Best posts made by Kestrel

As a mentally ill person who wishes not to be stigmatised for having a mental illness, I would politely request that people kindly not treat mental illness as a hall-pass to do/say awful shit and not be held accountable.

@Ghost said in Tyche Banned:

Tyche didnt really seem to have interest in interfacing with anyone constructively on the forum. He mostly just haunted political threads to ruffle feathers using superskeeeery alt-rightisms to watch people's reactions. Not surprised to see this, but ultimately I question why he anyone wasted his their time feeding and allowing him to oh-so slyly provocateur on this forum for so long to begin with.

ftfy

@insomniac7809 said in Tyche Banned:

@Ghost Right? It's not that he lied that bugs me, it's that he thinks his lie is remotely plausible and it's supposed to be on me to play dumb about the lie. In the interests of civility or whatever.

I'm so fucking tired of civility towards these kinds of shitstains, frankly. Very very over it. @saosmash, @silverfox and @surreality said it all. Some topics don't deserve civil discourse. Treating it with unearned respect only serves to normalise the behaviour and give it a sense of legitimacy, as though it were on equal footing with other, equally valid viewpoints on perhaps not being a racist. There's a word for this. It doesn't deserve to be held in this regard. It doesn't deserve any kind of place in civil society. It is not civil.

@GreenFlashlight said in Tyche Banned:

there's always one Neo-Nazi (I will not be suckered into calling them "alt-right")

@Chet said in Vietnam War MUSH:

I took a fantastic class on the Vietnam War at UMass, I learned a lot of elements of it that were outside of traditional media.

[...]

You also had a high degree of defection or enemy sympathy with everyone, even Americans (Mao Mao movement) in Vietnam, mercenaries were the only reliable troops for 'heavy point artillery', use of infantry as anti-personnel stage clearance.

The Mao Mao movement was in Kenya and had to do with British colonialism. Sounds like you're a troll, and your credentials are made up.

@Arkandel said in Vietnam War MUSH:

@TiredEwok said in Vietnam War MUSH:

I personally am not sure how well received this would be. The war in Vietnam was fucking horrific

Although you're entitled to your opinions I'm not sure I follow. WW1 and WW2 were both pretty damn horrific as well, and true atrocities were committed, yet there are games based on those.

There's a bit of a difference between a game like Savage Skies that's set during WWII and glorifies fighting fascism, and a game set during the Vietnam War that glorifies American imperialism.

Generally, to be honest, I don't. I don't feel the need to force a scene to be enjoyable if I don't think it will be; I just sit it out.

I find that these days my motivation to RP is somewhat lower than it used to be, because I'm always thinking on what else I could be doing with that time, so this scene better be good and worth it. I'm not gonna show up unless I think it'll be really cool and I'm genuinely excited to be there. Never out of a sense of obligation, never just to be polite, never to spare someone's feelings because they asked nicely, never just because there's nothing else to do. If I'm sitting here thinking about how to make something that doesn't seem fun be a bit funner, that's a sign I shouldn't be doing it.

I would instead suggest that when trying to come up with ways to initiate scenes with new people, the same rule applies to RP as it does to dating: find something to do. @L-B-Heuschkel's advice I feel is similar to this, as is the article linked by @Carma. For instance instead of starting/joining a bar scene, I'd be much more enthused to suggest we meet for a spar, or a secret recon mission spying on vNPCs, or that we got pulled into a brawl. Or if I am gonna join a bar scene I'll come up with a reason to be there that isn't just 'hang out and meet new people'; something like 'I'm here to ask questions about the missing person I just made up, here's a photo and the scary details of where they were last seen.'

Yes — but I would add the caveat that they're a different kind of friend and that it's important to keep things in perspective.

