Posts made by Coin

@TNP said:

@nyctophiliac said:

The average human body contains...what, 5 pints of blood? Each pint of blood is a single blood point. Take 1/5th of someones blood and you just fucked them up

Actually, it's 10 pints or so. When you give blood, they take a pint and there's little effect from it.

Yeah. That's why I forewent the "pint" measurement in my clarification above. 1 Vitae is an abstract amount of blood--enough that it's nourishing for a vampire, basically. The more Stamina you have and the bigger you are, the more Vitae their blood is worth. This is the same reason, as far as I can tell, that some vampires have more Vitae than others: the actual mystical power of the viae is concentrated the higher your Blood Potency (hence the term "blood potency") and each Vitae is less actual amount of physical blood.

A bloodpoint is actually a Lethal Health Level. So mortals will have anywhere between 6-10 blood points in their system. Just a nitpick, but an important one, I think. People with higher Stamina can handle more bloodloss, etc.

You know what's really sad?

Most people won't pay actual, real attention until it is a white dude behind a keyboard typing: I AM A WHITE, MALE GAMER AND I ALSO AGREE WITH ALL THESE THINGS THESE WOMEN ARE SAYING.

And then everyone will be like, "Oh, man, maybe it's true."

And the few of us who've been like, "No shit it's true!" for years will go: ARRRRRRRRRRGH.

I mean, I support Randall Bills's message--I am just so sick of it having to be white dudes posting support to get a message across. Same way I'm sick of it having to be white politicians who talk about racial issues before the world fucking acknowledges them.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

Great reason to hang out in mist-covered London. There was a series of books by Fred Saberhagen that had Dracul as the good guy (he went by "Matthew Maul") and he lived in Chicago, favoring its supposedly consistently overcast skies.

Many works in pop culture though - and I'm mainly talking movies/TV series here - employ lethal sunlight as a limitation for vampires.

Yes? My original comment was meant to clarify that vampires functioning in sunlight isn't something that comes around thanks to Dracula, which is why i quoted @misadventure's post.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

Sunlight doesn't actually bother Dracula all that much, either. I think at most it limits his powers a little bit, but he's quite active during the day in the novel.

Wikipedia to the rescue!

"Dracula is much less powerful in daylight and is only able to shift his form at dawn, noon, and dusk (he can shift his form freely at night or if he is at his grave). The sun is not fatal to him, though, as sunlight does not burn and destroy him upon contact, most of his abilities cease."

Great reason to hang out in mist-covered London. There was a series of books by Fred Saberhagen that had Dracul as the good guy (he went by "Matthew Maul") and he lived in Chicago, favoring its supposedly consistently overcast skies.

That looks pretty good, yeah.

@Misadventure said:

Sunlight didn't originally affect them in most myths. As a disease metaphor, anything that defeats them other than Divine Power would be hard to match up with the experience.

I read several pre-Dracula western vampire serials and stories to see what they were like.

Sunlight doesn't actually bother Dracula all that much, either. I think at most it limits his powers a little bit, but he's quite active during the day in the novel.

@Lithium said:

I'm still of the opinion that it's not /that/ hard to hide feedings, if you're in a large enough population center.

It's as difficult as the game requires it to be to achieve whatever atmosphere the game is going for. Games, like books and TV shows and any other form of story-based entertainment, have conceits that the players or audience have to buy into. If you can't buy into it, it's not the game for you, basically.

@Ganymede said:

@Arkandel said:

Gave deadlifts an honest try with rather low weight, a belt, stretching before and after and as good form as I could manage.

What the fuck, man? Do you even read?

AAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAH!!!!!

@TNP said:

Wish I could say I was surprised.

Same.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin What the actual fuck is going on there?

I have no actual fucking clue but it looks like some ridiculously creepy The Witcher cosplay or something, roflmfao.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin Your brother sounds like a cool dude.

He aiight.

I was raised by a rather progressive mother. She may not be very feminist on the surface (she has issues separating radical misandry from the word "feminism", I don't know why) but the core values are there and she instilled them early in me and my brother, which is why even when my brother and I are fighting like rabid raccoons, when we find ourselves in certain situations, we are in complete synchronicity.

Anyway, I have a story relevant to this topic that I think you guys will appreciate. It happened about seven or eight years ago during a party my brother hosted at our place while my mother and her boyfriend were on vacation.

I live in South America, and while I know that the stereotype is "brown skinned", in case some of you don't know, there are people who would qualify, on sight, as essentially "white"--especially in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, and others.

In my country, racially charged and racist language is a lot more prevalent and a lot harder to combat (we don't have the history the U.S. does) so we're used to hearing certain things. And while the word "nigger" isn't used at all (aside from perhaps people commenting on its use in the U.S.) there are other colorful phrases that mean essentially the same thing when referring to darker-skinned people.

