You're more amazing than catchphrases

90% of all Yugioh card effects are either "move a card from one zone to another" or "negate an effect" so I made a bunch of combat keywords so that monsters can actually be interesting on the field.

you're spot on, so much of the hysteria on twitter seems to be fueled by people with agendas - 3pp who'll have to pay royalties, youtubers looking for engagement, indie developers etc

heck, i saw one youtuber tweet "let's put cr on blast and make them comment on this" which is incredibly stupid. even if they wanted to comment on the ogl (which they're not obligated to), they'll at least wait until the official version is out and not comment on a leaked document

and the thing is, that document is almost a month old. odds are there's already been some revisions based on feedback and negotiations with the big publishers, who knows. no one has the whole picture and everyone's just wildly speculating and accusing

Right like...obviously CR has a close working relationship with WoTC, and, frankly, might even be affected since the Tal'Dorei guides are under the OGL, but also, does that youtuber remember when Critical Role put out a not-dissimilar copyright statement and people similarly lost their shit? Or how whenever CR plays a non-D&D game for a one-shot the indie crowd screams that they're doing it wrong (*cough* Monsterhearts)? It's just so obviously people who either already hate D&D and yet hang on to its every word waiting for reasons to tell people to switch, which I have never seen work and I've been in these online spaces for 4+ years now;

For what it's worth: I actually have rarely seen this kind of fuckery from indie developers though I'm sure it exists. It's usually just random fans (see again Monsterhearts; the creator said she thought Cinderbrush was great; it was fans of the game/haters of CR making all the noise).

Like, I make fun of indie games from time to time but actually, TAZ: Steeplechase has made me interested in checking out Blades in the Dark for a one-shot or something, which a lot of screeching idiots have repeatedly failed to do, because TAZ: Steeplechase is like "hey we are using this system and it's fun as hell for the story we're trying to do here!" instead of saying "D&D is evil and everyone will be leaving it now! just like we said when One D&D came out or when Hasbro said it wasn't profitable enough or when discussions in 2020 touched upon some of the racially charged language surrounding certain character races or or or...ANYWAY PLAY MY FAVORITE GAME."

Also I do want to note that I'm barely exaggerating about the alternatives people offer. I've seen some dude touting Rolemaster, which is literally out of print. Or like, after A Court of Fey and Flowers, someone brought up Good Society and seriously overstated how it was used in that game (it was significantly hacked, and also they were still very much playing D&D 90% of the time) and did not actually cover that if you want to cast spells, Good Society will not help you. It's just...I actually very much agree that we should encourage the use of alternatives to D&D! I think it's good to have a thriving independent game culture! It's just...why is everyone's response to shit on D&D, which is not perfect, but is immensely popular for many good reasons, instead of putting that effort into making their favorite indie game more accessible and appealing to new players. What kind of idiot says "the correct way to convince people to change is to tell them that the thing they love is dumb and bad, and offer an alternative without understanding what other people are looking for."

24 and a half <3

hi me from 3 years ago (ish) hi 20 year old me, this is 24 year old you speaking. there's 3 days till christmas and i'm typing on the couch of our (collective) first ever boyfriend's house. i bet you're very impressed, to be honest, this was a life event that i've given up on and to be extra honest, it has entirely consumed me for the last 6 months (with very minor exaggeration). and i've learned a lot about myself.

first things first though. i wanted to say hi and i wanted to say thank you. i think in life, and we know this because we are us, it can feel lonely. i feel like life is a very ruthless churn wheel that gives and takes people away. i keep hoping for them to stay, to last forever, friends lovers etc etc but no one really does. but you - you're here for good. me, i'm here for good and this post, you reaching out to me like that - same person, same person who is continually invested in us (it's getting a little meta) is here, i suddenly feel a wave of anti-loneliness. this past year has been me trying to change my life in the sense of me trying to be a better person for other people, trying to nurture good friendships into something great, and there's something comforting knowing that my rock, you/us/helen-next-year-and-ten-years-to-come will always be here, the girl always in my corner is you. i love you. forever, i've got you. we've got this <3 thanks for saying hi and future helen, hi :) i hope you're good, i love you, i have faith in you!!

