@sunny said in Code systems that make it easier to get on with the business of roleplaying:
@auspice Yeah, can do the same on both Arx and M1963, too. Choose the colors and so on. It is one of my favorite new options people make available.
OH OH OH OH OH OH OH.
EMIT LABEL IS THE BEST THING EVER.
It puts [name] at the beginning of an emit for who did it.
The colors thing on Arx for your chars name and for quotes basically changed my entire life for the better.
@kanye-qwest said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
@apos ehhh i played a mildly acerbic - mildly - person and had people treat me like a heinous bitch IRL because of it. I didn't talk to people OOC much, because I don't get like to get down like that. Experiences will vary, and if you are playing a terrible male character I think you get away with a lot more than if you are playing a 'terrible' female character.
Quoted for truth. So much painful truth.
@three-eyed-crow said in Reasons why you quit a game...:
@ixokai
I volunteer IRL, too (and I've done organizational stuff for book clubs/poker games/etc), and I have wildly different feelings/expectations/personal fulfillment about that experience and the people I do it with than I do about my IRL job and co-workers. I am one of those people who it grates whenever the term 'professional' is equated with hobby work. I get that it's inferring certain types of behavior (responsibility, commitment, etc) that I do think MU staff should have, but I get the knee-jerk reaction because I also have it.This has been a tangent. Back to your regularly scheduled thread, and such.
Yes to this. Upvoting was not enough. I do volunteer work as well and that work has me interacting with colleagues sometimes. My professional career is one with a very high level of emotional 'work' attached and it takes effort and dedication to 'turn it off' at any point in the day in order to achieve any kind of balance or play any of the other roles that I am expected to play in life. I like working on games and playing on games, but I won't ever give the amount of myself to a game/hobby that I do to work, it would be unhealthy as well as impossible. The unstated message some send that if you don't have X amount of time and energy playing or working on a MU* is not for you annoy me too. Its possible to enjoy MU* even as our life stages and responsibilities change so long as we find the right place and the right people. Fun fact: I play on Arx even though my logins are unreliable and even though it is super fast paced. I wanted to do it and found a way(s) to do it and its awesome!
@kanye-qwest said in Reasons why you quit a game...:
@gingerlily Even I struggle with just saying "No" and not explaining. And I am among the most confrontational and blunt women I know of.
Last week I was emailing back and forth about a lengthy meeting that was scheduled outside my work hours and trying to establish boundaries because cutting my caseload this year was a deliberate choice made for my health and my family. It doesn't work if we cut my caseload and work hours and then have me doing more paperwork, placement meets, and prep. I had all of these long paragraphs that I edited, trimmed, changed, tried again, and finally just said. "That does not work for me" (At first it had, 'I'm sorry' at the end but I deleted that.) Just hitting 'send' had me physically cringing...but it did the job. SO hard though, it boggles me.
Yeah, it totally works as a useful tool without all the structure and language that I think creates too much parallel between designing/running a game for fun and paid professional work.
I've also liked both in work and online the "No is a complete sentence" strategy. I think for many women it can be very challenging to try: just flat out "No." without explanation or softening. I feel really weird whenever I try employing it but at least I'm practicing.
@kanye-qwest said in Reasons why you quit a game...:
This has been very helpful to me, for Arx in particular.
http://thagomizer.com/blog/2017/09/29/we-don-t-do-that-here.html
I like that one. In general I am a bit exhausted when people create these parallels between those staffing a game and those doing paid work. This was more 'here is an easy thing from our professional lives that we can also use in games'
@apos said in Reasons why you quit a game...:
Now one important thing for staff. You'll hear through the grapevine about people quitting for wildly hypocritical reasons, absurd reasons, reasons based off of things factually untrue. I never think it's worth it to argue your point of view to anyone that's left for any reason. Never chase people. You can think about their concerns, work to address ones you thought were valid underneath the vitriol or hyperbole, and dismiss the ones that are unreasonable.
