I don't know if this belongs here or in RL things I love, but it's mu*-adjacent so I'll go with here.

It's really cool that years after a stupid fight that I got the opportunity to talk to someone I met in a mu* and really liked to engage with, both IC and OOC and patch things up.

In addition, making it doubly cool is the fact that this happened less than twenty-four hours after I finally managed to see through and peel a manipulative emotional vampire barnacle that I also met in a mu* off my ass for the final time, so... net gain.

I did it! I made it through the wedding and reception and all the things!

My dress and shoes fit (not my new underwear but 2/3 ain't bad), my hair worked out (I will die on the banana clip hill plus I found a sun hat to match), my makeup worked out (I managed to not-goth and just look a little pale vs dead).

The estranged daughter and I have a lot of shit to work on, but a lot of information was traded and things discussed and there's definitely progress toward working out said shit that needs woring on. The mother/son dance went great, we danced together and sang 'Wonderwall' and we could hear other people singing with us and it turned into A Moment.

I even gave a toast speech completely off the cuff. I don't feel quite as weird about the in-laws anymore since so many of them made it a point to come introduce themselves and talk to me that there's a Godfather joke in there somewhere. Then we all danced to 'Low' and who can be all standoffish after that, really?

Then, everything at home was as wel left it. I couldn't really ask for a more perfect day.

Everybody who was like 'it'll be great, celebrate your son and his family and just ride the wave' when I bled into the 'RL Peeves' section - you were all right, and I couldn't be happier that you were.

Baby's home! They managed to jumpstart her system without any invasive procedures. The very last thing to worry about is the cystic fibrosis test which they had to redo after some cock-up of her initial bloodwork and then, if the genes are there or whatever, the sweat test confirmation. Hopefully negative there.

So glad she's home and, for now at least, everybody's happy and cozy and breathing more easily.

Since January my SO and I have been having a 'date night' once a week where we go to the only restaurant in our little town of 300 (nearest city 40 miles one way) for dinner. In the beginning it was because they'd started a new 'Friday special' that was something the cook, a really cool lady, would make herself as opposed to a regular bar and grill greasy spoon menu item.

I got to eat some really good food I'd never have tried on my own because of it, then about a month ago, they stopped having the special, which was a real bummer, but we still go every Friday because it's nice to have one day a week where I don't cook all three meals and we never really get to do anything that's not a duty.

Tonight we went in and were talking to her and the bartender/owner while browsing the menu when she beckoned us over to the corner by the register to tell us she'd made(!) and frozen(!) one of her own recipes and brought it to heat up just for us!

It probably sounds SO silly to be SO chuffed about such a thing, but she really is a wonderful cook plus just how sweet and thoughtful even THINKING of doing that is, much less convincing the owner to let her offer us the meal despite the owner having been the one to put the kibosh on the specials has made my otherwise kind of blah week.

I decided to play a bit of my game to relax since I'm epicly stressed, likely not the best of ideas but I can't really think of anything else and I'm sick of chasing my tail. I've been studiously avoiding running into other people, though, so I felt like that could work out well.

Enter unintended antagonistic RP aimed my way. Immediately I panic. Cue up delete. Cue up self-destruct. Realize I'm being fucking stupid and interact as my PC would.

End up getting unexpectedly hilarious RP that makes me glad I didn't just give in to whatever gremlins are eating my brain right now and the fallout of which has given me new options for RP when I've evicted said gremlins. (Saturday. They move Saturday, whether they like it or not.)

Thank you, MU* people, for being unpredictable and insane in just the right way at just the right times.

Since we're empty-nesters for the second year in a row and neither of us bothers with our trash families, my husband and I don't really do much for holidays we used to go crazy on because of the kids. I still cook us 'holiday' meals but mostly because that sort of stuff is too hard on our budgets but is on sale during those times, not because we're actually celebrating.

This year we were going to go to Daughter #2's house 7 hours away because she's eight months into a really hard pregnancy that's going to require neo-natal surgery and she wanted family around for holidays but I didn't want them driving. Blizzards rolled through the Sierras and her oven igniter ate shit so we've postponed, and I went ahead and bought November holiday dinner fixings for us, and as usual I bought too much.

Cut to my son, who is also expecting a baby with his fiance and since they just bought their house in April, they were going to stay home and do their new little family thing. Turns out the fiance's mom ended up hooking her into a trip to Texas for moral support because the awful branch of the family decided to show up, so my son called and asked if he could come to us for dinner. Fuck yeah, score!

SO Thanksgiving went from 'meh' to 'woohoo' because every course went perfect (last year I dropped a pie in the litter box, for an example of how things usually go wrong), and even though I miscalculated the turkey cooking time (as usual), drafting my ridiculously huge 80s toaster oven ensured that everything was ready and served simultaneously and I got to sit down with husband and son to watch The Irishman.

My RL thing I love for today is that one day you get the best of good luck amidst a whole year of just suffering and fuckery.

