Best posts made by Kanye Qwest

@Derp
I don't know you at all, nor do I know where you staffed, but I bet you weren't that bad! People generally aren't.

@Wretched
please
please
PLEASE

I have been staff on exactly one game, and let me tell you, it was a thankless, thankless job. In fact, becoming staff led to a friend I actually really liked and cared about going off and ending that (though to be fair she seems to blow up and flake out a lot, evidenced here, so in retrospect I don't think that situation is what I thought it was at the time).

It led to a bunch of frustrations, as within any staff there are cliques, and woe betide the person who raises an objection. That led to a culture of people afraid to speak up because they would be sacrificing the work they had put into the game. In that game, if you stepped down from staff, your PCs ceased to matter, and you'd be in the negative, forever, any time it came to staff decisions.

Which is not to say I didn't have fun, of course I did. Some of the fun was even related to BEING staff. I enjoyed the things I was allowed to write/GM by myself. I enjoyed my war mission even though it killed the first PC of the season and I felt awful about THAT.

But I think people are way more judgmental of staff than they are players, disproportionately so. Maybe there are games where being staff means you get your way more often than not. That was the case for a few people, but they were the exception. Even then, I do not think most of them were purposefully trying to exploit their staff positions to 'win'. Not consciously. People are not as bad as momentary interactions can paint them to be, and I think we all know that, but it's hard to let go of a time you felt you were in the right and didn't get your way.

I have a pretty mixed rep due to that staffing, but it doesn't bother me. For instance, one player said I was the most terrible PERSON playing the game, and because of me she wouldn't even RP her character in my clan. I was that terrible. This person also said that my staffbit was a total darling because I did a tiny bit of research into her and tailored her part in a little one-off plot to give her a reward she loved. . .not realizing we were the same person.

Staffing is hard. Benefit of the doubt is the order of the day. Wall of text, here, sorry.

@Apos said in A Lack of Imagination:

@faraday said in A Lack of Imagination:

Meanwhile if you asked me to describe my kitchen, like @Ninjakitten says, I could do so in fact-based terms... the cabinets are brown, the sink is right by the back door, the stove is gas with five burners... but I don't really see a vivid image in my mind. It's more like fuzzy still pictures at best.

It's interesting in that there's definitely degrees, between people that have photorealistic imaginations vs fuzzy imagery vs nothing at all. For me, asking me what color things are in the kitchen is a lot like asking me to remember the calendar date that something happened. I can take a guess. It might be right, might be wrong, I have no idea though I might sometimes get an extremely vague sensation.

What color are my eyes, HMM?

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Kestrel

I would be okay with that second meta pose but a lot of people would bristle at it. It's entertaining and probably accurate. If you had posed how you thought he was a jerk but would never say so out loud, you are denying the other player retort to an insult. That is not okay.

Is it different if I use my character's silently-held disdain to explain the atmosphere of the scene? e.g.:

When @Thenomain walks up to Kestrel, she just glares. She thinks he's a jerk, but of course she'd never say that out loud. And so biting back her insult, she grits her teeth and says, "Good day... sir."

This personally doesn't bother me at all, because you aren't posing anything internal that is off limits. As long as there's some VISUAL cue for whatever the internal thing happening in the pose is, it's fine.

note, I also pretend there are visual cues in twinky metaposes people do, where they might say "Kestrel hates Thenomain, hates him forever. She smiles brightly, "Hello!"

I will cheerfully pretend they were gritting their teeth and making it obvious the smile was fake, and play accordingly.

@Roz said in A Lack of Imagination:

I remember some things very well. The way I sort of collect knowledge in a mental repository on Arx can also be reflected in my work, which is a good skill to have.

I don't visualize stuff habitually almost ever, but I can? Like, if I consciously attempt, I can visualize an apple, sure. I was actually just driving home listening to Quadrophenia in the car and visualizing how GREAT A STAGE MUSICAL IT WOULD MAKE and how I would design it and shit, so I'm definitely not incapable. But I don't generally visualize, like, RP scenes as they're happening for the most part. I'm somewhere in the middle of that -- apple scale or whatever.

I don't have the voice in my head, though. Like, the idea of that is honestly HUGELY WEIRD for me to consider. WHY DO YOU HAVE AN INTERNAL NARRATOR?! My thought process all feels a lot more abstract. Like, feelings and impressions and such.

Oh my god brains are so weird. I absolutely visualize scenes. Sometimes I get held up because I'm like wait but they were right HERE and now they are posing being THERE and arms don't work like that!!!1 And I realize it's my deal and I don't push it on other people but it slows my poses down as I adjust and try to figure out how to describe plausible animation I see happening.

