This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

Author Topic: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really  (Read 38201 times)

Omega

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • O
  • Posts: 17093
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #255 on: October 27, 2020, 12:59:10 AM »
I am not being disingenuous and you're emphasizing the wrong word in my question. I am not being naive about the reaction, I am ASKING WHY. As in I genuinely want people to articulate the reasons they object to this specific thing, and not their general feelings of this company being icky for being SJW. It's not that I am surprised by people's reactions - I am asking for your reasons.

Thought I'd voiced mine before on this but here goes again.

Its the same objection I have to any "woke" material and especially to hateful "woke" statements and accusations as in their promotionals. This applies to any company that uses similar low stunts like this. Its the same reason I have a particular hate for Mearls and others of his ilk after he "fired" players from D&D. Or how 4e D&D had to piss on players of prior editions, or how WOTC has slapped a great big "WACIST!" label on all older product. And every other stunt companies and designers have pulled in the last 10 years.

And I particularly despise these things when all they are is an outrage marketing gag to get free advertising.

If you have to attack someone to promote your product. Then your product is not dirt. It is less than dirt.

SHARK

  • The Great Shark Hope
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5040
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #256 on: October 27, 2020, 01:23:55 AM »
I am not being disingenuous and you're emphasizing the wrong word in my question. I am not being naive about the reaction, I am ASKING WHY. As in I genuinely want people to articulate the reasons they object to this specific thing, and not their general feelings of this company being icky for being SJW. It's not that I am surprised by people's reactions - I am asking for your reasons.

Thought I'd voiced mine before on this but here goes again.

Its the same objection I have to any "woke" material and especially to hateful "woke" statements and accusations as in their promotionals. This applies to any company that uses similar low stunts like this. Its the same reason I have a particular hate for Mearls and others of his ilk after he "fired" players from D&D. Or how 4e D&D had to piss on players of prior editions, or how WOTC has slapped a great big "WACIST!" label on all older product. And every other stunt companies and designers have pulled in the last 10 years.

And I particularly despise these things when all they are is an outrage marketing gag to get free advertising.

If you have to attack someone to promote your product. Then your product is not dirt. It is less than dirt.

Greetings!

Well said, Omega! I agree entirely!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
"It is the Marine Corps that will strip away the façade so easily confused with self. It is the Corps that will offer the pain needed to buy the truth. And at last, each will own the privilege of looking inside himself  to discover what truly resides there. Comfort is an illusion. A false security b

Flash_Gorgon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • F
  • Posts: 1
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #257 on: October 27, 2020, 01:29:10 AM »
Sheridan Le Fanu did it better in 1872.   :)

Kyle Aaron

  • high-minded hack
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 9487
  • high-minded hack
    • The Viking Hat GM
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #258 on: October 27, 2020, 02:27:19 AM »
These goons are way behind. 12 year old boys have been using D&D to play lesbianstripperninjas since at least 1983.
The Viking Hat GM
Conflict, the adventure game of modern warfare
Wastrel Wednesdays, livestream with Dungeondelver

ShieldWife

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 226
    • https://www.youtube.com/user/ShieldWife
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #259 on: October 27, 2020, 04:36:29 AM »
Sure. Blue Rose was an RPG in the genre of "romantic fantasy" - inspired most particularly by the fantasy novels of Mercedes Lackey, along with Diane Duane and Tamora Pierce. It first came out in 2005, and it was the first game to feature the "True20" system - a variant of D20.

It was a technically post-apocalyptic, but it featured a central nation (Aldea) that had a limited monarchy or partial democracy. It didn't have elves or dwarves, but instead had things like talking wolves and horses (Rhydan), sea-people, and other non-standard races. I still have up my old resource pages on the original Blue Rose:

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/bluerose/

I have an essay there about addressing a number of common criticisms of Blue Rose from here ("Does the Golden Harte trample on role-playing?").

Thanks. I read about it on your linked site.

I don’t necessarily find that objectionable. I actually used to read a fair amount of Mercedes Lackey and Tamora Pierce when I was younger. There are a few qualities to the setting that aren’t my idea, though most published D&D settings have such qualities too. The Golden Heart chooses the king, but in standard D&D every has alignments that can be easily detected and gods grant powers to their followers, both of which are going to massively change the way politics in conducted. I’m not really that much into Old School either.

Aldis seems a little bit too perfect from a left wing perspective, which is not my ideal, but as I mentioned, D&D settings tend to have that too.

Of course, if people don’t like the game or it’s setting, they are free to say so, just as any of us should voice our opinions on games we like or dislike. I’m not sure how much I would like the game if I were to investigate it further, but whatever it’s merits and flaws, it’s certainly better than the designers telling me that I suck and can’t play their game.

