"thank the gods ~yours and mine~"

I have an admission to make. I was once interested in Role Playing Games (RPGs). Context first: this was only during elementary and some of middle school. I never actually played the games, and was always creeped out by people who did. But I bought the books and read them. Anyway, as I was strolling through the internet on my Hacker Box +12 Laptop Computer Machine, I noticed a post on Metafilter about one of the games I used to own as a kid. I went to the site it linked to out of a desire to understand my sick history and what could have been, had I not somehow turned my life around in 7th or 8th grade. The company that makes this game, Palladium Books, may be going under, and the owner is offering a limited edition piece of game artwork in order to save the company. The people who play their games are going absolutely fucking nuts. For example, my man "Citizen Lazlo" writes

"I feel as if I have been kicked in the gut.

Palladium has been one of the few constants in a life that has not always been happy or safe.

In 1983, when I was 6 or 7 my Stepfather got me my first copy of PFRPG because he knew I loved D and D. I was hooked in 10 minutes. I have run hundreds of campaigns and thousands of oners over the years.

My home was broken early and my father was a raging alcoholic and my mother was a prescription drug addict. My little brother and I spent my lonely and scary nights when we were left home alone all night, becoming heroic elves super powered heroes and eventually those awesome Ninja Turtles!

As I got older and, thank the gods ~yours and mine~ we moved in with my grandparents with our new babybrother. It was there that my dark and moody preteen self discovered After the Bomb and I still say to this day that it changed my life. My love of the postapocoliptic genre and survival against the odds grew from this game. I still run it to this day.

I got a little older and moved in with my now sobber father and my stepmother who barely tolerated me and my 'stupid games'. Robotech was my game of choice, until Rifts...." blah blah blah.

Citizen Lazlo concludes that Palladium, the company that creates this game, "is part of my family. And when your family needs you, you don't ask questions, you just lace up your boots and do what needs doing".

Wow, real devotion, buddy (isn't this a line from Sin City or something?). Just go to this forum. Your faith in your own humanity and others' lack thereof will be restored.

PS. Some might believe that this and other recent posts ("The Kazakh Dream" and the one about that nerdguy and his gf) demonstrate a lack of respect for weird people put in tough situations. That's not the case. I have zero respect for people who deal with tough circumstances by making asses of themselves. As Mansfield says in Manliness: "A real man does not engage in pussy ass shit like video games or the use of wireless snooping techniques to deal with his problems".