Dowlphin

Wanted to say this. To maybe make you pause and meditate. It's based on my own experiences. There is a staunch brony hater who calls me his friend and says he respects me. He never hurt me. ... Maybe because I don't expect much from him. But is it wrong to expect at least a minimum amount of decency from a fan of a show like MLP that conveys certain values and is so full of inspiring beauty? There are self-proclaimed bronies who I, without trying to exaggerate, can only describe as vile scum, fervently perverting everything the show stands for. Sometimes their amount of denial and lack of self-awareness is borderline comical. Dan Vs. might be another show on The Hub, but when you think "brony", an image of Dan would be among the last things popping into your head, no? I know, I should expect these things. But it's still saddening. Feel free to comment. For more extensive discussion, you can also talk here: http://mlpforums.com/topic/101832-some-brony-haters-are-more-decent-people-than-some-bronies

But are you sure you're reading their inside and not their outside? Maybe people even have different ideas of what reading means in this context.

That is well-said and a thesis I would agree on. There of course are always exceptions to a norm and also variations depending on the situation, but generally speaking this could be an explanation.

Why the sudden urge to stop the dialogue? There seems to be another misconception: When all your senses stop working AND you have no awareness and no memory of how much time passed during the incident, then I don't see how that is different from losing consciousness through fainting ... or sleep for that matter. Of course during sleep your brain still works, but you are unconscious. And from the information you provided so far, it sounded like that. Also, when you say you ought to go a doctor but nothing seems wrong with you, how can you know nothing it wrong with you? The doctor is supposed to figure that out. (And for a diagnosis, should a medical examination not yield results, it helps to give an accurate description of what happens.)

Uhm... sorry, but why didn't you just say you fainted then?

How is that not 'technically' blind? If your visual sense was offline, you were blind. It sounds like a very interesting (spiritually relevant) experience though, comparable to an imagined perfect isolation tank setup. The whole world must have seemed to cease to exist for you, yet your awareness of your own existence remained. Ever wondered how that can be? ;-) Did you have a perception of passing time during the experience?

Extroverts might have way more to hide than introverts. In spiritual philosophy, focusing on external things and other people can be a means for avoiding one's own inner state. I guess a good test to see whether this applies is to have an extrovert sit in an empty room in total silence with no distractions and see how they manage. I don't know whether anyone has done isolation tests like this with separate introvert and extrovert groups. I might have to investigate, because this could shed more light on whether extroversion is just a different 'style of being' or in fact constituting a different point in spiritual evolution.

How was it? Was your "blinded" the same as "blind"? Normally what you describe would temporarily injure the eyeball and thus impair the quality of the visual impression more or less. It would not affect the visual center of the brain ... unless it was some kind of psycholgical shock trauma I guess. The bright flash of the explosion might have harmed the receptors, but then I'd be curious about whether it is different from blindness caused directly in the brain. Because, as you might know, if you close your eyes in perfect darkness, you will not see perfect darkness, but various dim sensations and/or flickering and such; signal noise if you will.

