Posts made by Derp

@Ganymede

I mean I was going to sub even before I saw they were playing Dead Space.

But doubly so since they're playing Dead Space.

It's been my experience that breaking communications down into smaller bits is sometimes an easier way to do this, especially if it's done in writing. I have to do this for some of the people I work with.

For example, I'll send an e-mail that might say:

• Let's schedule a meeting to talk about the agenda for <thing>. Are you free at <X Time>?

And then send a follow-up e-mail that says:

• Let's make sure that we talk about <this other thing too>.

And then maybe one that says:

• Hey, can you make sure to do <this other thing> at some point?

Is it a pain in the ass? Yes. Should adults have to communicate like this? No. Should your coworker or whoever be trying to develop better coping mechanisms to deal with long-form communication about important topics? Absolutely.

But we do what we have to do to make our lives the least amount of hell possible, so if I have to send a million e-mials like a micromanager, then that's what I'm going to do.

@Hella said in The Case Against Real PBs:

I still don't know where I fall on the issue but it was helpful to read the various stances posed here.

So I guess my hot take is as follows:

Real talk? It’s not an issue. Or it’s only as much an issue as, say, “the use of electricity is bad for the planet” is an issue. You can talk about ethical considerations until the end of time and possible ethical ramifications, alternatives, etc, but to what end? It’s already so ingrained into the culture as to be normalized, almost necessary for many of us, so all of this is academic at best.

It’s not going to change. Nobody but a very vocal minority wants it to change. It’s not a conversation that’s going to do anything but stoke tempers and make people look like wacky inflatable arm flaily tube men.

It’s a thing and it always will be, forever and ever, amen. No use in fighting it.

@reimesu

I am 100% on board with everything in this post. All of it.

@LittleLizard said in The Case Against Real PBs:

And question why people who you believe are usually sensible people give it a pass.

Nobody gave it a pass. It was called out and acted upon. By two different admins.

Giving it a pass would be just ignoring it. That's not what happened.

Also, we took an action that we thought was appropriate once we conferenced a bit and talked about scope and impact, other things. If you don't agree with us? Cool. But it was our call, and that's the call we made.

To answer your much broader question above -- we'll always make decisions based on the totality of the circumstances, including the severity of the behavior and time between infractions.

Cool? Cool.

@reimesu said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Frankly, the entire argument against <insert whatever blank you want here> isn't an argument against <insert whatever blank you want here>, it's an argument against unethical players who are being manipulative. Which really means that you have to be vigilant about who you play with and what you're willing to get into with people you don't know.

I feel like the entire history of this forum can be summed up thus.

@Ghost

To answer your question -- yes, the people with the admin tags are held to the same standards as everyone else. Naturally.

To that point -- you started a thread with a charged topic, got out of line yourself, got people riled up, and were given some grace. It's not the first time, and we generally make that judgment based on frequency and severity. It's a gut check.

Given that this is a charged topic and tempers are running hot, and we've strayed well outside the bounds of the original thesis? I think it's fair to say that we're extended some equal grace all around.

So, yes. Our admins are held to the same standards that we hold everyone else to.

You're welcome.

That said, the temperature of this entire thread should probably come down a bit. I don't think that we're anywhere near 'mildly constructive' right now.

@Ghost

My dude. You’re a bit out over your skis here. Take a breath, find your chill. Reasonable people can disagree in reasonable ways. Your examples and language do not currently fall within the bounds of “reasonable”, nor in fact “mildly constructive.”

Take it down a few notches.

I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, but two things strike me:

• If you don’t like PBs, don’t use them. You can’t really force people to accommodate your personal tastes, and it does kinda feel a little shame-y.

• Tangentially, but: People keep calling this a writing hobby. But it isn’t. I think that’s where a lot of heartburn comes from. It’s a storytelling hobby, which is something distinct. A writing hobby focused on producing increasingly good writing. We don’t really do that. We just focus on entertaining people. It doesn’t matter if some of us suck at character descs. That isn’t the point of the exercise or what we’re investing our time in. (Most of us. Some Arx descs I’ve seen read like a thesis on weaving and embroidery, so it’s certainly not universally true.)

Point being, calling it a writing hobby and getting mad that people lack the skill to wordsmith something to give you a perfect picture in your head really misses the mark of what skills are actually important for the end result of “being entertained with a collaborative story,” especially when there are literal pictures to help you get a picture in your head.

@Ganymede

Will second Nimona. So cute.

@ZombieGenesis

The Gamera series on Netflix is really good too. You know. For us kaiju fans.

@Warma-Sheen

Oooh, Mage game! Wish I had time to do a MU.

@hobos said in Observation:

I can't really make a post without taking a stab at a solution though, so how about... we try not to care if anyone tracks us down, and let our current behavior stand for itself if anyone does figure us out, because all that will do is let us know who our friends are... and we try to legitimately have better current behavior -- including being as actually fair as our theoretical code demands, when push come to shove?

Or we could not.

Personally, I'm not playing anywhere. It's kind of a bummer. I'm just too damned busy with life to actually devote hours and hours and hours of my time to a character that may or may not ever get accepted because I may or may not click with the 'in' group.

But I'm certainly not going to demand that people who are playing somewhere and have found that group (the MU equivalent of winning the lottery for many of the people that are still around here) out themselves just so that readers have some entertainment value. Especially not for people who themselves aren't posting the same content.

As far as being better or worse than other people? Opinions differ. I don't think any of us are saying that. I think that a lot of us have said that it's a better environment without certain voices, which is a different thing.

@Warma-Sheen said in Observation:

But also the "MU" in MU Soapbox seems to be conspicuously absent.

That's true. A lot of us aren't playing. We're getting older, we have more responsibilities, our fatigue with trying to appease certain groups grows by the day. But some people are still playing.

If you're playing somewhere, you could always post about that. I'm sure that there are plenty of readers out there that would like to see it. They may feel emboldened to do so themselves. Others don't, for the reasons noted above. It's just a kind of sad reality of an aging and fractured base.

But this forum isn't JUST for MUs. It hasn't been for basically the entire time it's existed. It's so that friends who have known each other for ages and ages have a place to come, check in, communicate about the things that are going on, vent frustrations, support each other, etc. MU is the thing that brought us all together, but it isn't the reason that we persist as a friend group.

Bob Knight

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/38796141/legendary-basketball-coach-bob-knight-dies-83

I kind of think it's nice that none of us are hanging on every dramatic instance that happens on some game somewhere, or rehashing decades-old grudges. Is it slower than some other places? Sure. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, either. We still get plenty of traffic to the site, and we normally just post about less stressful things.

For those looking for a little more drama and fire, there are always other options.

@Macha Derps are wonderful. I have it on good authority.

@ShelBeast

I know that there were at least a few WoD games running in the not-too-distant past, but I don't know which ones are still up. There was the Obsidian Reverie Ares game which may-or-may-not still be running. City of Shadows still has a website but I don't know about the game itself. I thiiiiiink that Liberation is still going strong?

There may be other, my brain is a melting puddle due to All the RL.

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

@Derp Scroll up, homie. I did mention him.

SO YOU DID.

@Misadventure

I absolutely put that in a discord chat. <.<

Did anyone mention Bob Barker? I feel like we overlooked Bob Barker.