@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:
@auspice said in General Video Game Thread:
So who are we gonna roll so we can both afford a PS4?
Who do you think? She can afford a corset-style leather jacket.
If you're both very good, I will buy you one for Christmas, but you have to share. No fighting.
Unless it's a fight to the death over who gets ownership. Then, of course, you may proceed.
My amazing professor, who apparently is some manner of divine being with keen omniscient abilities, paired us off for research.
She paired me with the hottest guy in class.
Who is also the only other gay guy in class.
And we are the strongest writers.
Bonus: She has decided that this grouping system shall remain for the advanced class next semester.
I have made a new strictly platonic awesome friend who also happens to be very fun to talk to. And stare at. (Don't judge me).
I think I need to buy her a present.
@thenomain said in System dealbreakers:
Gangrel was my second choice, but overlaps a bit too hard with Werewolf. Well. Depending on which Werewolf Princess archetype we'd be going for.
Think of the TS possibilities though.
There's still room for another! The Flotsam Foursome could be a thing!
@thenomain said in System dealbreakers:
@derp said in System dealbreakers:
@thenomain said in System dealbreakers:
@auspice said in System dealbreakers:
YOU TOO COULD BE A WASTE MANAGEMENT PRINCESS.
I have my next WoD concept.
I'm afraid you'll have to fight me for it. puts up his dukes
Tell you what. I'll take the concept to Werewolf, you can have Changeling.
Only if they can either be BFF's or mortal enemies.
ETA: If we can get @Ganymede to throw in with a similar Nossie concept, we could do wonderful and terrible things.
@thenomain said in System dealbreakers:
@auspice said in System dealbreakers:
YOU TOO COULD BE A WASTE MANAGEMENT PRINCESS.
I have my next WoD concept.
I'm afraid you'll have to fight me for it. puts up his dukes
@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I've been taking Lyft/Uber/etc for a while. I've never had a weird/wtf experience until tonight.
Guy kept asking if I wanted him to just 'drive [me] around.'
Kept insisting I take his number.Outright asked if I live alone at one point.
I almost went to a neighbor's door other than my own, but I don't know any of my neighbors, so it would've been an added layer of awkward. I just made sure to immediately lock my door as I got in and I was texting a friend the whole time.
But holyfuck.
Did you report said creepy behavior to the company? If not, you probably should.
Apparently that I am the person whose name is on the account. Not worth it. If I get an itch or something, I'll make a new one. Or, you know, play something that I didn't find mildly unpleasant to begin with.
Someone apparently went through a great deal of trouble to hack into the World of Warcraft account that I haven't used since 2012 and set things up via whatever means it would take for them to go and apparently abuse the economy and get the account banned.
I mean, I don't know whether to be mildly worried that someone got into the account, or mildly impressed at the sheer level of work I imagine it would take to get that beast up to date. I haven't updated anything on it since the Panda thing was a thing.
Still, I changed all the passwords to all the things to be safe, and was going to submit a ticket until Blizzard was like 'Lol no take a picture of your ID and send it to us.'
Hahahahaha no. If they want the account that badly, they can have it. I give props to you, bad actor, and leave this Battletag in your midly obsessive hands, since I was never going to use it again anyway. Cheers, bad actors! You win this round!
@auspice said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
I played a heroin addict on a game once. I made sure to be careful of who I played it around (since I know it can be triggering), but what surprised me more than people who it bothered (which I get)...
... was how lightly other people took it? Like to some it was this cutesy 'oh your character has the addict flaw? Mine does, too! To caffeine!'
....wat.
I think that this mostly stems from two things:
People being unfamiliar with real addiction.
Addicts in fiction being treated as little more than set pieces unless their struggle with addiction is the main focus of the story.
This flaw always struck me as weird, because addiction is by its nature a selfish beast. It's one of those things that, if it's not demanding the spotlight because of the attention the addict needs and the trouble they tend to cause in the lives of the people around them, then it's being played unrealistically. (Not wrong, mind you, just unrealistically). Sometimes, that's what you need to do in order to make it viable, but then they get treated in the equally unrealistic manner of being little more than interactive scene furniture. It's a hard bargain to strike to make it both poignant and not annoying as fuck.
@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@derp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I mean, while I can see where you're coming from, let's remember two things:
1). You are currently in the Hog Pit. I don't think "having nice things" is a realistic bar in here.
Yeah, I just caught that. Similar titles are confusing!
@lithium said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Comments like @Jennkryst are why we can't have nice things in MU's, real world peeve, people who /know/ what they are doing is fucked up, insulting, and otherwise being a douche, and do it anyways.
I mean, while I can see where you're coming from, let's remember two things:
1). Edited because turns out, not in the Hog Pit. That's the other thread.
2). That comment was a follow-up to a series of previous comments, and actually happened to be on-point, at least. It even came with justification.
In other news, I've started a new 'Current Events' post over in the Politics section, complete with not one but two things to talk about, one extensively covered and one barely touched upon. Feel free, everyone, to go over and continue the politics discussion there, or add a new thing to talk about that you find discussion-worthy!