There are some perks that online friends offer that RL friends don't. The inverse is also true. In some ways my online friends know me on a more intimate level than my RL friends do because I'm able to communicate with them far more deeply via long chats over Discord late into the night, and depending on how many communities we share they get to see me in a variety of contexts, one-on-one, communal and public. I'm able to share sides of myself that I might not share IRL because of how it would impact me professionally or whatever else. My RL community was in some ways forced on me by geography, culture and circumstance, whereas my online community is almost entirely by choice. My online friends by and large don't know who I was 10 years ago and aren't likely to hold onto those biases, whereas to my childhood friends for instance I may never not be the rebellious slacker at school. I see most of my RL friends maybe once a week; I see most of my online friends maybe every day.

If you're kind of weird compared to the general population, finding people on your wavelength IRL can be a lot harder and often just down to luck. Whereas online you can join an entire community of weirdos, like this one.

The downside though is that online friends can't touch you. They can't hug you when you need to be hugged and their intimacy doesn't provide a rush of endorphins. When you're grieving the loss of a loved one or a fresh breakup, they won't come over and bring you soup. They won't buy you a drink on your birthday, wait by your hospital bed or check out a local restaurant/club with you. And sometimes their interest in you may well be conditional to your current shared interests and community; I'm sure we've all had the experience of drifting apart from a seemingly close online friend once you stopped playing the same MU*.

Sometimes being on the same intellectual wavelength isn't half so important as just being there, period. And I can't depend on my online friends for that; I try to maintain healthy boundaries and keep in mind that just because we're vibing the same RP right now doesn't mean we're actually friends.

I love the unique connection I feel with other people in this hobby who share my story-oriented mode of thought in a way that most people in my life don't. Even when we aren't actually talking about the games we play(ed) together.

In my transition from MUDs to MUSHes in the last few weeks, lately I've been coming across a lot of terms that I've never (or rarely) heard before:

• Posing — which means emoting
• Metaposing — which means the opposite of show-don't-tell, and apparently is sometimes acceptable, sometimes not
• TS — which means mudsex

And a whole bunch of other things. I've also been encountering culture shock, which for me is a lot harder to learn to manoeuvre around.

• Different attitudes towards what constitutes creepy player behaviour, addressed by me here
• Anger over metaposing etiquette, brought up by others here
• The lack of spontaneity in stumbling across RP on the grid, partly explained here
• The ubiquity of OOC communication
• Preferences for openness about characters' hidden motives vs. a preference for mystery and secrecy

These are just the ones I've observed, to name a few, but I'm sure there are others I haven't picked up on yet.

Naturally, when in Rome, one should do as the Romans do, though it's a little hard when there's so little documentation the Romans have about their unspoken rules. I was wondering if anyone who's made similar cross-genre forays would care to share observations they've made about the cultural differences.

I'm particularly interested to hear from MUSHers: what are some aspects of player etiquette you would consider to be required, and which are more take-it-or-leave-it? For example with metaposing, what does everyone agree you shouldn't do, and where do personal preferences come in? Note, I'm not really interested in the 'be yourself, all roleplay is subjective' attitude, because it can be very easy to offend, or worse, bore people if you don't engage them according to their expectations. And that's going to kill potential interactions faster than confusing 'your' and 'you're'.

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Can you please frame the example situation as it would happen on a MUD? That is, you asked someone if you could come to their house, they said nope sorry too busy, and that's off-putting to you. What is your cultural expectation?

OOCly, it wouldn't happen.

So you wouldn't know where people were, and therefore you couldn't make the decision to join or not join.

Then your expectations are coming from something that is not related to MUD. Either that, or the situation you gave, stopping by someone's IC location, is different. How would it happen in a public sense?

More or less like this:

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

A better example though would be that Bob is having an open house party at his place. It's crowded enough that people are saying they might leave soon, because they don't like big scenes. There would still be no expectation that I should ask if I could join — my character would roll up to his house and walk in. Two people might leave for an adjoining room. I might even leave for an adjoining room. Or Bob, ICly, might say, 'Hey KestrelCharacter, we don't want you joining our party', and he'll shove my character out the door. We may have a fight on the front lawn.