Opaopajr

  • Señor Wences
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7768
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #260 on: October 27, 2020, 05:55:41 AM »
My goodness, at least get them a wine cooler already!   :'(  (So thirsty!...)

One of the best advice I took to heart from IN SJG was (paraphrasing): "Hell makes for great adventures because menace and malice is everywhere. Heaven, not so much, because then it would go against its definition of perfection. Disagreements and maybe some politics, yes, but nothing that could be sustained for long."

Point being is polemical art usually forgets the 'art' part in its struggle to maintain polemic purity -- which is why it often fails in its craft. It has to keep a dogmatic other that is often out of the scope of visbility, let alone play. It fails to emulate any of its influences (e.g. Mercedes Lackey-esque romanticism) because things are too safe, victorious, infallible. At that point, with little to no risk, what is there to play?

It is an ideological rigidity that smothers its own creativity, and that is sad to me. But may they go forth and show everyone wrong with an untapped vein of playable awesome.  :-* I just reserve my doubts.
Just make your fuckin' guy and roll the dice, you pricks. Focus on what's interesting, not what gives you the biggest randomly generated virtual penis.  -- J Arcane
 
You know, people keep comparing non-TSR D&D to deck-building in Magic: the Gathering. But maybe it's more like Katamari Damacy. You keep sticking shit on your characters until they are big enough to be a star.
-- talysman

Slambo

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • S
  • Posts: 411
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #261 on: October 27, 2020, 10:43:24 AM »
There are a handful of references to homosexuality in a 192-page book.

Which amounts to far more, and far more thematically important (there are two gods of the setting's religion dedicated to the topic, and it's listed as one of the major philosophical differences driving the two major "good" nations of the setting apart), than any comparable major commercial product of the time.

Nor, I suspect, would the game's creators have described those design choices as some kind of minor or incidental, easily-ignored optional element, because they are certainly not intended so in the source genre.

Quote
So characters who are from a different genre can't prosper? That's like saying that the DC Universe is not a world where characters like Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, or Drizzt could prosper - because they'd be arrested by police and/or stopped by superheroes from their rampages. But I don't think that's a valid criticism of DC Heroes as a game system.

People are far less likely to try to run Conan in DC Heroes, because they don't both share the label "fantasy" and a set of rules largely inspired by D&D.

But even in DC Heroes, there are places within the world and styles within the game that make it possible and viable to run, shall we say, "less traditionally heroic" adventurers and adventures (cf. John Constantine). Blue Rose, from my observation, provides much less support for this kind of thing, not just in terms of rule style but in terms of setting availability -- there is nowhere in Aldea that reminds me of Greyhawk, Sharn or Waterdeep, for example; even the capital of Aldis tends to come off in its promotional material as something more like post-Napoleon III Paris than Imperial Rome or Victorian London. This lack of stylistic flexibility isn't always as apparent as it could stand to be.

Funny thing, Conan is an Avenger now, and DC hasn its own sword and sorcery characters in theirnprehistory that often crossed over via time magic shenanigans in ye olden times. I realize ot doesnt really refute jhkim but its just funny to me.

VisionStorm

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2184
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #262 on: October 27, 2020, 11:21:23 AM »
I am not being disingenuous and you're emphasizing the wrong word in my question. I am not being naive about the reaction, I am ASKING WHY. As in I genuinely want people to articulate the reasons they object to this specific thing, and not their general feelings of this company being icky for being SJW. It's not that I am surprised by people's reactions - I am asking for your reasons.

Thought I'd voiced mine before on this but here goes again.

Its the same objection I have to any "woke" material and especially to hateful "woke" statements and accusations as in their promotionals. This applies to any company that uses similar low stunts like this. Its the same reason I have a particular hate for Mearls and others of his ilk after he "fired" players from D&D. Or how 4e D&D had to piss on players of prior editions, or how WOTC has slapped a great big "WACIST!" label on all older product. And every other stunt companies and designers have pulled in the last 10 years.

And I particularly despise these things when all they are is an outrage marketing gag to get free advertising.

If you have to attack someone to promote your product. Then your product is not dirt. It is less than dirt.

That's the thing about Mistwell's intrusion into this topic. He's like "I'm totally not being disingenuous at all, guys! I've no idea WTF you're talking about. I'M JUST ASKING FOR...REASONS!"

Meanwhile there's like 17+ pages of "reasons" in this thread that have been hatched out over and over again. People have brought up the adversarial, ideologically purist marketing like three dozen times. A few also criticized the fugly has hell art as well. I may have mentioned something about the silly game play concept at one point (which revolves around "redeeming" lesbian adversaries, rather than killing them, in order to "kiss" them *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*), but by and large there have been pages upon pages criticizing the marketing. Yet somehow totally not disingenuous Mistwell has managed to miss that.

