Best posts made by mietze

a redcard signifying stop staff arbitration needed protects all parties. First, the person initiating the activity that caused it will have another set of eyes on what it is that they were trying to do. This is important because there are patterns of behavior of people surprising people with unwelcome content that might be useful to see over the long term--just as there are issues with some people wanting to engage with others in ways that are aggressive but then try to nope out of consequences.

Are there staff who really are going to treat anyone with disdain who calls in staff help when they can't come to an agreement with the other player? Yes. But that's kind of good to know as a player too, to be honest.

Putting a system in is basically giving people the green light to use it. That might be important if staff is willing and wishes to encourage people to do that, since I think most people are more used to the disdain or fear of it when asking staff for help about "sensitive" issues.

Oh my fucking god. There is a FB group called "Show Me Your Aspics"!

As a lifelong fan of these I am over the moon. I would love to do a cocktail and aspics dinner party sometime though I think my local crew's stomachs would rebel...

And I'm not saying that to be mean to you Carex. I looked at the game and didn't really feel compelled to make a PC there (not anyone's fault or that it's a bad game or anything like that, I just didn't feel inspired). I have in the past forced myself to make a PC somewhere to play with friends, but I have rarely found that to work out long term because I drift (and then annoy my friends). I think it's good to listen to your gut when it comes to whether you want to invest time in a place. You can always come back in a few months and see if you're more inspired. I just think entering a game with a chip on your shoulder or starting off annoyed just doesn't usually work well, even if you're a super nice person playing on a game with good folks.

I don't have a strict time between poses preference except in a managed scene (STed or something like court). I very much appreciate @Ganymede 's suggestion long ago to preload poses and alter as necessary. It's really helped me in light of some health issues that make me a little slower in typing/processing things. Even so I tend to be in the 10-15 minute range (so my difficulties are far more noticeable 1 on 1 than in 3 pr scenes), but I tend to not get too many complaints because I do try to make it up in quality if I can. The flip side is that unlike my younger mushing days I find I greatly enjoy work-slow scenes, rather than getting impatient, so I enjoy a wider variety of people than I once did. (As long as they're quality!) it has its rewards.

I am going to be making a locked thread in the hogpit (for now) to move the personal attack posts. They may be deleted since I really do not think that's the best place for this particular attack. Or the thread may be opened once the admin have a chance to talk so people can bash away.

Discussing and disagreeing with parenting methods is just fine.

However. Accusing someone of being an abusive parent, especially how it was done in this instance, is inappropriate, especially on this subforum. If anyone has any concerns or questions then they are welcome to contact me, Ganymede, or Arkandel.

I'm in the middle of a very painful flare up of joint and muscle pain, but I am also making homemade cinnamon rolls now that I have a bread machine to knead/make dough (can't afford a stand mixer so I'm used to doing everything by hand except for bucket bread!)

I feel happy and useful!

And I also got a recipe for pho broth for my electric pressure cooker that one of my Vietnamese friends is raving about so I get to try that tomorrow!

And I'm not coming at this from a Perfectly Perfect Person standpoint. When I think back on all of the heartbreakers in my MUSHlife, where OOC relationships were damaged, where games broke up, ect--whether or not I was directly involved or not, at some point somewhere along the way most (not all but most) could have been greatly reduced in scope and impact if I or someone else would have just...NOT said what was on their mind in the midst of a fit of pique. If we'd just sat with it, even though it was uncomfortable. If we'd not had to get the last word in. If maybe it was okay to cede the point, even if there was still fight left in our spirit.

I have never been kicked off a game or put in timeout, but certainly over 22 years of mushing I can look back and think back on things where it would not have been unwise or unreasonable to have been, based on things I've said to people (or didn't say).

