Honestly, the people who shit talk others in mu*dom expecting it will never get back to them are idiots. Even if you shittalk only to someone you think doesn't even know who you're talking about or that other person, it always gets back.
Double idiocy if you share logs showing how "wrong" they are and end up showing your own ass instead. LOL.
Mushers are insatiable gossips and there's a very small degree of separation even between genres. How is it that people still don't know this?
Yes and no. Depends greatly where you are in the metro area. Trans and gay people get violently attacked on a regular basis. I recently got into a shouting match (with the guy trying to grab my arm and he threw one of his pens at me) with a bigoted signature gatherer outside the grocery store for our state's very own bathroom bill. My eldest kid has faced verbal, physical, and sexual harassment (to the point we will pay $500 so that they can take the one year of required PE credit as private independent study, it is not emotionally or physically safe for them to be in the locker room).
Yet there is a lot of safety as well, and support in the community.
Keep in mind like most sparsely populated blue collar/rural poor and big boom cities states, while Seattle metro area overrules the rest of the state in national elections, the state is actually very purple (as evidenced by our deadlocked narrow margin state legislature). There is a Bible Belt here sort of just not in the urban areas--but with all the out of state influx comes a change in that as well. I live within a 10 minute drive of about 4 mega churches.
Most of my friends are transplants from other Pacific Northwest states (OR/ID), Mormons, or are ex-pats from another country. It's why I cook great non-westernized Indian food now! :). And I am learning a lot of Somali and Persian cooking styles now too. Also helps that I have four Seattle born and raised kids, which once you see the same families day in/day out for 10 years in the PTA/school district makes it easier.
Really there are enough transplants and friendly people it's not as difficult as it was in the late 90s when I moved out here. At least if you're white or can pass. I am not kidding about the uptick in both subtle and overt crass racism that I've seen, with false resentments at the root cause of it. 
I used to like voice chatting but now pretty much you'd just hear preschoolers and/or teenagers shouting/tantruming in the background. 
As someone who has lived in the Seattle area now for nearly 20 years but who is from the south (Louisiana, West Virginia, and Florida to be exact)...please understand that the Pacific Northwest is very very white supremacist by culture except for a few (and not as much as you'd think) urban pockets. There is a candidate running for my school board who loves to splash the "confederate flag" all over his Facebook, says that BLM is a black jihad against cops, and is extremely trans and homophobic. On a regular basis over the last six months we have had people stabbed, shot, and beaten up for being brown in the presence of "America first!" people.
I have seldom heard the kind of offhand casual bigotry (especially for Native Americans and Latino folks) elsewhere. This is one of the most segregated areas I've ever lived in, which I guess is somewhat understandable since our area retained sundown laws long after they were starting to be legally struck down elsewhere, etc. and has also a long history of legalized housing discrimination and other issues that persisted while attention was directed at other areas of the country, and also suffers from snobby "we can't be racist if we don't have the klan!" thinking.
Seattle is not a racism and homophobia bigotry free zone. Especially in the burbs. And given how the whole puget sound is gentrifying I predict a worsening.
That being said, Seattle is awesome. In geography, the arts, climate, and the people (for the most part). I have lived all over the world and the US and this is the place I will call home for the rest of my life by choice. But we have some very scary and real problems here, under a veneer of assumed progressivism.
Sorry for the rant. Currently I am am activist and primary volunteer with our refugee community and with making our suburban schools safer for LGBT students and students who aren't white. It's an easy sell on the surface but sometimes the huge difficulty in affecting real change is very daunting and wearying. So I guess this is my RL anger at present.
I have seen this system before, where retainers can be built up over time, and participate in downtime/offscreen/supplemental actions. Just want to warn you that the unintended consequences often elbow out lower level PC from play and participation, especially as described above--high level friends build up retainers and then use those objects in a circular fashion with eAch other.
I don't believe that it ever starts out as an intentional way to bypass newbie/lower level inclusion but it often turns into that. So. Something to keep an eye on.
If people can just buy a bunch of retainers to help with investigations if they can't/won't purchase their own investigate higher, doesn't that render obsolete the niche for high investigate pcs?
School is almost out! I love summer and having all my kiddos home, and deciding what we are going to do on the spur of the moment if we want. I love having a ton of teens and preschoolers over, sometimes at the same time.
@ThatOneDude said in RL Anger:
The kids can be sent away for less...
IDK, maybe California is different with the high ticket price plus price of concessions and then huge crowds equals >.<
Sending kids to a friend/relative/parents night out ... priceless?
The going rate for a sitter coming to my house when I had 3 young children was over $20/hr. I had no relatives within a 3 hour drive. I've never paid $80 for 2 movie tickets plus a tub of popcorn.
Now, my house always was the dumping ground of choice when other people needed some time away because honestly, once you have 3, adding more kids to the mix really isn't even noticeable. But the intimidation factor for other people who only had 1 in particular of going from 1-2 to 4-5 was huge. Not that I blame them!
Now our house is the teenage hangout because, I shit you not, now that we have a toddler again, we have an sandbox and kiddie pools/slip and slides and popsicles. I should have taken a pic of the 4 giant ass 13-15 year olds playing with the 3 year old with cars and sand castles the other day. Otoh my babysitting expenses probably will drop to nil once he's completely toilet independent!
Tempting.
My issue mostly is time and stupidity (when it comes time learning new game systems).
And it has been really super nice not having to deal with ooc meanness or drama for the last year.
Maybe our compulsion to dehumanize anyone we find threatening/distasteful/disagreeable and declare them garbage is part of what got us into the current mess we are in.
