Posts made by mietze

Owning your shit and apologizing genuinely (hint: this does not involve an I'm sorry but/I'm sorry you feel that way/I'm sorry that my attempt to be awesome just wasn't what you wanted/I'm sorry I'm such a horrible catastrophe who need to go eat worms) as well as, shutting the fuck up when you're asked to do so at the time goes a long way to settle/rebuild relationships.

Though depending upon the offense and what happened it doesn't always salvage your participation.

I think it's fine to disagree or whatever, but honestly it sounds like you just did not listen when told to stop. Stop means stop. If you cannot it's best to walk. For the night/week/permanently/whatever.

Yes, even if you thought you were tirelessly working to improve your family/group/the game/whatever. It's not fair sometimes, and some folks are better than others at recovery. I think a lot of us mushers have difficulties with knowing when to back off or change tone, ect. But when you are given explicit direction, just...I don't know. If you truly want to stay on a play just bite your tongue and do it, and give it some time to see if you still want to play, with that restriction, once you're not in the moment.

And there is never, ever a good reason to go off on a channel, especially a public one, ever. Even if it's about game stuff like systems and stats. Just don't do that unless you're on the Rules Lawyer channel with other people who love that stuff (there's always a few, keep it to there so you have fun without stressing everyone else out.)

But really. Sometimes even when your dander is up and you're about to saddle up that tall horse, especially if it's with staff on their game--it's wiser to just shut up.

@Kireek

If someone, ANYONE, but especially a lead staffer /tells you to stop talking about something like support that you're not supposed to be talking about anyway/ then you are courting trouble by continuing on.

Yes. Even if all the other boys and girls are doing it or someone else did it first.

If you are told to shut up about something and you want to stay on the game, STFU. If you don't want to stay on the game and/or it's more important to you to keep pushing it, don't act all omg surprised when you are (more politely than is usual in this case!) shown the door.

I commend the staff for their decision. Even in this thread of "oh I have NO idea why except for oh maybe a, b, c, d, e, f, g...I mean omg whatever did I do to deserve this," you don't appear to be a player that's a good fit for a small staff that doesn't have time to burn micromanaging behavior.

Thank god they decided not to. This is the type of self-centered and careless behavior that I wish more places came down on, it'd be nice to see it extinguished a bit more in the community.

We have had Diplomacy at game night before but everyone was too drunk or stuffed with food to break it out. it'll happen eventually!

Looks neat!

True. But the same thing could be said for a lot of women too. There are some awesome sex ed things out there, but I would say many young folks don't have access to them. I have met many more women who are more squicked out at experimenting to find out what they like/don't like by themselves/with another than I have men. It could just be the bias in my upbringing here, but honestly--I could see more guys being interested in the 3D printing of the clitoris (whether they admit it or not) than women. Though I think (I hope) that's changing too.

I think it is cool though, that models are being used. I like to imagine that maybe it's more useful than the fake boob with the marble in it that the girls tossed around like a hot potato in 7th grade health class (it was supposed to be a tool for leaning how to do self-exams). I always wondered if they still have those things around. When I asked my eldest after her health class quarter, she gave me a very long look and said "Uhhhh no, why wouldn't you practice on your own boob?" So, hey, progress maybe!

I dunno. I mean, male fear of vaginas, that is a common perception, but having had a lot of male friends, even as teens--the only time I remember a male getting all hysterical over a tampon and/or female anatomy was looked at pretty weirdly by the other guys too. I've never had a partner who wouldn't willingly go get me a tampon or pad out of the box if it was in a different bathroom (or who wouldn't pick up some for me while shopping, or run to the drug store or whatever). Hell, I never had a male friend or roommate or other man in my life (notably 2 youth pastors--and these were not liberal women can do anything churches) who wouldn't. The only guys I've ever seen make a big deal out female parts or processes were...well...really super duper assholes who were just taking another opportunity to show how big of an asshole they were. And I grew up with pretty much conservative, complementarian gender role believing men.

@Pyrephox

Considering I was told to "adult more" when a weird guy sent me harassing stuff and then showed up unannounced at my appointment only business, yeah, this attitude of "what do you expect? it's your fault for being so famous/hot/searchable/ect" does not surprise me in the least. I think pewdiepie is adorbs because he's a really cute kiddo. Unfortunately in our culture ill people /kill/ their crushes/obsessions (and most of the time there will be plenty of people who say that it's the murder victim's fault too). So I hope now this means he'll take some extra security precautions--but I don't know. People spend milllions on security and yet people still manage to get into their houses, ect. I think I would be a whole hell of a lot more freaked out than he seems to be. Just in my very diminished personal experience of unannounced weirdo showing up on my biz doorstep has me still feeling unsafe if I'm there alone and I hate it.

