@L-B-Heuschkel said in RL Sads:
Trying to decide whether to cut off contact with the parental unit after decades of verbal abuse.
Would you allow them to say this to their grandchildren?
The decision is clear to me.
The love of a child to their parent does not include quietly accepting abuse of any kind as an adult.
I think the hobby is great for safely exploring various identities and sexual ties, for the reasons Admiral cited. My general experience has been welcoming, barring some setting-based prejudices, but players on the games I have played on have been generally accepting of non-cis identities.
I mean, I picked my name here very deliberately nearly 20 years ago.
Why do you pay to have this done? I've always bathed and cut my dogs' nails myself.
I'm guessing it's because her greyhound is a greyhound. They are the skittish type.
I have a cat. He gets IAMS food for indoor cats with hairball issues. I never give him any treats. I clean his litterbox out once a week. I took off his front claws. I'm not home or I'm taking care of the kids 14 hours a day, and then I am out or sleeping for the rest. I maybe spend 5 hours a week with him.
He crawls up when I'm RPing or watching Netflix/Hulu right next to me, and if I'm not paying attention he will lick my hand until I pet him. He knows I don't like him on the bed, so he never jumps on it.
He lets me hug him. He purrs when I let him up on my shoulder or tummy.
My cat loves me, despite the fact that others have the gall to say I treat him awful because I buy store-bought food, don't spend 4 hours a day with him, and don't clean out his box every day.
Like, fuck you.
Fuck you.
I got my cat from a shelter when he was a kitten and very sick. He loves me.
Animal snobs can fuck right off.
I got rid of Signior Montanto.
@tek said in Emotional bleed:
What are the ways you handle your bleed? What advice do you have for others who might not handle it as well?
I think much depends on how much bleed you can handle and continue to function. Some people are better at handling bleed than others. That tailors one's strategy a great deal.
Me, I feel I can handle a lot of emotional stress, so bleed isn't much of an issue for me. Also, being on stage regularly (either as an actor or singer) helps to manage bleed.
@Apos said in Emotional bleed:
I don't tend to play any character I'd fall in love with, if that makes sense.
I don't want to fall in love with my PCs, but I end up kind of wanting too because most of them engage in unmitigated violence regularly and who the heck doesn't find that attractive.
@rook said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Not that anyone gives a shit about me, but seriously, I am not the only person/American here and elsewhere that is beyond the puking stage with politics and the zealotry and idle attacks.
I'd love to ignore the shit out of politics, but I have neither the privilege nor the luxury to ignore it.
@wtfe said in Make MSB great again!:
The toxic part of this place is this place.
If you asked me to come to your business and tell you how it could be better and I told you to burn it to the ground and start over, I am pretty sure you would not listen to me, and would, in fact, probably stop listening to me.
You're not helping.
@Arkandel said in Accounting for gender imbalances:
I don't know (I have no way of knowing) how that would feel. How awkward, intimidated or comfortable someone might feel despite the best intentions from everyone involved to make them fit in and feel part of the group... I haven't had to deal with it.
You'll never know for sure if you don't hire a woman. Women aren't like robots: they all act and react differently. You can refer to my manual, but that won't help you lead a woman.
But some of you might have. What are the challenges? What has gone wrong assuming good intentions were in place? What mistakes were made despite those intentions? What can I do from my end to make things smoother?
I'll just start with some advice.
My firm has hired three female attorneys over the past year, unbalancing the gender composition of the firm's attorneys. The entire support staff is composed of women. Yet the men aren't nervous because they follow the above rules.
@ghost said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Waxing philosophical here, but how can we expect people to treat each other with respect and civility on these games if the general standard for many is to take the OOC drama from these games to a demilitarized zone where they can behave aggressively and abusively without it affecting their actual roleplay time?
The fact that there's a Hog Pit doesn't mean I cannot be respectful and civil in other arenas.
I don't think there is any reasonable policy that can prevent a person from allowing toxicity to affect them in other parts of their lives. To-wit: when I lashed out at Tempest, I was in the middle of a trial.
I don't believe that removing the Hog Pit will solve anything. It's not going to cure this place, or other games, of toxicity. Toxicity isn't just a matter of personal insults, dick jokes, and derailing .GIFs. There are people who engage in toxic behavior, yet couch it in what may be considered reasonable language. Niceties and politeness doesn't make some behaviors any more or less toxic.
@Ghost said in Accounting for gender imbalances:
I said the same thing everyone else did: choose the right people/good team.