A MUD I recently played had place code, which I liked a lot, as it meant that my character could join this party, go talk to someone on the sofas, get bored, then go talk to someone at the buffet table instead. Everyone you see in this room is basically 'open to RP' because they're online and IC (there is no OOC lounge), but to avoid having to focus on too many things at once, you can split the scene into multiple sub-scenes for various, dynamic groups within. I may go from place to place and roleplay with everyone in the room in a single evening, but only one at a time, and not have to be inundated with the spam of people privately making out on the sofas while I'm standing at the buffet table. But with a quick look around the room, I can make myself vaguely aware of what's going on and pick and choose which information I want to see. (e.g., look sofa — oh hey, two people have set their shortdescs/roomtitles/looktexts to be eating each other's faces. I'll bring that up to my buffet partner conversation partner, and maybe clue in the sofa couple that they get the sense people are talking about them.)

Translated into the scene @ixokai brought up, my character (G) and H would have walked into the village centre, where A & B may be talking privately at a stall, C may be milling around on her own and therefore an open invitation to RP, DEF may be in a huge crowd fighting. H and I would probably make a comment to one another about the fight, then approach C, etc.

Any rejection H and I experience (e.g., C may ICly say, 'How dare you intrude! Go away!') would not be taken as any kind of affront because IC is IC. It would, however, give H and I something to work with in terms of, 'oh, I guess the villagers here don't like us', and RP is still RP.

Pages do not come into it.

Mainly I think the difference is that on a MUD, RP is a lot more dynamic; there is a lot of code in place to make it so. In a MUSH, as clued in by the term 'shared hallucination' (instead of dungeon), it's make-your-own-fun, and unless you make it so, RP is static. Everyone in a room is expected to involve everyone there, and you cannot really move your character around without ending the RP taking place. (Conversely in a MUD, if you leave the room, I can follow you.)

It's a trade-off though because on MUDs the writing standard is a lot lower; people don't just use the code to facilitate RP, they rely on it like a crutch. Even the very best writers there get lazy, because why emote what code has already stated for you? I'm answering your questions because you're asking them, but that doesn't mean I think MUDs are better.

So I should probably clarify that when you ask what my cultural expectations are — I don't have any. I've walked into someone else's house, and they've asked me to take off my shoes, so my expectation is that I should take off my shoes. Even if, having now been exposed to their smelly feet, I would set a rule in my own house that they should keep their shoes on when they visit me in turn.

EDIT: I'm only editing typos and bad sentence structure. I swear.

What's Intersectionality?

Intersectionality is a modern, socially progressive theory that seeks to explore the ways in which sociopolitical and economic axes of power intersect to create multifaceted hierarchal structures: across the spectrums of sex, gender, ethnicity, nationality, age, health, ability, income and more; and the ways in which these structures contribute to socioeconomic advantages and disadvantages. As a practice, it seeks to empower marginalised communities and their most vulnerable members — who may be disadvantaged across more than one axiom — in order to achieve a more just, safe, equal and empathic society for all.

What's this got to do with gaming?

Members of disadvantaged groups often experience harassment and discrimination online, within their recreational communities, just as they do in the real world and in more consequential settings. In attempting to socialise with strangers online, they may be met with a taxing lack of empathy regarding their real life circumstances or feel dehumanised for their identity, which can harm their ability to form relationships with other players in the hobby. This too can have an impact on one's sense of wellbeing, particularly as recreational spheres are often used as tools for escape where individuals prefer not to be exposed to negative social interactions. In a story-driven environment, this can have an impact on the kinds of stories they can or want to tell, regarding characters that they feel best represent them.

Enter the InterSect.

On the 12th of March, 2019, the InterSect was created with the aim of providing a positive, empowering community for intersectional advocates, gamers, writers, creators and roleplayers who enjoy MUDs, MUSH, RPI, play-by-post forums and other text-based, storytelling-driven online media.

You do not have to identify as a member of any marginalised group in order to take part in this community. You just have to identify with our shared humanity, and see the benefit of a group that aspires towards inclusion and empathy across the broad spectrum of human identities and experiences.

We aim to foster a more welcoming environment within the games we play and collaborative stories we write, for those most commonly targeted by harassment and identity-based dehumanisation. We help to connect players in various games with partners they can trust to be respectful and supportive, as well as offering a safer, kinder OOC hangout.

