Then you really haven't been paying attention.
Bluntly, I don't care that much about my games anymore. I've been jaded and embittered to the world such that with my hundreds of games of experience, I live in the moment. I'll play to win because you try to win games, but for the most part, I'm still playing for fun and fun alone. And, frankly? Fear is counterproductive to fun.
Fear is a basic part of any logical calculus.
Not for me. Not in games, anyway. I might have fear when it comes to my life, I'll admit: "What if my family found me out?" being the main one. But that traces back to the same fear of not having fear, because it's related to the same thing: self-destruction.
What if it goes wrong?
Another thing I've made explicit is my attitude towards this. "If it happens, it happens. Oh, well." That's literally it. I had a fear of the darkness when I was young. That thought made it go away, and now I don't have that fear anymore. I had a fear of heights at a time. That fear went away after that thought. My mind has an amazing way of thinking about an action, and then after having thought about it...just numbing it out. I have an overreactive (yes, I say overreactive, because it reacts to literally any stimuli) imagination, so I literally spend all day thinking about things. Games included. And my mind goes to the best cases and the worst cases. And I numb it out. I dull the sensations. It's not something I do consciously. It just...naturally happens. Like, I'll be eating breakfast, my thoughts drift to some mafia game, I'll give it thought, and then when it comes time for that mafia game, the emotions such as fear have disappeared. Gone.
I literally have no fear. Not even of the irrational paranoia. Because I'm paranoid of everything. You could say...I fear nothing because I feared everything. And by having feared everything, in truth I feared nothing. That's the way my mind works. I don't like it--I hate it--but it's how it is.
So I mean it when I say I feel no fear of a player in a game. You know what happens when I'm scum and a player correctly calls me scum?
I get an adrenaline rush
. Because there's a thrill--there's an actual challenge present. (Another facet of my scumgame is that it's so dang good that frankly, I get BORED. I don't get to be scum often, yet when I do roll scum, I can steamroll a town effortlessly...so any semblance of resistance to my victory I enjoy the challenge of overcoming: the thrill of the hunt, the chase.) But that's not fear. That's excitement at having a worthy opponent to engage in battle.
Pretty much the only moments of happiness I feel in a game anymore are when I'm scum, when I'm town and I've caught scum, or when I'm town and having a daydream which is little more than a delusion of grandeur.
I do believe this is a chessmatch and you have to fear the very moves I would make.
Bluntly, if you're thinking in terms of chess, I'm laughing as I go steal all your poker chips. (Alternatively, if you're thinking in terms of poker, I laugh while I place you in checkmate.) The one defining characteristic of me is that I don't play the game that others play--as scum, I'm the one who's making the game. You think you enter a game of Crazy 8s, we're actually secretly playing a game of Mao. (And just as you begin to catch onto it being a game of Mao, I subtly shift the rules to be closer to Crazy 8s!) Even as town, I set my own path, I just make it very much public that I have chosen to do so rather than keeping it a secret.
I make moves in games, sure, yeah. But the only thing you can know about the moves I have made is that there is no way to know anything about the moves I have made. I, quite simply, hold no fear of counterattacks to my movements. I'm usually five steps ahead of my nearest opponent. The weapon I have above all other weapons is situational awareness, after all. I instinctively have a grasp of the game--I know what to do. I know what moves to make. So I never need to hold any concern.
That is me. That is how my mind works.
We both have to at least guess what the other is doing.
And that's where you're wrong. I don't need to know what you do. I don't even bother guessing. I either know, or I don't know. And if I don't know, then I adapt. I work around my lack of knowledge. I never really bother to guess. As town I'll sometimes try to understand if I think you're town, or try to anticipate if I think you're scum, but that's mainly for pragmatic reasons: when town, I try to work with you if I can, and if I think you're scum, I try to hinder your advancement. But in spite of that, I never really need to know. Especially not if I actually were scum, because why would I care what you're doing as scum?
Bluntly, I don't fear you. Even if I felt fear of a player. Like zMuf. Like AP. Even if I felt fear of a person like them. I wouldn't fear you. Respect you, yes, because sometimes you get things right. But fear, no. Never. Maybe get a high off of the engaging battle, because it'd be a thrill ride for me to cross words with a respectable foe. Yet that's, again, adrenaline pumping in out of anticipation and excitement--not fear.
Don't deny how you feel. Acknowledge it.
I am. Don't presume you know. When I say I don't feel those emotions...
I don't feel those emotions
. That is me, accepting how I feel, acknowledging that I don't have the basic human emotion that I am supposed to possess. (And, yes. That means that, literally every day, I end up calling myself things like a beast, or a monster. Because if humans are supposed to feel those things and I don't feel them...then yeah, I don't feel human.)
Anger, hatred, and loathing I feel plenty of, mainly directed at myself but progressively moving outwards towards the world as I grow increasingly bitter, cynical, and pessimistic. Rage, I suppress plenty of. (Reason I have outbursts of it during games.) But I feel remorse only for not feeling grief, and fear only of how "then I'll let it happen" I am thanks to no fear.