But take it for what it's worth (not much, as free unsolicited advice goes)--if you find yourself bumping up against staff a couple of times, and they're telling you your personality/the way you talk to people/specific actions are not okay--either decide to change it (or talk less ooc and focus on play), or decide if you really are just better off finding a game where the staff tolerates your behavior. Fighting it with "but I did so much for you" is a losing tide. Or even an "I don't know what I'm doing," or "I can't help it." Ultimately if you can't control it, or even see it, then you're just going to keep bumping heads, and that's not fun for anyone. So just find a place where you dont or it's big enough with enough changeover that people are more tolerant with folks that they feel they have to manage.

I don't think there's probably any MUSHer out there who has not felt eventually or even been told directly that they need to just let a game go because it's not working out. Some personality types tend to be martyrs and try to stick it out, but all that does is make it worse and uncomfortable for everyone (and as someone with those inclinations, I totally understand).

My apologies, when I am at work it is harder for me to see stuff like that. More information in the temp ban thread.

@wizz the see through pants are a nice touch.

I remember when my kid was really down on their appearance and height and other stuff due to some pretty vicious bullying in the 2nd grade. I being dumb parent decided to tell them all the ways I thought they were beautiful. So they tell me "I don't WANT to be beautiful, Mama, I want to look just like you!" Thanks, kid.

I think a lot of places have had pressure to open early/prior to being truly ready because they are afraid of losing people being super excited, and there's the stir of having a bunch of logins of people waiting and constantly asking when things are going to open. Though I also think that people open things up to "hang out time" prior to a MUSH opening these days way way waaaaaaaaay too early. It is on players logging in to bother to pay attention when a developer says "We won't be open for 4 months, ect." but also I think you can't fight human nature towards antsiness when they've got a concept.

Though I dunno. Maybe this comes with the territory of the entitlement/immediate gratification stuff that's been discussed across multiple threads now? Not sure.

At any rate, I really respect and applaud teams that do not open "early" due to login pressure. I'd rather a game open late with all parts of the team ready than to open early or on time with one or more staff teams/other stuff not ready.

I think it is fair to have pretty narrow restriction of topics in pub chan. That is first point of contact for new players and nobody should step away from their screen and have to come back to screens of people trying to one up each other on pub about how hardcore bsdm lifestyle they are or intimate details about their various mental and physical health ailments, or deal with a RL political fight or graphic descriptions of the latest RL mass shooting or hate crime. (All examples I have experienced in the last 3 months checking out various new games--i was shocked to realize how only playing on a game that discourages that for the most part had taken away the desensitization I had experienced being on WoD to knowing who waxes their genitals, whose diagnoses are what, ect in the first 45 minutes of login.

I think spin off channels are okay. I agree that some specific rules are good but I think staff should always have the ability to decide something it out of line, when they see it.

Mmmm, why does soup always taste even better the next day? I have baked potato soup and pumpkin sausage soup and they are soooo good.

Also, getting to hear my 3 year old chirrup "I'm a hot dog!" to everyone who looks even sideways at him while he's wearing his costume is pretty adorable.

I totally agree on having open IC hangouts. Though I do think that people need to remember that there's a variety of "cultures" when it comes to joining a scene in a public place. I had my ass handed to me once when I showed up at a public coffeehouse (I did not see that anyone was in there actually) because I dared come in there when other people had started to RP before I did (and I didn't have a chance to oocly say hey there, can I join before getting yelled at). It shocked me, because I'd always come from a culture that if someone doesn't want people wandering into a public gridspace then it's on them to leave to a private room; but obviously other people come from the opposite! So even if you have visible hangouts, some folks may feel like they can't go there if there's already people there because that would be rude--or people who assume that they're always welcome in a clearly marked Come Hang Out Here place may get a 'welcome' that kind of shoves them away from wanting to risk it at all.

In my experience the majority of people I have interacted with on games want that deeper exploration of themes and what makes their PC tick, but it takes some time and investment to learn and enjoy the RP style that will allow me to engage with them in that way. I have also experienced (as I am sure many people have) players who drop their PCs into a scene and have a very specific agenda in mind to highlight their PC (this is fine) but who then become very aggressive and put out if they do not get the desired response and their ooc exasperation really makes it unpleasant because they really cannot hide their snobbery once they decide that all the other PCs are shallow and trite because they're not engaging that person like they want to be engaged with in that particular scene.