To join, you must be invited and vouched for by an existing member. We aim to expand through word of mouth referral.

If you feel this community is right for you, please send me a message on MSB. Any member of our community who feels comfortable doing so may also advertise themselves as a referral contact.

Because such communities are often targets for harassment, and the concern that bad actors may join in ill faith is well-founded, we ask for understanding if we can't yet find a community member to vouch for you, or if we can't gauge a sense of your online presence. We aim to keep the InterSect safe and worthy of its members' trust as a first priority; the more we grow over time, the more accessible we will become. We thank you for being patient with us.

@insomniac7809 said in Tyche Banned:

It's been really clear for a really long time that Tyche was not engaging in good faith. I'm not saying this because we disagree on politics, I'm saying it because he kept breaking the rules, kept catching a warnings, and not once did he interpret these warnings as "I should engage with the other posters on this forum like a decent human being." At most, he tried to ask a couple questions to work out exactly where the line was for various-ist trolling so he could creep right back up to that line and start edging his toe at it.

I'll be honest. I don't care about the rules. I care about the very first sentence in this paragraph. Rules should neither entitle nor excuse anyone behaving a certain way.

@surreality mentioned feeling proud to have been banned from a forum at one point because she realised it was a disgusting cesspit. I applaud that.

If I felt MSB was as vile a cesspit as Tyche is, I would very gladly get myself banned here for speaking my mind and I'd wear that like a badge of pride. (What up HavenRPG/Discordance.)

I have no idea if this is how Tyche feels, or if he finally put his foot in his mouth and slipped just one step further than he'd intended to in order to make sure he could keep rules-lawyering his way out of trouble. But one thing I'm willing to respect about the former mentality is that at least such people are consistent about what they believe in and not spineless cowards who place social acceptability above their moral integrity.

While we are on the topic of Jews and ovens, I suggest looking into the Milgram experiment. Some proper looking person in a labcoat telling you that your behaviour is OK doesn't make it so any more than an admin on the internet does.

Yeah I really don't care one bit that Tyche broke rules, I care that his politics are disgusting and that as a society we seem to think such things are more sacred than the actual human lives they systemically oppress.

@faraday said in Heroic Sacrifice:

• The majority of MUers regard MUs as games, not stories. Yeah, there are some stories involved, but in many ways the stories are secondary to the game aspect - XP, advancement, minigames, status, and even TS in a way.
• An awful lot of MUers (perhaps even the majority here too) view their character not as a fictional character in an ensemble story, but as their personal proxy. When their character wins, they win. When their character loses, they lose. This is why we see so much unhealthy IC/OOC.

So for me, this is very much a key aspect that needs to die. The question is just how to kill it. I think the latter can be tackled by swapping out narcissism for group narcissism, i.e. fostering a player culture of in-group loyalty, where individuals feel most rewarded for their contributions to and the successes of the collective. In this case 'the collective' is the overarching storyline, but it's fundamentally no different from getting people to cheer on a sports team, rally for a political party or join a fundraiser. Players need to feel like the way to become their most heroic, badass, righteous selves is not through their character's individual successes, but by supporting other players, supporting the group, and even lining their character up as a sacrificial pawn in the great story-churning machine.

The former is a little harder. I agree that taking away gamist incentivisation is a good start, but I worry that @seraphim73's idea of having only 'karma' as a stat would also risk people running too wild with their character builds. I like @arkandel's idea of rewarding failure but I feel like this too is a band-aid, as it would still, ultimately, be about a system of rewards and progression. However a band-aid might be the best that can be hoped for.

Since you've posted on this thread, @faraday, I'll add that one thing I really liked about FS3 was the combat system. Perhaps it's just because I had never played a MUSH before the 100 came along, but I had never seen anything like that before. What I saw there is that once players already know whether they're going to win or lose, and are given freedom to write as they will about the manner in which this has happened, they're generally their best selves in terms of writing some pretty epic failure emotes, narrow successes, etc. If you already know you've managed a critical success then there's no reason not to RP struggling, bobbing and weaving, taking your time and just barely making the shot after almost getting killed, etc. Whereas if you don't, people will RP being ultimate badasses until the result comes in, in hopes of brute-forcing their way to a win.