ANYWAYs digression aside, what else has been going on in the world ever since 20 year old me? the pandemic finished, it's crazy to think but nothing really changed for good, we all went back to work -actually one thing is working from home. that's been very good. but no one wears masks anymore and try as i might to have spare hand sanitiser somewhere in my bag, i do not and i have regressed to a degenerate who sometimes eats with her bare hands without washing in urgently hungry situations. hmm what else, omg ai has developed, there's this thing called chatgpt and basically i'm just using it to help me find words that rhyme and write applications/cover letters and rephrase professional sentences but it's super useful and i do wonder when robots are going to overtake the world. oh btw, there's also a recession ongoing at the moment, people are getting fired, people are struggling to find jobs. it's a bit grim, there's a cost of living crisis but in spite of it all, people are still going to bars and having a blast on friday evenings (and sometimes i do this too - i went yesterday actually and beat my boyfriend at poole). i think that's all for the world updates. OMG ONE MORE THING. taylor swift is back, she's better and more successful than ever. she wasn't lying when she said she bounces back stronger than a 90s trend. she's also moved on from joe alwyn and that made us all believe in a hot minute that love wasn't real until she started dating travis kelce which also taught the whole damn world that the good kind of love, the right kind of love won't have to ask you to make sacrifices, they show up for you even in the hardest nights.

ANYWAYS, 20 year old Helen, I miss you, I know you had a lot of things against yourself but one thing I really love about you is your optimism, your general belief in the order of things and us, our potential. so here's the answer to all your crazy questions, i think we hoped for the best at that time but we weren't sure, maybe we didn't believe in ourselves a lot but actually, we did okay! and we're a work in progress. one thing is that i am growing up SO MUCH these days, i'm learning a lot about myself in terms of my self-esteem issues, in terms of how i want to be a friend and a person that i would want to love myself, what makes a good friend vs a great friend (someone who will give you their time regardless), what love is (always picking up the phone), how it comes in all shapes and forms (friendships, family), how i have the power to shape my life. On the other side I think we're a lot more grounded now, a few lessons we're learning today is that our voice is our power, i'm trying to voice my needs and opinions as much as possible and stay true to myself, i'm learning patience because good things take time, i'm learning how perfect gets in the way of good enough and really really great and also how it's achievable eventually (in my own defined way) but i have to work and have faith. i trust myself more, to take care of myself first but also i will always be my own failsafe, i trust myself and i am glad to have myself be the person there to pick me back up. I'm learning how to apply my pre-frontal cortex thinking, slowly but surely. i'm learning that in order to love you have to be vulnerable. i'm still trying to figure out how romantic relationships work, how love works, how to understand someone. so those are a few things i'm working on at the moment, i feel like i'm trying to make up for lost time with these intersocial skills, i'm healing a wound from childhood. i'm trying to take care of us, not just 20 year old us but also 10 year old us, 15 year old us. I also learned that you shouldn't make fun of people, the things they find good about life, the things they love, their excitement, you shouldn't rain on someone's parade ever.

OKAY to answer your q's:

I'm listening to ghost me by holly humberstone, our taste hasn't changed much and i wonder if it ever will. this year i met what feels like so many people who love the same music as me and i went to concerts with them! in reality it was just Leah, Shannon and Lauren, but still, I am so happy about this. I just realised in 5 years we're going to be 30 holy crap. i'm a bit scared as 24 year old helen to be honest - but 30 year old Helen how are you? :) I am excited to hear about your life, what are you listening to right now?

We talked about my relationship status, I have a boyfriend!! he's cute and tall and pretty and softly spoken and he's funny and he cares about me and he is super smart and goofy and weird sometimes and he kisses me randomly in the morning and strokes my hair when we watch tv, he's a good guy. we have an issue, i am a bit concerned he's in love with his ex but i think half of it is me overthinking - 30 year old Helen please feedback what happened with him? are you still together or are you with someone else? Are you single and hot and touring the world on your latest book tour? What's your relationship status, what have you learned about love? what's your outlook on finding someone now? ARE YOU STARTING A FAMILY? 20 year old me, you accused me of having self esteem issues - i totally agree with you and we're working on this :) it does affect my relationship though lmao the situation doesn't help.