While I do not usually have the snobbery directed towards me personally, when I witness it towards others it's honestly and instant turn off and even if I enjoy that person's writing I will be reluctant to engage.

Do I find social chit chat draining at times, yeah. But I try not to assume anything about depth or motivation from social scenes either. What I as a player am looking at in social scenes is if there's anything little or big that's thrown out during it that might be fun to engage with later more personally. Is this person oocly polite/responsible regardless of the personality of the PC. Does this person seem to ignore certain types of PCs consistently in the scene. Ect.

All of my PCs have deeper backgrounds and goals and motivations than their snapshot writeups and/or wiki pages suggest. I do not play coy with them either. But I also have my own style and preferences and while I have a rule that I will always be willing to engage someone a certain amount of times (unless I see them doing something abusive or they are super unpleasant) regardless of playstyle or mannerisms, it has to be an enjoyable experience. (That doesn't mean ICly happy.)

Whenever I am having an extreme disconnect between desire and how I am actually feeling I always step back and take a look at internal factors as well as external.

Do I have realistic expectations for the amount of time I have invested in RP with the other PC.

Am I writing adequately and clearly enough that my objective is known? Am I ascribing to shallowness or inattention something that I am contributing to because I am expecting too much interpretation on their part?

Am I frustrated or worried about other aspects of the game that is coloring my experience of this interaction.

Usually if I am feeling a huge disconnect I can find things that I am doing that are contributing to it and if I work on course correcting those it can help a lot.

Zomg I’m doing the fat cougar housewife thing and getting violet highlights in my hair! Unfortunately I can’t afford to change them every week for @Tempest

The only caveat I would give to Gang of Dolls post is that there's a huge difference between a TV show and expository insight there into an antagonistic character vs. on a MUSH. A TV show is not in any way collaborative. A game is. So thinking that you can beat people over the head with expository insight into your PC and why you should still sign up for being treated like shit/more audience than participant and that solves things doesn't work very well.

It's a very delicate balance. I can see it being very very fun for the people who feel empowered to do whatever they please and write off everyone else OOCly though. In my experience though, that tends to feed to a point where even people who enjoyed being around them once don't after awhile, because it doesn't create a great OOC environment for anyone in the long run.

At least not IMO. Maybe this is why I'm finding it harder and harder to find a place to play anywhere. I really would like a genuinely collaborative environment, where there's some give and take. I could find that pretty regularly in pockets before (maybe I just had more time, or was more willing to give some time for people to "decide" OOCly that I was worthy or for me to decide "yes, I can tolerate bad first-second-third impressions and just ride it out for awhile", so I got over that first hump) but these days if I run into more than one scene dominator, or it's someone that I know should know better, it turns me off so bad it's just hard to recover.

I said that I personally find more success at being happy on a game if I adjust my expectations to what the game seems to be realistically provide. If I'm going to stay on the game.

If when examining what those expectations should be (including things that I might be doing that could be sabotaging the results) I find that it's not going to be fun for me, I leave. But I do not do so because I assume that people had nothing to offer there. Sometimes you just never have the chance because either you do not fit, or frankly there are a lot places where it's hard to break in where people will invest in your story, period, no matter how awesome you are and they are.

So you have the choice to see if you'd like to give it a go with adjusted expectations, or go find somewhere else.

I like this discussed in the "RP Fantasy vs reality" framework because that kind of automatically puts the idea there that expectations and adjustments to the reality of what you have in the environment you are in.

If people do not want to "settle" then that's fine--lots of folks congregate with like minded folks. Whether that is a close knit subgroup on a larger game or people forming an invite only place so that they have quality control, ect. You do what you do when you need to do it, there isn't anything wrong with that.

