Best posts made by AeriaNyx

Fuckit. Double posting. FYI, unwanted nuzzling IS sexual harassment dude. It's not cool.

@Thenomain I always used to mix up Rip Taylor and Rip Torn. Unfortunately they both died this year.

I am STILL full of squee over the run I got to participate in. It. Was. AWESOME. I rarely have a chance to feel really useful as Rei is very much a support character. But man, the variety of skills needed for various obstacles and puzzles is so great! It really gave a lot of opportunity and encourages bringing a diverse bunch of people!

So, about healing -- I think maybe reducing the time between heal attempts from 1 hour to maybe 30 minutes is a really good idea. People can much more easily take a thirty minute RP break and kind of RP taking a break, setting up a small camp, etc, than waiting a full hour.

Another potential idea might be to make items that gift temporary HP for a specific period of time (15-30 minutes)? Like, bandages or cure-alls that might be applied to someone to get them back onto their feet long enough to get to safety and set up camp?

Having a camp function might also be really cool. Where everyone votes to enter a camp mode, where healing might happen a little faster, and people have to sign up for 'watch' shifts? I am likely getting way over complicated, but I'm really so impressed and so excited about this. It is simply amazing.

For me, the answer is mixed. I mean, overall the answer must be yes, or I wouldn't dedicate so much of my headspace and time to it.

In a lot of ways, I treat mushing as my therapy. I have a profound amount of emotional disconnect in my day to day life. If you ask me how I am, or how I am feeling there is a high probability I wouldn't be able to fully answer. But when I play a character, it almost always provides me insight into where my emotional triggers are. When they are happy, I feel happy. When they are devastated, I am devastated. I get a lot of emotional release out of it. It also helps me quantify what upsets me in a way that remains nebulous and ephemeral in the real world.

The problems I run into are, however, that my insecurities are often heightened and my social paranoia tends to be much more powerful given the lack of contextual information via body language and tone. So people who are naturally more brusque/curt immediately twig my 'I did something wrong, they are mad at me oh no oh no' triggers. So then it becomes a dance of self-awareness of my personal issues and the persistent, nagging belief that there IS something wrong I just have to keep digging until I find it (or create it by said persistent digging).

I am also a people pleaser who seeks outside validation like an addict. So, there are a lot of pay offs in terms of running things for people, or crafting things for people. Until I burn out.

For me the hobby is filled with extremes. Excellent highs, horribad lows. I'm slowly teaching myself how to find the balance. And I think that is one of my favorite things about this hobby. The opportunity it offers me to grow as a person. While at the same time losing myself in neat worlds and cool characters.

I love how excited people can get. The knowledge that they are having a blast and that I've been able to pull them into the moment is really validating. Seeing them guessing what is going to happen, or planning ahead is great. One of the nicest things anyone ever said to me, what that I make these really realistic NPCs that people fall in love with only to destroy the players when something bad happens to them. That made me beyond happy.

@Sparks No. It was definitely a blend of real life jerkitude as well. I will give an example -- Keep in mind I fully acknowledge that I am as responsible for the following given my people-pleaser nature, but ... enh. There is a line.

So. This person had a way of being the pinnacle of the social strata, of making it seem as if you needed her approval to be invited to the party. Some of this was just her charisma, and her (clearly) superior writing. Some of it was legitimate if you're not in, you don't get to participate in the cool story. This IS the Pillowfort, that was their entire bag. They'd take over a sphere, become staff and if you wanted anything you had to be in their good graces. So a very real factor was being on her good side. She'd casually mention really wanting something or other, and those of us on the periphery would often scramble to gain ground by giving her gifts. Did she demand this? Nope. Did anyone hold a gun to my head? Nope. Did I make bad life decisions to spend my money on an $80 DVD collector's edition and mail it to her? I certainly did. Now, typically, you would never know if she received these gifts as she would never mention it. Another person I know actually sent her $300 worth of My Little Pony stuff and shipped it across the country. Again, no acknowledgement of receiving any thing, nothing. There was an incident in which she was stranded at an airport and called me asking if I could set up a ride for her. I called my BF, who drove 40 miles to pick me up, another 40 miles across the Bay Area to pick her up, then back across the Bay for another 50 miles, stopped at her comic shop and then to her door, where she got out, and went into her house. No thank you, no offer to cover all or even part of the gas or bridge tolls. Not even a goodbye.

I hung out at her house multiple times. I accidentally set her broom on fire. I'm not saying she was a totally bad person with no redeeming qualities. And I'm able to admit that I did a lot of these things because of my own damage. But she did pit people against each other in an attempt to maintain her position at the top. She did control people for her own benefit and she did not give any fucks what people did to help her.

ETA to remove a lot of self-indulgent whinging.

ETA to add:
I'm really sorry about the stuff going on in your life, Sparks. That all sounds super overwhelming and that level of stress has to be intense. I'm really sorry and I hope that things ... well, I hope something good happens soon. You're a really good person and you don't deserve to have such pressure. I think you're awesome.

When I am running a plot, I try to ensure that there is a variety of ways to contribute, specifically those who are less combat focused. Granted I tend towards a very 'I'll come up with it when it's happening' style of late, but it has been fairly effective in ensuring people don't get left out. If I see in the rolls that someone hasn't had a lot of success, I will often throw in a trap or a puzzle that allows them to contribute to the action in a noticeable way, to let them shine too. My style of STing has grown increasingly fast and loose, to the point that I really just come up with a general idea of what they are going to be doing and then let the players direct the action. This is really hard to do in scenes with 8 or more people, and it can end up meandering if I am not careful, but I find that people seem to be having a lot of fun, or are feeling like they are being effective. And really, as long as people are having fun? I did my job.

