Posts made by mietze

I think you might be surprised to find out how many people on the forum are on the spectrum, or have a close relationship with someone that does.

It still does not mean that folks will not be shown the door for inappropriate behavior.

You can have empathy for someone's struggle or having been there yourself, and still show them the door when their behavior gets to the point it is detrimental to others on your game or more than you can handle.

As I have said it isn't fair. But it also is not kind to tell people that they should expect accommodations from places that are extremely unlikely to give them.

Is there any reason why you do not organized a game that can accommodate behavioral issues to give those that cannot or will not learn to moderate them, perhaps with more concrete and published boundaries, a mu they can play on that where behavior won't be a stumbling block? Seems like you are passionate about the subject, have ideas on how others should do this, and seem willing to tolerate a lot of behavior others wouldn't. Why don't you step up? Maybe if you showed others it could be done and how, people might be willing to try your strategies once they see it in action and working.

Because it is also the case that many people do try, but have limited success, especially when the behaviors involved are lashing out, or extreme emotional distress or neediness coupled with angry lashing out when someone puts down a boundary.

Having just enough energy to get the final stuff crafted for a project I've been working towards for a long time now. It's kind of silly in the grand scope of things, but it's led to a lot of character growth, interesting RP (albeit a long absence for the last two month), and I think I'll feel pretty proud when it's done, and I think there will be a few folks who really enjoy it. It's nice to do stuff even if I'm still limited greatly in my actual on grid playtime right now.

This thread is in constructive right now, so please try to keep it from going too far into just insults.

Also, I am thinking the topic of how to avoid banning in general due to behavior is porbably not topical to this thread. I'm in the middle of cooking dinner right now but it might get split off/moved.

@A-B I am glad to hear that you're going to respect an ask here of you not contacting them. Unfortunately some people who use other platforms to make contact with people after they've been banned do /not/ respect that.

I think in the future if someone is not responding to you, it's better to leave them alone, rather than making it seem like you're chasing them down, which is nearly always going to make someone defensive, especially if your last contact was not a pleasant one and they had to remove you from somewhere.

No one owes you a private message back, even if you would very much like one. And if you rush it, the likelihood of an outcome in your favor decreases.

And yes, I am aware that it's not fair for people who do not recognize social cues and who have a tendency towards behaviors that make others uncomfortable do not get allowances for that on many games. If things were fair there would be mitigations perhaps that would give some people allowances for these types of behavior if they are something that they can't control, or perhaps there might be ways that that behavior could be totally muted so it doesn't affect anyone else but they could still play ICly.

There's not a lot of places though that are going to do that, or where it's possible to do that, though some staff and games are more able to do a lot of trellising and handholding than others in that regard.

There's not an easy answer. You could that the strategy of limiting your use of anything that gets you into trouble. (Public channel, OOC communication, ect) Unfortunately that's difficult to do on a lot of places but you could try that. If you can find someone who is willing to help set boundaries and be willing to work with you so that you can double check with them or they have your permission to page you with a "you're going too far/being inappropriate", then that might work, but that also is a tall order. But I think particularly now with the stress levels of everyone so high, there's less of that to go around.

But learning to choose to respect staff or a player telling you "stop with X behavior" can really help. It is easier said than done if it's something you struggle with, but it also isn't something you can force other people to help you with.

When someone tells you that you are unwelcome in one space to the point you are forcibly removed from it, it really is never a good idea to try to get around that by utilizing another platform to try to continue to engage with them. If you unwisely attempt to engage with them elsewhere, rather than expecting them to be polite "in public" and not disclose why they didn't want contact with you, you should probably expect that they may feel creeped out and they may react with public disclosure and ask you to leave them alone there as well.

If you are banned, leave the people who banned you alone.

And if anyone is receiving unwelcome messages from someone that they've asked to leave them alone here, please let any moderator know. And to anyone who thinks it's a good idea to argue with someone privately here after they have asked you to not contact them personally, if you do that you're probably going to get banned here too.

Adding a warning to those who might start travelers--there are two episodes that involve a pandemic that might be kinda triggering. I had to keep looking back to when this was made (though I do not think the modeling for how that would affect things was any secret and I'm sure that other shows have done a bang up job of it too, it just was firmly in the speculative realm for me then, or reading about them elsewhere).

Because of events in my own life now I found it super difficult to sleep this week and a big increase in nightmares for a few days when we binge watched through those episodes this weekend! But honestly still worth the discomfort, I thought I'd give a heads up though.

Hearing my 6 year old talk/play like the child character in a speculative fiction novel. Especially when it's a little creepy and I'm not sure where get got certain phrasing. We do not really have news or other media on in the house, but I think he might be getting it from the times I come home and crash out while trying to listen to the state briefings (so they are playing in the background on my phone while I am dozing on the couch.) I kind of wonder if this weird discomfort was what plague parents would have felt watching their kids play ring around a rosy if the story about that there's origin is true (which iirc is not actually supported by a lot of evidence).

@surreality they are really good crispy and roasted, too.

The May the 4th hot dogs wrapped in crescent dough that I made with the 6 year old looked like either uncut penises OR the full package depending on what angle you were looking at, but the fam wolfed them down anyway. We also yoda in a blender (homemade green mint chocolate chip milkshakes)

I am enjoying Travelers. It is a little different from most time travel stuff I've watched in that you do not have the characters skipping back and forth on screen (I do not think my stress flatlined brain could handle something similar to Dark right now for example).

