Best posts made by Pandora

Stop asking which came first, the goddamned chicken or the egg. The egg came first; a natural-born chicken HAS to come out of an egg, but the egg could have been the malformed/irradiated/evolutionary product of some closely-related creature.

@TNP said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Pandora said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

"Let's fade to black" is fairly often met with 'Why?' or 'Oh, I wish I'd known you didn't TS before we let it get this far.' or 'Lol, let me just do one more pose, your character will get a kick out of this.' or a dozen and a half other things.

Point. And I just added clarification to the news policies that a request to fade to black should be accepted without question and ending the scene at that point.

You're a good egg. That made me smile.

@mietze Send the spouse and the kids to a movie or something some time. Everyone needs alone time.

I am open to all opinions here, whether in favor or wildly against. I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do, I'm asking what can we do & offering my 2 cents toward a potential solution to a problem that is not going to go away by doing absolutely nothing different and continuing to say 'People, just be better.'

@Paris I have no dog in the 'defining microaggressions' fight but this post has made my morning bleak and my coffee bitter. Sorry that some people suck.

@Tempest Uh uh. Take that raggedy bullshit back to the Hog Pit. I respect your fire but this isn't the time or the dumpster for it.

Antagonizing people to the point of losing their cool and then pointing at the resulting blow up and insinuating they're a terrible person for being human doesn't make you clever or amusing, it makes you a fucking asshole. There are a lot of fucking assholes in the world, but at this moment I'm talking about the ones on MSB. At least I own being mean and hateful when I am in fact being mean and hateful, which is honestly not that often. Shameless, self-righteous fucks.

As the parent of a kid very active in the Roblox/Discord roleplay scene, let me just say that if your kid isn't running into your room every 5 minutes to howl laughing as they share every even-remotely-scandalous thing so-n-so said or emoted or to fume angrily at every perceived injustice encountered... lucky you fostering open lines of communication and non-judgment can be much less stressful than trying to log everything ever, especially as reading back over what's happened isn't addressing issues in real-time.

I'm sorry, are you insinuating that someone holds the rights to sanctimonious BS on this forum? Because that shit is practically the bread and butter around here, and if I'm also guilty of it then so be it, but let's not throw stones at cheap glass houses please. I'll never champion the idea that people need to 'be nice', I'm certainly not. But the way you little cliques form up and and disperse like so many swarms of cannibalistic piranha to prey on people that aren't even doing/saying anything particularly grievous is bogus as shit. At least be half-decent enough to keep it aimed at people that you can at least pretend have it coming. Like me.

@Rinel said in The Dark Side of online Role-Playing:

"is that a real friend you've met in person" questions from my father from time to time.

If this isn't the whole truth and nothing but the truth! I married my 'internet friend' and it's still my mother's favorite confusing story to tell.

I don't mind who is offended by what, I expressed that I find it interesting what people choose to be offended over. Be offended or don't, that's your choice. I'm simply stating that unlike what appears to be 99% of the MSB population, I will not ever hold my tongue out of fear of offending someone whose opinion/well-being I don't care about. I don't call people cunts because I don't like the word. If I did, I would say it, because honestly the point of insulting someone is to insult them and apparently it's been decided that the misogynists are right: a cunt really is the most offensive thing anyone can be compared to now! Cheers.

Re: the whole 'kill yourself' thing - that's a fucked up thing to say to anyone; I don't advise anyone else to do it, but I can say it whenever I like and anyone that wants to be offended can feel free to be offended. It's literally no skin off my nose & I've never lost a friend over something I've said to someone I already didn't like.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

No, it isn't, but it is doable and should be done.

It is doable and it is often done, but the degree to which it is successful varies between games and literally nowhere I've seen is it done perfectly or even to a degree to which I'd ever, say, want my child to experience. The culture of a game can only do so much to deter players that are not acting in good faith, the same way a constitution can only do so much to ensure law and order. There still need to be safeguards and systems in place to catch things that make it past the culture checkpoints, like harem-builders who smile nicely and offer newbie help and RP hooks but will ice you out of roleplay if you don't do X.

I continue to reply because I continue to be discussed. Be the change you want to see.

I do not ascribe to a universal morality. I do not believe in karma. I believe that what I say today can and will be used against me in the court of public opinion. I accept that others will sometimes not agree with the things I say or how I say them, but since I have friends that are for the most part quite nice and pleasant and friendly in public but have been known to say some horrible shit about people behind their backs, I can and do and always have taken some measure of pride in the fact that everyone knows where they stand with me. That might not have value with others, but it means the world to me.

