Best posts made by GreenFlashlight

My rehab has added a new exercise to the routine. I don't know the name of the machine I'm using, but I call it the pap smear machine because even though I'm seated and upright that's what I think of any time my feet are in stirrups that spread my legs. Anyway, the point of the machine is to bring your knees together against the resistance of the weights tied to the stirrups. You know the one.

I am dipping into my squirrel-stash of prescription painkillers today because Jesus fuck, my groin.* It's like someone's tightening a winch in my thigh muscles. You should have seen the undignified waddle-lurch I had to do just to get downstairs today.

Take good care of your body, kids. Maintenance is boring but it's so much easier than repair is.

*this sentence contains one of the most important commas I have ever used

@l-b-heuschkel said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@sixregrets I figured that was the joke. That his name is close enough that he's having a really shitty week because of that other guy.

Truth is, from over here, I wouldn't know one from the other. I have no idea who either of them are.

Matt Gaetz is a professional Jimmy Neutron cosplayer who wandered into Congress one day and through a series of comically implausible misunderstandings was declared a legislator in the federal government despite his obvious incompetence and moral turpitude.

@wretched said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

I swear to god, the next time someone asks me to tell them something about myself, I'm just going to say, "I never have any idea what that question means. How about you tell me something about yourself so I have an example to follow?" Because the alternative is me sitting there with no thoughts at all in my skull, barely even sure in that moment that I exist.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

And yet it's strange how almost every society in the world has structured its systems of justice around the premise that an accused is innocent until proven guilty, which requires, you know -- proof.

First, I disagree that we are talking about systems of justice. We are talking about systems of punishment, which is not the same thing. Healing is justice. If you think I am advocating for silently and instantly kicking people off games the first time someone pages staff, then you do not understand me at all, nor my stance on how to effectively deal with victims. I went into it years ago and will not bother repeating it because I could not convince people then to stop viewing this as a matter of authority figures needing to "solve" problems with punitive dominance displays that focus on the abuser over the abused, and nothing has changed since then to make the audience any more receptive.

Second, refusing to believe a victim is itself an accusation that the victim is a perjurer who must prove herself innocent of the crime. It is not and cannot be a neutral position, because neutrality is impossible in the case of accusations. You must choose which party you default to believing is innocent of an offense, and you have. I will never change your mind, and cannot ever affect your ability to implement whatever policy you want, so I'm not sure why you bother arguing with me at all.

@scissors said in Enervation, et al., banned:

I am gradually turning into a misanthropist thanks to DownWithOPP and his ilk. My logical brain simply cannot fathom how someone fails to decipher that they are not wanted or welcomed after repeated bans.

Not being wanted is the point. It's about having the power to take what you want without your victims being able to stop you. It's sad as hell to get your dopamine fix from something as petty as being able to log in to an internet site that would prefer you not log in to it, but everything about them is sad as hell, so at least it's keeping in character.

Oh. Another thing staff should do when dealing with a victim to be be careful in all phrasing of discussions. "Do you have logs?" is an accusatory question whether it's intended that way or not, because of the social context it takes place in, where victims are often considered as guilty as their harassers are. "Do you want to show me any logs you have?" is better, because it acknowledges her role as the driving force in whatever happens next.

Stuff like that.

@testament said in Critters!:

Such a prettyful curious little man!

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Nobody is saying that those who report bad behavior are by default bad actors. The debate is where the standards of proof lie for those accusations, and at what point it is appropriate to take action based on that.

Beginning from the assumption that a victim's story must be litigated is indistinguishable from beginning from the assumption that victims are liars until proven innocent. I acknowledge that there is no perfect solution in a situation in which it is impossible to be neutral, but that does not stop me from being deeply disappointed at the direction the advocacy in this argument is leaning toward. A lot of us* have been through the results of the proposed policies several times in our lives, and if you ever wonder what has made some of us so bitter, angry, and distrustful of authority figures who claim to have an interest in fairness and justice, the outcomes of those policies are why.

*well, I guess not really "us" any more, since most of "us" are no longer welcome on this board

I do not understand why it matters if Peter NPCs May, even if someone apps May. How would that player's choice to ignore previous canon be any different from a player ignoring the previous canon from a previously played character?

@Groth said in Good or New Movies Review:

What is there even in TLJ to springboard off?

Explore what it means that the Force has awakened to a degree that random children are absentmindedly telekinetic to a degree the One True Bloodline is no longer the only important thing in the galaxy.

