I LOVE the concept of being cursed/blessed with earth magic in that way. And I love that you're playing her as a fucking idiot who hides that shit, haha. (Fingers crossed she and her village get cured.) Incidentally, two of my characters were/are hiding things from the party as well, though nothing of that magnitude. My cleric is hiding that she's literally haunted--her childhood friend's ghost, who blames my cleric for her death, is hanging around and pestering her. (The players know as of recently, but iirc their characters don't.) And my champion is hiding her ancestry. She wears a magical scarf that makes her look like a human, but she's secretly a fucken furry kitsune. No big dramatic reason for that; she just dislikes the attention it draws in an area where kitsune are relatively uncommon.
I really want to try playing a kineticist sometime, and not just because I've always wanted to be a firebender haha.
I want to try GMing someday, but I'm so intimidated. It seems like a lot of responsibility. I might try GMing a one-shot or two at some point to test it out.
Also, same re: Having a huge backlog of characters. I love coming up with characters, especially in PF2E.
Today has been okay for me. Had a doctor's appointment, which went fine. I've been sleepy all day, though, and suspect I accidentally took a sleeping pill instead of an antidepressant this morning.
Honestly? Nothing except a lot of pointless suffering. Eugenics isn't just immoral; it literally does not work. The nazis did their damnedest to kill all people with schizophrenia during the Holocaust. Schizophrenia numbers were back up to normal within a couple decades.
See this video (linked to the correct timestamp) for more on why eugenics doesn't actually do anything.
Right, but there are degrees of abusable. There's a difference between "yes, you could abuse this thing" and "this thing will inevitably be abused." In my opinion, hate speech laws fall into the latter category. I know of too many cases of them being abused... and worse, they don't even seem to do much to prevent hatred. See this article.
Say what you like, but I just can't think of any way to write hate speech laws that isn't incredibly abusable. Handing the government an excuse to punish to people is inherently dangerous. While it's certainly necessary in some instances, I think we should be very, very careful about adding to the list of things you can get thrown in prison for.
There are people whom I met online but transitioned into having an in-person relationship with. My experiences of them online were not inaccurate or even incomplete. Again, fucking skill issue.
I think speech that depicts a real person being abused--e.g CSEM, revenge porn--should be prohibited. Credible threats should also be illegal. Otherwise, I don't think there should be many state-enforced restrictions on speech. I think hate speech laws are a pretty bad idea, because the people in power will inevitably use them against marginalized people. Laws intended to protect the vulnerable can easily be used to oppress them further. We're seeing this with pro-Palestinian groups being labeled hate groups right now in the name of "protecting" people from "antisemitism." (Antisemitism is a real problem, don't get me wrong, but a lot of people who get prosecuted for it haven't actually done anything except support Palestine.)
I do think that communities should enforce their own speech prohibitions, though. For example, social media platforms shouldn't tolerate racism. Even if you think racists have a moral right to spread their racism (they shouldn't), you have to understand that some forms of speech inherently suppress others. If you've got a neo-nazi screaming racial slurs at an event, obviously the people of color there will not feel safe to speak up, and their voices will not be heard. You have to decide whose speech you want to protect.
If you can't maintain a deep relationship online, that's an absolute skill issue on your part. People are, if anything, more their real selves online than in-person. All the best relationships I've had--romantic or otherwise--have been primarily online, and not because I don't have any relationships IRL.
An actual sleep med.