I never chase people, though I do try hard to look at it from their perspective, and more often than not it can still be thrown out.
This is the motto that made you my guru of....something or other. Participating in mu*s while still having a demanding reality.
@apos said in MU Things I Love:
@Thenomain Doesn't happen as much on games with coded money and any feeling of resource scarcity. It's a symptom of money feeling meaningless, and the largest reason for that is because it's not coded so no character feels the need to RP not having access to it when they need it. I think not having coded money is analogous to not having any way of showing someone taking damage. In full consent games without systems, sure people will pose getting hurt. How hurt are they? Shrug, there's a lot of dumb ways to track it, but the equivalent of saying, 'well okay since there's bad systems for tracking damage, we should handwave it and go without' creates way, way more problems than people think.
Like the time where my char's husband informed her that due to Reasons, we'd have to be tightening our belts and cutting down on expenses almost entirely and OOC I was all "So is this just rp flavor or do I really have to stop buying things?" and he was all "No its the second one, stop buying things." and its VERY SAD. But I will definitely rp not having access to it because I DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO IT 
@sunny said in RL things I love:
@gingerlily said in RL things I love:
@sunny said in RL things I love:
I am officially down 5 pants sizes from when I started working this job a year and a half ago (and by officially, I mean I am not having to wiggle to zip the pants up). Between activity levels, far less stress, and healthier eating (both in terms of what I eat, and also how I eat it)...I've just steadily been getting better. Is pretty cool.
Teach me your magic plx.
Cut back on soda and junk. Eat less more often, and especially breakfast. Get enough sleep. Reduce stress levels. I also went from a sedentary job to a fairly physically active one. Mostly I think it was the more sleep and the less stress, mostly.
Wait eat breakfast especially or especially eat less at breakfast?
Reduce stress levels..hahah!
@sunny said in RL things I love:
I am officially down 5 pants sizes from when I started working this job a year and a half ago (and by officially, I mean I am not having to wiggle to zip the pants up). Between activity levels, far less stress, and healthier eating (both in terms of what I eat, and also how I eat it)...I've just steadily been getting better. Is pretty cool.
Teach me your magic plx.
@auspice No. The problem is that they receive major kickbacks from the pharmaceutical company to get people to /try/ them in the first place.
Last psych I went to had me changing medicine every three months for my bi-polar, but I was like just give me fucking Lithium, that shit works for me (and is also how I got my forum moniker) but to this date, he won't put me on it.
This is always fun for looking up doctors: https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/
That's the problem with so many of those. A lot of the 'new miracle drugs' for fibro / chronic pain have the same issues. That they cause suicidal thoughts, etc... it's why I won't go near them.
I hate when doctors mislead you like that.
Are these the Black Box warnings? Many many medications that help depression, anxiety, chronic pain, etc have them, because there can be an escalated risk of suicide especially during the time it takes for the medication to start truly doing it's job. Everyone has to make their own calls with their doctors, but the warning alone is pretty common...it's just a message to doctors that these medications need to be used with caution and with close monitoring at the beginning.
Man I really want to know what the new miracle sleep drug @wizz was recommended was though. I alternate between a couple of things but they are meh and not new or miraculous.
@auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
The migraines had ebbed off. Drugs were managing.
But oh god I have a killer one today.
Love and sympathy. I had gone 9 days with no migraine it was a personal record! So cool. Then work exploded and I got a nassssty one on Tuesday. Life is cruel.
@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
@gingerlily Give me your hamstrings! I'll give you uhm, a chocolate chip cookie.
Give me your brain and we have a deal. I want to keep my own thoughts and stuff, I just want a brain that isn't constantly misfiring chemicals and giving me headaches. You can have that, and also be able to touch your toes AND get into lotus position with no effort!
@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
@ganymede The physical therapist said I was lucky to have been wearing a belt and dropping the barbell immediately, since the pain itself was caused by a spasm as my muscles all seized up trying to protect my lower back from ... stuff.
