Best posts made by Auspice

I just read this and I think I should leave it here:
http://astolat.tumblr.com/post/144069870158/badscienceshenanigans-0hcicero

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

And every. single. time. they seem to think I'm on-call to help them with this 'brilliant plan' of theirs and my fucking god I am sick of it.

As it seems clear to me that your family doesn't give a shit about your emotional needs and well-being, I am still at a loss as to why you bother to even respond to them.

Honestly?

The hope, desperation, and wish to have... some sort of familial connection.

I'm jealous of people who do. I'm jealous of people who have parents or siblings they can rely upon, they can reach out to, they can talk to and enjoy spending time with. And it's just a sort of continued desperate hope that someday maybe things will be better. It seems every 5, 10 years roughly things do improve a bit.

But I very much want that kind of thing. As I watch, from afar, my sister do those terrible, idiotic things some teenagers do, I keep hoping: maybe in a few years she'll start to smarten up and we can be sisters.

I want these things. So I keep reaching out and I hope someday they'll be able to do so in return. Maybe.

There has definitely been an increase over the last few years, in my experience, of people expecting Staff to entertain them constantly.

I've seen people leave games, citing that there's 'nothing to do,' when there's 1-2 Staff-run scenes a week and a few player-run +events beyond that.

And a lot of these people just flat out will not attend player-run +events.

It just reminds me of the brief time period in which I tried to LARP and 90% of the other players just pressed in around the STs and ignored absolutely everyone else, in the sheer hope that they would get their precious seconds of attention.

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Pandora

To be fair, it may be reasonably argued that lawyers are, in fact, poxes on society.

But you're our pox.

@Vorpal said in There's Nothing to Do Here:

Players do need to take the initiative and be willing to create their own content- but what most players get to do is micro-plot. Plot staff often tends to pick up the other end of the deal by working on the macro-plot, the over-arching threads that can make really cool stuff happen by incorporating some of the things going on into a Big Thing.

When plot staff stop being active, things tend to stagnate pretty quickly. Speaking as someone who is playing less and less on his once-favorite MU*, the lack of a good plot staffers can make a place feel more and more like splashing around with your bath-tub toys. You make a splash and then it stops, and that's where it ends.

Which is true. If Staff has dropped off running anything, then that IS a Staff issue.

But in the cases I've seen where Staff is running 1-2 +events every week... and people still complain there's 'nothing to do'? That is entirely and completely on those players.

I hate my ADD days.

Today is one.

Yesterday just sort of flew by at work. I felt like crap. I had nothing to do. But I was able to focus and go and get it done.

Today? I'm jittery and frustrated and even though I'm striving to just.do.things.....nothing is scratching the unfocused itch and I look at the clock after what feels like an eternity and it's.......fifteen minutes.

It feels like a literal ache, like noise at the base of my skull.

@ixokai said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Who the hell is talking about punishing anyone (let alone everyone) or slavish dedication to a pose order?

I think asking that everyone keep a pose order, even in a larger scene, because someone 'might' jump order is considered punishing everyone else. It's going 'I'm going to limit all of you because of something one person may or may not do.'

I've also seen people pitch fits when someone poses 'out of order' because the proper order was someone who went AFK for a long period of time without warning. I consider that punishing also because, depending on the person having a fit, it can be problematic.

I think it's coming along okay:

Just gotta finish the foot and toe...

...then convince myself I can do it all a second time.

Fell out of touch with someone when a game closed.

Just confirmed today that the person I've been RPing with (and enjoying!) is said person. I'd been wondering for a bit and finally paged today. Apparently they realized it was me a few days ago.

(This is a double-win because our chars are angling into a relationship and I already know they're sane and have the same sort of 'style' for relationship RP that I do.)

RL peeve:
People who cannot be on time, but will insist that you are.

I should have just assumed that my parents would be 45m-hour late meeting me this morning and slept more. But nooooo I believed their continued insistence last night that they wanted to meet at 7.

I’m glad they leave today. It’s been a better trip than I expected (shockingly, I got no mockery for being the liberal one in the family for once), but I am tired and stressed and ready to have a more open schedule.

@Sunny

This is where my personal "metaposing" comes into play. Because people may not get the cues just from describing physical action.

