Best posts made by Pandora

"Co-worker is leaving, drinks tonight?"
"Can't, I have work at 9AM."
"Come, on, just a couple drinks, it's his last night out!"
"...Fine."

Turns into:
7:30PM: Fuck wearing jackets, let's just do a few shots, we won't feel the cold.
8PM: A 37-person zerg descends on a pub. Halfway through security, one co-worker gets turned away as he's wearing shorts. We all pile back out onto the street.
8:17PM: Oooh, McDonalds.
8:45PM: Zerg has inflated past the point of a headcount. Descends on a pub. Shots, shots, shots.
Somewhere after 11PM: Someone orders a Sex on the Beach. It's fucking terrible. Bartender should be ashamed. We nominate new names for the drink. Winner: Foreplay on Damp Pavement. Notable mention: Interrupted Head on the Boardwalk.
Around 1AM: The beautiful Polish translator has fallen so many times it's a bit concerning. Sweet younger guy in the office is throwing up on the dancefloor.
After 1AM: Me, having an 'earnest conversation' with the bouncer about maybe letting my friends back inside, they'll be better, honest. He tells me off about health and safety & says the only reason he hadn't kicked us all out sooner is because the manager didn't want to offend such a huge party. We were ridiculously proud of this for some reason. Shots!
Around 1:30AM: Listening to denied-entry translator tearfully recount her ejection: "I was lying on the floor and he was shouting at me in Polish. I was doing this." proceeds to wave arms beautifully above her head "I was trying to look classy but I know I didn't..." (She's so cute you guys, her sad face made me wanna fight the bouncer.)
A bit after 1:30AM: We leave, the bouncer seemingly enjoys trading insults with those of the party who use their choicest disses, found at the bottom of Jager Bombs a few minutes ago, on our way out.
1:45AM: The zerg has gained and lost mass, I lost count. We descend on a nightclub. SHOTS.
3AM: Club closes, we get booted out.
3:05: The one kebab shop still open welcomes the zerg. Kebab does not mean what I, the lone American, think it means. It was gross. I slathered it in ketchup. It was gross but tolerable. The ketchup also wasn't great. I ate it all.
A bit after 3:30AM: Alexa, set alarm for 8AM.
All the hours since 8AM: Pain.

Seriously, the office was full of zombies today. It's Ramadan, so our co-workers who were fasting and thus did not come out with us? Seriously unimpressed. I brought in Krispy Kremes for everyone though, so we mostly muddled through on carbs, sugar, and that twilight between 'still kinda drunk' and 'hungover'.

Verdict: Would do again. Great time. Best co-workers ever. My boss dances like a dork, would not trade him in.

Edited to fix club closure time, which makes me feel even sleepier.

@Tinuviel said in Intersectional MU* Community - Discussion:

@BobGoblin said in Intersectional MU* Community - Discussion:

You know what the Mu community needs? More stupidity... Oh look, I found it!

There's always room for more! We've been far too considerate and caring lately.

Not by choice, there's just a rabid mob ready to jump on you if you accidentally use a word or meme they don't like so we're a bit boxed into a culture of only being mean when the hive mind says it's okay to dogpile on something, at which point people gleefully tear into it after being repressed.

At the rate we're going, if the Cancel Cartel gets its way, every artist that's ever existed is going to be canceled at some point for breaking some sacred rule they haven't come up with yet. I can't get behind it; this is definitely the product of people with too much time and wifi on their hands.

NPCs and vNPCs fill the world that we play in. That means NPCs are people in the world. People that have sex, or pointless conversations, or attend wine tastings, because that's what people do. When you get into the territory of what NPCs should be doing, you're getting into the territory of staffers having wrongfun. Of dictating what staffers can spend their time doing.

Yes, they could do these things on their PCs, but again - NPCs are people who do things as well. As long as the NPC is furthering plot appropriately, why does it matter to anyone what they're doing in their free time?

In some instances of these complaints, it really just looks like jealousy. Like if the NPC doesn't find you interesting enough to go off-topic with, they shouldn't find anyone else interesting enough to go play with outside of their main mission, either. That's nonsense. Real people are playing these NPCs, and they have the right to whatever fun they can get on whatever characters they enjoy playing - and it's really just none of anyone else's business.

I don't even know who to @ right now, this thread is so motherfucking broken.

I recognize that there will always be the faction of players that believe staff attention/leadership attention should be spread evenly through the playerbase.

What the people who hold this belief need to understand is that this is their opinion. You can play on games where staff shares this opinion. You cannot force everyone to share this opinion, because this opinion is fundamentally flawed in the eyes of people who disagree.