These goons are way behind. 12 year old boys have been using D&D to play lesbianstripperninjas since at least 1983.


Ratman_tf

  • Alt-Reich Shitlord
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8330
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #263 on: October 27, 2020, 12:13:14 PM »
I am not being disingenuous and you're emphasizing the wrong word in my question. I am not being naive about the reaction, I am ASKING WHY. As in I genuinely want people to articulate the reasons they object to this specific thing, and not their general feelings of this company being icky for being SJW. It's not that I am surprised by people's reactions - I am asking for your reasons.

Thought I'd voiced mine before on this but here goes again.


We all laid out our thoughts and opinions earlier in the thread. Mistwell just seems to have jumped in without reading up, and made some dumb ass statements.

I bet he's the type who comes in the middle of a movie and starts bugging everyone else asking questions about what happened earlier in the film. :D
The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
-Haffrung

jhkim

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11746
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #264 on: October 27, 2020, 12:16:15 PM »
Quote from: jhkim
So characters who are from a different genre can't prosper? That's like saying that the DC Universe is not a world where characters like Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, or Drizzt could prosper - because they'd be arrested by police and/or stopped by superheroes from their rampages. But I don't think that's a valid criticism of DC Heroes as a game system.
But even in DC Heroes, there are places within the world and styles within the game that make it possible and viable to run, shall we say, "less traditionally heroic" adventurers and adventures (cf. John Constantine). Blue Rose, from my observation, provides much less support for this kind of thing, not just in terms of rule style but in terms of setting availability -- there is nowhere in Aldea that reminds me of Greyhawk, Sharn or Waterdeep, for example; even the capital of Aldis tends to come off in its promotional material as something more like post-Napoleon III Paris than Imperial Rome or Victorian London. This lack of stylistic flexibility isn't always as apparent as it could stand to be.
First of all, I think judging *either* DC Heroes *or* Blue Rose based on how well they support Conan adventures is utterly ridiculous.

Second of all, if I wanted to run a Conan game - and my only two choices were DC Heroes or Blue Rose, then Blue Rose has far more support for it. It's not anywhere close to a contest. There are monsters detailed to fight, evil cultists, undead armies, and lots of other ready-made elements that support Conan adventures. I agree that there isn't a city like Greyhawk or Waterdeep detailed in the Blue Rose setting - but there are lots of other hooks for sword-and-sorcery type adventure. I could have a pirate Conan game set in the Scatterstar Archipelago, for example - as Conan had a pirate career. I could have a more pure monster-killing game set in Kern as he fights a guerrilla war on the Lich-King. I could have wild plains-riding adventures in Rezea. Or I could have him join the armies in Jarzon in demon-fighting.

While it is technically possible for Conan to be supported in the DC Comics setting (given thousands of comics published over decades), there is almost nothing to support Conan-style adventures in the basic game of DC Heroes.

Abraxus

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2434
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #265 on: October 27, 2020, 01:14:58 PM »
That's the thing about Mistwell's intrusion into this topic. He's like "I'm totally not being disingenuous at all, guys! I've no idea WTF you're talking about. I'M JUST ASKING FOR...REASONS!"

Meanwhile there's like 17+ pages of "reasons" in this thread that have been hatched out over and over again. People have brought up the adversarial, ideologically purist marketing like three dozen times. A few also criticized the fugly has hell art as well. I may have mentioned something about the silly game play concept at one point (which revolves around "redeeming" lesbian adversaries, rather than killing them, in order to "kiss" them *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*), but by and large there have been pages upon pages criticizing the marketing. Yet somehow totally not disingenuous Mistwell has managed to miss that.

Agreed and seconded and why I called him out for being disingenuous. either he could not be bothered to read the entire thread or simply pretending to be blind. What gets me his how he gets annoyed with his pretending to be stupid and clueless. It's no longer fooling anyone anymore. Quite frankly being even more stale than year old bread past it's expiry date. Then he has the stones to get angry when called out on it.  In any case he is the one coming off as a fake and naive clueless. He probably thinks he is being smart when veterans like ourselves of this board can see him coming a galaxy away.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2020, 01:20:05 PM by sureshot »

Stephen Tannhauser

  • Curmudgeonly Refugee
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 1205
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #266 on: October 27, 2020, 01:50:44 PM »
I think judging *either* DC Heroes *or* Blue Rose based on how well they support Conan adventures is utterly ridiculous.

