Best posts made by GreenFlashlight

I am always going to feel isolated and separate from the rest of the world. I am always going to feel like a lesser kind of person, not by the reality I live but by the decree of people who have more power than I have. That's just how it is.

But sometimes, people will remind me that though I don't know how to reach out to them, let alone how to connect to them the way they seem to do so easily to each other, we have shared experiences that we can come together over and support each other through and try to lift one another out of. It's terrible that shared pain is what makes it happen, but something beautiful can come out of it, and for just a moment I can almost perceive the connections we all have but that I'm otherwise blind to; and that perception feels like being embraced by strangers who are trying their best to help me. It takes my breath away in the best possible way, and if it also does bad things to my blood pressure, that's fine. You gotta pay the cost to ride the rides.

I'm saying the MU thing I love is all of you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. You're sincerely better off for having missed it. I'm gonna take a little break now until I get my breath back, and watch cartoons about princesses who want to be friends even if it's dangerous to be.

@bear_necessities said in Covid-19 Gallows Humor:

@GreenFlashlight why fuck landlords?

I oppose the idea that anyone's income must go to someone who provides me something you will die without, something literally forming the foundation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I think it is outright criminal that there are more empty houses in America than there are homeless people (and this might be true worldwide as well; I forget), because it means that the body count of every person in this country who has ever died of exposure is less horrific to landlords than the idea of people not paying them for the privilege of not dying. Every person who dies homeless was murdered by the people who put profit over the sanctity of human life.

Less pressingly but just as infuriatingly, I do not believe landlords actually provide a good or service in return for the rent they are paid, because the costs of business are funded one hundred percent by the rent tenants pay, which means the only thing a landlord does to earn a check is come unclog your sink as part of you paying I'm guessing a thousand bucks a month, or maybe picks up a phone to call someone else to fix your problem and act as a middleman who for some reason deserves half your income in perpetuity.

What exactly is the alternative?

Guaranteed housing. Just give people houses. I know that's hard to imagine under capitalism, but seriously, the only thing stopping us from letting people live in houses is the fact that we want our fellows to die if they don't make enough money to please our overlords. There is literally nothing in the world stopping us from giving every living human the relative comfort and dignity of a home except for the murderous greed that tells us our landlords should have the power of life and death over us unless we tithe to their coffers.

You ask what the alternative is to letting millions of people die of exposure every year, and my mouth drops open a little bit because I can't for my life imagine why you think that is an unavoidable outcome rather than one cultivated by greedy fuckwits who think that owning land is more important than human life.

EDIT: I just noticed the above complaint, and begrudgingly agree that this is not the thread to discuss landlords. I don't know how to spoiler tag this post, so I will leave it here as my answer, but I will not reply further in this thread to questions about my stance on landlords.

On a more general note, I'm very heartened to see so many discussions of harassment in this hobby being had openly. I'm glad the community is in a place where these conversations no longer get victims labeled as psycho bitches making trouble for men.

That's not to distract from the fact that we still need to have these conversations at all (not to mention direct action to stop these conversations from being necessary), but still, seeing this makes me feel happy in a fragile kind of way.

Arousal darkened her skin to the warm rosy color of a well-smoked salmon patty. The sight of her made him ache with lust, as if to sprinkle her with salt and a twist of lime juice. He laid her on the sheets as gently as if he were laying her on a bed of rice. The lubricated marital aids lying beside her, waiting for their turns to be used, reminded him of spears of buttered asparagus. He looked down at her and lowered his mouth to her lips as he would to bite into a cheesy garlic biscuit. He missed the Red Lobster in town that had closed earlier this year.

Hit Points. I just can't stop thinking about how weird it is that if you stab a lot of people to death, then you will require more stabbings to be killed than someone who has stabbed fewer people than you.

@arkandel said in Sensitivity in gaming:

In your opinion how much effort should game runners (be that for a D&D game or a MUSH) be reasonably expected to put into not offending players? Or if that same question is flipped around, when are a player's demands to not be triggered crossing a line?