People should play with those who are interesting and engaging and contributing to their sense of enjoyment in a game. If you are taking actions, involving other players, building stories, and making the game more fun for many people - staffers are more likely to pay you attention because you are doing what most staffers want their players to do, and we generally reward people for doing good things.

Generally speaking, on many games, the people doing this are a relatively smallish number, which can contribute to the mostly-accurate perception that a particular staff-run NPC is handing out all the goodies to one small group.

But what it all eventually boils down to is that NPCs are going to play where their player's interests and enjoyment lies. Being someone that gripes about staff not paying them attention doesn't make you fun, interesting, or enjoyable. So you're probably going to live your best life on a game where being fun isn't as important to staff as making sure everyone is getting their turn, deserved or not, in the spotlight.

Serious question though: Why would anyone ever want staff/NPC attention from anyone they had to bully/harass/shame into RPing with them? I'd feel super gross if I thought someone was begrudgingly RPing with me. This is what messengers are for, when you need something from someone but they haven't expressed any interest in RPing with you in person. KISS and move on.

I'm not @ing anyone in this clusterfuck, but I'll say this: If a game has 'DO NOT TS' as a rule, you fucking obey it. Why? Because you don't know WHY that rule is in place. Perhaps the staffer is a prude. Perhaps the staffer's kid plays the game. Perhaps the staffer is not tech-savvy enough to figure out how to get their game registered with net-nanny or Google to make it internet-child-safe. Perhaps the staffer wants their game to focus on the theme and not get bogged down in the undeniable mess that is IC interpersonal relationships when font-fucking is involved.

If you want to write erotica, play somewhere else. Period. No one owes you a smut repository, this entitled shit from even veteran players is fucking crazy, ok boomers?

Edited to add: If as a staffer you don't want to 'deal with' anyone's TS bullshit on your no-TS game, the correct answer is to ban anyone that's decided to TS anyway. Responsibility fulfilled, drama avoided.

I don't expect privacy on a game. I expect staff to use the information gleaned ethically. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not doing anything on a telnet server that I'm ashamed of; my RP is fair, I'm not gaslighting anyone, my TS is bomb, my desire to create RP for others is genuine, and I damn sure am not the friendliest person so it's good in my opinion if staff can see I'm a good player despite loathing most other players. I think we've gotten so entrenched in 'PROTECTIN' MAH RIGHTS!' that people aren't really giving any thought to how (not)useful this so-called right is in the context of a GAME as opposed to real life.

@Kanye-Qwest It'd be awesome if anyone else that that has struggled with this issue felt cool coming forward to give their opinion on it, I know @Kestrel posted earlier about their experience, which falls pretty squarely within the lines of what I mean to address, namely the fact that current policies tell people that they have recourse to assert themselves, but generally do not have a streamlined, game-wide accepted process by which to do so.

Saying 'Hey could we not?' is a passive inquisitive & invites further discussion, leaving one open to being pressured, coerced, or worse - having your concerns twisted into a narrative they can then use to vilify you.

As someone with firm boundaries, I often opt to throw the game out with the bathwater when I see drama headed my way these days because I apparently suck at OOC communication; I type words when people are upset & they almost invariably make things worse. It'd be nice to be able to just throw out the drama without exchanging words further. Sometimes in text-based games, the less words, the better.

@BlondeBot said in Model Policies?:

I'd say limit what can or can't be said on channels is a good one. Keep the guidelines clear and the consequences consistent. For instance:

No social justice

GTFO. I'm not playing anywhere with a policy that says if someone is being a misogynistic toad on a channel & I decide to get froggy about it, someone else has the right to scoff and say SJW like that means I'm the one being unreasonable.

No sexuality/gender/orientation

Excuse me while I pull my eyebrows back down from my fucking hairline at this one. Did you just suggest a 'don't ask/don't tell' policy on a MUSH channel?

Where the fuck did you people come from, and please go back.

I'd be all for OOC rooms being silent rooms and people just using the public channel for what they usually use the OOC room for. I find that OOC rooms tend to be inordinately cliquish, even inadvertently, with the Usual Suspects and their inside jokes you wouldn't get if you weren't also perpetually-logged-on-and-yet-never-roleplaying, like them.

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@HelloProject It's not clear if your'e arguing only with @TheBigD or editorializing on the thread, but

Like, so far I keep hearing all of these anecdotes about how the SJW staff came at the poor innocent people playing a POC, but I haven't seen a single receipt, log of the character being played, MU name, or hell even a goddamned app to let people take a look at anything. It's just people saying shit in the midst of making what sounds a hell of a lot like a bad faith argument. In general I'm not questioning anyone who seems to be making their argument in good faith, but when people come making straw arguments and acting like there's packs of roving nonbinary bandits coming after them if they even remotely step out of line, I'm going to go "okay so where's the receipts".