Occasionally I am reminded of a popular misconception: The erroneous belief that for blind people, there is always darkness, everywhere. This even bothers me when used with poetical intention, since poetry should open new worlds and not further limit perception. Darkness is a concept that can only occur in a world where light exists. This is according to Daoist ideas of duality, which I have somewhat studied, but I also got practical confirmation once. When I was ill and had low blood pressure, my vision started to fade. This resulted in difficulty reading text and such. It wasn't darker, or blurry, it was actually quite like how you often cannot read text in a dream. It's there, but it also eludes your awareness - you cannot focus your mind on it. A moment later, when I got up, I was blind, and probably due to the general effect of the low blood pressure on the brain, I at first didn't really notice it. Pretty much like you also cannot notice the process of falling asleep. I definitely didn't panic or anything. And that's how I know from own experience what blindness feels like. There is no darkness. It's nothing like closing your eyelids. ... Well, it's a little bit like extending the line from open eyes in complete darkness way past closed (rolled up) eyes in total darkness. ... Anything visual is simply no longer part of your world, your reality. It's like there is no visual in the world - it only consists of smell, taste, touch and sound. Once I realized I was blind, I instinctively used my hands to find the way to the bed, and when I laid down, again, just like the blurry awareness you can have in a dream, my vision slowly came back, and the perceptive experience was like waking up from unconsciousness, but only affecting the visual senses. My vision was waking up from a nap. And now imagine yourself in such a situation, but try to imagine that there are perceptions in addition to the ones you consider normal. There's smell, taste, touch, sound, vision ... and then there are some other senses that you never experienced. You cannot possibly imagine them. You very likely wouldn't even believe they exist. But psychedelics for example can open that world to you and give you a brief glimpse into what else there is. ... Then, later, it is lost again, and what you remember is but a shadow of the real thing. You might remember the fact that you were perceiving more than usual, but it's like you are blind again and have amnesia. Those things are no longer part of your reality, thus you couldn't possibly imagine their existence. Ever wondered what ultraviolet light looks like? Well, duh! It looks ultraviolet. ... And not like anything else, so don't even try explaining or imagining it, believing you might be on to something. You either can see it or you don't have the slightest clue what it looks like.

Personally I don't enjoy planned roleplaying at all. It's my Pinkie Pie nature. RP for me is like an extension of my personality. I might do it when people least expect it, and then I enjoy it the most.

@Sir Jackleberry I looked them up on Wikipedia. Personally I'd definitely not enjoy playing Arma 2/3. The story synopses read like those games were funded by the Pentagon. @Lunatic Envy I wouldn't have expected that a third party voice chat tool could tie into a game process like that. Although I guess it means it works only for those who use it, i.e. a mere added limitation on the regular voice chat.

I couldn't find an answer to this using a web search. I thought of an awesome feature in gaming again and I'm sure it has been used somewhere, and I'm actually surprised it's not more popular. So which games do you know of that feature voice chat that is sent, not to all players equally, but (at least optionally) played like a sound effect originating from your character? I'd imagine this would be awesome fun especially for immersive roleplaying / hobby voice acting in Team Fortress 2. Imagine you could say "Put dispenser here!" or any other line you like, in a voice of your own choosing. It would also make the voice chat aspect of the gameplay much more realistic and thus immersive, and it might even encourage voice acting in the creative community not unlike Source Filmmaker encourages video creation. Seriously... why isn't this the norm by now?! FUN! FUN! FUN! (Depending on feedback, I might ask this on a Steam group later. Just not sure which.)

Friendship is magic. Until I get my own place, I'll have to manage without a plushie.

Indeed! I got to save a country workhorse damsel from the Evil Nerd-Faker. I gotta remember where I left that katana. Could come in handy for future dreams. (I didn't even see its blade, so it must have been an invisible katana, which is way cooler! ... But also makes it even more difficult to find. - I hope I at least sheathed it, otherwise I might not even want to risk searching for it.) Hm... now I'm wondering whether all this is related to my recent watching of Adventure Time.

It was an odd dream though, and I wish I had the energy and skill to draw comics from my dreams sometimes. From what I can tell, a villain was on the loose. There was a scene in a dark castle hallway or something, but I don't remember anything from there. Then there was an icy lake, I was running along the outer rim where there were sheets of ice, and I grabbed Applejack out of the water. A moment later I see Twilight Sparkle ahead, with her back to the lake, acting like she was being threatened by something, defensive and somewhat scared. But when I came closer, I noticed her colors were lighter, and somehow I immediately knew it's not the real Twilight. Without having to think, I swung my katana and somehow mananged to - in a frontal attack - cut off her tail. LOL WTF, why did I do that?! Well, in any case, when I did that, she assumed a slight white-glow and had a wicked-evil grin on her face and that's when I thrust my katana straight through her from top to bottom, leaving a white-glowing line through her still grinning (holographic?) body. That's when the dream ended.

Pinkie Pie is neither Rainbow nor a unicorn, yet one smile of her makes everything feel like rainbows and unicorns. Joust when you need it

Don't be a square.