I don't know anyone who wants to not be offended. The people I know want to not be hurt. They want to not have their unhealed wounds torn open by people who don't understand or respect how much trauma hurts to live with. I don't think that's unfair to ask for. I know sometimes people will cross the line because of poor communication, and sometimes even that is enough to destroy the bonds of trust in a person, but in most cases, a heartfelt apology from the person who hurt you is enough to solve it.

I am hard-pressed to think of a single circumstance in which one person can say, "Please don't hurt me," and a second can reply, "That places an undue burden on my ability to play make-believe," without that second person deeply sucking as a human being.

If there are genuinely people out there who just want to not be offended, then fine, I guess they're snowflakes or whatever; but I am not prepared to accept their existence on the word of a YouTuber who, at roughly 2:30 into his video, gets angry that there exists a forum site which does not allow people to post Qanon conspiracy theories on their site.

@nyctophiliac said in Buying Shit:

I keep hearing the "women's pants don't have pockets" argument and I have to ask myself - where the heck yall shopping? Is this an American thing I missed? Do I just not buy the right type of pants?

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but in America, women's pants pockets are generally too small and tight to fit your hands into, let alone a phone or your car keys or whatever, because women's pants prioritize displaying the shape of our hips and thighs over being useful as clothing objects.

@saosmash said in Something Completely Different:

I think you need to look into the definition of your terms. For example, dictionary citations:

Bully (verb form): "seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone perceived as vulnerable)."

You can't bully someone who is in authority over you.

I'm glad you brought this up, because it has slightly changed my stance on the matter by reminding me of a principle I am trying to live by despite it not coming naturally to me: that understanding isn't achieved by relying on dictionary definitions, but rather by trying to empathize with what motivates the other person to say something at all.

Is it possible to bully someone who has absolute, incontestable authority over you? I don't think it is.

Is it possible for someone who has absolute, incontestable authority over you to feel bullied by you because what you have said or done hurts them regardless of their absolute, incontestable authority over you? Yes. And in that case, I don't think quibbling over definitions is more helpful than addressing the feeling of hurt that exist on both sides.

But that's the whole problem here, isn't it? I've no idea how any of our overlords are currently feeling because they won't talk about it, so any emotion I assign to them is pure projection. Likewise, I can't talk to them about my feelings because I can't trust that if I do, it won't be declared a violation of the spirit of the law rather than the letter of it. I am more than half convinced that this is my final post on this forum because it will provoke the mods to feel defensive, which they will decide means my intent is to attack and is therefore a bannable offense. Is that assumption empathy on my part or projection? Hell if I know.

I don't know. I thought I had a point when I started writing this post, maybe something about how it would be really helpful if everyone could set aside their defensiveness to just talk to one another like people who actually want the best outcome, but like Prototart said, I'm not sure that matters any more. The most community participation in this site in the last week is people announcing they will no longer be participating in the community, and I can't even tell if pointing that out is a violation of the code of conduct because the code has been clarified until clarity is impossible.

So maybe this is the post I get banned for. If so, I'm not sure there's much left for me to mourn. I'll always be grateful to this site and this community for the support I found when I needed it most, and I'll regret everyone I hurt with my careless anger, but it doesn't seem like anyone I need to thank or apologize to is around to hear it anyway.

That's not a bad attempt to salvage a point from a pointless ramble, I guess. Yeah, I can be satisfied if it ends there.

@Sunny I get the feeling this thread will get moved to the Hog Pit if I say what I think about someone who gets a pass on advocating for beating women because he once did a good job pretending to be a spy who drives cool cars, so let me just say I don't think you're being sensitive.

@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

"Nobody wants to work anymore," I keep hearing.

Motherfuckers of course nobody wants to work, that's what work is.

I think people want to work. We just want our work to be fulfilling and humane; and our overlords frown on that because then we start getting uppity ideas about being people instead of numbers on spreadsheets.