I just happen though to have seen people self sabotaging with expectations and behavior. I have self-sabotaged with expectations and behavior. In reality, every time I have has differences in the RP reality vs what I get to the point that i no longer enjoy being there, 99.9 percent of the time it is not because nobody else is interested in meaningful play or risky play that might involve their PC being drawn in directions they hadn't planned on (I am sure other people on the same game even though would have different experiences than me), it is largely about expectations (including those that I wasn't aware that I had). Sometimes if I can tweak them, I do find more of what I am looking for. Sometimes not.

Maybe it's just the company I keep, but I see a lot more sacrifice when it comes to community organizing, GOTV efforts (beyond just posting some doodad on FB), canvassing, and more importantly supporting others running for office who are NOT the traditional middle aged middlin' to wealthy white penis-haver from the "Millenial" generation than I do from the people my age and older who sit around on their asses bitching about them.

I think a lot of people forget about all the voter suppression methods that have been part of many states for years and years, that make it extremely hard for college students and frequent movers to get their ballots or make it on to lists, ect. To say nothing of the idiotic campaign of voter suppression that is the avalanche of "everyone's the same, why bother voting" that's vomited everywhere. Hmmm. Wonder who that targets by and large.

When I show up for community meetings, millenials and younger gen-xers make up the majority of people there, not silver haired white guys. When I've needed to recruit people to walk with me and go to events to do voter registration or chase ballots during election times (help find people whose signatures were rejected, so they know they've been disenfranchised and help them rectify it) they've been millenials who are actually giving up a lot of after work or lunch break time, not the old people with lots of time to spare and senority. The running for office trainings we've been putting on are swamped with those under 35, women, and brown or black people.

I get that a lot of people can't do much but nag their friends and coworkers, but please don't shit on a generation that is probably a lot more involved locally than yours.

ETA: I'm almost 45, so not a millenial. Just getting kind of tired of people dumping on them. I paid about $30k for my bachelors degree, could set my pay level (outside of government employment) and get it because the job market of the 90s was so awesome, know a ton of people my age who became independently wealthy because of the dot com era (those that didn't fritter it away and invested wisely, that is), I could buy individual health insurance for $90 a month, schools maybe weren't funded as well as they could have been, but they weren't at the level of falling apart even in the rich suburbs level that they are now for K-12. Pretty sure the people under 30 are getting a shitty ass deal than the one I got. So I don't know, if they feel some futility about things, or decide not to work themselves to death for less than half real-worth wise hourly wages than what I got at their ages, I really can't say I blame them too much.

I think my only concern (and I believe that I've been very clear) is that when there's an attitude of "if you don't enjoy what I'm doing right now it's because you just can't handle the awesome play I do and just want tea and cake," that is something that does not benefit the game oocly ever. I don't see there have been terrible awful screams about anything going on there. I asked some questions and offered comment that if there is feedback about antagonism there's a possibility that it's more ooc scene hogging or overexposure by that one person who perhaps got frustrated because they wanted other experiences as well but for whatever reason didn't feel like they could. Given that the attitude quickly turned towards "omfg you hate conflict!" even though that seemed to be not at all what players who'd left were saying, I now totally understand why perhaps they intuited that asking around for less personal targeting for antagonism was something that would be fruitless or get them put in the pansy category. (And as I said also, this is a sort of usually unintentional dynamic I've seen very often with antagonistic rp, which is why I suggested keeping ooc tabs on it /if/ there was feedback from multiple sources that it was getting difficult to deal with.)

I do not think playing on an antagonistic themed game means that it should be forbidden to say "this is good but I'd like some other opportunities too, who is friendly to that, so that I can enjoy the antagonism that remains," without being labeled a pansy who hates IC antagonism. It doesn't sound like the creators intended the game to be that way either?

But often times any discussion of this kind of thing gets shut down by either side deciding that any "maybe watch out for this" comment constitutes someone saying "omg no antagonism/protagonist allowed!!!" I am sorry if my comments inflamed that, I did attempt to be very careful to separate out IC RP from ooc environment slippage and not being willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.

As a reminder, this thread is not in the Hog Pit, and while argument (and strong argument) is fine, please refrain from personal attacks.