@kay said in Heroic Sacrifice:

That said, having your character die or otherwise effectively taken out of play, that is a more difficult issue. That's not failure but that you don't get to develop that character's story further. The only two ways I see to make that easier for players is to either somehow make it a fitting end for the character or have a game like Paranoia or Kult where you KNOW your character is going to be short lived and the goal is to have as much fun as possible before the inevitable end. But that also means players will be much less invested in those same PCs and typically makes for more beer and pretzels type RP than anything with depth. Ymmv.

This is a good example of something I see as a game culture issue. Ideally (in a perfect, utopian MU) people shouldn't be focused on 'my story' — this is hero-think; protagonist-think. It should be first and foremost about the story, and sometimes for the benefit of the story, an important character has to die, or suffer. They still get a really cool story, much like Wash did in Serenity, Snape and Dumbledore did in Harry Potter, Boromir did in the Lord of the Rings, and so on. But yes, sometimes the personal story has to end for the purpose of overarching stakes/impact, and then ideally you'd get to create a new, even cooler character than the first one.

I don't think this makes for beer and pretzels RP; the opposite. The higher the stakes, the more meaningful character choices become; the more the story has a sense of urgency and momentum. Your character is important, and worth investing in, precisely because they could be snatched away at any moment, and every second you have with them counts.

However, for it to be a sacrifice, you would have to volunteer your character for the funeral pyre, so in reality the character wouldn't be snatched away until you've reached a point where you're happy enough with their story so far and are willing to let them go.

@kay said in Heroic Sacrifice:

The theme and setting of the game will make that harder or easier: a superhero game, the death of a superhero would of course be a huge deal that people talk about ICly years and decades afterwards. In a fantasy game, a well known hero/noble whatsit would also be remembered. But outside of those positions and themes it gets harder. Why would anyone except his friends remember Joe McBluejeans in modern Chicago, say? Still, given the right story, that would be one way to make it a feel good thing.

I don't really know a great deal about modern Chicago (UK here) but I feel like this kind of system would work best in a brutal or gritty setting where death is expected, and moral bankruptcy is accepted. E.g. survival horror or noir. But the idea would definitely be to make sacrifice rewarding, be it because you got an epic death scene or because everyone will always remember IC how your character bravely laid their life down challenging the enemy, so that their friends could get away.

Whoa man. I'm sensing there's an undercurrent of drama here, but as I don't really know any of you, didn't play 5W and don't have a history of any kind (positive or negative) with the 100 MUSH's staff, I'm going to avoid stepping into that and just comment on my experiences, which have been overwhelmingly awesome.

It's now officially been two weeks since I joined. This is my first MUSH, and aside from @dev, who's as new to the style and community as I am, I've never (to my knowledge) played with anyone who plays this game before and have no OOC contact. I missed the important landing event and did not become involved until 3 IC days after it. Despite this, everyone has been immensely welcoming, I was readily involved in an ongoing social scene the second I was ready to venture IC from chargen, and I since feel like I have been warmly accepted as an equal part of the community and afforded all the respect and regard I could ask for. It took all of three days for people to start adding me to their relationship info on their wiki pages, plenty of people have sent me friendly pages indicating they like my character, and I received a flattering number of cookies in my first week. (They're kind of like anonymous little thumbs-up you can freely give to people you enjoy roleplaying with, which they see the tally of at the end of the week and help them earn 'luck' points to spend on rerolls and hero moments, etc.)

Are there cliques and characters with backstory tie-ins? Sure! But I have no problem with the way they handle themselves in this MU*. A prominent example would be the 'Tesla Three', which consists of Fiona, Martin and Lip, whose backstory tie-in is that they staged a social justice protest on the Ark by chaining themselves to the doors of the Tesla Station, resulting in them being incarcerated for treason. (Currently all characters in play must be juvenile delinquents, as it's part of the setting.) I find their backstory to be a compelling and interesting plot-hook, which I've regularly brought up IC when talking to/about them. I've interacted with all three characters, both as a group and individually, and though they definitely have a clique thing going, it is not exclusionary or detrimental to the setting, but quite the opposite.

