Best posts made by Faceless

My spouse enjoys scrapbooking and planning? Plannering? She likes keeping an organized planner. I mean, this thing is laden not only with the day's schedules weeks(or more) in advance, but there are stickers here and there that are relevant to what's written, notes, this and that. Everything under the sun. Harry Potter stickers, kid with a doctor stickers, grapefruit stickers, this sticker, that sticker, a sticker for every occasion!

A few short months ago she came to me and told me that she had something she was really excited about, something she was interested in doing. Cool!

Faceless: "Well, what is it?"
Mrs. Faceless: "You can't laugh..."

That's pretty much the way to make certain that I'm going to laugh.

F: "Okay."
M: "So I put in an application to do PR for an online retail shop and I'd advertise for them and stuff through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media."
F: "Okay. And how much do they intend to compensate you for your time?"
M: "Well..."
F: "Well?"
M: "They would pay me in stickers."

Aaaaand there's where I lost it. I haven't laughed that hard, that long, or with that much vigor in years. Nor have I since. I couldn't breathe. At one point I sincerely thought I was going to lose consciousness. My laughter wasn't because of her choices or her interests. It was because my wife, in pursuit of something she enjoys, was willing to essentially be compensated with peanuts. To each their own. In her defense, one month she spent something like $75 on stickers. Stickers.

Flash forward to this evening. My wife comes to me at my desk while I'm trying to RP. I pause my music, I take off my headphones, I provide her with my undivided attention.

M: "So I want to show you something, but you can't laugh."
F: "...oh god, not this again...I can't do this again", as I'm beginning to crack up even thinking about the last time.
M: "No, really. It's something that I ordered for myself, for my birthday."
F: "Your birthday was quite a few months ago."
M: "I was on a waiting list."
F: "Okay. You can not get mad at me if I laugh."
M: "Okay!"

She shows me her phone. It's a picture of her. No, an artwork of her. She had commissioned someone to take a picture that she had, of herself, and turn it into an artwork. I just stared at it for a moment, studying it, noting how much it looked like her. How great it looked. How I wanted two more just like it.

M: "You aren't laughing... do you like it?"
F: "Why would I laugh? It's beautiful! I want a copy, for my desk, in a frame."
M: "Really?"
F: "Yes!"

She couldn't believe I loved it. She thought I'd think it was silly.
I couldn't believe she'd even question it. She's the strongest, smartest, most wonderful person that I know.
She gave me my son. I know I talk about my family a lot, with folks in private or even casual mentions here. It's because I'm proud of what I have.

Took the time to create an item; naming, describing, coloring(oh man, I spent some time getting the colors just right) for the item. It was intended as a birthday gift for another PC.

The thing that I love is just how genuinely appreciative not only the character, but also the player, seemed to feel about it and the time I invested in it. All in all it only took me maybe an hour to get it to my liking, but their reaction felt like I'd spent considerably more time on it or given them a real world gift or something. It was really great of them and it's reactions like that which cause me to keep making things for other characters.

George Winston is the lone survivor. He is Mrs. Faceless's remaining companion as George's sister moved on a couple years ago. He's become an old man and is beginning to let himself go. He's dropping weight and he's just not as spry as he once was. He's still a dapper gentleman of leisure, however. He's also exceptionally gentle with my very hands-on toddler. Two years and a couple months without a single incident! Go George!

When he moves on, then I will finally have a dog once more. I've refrained from taking on a dog because I know that Mrs. Faceless's cats wouldn't handle it well and I'm all about the harmony of my household, so no pooch for me. @Darinelle has been telling me the breed to get and I think @Kanye-Qwest's images of Braum that I've shown to Mrs. Faceless, may have sealed the deal.

@Arkandel said in MU Things I Love:

And they had the nerve to ask me if they could try it! Motherfuckers, once you brought it up I wouldn't have it any other way.

I salute you. It's always great to reward players who...use their head.

Update.

Mrs. Faceless's former employer had their Christmas party on Friday night.

One employee spent quite a bit of their time walking around with their phone doing that new-fangled FaceTime thingymabob with Mrs. Faceless, so everyone could see her.

At one point there was a slide show. One of those: This Year In the Company! sort of things.