I concur, but again write separately.
I think it's important to remember that "the right people" aren't necessarily the people with the "best credentials." The "right people" can often seem, on paper, to be the "wrong person," and yet turn out to be the "right person" based on what some coaches might call "intangibles" that aren't immediately apparent.
Take, for example, these two candidates for a small-to-medium firm (5-10 attorneys) general litigation firm:
Male, late-20s, runs his own small firm with criminal and civil experience based on his general practice, and has done so since he exited law school.
Woman, late-20s, works in the local prosecutor's office doing sexual felony prosecution.
On paper, the male candidate looks like the "best candidate": he has his own practice; he handles general litigation; and he is enough of a self-starter to continue a practice for a few years out of law school. But based on how we greased him in a case recently, we made the better choice.
The woman had better intangibles. Working in a completely different field means no fewer bad habits. Working in a local prosecutor's office means being used to taking orders from others. Substantial experience as a prosecutor means that she has absolutely no problem walking into a courtroom with little or no backup and winging her way through an evidentiary hearing. And I'd rather have a new associate bugging me with questions on the smallest things or about areas of the law she has no familiarity with than to pretend that she knows what she's doing because, hey, she used to run her own practice.
Yeah, she wiped the floor with that other guy. It wasn't even close. And I'm so fucking proud of her. (Because I brought her to the firm, I pushed for her hire, and I got it dammit because I can see talent, bitch.)
Look for the intangibles. Take a bit of a risk on paper. The rewards are enormous, and you better damn believe I have an ally in the office place.
I'm being conservative here. In the team's discussions, we will likely need an ambitious coder on board. Sure, we could take stuff from other games -- we have a codebase to work with already -- but I'd rather say "we're looking at the end of the year" rather than "we're looking at the end of spring," even though I know the team's working diligently and actively.
We plan to roll out with a complete, or close-to-complete product, with a well-dressed wiki and game. I plan to ask some others to help along the way because I know where their skill lies.
And we want to make sure that folks come on board early to play test, poke at the theme, and all of that.
In short, we're serious about this project, we're working hard on it, and we don't plan on half-assing it (according to our rather lofty standards).
@Derp said in The Art of Lawyering:
Totally stealing this for the next time I need nerd law.
True story.
Professor: As a former student, can you tell the prospective students what it is like to be lawyer?
Me: <looks over the crowd> I don't know if any of you play Dungeons & Dragons, but the practice of law is applied Dungeons & Dragons. Seriously. You have books and books which provides rules for a game that allows you, the player, to solve problems which mostly reside in people's imagination. Most of the time, though, you are arguing with other players about what the rules mean, and when those arguments may actually have a bearing on the game you bring them to the judge, or "game master," to resolve. And no matter what the game master says one of you will get pissed off and decide to take it up with someone else, and we call this the "appeals process." So if you are familiar with Dungeons & Dragons or any other role-playing game you are probably well-equipped to deal with the practice of law. If you have no interest rolling around with people who will argue incessantly about fantasy situations, the practice of law will probably irritate you.
Professor: <pause> Wow.
I was never invited back to speak to prospective students after that.
@arkandel said in Let's talk about TS.:
And it's this kind of thing I was hoping to discuss here - what are some good ways to approach this issue?
I would say, bluntly, communicate well. But you said that we couldn't fall back on this.
To parse it out a bit better:
1. Set boundaries: You have limits. Declare your limits.
2. Set clear boundaries: Declare them again. Be specific. Everything from "no anal sex" to "i really hate pregnancy sex."
3. Then set expectations: How often do you want TS? Is it a garnish or the main course when you come online? (Yes, double-entendre there, har har, GTFO.)
4. Then discuss what you like: Do you prefer the grinding, descriptive, purple-prose TS, or the light-hearted, fun-having TS that leads to injuries and escapades?
Outside of this triumvirate, there are my personal lines:
1. Never give out personal information.
2. Never talk about RL sex partners, past or current.
3. Never agree to chat, swap pics, or otherwise interact away from the MUSH of this forum.
Real world reminder and peeve:
Please stop calling COVID-19 "the Chinese virus."
It's not Chinese. It is no more Chinese than MAGA hats or iPhones. We don't call the 1918 Spanish Flu "the American flu" because the first reported case was from Kansas. We adopted a more neutral way of identifying these viruses long ago (with MERS being an exception, I guess, but people are going to hate on Muslims no matter what it seems).
But, Gany, what about the Zika and Ebola viruses?
