One of my very first conversations with the guy:
@TheOnceler pages: Usually I keep my penis in my front pocket while at work,
but since I'm in the back I'm just wearing a sweatshirt and letting it
hang from my pull-ties. It's a broad-tip so it leaks ink all over the
place and everytime I reached for it I got a big mark on my hand.
@TheOnceler pages: PENS! PENS! PENS!
It still makes me cry laughing when I read it.
My uncle died of covid this afternoon. Please take this seriously and stay inside and wash your hands and wear masks.
When you don't get a huge turnout for an event but the people that do show up are super enthusiastic and it all goes exactly according to plan!
He was my favorite actor until the whole "sometimes a woman just needs to be hit" thing that he then would double down on later. Since that point I've always sort of cringed to like anything he did.
@Arkandel said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:
Which parts of being in IC relationships, be they romantic and/or sexual or even otherwise, bind the players as well as the characters?
I think it really just boils down to: are you having fun? Is the other person having fun? And that just comes down to communication. And the only thing I think is really unethical is if someone plays the PLAYER rather than the PC. Like I think it's scenarios like this that have prompted this conversation:
Player A tells Player B their PCs are perfect for each other after much romantic RP and wants to put a ring on it and make it totally exclusive because they're not interested in cheating drama RP. Player B agrees because the RP has been so great and they also would like to avoid drama! But it actually turns out that what Player A meant was that Player B just had to devote their PC to them, while Player A's PC was still out fucking around. When confronted with this, Player A is all 'hey it's just IC lol' and then cheating drama RP happens with an unwilling participant who feels played OOC.
That kind of situation is not fun.
It could've been worse. All the remaining Stark children could've gone off to become lumberjacks.
When I was in first grade (Catholic school, yo!) I was a year younger than everyone and at that age there are a million ways fellow students and teachers find to rub that in. I was a "baby" I wasn't "old enough" to do other stuff, etc. We had our math class with the second grade teacher, who everyone adored, and she put up a big chart with everyone's names and when you lost a tooth, a big gold star went up there.
Naturally everyone had two or three up there but me. I was the only kid that did not have a big gold star because none of my teeth had even gotten loose yet and I got tormented about it whenever we went into the classroom. So one day I decided that the (small) gap between my front teeth counted as me losing a tooth. So I went up to her and pointed to it and said that a tooth had been there but now it had fallen out so I deserved a gold star. After asking me a couple of times if I was SURE I had lost a tooth (I was SO SURE!) she put a star up and, like a moron, my 5 year old self goes home all excited and tells my mom I got a gold star because I lost a tooth!
Except I clearly hadn't, so my mom made me write an apology note about how I was sorry I lied, but I had not really lost a tooth. She sent me to school with it under strict instruction to get it signed by the teacher after she had read it. So that day, before I went home, in my best printing, I signed "Missus Lynch" and brought it home.
But there was no getting it past my mother, who asked me several times if I had gotten Mrs. Lynch to sign the confession ("Yes mommy! See?!") before dropping the fucking bomb that teachers wrote in cursive and had first names. I broke the fuck down sobbing and begged and pleaded, but she made me take the letter in the next day, now with an added explanation about how I forged her name, and with my mom holding my hand, I had to confess to the teacher.
I cried my little eyes out about how sorry I was but I just really wanted a gold star and everyone else had one and it wasn't fair! Thankfully the teacher was SUPER nice and she decided that I could keep the gold star up there since I'd told the truth (eventually) and she signed the note and gave it to my mom, telling her to keep it because it was a hilarious story that one day I'd appreciate.
Later on when I actually DID have a loose tooth I was the fucking Queen of First Grade and EVERYONE wanted to be there when it fell out--which it did during lunch one day. I still remember Phillip Burns asking me why I didn't get another gold star up on the chart since I lost "another" tooth, and I stood up, put my hands on my hips and proudly announced, "Because I LIED!"
My mom still has the note.
@Kestrel This is basically my life today since our town voted to remove a racist high school logo and you can imagine the facebook town page right now.
Luckily after thinking better of responding to racists for awhile I decided NO NOT IN MY TOWN and now I'm in several Facebook fights and I feel pretty good about it.
But seriously. Fuck racists.
We still have tonic aisles around here, although they are fewer and further between than they were when I was young. When I was a kid I thought that tonic was storebrand soda cause that's what my dad bought and called it. And then soda was like, your Cokes and Pepsis.
And if I had known my husband called it 'pop' I never would've married him.
There was also:
Fighter1: Is anyone checking for traps?
Fighter2: I think the halfling can do something like that.
Fighter1: But is he doing it?!?!
Wizard: Just stay at the back if you're afraid of traps.
Rogue1: Yeah don't worry about it.
Fighter1: WHY IS NO ONE CHECKING FOR TRAPS?!
Fighter1 has left.
Rogue2: Hey I found a trap!
During a dungeon crawl the DM described the hoard we had stumbled across with detailed descriptions of jeweled swords, crowns, coins, doomsday machines, and inexplicably a penguin.