Mrs. Faceless was the focus of 20% of the slides. 4/20 slides. Dedicated to her.

She was informed that it was done intentionally because the group who arranged the slides knew that people missed her and that it would make certain people uncomfortable.

Mrs. Faceless laughed long and hard. I think this was a little bit of closure that she was in need of, which is good.

I felt the need to share these two short stories because these little acts of passive aggressiveness by her former colleagues are pretty damn great.

Received a ton of In Character information that had been largely withheld from my character, whether intentionally or accidentally is irrelevant. A series of clues scattered within the game world. Virtual dots cast into the wind and left to be found. Though as I began piecing those dots together, the puzzle started to make more sense. A lot more sense.

The MU Thing I Love? When you find yourself going to bed later and later because your mind dwells on those clues for so long. Then when you go to bed, you find yourself laying there filling the silence with thinking about your imaginary fun-times and those clues. Connecting dots to dots to dots with the little information that you already had available to yourself and you find it gives you a little wiggle of goddamn fun-terror at some of your theories.

I haven't felt this immersed in a game for a long time and it feels good. Gotta make sure I give the player who brought me into the fold a vote and another thank you. Are internet reach-around's an acceptable form of MU payment?

My 2 y/o has discovered a pair of my wife's thigh high socks. He's pulled each one on and is now proudly strutting around the house in these pink and grey striped things, while enthusiastically talking on his toy phone.

He's made this tired morning much better.

When you're in a scene, things start to get tense, and some pretty heavy violence is on the horizon.

First, the players involved stick to IC communication. There's no OOC "OMG wut r u dueing?!?!', people kept it In Character and dealt with the mounting issue and tension through in character means. Gold star.

Second, those that did have things to say out of character kept it confined to pages with myself and generally kept the atmosphere light and fun. Through pages myself and a fraction of the people present, seemed to understand that the IC tensions were not in any form an out of character tension. Jokes were exchanged and chuckles were had. "Sorry! Sorry! Kill me quickly!"

Third, it didn't result in everyone immediately trying to jump to combat as the first response. Even if someone seems on the edge of going HAM, there's always that potential of talking sense into them! It resulted in dialogue and an apparent misunderstanding overcome. I always appreciate people who can deescalate a tense IC situation, through IC means. I salute you half dozen or so people.

Fourth, even after the scene concluded the in character matters weren't really discussed. Everyone kept the mood light and there was unspoken understanding(at least I think) that the IC actions were just that and should remain there. So kudos to everyone for being Big Kids.

I've kept quiet about it because I'm not often one to throw my real world issues off on the shoulders of others. This is by no means any sort of 'call for help' or the like. I help myself. We help ourselves. This is just my venting so that I don't end up following through with a wish to pay a visit to someone's home.

My wife, as many have likely gathered, is the cheddar-maker in our household. I'm the stay-at-home parent. Quite a few have likely also heard me talk about how much she loves her job, because she really, really does.

She was fired about a week and a half ago. Long story short: her boss, who had filled her head with all this talk of her becoming the Director(which essentially functions as the Vice President of that respective department)(i.e., her boss's current position) realized that the timetable that she presented for the promotions to be passed around, was flawed. She realized, in short, that she'd probably not be promoted for a long, long time. Largely because she just wasn't very good at her job. In fact Mrs. Faceless was more likely to leap frog or outright replace her.

Since Bad Boss began her job about two years ago, there has been two controversial firings within her department, that were her doing. At one point she informed my wife that "this is what she does; she treats someone she doesn't like shit until they quit or they give her a good reason to fire them". This also had the side effect of her doing it so that she could get people from her previous employer to come over and join her team at her current employer(i.e., my wife's place of employment).

So about a month ago there was some mistakes in processes that were made. My wife was given the blame. Was it her fault? No. It was one of the people under her that screwed up, but as is expected the fire burnt up the rope. When my wife was asked why what happened, happened, she was honest: I was told to do it by my immediate management. This prompted Bad Boss to initiate termination protocols. She made my wife's life hell for a couple weeks, up to and including pulling her into a private meeting to inform her sweetly that she was "pretentious" and "walk around here like you're Mrs. Faceless Fucking McFacelessface". It became a situation where Mrs. Faceless was sent into walking on egg shells because Bad Boss had become overly critical of everything. She stayed over 15 minutes one night to ensure every last shred of her duties were completed, so that she could get a fresh start on a new project the next day. Something which she's done periodically for nearly 3 years. Bad Boss took exception to this Go-Getter attitude suddenly and made it a point to chastise her diligence.

