Posts made by mietze

@Sunny I'm right there with you. I'm sorry that you are there though, because it's a very bad place to be.

Athlete A. It's on Netflix. Not an easy watch, but an extremely compelling documentary, especially if you follow or have participated in competative gymnastics. Though it mostly revolves around Maggie Nichols' complaint against Larry Nassar to USA Gymnastics, as well as Rachel Denhollander and the Indy Stars amazing journalism, the big picture view is also there and I think really important for consumers of elite gymnastics to be aware of.

@Cupcake luckily I pick my own, and will. It is pretty exhausting though and bringing back some medical trauma that has blindsided me a bit emotionally. (I had some medical care negligence many years ago that had some significant health impacts to me as well as almost leading to the death of one of my newborn twins, took about 5 years of intense therapy to be able to deal with the PTSD around that. This is a VERY different situation and nowhere near as severe, it's rather mundane and run of the mill for people who are fat, really,but for some reason it is triggering those emotions/memories like whoa. I'm thinking because of all the external unrelated stress.)

I am feeling vulnerable. I loathe feeling vulnerable. But I know it will pass.

As much as I would love to play on a place where erotic RP was not something that one had to worry about being shamed about (as long as it was consensual between the parties involved or witnessing, meaning that people would have to opt in to be part of the storyline even if they were not involved in the sexytimes directly), I just am not sure that's possible.

And yet, you can find pockets of safe playgroups on any game for just about any content matter, erotic or otherwise.

But I think people definitely fear being judged for what kind of play thet like, and people are definitely judgy of others even about the most inconsequential things, so.

I never played on any of the Star Trek games but I've played several different genres of space-theme/travel games and here are some of the issues I've noticed with keeping them staffed/focused:

*Having adequate staff or player storytellers to really allow for exploration/small-crew (by PC, not necessarily the actual size of vessel/crew) stories. Otherwise people come expecting that kind of play and when they don't get it and don't bring their own dedicated player STer team the allure of station play or planet-based cantina play fades fast and leads to a lot of frustration/jealous resource guarding.

*On military focused games just the sheer amount of people who either don't really get military basic play knowledge or conversely are extremely anal about everything being played "right" according to their own expertise (complicated by the fact that there are a ton of people who lie like hell about their military service). There can be a difficult balance to strike between that, how fun it is/isn't for people to write and publish reports, bottlenecking with continuous idling/changeover of command pcs, ect.

*I also think that Star Trek and Star Wars (more the latter than the former) can sometimes fall into the SO many things to do/focus on that the overall game can be difficult to stay focused on what the runners/staff had started out doing.

I mean these are pretty generic issues that can happen with ANY genre of game, but I've noticed that esp. with spacecapades games that when any of that slows down the play dries up really super fast, and for whatever reason, people kind of just expect more Staff-driven storytelling so they can do the exploring/war scenes/away missions.

I feel you. I think you might have a lot of company really, even if we all express it differently (or similarly).

Finding out the specialist you went to was so focused on talking to you about a health issue that was actually not the reason why you went there meant that they declined to mention some significant findings and then instead of calling you just added it to your health record as if it were discussed.

My primary doctor obviously has been monitoring things to messaged me to find out how things were going and referencing the finding. That's how I found out and saw the addition to my record.

I was already planning on communicating with the specialist's office about some concerns I had with the way I was treated, but this just ironically has me feeling pretty depressed and like it's not worth the time to do so, and honestly I worry about retaliation.

So I guess it's looking for a new doctor/medical group, though I really like my primary care doc, who is wonderful. I'm not sure I feel safe with the specialist group in this medical group though.

And boy does it really give me a good view of how likely I am to get adequate treatment for covid if things get hairy.

Downer day for me.

My first female role model was my 7th grade girl scout leader, Dolly. Dolly worked in the bomb shop on base. Her husband was the dependent, not her. She took us primitive camping and canoeing with her hubby's boy scout troop. She took us to the rifle range to play with m16s. We did the obstacle courses with rubber rifles too. Luckily my parents were extremely inattentive at that time, so she was the first non religious non fake adult woman in my life who had the time to listen and see me.