@Ganymede

Hey any settlement that contains the word cum in it sounds great to me as it relates to MUSHing.

@BetterJudgment I am so sorry for your loss.

I've enjoyed the Star Trek reboot a lot (my first fandom was the original Star Trek, though I wasn't even alive during its run) and it seems pretty close to the spirit of things. I thought the latest installation ran a little too long, it was fun, but I think some better editing would have done it well, but I still enjoyed it!

I really REALLY loved the new Ghostbusters movie though. I was pretty skeptical because Melissa McCarthy is super duper hit or miss for me, as is Kristen Wiig. But I thought that had the spirit (har de har) of the originals too, I loved the cameos, it was very enjoyable and fun from start to finish. And I loved that for once I was thinking "wow, I wish the movie were a little longer" rather than "jesus christ, when is this going to end!" (which has been my experience with the latest Star Trek movie, as mentioned, as well as Civil War, even though I liked them both).

1940s-60s cookbooks and housewife manuals. I keep threatening to make my local friends come to an aspics and cocktail 50s themed party, but as of yet have not made good on my threat.

It's easy to say "don't worry about what other people think," but the truth is when you land on a new mush, chat with people and the conversation moves to where else you've played, and then they say "oh shit! You are the person who forced rape play on someone I know and were skype sexing the head staff to get away with it and get bumped up stats!!!" When you did no such thing? It feels pretty gross. Horrible in fact. And people do not give others the benefit of the doubt, until the lies start about them. which if you're smart you're not around for! But it's still a really gross feeling.

Anyway, I concur: please state the incorrect rumors here. At least it's a record.

My only real foray into fandom was when I was 12-14 and I was involved in a play by mail Star Trek (the original, there were no new series yet) rpg + fan club fusion organization. You got ranks you could move up! There were meet ups. Thank god that I did not run across any true weirdos since I was a very isolated girl and some of those meet ups could have gone very VERY badly. (It happened in the pre-Internet days too, kids).

Anyway. While yes, some of the people were rabid fans of the original content (and mega fans of the paperback series that was mostly originalish), and would debate about stuff, the real drama happened within the organization because that's where the people mingling happened.

I do not think mushers are like tv show fans. I think mushing entitlement tends to be much more like what happens in a fan club or PTA--where people decide to treat each other like shit, crusty old people can't stand the thought of new blood OMFG might change something that I put into place with my PC that I've changed over 2 times since, unable to disagree without making the other person out to be Wrong!Bad!

Add in the at least one eeyore personality, the passive aggressive folks, the habitually helpless, the control freaks, ect--yeah, I'd say the entitlement stuff on a mush plays out more like a local fan club or small community organization than a more diffuse group. There is a perceived intimacy involved, but many times the loudest people and the most obnoxious folks (staff or player) tend to inflate their own investment/importance while being rather blind to anyone else's, especially when it comes to a question of them "winning" or getting what they want.

It's human nature, as anyone who has been part of a pta/booster club/social org can tell you.

Smelling like pool + lake + sunscreen + shave ice + sleepy toddler after a long summer day; seeing exhausted teens that pretty much smell the same way all sprawled out reading. I hate when school starts again.

Pretty much nobody but other parental figures/carers will care--but. My final child just peed and pooped in the toilet after telling me he had to go. No more diapers is finally on the horizon again. At least until old age.

Limitless is pretty cute.

Because it's been asked several times, I'll kind of give a rundown of types of plots that I saw and/or ran during my time there, as well as how the multi-splat environment was handled.

First, the multisphere/rules challenge--to be honest as a beat cop this wasn't a big deal. Because of the nature of interactive with the public and in close quarters with other officers, hands down one of my FAVORITE things and source of enjoyment oocly was to see how players and PCs handled /keeping/ the IC masque. I realize that's kind of blah old school for a lot of people, but frankly it was really fun to see the creative ways that people would disguise or lowball things to avoid 'freaking the mundanes'. There was an informal "snowflake squad" of powered pcs (some supernaturals, some psychic) that were aware of each other because of things happening in game, but even then it was not a superfriends thing, I don't know that ICly I even knew what anyone was except for a few and that happened very organically. It wasn't important. An IC encouragement to keep the masque often helped give reasons for PCs to ICly moderate their use of powers as well. Those who refused or who really needed to wag their big dick around tended to not last long, at least not amongst the beat cop group, because honestly I don't think they cared for the player group ST styles, so they'd wander off to just do the RP of "I am a cop, but I don't really participate on screen with that," I assume.