I think there is a blind singular focus aspect to white knighting vs speaking up too. This could apply to a singular individual person that should be rescued at all costs, regardless of their behavior. It could be rushing to do battle on behalf of a specific group without bothering to read the context of a specific discussion. I would say that the most frequent example of that would be when some woke non-category bystander person starts tone policing the people they are purporting to champion, and look as if they are more concerned with appearing like a defender including lecturing people in that group vs listening to what they have to say.

I think there are people who get off on doing those things, but I think usually (except for the specific individual attached people) it just means that they are not capable or willing to look at the broader perspective, and a lot of people who get labeled that frequently in my observation are usually quite stubborn and unable to really come up for air once they have sunk their teeth into something.

It is one thing to speak up/out, but it is another to do so while being blind to context. I think that is where people get into trouble, whether it is blindly defending someone who has a history of terrible behavior, or people who end up saying shit like "if you are mean to someone who used a slur then you are just as bad, and it's your fault if they become more racist/antisemitic/whathaveyou."

Usually I think white knighting/virtue signaling is speaking more to the self-centered or self-promotional appearance of that person's behavior than it is about the fact that they spoke up at all. Sometimes people throw that out there to try to shut someone speaking up down, but I think usually it's worth it to slow down, reread or regroup, and see if there's something that was missed in the broader context that got trampled over in the rush to come out swinging as to why people are left with that impression.

Not sure what group (but I will try to find out when I have bandwidth this weekend) went around and put "Class of 2020, we love you" with the high school logo printed yard signs in the seniors' yards or at their apartment doors sometime this morning/afternoon.

I saw the sign when I came home from work and needed to have a tearful moment in the car before coming in. That plus a surprise package of new college gear (sweats plus hoodie plus shirt) from us and some surprise cash from grandparents made my oldest smile bigger than I've seen in months.

I have been so mentally exhausted when I am home and burnt out I was worried about being able to do special things like that when I'd seen them pop up for other schools, but someone in the community made it happen. My eldest has been pretty sad as the reality of prom/senior breakfast, grad party, and graduation being cancelled has hit in the last few weeks.

It was nice to have a reprieve, today.

I am mentally exhausted, pretty depressed, very stressed out and oh yay one of my coworkers in our 4 person office just went home after exhibiting signs of coronavirus infection. She has been the one meeting with people inside the building one at a time. Now it is a matter of when she can get tested/how long it takes, but fucking yikes.

For awhile we had a reprieve at work from having nearly all calls be from inconsolable people that we could not help. Now tomorrow it is back to that, I'm trying to gird up but really I just feel my heart breaking again.

Couldn't catch it fast enough to screenshot, but my god the true spirit of AMERICA is flowing freely in the comments section of my governor's press conference today (announcing that all WA state K12 schools will be closed through end of the year, except for online distance learning).

My favorite comment from the peanut gallery on FB: "Did you know that the British president Boris Yeltsin has coronavirus now?"

My god if that is not stereotypically American now...

Today was a bad day. Too many people in tears on the phone needing help that we cannot give them yet because the feds have not come up with the guidelines or system yet while promoting it. Not hearing from my sweet elderly client who hasn't called for 2 days and sounded scratchy voice the last time she did. A client in tears at the drive thru. Just a lot of little things hitting and tugging at me, like the birthday party box of favors and decorations from the canceled party for the 6 year old, the senior trying to not show he is bummed about no graduation, no prom, no senior party, maybe even no moving into the dorms this fall.

Every morning hearing the daily report on closures and colleagues out sick. Knowing a colleague in my office has been very sick the last 2 days and is fighting for testing. being a bit of an extrovert and getting choked up how long it's been since I got to hug any of my friends. Seeing the teens put on a brave face while being nervous. Learning about more deaths of clients/their family members. Feeling my chest tighten and feeling fear until the allergy med and the inhaler makes it go completely away (stupid fucking trees).

I dunno. It's been a very bad day with a lot of things snowballing and I will be fine tomorrow, but I am just super fatigued.

Hubby has greatly enjoyed the 3 times a week Kindergarten zoom meetings with a very non-techie inclined teacher. And apparently our silly cuddly floppy cat has had a starring role in a lot of the teens' zoom meetings (along with occasional guest appareances by the Kindergartener if he sneaks down to the teen lair while hubby has to do some work.

@Ganymede I am not so sure about that. We certainly are not there yet. A lot of things have changed, not just economics. And we have endure far worse devastation locally that did not involve wide scale riots, protests, and bloodshed (and I am pretty sure that is what is going to need to happen, or an actual credible threat of it, like in FDR's time. That stuff did not get passed out of benevolence.)

Do I hope that people look at things and look to future prevention? Yes. Am I hopeful, no. mostly because what people are experiencing now is fear and isolation. When people really are starting to be massively displaced, starving, cannot afford necessities like power, cell phone service, ect then I think maybe. But this has happened before in local areas and...things did not significantly change for the better and often got worse for the most vulnerable.

A lot of people are having all kinds of fantasies about this on all sides of the equation but it seems like a super shitty time that I hope that we actually do not see come to pass, if for no other reason than with very few exceptions everyone always seems to get to end result super bad wrong a few times.