That was followed up by one of the chaplain's wives and mom of one of my best friends the next base we were stationed. They were Episcopalian (an oddity in a sea of conservative baptists and shit like that). Mrs. Gilman wore her hair buzz cut short. She put a lot of challenging books in my hands and discussed them with me (and her daughters) so I wasn't just an isolated compulsive reader working my way through the base library. On base you could apply for permission to paint your house a different color but weren't supposed to especially as an officer'sfamily. Mrs Gilman did and we painted their house that summer /red/ in a sea of past gray and barf green. She argued with her husband at the dinner table. She was very very pushy on getting a college degree. Chaplain Gilman was the cook.

These two women are probably the only reason why I'm still alive since it took me awhile to escape my religion and the spousal abuse it set me up for in my first go around of marriage (yes they both knew this, but both are gone now).

I really never had a fictional character that held a candle to them. I've tried in my RL with different volunteer and vocational roles though to be someone that sees who needs to be seen but I'll never hold a candle to them either!

My youngest child came home with a pilgrims and Indians themes project in kindergarten this year school year in WA state. Which was horrifying to me on many levels.

Public school instruction in the US is extremely fractured, not only state by state but district by district and school by school. (My older kids' elementary school would have NEVER done that, and also at the time was the main site for a native american students and families group for the district, and those parents very generously shared resources with the teachers, students, and other families about PacNW history and current culture!!)

My teenagers were not taught about the Japanese detention camps in school until /9th grade/. My kids knew about it because we are part Japanese by heritage and there's a lot of opportunities to learn about it outside of school here if you know where to look, and we also always took advantage of the Japanese american cultural events put on by the community. Including talks by survivors! None of their schools ever invited these people to come and speak, even though there is a very very local connection. In high school in the 90s this was never taught (I wasn't in WA state though) not even in AP history. I only learned about it because I've always been a compulsive overreader.

Growing up mostly in southern and midwestern schools, we did not have MLK day, we had Lee-Jefferson-King Day (in that order, I shit you not) and I never received any sort of education in the civil rights movement (including in AP history or the advances history classes that didnt teach to a for profit test), aside from my own personal interest. Even though there were historical resources right in those cities where I lived that could have been utilized by the schools.

I did get to tour a plantation house in the 8th grade though.

I hope things are less stupid elsewhere than they are here. For fucks sake, even just looking at the narrow band of colonization to modern focusing solely on things involving white people the US has so little history to do (as opposed to, say, England, for example) you would think we could at least do that competently, but I do not think we manage usually. It's gross.

So I'm not surprised that many Americans in particular are just ignorant and fall back on fictional media and what they "see".

Scallops, angel food cake, classic fondue, Mashed potatoes (and baked potatoes but I grant that the crispy skin of the baked potato is the best part), vanilla or coconut ice cream, divinity, meringues, coconut sticky rice, congee, jicama with like a little lime juice squirted on it...

She had skin like a tender scallop?
Her complexion was as pale as a big bowl of congee before anyone put the toppings on...

Doesn't super have a nice ring to it though.

His cheeks were as robust and smooth and tender as a porkbun!

I think my fever just broke and I'm actually feeling hungry again, just in time for getting a birthday dinner tonight! (Local yummy mom and pop restaurant ramen + takoyaki, picked up by hubby) and I found out I'm covid19 negative.

My big floofcat usually prefers hubby, but she has been draping all over me today snoring and drooling and kneading and purring and trilling at me when I try to get up. Apparently The Queen has decided I should get more rest today.

It's been kinda a scary crappy day but while I was waiting in my car for an appt my favoritest voracious predator (a ladybug) flew in and landed on me and hung out until it was time for me to go in.

That being said, just having it on your wiki does not mean that all players do not assume the PC is straight. I had to have the conversation many times with Everyone's Favorite Creeper that even if he tried to create/get with my knight marriage wise it would never be monogamous because she was always going to be romantically involved with other women, and would expect that he not rely on her for romance like ever before he got it through his skull and left me alone about that finally.