Spur of the moment scenes with awesome people having a blast! This has been a stretch of good times. I've really been feeling much better.

@Arkandel Yeeeeeeeeeeeees. Holy crap. I was all o.O but the premise of that comic is so damn good. Garth Ennis comes up with the most twisted stuff. But I really like Preacher and The Boys looks like it's going to be super fun. That Karl Urban tho! Wooot!

I am super, super impressed with this concept. It's fascinating! And I'm learning a lot by watching this process. Good work! I am really excited to see the finished product!

I was always partial to Dragonsdawn, and the story of Sallah Telgar always got to me. I really enjoyed almost all of those books, really. I think they made a profound impression on me from a very young age. I don't remember when it was I started reading them. But I think it was around eleven or twelve.

I am still processing my feelings on Joker. It was really really really intense. It was not the usual point of view/protagonist driven story. It was very specific and very bleak. But it was as good and powerful as it was uncomfortable.

@coin
Jeff Jeffty Jeff born on the first of Jeff, nineteen Jeffty Jeff...

I have no idea what is happening.

Jeff.

To second @Sparks, when you have a reeeeally out there idea, and you spend days working it out and layering in things and really working hard to make things make sense. And you finally get to the day you have to run it, and not only are the players awesome, but they pick up on what you're trying to do and they just make it glorious.

I have really, really, started to discover that my favorite part of MU*ing is running stories for people. I was so honored to be trusted with a really important goal for a character and just watching them go through it was so gratifying.

Now. If i could just get better at guesstimating timing. What I thought would take about 4 hours, ended up taking nearly 12. And kudos to them for sticking with it that long! It was probably the most fun I've had in months. It was all of the warm and fuzzies.

After taking time to process, here is my take. I will put in spoiler tags for things that are spoilery.

My opinion is that this is not a movie with a point of view. Well, let me clarify: It is not attempting to persuade the viewer to its point of view. This is not, as some have said, a war cry for the Incels, a touchstone for entitled white guys to feel more justified in committing acts of violence because the world was mean to them. Anyone who walks out of that film feeling that way was already in that mindset when they went in.

I think it did a ridiculously good job at evoking the reality of being mentally ill. There were certain shots, wordless tableaux that so evoked what it feels like to be depressed that it was... both profoundly freeing and just bleakly despairing. As someone who struggles with depression and anxiety I felt seen and understood. Let me be clear, however, at no point in the film was the character of Joker, in my opinion, a sympathetic one. There is an innate desire in most people to root for the underdog. And in this film, Arthur Fleck is the personification of a no-win scenario made flesh. I wanted to empathize with him, but I couldn't. And I think that was purposeful.

Joaquin Phoenix's performance was indescribably good.

I didn't feel like a comic book movie. Despite the characters present, the location of Gotham, it felt way more real than a comic book movie. It was 100% more Chronicle and nothing like Man of Steel or Batman v Superman. There were times when I was like 'Well, clearly that wouldn't really happen...' and then I sit and think about the shit that we see on the news and it just hit me that this movie is way more grounded in reality than I am at all comfortable with.

This movie is deeply uncomfortable. It is not fun. It challenges you and makes you think. I strongly caution people looking for a fun night out to consider something else unless you're prepared to really think about some heavy shit afterwards. This could be a stellar date movie, if like... you're both woke as fuck and are down for deeply complicated conversations about uncomfortable shit.

There is so much to unpack and talk about, but I really need to actually get some work done and not spam this board all day. But man. If you've seen this movie and wanna talk, PM me. There is so much going on.

@Arkandel Oh, I totally agree with that. I mean, that's what I get out of the hobby -- but just because I recognize how I use it, doesn't give me the right to spew my baggage on other people! Oh hell no. I'm an adult human being, and I can't, like you said, always control how I feel, but I can damn well control how I behave. I hope my RP doesn't come across as my slapdash therapy experiments to other people. People who RP with me aren't signing up for that shit. They are signing up for happy fun time and I try to ensure that that is the experience I give. I just then spend a ton of time afterwards self-analyzing and picking things apart when I see something in the pattern of my PC's behavior that strikes me as something important.

Now, there are the rare occurrences in which I find people I just do not gel with. I can think of one such person, who I genuinely like as a person, but if I try to RP with them, my emotional state just flips into entirely irrational. So I avoid them. Not because I don't like them, not because I don't like their character. I just know that I cannot trust my behavior around them. I am more than happy to accept that onus and try to leave it be as much as possible. Because, adult.

@Zobi Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes

Austin Texas would make for an awesome setting. UT is situated there, for your college wants, it's a Capitol city with lots of corrupt politicians lurking around (Some that brag about shooting coyotes while on a jog. Sigh.) It has South Congress Bridge which has all of the bats ever that swoop out at sunset for a spectacle. It hosts South by Southwest, the Rot Rally (Republic of Texas Biker Rally) Sixth street, which is one of the most awesome places for live music in the Southwest. Progressive politics (Within the city limits, creeping more and more conservative as you pass through the surrounding suburbs), some of the most gorgeous scenery you'll find in Texas (I know, a stretch, right?), it's super green, has amazing hills and valleys, several large lakes. There is a huge population of hippy folk in South Austin. I mean, the city motto is "Keep Austin Weird".