Bolds mine. All of those look very plural, very general, very whole-thread wide-net, and a weasel clause at the end doesn't really change that. If that's not the intent, OK. But that's not how the post read to me.

Your personal stance/walking anything back/etc isn't the point, the issue is whether or not you think this shit is part of the discourse or not. You brought it into the discourse. So did @Pandora, who was part of that exchange. When people think it's maybe not worth the drama to play POC/outside their sexuality, stuff like this is why (And, since you brought up Cirno, it's really hard to tell 'legit' concern from the weaponized kind. He might be a rare example, but he had a whole lot of this forum fooled, using the same language you are).

Did you seriously tag me into a "You POC are the problem" post? Please don't. I prefer to make my own negativity, this kind of energy is not my speed.

I brought my new guinea pigs home on Sunday, and as expected they've been hiding and pretending I don't exist.

The younger of the two (she's 7 weeks) came out to eat while I was stuffing her ball with hay. It was the first time I'd seen her face since the day they came home. Naturally, I am elated. She's a beautiful, lilac sheltie with vampiric red eyes, cannot get enough of that haughty little face.

She did a fairly thorough exploration of the enclosure I built, and for this I've named her Freya.

The older of the two (she's 11 weeks) has been giving me her ass to kiss - literally, she burrows and leaves only her furry butt visible. Granted, she's a long-haired Peruvian, so her face and butt look a lot alike, except one has stunning dark blue eyes - and one doesn't.

Edited to fix the breed names I mixed up, whoops.

The World in the Walls

It's the name of the first Fillory book, for anyone that's forgotten.

Sister-in-Law's son is 4 and my kid will be 10 in a few days, and SIL repeated, several times, as soon as we walked into her house, 'OH, MY SON DIDN'T WANT SIDNEY TO COME, HE SAID SHE THREW A TOY EGG AT HIM LAST TIME' & 'I WAS TELLING MY SON WE'RE GOING ON HOLIDAY WITH SIDNEY SOON AND HE DIDN'T WANT HER ALONG AS LAST TIME SHE THREW A TOY EGG AT HIM'.

Listen: I only do this shit to pretend to be a big happy family & my kid would definitely rather be at home on her laptop so could you please PIPE THE FUCK DOWN making a 9 year old feel unwanted in your fucking house? Look, he's trying to play with her already - shut the fuck up. If you don't like me, cool. Let's pretend like grown ups. Don't embarrass my kid, I fucking hit people.

Edited to add: Happy fucking holidays. Have a drink for me if you too have in-laws you could do without.

@Kestrel I'll keep it brief so no one gets confused: I don't care what you read. I don't care what anyone reads. This is part of why I detest Cancel Culture, because it presumes to dictate what people are 'exposed' to, as if people are incapable of consuming anything without internalizing and then celebrating it.

@peasoupling said in Historical MUSHes:

@faraday said in Historical MUSHes:

What about something that just flat-out didn't exist, such as a female soldier serving openly (i.e. without disguising herself as a man) in a front-line regular unit of the Union Army?

This cuts both ways. If you have female soldiers serving openly in front-line regular units of the Union Army, I can't play a female soldier disguised as a man. Not really.

I upvoted this because I see where you're coming from, but there's a loophole. If there are female soldiers serving openly and being treated with disdain, and my female soldier is disguised as a man and reaping the benefits (respect, dignity, worthwhile assignments, remaining unmolested, etc) of her assumed masculinity, there's a story worth telling there. Will I stand up for these other women? Will I join in on the misogyny to be part of the boys' club? Will I sacrifice my pride as a woman to protect my cover as a man? And so on.

Election day should be a federal holiday and the fact that it isn't smacks of a contempt for the right to vote for the poorer working class who have less control over their work schedules.

I'm open to the idea of people tagging or flagging ahead of time that they don't like X, Y, and Z, as it makes it very easy for me to exclude them from my RP thus avoiding triggering their anxieties or having my roleplay interrupted.

The idea of anyone being able to halt my RP mid-scene because something unexpected that they don't like has come up is less appealing. If I want to host a dinner party and lift the lid off of a silver platter and there's [redacted] underneath it as the dramatic climax of some vendetta, I'd rather not ruin it ahead of time by printing on the invitation that this seemingly innocuous dinner party may have extreme violence and gore.

I'd much rather just not invite anyone that is opposed to those things.

