Posts made by il-volpe

@derp Cool beans, and I can think of other ways to practice that, all of which can reasonably occur off-camera and don't depend on me being in the reindeer games.

Balanced character types on a MU don't mean the same thing as in a table-top, unless you do not allow character advancement, or you give every player the same amount of XP and let newcomers have that same amount out of the gate.

You might think of 'not balanced, but balances out over time' methods, like letting people start as either a mediocre fighter or a really shitty wizard. Mediocre fighter becomes Kinda Good Fighter, Really Shitty Wizard becomes Shitty Wizard, by the time he becomes Pretty Good Wizard the other guy could be Excellent Fighter. Even an Obscenely Splendid Fighter is kinda hosed taking on a Really Good Wizard, but for the first handful of levels the fighter's got it in the bag.

My recent-ish experience with this was, uh, "You cannot learn firearms 3 by practicing, you have to shoot at things in a GMed scene." Since GMed scenes, and hence opportunities to shoot at things in GMed scenes, were not forthcoming (for me), I would have to +request My character would like to go on a rampage for no particular reason, I will attack the lover's lane on prom night with my glock 9. Or something of that ilk.

@macha I keep wanting a .gif of Peter Weller in Dexter saying, "They can go fuck the dog." For your boss.

@derp Very true.

@Ganymede Yeah, it'll probably kill me. I like to think that the Glorious Autistic Uprising Autism epidemic will make people more knowledgeable and less crappy. Then I remember how like, every law librarian I've ever met is either a retired lawyer on a second mini-career, or a woman who got her law degree and then learned that wanting or having kids gets you blacklisted. Stuff like Derp mentioned.

@23quarius Not just "somebody" but organizations with the purpose of helping people with disabilities, invariably (in the experience of myself and everyone I've ever asked) advise you to keep your 'invisible' disability to yourself until hired. Once hired, you can ask for accommodations and the law is on your side about getting them. Disclose before you're hired, you won't get hired because you are "not the best fit for our organization" and there's fuck all you can do.

This was not some rando giving me bad advice. Stunning or not, this is reality.

Yeah, somebody applying for a full-time position and then demanding part-time as an accommodation is probably being crap.

@ganymede @Ominous

Thing about being marginalized as they say, is that there's this deal where your word doesn't count much. Like many autistic people, I'm grossly underemployed for my education/skill levels, because I can't pass interviews. The state Autism Society people advise that one never disclose until hired, because they'll think up some other reason not to hire you, and there's just nothing one can do except improve your ability to pass for NT. It's illegal to deny people housing for being LGBTQ in my state, but when my landlady figured it out she just started accusing me of doing weird shit, and there wasn't anything I could prove besides 'this happened after she learned...'. Hah, another incident my lawyer informed me that I had had the misfortune to draw the homophobic judge, and that while he had been fair in some situations in the past, in this case I was obviously and by far the bigger queer, and must make every effort to avoid it coming before him. My ex's lawyer told him the same, but with the we-win glees.

Edited to add the no-touch virtual high-five to Gany's kid, who looks to have won the parent lotto in getting great support for this kinda crap.

What @thhppbbbt says.

@Ganymede It's more that HR will fail to see the sameness. Instead of seeing it as me being disregarded after politely asking multiple times for something that's hard on me to change, they will assess the validity of my finding it difficult. They are liable to decide that I ought not to feel as I feel, so my request is invalid. And that I am the bad actor, what with my way of annoying people by repeatedly asking for weird shit that co-workers and HR can't relate to and not taking ignoring me as a "no" or that "no" for an answer. Which brings me back to what Grandma said. Oif.

@misterboring Oh, that happens. What I had in mind is stuff like,

I say, "Please do not attempt to get my attention by touching me. Unexpected touches are not only startling but often literally painful."

"They don't bother me," says co-worker, and continues to put her hand on my shoulder at random times when I'm staring down a microscope.

Repeat until I quit.

I say, "The noise that kettle makes is like somebody tattooing "no ragerts" on my cerebral cortex. Please use the other one."

"I don't hear it."

"That's not really relevant. Anyway, I bought you this other one. Please use it instead."

Person continues to use the old one until I steal it and give it to the Sally Anne.

@groth I'm not paying much attention here, sorry. But it sounds as if you would enjoy studying epistemology in some formal with-the-philosophy-department kinda way.