I also have an internal narrator, and it narrates things like I'm a character in a book, sometimes. If I'm not DOING something, my brain fills the silence and dead space with actual narration. I can also hear this narration in different voices. I was doing mantra meditation for awhile but just saying the word mentally, and the voice I was doing it in kept shifting. Jeremy Irons, Cate Blanchett, Tim Gunn...

@Pandora Yes! While I think it's reasonable to make reasonable concessions for people who aren't online, I lean a lot more to the "make up a reason you weren't there". I'd personally say that does more to build a relatable IC continuity. I'm not sure if MUSHers live in a wonderful world where events go as scheduled and planned, people are where they should be, things work out in time for the Late Show, or what. (If so, fuck them. God)

But to me, the unexpected goes a long, long way towards building that 'immersion' I like to talk about.

I also see that it's just an issue of developed grid vs non developed. If you had a super terrible day and you don't want to be involved in any conflict RP, then by all means ask a friendly pc over and have tea and watch American Horror Story. If you are feeling more emotionally stable, get out there and see what happens. Make something happen. Be flexible! Unless someone wants you to RP about pranks.

Then, all you can do is nuke it from orbit.

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Let me rephrase this in another game.

We are playing chess. You get up to answer an emergency call, I want to capture your king. You're not there to decide you move, I do it for you ... and you can make up why you made such a horrible move.

Yo, this is a terrible example. There's no narrative in chess. It's like comparing mini golf and charades. Just because they are both "games' doesn't mean the ways they are played (or the reasons they are played) are remotely similar.

ok first of all, ouch

second of all, loud no-lyric music HELPS because it drowns out all the other stuff

@Apos said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Is it me or are most of the, 'You abandoned me!' 'NO I WAS THERE ALL ALONG' arguments from dysfunctional IC couples arguing about whether one person is active enough? I'll take Shit I Never Want To Arbitrate As Staff for a thousand, Alex.

Yeah, honestly most of the nasty possibilities people are laying out in this thread are things that come about because of OOC tensions between players, making them become extremely exacting in the keeping of rules, permissive of other rules being bent, etc.

When I've seen these issues, they were more often about OOC interactions than a lack of them.

And again, this is why I'm all about limiting my OOC interactions with people in game as much as possible. It eliminates both the issue of taking things that happen IC in a personal, OOC manner (since you have no OOC interactions to color your perceptions of things) and those popups of insanely derailing OOC drama.

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

If that was the case MSB would be the source of all happiness, all the time.

haha. you think small hits of dopamine make us happy. Imagine being thirsty, all the time, and getting little sips of water.

@Pandora I mean I think you were also telling people to kill themselves in that thread. Which, yes, could count as a differing opinion but let's not be DISINGENUOUS now.

@ifrit

I'm finding I like seeing people get excited about roster characters I make (or help to make) almost as much as I like playing the awesome characters myself.

Foggy also does not deserve this shit, but to be honest he is also giving KAREN shit. So. Everyone should apologize to everyone. Now kiss.

@Apos Bah, my character concepts are just TOO INTERESTING for you puny plebs to appreciate.

Not just limited to gaming as a hobby, I have been harassed, groped, threatened, stalked, photographed without my consent, and almost abducted three times.

I've also been called a liar and arrogant for making those claims. Arrogant. Like my self-esteem is so broken and I'm so twisted that I would not only welcome but INVENT that kind of thing. It's enough to make a girl give up on sharing these experiences, and in a lot of cases? It does.

When I say these things do happen, it's because I know for a fact that they happen.

#notallmen - Of course not. Most people are decent, men included! We really need those decent men to step up more, instead of assuming a claim is unlikely because it hasn't been their experience. If that's you, high five and please do carry on.

@Roz
I don't know. When I was very young, I personally heard BOTH "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed" and "if there's grass on the field, play ball", to a chorus of snickers from the guys around.

It isn't farfetched at all.

Talking about women's issues:

Women: This is an issue.

Men: Are you sure you aren't overreacting or exaggerating?

Women: Pretty sure. I think about it a lot, you know, since it's been the context of my entire life.

Men: But it isn't even a problem. If this was happening to women around me, they'd say something so I'd notice.

Women: We are literally telling you. Right now.

Men: But I have never seen this happen. In my experience, things are fine for women.

Your experience has NO BEARING on women's experiences. I don't know what it is about this concept that is so hard to grasp.