@Macha said in 2023: Dead Celebs pt 2, Electric Boogaloo.:

She was too suck to be serving anymore, but making that money, yo.

It wasn't the money. It was the position.

Pride is definitely one of my favorite sins.

@JinShei said in PhD help:

L.Muresan.19@unimail.winchester.ac.uk

Sent! Good luck to her!

@Derp he was so good, as was his opener Matt Bergman. Enjoyed it. I hadn't gone out to anything like that in aaaaages.

I'm sad to hear this. Catriona was always very kind and was an excellent storyteller and writer. She had good advice for larger scope projects like the establishment of the Dragon's Knell freehold and was great at invigorating the Dunlin family's larger RP. Very sorry for the loss.

Dominos coupon code 5162:

Large five topping for basically half price. Comes out to like 12 bucks here. Might be more where you are but give it a shot.

@Ghost I wouldn't say I have nothing to show for it. Quite the contrary.

I have fantastic friends who I went on to meet IRL and who became an important part of the fabric of my life and who I wouldn't give up for anything. People who have had my back, enriched my world, and made life better for me just for being there.

There were times in my life when I was in such a black hole of misery that being able to jump on and talk nerd shit with MUSHers, or be involved in some story where I needed to know what happened next or where I was aware my character's absence would be detrimental to other people's...I mean...sometimes that gave me a reason to hold on and thus I am still here. Not saying that's universal for everyone but. No. I wouldn't say, at all, that it's brought nothing to my life.

And that's why, right alongside seeing the benefits of not doing it, I miss it, and am aware of what it's costing me to not do it.

Ambivalence for the win I guess.

Ted Lasso finale. I wasn't ready for that show to be over.

ted lasso

"Macha... you can't push these things and expect to keep your job at this level. It SUCKS. The way the economy is set up is REALLY bad. But you just CAN'T."

me: I can't what? Expect them to do the BARE minimum of what the law demands? Expect to be allowed to treat sugar crashes or be able to take insulin before I eat?

"You can't expect them to do the bare minimum, no.They won't.
And you will get fired."

on a higher note: Surgery went well.

@Macha

I won't be, but I know people I know are going to drag me into it.

@reimesu

The Darth Jar-Jar theory is one of my personal favorites.

Thread resurrection!

Today is gamebook day! I was sent a copy of Werewolf: The Forsaken by a close friend who's divesting himself of his hardcopy.

For further squee, my Avatar Legends Kickstarter stuff arrived today. (This is Last Airbender, not Blue People.) And it's the main book, the adventure guide, the cloth map, the Combat Action deck, the dice and the dice bag! (Ok, at this point, I'm boasting.)

But it's nice to be having a Good Day. (And in March, gods willin' and the crick don't rise, the Old Gods of Appalachia stuff will ship.)

As Into The Garden Elizabeth Ran
by A. E. Housman

As into the garden Elizabeth ran,
Pursued by the just indignation of Ann,
she trod on an object that lay in her road,
She trod on an object that looked like a toad.

It looked like a toad, and it looked so because
A toad was the actual object it was;
And after supporting Elizabeth's tread
It looked like a toad that was visibly dead.

Elizabeth, leaving her footprint behind,
Continued her flight on the wings of the wind,
And Ann in her anger was heard to arrive
At the toad that was not any longer alive.

She was heard to arrive, for the firmament rang
With the sound of a scream and the noise of a bang,
As her breath on the breezes she broadly bestowed
And fainted away on Elizabeth's toad.

Elizabeth, saved by the soul of her boot,
Escaped her insensible sister's pursuit;
And if ever hereafter she irritates Ann,
She will tread on a toad if she possibly can.

Pope Benedict, just under the wire.

@Macha Sounds about right. It was pretty well known around here that it wasn’t exactly a safe environment. The internalized misogyny that keeps that running makes me insane.

@Pondscum said in Housing UK?:

Best idea would be to go through a regulated site. https://www.spareroom.co.uk/ is one of the better ones here in the UK and very widely used by students and professionals alike. Good luck.

Yeah, we're doing that too... But sometimes all routes to an end are useful.

Forcing "purity" (interesting term for the topic, isn't it?) in an RPG is a slippery slope.

Sure, Genre-wise you don't want Luke Skywalker using 2022 tiktok meme examples in RP (he's supposed to be from a galaxy far away in a long time ago), but there's a pretty big line between "Creative preference" and "tyrannical GM nonsense". In the case of BofD and these two mentioned in the topic, their angle is that they view themselves to be an authority on the setting and they're literally inviting people to play content they view themselves to be owners of. So I don't get why people even bother to play that game, because ultimately it comes down to playing "house" with a couple of kids in their backyard and they'll make you leave if you're "not doing it right".

Why bother trying to be creative or create ANYTHING in an environment with someone who will tell everyone what their characters are, what they think, what they would or wouldn't do, etc?

These people are all "No" and not "Yes, and". They're not even "maybe, so" or "No, but". At the risk of sounding snide, they're literally using someone else's literary work and reputation to build themselves as an authority on the content and gatekeeping the shit out of it...and one of their preferred gates to keep is that BIPOC aren't in the ruling caste, make racist jokes, and consider black characters in the setting to be a matter of "woke cancel culture".

So, constructively, this should all be a lesson on do's and don'ts when it comes to understanding a few key things.

if you don't want people to try to create their own things and having a stake in it, you should be solo-writing it and not running it as an RPG where you falsely promote the concept of logging in to have agency over...well...anything. Yes, it's true that players/fans blur the concept behind a character's skin color as being indicative of support for ACTUAL people with that skin color. Is it a minefield? Yes. Is it 100% about the content? No. It's somewhat shades of politics, social issues, etc blurring it's way into content. Still, it's best to understand this and take at least a "maybe, but" approach.

You could create a setting where 1000 all-white families boarded a spaceship and colonized a planet, and after 200 years there are 10,000 people who have ONLY mated with people on that initial all-white spaceship, and people will STILL be like "...can I play a black character?" and your answer should always, ALWAYS be to question why the fuck you decided creatively that everyone in that ship was white to begin with. What's up with that?

@Ghost I enjoyed the new Hellraiser. Maybe not as much as the first one but on par with the second one. I don't think it was perfect but what is? I'll definitely watch it again and I'm eagerly awaiting the announcement of a sequel.

@Ganymede I'm still unsure on how the intraction of HBO, HBO Max, and WB/Discovery is working. The new CEO of WB/D seems to be taking a chainsaw to movie and streaming projects, but some people are saying this isn't going to affect HBO, just the streaming content on HBO Max...

Addendum: I'm almost positive that Brus was the first to coin the word "dinosaur" to describe a PC that has been around so long, and gained so much XP, that they were a problem for the game.