I am at work and so I cannot properly moderate what's going on. Having been made aware of the picture posted, I have put a temp ban on @Carex until another mod can take a look. Unfortunately i cannot move the picture post in question for which I apologize, hopefully one of the admin will remove it soon or move it to the admin area .
Sorry guys. I am limited in what I can do right now due to being at work and will not be home for several hours.
And also:
For those of us who are having to navigate parenting while also coming from a background of abuse and trauma, there are more and more therapists trained in how to help with that also. Because a lot of your instincts from childhood may be very dangerous or ineffective, and nobody is ever going to trigger rage like your children can. If your own attachment was fucked up, it can create a lot of internal emotions as you are providing for your kids what you yourself never received. Some people can tough it out.
But honestly, investing in trauma/attachment focused therapy for myself during each prenatal/postnatal (I get severe depression in pregnancy, not postpartum) and tween/teen period has kept me from making too many destructive mistakes, or at least helped me talk to/apologize/keep the door open for my children. I highly recommend it. Not being shy about getting therapy when needed has helped my kids who felt that they need it at certain parts of their lives have the language and know how of how to ask for help too.
Again. Not a magic formula. No guarantees. But you're never a failure as a parent for needing to ask for help in getting your shit together as you are parenting, IMO. It can be an important family safety thing to do just that.
Putting in boundaries around internet use and meetups (regardless of where the people are from), as well as expecting behavior standards of one's adolescent children is not to protect their innocence, it is part of helping them gain the skills needed to become functional adults. At least it is for me.
You MUST have these conversations with your kids, IMO, if you do not want to be negligent. Maybe the parents of people 30-50 currently could claim some degree of ignorance but I do not think anyone with little kids NOW can.
You can have comprehensive sexuality education (it starts at home but I also highly recommend the Our Whole Lives/OWL sexuality education that is usually put on by UU or UCC churches, it's a developmentally appropriate curriculum that starts in groups for K/1, again in late elementary school, again in jr high, again in HS and theres adult discussion groups as well), be committed to being open and affirming and /still/ have rules.
For our family (no kind of special issues for us as far as being on the spectrum or severe mental illness) that has meant an unfolding process of release of responsibility from parent to the child throughout their childhood and adolescence. On the outside it probably looks to tiger moms and helicopter dads like we are on the permissive end (my teens do not have curfews, they are allowed to travel in and out if the big city on their bus cards even if we arent there and are expected to utilize public transportation on their own during the day unless it's an emergency, they all now have their own devices that we dont put trackers on). But what they do not see is the rules/process to get there, the fact that nobody was allowed to have smart phones until high school (eldest had one briefly in jr high but repeatedly broke rules so it was taken away and replaced with a texting phone until we all agreed he was ready to try again--in high school). None of the kids had computers in their rooms until they were juniors in high school (and they bought them themselves, just like they pay monthly for their cell phone line).
My kids have gone to different cons since they were around 11-12; this is the first year I will not be on site as a condition of their going because they are vets and they will be 18 and 17, but I have been invited to go anyway (probably so I can be mom-bag-of-holding for cosplay shit) and may go anyway (they've offered to buy my badge).
My kids usually tell me things relatively soon. Sometimes I have to pry it out of them. Lots of their friends tell me things. We have spent many hours helping our kids help their friends (and sometimes had to contact other parents, which made our kid/s mad but they later understood why).
Shit still happens though. People do not understand what it is like to drop your trans teen off at a friend's house that you dont know well and then stress vomit all the way home because it happens to be the same day that you hear about a trans teen being lured by "friends" to come over and then is jumped, raped, and/or murdered. Even with all our safeguards we still have had to walk a child through/help them cope/get help to cope with them getting doxxed and getting death and rape threats; and I am sure it will not be the last time no matter how conscientious they are, because none of my kids is interested in walling off from interacting with people and living in a bunker.
There's plenty of people from shit backgrounds and awful parents that dodge bullets and turn out to be mostly functional. There's plenty of people who end up being shitty even though they come from pretty normal to pretty good home environments and people that care for them. There is no magic formula.
You do the best you can for each kid. You try to encourage them to do the best they can for themselves and others. Hopefully your relationship will be strong enough to deal with awkwardness and anger from time to time, since I doubt it is possible to escape that in any relationship.
I know I was a lot better parent before I actually had to start doing it. It never hurts to start thinking about this stuff, though. And I think community is very important as well.
It will be 19 years married for us this spring, together for 21. 
First met on Shadowrun Seattle about 25 years ago?
My kids still have online expectations and rules though, and we talk about safety and best practices frequently. I do not doubt they'll meet some of their partners online though. I see that more and more (almost as normal as meeting someone at a bar) amongst other moms I talk to (definitely was NOT the case 20 years ago!). Except for mostly I meet people at the PTA or other parent groups who met on MMOs and online dating apps rather than text based RPGs, they do not bat an eye at my story.
@Carex Next time "try to explain" without personal attacks, if that is your motive. Or at least try to remember where the thread is that you are posting in.
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 can thank mushing for making me a very aware parent when it comes to online stuff, and going to conventions from 12+ for making me aware of con safety as well.
I used to find it pretty hard to have discussions with other parents to get them to take it seriously, but thankfully that really seems to be changing in the past few years.