The therapist himself was this super limber Asian dude who didn't bother smirking when he concluded that the underlying issue was 'high pain tolerance and strength combined with almost no flexibility whatsoever' once he had me trying to bend a few different ways.
Apparently I am missing 20 degrees in my hamstring flexibility alone. Whee.
... Back to work then.
Man I am super flexible, hypermobile even which is flexibility that is potentially dangerous and causes many pain issues. I am also weak as a baby bird, so we are like opposite people.
@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
@ganymede The physical therapist said I was lucky to have been wearing a belt and dropping the barbell immediately, since the pain itself was caused by a spasm as my muscles all seized up trying to protect my lower back from ... stuff.
The therapist himself was this super limber Asian dude who didn't bother smirking when he concluded that the underlying issue was 'high pain tolerance and strength combined with almost no flexibility whatsoever' once he had me trying to bend a few different ways.
Apparently I am missing 20 degrees in my hamstring flexibility alone. Whee.
... Back to work then.
@meg said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
I am going through this weird period of depression and anxiety where I find it really difficult to drag myself into work, compounded by daily headaches and often, migraines. All of my energy seems to be like, sweating out of me, and I can practically see it leaving my body but I can't stop it.
It doesn't help that my job sucks and my house is a mess and just, bleh. I feel like there has to be some way to get my life together, but man, having the energy to do that seems impossible and then I feel worse.
This is basically also my life, though it has improved. Chronic Pain does /such/ a number on so many aspects of life, that's probably where the link to depression/anxiety in Chronic Pain patients comes from. I mean it could also be a chemical imbalance, but whatever your ordinary mental state, feeling anything but misery when constantly in agony is not easy work.
So this is me expressing solidarity, but also the notion that it /can/ improve even if it is very, very slow and sometimes two steps forward and three back. Be kind to yourself. Read the book "Unfuck your Habitat" by Rachel Hoffman, it helped me work on small plans for housekeeping that did not overtax me physically and lead to pain, but also helped me let go of a lot of the guilt that comes with being behind on stuff because you are in too much pain to get it done. Do the cheesy thing I am doing to cope with some work misery this year, and make one of those lists of three good things that happened each day even if you have to force it and some of them are "One co-worker smiled at me. No one threw blocks at my head (this one may not apply so much to your job but who can say).
Not to claim I am perfect or even good at any of this, today I am having a stress meltdown related to work and a horrid migraine to go with it...but not every day is as shitty as today and that is what keeps me keepin on.
@ganymede said in Make MSB great again!:
@gingerlily said in Make MSB great again!:
The 'MSB effect' is on PEOPLE not games. It is damaging because not all game runners are intensely resilient and sometimes when a person is called useless and pointless or jokes are made about whether they are seeing a shrink, they are hurt, insulted, and no longer interested in running a game or dealing with anything MU* related ever again...or for a few months at least. If people posting on MSB were slightly less vitriolic it would be better for everyone.
I'm going to pick at this for a second.
If people were slightly less vitriolic in general, life would be better for everyone. If we all carefully picked our words, or kept our messages somewhere between Sunny's succinctness and Thenomain's grumpiness, the messages would be clear, cogent, and concise. But we all know this is not going to happen overnight.
There was a time when this place was different, at its inception. It was so full of good feelings and felicity that HelloRaptor felt alienated, old, and useless (although, to be fair, he is at least two of these three things, no matter what). But, the good old hate is on the rebound again, for whatever reason.
Ever wonder why?
Frankly, I think it's because we've stopped caring: not about each other, but about what and how we say things. Or, at least, we aren't taking the time to consider this before hitting that submit button. Maybe if we did that, this place would change slightly.
And then, maybe we keep on taking more and more time to consider what we're saying, how we're saying it, and if we can say it better. And then, maybe this place would change some more.
But you can't legislate that any more than you can legislate Bill & Ted's Prime Directive.