@ganymede

I do see your dilemma and sympathize.

As an NT, learning that I cannot be held responsible for the weakness or sensitivities of other NTs has been liberating.

As an autistic, I am frequently held responsible for those things and can't escape it without narrowing my social sphere even more severely than nature has forced.

As a child I was informed, by a grandmother quite familiar with the rearing of autistic children (though she was far too old to consider it a medical thing) "Other people's feelings are real and matter even if you do not understand them." Much of my life has been spend banging my head against the fact that other people will not apply this principle to me.

ETA: And along with narrowing social sphere, I must also find work where interaction with other people is minimal. ETAA: More minimal than can be reasonably expected, really.

@mietze Oh, they are drop-by people, I don't do that with just anybody. I later learned that they were in the middle of a marital dispute. But anyway, they were blunt af, I took it well, friend three didn't, his response is probably more normal. So people rely on the types of cues that autistic people are likely to miss, and it's hard on us.

@mietze My autistic perspective is basically that many NTs take honesty and clarity as offensive, and are thus themselves habitually unwilling to just fucking say it.

Years ago I was walking around this part of town where some friends of mine (probably neurotypical, though their sons have some traits) lived, so I went up and knocked on their door. One of them answered, said, "Oh, hi, sorry, we don't want to see anybody right now," and shut the door. I left and went to the coffee-shop a few blocks away. There I encountered a mutual friend, who was in a high state of hurt feelings, because exactly the same thing had happened to him ten or twenty minutes earlier. He was furious, they'd said they didn't want to see him and slammed the door in his face. I was fucking /delighted/ that they'd said no and shut the door, instead of asking me in and letting me wonder what the fuck was going on that the vibe was so weird, feeling confused and anxious and not sure what to do, making my day and theirs worse.

Considering friend 3's anger and that it's probably a typical reaction, I have some sympathy. Though the familiar MU behavior of 'say nothing and try to get them in trouble with staff' is still just obnoxious and stupid, because, uh, callin' the cops instead of asking your neighbors to turn down the music is vicious.

ETA: I expect probably most of the ones who say 'I was never told' when staff come in are lying about it and that's far more common and far more obnoxious.

@mietze said in Autism and The MU* Community:

There are many people who are not neurotypical who have learned that no/stop means no/stop as well as far more people who are that rely on being able to push past that.

There seem to be a hell of a lot of neurotypical people who for some fucking reason cannot say "no," or "stop." And for some damn reason actually think they can complain to staff about somebody talking about something they don't want to hear, without telling the person doing the talking that they don't want to hear it. And there seem to be plenty of staff who for some fucking reason think the person who was never asked to stop or told it was a problem at all is the problem.

@derp I shall begin using Darius and tell no one.

@carma said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

I think I traced it back to @boop's post here.

Abelard, Brigid, Camille, and Darren appear to be the most common names used in posts referencing example names since then.

It was this post. Clearly Abelard, Brigid, Camille, Darren (and to a lesser degree Euphonia, Frog, Gillian and Henri) are the best example PC name convention.

ETA that it was @Derp who added Darren, and @boop tragically used Joshua and Sam when it was Euphonia and Frog. What a world.

@derp Yeah. So is roll-over XP so Abelard grows powerful, dies, and gets a new PC who's halfway to monsterhood to start with while Millicent, who joined the game when Abelard, Brigid and Camille were all two and three characters in, will never catch up and get to play with the big doggies except as incompetent sidekick.

Most MUs that are looking for that long slow game really ought to set advancement XP costs on a sliding scale so the more you have spent, the more everything costs, so new characters get the encouragement but by the time you're close to what game-runners consider a maxed-out sheet you can only swing two spends a year or so.

I may have mentioned this before, but in the interests of realism, at least 30% of found magic items ought to turn out to be sex toys.

@greenflashlight Also, once you've stabbed a lot of people, you're just a little scratched up after you get stabbed a few times yourself BUT if you let yourself heal up naturally it takes just as long to go from a little scratched up to fine as it took to go from near dead to fine before you did so much stabbing...

@pacha said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

@misadventure

Yeah, I mean, in the historical example I gave that is what happened. It was very common in ancient Rome. I just find it odd that we can accept dragons and magic and sentient animals but adoption is the thing that breaks immersion.