Harassment and grooming happens a lot in support chats/boards too. While my kids have done a really good job being savvy in regards to roleplaying and gaming (they do not mush, but it's not like some of the same issues don't come up in alternative formats), one of my kids got majorly harassed privately from a person in a support group that he thought was for trans teens (and most of the people were probably genuine). Death and rape threats, ect. Luckily he involved us almost immediately, but unfortunately you can't really unsee when you've been subjected to that kind of thing.
Honestly, I also think that people can keep this kind of thing in mind when they look down their noses at people who get caught up in harassment and threats and sexual pressure from people they meet on MUSHing too. I know that some of those same threats (I'll post our conversations to your FB page/all over discord if you don't send me pictures) are leveled against people and it's very scary, even if they are pretty sure it's a bluff.
@Pandora agreed. The phrase "adult more" can be really super ugly thrown out in certain contexts.
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.
I like that it normalizes (without shaming) seeking help from staff when the parties can't resolve a dispute to their satisfaction on their own. While I would never want to go back to timestop objects and 100 percent staff arbitration, sometimes I wish there wasn't quite as much stigma attached to calling in someone. +judge was pretty nice in many ways.
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.
You would be surprised at how much people will come after you first TS and relationship play when you play an elderly pc.
Its almost always because they cant be bothered to look or read, but.
That being said I have had PCs that would totally pick a date being verbally trounced and enjoying the wit of an Olenna Tyrell PC over a naked lap dance from the hottest hott Instagram model 20something ninja/phd/warrior PC, so maybe I'm just biased.
Someone did make a remark to me that superhero places were even more sex crazed than WoD, though so I mean I can see why maybe those pcs don't get played.
But come on. Alfred would get laid more often than batman probably. 
@Arkandel I do not think that an automated cg that spits a ton of people out onto the grid quickly solves the problem and may in fact exacerbate it especially on an original themed game where there may need to be some front in quality control.
But yes, you will lose some people (possibly very loudly) if you do not adhere to their timetables. I'm not sure that I think this is a bad thing because there's always going to be some bottleneck. "OMFG approval took 4-7 days even though there were 75 applications!" Easily evolved into other time crunch angst.
I think if you do not have any chill or patience, it is better to wait to app in for a few weeks and let the staff work out the kinks. Especially if you do not plan on apping in/going for a high mucketymuck on a place where it is first come first served.
I think you should prepare for a huge influx and rush at the beginning, and then just do the best you can to choke down drinking from the firehose until a good number of people will wander away in the first few months, and then you'll know what your base size is more realistically. This surge can be a real gamekiller/burnout machine if you are not mentally prepared for how you will deal.
Because I do absolutely believe you will have a huge rush at the beginning at the very least!
My board game and other crews don't drink as much anymore, so I don't get to make cocktails very often. 
But here are my two favorites for the season (and they're both sweet as fuck, though):
Coquito
1 can evaporated milk
1 1/2 cups white rum (though I think just about any tastes pretty good in it)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon plus dusting for serving
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups coconut cream (one big can or 2ish smaller ones)
cinnamon sticks for garnish
You can lessen the rum if you don't want a warm kick.
Blend/wisk everything together, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (I think it's better chilled at least overnight). Probably you want to start with a SMALL glass first. And you can double/triple the recipe really easily as well as experiment with the ratios.
North Pole Cocktail
Found this recipe a few years ago and uh...accidentally got my youngest kiddo's toddler teacher drunk off her ass at an adults only Christmas party, if you like gingerbread flavor they go down really quick. Probably it'd taste really good even without the molasses but I've only made it with it in there.
4 oz vodka
2+ oz kahlua
4 Tbsp chocolate syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp molasses
1/8 tsp ginger
1/2 cup heavy cream
whipped cream, crushed peppermint candies, and crushed gingerbread cookies for garnish.
In a cocktail shaker combine vodka, kahlua, chocolate, vanilla, molasses and ginger, shake until well combined. Add ice and shake again. Strain into 4 glasses. Top off each glass with heavy cream. Dollop with whipped cream and use crushed peppermint candies and/or cookies as garnish.
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.
After being ovenless since the week before thanksgiving (luckily this range has been a fucking piece of shit from day one so I have a plug in turkey roaster AND a countertop monster toaster oven along with various other work around appliances so Thanksgiving was not a bust) my new oven is here and being installed today!!!
Someone taught my 5 year old to say "Stop!! Hammer time!" So for shits and giggles I showed him the original video of the song. And he wanted to watch it over and over and now says he wants "big pants" like MC Hammer and keeps running back and forth trying to do it sideways and singing "Ohhhh ohhhhh ohhhhh" like the middle of the song. :P. I am sure I will be annoyed by it in the next hours but right now he's pretty cute.
It really does not make you a bad person if you need to back away for a bit (though certainly they might think so!) I have a lot of people that I love/care for, that are good people at heart (I tend to think most people are) but who are currently or have engaged in behaviors either in my presence or directed towards me that meant I needed to step away or disengage or put up boundaries that meant they needed to go find other people to rely on. Nobody needs to be "bad" for that happening, just relationships and how much you can put into them change over time.
I always kind of expect people to be deep into the shit and fighting with each other this time of year in particular, just because it's the holiday season which can bring out a lot of horrible stuff for people. Still sucks that you are having to deal with with drama you dont wanna though.