What we can do is just consider it.
I was not suggesting that it could be legislated, I thought I mentioned somewhere that it was a culture issue, not a moderation issue. I did not join MSB from its onset, by the time I was here there was a lot of pretty gross behavior going on already. There were a few discussions that were interesting and where people were conducting themselves like adults, and I did enjoy some of those. Mostly I have enjoyed not the forums themselves but meeting and talking one on one through chat with some really fabulous people who I would not have come across otherwise.
I can't speak to the 'we' who have stopped caring. I've never participated in the nastiness. It doesn't jive with who I am nor who I want to be, and the appeal of being an asshole to someone through the anonymity of the internet was fun when the internet was new, but by the end of college a good 20 years ago less so.
So I've never wondered why hate was on the rebound again because I never saw MSB at a time when it wasn't alive and well. I assumed it was just the nature of the place from the get go.
I've seen the same people talk on threads like these about how all the mean needs to stop who on other threads enjoyed being as mean as possible. So I don't really know what's going on in people's heads. What I do know is that its actually /extremely easy/ to not be shitty to other people. It's not a major challenge. It takes almost no effort. So yeah I mean people can talk about it and consider it. Or they could just grow up and decide to do it. It really is exactly that simple. The rules that applied to us as preschoolers still work, and we have advanced social emotional and executive functioning skills...if they can manage to use kind words and think about other people's feelings, pretty sure we can to. All one has to do is bother.
@wizz said in Make MSB great again!:
@wtfe said in Make MSB great again!:
There was maybe once a small window in which a site could have been built that was WORA for adults. That ship has long since sailed
If that genuinely turns out to be the consensus and the majority here feels like they are not obligated to ever change and grow up...LOL, good luck with that. It's been a trip MSB, but I'm too old for this shit.
We are ALL too old for this shit. I mean maybe a few college kids stumbled this way I don't know everyone's lives. But I would wager that most of us are wayyyy to old to behave the way we do here. I'm embarrassed for all of us, including myself.
@thenomain said in Make MSB great again!:
Except that you can’t rely on a community to change just because. It can happen, and it’s beautiful when it does, but without someone with a whistle sitting in the high chair by the pool, it’s just Lord of the Flies.
c.f. Right Here, Right Now.
PIGGY HAS THE CONCH
But no, you're right. I don't actually expect anything to change.
@ganymede said in Make MSB great again!:
@arkandel said in Make MSB great again!:
The 'MSB effect' in regards to damaging/killing games has come up before, and I hate it. The very idea that this forum is important 'because it can bring down a MUSH', whether right or wrong, is abominable. It's not what the place is about, or for. If our ability to damage games was the measure of its success I'd be looking to pass it on to someone else today since that's not something I want to invest any time into.
There is no "MSB Effect." Any claim thereof is simply untrue.
There are countless examples of games that have persisted despite the best efforts of MSB, WORA, or SWOFA to take them down. To suggest otherwise, in my opinion, is erroneous at best and flat-out false at worst.
This place is the only place I'm aware of that serves as a media outlet. People promote, complain, and defame in equal measure. While it would be nice if people stick to known facts and honest opinions, that as a policy cannot be reasonably enforced without censorship.
This place is fine. Its members may not be, but this place is fine.
You know, except for the changes we're recommending here.
The 'MSB effect' is not an effect on games. As you have stated and as is true, plenty of games keep going strong despite not being popular on MSB. The 'MSB effect' is on PEOPLE not games. It is damaging because not all game runners are intensely resilient and sometimes when a person is called useless and pointless or jokes are made about whether they are seeing a shrink, they are hurt, insulted, and no longer interested in running a game or dealing with anything MU* related ever again...or for a few months at least. If people posting on MSB were slightly less vitriolic it would be better for everyone. This isn't @Arkandel's job to enforce, its on 'the community'. But pretending that some of this doesn't effect games negatively is just pretending.