ETA: Getting my husband to agree to try 'Mass Effect' because I could download an XB360 version for $5 was just a cherry on top.

Making it through my first scene in like two years... and it was completely by accident, as I was trying to sneak out to look around at the map and just blundered right into gasp PEOPLE!

I loved every minute of it and finally remember why I stuck with this hobby all those years before.

/sings, "Merry Christmas to me... Merry Christmas TO me... Merry Christmas to Ca-aaaake... Merry Christmas to me."

ETA: Special thanks to @Sunny and @OldFrightful.

This is Luci. He 'adopted' us in December, and by 'adopted' I mean materialized in the motorcycle room one day, got caught, decided pets were OMG TO DIE FOR and moved in for them, then promptly got deathly ill two days later. Now he thinks I'm his mom/teething biscuit.

Participating in my first event in Arx and not only being able to follow, roll when appropriate(ish), and function, but also thoroughly enjoying myself doing all those things.

Thanks to a great batch of people for making this fun and painless and I'm looking forward to more.

Story/event runners who not only welcome the input that they're hitting a hard boundary for you that the info that brought you to join the event didn't even hint at or warn of and who then changes their path rather than just send you home, so you get to see it through.

That was a first, and definitely a welcome one, for me.

My daughter's boyfriend/fiance, someone we all love and think so highly of killed himself yesterday morning after a brief struggle over a firearm during which my daughter tried to disarm him and failed. He was very important to all of us, but obviously she's utterly shattered right now and his mother my heart literally breaks for given their whole story. This is making me take stock of pretty much everything in my life and I'm stepping back from a lot of things to do that, especially online.

I don't usually do big 'I hope you miss me, farewell, cruel world' type posts, even in games/communities I've been super active in for a super long time but I'm kind of making one right now not because I want attention and to make sure people miss me, but because I want to leave expressing my gratitude to this community for having helped provide discussion, debate, and anecdotes to me time and time again that have helped me analyze, decide and deal with things.

I see a lot of people here referring to this WORA thing, and making comments about how horrible and toxic it was and how this place is in some measure that place, but that's not been my experience here and I didn't want to go without saying that. I'm hoping this doesn't sound stupid, but so many of you are so open about communicating your thoughts and feelings about things and I wanted you all to know that someone appreciates it and feels that, overall, being a part of this community has been beneficial to me.

Thank you for that. I'm not someone who asks for help very easily, and I'm the person in my closest circle who is always expected to have the answers, and act, and be the impetus for everybody else acting, and appropriately, in crises and having people here who have been willing to share what they learned from having been in the same or similar situations has been absolutely cathartic and invaluable to me on the times when I had to come here to talk about those things.

That said, it's time for me to go, for reasons, and I'm going to leave on the above positive note with a public request to Ganymede to please ban me.

@ganymede said in Organix banned:

@tinuviel said in Organix banned:

As a resident mentally ill person: Mental illness isn't a reason to be lenient.

I don't see it as a reason for leniency; I see it as a potential explanation for some behavior.

This guy has fallen back on that shit for half a decade that I'm aware of, at this point. Then, if you bat that excuse away, it's his meds. Then, it's his military service.

This guy is such a fucking jackass that my PC blew up at him ICly for sounding 'ESL' and he went completely batshit in Tells (until I turned those off) and Notes (until I put his whole account on ignore) about what a racist piece of shit I am OOCly bc somehow I supposedly knew magically that he's Latino and I was clearly exhibiting OOC bigotry toward him.

Sure, maybe, but not racist bigotry - intellectually elite bigotry at yet another idiot who can't write shitting up a fucking writing game.

@lotherio said in Thundergulch:

Its a server side error in writing to the backup somehow. If you are logged on already on the portal, you're still logged in but can't access DB things like chat or scenes. If you logout you won't be able to log back in. Its being looked into.

Oh, wow, somehow even though I read everything I missed that this is your game! I blame stress.
I'll have to peek in! I hope, outside this blip, it goes so well!

I did it! I made it through the wedding and reception and all the things!

My dress and shoes fit (not my new underwear but 2/3 ain't bad), my hair worked out (I will die on the banana clip hill plus I found a sun hat to match), my makeup worked out (I managed to not-goth and just look a little pale vs dead).

The estranged daughter and I have a lot of shit to work on, but a lot of information was traded and things discussed and there's definitely progress toward working out said shit that needs woring on. The mother/son dance went great, we danced together and sang 'Wonderwall' and we could hear other people singing with us and it turned into A Moment.

I even gave a toast speech completely off the cuff. I don't feel quite as weird about the in-laws anymore since so many of them made it a point to come introduce themselves and talk to me that there's a Godfather joke in there somewhere. Then we all danced to 'Low' and who can be all standoffish after that, really?

Then, everything at home was as wel left it. I couldn't really ask for a more perfect day.