So she ended up getting fired for "insubordination". In what way or how? I've no damn idea, mostly because I know it didn't happen. I do know that I had a couple ideas that involved limb breaking, until I was reminded that my pictures had been all over her desk. An oversight. Chick needs to keep me off her grid, duh.

NOW...

She had two interviews and one job offer within an hour of losing her job. When I say my wife is the hardest working person that I personally know? It's not an embellishment or some weird flattery that she'll never see. I have zero doubts that she'll find another place to work, even if she has to take a bit of a pay hit. What angers me is the fact she lost her job or career that I know she loved, because her immediate supervisor felt threatened in their own position because they recognized that they're bad at their job. When she was confronted with the allegations, she denied them of course.

She's had a number of interviews since the separation from her previous employer. Today? Today I'm the most hopeful. I like money. It makes my junk wiggle. The position she's interviewing for today would ultimately result in a $20k increase over what she was making previously. I kind of want her to get and take this, because if so? It'll make all the headache and frustration she's felt since being fired from a place that she loved, seem worth it. For her sake, I hope she gets it because I think it'll make her appreciate the opportunity for something new.

Alternatively, she was just offered another job that while it would actually involve a slight pay cut over her previous employment; it would be with a company that has apparently won some award for being the best employer in the city the past six years or something and have a lot more bonus opportunities over what she had available previously so it would likely even out or put her slightly above her past earnings.

This is only a matter of concern to me because I know she'll ask my advice when or if she gets offered both positions. One seems a safer bet and would likely result in her having a happier experience. The other one... more money, but an uncertain environment. So I'm sort of adrift on which direction to advise her, when she comes asking.

So, in short, fuck you Bad Boss. You literally got rid of someone who was doing the duties of four people. Your department was so under budget because she was doing the work of four people in total, at the pay of one and a half. She's heard from literally a couple dozen of her former coworkers or subordinates how much chaos, confusion, and general lack of progress there's been since her firing. People now placed in jobs that they weren't prepared for, unable to answer questions or just get the job done in general. You tried to "knock her down a peg", but it didn't work. Chick's Obi-Wan, yo. She'll just come back stronger than you could possibly imagine. You've played yourself. It's my genuine hope that someone breaks your goddamn legs, you lying fuck.

/venting

We've discovered that my youngest loves him some Christmas music. Not really my cuppa, but hey I'll enjoy it for him. It's once a year, it's not like he'll want to listen to it daily for the next nine months... right?

He loves to dance around to it(which for his age basically just means a lot of swaying and booty-dropping). The latest thing though is that he'll dash up alongside, take hold of your hand, and just rock side to side with you while humming along to the music.

And that shit leaves my cold, dying heart like...

For the second review in a row my spouse has received a 10% raise and has been advised that due to the growth in business her company's been experiencing over the past couple of years, she can likely expect a promotion within the year. She's among the hardest working people I've ever known, she deserves it without a shred of doubt.

I may also find it kind of hot to call her 'Director' from time to time.

Just a little moment of swelling pride I feel on her behalf.

@ganymede said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

Nothing much. Bug-squishing. But there's also the military politics involved as well, if you wanted to head into that angle.

That's where my mind was at on the matter. The large scale combat would be served well with the system, I think. Just a bunch of pve focused splatting.

Would you like to know more? (I couldn't help myself)

@sg said in RL things I love:

I'd argue coworkers should know what their coworkers make, especially in fields where pay is negotiated.

I have to agree. When I was much, much younger I moved from one State to another. I transferred within the company I worked. I can't recall the exact amounts so they're just examples...

When I transferred my pay was set at $16.50 an hour. Moving from a rural area to metropolitan, the pay wasn't really enough for anyone with any sort of bills to get on solo. Rent alone to be near to work was something like 45-50% of my income. Whatever, I've been in worse positions.