Deal with all the Space Neo-Nazis who are still out there and have much larger numbers than the Resistance. Maybe strike them while they're disorganized and possibly even fractured by the death of Darth Smeagol.

Speaking of the Resistance, rebuild it. Be the spark that starts a flame, and all that.

Build a Jedi Order stronger and wiser than the one that came before, that breaks the cycle of failure to at least find its own, new ways to fail.

Show what happens when Rey tries to learn how to be a Jedi from books.

Tackle the issue of Space Neo-Nazis being enabled by weapons dealers who profit off an apparently perpetual state of war in the starry region.

Explore what Kylo Ren is capable of now that he's moved beyond cosplaying his grandfather and has been eternally denied his revenge against his betrayer in the most humiliating way possible.

have Finn and Poe kiss you cowards I would watch two hours of them holding hands and picking movies to watch and laughing at each other's bad jokes while one washes dishes and the other dries them yes I know no movie actually set that up but make it happen

@fatefan said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

@Wretched It probably could be fun, but I am not convinced that the scope needs to be expanded beyond human PCs.

Remember that fox in the desert library who got in trouble for telling the giant owl spirit that radios are boxes with tiny singers inside them? If you allow spirit PCs, someone (I'm not saying me but I'm also not not saying me) could play that fox who is working as a bartender now because she was cast out from the library. She would have many daily struggles like how to serve alcohol when you don't have hands, but she would also have many daily successes because when people tell her their troubles she can lay her head on the bar and let people pet her between the ears until they feel better.

This is obviously very very compelling and is therefore an excellent argument for spirit PCs.

@Auspice said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:

Sure, I'll take a deep breath before I shove my foot up your ass.

Remember to exhale as you kick. It gives your foot more power by tightening your core.

@Rinel said in Good or New Movies Review:

Fight me.

You like a thing I like, but you don't like it as much as I like it, which means you're not just a bad person, you're my mortal enemy and I must never forget this injury you have done me which definitely doesn't mean my life is so low-stakes I can treat levels of performative devotion to a movie about space wizards as an enraging injustice.

Sleep with one eye open, you monster.

@onigiri said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I've largely found MUSHes to be far more progressive when it comes to gender/sexuality politics than when it comes to race.

If you say so. I've found that people's progressive attitudes toward my gender and sexuality directly correlate to how much they can fap to them, which I guess is better than a lot of reactions but is still pretty creepy.

@Ghost said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Arkandel God damn. That's bleak as fuck.

Well, yes. It's a series about war, told by someone who watched his generation destroyed by the Vietnam War; mostly about a boy who's King Arthur with the serial numbers filed off, and remind me how Arthur's story ends again?

It's always been a bleak series, and I feel like a lot of the backlash to the new trilogy is based on the audience resenting that they now have enough critical thinking skills to recognize the things they weren't savvy enough to notice as kids.

@Ominous said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Limps and atrophied limbs don't exactly make people's fun bits feel tingly.

I'm sure both of those things are listed as kinks on flist or whatever.

I like how many of the entries in this thread are some variation on Italian food.

We love our breads and bread variants, we depressed people.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I'm tempted to say that cultural rivalries seems to be an issue for both?

There's definitely an element of it in American racism. Black people are poor, which must mean they're lazy; black people don't do well in school, which must mean they're stupid; black families are broken, which must mean they're selfish; on and on like that. I think most of it really is visual signifiers, though. Like, if Ted Cruz was as visibly Hispanic as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he'd never have been allowed into Republican halls of power.

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I need to convince myself that it's OK that I don't have a job yet. It's only been a week.
I need to convince myself that I shouldn't define my self-worth by having a job and the quality of that job.

I am completely failing to convince myself of that and I just spent all night watching TV because going to bed is depressing and once I do go to bed I'll spend all day in it and hoo boy I am depressed. Welp. Time to sleep and set an alarm and probably disregard it anyway.

If it helps you, remind yourself that our corporate overlords are extremely pleased when we are tricked into thinking our value as people is dependent on our economic output, the full value of which they are stealing from us anyway.

@ZombieGenesis said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):

Even if the focus isn't on erotic RP(though it certainly could be) I'd just like to see more games that don't shame players for engaging in erotic RP. A lot of games nowadays have policies in place that amount to "do it but don't post logs about it or discuss it in any way" and I think that's a shame.

I'm not sure that's shaming as much as an attempt to cultivate a particular audience and/or not have the owner and staff on the hook for whatever possibly illegal stuff the players might get up to.