Some players, though they are few and far between, can be a little standoffish and may require a scene or two before they start being friendly. I think this is normal, and it doesn't bother me; there were plenty of other people to interact with, and once I'd gotten my foot in the door (which didn't take long), they were as inclusive as anyone else has been. I would advise new players (on any game, not just this one) not to be discouraged just because a few people take some warming up to.

The game is packed full of excitement. Almost too much, as some people have pointed out, but I have to hand it to staff for how evidently they put their blood, sweat and tears into the stories they craft. The action moves fast, which suits me better than slow, dull social RP settings I've played in the past, and something new, intense and meaningful happens nearly every single day. The 'lack of threat' which @Admiral has pointed out, in the sense that characters are unlikely to die unless their players want them to, doesn't bother me. People have been captured, attacked, injured, threatened and run for their lives. The adrenaline factor is real, even if only NPCs die. That the emphasis is on how our stories develop around danger rather than just having a bloodbath and killing off PCs suits me fine.

I think it's a little disingenuous to say that you don't have to have watched the show to play this game. You probably don't have to be up to date with the entire series, but I do think that watching just the first episode provides a lot of background information for the setting which would help new players. I also think that whether you've seen the show or not, if you aren't apt to like it, you aren't going to like the MUSH either. The theme is survival in a post-apocalyptic world; it's gritty, intense, political, raw, occasionally violent and occasionally with smatterings of angst. There is moral complexity, and your character will eventually get blood on their hands, directly or indirectly, whether you like it or not. They will have to make tough choices. From an observation, I think the players who are having the best time on the MUSH so far are those who are embracing the theme fully and placing themselves at the midst of the action, at risk of such choices, rather than just faffing around camp. There's nothing wrong with faffing around, I just think that if that's you, you shouldn't be surprised if you don't have as much fun.

The staff know what they're doing on a level that intimidates me. Coming from a long line of MUDs with coders at the helm (and even staffing in one), I am now fully convinced that having storytellers at the helm is the only way it should be. They have the creative freedom to offer a lot, to everyone, and in processing my application, they were nothing short of helpful and patient in answering questions and asking me to make a few minor tweaks. I have thus far found them to be 100% transparent and open about how everything works, who they play, what powers they have as staff and what they don't. The system they employ to aid in action scenes, FS3, is good, clean, hassle-free, and very easy to learn and understand after ten minutes maximum of bleary-eyed confusion. I haven't used it before, but would again. I will also add, in staff's favour, that they seem to not be batshit crazy. I think this bears mentioning because it's a rarity in roleplaying communities, and I want to make it clear that when I say they're friendly and helpful, I don't mean that as a euphemism for 'overbearing and neurotic', which it very often is. A+ for staff sanity and approachability.

I'll touch briefly on the point about staff PCs stealing all the action: Yes, Grey (Orion/ @Seraphim73) is a central character. But I don't think he's more central than Cole, Quinn and Fiona, neither of whom are staff-played, to my knowledge. I'll admit that I sniffed a bit when I saw he'd had a bunch of scenes with the Grounder prisoner and then a lot went down before anyone could process, especially since it involved learning that the Grounders speak English and that Mountain Men exist. I would have preferred for that to be a lot more drawn out, and less centred on such a small group of characters interacting with the prisoner. I'm also sad that such major reveals were made before the moment of maximum tension (e.g. when the Mountain Men actually show up to abduct us). But I think they did a good job of rectifying it when they came back the next day, more action happened which they involved many more people in, and though he got the spotlight for one scene, I don't feel like I was excluded from the overall arc. It also just so happens that Grey is a terrific character by a terrific roleplayer. He's engaging, inclusive, writes well, has a thematic backstory which he plays to consistently, and he makes a point of acknowledging other people's backstories as well in his RP. I've enjoyed his involvement in every scene I've had with him, so it really doesn't bother me that he's a central character. With the exception of that one thing with the Grounder prisoner, his centralisation has been an organic result of his interaction with other players.