@ me all you like with your tsk-tsk and fingerwagging and aspersions about my character; I clearly don't mind, right? Else I wouldn't have brought up the year-old 'kill yourself' comment to make the point that sometimes I am an asshole, but certainly not all the time. Differing opinions are worth noting, and if it galls you that I have a different moral compass than you, well, that's only bothering one of us - the one that isn't me.

Also, and this one is really more for me than trying to kill @WTFE with alcohol - I really enjoy talking about me, and how special and different I am from everyone else, etc. This 'this is why you're awful' conversation is remarkably similar to the 'this is why I like you' conversations I have with my friends and literally almost every random stranger that has ever private-messaged me on MSB.

@faraday Hopefully you can appreciate that this thread is about the people that don't generally come to you or staff on other games with their problems though; as stated in the original post, this thread is about the people that are not finding the current way of doing things sufficient. I do appreciate your input though, I'd never expect 100% agreement on any issue on MSB but it's still interesting to hear where the line is drawn on different games.

@Ganymede Of course it bears keeping in mind that oftentimes it'll be someone in no position to be making threats that's hitting the abort mission button.

@Kestrel said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

There's a MUD called After Earth which has a "graphic" command which I think is a pretty neat idea:

Graphic is used to indicate that you are uncomfortable with the content of the RP, either due to its violent nature, sexual content, or some other reason which would justify omitting, editing, or otherwise toning the RP down to a more acceptable level.

When this command is used, all persons in the room should comply and reduce the level of detail. It should not require clarification or lapse into OOC discussion.

See also: MUDSEX, TURNS

Mudsex (TS) is also never supposed to occur without use of a "consent" command.

Helpfile for Consent

Syntax: consent list
consent give <name> [note]
consent revoke <name> [note]
consent alert <name> <reason>
consent check <name>
consent request <name> [reason]

All players are required to seek and obtain consent prior to engaging in sexually explicit roleplay.

The consent list command lists all characters that your character has provided consent to. Consent give <name> will add a character to the list, with an optional note if desired. Consent revoke <name> will remove consent at any time, also with an optional note.

All players are required to confirm that they have received consent before pursuing sexual intercourse using the consent check <name> command. Likewise, a player can OOCly declare their character's IC intentions with consent request <name> with an optional reason.

The consent system is PRIVATE. It does not report to staff unless a player uses the consent alert <name> <reason> command to tell staff that something is wrong.

At first glance I really like this idea, but a few concerns come to mind. First and foremost, at what point is one supposed to use the consent command? How far can RP go without the command being used? Kissing? Cuddling? Intimate non-penetrative touching? Let's say the RP has gotten that far, and although both characters seem into it, one of them has not provided consent or responded to the consent request command. Does that mean the scene should end? What if they didn't see it or don't know how the system works? Should you OOCly bring it up?

That brings us to another can of worms I see, which is people OOCly pressuring others to use the consent command. The helpfile doesn't seem to make any mention of whether or not it is against policy to OOCly pressure/cajole/convince anyone to give consent; as we all hopefully know, consent given under pressure isn't true consent.

Another issue is one that probably shouldn't be an issue, but if you've ever been in a game Discord with more than your immediate circle of friends, you've probably witnessed something of the sort: If Susie and Katie are RPing and flirting and having a good time and seem to mesh well and Katie activates consent before Susie and then Susie jokes to her Discord chat "Ha, I'm so awesome Katie gave me consent already and we're only having a drink in the bar." & then this triggers a wave of 'Katie is a slut' and 'Katie gave me consent her first day on the grid' and 'Katie is a mesbian all they want is TS' - you know, the usual slut-shaming, except now with coded 'proof' that player-of-Katie is DTF.

I don't mean to be a pessimist, I just know some of the people I unfortunately roleplay adjacent to; considering the downsides to everything is just a result to that.

@Ghost I feel where you're coming from, but let's allow the heroes to focus on actual children being harmed rather than a wild goose chase for consenting adults writing distasteful smut that does not harm actual children. Priorities are important.

@Tinuviel said in Model Policies?:

@Pandora said in Model Policies?:

I can't think of any time a rule like that has been needed, and I feel like having that in your policy will say more (negative) about you and your game than just leaving it out and having some sort of Be Cool policy instead.

Well sure, not "don't talk about this ever" but more like... keep such conversations on X channel, instead of the main one. It's a compromise between those that do want to talk about everything to do with 'heated' subjects and those that don't.

But I'm asking like, when and where has a policy like this ever been needed? If you're in some circumstance where something as spicy as someone's gender or orientation would be inappropriate reading material, ya prolly shouldn't be on public channel until you get home.

@Tinuviel said in Model Policies?:

@Pandora Heck, I'd say "If anyone asks you to take it off channel, don't argue about it."

I'm cringing at the idea of most of you motherfuckers being authorized to tell anyone to shut up and that being enforced, real talk.

@Kestrel