This goes along with this story in the event that you haven’t read it, to alleviate confusion.

After I had met this boyfriend in person, he divulged to me that he was (obviously illegally) obtaining opioids from the brother of a friend of his. This was not something that I had suspected while spending time in person, and I don’t think I would have suspected a thing at all had he not casually told me about it. He must have very been good at hiding, and balancing, what was clearly an addiction, as he was almost completely cavalier about divulging this information to me. Because he actually named the friend, I was able to find her by looking through who he had friended on social media — at the time, this was MySpace. I reached out to her and told her that I had some information about her brother that I thought she should know, and I gave her that information. She confirmed that I had contacted the right person and that the person with the prescription for opioids was indeed her brother. There came up the concern that he was being… for lack of a better way to put it, taken advantage of by who was at the time my boyfriend in vulnerable states, or in a vulnerable state. She thanked me for reaching out to her to tell her this — she’d honestly had no idea that this was even occurring — and told me that she, and his family, would work harder to ensure that he was not put in circumstances where this would happen. I told her that I felt bad that this was even happening and had reached out to her for that reason. And needless to say, this was the end of that relationship.

When he found out that would no longer be able to obtain the opioids that he had freely and regularly been obtaining up until that point, he got mad. And after he got mad, he tried to convince people that I had lied and made all of this up. His friend then pointed out that I knew about her brother (who was not mentioned on her MySpace) and knew what medication he had been prescribed, and she questioned how I would correctly have been able to put all of that together if I were not telling the truth. I would literally have had to guess that she had a brother, that he had a chronic disease that required the use of opioids to decrease pain, and that he was the one who had been supplying the person who, at the time, had been my boyfriend with them. Some time in the immediate aftermath of this, she ended her friendship with who had become my ex-boyfriend over what he had done and how he had responded to it when his access to this drug was cut off.

She also confirmed that his mother had left the state around when her benefits were being investigated.

If I weren’t staunchly opposed to all of J.K. Rowling’s works by now due to her transantagonism, I would definitely say that Hufflepuff might be my second house. In two circumstances I did what was right because it needed to be done, even though it was hard for me to do, and because the circumstances were both far cries from “splitting hairs” on. These were very clear cases of agencies, or people, being taken advantage of.

Growing up, and even into my early adult years, I continued to play Diablo II because I liked it. At the time, and for the longest time, Diablo III wasn’t out (splitting hairs, 2? 3?), so it really was the newest Diablo game out. I’m pretty sure that it was here that I mentioned that I could blog about some of the more… colorful experiences that I’ve had as a result of the game, much as I like it, and much as I like Diablo II: Resurrected. Almost all of them came about as a result of one person who I had entered into a long-distance relationship with, actually met, and realized not long after that this person was not someone that I needed to be around. The relationship did not last far beyond that point, for which I continue to be thankful leading up to this day.

One of the experiences that I describe is the fact that I had to turn this man’s mother in to their home state for food stamp fraud. For some reason, she felt like she “trusted” me enough to tell me how she was literally getting one over on the system — having friends of hers tell the state or provide documentation to the state about them allegedly giving her money or helping her pay her bills because she had been telling the state that her children’s father (whom she still shared minor children with) was not in their lives and was not providing them with any support when he was out of the house for weeks at a time due to his job, not telling the state that she still had a joint bank account with him that his pay was deposited into, not declaring his income anywhere on her application and getting the maximum amount of food stamps for her family size.

I sought out counsel as to how I would go about informing their home state of this, which I did not take lightly because of the simple fact that I did not want to do it. I literally wish it hadn’t been happening. But it was, and I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to continue to live with myself if I didn’t report it, because had she been honest about her husband’s income and her access to it she would not have been eligible for the food stamps that she had been getting at all. I mean, this isn’t exactly something that you plan for. But it got reported, and I gave their home state all the information that I myself had been given. Someone working the investigation made contact with me to let me know that one had indeed been started based on that information, and that apparently she’d moved out of the state within days of this. She packed up that fast.

I mean, I can only imagine what he must actually have come home to, as he’d had no idea about any of this.

And peculiarly, events with this one family were the only outliers in otherwise good experiences that I’ve had playing the Blizzard games that I play, let alone Diablo II. The rest of my experiences have been pretty great.

So I had to tell someone in Diablo II Resurrected that if you make a cow level game on normal difficulty with no level cap that you are going to get people of all levels in your game, to include people who see the game name, have no idea what a cow level is, and want to learn because they are curious. I am not surprised that I had to have this conversation with someone. I’m sure that a lot of people who play this game are new to it and did not play Diablo II growing up like I did, so hey. I’m not going to fault the majority of them for this.

Also, regarding more Supernatural fandom wank: I keep my fandom life separate from my everyday life, but that is in large part due to the fact that the people that I converse with in person on a regular basis know absolutely nothing about fandom and would not even in the slightest be interested in anything fandom-related. I think I could probably talk shop about The Walking Dead to a few of them, but I have not gotten to that show yet because migraine treatment keeps getting in the way of shows that I actually want to watch (light hurts my soul, as they say, so I have to be careful about what light sources I expose myself to). I keep my online life separate from my real life, at least living where I do right now, because my online life involves a lot more geekery than people who know me in real life can handle or would want to be interested in. I can guarantee that not a single person that I know in real life knows what a fanfic is, and I’m not explaining the intricacies of fandom life to people who are not at all interested in it. The same goes for autism groups that I am a part of, and parenting groups as well, aside from “I like Supernatural”. That’s all any of them get…

It seems like finding active cow level parties in Diablo 2: Resurrected is a real hit and miss.

Knowing me, I’ll probably participate in Ladders once those start (although I need to figure out how Diablo II is going to do this before I commit to anything). I’m actually surprised that Ladders didn’t immediately start with the launch of the game, because there have to be people who got their characters up to level 99, and they should be rewarded in some way. I also feel like the Lobby could be improved, as you only have access to one chat at a time depending on where you’re at in the game. The older, classic Diablo II had more than one room that you could go to chat in depending on what you were looking for or what struck your fancy.

One day I may also tell the story of the person who I actually met in Diablo II in person… it didn’t, and doesn’t, change how I viewed the game or view the game, but it’s still proof that there are people out there who aren’t exactly good. It’s similar to the story I told of the person I used to know who got, and probably still is, so addicted to World of Warcraft that they permanently threw away the chance at getting a really good job that they could have turned into a really good career. I think it was somewhere in the ballpark of a year ago or so that I told that story. But I need to find some way to tell this story as vaguely as possible…

So we’ve found a few interesting glitches in Diablo 2: Resurrected.

I let someone from a Discord server that I am on rush my sorceress through Normal mode with the intention of me using Mad Cow games (the Secret Cow level, whatever it’s called) to level her up because the requirement to access them is that you had to have defeated Baal, the big bad at the end of the game, at least once. However, we found out that the Ancients quest, which is supposed to spawn a portal into the Worldstone Keep where Baal hides, has a — what seems to be new — level requirement of… twenty, I think. You can’t even access the Worldstone Keep if you aren’t level twenty, even if someone goes in and throws up a Town Portal for you. The game simply will not let you walk through it. But strangely enough, as alluded to in my last post, if you simply stand around in town while your party members go kill Baal, you get credit for the whole quest and the game “sees” you as having completed Normal mode. And then, if you or someone in your party gets the required items (Tome of Town Portal, Wirt’s leg in the Horadric Cube), you can go right into the Mad Cow level. Secret Cow Level, whatever. Make it make sense. Because, right now, it does not…

The… whatever you want to call the cow level (your mileage may vary), is really, really fun to play though.