Our grandma died a few months after you wrote that post and i think i am still grieving although it gets lighter with time. i'm not sure if grief ever leaves you, i miss her, i miss the childhood that i remember with her. i miss squeezing the wrinkles on her hands. i miss the way when she'd ask after me, i would be sick for some reason, it's like she always knew. but mostly i miss holding her small hand on walks, or peeling garlic with her in the kitchen, i miss loving her i think. there was a tenderness i felt with her, a kind of safety and peace that i don't feel anymore at home. i miss her so much. i am glad i got to have her for the time that i did. home isn't the same without her. everyone has processed their grief differently. i am lucky i still have most people around me. i want to spend more time with parents as much as i can. 30 year old me, how is the family? do you go on holidays with Lucy and Fran? are you doing all expenses paid trips with mum and dad? are you making sure you tell them you love them? are you making sure you are giving them your time, please look after them well, they raised you up so well, they worked so hard, please love them harder. are we better at showing it yet? if not, what's stopping you? i hope they are well and healthy.

i moved out. i'm living in london in Liz's flat and i am struggling with sharing 30 year old me DID YOU GET TO LIVE ALONE have you decorated your place exactly how you wanted it? did you have fun moving in, did you have fun matching furnitures and furnishings and making pinterest boards? do you own your place now or are you planning to buy and settle somewhere soon? WHERE ARE YOU BTW? i am excited to know hehe. did you manage to travel and live somewhere random for 6 months? did you work out so you have multiple homes in different locations that you are enamoured by?

funny thing is, i did end up working in consulting it's like marketing and basic basic data consulting and we are not enjoying it, but we found a strange kooky kind of family there, a bunch of asians and i think it's one of the first times in my life where i felt like i belonged to a social strata, it's healing. we had a crush on one of them at 23 but he was weird. we're all eating together next week, Michael's making food for Abi and I! 30 year old me - what happened to these guys, are we still in touch? i'm not too sure but i hope you found a good group of fun friends to hang with. Career-wise i just finished a course to become a designer. I KNOW I CONCEEDED, ya girl is GOING TO DO SOMETHING CREATIVE. 30 year old me - miss SNR DESIGNER, are you lecturing? did you go back and do a masters like you wanted to? are you speaking at conferences on best design practices? are you building products you believe in and if not why not? what are you doing now career wise and are you enjoying it? is it giving you a greater purpose? are you proud? 20 year old me, i think you'll be proud of me to be honest, i did end up being a marketing hoe in a fancy ass office building and i am SERVING work fits in the office. we did it, let's do some more :) and you'll be even prouder to know that i have made a few more serious attempts to start writing, i got a scholarship on a writing course this year that i did not complete but tbc, i want to focus on this area of my life for sure going forwards, i am excited. 30 year old Helen - what are you writing about? is it non-fiction, fiction? how has your writing style changed? what's your process like? do you read? what do you like to read nowadays? right now i am building a reading app and i still haven't hit my goodreads targets but i'm doing okay!! i read on and off and i'm proud that i've kind of picked it back up and we're moving forwards! i am rich enough to do weekly spin/pilates sessions, my relationship means i don't want to spend extra time doing this stuff but I NEED TO. i must, i am struggling, 30 year old me, did you manage to sort this out? please be hot and fit and healthy, please make me proud, to be honest i have faith in myself, but 30 year old me, how did i do? and how can we do better? :) are we taking therapy now? because we tried that for a hot minute but we were too poor to continue. drones are still not really a thing. I went with Elizabeth to spain this year and saw a need side to her. i haven't seen Jason since uni. I've spoke to chloe less and less since she's got a boyfriend. I call Jen and Michelle and Taiga a lot these days, i think they'll be around for a long time :) how are they? how's Abi? how's Shannon? any new friends?

OMG THE GUY, he was not over his ex and he broke up with you, i really hope 30 year old us has more perspective but i hope it doesn't end the same with this guy. but he was not the one for you HONEY. you live, you learn, you do better. :)

i cook a little now, could be healthier and i am SO EXCITED TO HAVE OUR OWN POTS AND PANS AND PLATE COLLECTIONS IN OUR OWN PLACE, 30 year old me - please describe our aesthetic kitchen set up and the scrumptious meals you make for candlelit dinners <3

i just took an enneagram test i am still 9 and then 2 as fuck but closely followed by 3 :) to be honest i think these are not super bad traits but i am more honest about how i am a slight pushover so 30 year old me are we a 1/3 through and through? i think i am a 1 or a 4 at heart to be honest, let me know your results.

i write songs and i sing a bit better, do we still do this later? no kids, 2.3k monthly salary post tax, wbu 30 Helen? have we made 6 figures yet? :) I started dancing this year! planning to keep going next year, i;m not great but i really love it. it made me feel a live again, hbu 30 year old Helen? do you dance? are you finally good at it?