The zika virus was first identified in 1947,and is alternately identified by virologists as ZIKV. Like the Spanish flu, the Asian flu, and the Hong Kong flu, this virus was identified back when the place of origin (or, in the case of the Spanish flu, no fucking good reason) was important to virologists. In the case of ZIKV, it was named after the Ziika forest in Uganda.
The Ebola virus is alternately identified as EBOV, and was originally thought to be a new strain of the Marburg virus in 1976. It was allegedly named after the Ebola river in the DRC. The Marburg virus was originally discovered in 1967 around the German city with the same name, but we don't call it "the German virus."
The difference is that few people identify as "Ebolan" or "Ziikan." The term "Chinese" refers to a visible minority in Western nations that have a history of being oppressed by the white majority. So, if you want to be an ally -- who doesn't? -- just call the virus "COVID-19" or "COVID". Because for a layperson the origin of a virus doesn't help in protecting against or treating it.
Upset of the Day: Learned that my boy is being bullied by the class mean girl because he has stress-related alopecia and is looking a little bare in the front.
Comfort of the Day: Apparently, the school already has the mean girl on their radar and is gathering a file on her to present to her parents.
Lesson of the Day: To his sister: "I know I tell you to mind your business. You should mind your business when someone is doing something that isn't hurting anyone else. But if that someone is doing something that hurts anyone else, you can and should step in. And if that someone is hurting your brother, that is your damn business and you can step in and do what you have to. People hurting your family is always your business. Am I clear?"
In my experience, complaints should never be anonymous to the person tasked with investigating such complaints.
On Victorian Reverie, I served as the player ombudsman and the third in a triumvirate of headstaff. The other headstaff didn't always agree on things, and I acted as the third vote to break ties. My duties otherwise only included investigating complaints. We didn't have many.
From that experience, I can tell you that player ombudsmen do not work the way you want them to. By the time a complaint is filed by someone with the wherewithal to raise it, the damage has already been done. Predators don't persist because they target people who are well-established or known to have the sort of courage to report problems. Problematic behavior has to be caught at an early stage.
In my other kinds of experiences, I've found that allowing your staff to play PCs allow them to get a feel for the player-base. I've seen staff pick out and remove problem players before they become too awful to extricate, but these were staff that I knew to be reasonable, responsible players too. Or staff was literally omni-present, and so involved with the game that it became impossible for predators to remain under the radar for long.
Here's a few suggestions for staff to keep the player-base happy, engaged, and feeling safe:
No staff should be playing PCs that obtain any sort of status or power on the game. If the game involves territory, staff PCs should not be able to gain control over territory; if the game involves titles, staff PCs should not be able to have anything but middling titles or offices. Only non-staff PCs should have the ability to gain positions of power that can affect a game's social environment.
Complaints about a PC's player should be sent to the head of that PC's sphere, if you have spheres, or directly to headstaff via @mail or e-mail. Staff should then open up a +request about the complaint on a +job system only visible to wizbits, or into a bucket only visible to wizbits. The matter should be investigated by a wizbit-staffer without direct authority to affect the PC at issue if possible, else by headstaff with control over the game.
Logs should not be required. In my experience, confronting the behavior is usually enough to elicit some explanation or confession from the accused, else a counter-complaint.
Action should not be predicated on a complaint. Staff should be keeping an eye out at all times for odd comments on channels or in pages.
No system will be perfect, but I think the modern practice of having minimal staff on a game is making it easier for problem players to fly under the radar.
PM me. I am willing to purchase a Fujitsu scanner for you. It is the least I can do.
@Arkandel said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:
Privacy is a right. It doesn't require justification, but taking it away does.
I disagree.
You have no right to privacy on a MUSH. You have no right to be on a MUSH. The only right to privacy on a MUSH that may exists is a code of conduct which staff informs the players that they shall adhere to. I therefore concur that, generally, staff can spy on RP.
That said, within the hobby I think there is a valid presumption that staff will not spy on RP unless there is good cause for it. Whether that is enshrined in rainbow letters is largely irrelevant. If players discover that staff is spying on RP willy-nilly they will likely report it to someone, and that report will make it to some place public. As a result of the breach of the social agreement, there is a substantially likelihood that a lot of people are going to be pissed off.
I think it is well-advised that staff should probably post some sort of policy regarding privacy, and make it clear that, if there are to be circumstances wherein staff will watch RP, such circumstances are evident and socially acceptable. For example, I think that staff are justified to spying on RP if they have reason to believe there is a violation of game policy.