I'm sure also some of the typical stereotypical bad behavior also was curtailed by the types of plots ran. They were very much slice of life. I think a lot of us pulled from old headlines of police action/older 'current events'. It wasn't guns blazing every 'episode'. I saw tense negotations/hostage situations, trying to find the location of a sniper/bomber, domestic calls, dealing with protestors, busting up prostitution/drug/domestic terrorist rings. Missing persons calls. Murder scenes. Sometimes there was a supernatural element involved, because, well...Aleswich. But most of the time when that took place it was subtle. Sometimes the plots were long/multilayered/twisty...sometimes it was just a crazy traffic stop or dealing with someone brandishing.

Because most of the players in the group I participated in not only enjoyed action as in fighty stuff, but also the psychological side of having to choose between no good choices, or the impact of making a very unfortunate choice, I think it probably bored/fended off some of the people who like to be OOC dicks who think they get to curbstomp people ICly.

But it wasn't a soap opera/monster of the week sort of thing. It was very much somewhere where the tension of covering up powers (if you had them) and the tension of being so part of the mundane world while having a secret came into play for the supers/M+s, and there was not really (again, just in the segment I participated in, the beat cops) a soap opera of bedhopping and relationships. Judging from channel behavior by new people now and then I think that probably some people who were very interested in the sexytimes soap opera (hey, it's been part of just about every long running cop drama that I've seen, so not throwing shade) or monsterhunters in blue might have felt a little ooc like they didn't fit in. But for me it was a very nice place to play with players that skewed genuinely no drama (At least in law ) and who were mature and supportive storytellers and participants.

I had a great time with my cop PC. By the time I played one there were not any metaplot things involving staff--the scenes (at least for beat cops) were nearly 100 percent player driven. (As in there was a cadre of us that took turns running beat cop scenes for the other beat cops). Occasionally we tried to involve the other police folks but aside from a really sweet ooc and enthusiastic detective I never got much nibbles outside of beat cops.

We never went after PCs. In fact, we often had to rebuff criminals wanting us to keystone cop for them (you guys will run a scene where I get to get away/defeat you with no risk right?) or to narc on other PCs (I want you guys to arrest this other PC but don't tell him I told you), because of the policy that cop pc vs. other pc had to be consentual in the sense that BOTH parties had to agree to the boundaries. Sometimes I was willing to let people get away in a scene, but after getting pouted and yelled at by a player because they wanted to not allow me to use any of my special abilities (my pc was a mortal+) to get a chance against them (it still wasn't a level playing field), I was pretty choosy about who I'd interact with in a "PvP" manner. (Read: only people whose RP I enjoyed and who were nice and respectful ooc, and weren't just using me as masturbation device and ignoring the fact that my PC was also a PC and I-player wanted to have some agency as well).

Law can be awesome. Maybe because of some of those restrictions (or I might have been lucky in time in that sphere), it tended to attract mainly mature players and low-drama (at least in-house) players in at least the beat cop sub-group. We played with each other a lot in scenarios and socially. It was really awesome, and we required absolutely nothing from staff other than reading logs.

So. I think law can work. I love law stories, especially of the beat cop variety and investigations. But because people can be very attitudinal (especially out of sphere, IME) it's probably a good idea to have a well-defined list of dos/don'ts and how PvP is to be worked out.

Also of the opinion that it's okay to re-evaluate the alt policy from time to time. I do think it's easier to start conservatively and then open up more slots, but honestly? If an alt policy had assumed a much larger population than ends up happening, and there are multiple problems regarding crossover (not just one asshole, I really hate player-targed global rulings) then while you may get fussed at I also think it's fine to say "Guys, when we first adopted the 15 alt policy, we were envisioning a bigger game than has happened now 6 months in, and we've noticed quite a few struggles in regards to this. So effective next week, we're limiting it to 2 (or 3, or 7). Please let us know which ones you plan to freeze--if we decide to expand PC slots per player in the future you'll have the option of unfreezing or creating new ones."

You will have people scream betrayal and all that, but I think most sane people, while perhaps disappointed, are much more tolerant of decisions that are truly better for the game/reflect reality than sometimes given credit for.

I also find the snobbishness about who does and doesn't have alts (again, not talking about crossover alts or weird-ass players who smother/focus their 5 alts on one favored person, or assholes who feel like they need to dominate every scene/event they touch--those have nothing to do with alt ability but are problem /players/) to be like the clutching of pearls over who doesn't and doesn't TS. Kinda dumb, but I guess it's another thing to feel superior about or to get to say "Well, I NEVER!"