At which point the Halfling rogue we had with us looked left, looked right, then picked up the penguin and ran off with it.
Then he cast animal awareness and it became Hubert the clove smoking penguin that wrote depressing poetry about being the only penguin that could talk.
It was great.
Yeah I just got an equity raise at work and on the one hand I was like hooray a raise! And on the other I was like...so how long have you guys been massively underpaying me? 
I REALLY want to garden but we have to figure out our outside space first. This house is old, so it's likely that there's some lead paint chips in the ground from the siding at some point (it's got vinyl siding now but that was clearly slapped over some old wood shingles) so planting in the ground is very iffy. We get SO MUCH SUN on the side of the yard that has some grass that I really want to build a raised planter, but it's also the only yard space my kids have to play in right now until we can find the money to tear down the huge old garage in the backyard that I hesitate to take up more space over there.
Also so many chipmunks and bunnies. We planted tulips the first year we were here and we have not seen ANY of them because as soon as they come up they get eaten! Even fox pee doesn't keep them away!
@tinuviel said in Meshing Groups:
Oh, another thought: Why are these people in particular here? Come up with a reason for why these specific individuals are involved in the story you're telling. Give each something that only they can do, so that everyone is useful/helpful but won't really succeed without the other people.
This is what I try to do--find that little something that a PC might not get to play or mention all the time that would be cool to include that can build off another little something another PC has, etc. And yeah some people will still shrug and only be interested in what they're doing, but most of the time you'll get a couple people to hit it off and EVERYONE is going to love it if you allow them to use the random skill they picked up for fun instead of the main standard ones that always get pulled out. Let that guy who picked up a couple ranks in geology find a safe place when rocks fall. Have the person with points in fashion know that an NPC of that level would never be caught dead in those shoes, etc.
This is obviously easier for staff to do on places where sheets are hidden, but if you're doing a player run plot and don't have access to people's sheets you can also just straight up ask them if there's something they'd like to highlight. More often than not you'll find SOME overlap that can link people who don't really know each other together. I think we've all had things on our sheets at some point we wished we could actively use that just never come up.
But in a group of 5-7, I'd say if you can get even just 2 people that didn't know each other before to really engage together that's a win and anything above it is a bonus.
@tinuviel Do the assignments in advance. Best advice I ever got while going through grad school. I'd just knock out the papers that I could early in the semester and have them waiting around so I could tweak them if I needed by the time the deadline rolled around. Far less stressful! It's how I managed to keep up with things even when I have birth in the middle of spring semester.
Thanks-A-Lot were the best and I'm mad they got rid of them.
I've always liked the peanut butter patties/tagalongs though. Just a good ratio of cookie to chocolate to peanut butter.
My kids do a taste test video every year so if anyone doesn't have a local cookie provider hit me up. They do online ordering and delivery these days and barring snow storms, shipping has been super fast even in COVID times.
Their favorite is the lemonades. My oldest says they have a 'sour lemon' taste but she likes the yellow chocolate on the bottom to balance it.
Some states have outright banned remote learning. The department of education has done that here. It will not count as 'in school hours' even though some classrooms have set up streams since there are kids that are out for extended periods because of COVID. This means that during the current spike even though most of the teachers in the district WANTED to go remote for at least the week after vacation everyone had to go back. Districts have basically been left on their own once again to scramble trying to do...well, anything. There is no leadership coming from above. Or above the above. Hell my daughter's kindergarten teacher was all set to come in Monday from vacation but decided to go get one of the completely voluntary tests the school was offering that Sunday and whoops, she was positive.
She otherwise would have been in class Monday and Tuesday--a class where the kids aren't the best at wearing masks judging by the pictures we get every day from school--because she didn't actually start having symptoms until that Wednesday.
It is maddening to me that employers and school administrations are just pushing for back to 'normal' when normal can kill people or leave them with long-term health issues. We're asking teachers to risk their lives once again while severely under compensating them. Or having plans in place to keep them safe. It drives me crazy that we are not innovating here and I have written lots and lots of emails to the heads of just everything I can get my hands on to try to get someone to listen.
Here's one for my friend who is an art teacher and a single mom and just had an art show where she sold a ton of stuff and will be listing even more on etsy soon:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MenagerieByCNKurman
Another for a friend who does AWESOME stuff with chainmail:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/Chainbow
Who knew oyster shell ornaments and lit bottles would be a hit gift?
https://www.etsy.com/shop/OShucksOysterShells
And I'm a Disney fanatic so I love all their signs and magnets I have so many:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/SimplySawdustStudio
I'm a sucker for travel posters:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/HarknettPrints
You have probably seen an ad for these on Facebook--they work! Just remember to flour the dough before rolling:
@juniper For years I would fight against things like that and then on reviews be told "I'm hearing a lot of 'that's not my job' and you need to be more of a team player" and when I would say "Why does Jim not get asked to do these things?" They would frown and write down 'hostile rather than helpful.'
The fun flip side of that is being promoted a few times and when you defend your team being told you 'mother' them rather than, you know, being a good manager and standing up for your team.