I do still make spotify playlists AND instagram highlights WITH MY ENTIRE LIFE in it. hbu 30 year old helen? what are our latest themes? are we recording our life in any other way? my spotify playlists are not so theme based i think i grew out of it i don't have the time and it's less fun when you don't have an ex potentially stalking your profile. but we categorise it by month and we are SO FREAKING PROUD of it.

TV series I love: scorpion, omg singles inferno, buccaneers, rick and morty, discovered parks and recreation it was insane and brooklyn 999 but will always ALWAYS be a hoe for new girl, it has my heart. but to be honest i don't watch a lot of TV anymore I am really into Ali Abdaal's podcast and i'm trying to watch productive youtube videos and read when i eat ofc a lot of the times this doesn't happen. How are you entertaining yourself 30 year old Helen? did you build healthier habits? do you have a consistent morning/evening routine?

I have 40 followers on my private ig. hbu 30 year old Helen? how many detoxes did you do? are you still posting your thoughts? are there people on there that you don't speak to now?

Funnily enough I am speaking to jen and Michelle and taiga on facebook, hbu?

you had a lot of questions for me 20 year old Helen and I love you for that but I am also very tired to keep going back and forth so let me try my best to answer everything in my next paragraph and I'll cover all the bases in my life too. screenwriting has been vetoed as a pipe dream, you are right i did become more realistic but this has also helped me to see things clearer and evaluate what i want and who i want to be and what i want to do with this limited time, we have arrived at writing, designing, teaching and being a good person who applies herself as much as possible, who is always true to her authentic self. we are kinder to ourselves and more forgiving when we mess up and we're still messing up but now we're learning from it more because we're not afraid anymore. i am trying to carry less shame with me and this comes with brutal honesty for everyone, i've also realised that some shame is not for me to carry, some trauma may impact me but it belongs to other people and i am blaming myself less. i am writing a little, i've paused but my heart is tied to it, i will do it - 30 year old me, did i do it? ARE WE PUBLISHED?? are we good? did we take our parents to duck and waffle? logistically this wouldn't really make sense but i hope you paid a shit tonne of money when you're rich to show them that their daughter made it, pride is everything to a parent - it's something that I want to give to them. i know they are proud already, but i want to give back to them something tangible that they can hold on to. i want to act in love. i want to celebrate the very act of existing.

do we have mentors? are we mentoring people? how did we meet these people? how have they helped us in our career and life and relationships? are we healthy? are we happy? are we still trying? do you have a grand plan, a vision, something you are entirely excited about and pouring your entire soul into? are you enjoying the small moments in life? are you calling your friends are telling you you love them? are you calling your parents? do you have someone you love? do you tell it to them enough? are you celebrating yourself? are you having good birthdays? are you in love with life? what do you love about it these days? i'm always in the process of falling in and out of love with life but recently i went to Elliot's to see Jay and his girlfriend and i walked to borough and the people there, the scene, the life itself they were all breathing, made me fall completely head over heels in love all over again. life makes life after all - please touch it as much as possible, play with it and mould it, feel, feel things and be honest about them. are you still a romantic realist? are you still an optimist? i fucking hope so because the world is too miserable to live as a cynic. do you use your words wisely? do you mean them? are you shouting these days?

i love you, i hope you're loving yourself, i know you do actually. let's rephrase, how do you love yourself these days?

last note to 30 year old Helen:

you seem old and far away but I'm sure that when i get to you you won't feel that much different, but I hope you've changed a lot for the better. I hope you're still changing for the better. I know I get to choose a version of you based on my actions today. I know what I want, what I can give to us. wish me luck, i hope you don't blame me. what do you think of me? did i try my best? i'll try my best - i'm a little scared to be honest but i have faith in the universe. i really do.

so... how are we doing? :)

This is so not a story at all, so get ready for a whole bunch of nothing about what a gigantic snob I am!