There is only one thing so far about the game that I really don't like: I think the senate is a silly idea. It doesn't fit the theme, will lead to plot marginalisation and will favour those playing mature and responsible characters. While I have no problem with mature and responsible characters existing, as they are necessary counterpoints, most of us are playing teenagers enjoying their first taste of freedom the way your average teenager would, and so the counterpoints are a little less thematic, even if it's necessary to have exceptions. Even Clarke and Bellamy aren't official leaders in the show, and they aren't universally liked. They just end up leading often because they raise good ideas, and I would prefer it if the 100 MUSH also just allowed leadership to organically flow towards whoever ends up having good ideas in the moment. We're teenagers, after all. And while it's been said this is the result of IC talks, they're IC talks that I wasn't privy to, and don't think the majority of NPCs would be privy to or support. The senate idea's also been given staff support for voting, so it's a little beyond that now.

Anyway. Play the 100 MUSH. Involve yourself in +events, they're a great way to get your foot in the door and be a part of the action. Wiki and +sheet-stalk people during your first scenes with them so you know which plot-hooks to raise, just like when you bring up the Summer they spent in France as a talking point with a Tinder date. And, uh... haters gonna hate, I guess. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I agree with almost everything @Ganymede said above. This shouldn't be rocket-science.

In my experience I'm almost alone in this within the MU* community (or maybe alone in being honest about this?) but most of my RL partners have been fully aware of my text-hobby and would consider TS cheating. So if I'm seeing someone, I usually let people know upfront, 'Hey I'm down for anything but no sexytimes please.' The people who are worth RPing with have always respected that, even if we'd TSed in the past. I've had one person say to me, 'Hey I respect your choice and understand your reasoning but sexual scenarios are mostly inevitable in this particular storyline, so I think you would be a bad fit for it.' I was fine with that too. On every occasion when someone disrespected my request (e.g. attempted to initiate sexy stuff after I'd specifically said I wasn't cool with that), it was abundantly clear that they had serious mental health issues and that I should avoid engaging with them regardless, so I wasn't sorry to cut them loose.

Don't make it taboo. Don't make it awkward. If you're old enough to write about sex, you should be old enough to talk about it like an adult.

If you've clearly communicated your limits and expectations but your partner still opts to disrespect them, that's on them, not you. And this is a separate discussion to be had about consent, respect and entitlement.

Is this the part where I take your thread seriously, invest the time and emotional energy to respond in good faith, only to then receive a veiled warning from our new admins, accused of being in a clique with people I don’t even talk to, and told that my choice to answer the very question that was asked in the first place makes my motives suspect?

Fast-forward to the thread lock and paternalistic lecture IMO.

I don't know how helpful this bit of advice is, because it's very circumstantial, but I used to have this problem and I don't have it any more. The honest truth of what helped me? No, I didn't have any kind of epiphany. I just got medicated.

You might not need medication in your specific case — I hardly know you — but a question I have would be: does this only apply to your RP circles? Or is this a persistent problem in your life? If you're constantly talking down to yourself, experiencing social anxiety and unable to accept the idea that anyone might possibly be able to enjoy your company, then please, don't ignore the signs of an obstacle to your mental health. It's a medical issue like any other. Society has for too long been telling people that they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps if only they would just think positive and remember that this is all in their head, and shaming them if they can't do that. It's a load of bullcrap. Chemical imbalances in your brain don't disappear after making a few life-affirming statements.

I suppose I'll undercut all that though and share a life-affirming statement I do like to make (supplemented by a trio of pills and a therapist who tells me off for being rude to myself) whenever I run into other people who, for whatever reason, just don't seem to like me:

Other people's bullshit does not reflect on you.

Someone's gonna give you attitude or look down their nose at you when you're just trying to make friends, that's their bullshit. Their attitude. Their problem. Maybe their mother died or has cancer or something, what do I know? Maybe they were picked on at school and never really got over it. But it has absolutely nothing to do with me, I just happened to be in their way.