Having been witness to the peanut butter in elementary school lunches "debate" now for like 10 years...actually, yeah, there are plenty of people who say quite literally "Fuck you and your fatally allergic child, my kid will only eat peanut butter sandwiches, and YOU want him to STARVE!" I have seen it in email, as well as seen it screamed in person.
I love my 40s. No really--they are even better than my 30s, and that was frankly THE best decade of my life so far in every way imaginable!
The one thing I do not love is that I guess something must happen to your inner ears; I used to love roller coasters. Still loved them and scrambler rides and all that stuff in my early 30s when I had the opportunity to go.
Last summer I went on a very tame baby scrambler type ride with all 4 kids and thought I was going to hurl if I tried to open my eyes. I figured that was just part of grumpy old mom stuff.
But today I was teaching my toddler how to pump legs on a swing by swinging in my own seat beside him--and it made me dizzy for like half an hour! Fuck, now I can't SWING without wanting to hurl?!?
At least I still enjoy going down slides... 
HP, you'd be wrong. It does indeed still happen.
While you cannot ask "is your dog a service dog" directly, you can say "only service dogs are allowed at this establishment, and according to <insert rcv number and text> you may only have your animal with you if it is under your control and not presenting a danger to other patrons."
I had to research and talk to the relevant agencies in my state because I had someone bring their filthy, matted, literally stinking obviously having cateracts dog into a children's indoor playground I was working on, have it pee and shit on the floor and snap at a toddler because she let it wander. She screamed it was a service dog and that I could not prevent her from having it as they went out the door. When she returned the next day, I was armed with the facts.
Housing has much more leeway. But if you want to take your animal into a facility where it can be a dangerous environment for that interaction (like a ton of running, screaming, playing babies, toddlers, and preschoolers with no separate holding area), there are some protections for the business.
And I was probably doing her a favor since our county has draconian owner of biting dog always responsible for dog bites to humans statutes. I felt sorry for the neglected dog though.
@Derp said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:
To be clear here: I don't think anyone is attaching me, though I do appreciate @Surreality for saying that. It's refreshing.
To be clear on another thing: Yes, the entire staff of Fate's Harvest is listening. We are aware of the feelings, we're in active discussion on the matter, and we take your concerns seriously.
What we are doubling down on is this: We are not going to remove a player before they have presented themselves as a problem on that game. This goes against the spirit of things that the Game Owner wants to see become canon there. So no amount of outcry is going to get us to magically remove the player before she has done so.
However, that doesn't mean that we aren't doing something. We've already shifted course a bit in light of these things, and continue to discuss ways to try and help handle the situation in a way that protects us and all of our players, both present and potential. While we haven't come to any solid conclusions yet, you're being heard. We just won't take the (in our opinion, drastic) measure of removing a player from the game before they present themselves as a problem. I know that this leaves some people disappointed, but that's just the way it is.
And on that note: We invite anyone who sees something shady going on to let us know. Staff can't be everywhere all the time, as players have pointed out, but the players also have to communicate with the staff if something suspicious is going down (beyond 'this person is present'). If you see something, say something. Preferably with some kind of log so that we can see it too.
One interesting thing about the game: logging is pretty heavy on most players' to-do lists. If you want to do more than the standard one xp a week, logs must be submitted. Pretty much everyone is aware of that, and scenes get logged pretty diligently, so logging is already in our nature. And we do read them.
So, as constructively as possible: We know. We hear you. We'll take action if it even starts to look like a problem. But so far, it doesn't look anything like that. If that changes, we'll be on it. Trust.
You might want to clean this up a bit and post it to your ad thread. This is an excellent, actual response.
I have not had to cite off game info on the few occasions I have involved staff in someone else's assholery or unwelcome behavior. It always comes out in game eventually. Now there may have been and often is many off game incidents as well, that I can cite as background info.
But assholes determined to be assholes can't help but be themselves. And really some people just are bound and determined to prove without a doubt they're an ass.
If a person shows me certain ooc characteristics of themselves (misogyny, racism, bigotry against the lgbtq community, treating me like shit) then yeah I will limit my involvement with them--because if I know about it it's because they are fine with making gross comments oocly in front of me. In skype, on pub channel, in pages, etc.
I have cut people out or declined to do things with them on games before. It's my experience that toxic people really cannot hide their behavior for long. It will slip out on @mail or fb messenger or skype or whatever.
I don't feel particularly bad about it, since if they don't want me to know they're a freak or bigot then they should've kept their crazy under wraps better.
I do not stalk, wiki or otherwise, anyone because I think that's stupid. And those folks always show their ass eventually on their own. I don't need or want to pull down people's drawers until I find one. 
Rationally or irrationally I think most people have at least one or two people that are insta-NOPE people where they no longer feel ooc comfortable if they're there.
She is not one of mine. But as someone who has immediately vacated once I was aware that someone on my list was on a game, I can't really judge the folks that need to remove themselves either.
This is why when I was an active player I would rarely track people's alts (also I am crap for remembering alts in the first place). And if it was let slip or I became aware of their tells I would quietly exit. There are some people oocly that just kill my desire oocly to be part of the game. I am sure I'm on a list or two myself. It is what it is.
I do not like when people scream at staff and saying "it's them or me!" I think the person screaming that should be given the boot. You own your choice to stay or go, staff owns their choices about who is and isn't allowed to play.
@Ataru Possibly! I am not super familiar with Dune except for the 80s movie and game wikis. But I do very much enjoy what I have seen!