I can't stop thinking about this journey I went on with this person on Instagram. I'm obsessed with the area my dad's family is from, which is this weird tiny Finnish-but-culturally-Swedish, autonomous, demilitarized archipelago in the Baltic Sea. I'm always looking for Instagram users who live there, to see what daily life is like. I happened upon this one middle aged guy, and quickly noticed that he liked comics and genre film, which seemed lucky--the smaller a population, the less likely I am to find somebody with all my "weird" interests. So I followed him, even though I objected to his Van Dyke facial hair and consistently douchey uniform of a trench coat and porkpie hat. Then, I slowly began to realize that I didn't think he had very good taste in general; we generally liked the same kind of cult cinema, but he always seemed to find anything remotely cerebral to be really boring, and he skewed more toward Troma-style attention grabs, which *I* find really boring. His preferred comics ranged from boringly mainstream, to weirdly bad--cheapo revivals of musty old strip comics that absolutely nobody cares about. I knew the very slim population of guys who actually bought those books in the states, old duffers who a) think everything is a collector's item, and b) think their encyclopedic knowledge of e.g. seldom-seen silent era actors makes them geniuses. These guys also usually wore trench coats and porkpie hats, so I guess some things stay the same all around the world. On a side note, there's something distinctly European about loving both stuffy old genre material that has pretty much turned to dust by now (sword and sandal dramas, swashbuckling pirate adventures, etc), AND raunchy "in your face" splatterpunk satire. I can't describe why but it's definitely a thing, I encountered it a lot when I was spending time in France on and off, and it always gave me the willies for some unnamable reason. Uh anyway, I eventually figured out that this guy actually WRITES some of these throwback comics. I was thinking to myself, why the fuck would ANYBODY be obsessed with The Phantom, a property so boring that even in our creatively bankrupt post-everything era, the only attempt to mine it for contemporary interest is that forgotten Billy Zane movie? But no, it all makes sense, because this guy occasionally writes for a Phantom series that comes out of Australia. Let's take a quick look at some covers for that series, which will give us a good idea of why most rational people don't do this jungle adventure shit anymore:

I especially "like" the last one, where the Phantom is fucking some girl in a pool of native blood. The other thing this guy writes for occasionally is a comedy serial that I guess has been running forever, that's another kind of thing that lets me know the limits of my own taste. I guess it's kind of an Archie type of thing about conscripted military service:

The drawings are absolutely hideous, the jokes barely exist, and I don't even know how the scenario in the last one is supposed to have happened--did he phase shift through the tree or something? I had two jobs in the span of about 15 years where I saw all kinds of comics, so I'm not unfamiliar with this kind of thing, I just never ever "got" it. Even when the material is actually good, I never had good feelings toward the hairy, bulbous, hyperactive drawings that characterize a lot of European comedy output. Some of this would be forgivable if it were strictly for children, but Wikipedia tells me that this 91:an series is mostly read by older audiences. I would assume that this is because the existing fans mainly caught onto it in THEIR childhood, but who fucking knows, I have no idea what would attract anybody to this stuff in the first place.

Anyway, I just looked at this guy's Twitter page, and it lists him as a journalist and movie critic as well. I scrolled through about a year's worth of tweets to see if I could find any of his movie reviews. I could not. And, it's not an exaggeration to say that 85-90% of his tweets are just links to obituaries (not written by him) of like, every single remotely show business-y person who died, the second they died. This is another classic attribute of the kind of nerd who cares about Prince Valliant and shit, they always know everybody who is dead and they're really pushy about telling you for some reason. I find all of this kind of understandable when the person is in their 70s or something and has seen a lot of changes in the world, but this guy is only in his 40s or so. It's as if he fell in with a "bad crowd" of elderly nerds at a rummage sale (or at the very comic shop where I worked for many years, because they were all friends with the owner!) and just patterned his whole life after them.

Anyway, I don't really know what point I'm coming to. Probably none, I've just been thinking about this obsessively ever since I realized that this guy doesn't just innocently read bad comics, he actually writes them. I always knew there must be people who wrote these comics, I just never imagined them before, and now I got a whole profile going. Apparently this dude has a couple of screenwriting credits too, but I'm too scared to watch them.

