I guess I’ll do my normal sweep for errors and then go back and read Jungard’s as that wall o text crit me for 9001 upon first scrolling down…
Finding a gamer that’s a decent human being seems to be an achievement in and of itself.
Maybe finding an “omgwtfbbq super awesome player” that’s a decent human being is an achievement maybe? I mean we had plenty of decent human beings, Anni…shit, uhh Klocker…damn, hmm Blain…errr, Neps, yeah lets go with Neps.
Cast out of social groups at a young age, mocked for our ability to geek out on subject matter too niche for the general public:
Change the comma in this sentence to “and”, helps with flow into the list.
Kids and adults handle it very differently.
Handle what? Being shunned? Being a geek? The “it” isn’t clear enough in this sentence.
Children shift into an offensive mode, attacking with name calling and pantsing to prevent us from knowing the truth: they have no idea what you are talking about.
Along the same lines as the last edit, which children? The geeks or someone else? This isn’t clear enough to the reader.
they have no idea what you are talking about. Or even better: they are just like you, but don’t want their friends to know.
Remember, italics for emphasis, I would change the first bit to standard text to make the “they are just like you” be outstanding.
After a time, any interest in mingling with them far outweighed the effort of dumbing down our conversation…or we simply didn’t care to risk additional mockery for our less cavalier interests.
Again, just clarifying who is who.
We grew thick skins, shielding us from the ignorance of the others
There’s far too many italics in this paragraph even if they are being used to signal internal thoughts, might just want to save it for those so I would normalize “the others” here.
what we are missing in life.
Normalize text.
empathize…to communicate…with any efficacy.
Normalize text, no need for ellipses here either.
By what you knew.
Normalize text.
that high score.
Normalize text and change “that” to “the”
Scoring High lists
So this first part has a lot of X, Y, Z list examples of things and by the last paragraph it gets a little grating as far as pacing in reading the whole post.
ham radio signal frequencies and ‘handles’ imprinted onto license plates, the collected works of Rumiko Takahashi, an admiration for the aesthetic of a twenty-sided die.
I think this one works ok.
This is us: gamers, geeks, nerds…shunned by the jocks and the preps, the popular and the masses.
This could do with some cleanup, either combine gamers/geeks/nerds or drop “jocks and the preps” as popular pretty much covers both those groups from a cliche standpoint.
week-long binges of Mega Man and R-Type and Phantasy Star II. We ranked each other by who beat Battletoads, and our struggles with humanity were digitally obscured by the universes we occupied: the empty solitude of Fallout and the corporate greed driving Ultima into the ground.
I would say for the week-long binges, keep one or two as the examples are starting to saturate the point. Dump the bit about Battletoads but I think keeping the whole “obscured by the universes” bit is ok.
We grew thick skins, shielding us from the ignorance of the others, saving us from having to carry on a meaningful conversation about what’s important to us, what we need, what we are missing in life.
“We grew thick skins that shielded us from the ignorance of the others thus saving us from having to carry on a meaningful conversation about what’s important to us.” Less is more.
In turn, we lost our shot at gaining any tools necessary to persuade, empathize…to communicate…with any efficacy.
:“In turn, we lost out shot at gaining any tools necessary to communicate with any efficacy.” Again less is more.
Our only means of relating to people was through games and shared geekdom, and when we managed to pick other geeks out in a crowd, how did we do it?
Our only mode of relating to people is via our shared expertise, our proficiency at what we geek out on.
Same sentiment repeats between paragraph 5 and 6, alot of the same content, needs some cleanup.
But we could at least forgive, accept we made mistakes in judgement (both of us), and move forward.
I’m drowning in commas, send halp! “But we could at least forgive and accept we made mistakes in judgement, then move forward”
Better to be in a group of similarly-minded folk than to be off alone, roaming Azeroth, exiled to a life of pick-up groups and battlegrounds whose ever-changing faces ensure no history…nor any opportunity to write one.
Run on. “Better to be in a group of similarly-minded folk than to be exiled to a life of pick-up groups and battlegrounds that X.” Solve for X but make it something simple, I’m not quite sure what you are going for here but “ever-changing faces ensure no blah blah blah” is too much.
I don’t want things to ever get as bad as they did in TBC. If you are being pushed aside, mistreated, or have an issue with anyone in this guild, you can come to me directly and I will deal with it. Even if you think it’s not OK to bring up – I’m letting you know: it is.
Does this whole thing need to be italicized? It isn’t an internal thought correct? You are just going over what was previously said to Fal?
She was a star healer in those first weeks of January and February, granted every rotation she signed up for.
Change comma to “and”
Inside those raids, I monitored chat very carefully, listening for her in Vent and watching what she typed into /raid and /dodhealers.
Dump the first comma after “radis”
Was she rebutting a healing assignment, or merely seeking clarity?
Remove the comma.
Did I detect some snark? Or was it an innocent observation?
Combine these sentences.
her history, her possible targets of resentment.
Change comma after “history” to “and”
grate on you.
Italics aren’t needed (unless I guess they really grated on you)
Fred was a potential second candidate, a dedicated, enthusiastic member of the healing squad, backing opinion by quoting articles and research, yet struggled at the performance part of his role.
Run on. “Fred was a potential second candidate, a dedicated member of the healing squad. He backed opinion with research and by quoting articles but struggled at the performance part of his role.”
the likes of which Fal would chew up and spit out when put to the test.
Change second instance of “Fal” to “she”
of tamagotchi missing its battery.
“of a tamagotchi”
And yet, each time I’d ping her, Fal was amicable, perhaps even (dare I say it) pleasant.
Holy hell. “And yet each time I’d ping her, Fal was amicable and perhaps even (dare I say it) pleasant.” Either/or on the parenthesis or italics and since this post is already littered with the latter, lets go with the former.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Redundant, remove completely.
We were going to have folks like that
Normalize text
She took in stride, and with each passing week, I felt more optimistic about Fal’s state of mind as we dug in for the long, cataclysmic haul.
“She took it in stride and with each passing week, I fel more optimistic about Fal’s state of mind” Less is more.
this is why I kept a close eye on the roster and spammed guild messages / forum posts with reminders – we’re fallible, we forget. We’re human.
Em dash extension in the second part of a semicolon sentence? Gah! “…this is why I kept a close eye on the roster and spammed guild chat and the forums with reminders.”
We had a good roster – there were a few fillers here and there, waiting in the queue, but it was nothing like the days of Wrath: whole groups of players of each class, vying for a spot in the 25-Man.
ARRRRGGHHH “We had a good rost with a few fillers here and there waiting in the queue but it was nothing like in the days of Wrath. Whole groups of players of each class would be vying for the same spots in the 25-Man.”
which is why I eyed her missing sign-ups
Replace “her” with “Fal”. Even though she is the subject of this whole blog post, her name hasn’t been mentioned yet in the 3rd part.
Teras was Fal’s SO? Holy shit, TIL.
A cricket needs time for things to settle, too much activity forces them into a defensive position, unable to cope.
“A cricket needs time for things to settle. Too much activity forces them into a defensive position where they are unable to cope.”
You’ll get your chirping, about how your guild has become “too big of a crowd for their personality”
Remove the comma after “chirping”