I'm hanging out with my friend at this party--we're substantially older than the majority of the people there since they're all friends of my 10-years-younger brother, but we're having a good time, drinking, etc. And then someone says the equivalent of "niggers". He wasn't actually calling anyone present that, he was talking about "a certain type of people". (i.e. people with brown-skin, which as you may suspect quite correctly, form the majority of the lower class, like, you know, in most places.) (Yes, you get people of dark skin using the same terminology, and not in the way African-Americans have appropriated "niggah", but rather in actual insult, it's mind-bloggling.)

I told him not to say that. I even said "please". His argument as to why he should be allowed to say it is was tantamount to "I was talking about their way of thought, not their skin color" (another variant: "I was talking about them being 'niggers of the soul' not, you know, their skin color"). Suffice to say this didn't endear me to him any, and I told him I didn't care--just stop. I'm a teacher--I like to educate if at all possible--but I was also relaxing and frankly I didn't have the desire to argue about it with an idiot--but then other people started: some defended him (usually citing cultural norms and a lack of cultural understanding, which is a shit argument) and some took my side.

Eventually, he got sick of getting schooled and when my brother--who was clueless as to this--walked by, the guy called him over and told him I was giving him a hard time. (My brother was holding a dude by the arm like he was going to use him to swing at a baseball, and the dude was holding his own head with one hand, so keep that in mind for the next part of the story). He didn't know I was his brother. He didn't know he was in my home. He explained what happened in the most favorable light (for himself) that he could and my brother grabbed him by the arm with his free hand, asked me to help with the other guy too, and together we escorted them right the fuck out.

Turns out the other guy (remember I told you to keep him in mind?) had pinned the door to the bathroom with a girl inside and was telling her he'd let her out if she let him take a picture of her bent over with her skirt pulled up. My brother had to pee and when he came around and heard the dude insisting, he knocked the guy's head into the doorframe and dragged him off.

We lived across the street from a police station. Racist Douchebag didn't get more than a boot from our house, but the other guy got charges, once we got one of the cops to cross the street and take the girl's statement.

Moral of the story is: surround yourself with people who will back you up when you are defending people, because even when you think you know the people you invite into your home, that's not a given. And raise your kids right--I have a ton of faults, but allowing that sort of shit in my vicinity, much less in my home, isn't one of them.

I hope @mietze's kids (and any that any of you have) never have that happen at a party they go to or that they host--but I hope if it does, they have the support of others so that they are able to excise these sorts of people summarily and without remorse.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I often wonder if there actually is more of a gender balance on MUs, or if the women are just more visible. By which I mean, on the average MU people talk, even if it's to a minimal degree, about who they are OOCly in ways that aren't really remarkable. It just comes up in casual conversation that's not directly related to me being a woman or feminist or whatever. Less so other places I've interacted online. It's easy to assume a forum is male-dominated if the loudest and most frequent posters are men, which creates a circle-jerk when topics like GamerGate come up that can make an environment really toxic to interact with if you're female, so you default to lurking because who the fuck wants to deal with the aggravation.

But this is just a theory I have no way to prove, because you can't measure non-participation or the reasons for it.

In my experience, as a ballpark estimate, I think women are more common. Like, for example, I chose my staffers for Eldritch based on who was willing and available. It ended up being, across the duration of the game: 2 male headstaffers, 1 female headstaffer, and then 1 male staffer and 4 female staffers, and it would have been 5 if one person had stayed, who left before opening. Of the people who offered to help and whom I turned down, I didn't turn down more men than I did women (if anything, the opposite is true). And that's just a short-lived, small game.

Unfortunately, a true census is very difficult (perhaps impossible). But that's my impression.

I remember when I started roleplaying online I was struck by how many women there were, especially in comparison to men. There tends to be more women than men.

And then I grew up a year or two and realized: well, of course there's more women in roleplaying online than real life--in real life, they have to deal with assholes face to face. And believe me: gamers can be just as much assholes as anyone else, and the gaming community is notoriously misogynyst--GamerGate attitudes are not relegated to video game culture, after all.

@Arkandel said:

Yeah, that's an issue with other shows as well, although it can involve different types in each of them. I could name The Walking Dead as an infamous example.

And I call those shows out too. But in Banshee's case, it's a very common version of it that requires little to no thought on the writers's part.

I'm pissed because of who they killed. Banshee has an unfortunate habit of killing that type of character over and over and over and over and it's even more annoying that they are essentially basing the entire season on it. I'll still watch it, because it still promises to be good despite that; but for fuck's sake, man, it would not be hard to avoid.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin Can't you leave it at the office and pick it up the next day? It's what I do if it starts raining after I get here.

Few issues:

• It's Friday;
• It's a brand new, still uninsured bike;
• It's tied up outside (yeah, the elements are not being kind today) and though there is a security guard in the vicinity, I don't think they stick around during the weekend.

So no, essentially, I can't.

It's fine. I'm usually okay with biking home in the rain since I am, essentially, just going home. If rain catches me mid-bike to the office, that's the worst. And, well, when I have to cancel all the things.