From OOCly planning roleplay scenes to OOCly approaching people to join IC factions to OOCly making people swear oaths of binding IC loyalty to even this, OOCly tearing people out of their immersion due to your own (perfectly valid) preferences or triggers - there is an increasing tendency toward roleplay being more of a staged play than improv, and if I wanted to follow a safe, no-surprises script, I could write a book instead.

TLDR; if you don't like something to the point where it's a roleplay deal breaker for yourself, the onus is on you to make these requirements known ahead of time or to remove yourself as swiftly and unobtrusively as possible without requiring anyone to cater to you. This is simply being considerate, and I believe it's important that we remember consideration is a two-way street, and not simply an entitlement for those who find themselves at odds with a scene's direction.

Caveat: Don't spring toilet play or graphic depictions of your character's anal prolapse on people without some sort of warning, there is of course a scale of appropriateness and I am not advocating for a free-for-all of everyone's batshit crazy.

@Arkandel said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

• If your PC is going to cheat IC on another character do you feel obligated to let your partner's player know?

No. If we both signed up to play a role, my intention is for the characters to deal with the situations presented. Much like the actors in a television series are not given advance warning of their characters being betrayed or killed, in order to keep their portrayals authentic, I believe that there is a watering-down of authenticity when secrets are discovered OOC rather than IC.

• Do you think you are responsible for a character whose roleplay is related to yours if your paths are to separate? In other words do you feel guilty someone else's PC might become quote/unquote unplayable because of your IC choices?

I am not responsible for any character I did not apply for. If a character is so closely entwined with mine that the concept no longer works without mine, that's a design fault. Similarly, it is the job of staff to ensure that everyone has a path forward, I am not my rp-brother's keeper unless I've signed up for that responsibility.

• Very closely related to the above, what if the choice that takes a PC mostly off the table is OOC? For instance if you stop being active on my PC's spouse to play an alt with Theno's PC. Do I have the moral high ground to get pissed off?

You don't need the moral high ground to be pissed off. We really need to stop emotion-regulating people and telling them when it is/isn't okay to feel a feeling. There is a difference between having a feeling & treating people badly.

• Being pissed off - Valid.
• Attempting to discuss why you're pissed off and negotiating some terms that all parties involved can deal with - Valid.
• OOCly talking shit about the player of your PC spouse and forming an OOC lynch mob against Theno - Invalid.

Run your rough draft of the attempt at communication by a non-MU friend. They'll have no dog in the race and can help you with your tone if that's something important to you; it's easy to come off as aggressive or worse when you're understandably upset.

• When it comes to TS what's the correct way to suggest it? Do you let the RP become more explicit until the big words come out or you get told no? Do you page the other player first and explicitly ask if they want to do it? Something else?

If you're suggesting TS before the RP has gotten into TS territory, be careful you don't come off as a creep. I wouldn't do it, but different strokes for different folks. Just like any other sort of RP, approach it ICly the way your character would do so.

People who don't want to TS are generally quite happy to make that apparent, usually by suggesting a FTB or making some sort of (usually endearing) ooc comment/joke to diffuse the situation. Read the room OOCly. If it seems like a no (or even a hesitation) now is the time to discuss.

Do not ever OOCly pressure/cajole anyone to roleplay period, this isn't even TS-specific. I will never understand people who can derive pleasure from the act of being given something the other person doesn't want to give, whether that's a RL rapist or someone that uses whining/pitygaming/coercion to get RP.

• Assuming OOC consent between adult players is there anything in an IC relationship, including TS, that you consider unethical? No, I'm not going to give examples since I'm keeping this classy! But you can.

Plenty of things in relationships can be unethical IC, we play monsters, demons, manipulators and murderers all day long. That's part and parcel of playing a role. Nothing one does ICly within the rules of a game can be OOCly unethical, but if you're talking OOC actions, the list is extensive and exhaustive and I won't get into it personally because my own stance is to not talk to people about IC things whenever possible. I'm not here to fuck anyone over OOC, so I'm good.

• Any other choices not found in this short list. I'm sure it's far from complete.

Well?

One thing I do find to be a matter of ethics is OOC intent. Many of you know the story of how I was roped into TS (It wasn't bad TS!) with someone that unbeknownst to me had a history of seeking TS in-character, then crying rape IC and OOC to have pity parties and lynch mobs form in defense of her 'too irresistible' PCs.

If your OOC intention in IC interactions/choices is to make life hard for someone OOCly, you're a bad unethical person and I will never RP with you again, and once your character is dead/retired I will certainly be dragging you on MSB if it comes up. Shots fired; keep that dramatic bullshit in your pants, not mine.