Best posts made by mietze

Another change I discovered due to my teens working is that many fast food and other grunt force labor jobs (including housekeeping and landscape) try to get (or must offer because their employees cannot get a bank account) employees to accept a company issued reloadable debit card that has their paycheck loaded to it each week in lieu of paper check or direct deposit. And they make direct deposit a hassle.

Again I was totally unaware of this until I had working teens and then work in a bank where people come in with these work issues cards yo get cash advances. And have to pay fees to cash paychecks since they do not have an account or get charged by the card company for the advance.

I think it is fine. While I agree that having integrated stuff is really nice, I also think with an interesting concept and fun and active people to play with, people will forgo the bells and whistles too.

I have not seen anyone on this thread say that all we need to do is give to the needy. I hope that is not directed at me. I do think that there are policies that make it very hard for people who have certain circumstances to access safe and secure finances, which also makes it hard to qualify for some housing if you do not have a bank account, and a snowballing of other things.

I hope nobody here begrudges people and organizations trying to step up to fill needed spaces that are not provided by the government where people and children that would otherwise be sleeping in cars or in 24 hour open buildings can come in to sleep in a warm and safe environment and get a (donated, do not worry tax dollars are not spent on this) hot dinner and grab and go breakfast before they leave to work, school, day shelters or programs. There are lots of people that do begrudge it though. Often using language like why cant they pull themselves up by the bootstraps, why dont they give up their kids for adoption, why can't they not have to use these services if they can afford bus fares/homes. Most panhandlers arent homeless. But people often want to see people who are homeless look like third world beggars or else they obviously dont need help but if they do look like that then they dont deserve help because they are garbage people that have no interest in helping themselves.

And even if the setting does not have racial bias or discomfort, it doesn't mean ick stuff doesn't crop up.

On one of my attempts to get started on Arx I picked up a roster who had PC parents, looked at their descriptions/pictures and picked a biracial PB. The first conversation ooc I had with her PC father was how great it was I'd picked a mixed PB and arent people like that so attractive. Did that player mean anything bad, I dont know, because it was sufficiently close to other weird racial fetishization I'd experienced elsewhere that I noped out and just did not come back to that PC.

So it's not like you escape shit even in an IC setting that it shouldn't be an issue. The amount of time needed to try to explain to people no really, purity culture/male strong woman weak/racism ect on games where it does not exist in IC culture can be really exhausting sometimes.

There's a surprising(though not really if you think about it) lot of subgroups of folks that get sucked into bad bad stuff like this. I mean I can think of several in essence gamer geek households that have operated pretty healthfully and smoothly, I know of a few very healthy intentional communities too--but that can go really horribly really quick and many of the people who gravitate to that may not have an easy way to get out of it. Add into it that both predatory people and folks dealing with trauma can also be attracted to some of the "alternative lifestyle" intentional communities or house sharing and it can get real gross real quick.

I like reading and do always. However I have seldom found that game staff uphold the culture of the world that they've built, and find that making a PC that fits in it and relies on it to any extent has led to a lot of let down 99 percent of the time.

So I mean yes, you can be pissy at "players" not reading but in my experience it's usually staff who show them no matter what they give lip service to that it actually isnt necessary or even supported.

And yep, I do understand why staff may not wish to enforce theme, it isnt fun usually especially in games like CoD that kind of attract in my observation a lot of rules lawyering and lots of shiny powers to collect and PCs are kind of expected to be able to do what they wish with minimal impediment on any game I've played.

But I do think that is partially why people do not invest in reading in depth. They do not have to most of the time and they are unlikely to be playing with people who honor it or have done the same, and they will not get any perks for having done so either especially from staff!

The slim minority of places I've played where their was at least for some time robust theme enforcement was awesome. I just do not envy staff that take that on.

Fuck me. The radio station that plays at work has switched over to 24/7 christmas music. AAAAARRGGGGHHHHH.

Oh well still better than the 5 years of enya has a LMT.

Thank goodness. And people today have even less excuse now that you can look at videos and there are web resources. It is just not that fucking hard if you give a shit, and wasnt really back then either.

These cookies are great for folks that love pumpkin quickbread (though they don't keep super well because they are very moist, no matter how big of a batch I've made for potlucks or holiday parties that's not a problem because I never have any to take home after).

Oh, also you can substitute 2 mashed up bananas and the spices you usually use for banana bread in this recipe to get banana bread cookies, which are also a hit, but the pumpkin ones get requested of me a lot.

Pumpkin bread cookies

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 t baking powerd
1 t baking soda
2 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground cloves
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree (it's okay to use pumpkin pie filling but I'd cut back of the spice)
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift/combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt, set aside

Cream together butter and sugars. Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla to butter mixture, beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients. Drop on ungreased cookie sheet by T/tablespoonful or equivalent cookie scoop.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, cool on wire rack.