You're missing my point. "No place for Conan in Aldea" isn't about specific characters in specific games, it's shorthand for my primary criticism of BR as a commercial gaming product: Put as directly as possible, I don't think the core tropes of romantic fantasy as a literary genre translate particularly well to what, in my observation and experience, most RPG'ers actually want out of their games, or to what the nature of games as games facilitates very well.

Romantic fantasy stories are ultimately centered on relationships and personal growth, and the vast majority of the genre's core dramatic conflicts tend to be internal, emotional and interpersonal; Mercedes Lackey's fantasy, for example, is notable for how seldom actual physical violence is depicted "on stage" (though the fallout afterwards is often examined with respectable directness). Success and failure are less about whether a character beats a challenge or wins a conflict through skill, power or cleverness than about whether he makes the right choice in the first place. By contrast, anything structured as a game is, by definition, an exercise in teamwork manoeuvring within a rules system to accomplish common goals and victories, which lends itself far better to the simulation of external physical conflicts -- action scenes, fights, clever use of spells and powers, etc. -- than to the kinds of drama favoured by the source material.  (You can see a parallel phenomenon with the World of Darkness games: no matter how hard the creators tried to build a game that encouraged deep, angsty, emotional roleplaying of characters facing a variety of dooms, in practice the games had a tremendous tendency to turn into, as I once heard them described, "Hammer-flavoured superheroes".)

To sum up, it's less about complaining that characters of one genre don't fit in another and more about concluding that this particular genre itself works less well as an RPG milieu than might be hoped, because of the fundamental nature of RPGs themselves. Nor is this limited to Blue Rose specifically; I have argued before that any game based on the Chronicles of Narnia, or on the stories of Thomas Ligotti (both ideas I've seen proposed) would have the same problem -- those stories, or at least the really important parts thereof, are ultimately not about the kinds of conflicts or challenges that lend themselves well to rule-based gaming.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2020, 01:55:39 PM by Stephen Tannhauser »
Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Mark Twain

STR 8 DEX 10 CON 10 INT 11 WIS 6 CHA 3

Dimitrios

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 511
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #267 on: October 27, 2020, 02:58:54 PM »
any game based on the Chronicles of Narnia, or on the stories of Thomas Ligotti (both ideas I've seen proposed) would have the same problem -- those stories, or at least the really important parts thereof, are ultimately not about the kinds of conflicts or challenges that lend themselves well to rule-based gaming.

This reminds me of the complaints I used to see about Call of Cthulhu that it "didn't recreate Lovecraft's stories". My response to that is "why would I want to role play those?". The brilliance of CoC is taking Lovecraft's (and others') work and finding the aspects of it that do work well as an rpg.

BoxCrayonTales

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • B
  • Posts: 3313
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #268 on: October 27, 2020, 03:48:17 PM »
You can see a parallel phenomenon with the World of Darkness games: no matter how hard the creators tried to build a game that encouraged deep, angsty, emotional roleplaying of characters facing a variety of dooms, in practice the games had a tremendous tendency to turn into, as I once heard them described, "Hammer-flavoured superheroes".
That's part of what drove me away from the games. The personality mechanics were ham-fisted and unfun to actually play (and I say this as someone who once fervently tried to defend them against detractors back when I still cared). It became a running joke even among some of the freelancers that "you stole a candybar? now you develop schizophrenia!" (this wasn't actually possible in the rules btw, but it goes to show how much people actually cared). The official solutions were to provide shallow cosmetic changes and various workarounds so that the players could more easily play mass murdering psychopaths without suffering psychological consequences (the irony here is that being a mass murdering psychopath is in and of itself a severe psychological problem). It would have been simpler to just remove those mechanics and let groups play the murderous psychopaths they obviously wanted to play as but were too pretentious to admit.

Roleplaying by nature allows you to immerse yourself in a setting to a much greater degree than any movie, book, comic, video game, etc. It is the ultimate immersive sim, at least until we develop VR with dynamically generated worlds. I find it mildly frustrating that RPGs (and video games in general) lend themselves best to violent slaughter simulators regardless of how fervently designers try to steer away from that. Yet I find it extremely frustrating when designers implement stick mechanics in an attempt to deter such behavior rather than carrot mechanics, or even letting groups decide on their own whether they want to play angsty romance fests or not.