And then you shrug, move on about your day, and remember it isn't your job to fix broken people, nor worry about whatever's bothering them. You just keep doing your thing.

Oh. Also, since you're a woman, I'm just gonna leave this here since you probably have this issue. Fix it. We all do.

@Sunny said in What do you eat?:

@Kestrel

There are a lot of people who are more concerned with not starving to death right now, who need to feed their families right now, that do not have the PRIVILEGE to be concerned with how food is sourced.

If you're eating what you need to in order to survive and don't have the privilege of choice, then you have my sympathy and 0 room for shame.

That includes homeless people accepting handouts, people recovering from eating disorders for whom additional restrictions/concerns can be dangerous, single/busy/working parents who rely on convenience foods in order to feed large families, people living in food deserts and remote locations, etc.

But if you have the time and ability to educate yourself, batch cooking vegan meals can be incredibly cost effective. Also: rice and beans are way, way more nutritious than I don't know ... McDonalds happy meals. And it's what a lot of people the world over (Latin/South/Native America, China & Southeast Asia) live on as a staple, so you know, where checking your privilege is concerned ... the idea that this is bad is a Western thing.

I'm not out to judge anyone, I just like helping people who are interested in it become better informed on veganism. So if you fall into that category and the only thing holding you back from going vegan is concerns that it'll be expensive, you're misinformed, and I'm offering resources to help with that. There is 0 need for this to become an emotive topic.

@Ominous said in Depression Meals:

I enjoy cooking, so it actually helps brighten my day a bit.

I enjoy cooking too, but when I'm depressed, I don't want to do things I enjoy. I want to lie in a congealing pool of self-loathing and misery and stare at the wall until an hour has passed.

When someone you knew was shady finally gets banned. JUSTICE.

@Auspice

You know, the Joss Whedon thing annoys me because I don't think cheating on your wife makes you a misogynist. It makes you a piece of shit for sure, but a misogynist? Eh. There are women who cheat on their husbands, are they misandrists? I think they're just selfish.

I have not cancelled Joss Whedon and I will not cancel Joss Whedon. Sorry not sorry. I will, however, hold him accountable for his embarrassingly bad Wonder Woman script. I do think the quality of his work has deteriorated somewhat over time. I'm in the minority but I liked his early original work, and though I think he's a great script doctor, I'm significantly less interested in his adaptations and comic book movies. He's still one of my favourite creators of all time. Buffy was brilliant.

I wish Buffy had more people of colour and showcased some women of different shapes and sizes — he seems to only like casting one kind of woman and that's "thin enough to be anorexic". I get that it was the 90s and heroin chic was all the rage, but eh. Even back then as someone who was never thin enough to be anorexic (yet sometimes, problematically, wanted to be), it bugged me.

These criticisms, at least for me, however, don't overwhelm the good of the whole. People laugh when I tell them that Buffy was the show that turned me into a feminist, but it's completely, 100% true. I hadn't even heard of the word in any positive light until one day I watched an interview where Whedon called himself that, which I thought was weird, because why would a guy want to call himself feminine? As someone who was raised only on Disney princess prior to that, falling in love with this show and having this hero on my screen completely changed who I am as a person and who I believed I could be or look up to. Oh. And I was incredibly queerphobic at the time. It helped seeing queer romance on screen while grappling with internalised disgust long before I was ready to myself come out. There really wasn't a lot of representation at the time.

Buffy's getting a reboot now with a woman of colour at the helm and Joss Whedon's stamp of approval. I think this is a welcome change, and I wouldn't trust it unless everyone else who worked on the original was on board. It'll be nice to see the show become more intersectional for the next generation of confused teenagers grappling with their identity. There's power in that.

So, while I'm not cancelling Joss Whedon, I'm also OK with moving on from works of his that shaped me in the late-90s/early-00s, because people are supposed to grow and it'd be sort of weird to stay stagnant like that. I'm also OK with acknowledging that he's fallible, human, and his works were never perfect. Hopefully, he's also grown, but I don't know his life.