Fun mixins to the batter: mini chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, crushed nuts of your choice. I haven't tried the butterscotch chips with the banana bread version but the chocolate chips and nuts do well in those as well.

@Pacha my knight PC is openly bi and has had that on her wiki since creation like over 2 years ago I think. I have seen others as well. But there are a lot of PCs played and unplayed on the wiki, so I am not surprised if someone has never run into one, esp if they only check the wiki page when they're in a scene with someone, ect.

My bigs used to love making these when they were little (they could do it themselves pretty much), and this year they're going to teach my youngest. They are great (if a little messy) to make with kids, and are pretty much a variety of rice krispies treats.

Cornflake christmas tree/wreath cookies:

1/2 cup butter
4 cups mini marshmallows
1 t green food coloring, add less if using paste. Or don't and have emo trees/wreaths and blue/green poop for awhile.
1 t vanilla extract
4 cups cornflakes cereal
1 package of cinnamon red hots OR a package of mini m&ms. Or both, plus sprinkles or candy stars or edible glitter, especially if you're giving the children back to someone else at some point.

Microwave marshmallows and butter on high for 2 mins. Stir, then microwave on high for 2 minutes more. (This is with our elderly microwave so if you have a powerful or newer one might be a good idea to keep a close on it).

Add in and mix quickly the coloring and vanilla, then quickly mix in cornflakes. Drop by buttered spoonfuls onto greased wax paper or silicone baking liner in clumps and then shape quickly into wreaths or trees, add candies (we use red hots for the wreaths, m&ms for ornaments on the trees). Once cool, transfer to airtight storage container with a wax paper lining between each layer.

@Arkandel yes, but I'm speaking of the aftereffect on other mushes that those folks play on later, where there isn't an arms race.

The fear/obsession that not being The Best means you are Worthless in any kind of rolled scene is something that dies really hard, in my observation.

Congrats!! I saw such a difference in Eldest's life when he took the step into full social/school transition. And if you do get pushback from a few, sometimes its good to know who you need to watch out for!

And pretty much everyone seems to agree that it is courteous to disclose pacing.

I think it is probably a little foolish to assume pacing slow or fast on web based scenes (I've been part of both and surprised a few times, so I learned to ask before engagement), so it would be kind of cool if there were pace tags for scenes that could be updated since they do shift sometimes! Or a time stamp visible on scenes in progress, ect. So that people can make decisions prior to hopping in before they wait for hours or get run over thinking its a slower scene.

But on a web based scene there really isn't a should that i have seen. But there are better ways to signal what the realistic expectations for that scene are. I found playing ares games that utilize all functions meant I needed to not be quite as attached to pacing and people in the room conventions as I was used to and while I like it in most ways it was a little weirder than I thought it would be especially at first.

There are fundamentalist Christians who reject halloween, christmas, and easter celebrations because of their pagan roots (or papist roots which is sometimes even worse to these people.) Or because you have to show that you're better than everyone else because you pay more attention to the important part like his death and resurrection rather than pansy things like a baby's birthday. Though you can have hell houses, bloody passion plays, ect, at least at some of the churches I went to. People get off like whoa on that stuff.

@faraday yeah I figured it was more complicated than non coder me could fathom. But having an average posting time or last 5 timestamp thing seems complicated even to me.

Mostly I think its on players to get in the habit of making an ooc note that can be updated periodically to disclose pacing. No assumptions.

I am anticipating a horrific Christmas since my parents are visiting for the first time in forever and my mom is being weirder than usual. However, at least this time they are staying in a hotel which means we wont have to purchase a hotel room just in case we need to kick them out, so that has lessened my stress a bit. I think I wasnt supposed to accept them staying at the hotel, since my dad immediately got a little pissy when I said that was great, and the hotel was really cute (it's the in-laws favorite). Oh well.

I don't understand what you mean.

Sounds like you are saying open +sheet game (which I personally love, but think that many people have difficulty with for various reasons), with instant XP awards perhaps (via vote/scene completion/some auto system rather than staff review); what do you mean by fiction ownership? No staff control over how things go as far as MUSH timeline/metaplot/what is or isn't allowed (blowing up stuff, killing off any important NPCs, ect)? I think that would be the hardest of them all, not because staff needs to control everything, but just how would you keep players from doing the same thing at once with very different results, or if people don't read updates. To be fair, sometimes staff don't do that either!

I had a really shitty day today. From finding out as soon as I got to work that a (very distant) colleague stabbed and killed his wife and two small children before killing himself over the weekend (I didn't know him so it feels weird to be upset about it but i am) to dealing with stupid ass gross troll at lunch to now dealing with a meltdown from my psychotic ass mother because you know, I totally suck and ruined her life (in other words she and my dad are fighting about something so she is targeting me as per usual). Pls send virtual daiquiris. It's been a fucking crazy hot noodle day.

The SR muxes and spinoffs of the 90s had oWoD levels of crazy. But they were pretty fun!