So using hint words / key words. '...sits with shoulders hunched, in a defensive pose..,' '...looks at him with a mild amusement, but also affection...'

Because these are things we'd "get" if we saw them IRL, but in just words it's a lot more difficult.

There is also the thing about how what is a glaring, obvious, neon sign of a clue to you as a writer... is just a tiny snippet of the whole picture. This goes mostly for STs. If you think you left a glaring clue and your players are just ignoring it or are 'too dense...' chances are it's not as obvious a clue as you think it is. I had an ST once tell me that a scene we had was "packed" with plot and I had to argue him into telling me what it was because I went back and read the log three times. It was all so vague that I just could not catch it.

This is something we get reminded about often in scriptwriting courses/feedback. That you, as the writer, have the whole picture, but you need to learn to step back and view it from your reader/viewer's perspective. Will that newspaper clipping truly be a big reveal like you think it is, or will it just appear as a confusing non sequitur?

I'm really digging on the 'it was already colonized,' except the colony is gone.

Space Roanoke.

Fields of crops left untended.
Homes abandoned in various states of disarray.

@silverfox said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I known isn't the intention when people make these comments, but my brain always twists these kinds of suggestions (x worked for y, why don't you do it?) to this:

"I am now judging you for not doing <thing they suggested> to help with <symptom, disease, complaints>. You must not actually be hurting all that bad if you aren't going to try this."

Well, I've had people actually say things like that.

Mostly after making assumptions because fuck you I shouldn't have to justify my health conditions constantly.

'You were eating fries the other day and those are so unhealthy for you. If you only ate better you'd be fine.'
^ this is in the same lines as 'If you'd just diet you'd lose weight.' (And we know that's not the case; my thyroid and PCOS ladies TOTALLY know).

Guess what, sometimes my stomach is in such bad shape all I can eat is potato-based products, bread, rice, and baked chicken. The latter three can be bland af so lemme have my damn fried potatoes.

But seriously, those comments fall into the same lines as the people who make shitty comments about weight loss. You don't know me. You don't know my particular health issues. You don't know what I have tried.

I just typoed, in a scene:

lawyer of awkward

My RP partner got excited over this typo. "There's a lawyer of awkward?! I have my next character concept!"

...All I can think of is @Ganymede.

For financial reasons, I've been off most my meds (after next week, I should be able to afford some of them again even sans-insurance since that won't go active until October... lolhalfwaythroughmycontract).

Today is the first day it was really noticeable. I can tell the anti-anxiety meds are out of my system. I was on my way to a standard, daily interview that's never been an issue before... and felt the panic welling up inside.

I hate that feeling.

This was spawned by something @surreality was saying in another thread. The 'Because magic' excuse is a common one and we see it used positively and negatively. The latter happens seemingly most often (in regards to it being negative / noticeable) when Staff outright has no answer and just doesn't want to deal. This is, in my opinion, the biggest weakness of an original theme game (that involves magic). We've discussed it before: original themes take work and a lot of it. Players will come up and approach things you hadn't yet considered. You can spend a year fleshing out a theme, building a game, and two days after the gates open... you have twenty jerbs to answer with things you never considered.

Look at all the 'fan theories' that abound for well-established properties, like Harry Potter. Almost always about things that don't come up nor have reason to in the main series.

The 'because magic' excuse is used often - notably when it comes to technology - and to varying degrees of success.

• Harry Potter: It's never fully explained. The best explanation we have from the books and JK is that the wizarding world doesn't use technology because magic fulfills all they need. Where this falls flat is with the Muggle-borns. There's been vague assumptions that technology and magic don't mesh, but we've never seen a truly, totally concrete answer on it (unless it's in some JK tweet I haven't seen yet).

• Dresden Files: This is where the assumption above comes from, likely. Dresden, for example, drives an old VW bug because his magic interferes with computers, so he has to drive a car without one. There's no real 'science' behind it, but it's at least made clear: he doesn't use tech because it doesn't play nice with magic.

• Peter Grant: If you haven't read these yet (Rivers of London is the first) and like the above, you should. They're like this lovely melding of the above two with one of the most enjoyable protags I've read. Anyway... Peter Grant, new wizard, finds that his cellphone gets fried when he uses magic. The chips in it literally disintegrate. So what does he do? He experiments. He tests range, intensity, etc.. I loved this and it really helped enrich the 'because magic' concept of anti-tech (Peter, for example, has to setup a 'tech cave' outside the main building he and Nightingale live in, so he can still do his police work or catch a football game).