Ok, I know it may come as quite offensive for some people, but it's a real question. I'm upper middle-class, as my parents were before me, I was still living with them during the econonical crisis and I barely felt it and now I have my own job, I have no problem having money for myself. And fortunately or not, all of my friends either come from this social class or got into it with their jobs, so I never had a real talk with someone considered "poor". I'm not trying to brag or anything, (cont)

I'm just explaining where I stand and why everyone in my family (including me) is right-winged (not far-right, thanks god, but very liberal). So there is my question, I see so much talk and post about how the situation is awful for people (and mainly young people) and I don't know if it's an exaggeration (aka the opinion of 90% of the people I know, friends + families) or is there a real problem I fail to understand. Thanks for taking the time to read (and maybe answer) me.

Sure I can answer you XD

So, given that the economical crisis hit differently in different countries so there’s different perspectives to be had, the short answer is: it’s not an exaggeration. Long answer:

if you come from an upper middle-class background it’s highly likely you won’t have felt the repercussions, and if you were living with your parents when the crisis hit because you weren’t old enough for college then I suppose you’re in your early-mid twenties, right? If you are, congratulations, you dodged the millennial bullet, which I will rant about further later. Anyway, it’s not like it’s a fault or anything, but like, upper-middle class = you have some degree of privilege.

Now, I also am middle class, though in Italy, which is a whole different thing than being middle class in the US - now I can’t be knowledgeable about the details of how it works in the US tho I know a few things that might give you extra perspective further down, but anyway, I do have the middle-class privilege that comes with having managed to dodge the economical crisis, but... I’m late twenties/early thirties, which means that I finished studying right when the crisis hit here the worst - it caught up with us a bit later than in the US but when I finished university there was literally nothing for anyone with my background and most people my age I know either are working from home somehow or working jobs that have nothing to do with their skill set or what they studied for or are freelancers or work without benefits and/or it took them years to get to economical stability - like, my cousin got first in this year’s chart to teach middle school in her area and she got two schools (if not three) for one year and is still living with her parents and it took her six years if not more to get there since getting the degree, her brother has worked for an ONG for years but his contract’s is meh and he compensates renting a room in a house his parents bought for him and as far as I’m concerned... it took me two years to get a shitty paid state job for one year and now I have to look again and I might end up trying to end up in a program to get a teaching certification that I don’t even want to do, but it’s STATE MONEY with BENEFITS and after four years and so of working without benefits I’m freaking out about retirement and shit, which brings us to another problem.

My parents’ generation (and the previous one) found jobs in a moment of economical growth. When my mother retires and when my father does, they’re going with the old pension system which means they get 90% of their last paycheck. As it is right now, I haven’t put money towards it at all because I don’t have it, and I’ll have to work until I’m like seventy and I’ll get.... an abysmal amount of money, with the current system, sure as fuck not 90% of my last paycheck. I couldn’t buy a house without my parents’ help or without them backing me up (banks don’t let you have a mortgage if your parents don’t grant for you). And like, the generation before mine all managed to lend decent jobs because the economy was pre-crisis, the one after mine is getting better jobs because we’re out of it and everyone is hiring again, and the one I’m in is fucked because we’re too old or too young or too qualified because if you don’t find work you go back to studying and get titles that then mean you should get PAID WHAT A TRAVESTY or not qualified enough because we ended up taking jobs without proper contracts that you can’t put on your resume and so on. Given that I don’t consider myself old and that I come from a background where I’m more or less covered because the parents have good jobs, the situation for me and my entire age group is shitty af because unless you have uber rich parents and you come from money your retirement money will be shit and our retirement funds are shitty af, and good luck when our parents retire and don’t feed the system with their retirement money.

Like, if I wanted hypothetical children (THANK FUCK I DON’T) I could never afford to give them the same level of wealth/living that my parents gave me and that their parents gave them. I could never. Because even with someone else in the house, if they were my age and in the same work conditions it’d be an utopia.