After being there for about 8 months or so, the conversation of pay came up between myself and coworkers. Mostly because one person mentioned how much they made, more of a slip than anything. Then when I expressed some measure of: Excuse me, wtf?, others began volunteering how much they made. Many of them were making upward of $25-28 on the hour. Doing the exact same job, same amount of time on a weekly basis, same everything.

Well, maybe they worked their way up to that point? I can certainly understand that and I'm perfectly fine with putting in time and effort to work toward raises. That's fair. That's reasonable. That's logical.

But that wasn't the case. Many of them had started out at a couple $$ shy of where they were at that time. They had got raises to reach that point, but not by much. Every one of them to the last was astonished how much I was being paid because at that rate I was making substantially lower than any of them when they had first started out - and by that point I had been with the company for a couple years, so I wasn't some new hire or something. The general consensus was that the only difference between any of us? Was that I wasn't a local. I was from out of town.

The next day following that little conversation I went right to HR and we had it out. They tried to intimidate me by informing me that "discussing pay among coworkers is a cause for termination". Fuck you. Don't try to play me like that because I will stab your ass with a stapler, kidnap your dog, and send ransom photos from Tijuana with @Royal. In the end they bent because I think they realized that I could cause a lot more problems for them legally. They gave me a bump of a few dollars and tried to imply that it must have been a clerical error. After that everything was peachy until I transferred out again a bit later.

So yes, I absolutely do believe you should know what your coworkers make. Even if it's what @Tinuviel said and was more ballpark. "Everyone makes $23-26 on the hour" or something. Otherwise it leaves far too much space for corporate douchebags to fuck over someone trying to put in their time and make a living simply because they aren't acclimated to the local norms.

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

The issue is that the new framework does not create a space where someone can say "This game is bad, it just is, I'm not being constructive, you can't fix it, you shouldn't even consider playing there, here's why, I repeat it's really terrible, plz no just no" and have that visible to the general public.

@faceless said in Regarding administration on MSB:

The Hog Pit is precisely where negative reviews can (and often do) go. Take off the opt-in feature. The responsibility for not clicking content with clear warnings can be on the user's end. "But I don't want to see bad things said about me/friends/people/etc!!", "So don't click it. You are presumably an adult with free will."

ETA: An opportunity to use Jeff Goldblum.

Less anger and more...a mixture of feels.

I'm thankful. My brother in law(the one I like more than the other) was involved in a traffic accident today. He had the right of way and was making a turn on a local highway at about 50-60mph. He was hit. Per one of the officers that acted as a first responder, he was "lucky to be alive". He was given a flight to the hospital for eval. He has a girlfriend and a son about the same age as our own - which is his nephew.

I'm sad. The other driver did not live. Upon running the red light he encountered a utility truck that didn't want to budge enough. He was pronounced dead on the scene. I'm sad because this person more than likely left behind people who cared about them. Which ties into why I'm also angry. This individual, because they more than likely wanted to be in a rush to get wherever, died because they couldn't take 45 seconds to just...chill. I'm angry because I know my brother in law...who does not know that the other driver didn't make it. In truth he didn't even know what happened. He "just woke up in the hospital" per his explanation. So I'm angry because I know him, I know how he'll react. Knowing that, despite it being no fault of his own, he'll take the other driver's loss of life and carry it on his shoulders pisses me off.

I've encountered tense moments in real life, actual danger that could have resulted in severe bodily harm or death. Whether environmental or human. I'm generally resistant to feelings of sadness, paralyzing fear, or really too much concern beyond the task at hand. Prison riots and the like, having someone try to shank you with a sharpened rock, things of that nature...they tend to sort of turn off that switch in you. The one for empathy as well, sometimes.

It's coming as a peculiar feeling to me though when I think about if I had been in my brother in law's shoes. Or worse yet, the other driver's. If he had just slowed down and taken his time, he'd still be here. BiL wouldn't be in the hospital and would probably be at home. Moral of the story to you, dear reader(s): slow down. Carelessness is rarely forgiving. Very few matters in modern living demand you can't give yourself 45 seconds to stop and look around. Unless you're driving a bus that can't drop below 50mph without blowing up.

I just needed to get this off my chest. My SO's fretting a lot. Her brother's in the hospital. Most people would fret. She doesn't need my irritation with people to be added to her burdens. So, thanks for giving me a place to vent.