It's one of the things I've studied. The 'because magic' excuse. You can't just handwave it because readers (players) will notice. Because it will vex them. Because it will ruin their immersion.

In HP, the balance of 'they don't use tech because magic does whatever they need' is there, so it's not as big a deal. In Peter Grant, the explanation is given that magic draws energy and the chips and resistors in devices like phones and computers are the first to go. The reasons are given (even if not in nitty-gritty detail) and it makes the world all that much richer.

Does every third born in a city grow an extra nipple in your setting? Why? 'Because magic' is vague and underwhelming, but 'Because a wizard cursed the family that founded the original settlement' gives something concrete and it adds just that more flavor to the world.

I think this goes for a lot of things and it's part of why original theme games are so few and far between now. I've got a world building worksheet that I used on one of my more established personal settings and even it left me just sitting there at times thinking 'I never once considered this,' even though I acknowledge that while a particular society's historical methods of entertainment may not be important to me right now, it could be later and it would definitely be important to someone playing someone in that world.

Submitted my first draft of the outline today.

Excuse while I hyperventilate.

It's easy... and by easy, I mean it doesn't demand a lot of energy from me. It's a way I can engage with people, even if I'm physically 'shot' enough that just getting out of bed is hard. Just because I may be having a shit fibro day doesn't mean I may not want to be able to interact with people and chat and have fun. I can have fun and RP and 'hang' all while kicking back on the couch in my PJs.

Especially lately... I can't play video games because of the migraines. And I largely avoid going out because of the vertigo. Sometimes I can't RP. But I'm more likely to be able to RP than anything else (even if I've had to bow out a number of times or keep to slow/one-on-one scenes).

I enjoy roleplay/TT stuff, but my shyness can kick in hardcore in person. I have a really, really hard time getting "in character" in LARP, TT, etc. I want to, but I clam up and shut down because I just can't perform, as it were. I get scared. MU*ing is a way of engaging in the activity without the fear, for me.

Lastly, what's kept me around (besides the people <3) is that it allows me to practice my writing. I can try out styles, 'voices,' dialogue methods, different characters, etc.. TS lets me practice sex scenes. Combat scenes let me work out writing out fight scenes that 'flow' visually. Playing male characters helps me practice writing a realistic character that's not my own RL gender. And if I'm ever uncertain about things, I can generally get real time feedback (I've found people are, in general, pretty great if I go 'Hey, I've never played <X> before, how am I doing?').

I imagine most of us have heard how 'No problem' can be perceived as rude. The reasoning being that saying it implies that the person was bothering you and you generously gave them your time. And true as this may be in some cases, it makes the phrase a prickly ground in customer service. Whereas many users of the phrase may think it indicates 'this wasn't an undue difficulty for me, so I was happy to help' others may feel the above or that you're belittling their needs.

'No problem' is mostly used by younger (I think sub-50 at this point; it's pretty broadly applied) generations while the older still stand by 'You're welcome.' It's a slang thing and pretty broadly done in English-speaking countries (not all, I'm sure, but here, Canada, the UK...)

The other issue, however, with 'you're welcome' is that a lot of people (myself included) can feel some anxiety around using it. It's not that it sounds stiff (though it does), but it feels like it takes away from the person you're helping and puts some power back on you. That implication of 'ah, yes, you're so fortunate that I was benevolent enough to share my time.'

Yet... we should think about ourselves that way. This shift to a service culture we've had in the past fifty years (more fast food, more stores, then call centers and....) seems to have built so many of us into this mindset of 'I must serve' as opposed to 'I am providing a service.'

They're two wildly different concepts. Something about being polite and respectful lies in there, but there's also the simple fact that instead of people viewing customer service roles as someone they pay to provide a service for them, they view customer service roles as someone who is fortunate enough to be the recipient of their money and thus should earn it.

Again, subtle but important differences and they fold into self-esteem at a level that's difficult to comprehend.

tl;dr I'm going to start using 'You're welcome' more than 'No problem' because I'm worth it.