Counter-Peeve: I majored in political science, and I am sick of hearing citizens of the United States talk about how much they don't care about politics because they're so disgusted by it. You guys are part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place, dudes. You're a part of the democratic machine -- your "fuck it all" attitudes toward things like voting and political engagement only serves to keep fueling the nightmare. I even have the math to prove it to you.
Get out and vote for something, it's not that hard. If you're super convinced that all of the candidates suck, then run for something. It's not remotely difficult to win a local election. Hell, if someone is retiring, there are better-than-even odds that the election won't even be contested, so long as they can get an ass in the seat.
It doesn't work right now because all of the sane people who aren't political extremists decided a long time ago that they didn't have to give a fuck, but reserve the right to bitch about how screwed up things are.
@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@darinelle said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I understand. Neither of my parents are narcissistic, but both are super conservative Christian and I spend a lot of time trying not to roll my eyes around them and showing them the acceptable parts of my life so we don't just fight for days. It's a problem. I hope it's not as bad as you fear it might be, and that you get to enjoy the visit through the anxiety.
It's difficult. Esp. in the current political climate. You don't want a fight, buuuuut.
When we don't clash, things are A-OK. Outside of religion/politics, I can get along with them alright, but as soon as either enter the stage... oof. So here's hoping.
Step 1: Tell them you are getting more serious about this whole bible thing.
Step 2: Show them your giant, framed poster of the verse Ezekiel 23:20. Say it gave you inspiration.
Step 3: Watch the internal struggle as they try and decide whether a bible verse is inappropriate.
You're welcome.
Some days, like today? Attorneys.
Short version of the conversation:
Him: There's a problem with your memo.
Me: Really? What's up?
Him: It doesn't include all of the relevant information.
Me: ...ok, what's it missing? I went through Henry's, MT, and Burns. That's what I could find. (These are legal treatises and the annotated statutes, respectively).
Him: You didn't include the parts about the required notice and these deadlines.
Me: Those only apply to minors.
Him: So why didn't you include them?
Me: ...because it's a legal memo for this case, and your client is not a minor? Nor are we dealing with any parties who are minors?
Him: Next time, include everything.
Me: . o O (If you want to know everything about everything, then read the goddamned treatises, dude. You have Lexis too. You asked me to write a memo for this case). Alright, I understand. Thanks for the feedback.
@the-tree-of-woe said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
@derp The Vivienne can also be difficult to pull off, because she's a sniffy manipulative bitch, which can be just the WORST without her being softened by a little humanity (like Vivienne was).
Also, it helps if she's right about pretty much everything (like Vivienne was, again).
Sera: Vivienne? She's a bitch. But she knows. She better.
@surreality said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
@apu said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
I think the phrase 'questionably viable' is a bit subjective. A concept that might cause one person to raise their brow at it might be perfectly fine in the opinion of another person.
It's more a factor of what some of the folks in the thread earlier were describing, re: characters that work well in fiction, but don't often make grand PCs on a MU* for a variety of reasons. (Some may make awesome plot NPCs or short-term antagonist NPCs, but they don't make for enduring PCs very well.)
There are versions of these tropes that do work -- for instance, the 'lone wolf' who is grousing all the time about all the teamwork they have to do now in <theme> when they'd rather be working on their own -- but they tend to have players aware of the limitations of the trope and compensate for it intentionally in ways that make the character not actually that trope at all in practice. Without that awareness on the player level, you have that asshole who is filing a dozen jobs a day and sucking up staff time like a shopvac on steroids because they have to do everything solo, and if they're not interacting with anybody but staff outside of OOC socializing and minimal BaRP brooding quietly in a corner and not talking to anyone, well... why be there at all?
This can also work for the lone wolves that volunteer to work on the team, but make everyone sort of uncomfortable.
Dorian: What would you say Blackwall's best feature is?
Vivienne: His absence, of course.
Blackwall: I can hear you both.
To be clear, I haven't had antagonism directed at me, but I rarely do antagonists. But I have see the sorts of doublespeak that happen around them. 'Jane/John is such a bitch/creeper, did you hear how (s)he did/does X ic thing I find gross/offensive/manipulative' is just as often a reference to a player as a character. I've seen it as staff, as a player, even on this forum.
I honestly feel that our 'separation of IC/OOC' exists more as a comforting fiction than any sort of norm. At least in my experience. YMMV.
Part of this in my experience comes down to something we tend to talk about a LOT, but put into practice much less frequently: separating IC and OOC. If your character is a huge racist jerkass, people just sort of -assume- you are too. It gets more muddied the less extreme the example of 'particular deviance/weirdness' is.
Look, we tend to talk a big game about keeping IC and OOC in their own corners, but as a hobby we -suck- at this. Maybe not all of us, but I think I can safely say that there's a nice bell curve between 'what separation?' and 'picture perfect model of person keeping things distinct'.
Until we're willing to roll with the idea that horrible characters who do terrible things are not by default played by awful people, I think this is a losing battle. We're too quick to take offense to... just about everything, and we as a hobby have way too long a memory for these things. I think this is unfortunate, but I think that it's the nature of the beast.
My two cents.