Previously:

Shattered Equinox: Terren
Masquerade: Chad, Ryse, Julian
Age of Alliances: Krirr
The Greatest Generation: Mason
Knights of the Old Republic: Pirge and others which skip memory
Serenity MUSH: There should be something here. Hell if I can remember the character's name though. Pilot who wore bunny slippers. Someday I'll remember.
The Reach: Alexander(some one-eyed werewolf), Gordon, Alfred, DeMarcus
Firan: Mayshar(? Very briefly sometime around 2003-2005?), Hakan, and some noble that shit himself in public before I started playing him?
Generations of Darkness: Markor, CC-0616
Eldritch: Mr. Bowman aka Jack Smith aka Ryan Jones
Fallcoast: Mason (Freeman), Dayne, Sledge (Richard)
That One BSG Game: Remi(2nd? Quite briefly)

Current:

Arx: Rymarr, Hadrian

Probably more, but I can't think of them. I'll probably add to the list as memory returns to me with time.

When you find a person or group who you can build with. When the creative energies are flowing and everyone's throwing out ideas, building together, and there's a general sense of excitement about a new project. It's a feeling that I think serves to motivate others to get more involved, really embrace a theme, and something to call their own.

It's one of the things I enjoy about MUing. Collaboration, especially when it's for no greater purpose than to make a world more immersive. Not for any one person's benefit, but a group or even a game as a whole.

***Stranger Things***

click to show

My past character on Fallcoast was named Dayne. He was, in short, a blast. Dude was a Changeling (Summer) and a Gilded Aspirant of the Sacred Band of the Golden Standard(read: he was suuuper full of himself and all about building a mythology around his own name), he was my first step into that splat, and altogether he was just a really, really enjoyable character.

He once killed a... those Hedge werewolf-thinga-ma-bobs... by German suplexing it. After bear-hugging it. So really it just looked like Dayne was slow-dancing with this thing for a couple rounds, before slamming it around until it decided to stop living.

Dayne hosted a wrestling match for a title belt... which I think the 'championship' was even named after himself. The belt(think like those 'professional' wrestling belts) had a pair of balls riveted to it.

He attended some huge party in the woods once and, I took pride in his reaction when a Winter courtier rolled something like 40 successes on some power activation that was supposed to scare the shit out of people - he literally grabbed the person next to him, threw them over his shoulder, and ran screaming into the woods - activating his own abilities along the way to make him run farther, faster. I took some self-pride in that because many people have trouble allowing their characters to show weakness. So Dayne just shrilly screaming as he fled into the night? I took some pride in that reaction.

Dayne was once caught in a motel room; covered in Hershey's chocolate syrup, fucking a watermelon with a picture of Barbara Eden(circa I Dream of Jeannie) stapled to it, a picture of himself stapled to his chest, a dead squirrel somewhere abouts(because he'd done copious amounts of cocaine with it), and that's just some of the crazy that Dayne was discovered doing or was a background feature in that particular scene.

He had a theme song(generously shown to me by another player). I once sent a @mail to a bunch of people, probably 30-something characters, because Dayne ICly had a picture of himself sent to each of them, thanking them for being his 'biggest fans', of himself in a bright red Speedo, with a rose + stem clutched between his teeth. None, or at least veeeery few, of these people were actually his "fans". He just assumed since they knew him, clearly they had to be his fans.

He got in a junkyard Jell-O pool fight with one of @Royal's characters that went hilariously as three superpowered Summer's just started flying leg dropping, punching, and headbutting one another for no other reason than to let a little anger out.

He was in effect an opportunity for me to play a character that was just over the top and larger than life, uncaring of what others thought because that was just Dayne. As a roleplayer, he was really well outside my usual comfort zone. My characters don't tend to be on that scale of extremes. Dayne wasn't fit for that. He was a cocaine addict and, really, probably had a lot more addictions than his sheet really indicated; all of which were just coping mechanisms to help him handle his greatest weakness: fear. He was an exploration of a personality and behavior, because I tend to play characters who take life a bit more seriously because they would. I feel like that only scratches the surface of Dayne, but I think it gives at least a decent enough example of why I really enjoyed playing him.