Now, given all this, I’m still middle class. If I, a person with a relative amount of *privilege*, am fairly screwed when it comes to job perspectives (I mean, in this country you work as soon as you finish uni if you studied engineering or economics and that’s it...), how do you assume someone who actually comes from a low middle class or poor background is faring? Spoilers: a lot worse than me. The unemployment level in between young people here is tremendously high and working jobs without a contract to bring money home doesn’t help either. And like, at least here a lot of people my age just dump everything and leave Italy (and I honestly sort of wish I had when it’d have been easier but never mind) because finding a job tied in some way to what you studied for here is a lottery gamble and then people don’t understand that if all the young people leave who pays for their goddamned retirement money? Anyway, tldr: obviously if I had found a government job at 24 just out of university I wouldn’t be here worrying about my retirement money as much, but I don’t have a government job and the majority of people doesn’t, and given the current times it’s not shaping up to look that much better for us, at least.

On to the US, since I assume you’re from the US: thing is, from what I understand especially right now the part where if you work hard enough you make money and climb into upper-middle class is kind of a myth especially when in order to attend university you have to get loans unless you’re on a scholarship and/or come from money, which means that you end university and you have already 40k of debt to repay on you, which already puts a hinder on anything you do because you’ll have to pay that shit off, same as your car, same as your house and so on, which means that if you’re *poor* it’s a lot less likely to get into college or find a good job unless you go in the military (which is imo another whole level of fucked up but never mind), not counting the people who from what I understand end up in debt or broke because they can’t pay off hospital expenses/insurance expenses if they get sick. Never mind that the entire 2008 crisis spiraled from the Reagan/Thatcher ridiculously terrible economical liberalims that people decided was AMAZING in the eighties, but if I don’t remember wrong, what kickstarted it was basically the fact that a lot of people took loans to buy houses with money they didn’t have and the banks defaulted and it all came tumbling down. Now, the people who lived in those houses basically lost everything and got fucked thrice over, and how do we assume their kids are faring? Not well, most probably.

Now, idk how the situation is there because it looks like by the end of his term Obama had managed to create more jobs and send things back on  a better track (if Trump doesn’t fuck that up obv) but like... Obama was there eight years. It took that long. Anyone who finished college and/or was in my age range and on the job market during the crisis or when it hit most probably got very much fucked, never mind that I’m 99% sure that the US don’t have the same retirement system as here when it comes down to it so people are nowhere near as sheltered when it comes to their retirement. Or to get benefits. Though from what I gathered we have more benefits than the average US worker, government or not, so... a lot of people have real issues finding a job or moving on from their crappy one or meeting the living standards their parents had and which from what I gather they’re expected to have (see the credit cards post I reblogged yesterday). And that’s going to be the majority. And since ‘young people’ are usually considered my��age range these days and my group (the millennials of doom) was the one most hit by this fuckery when it came to finding jobs... no, it’s not an exaggeration. I can say it’s not from another country where things are marginally better and coming from a background more like yours, I can’t even begin to imagine how worse it is for people who had it worse growing up and have less welfare to fall back on.

also, we’re talking young people but here a lot of older ones got fucked over thrice because the pension reform hit them badly, and most of them weren’t wealthy and worked time/health-consuming jobs, a lot lost their job and who’s going to re-hire you when you’re fifty-five, and that’s without having lost your savings as it happened in the US. if these people had kids, those kids didn’t fare well, most probably. the crisis was a problem for people from every age, not just for young people.

So, again: yes, there’s a problem, and no, it’s probably hard that you’d notice because if you managed to miss the crisis’s effects and you don’t have the retirement/pension funds problems we have here you wouldn’t have any reason to. However, it’s not an exaggeration at all and like, I don’t want to sound condescending or anything and I have nothing against moderate liberals so like don’t take it as me insulting you or anything because I swear I’m not, and I know it’s hard to know people outside your sphere which is usually someone in your same economical conditions, but if you get the chance to talk to someone who’s less economically well-off than you/your friends/your family is I’d suggest listening to them because a) they’d give you a better idea of it than me since I only know my country’s situation well, b) it’s always a good thing to go outside your bubble (but that’s valid for everyone - all people should, from all backgrounds) and check how things are. I can give my perspective (which is bad) but someone who actually lived it worse than I did could give a better one. Anyway, I hope it was a satisfactory answer - it’s not in any way shape or form comprehensive but as I said I can only speak for what I’m sure of. :)