But yeah with one exception all of her romantic and sexy RP has been with other women PCs. And I know plenty of other PCs who are the same, as far as same gender romance focused.

@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.

Now that I think about it you see it a lot on channels too. I do not see that as much anymore regardless, but that may be because I just tend to more channels a lot.

@GreenFlashlight yeah, I see it far far more with hetero couples, tbh,on every game I've played. I mean I've seen it with others too, but not nearly as often.

You say that. But for many people it is a stretch. Some people in my life seem to believe that my kid having basic human rights or the ability to express their gender is antithetical to their religion and is destroying our country. They make an exception for my kid in their heart perhaps but they are very vocal about wanting laws to exclude "people like that."

I just can't take it anymore.

But its not always about big things like that. There are others in my life that I have backed away from (and again, have they noticed, I doubt it, because they're not thinking of me or anything I might have said over the years, right now it's more important to them to exclude or deny my experience rather than acknowledge it, I think probably because that is how THEY are dealing with their own uncertainty or anger.) We agree on 98+ percent of things but I can no longer have the stress of them screaming that what I do/have done is "useless" or "doesn't matter" or is just "helping the corrupt evil people who are all the same no matter what." They simply are not interested in my perspective or the smaller/local stuff that is having a large impact in my community, because expressing their rage and disdain for the whole national group is more important. They really do not care how that might feel to me. They have their priorities.

It doesnt mean that I care for them less, but when someone calls you evil and just as bad as the othe evil people but oh no I wasnt talking about you personally, but why can't you pure like me, at this time in my life similarly I just cannot. It hurts, its endlessly frustrating, it makes me want to lash out right back in a similar way, which doesn't solve anything and I dont get off on it like they sure seem to. I think there are people like that in every advocacy group or viewpoint.

But I am so fucking tired and am doing the best I can to survive my own sadness and despair that I really sometimes can't take on yet another person who needs to sharpen their claws on me. Even though we agree on most things, sometimes the things that we do not, while minor and especially in impersonal conversations are so...rigid, I guess, that it really is not worth talking about because i am tired of them talking down to me, even when i am sure it is not intentional.

I am tired. So I just back off/mute/hide notifications until I can't, and then I distance. I no longer engage.

I think a lot of people are very tired, especially when we are dealing with pandemic disruptions on top of all of that.

I think it is great if you never have to distance yourself from anyone you disagree with. For swaths of my life off and on I have been able to do the same, and I still have some pretty wild diversity in my friends and the people I love. I do think there is a large number of people though that are just /done/ and tired right now though. I'm not really expecting anyone to understand it who doesnt feel it, but I think it's a thing.

@Groth honestly I find myself doing that more and more because I am fucking exhausted after years of trying to maintain relationships with people who want to see people like my kid rounded up and expelled from the country or worse, who are so very quick to scream and tantrum over anything different than what they want to deal with while proclaiming other people snowflakes, ect.

I am exhausted. I am tired of people whining but of course I wasnt talking about your family when they post articles and quotes saying that people like my family/kid are scum of the earth and a danger to society.

It is a very stressful time right now and I think many people have just hit their limit.

At this point in my life, I have to cut down on the external stressors one way or the other, and eliminating people from my active life who gleefully wish harm upon people like me/my family is a simple way.

It doesn't mean that I don't love them.

It doesn't mean I wish THEM harm.

But I am exhausted after years of trying to get them to concede my and my kid's humanity, and they do not want to. Pretty sure none of those people miss me walking away from them, or even notice, since they get more jollies from the people who encourage their way of thinking.

And if it is someone I do not know or have a significant relationship I have to pick and choose what I expend my energy on just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I dont really care if people agree or not at this point, but I do not have an obligation to engage with people who are not being mindful of me.

@HelloProject it's understandable! It may kind of make things disorienting (that's not the right word really but it's what comes to mind) for awhile when you have had unwelcome and unsolicited contact like that from someone who has already crossed boundaries before. For me at least there were several cycles of emotion before I could really process, but everyone is different. I am really glad you found support here too.