Everybody who was like 'it'll be great, celebrate your son and his family and just ride the wave' when I bled into the 'RL Peeves' section - you were all right, and I couldn't be happier that you were.

I decided to play a bit of my game to relax since I'm epicly stressed, likely not the best of ideas but I can't really think of anything else and I'm sick of chasing my tail. I've been studiously avoiding running into other people, though, so I felt like that could work out well.

Enter unintended antagonistic RP aimed my way. Immediately I panic. Cue up delete. Cue up self-destruct. Realize I'm being fucking stupid and interact as my PC would.

End up getting unexpectedly hilarious RP that makes me glad I didn't just give in to whatever gremlins are eating my brain right now and the fallout of which has given me new options for RP when I've evicted said gremlins. (Saturday. They move Saturday, whether they like it or not.)

Thank you, MU* people, for being unpredictable and insane in just the right way at just the right times.

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

@eye8urcake Just to be clear, have you asked your son if he cares if you return fire, should they start something? I ask because I don't know if he'd get vicarious pleasure out of that.

I don't know, either, to be honest. I have not asked him, it's awkward to bring up. He's friendly enough with them that he goes on family trips and the like, and they have a very positive relationship despite my son being, generally speaking, as liberal as we are - I assume he just doesn't discuss these things with them.

I also know that if they do come at me in any way other than passive-aggressive that he knows there will be one of two outcomes - I either unload on them, or hubs and I just make a quiet exit.

Chances are, it'd be the former and not the latter, but one of the major things stressing me out is that I actually like his wife - we've worked hard to overcome a lot of awkwardness between us, I was there for her when she had some post-partum issues, and I really don't want to be the one who shits on her special day. I know my temperament, and I know my recent stress-level, and I know I'm building it up more in my head than I ought to because of that.

Likely, it will be a nice, pleasant day made only mildly weird by me having to bring a crippled chicken in his cat-carrier house and me and my estranged daughter pretending to be nice to each other. BUT I WORRY SO MUCH.

ETA Also, you guys are such a weirdly good support system to have for things like that, that I feel are weird things 'normal' people won't get. You have a way of breaking things down that brings me up for air from deep within anxiety spirals. Thank you all for that.

My son's wedding is Saturday, at 4pm, outdoors in the middle of the northeastern Nevadan high desert during what's apparently going to be the next heat bubble mess. I've been stressing out a lot over this, for various reasons, and while I'm absolutely dreading it I'm also looking forward to it hoping after it finally ends, I'll feel like I have a modicum of my sanity back. That's the tl;dr.

***Serious powerleveling and unraveling. Do not pass GO if you don't like whining.***

I'm not a praying woman, and I don't believe in gods but I really do hope that I make it through this without embarrassing my son, getting insulted by my daughter, and with some tenuous grasp on my quickly eroding sanity.

ETA: Fucking Gs.

@de-villefort said in Thundergulch:

@citation said in Thundergulch:

Women aren't relegated to traditional women's roles. They can be any position.

Well, there goes my interest in the game...

***Terrible truths below...***

click to show

I kid! I kid! Westerns don't really show women of the period properly.
If you read history books a lot of towns were run by women.
From the whore houses to the banks, women ruled the west.
Men weren't trusted with money.
It was considered uncouth and desperate for a man to take a loan from another man but not to take out a loan from a woman.

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

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

Do they not know how hard it is for a woman to get taken seriously by a doctor?

I wonder if that's why I don't bother going to the doctor.

While hardly a bastion of 'elite' roleplay, the 'Legends of the Jedi' MUD has a role-playing council elected by the players and while that's not without its issues and controversies, I think there's actually a solid level of trust between the playerbase and administration because of its existence.

A lot of the issues presented in this thread still apply to various degrees, of course, because I think those issues will always apply in the situations that 'heat of the moment' will apply to but there seems to be a certain stability thanks to the whole 'committee' thing versus 'GodKingAtreides just doesn't like me' flareups and meltdowns.

This group is who you appeal to when you think you were permed unfairly or mistakenly, they're who oversee 'spyapp' situations (the process of which is intended and actually seems effective at heading off the inevitable screeching when orgs are infiltrated and backstabbed or robbed by recording intentions and plans prior to the actual fuckery), they make sure PCs that are jailed or otherwise incapacitated from the grid actually receive roleplay supporting, furthering and resolving these situations, etc. They also offer support and guidance to new players who may flail with lore, mechanics, and anything typically relegated to 'newbie helpers', though they have the typical game-wide NEWBIE/Q&A channel as well the council to serve as a resource for those who need more in-depth help for various reasons.

It's not perfect - nothing is, and nothing every will be, but it's a unique aspect of the way this particular game approaches player-staff relations that I personally think improves the environment. Yes, 'governing by committee' is not going to be the fastest or, likely, most efficient approach, but in this case, it seems to have achieved a balance of speed and efficacy that works for its base.

ETA: English is fucking hard for me today and I apologize for the garbage disposal grade grammar.