By contrast, one of the most sage passages I have ever read in RPGs regarding the subject of emo-roleplay are these from Green Ronin's Fang & Fury (regarding vampire-centric campaign options):
Quote
Decadent Cruelty
Not all roleplaying campaigns have to be about something. In this option the PCs are scions who live at the top of society, dispensing agony and ecstasy to mortals in their care and living an existence of endless debauchery. They create blood puppets for sport and order them off balconies when they cease to be amusing; they invent whole new sports and pastimes to humiliate their mortal thralls, treating them as riding beasts, musical instruments, or parlor game pieces; and they never, ever get caught.
In this sort of campaign, toss the standard rewards out the window and instead orient the game around parlor politics and the minor contests of influence likely to occupy immortal sadists. Each session has its prince and its goat, with plenty of minor nobles in between, all squabbling for influence. While d20 System rules are still used to resolve skill checks and combat, a card game like “Presidents and Assholes” may be better suited to resolving the outcome of complex political struggles. For example, the PCs may be jockeying for ownership of the local orphanage and the superb dining to be found therein. Their politicking toward this end may be expressed by playing a single hand of cards to determine the relative placement of each PC in the race.
GM’s Option
Half the fun of being a vampire is having minions. Consider removing the negative level penalties for creating blood puppets and vampiric thralls, and thus encourage PCs to gather twisted courtiers, pets, and sycophants to their sides.
Quote
Tortured Angst
Like the “decadent cruelty” option given above, this campaign is at its best when plots and goals are kept to the background. The PCs are decaying antiheroes sentenced to an eternal unlife of misery and self-loathing, and they spend much of their time plumbing the depths of sadness and lamenting the sorry state of their existence.
Despite the hollow-sounding premise, this “without a net” style of storytelling can develop into remarkable interactions between experienced roleplayers. It is not recommended for beginners, or for those who feel that a plot-driven narrative is vital to a campaign.
GM’s Option
Resist the temptation to let this game bog down in atmosphere. Force your players into situations of conflict at regular intervals: Without dramatic tension, such campaigns tend to run dry quickly. Also make sure that more flamboyant players don’t steal the limelight from shyer members of the gaming group. Take time to plan scenarios that let everyone have fun.

IMO, Green Ronin had better advice in these passages than the White Wolf games ever did in their three decades of existence. As always, YMMV.

SHARK

  • The Great Shark Hope
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5040
Re: Thirsty Sword Lesbians, no, really
« Reply #269 on: October 27, 2020, 03:52:06 PM »
I am not being disingenuous and you're emphasizing the wrong word in my question. I am not being naive about the reaction, I am ASKING WHY. As in I genuinely want people to articulate the reasons they object to this specific thing, and not their general feelings of this company being icky for being SJW. It's not that I am surprised by people's reactions - I am asking for your reasons.

Thought I'd voiced mine before on this but here goes again.

Its the same objection I have to any "woke" material and especially to hateful "woke" statements and accusations as in their promotionals. This applies to any company that uses similar low stunts like this. Its the same reason I have a particular hate for Mearls and others of his ilk after he "fired" players from D&D. Or how 4e D&D had to piss on players of prior editions, or how WOTC has slapped a great big "WACIST!" label on all older product. And every other stunt companies and designers have pulled in the last 10 years.

And I particularly despise these things when all they are is an outrage marketing gag to get free advertising.

If you have to attack someone to promote your product. Then your product is not dirt. It is less than dirt.

That's the thing about Mistwell's intrusion into this topic. He's like "I'm totally not being disingenuous at all, guys! I've no idea WTF you're talking about. I'M JUST ASKING FOR...REASONS!"

Meanwhile there's like 17+ pages of "reasons" in this thread that have been hatched out over and over again. People have brought up the adversarial, ideologically purist marketing like three dozen times. A few also criticized the fugly has hell art as well. I may have mentioned something about the silly game play concept at one point (which revolves around "redeeming" lesbian adversaries, rather than killing them, in order to "kiss" them *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*), but by and large there have been pages upon pages criticizing the marketing. Yet somehow totally not disingenuous Mistwell has managed to miss that.

These goons are way behind. 12 year old boys have been using D&D to play lesbianstripperninjas since at least 1983.



Greetings!

The *GAMEPLAY*--wait, wait, VisionStorm! I must have been sleeping and missed that class. Can you elaborate for me? Kissing and no doubt much more--dealing with Lesbian adversaries....redeeming them? WTF?

Who are the Lesbian adversaries? Do Lesbians fight different kinds of monsters and villains than Conan the Barbarian, or Sir Lancelot of the Round Table?

How are such adversaries "Redeemed"? Redeemed from what, and TO what?

This game sounds so fucking retarded. Mistwell must have been eating too many Cheetos or something not to see this truth. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
"It is the Marine Corps that will strip away the façade so easily confused with self. It is the Corps that will offer the pain needed to buy the truth. And at last, each will own the privilege of looking inside himself  to discover what truly resides there. Comfort is an illusion. A false security b