@RDC said in Suicide Squad: Nation Under Fire:

I don't know the history, but folks were super into anti-fascist action as a game theme when Eubanana was running WWII games, I don't really understand why everyone's pissed about it now.

I don't trust it coming from a guy whose last game advertisement included some antisemitic dogwhistles and a weird aside saying his professors told him he needs to include more of the Nazis' viewpoints in his essays about World War II. It would already be weird to tie Antifa to a government-sanctioned group of condemned murderers who serve on suicidally dangerous missions in an attempt to earn pardons for their crimes, but coming from this guy? Pretend I bothered to find the "that's a big yikes from me, dawg" meme.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I play POC and other genders/orientations quite frequently, and no one has ever said anything like this to me.

In all fairness, I complain constantly about men playing lesbians, at least when they do badly, like by treating gay women as voracious sextigers out to plant a butt in every female character's lap and a tongue in every female character's crevices. I just don't lose any sleep over it because on the list of problems I face due to my orientation, being badly represented by a few intellectually uncurious weirdos playing make-believe on a dying medium is just about the least serious threat imaginable. If you* are that kind of player, I'll make fun of you behind your back to a circle of friends I feel I can trust, possibly make vague allusions to you on this board, and promptly forget it because this is all too low-stakes to care about.

*general you, not you specifically, Kanye Qwest

@Auspice said in RL things I love:

@Aria said in RL things I love:

I'm not sure which I find funnier and/or more terrifying -- them thinking that's actually how any of it works or that a bunch of people looked at these assholes and went, "By golly, they really seem to have things together. We should elect them to Be In Charge."

You forgot option 3: that someone actually married them.

Women willingly marrying men is the best argument I have against the idea that sexual orientation is a choice.

I love every one of you who has been brave enough to come forward and relive your trauma to try to make this hobby safer and more considerate.

Chucklefucks who've never done an ounce of research into any of the myriad scientific and medical disciplines surrounding transgender reality but who do vaguely remember Mrs. Terwilliger mentioning X and Y chromosomes back in seventh grade so they're pretty damn sure they understand the situation better than actual doctors and scientists.

I had dreams last night.

Not nightmares. Dreams.

I usually only have nightmares. One night full of nightmares every four to five weeks. The nightmares don't upset me, at least not upon waking. I always assumed they were just my brain dumping built-up stress or what have as part of the regularly scheduled disk defragging.

But tonight, I had dreams. Lovely dreams. They were based too much on the media I watch, but still, perfectly nice dreams.

I feel content but also suspicious of feeling content. It's weird when nice isn't normal.

@kaedric said in Autism and The MU* Community:

Autism was merely something never discussed when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, you weren't autistic unless you had to wear a helmet at all times to keep you from bashing your brains against a wall when you were having a tantrum. You were just antisocial or a late bloomer or someone who has a good heart god bless you.

I didn't notice how much pent-up anger I had over it until I wrote that.

@arkandel I'm in a tabletop game with a min-maxing wizard. The player often destroys entire encounters because his initiative bonus guarantees he'll act first in any round, and his focus on one particular instant death spell means it's nearly impossible to survive; so the other players don't even get a chance to draw their weapons before combat is over. I'm not sure than min-maxing is the problem here rather than his disregard for allowing other players to play the game they're here to play, but his min-maxing is the method by which he's able to prevent them from playing.

@Kestrel said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

Here's the kind of manipulative BS he pulled with me:

Thanks for posting that log, Kestrel. When you mentioned it earlier, I assumed it was just another butthurt little boy having the kind of toxic but honest misunderstanding they seem so prone to... which I guess this nearly is, really, except for the honest part.

@Derp said in Good or New Movies Review:

RoS was awesome. I have no idea what else you wanted from it.

I want it to be exactly like my childhood but also better than my childhood despite not changing anything or asking me to change or think about my relationship to the franchise. And it should have a surfer Rastafarian dog who's totally in my face.