Best posts made by Pandora

@SinCerely On AO3, or somewhere else? I write the most shameless shit on AO3 because no one I know outside of AO3 knows about it, lol.

@Too-Old-For-This @surreality

Okay wow, those are horror stories. For me personally, when I get screeching mad about things not being cleaned up (internal screeching, my parents yelled and I just can't cope with loud noise because of that) I just stop. I stop cleaning. And then my husband comes out of his cave and does the dishes (by hand so everything is still dirty because he doesn't wear his glasses in the house) and takes out the garbage (banging the garbage bag against every corner in the house so it ALWAYS breaks/leaks in the hall) and...

You know what? Even though it's less of a headache to do it myself, I'm still happy he tries and realizes that as miserable as it is to do? I do it way more often than he has to.

@Tempest said in Intersectional MU* Community - Discussion:

Strange question, considering that all those factors seem to apply to the community's creator, judging from the last thread.

I assume that one's actual personality is meant to be left at the door, and the fake nicey-nice is meant to happen on the server. I just wondered what would happen if and when that facade crumbles in the face of a real disagreement in the ranks.

They're going to sit around and knitting circle about somebody who took a position they wanted on some game or is TSing the person they want to fuck or w/e, and probably harass that person.

I assume as much, and I've voiced my concern on this front. Only time will tell and you've got to give a new concept enough rope to swing for the moon - or hang itself.

@Kestrel said in Intersectional MU* Community - Discussion:

We currently have the following rules for our Discord server.

What happens when someone breaks an unenforceable rule like #6? Or just in general? What crosses the line from 'honest mistake' into 'petty BS'? Who decides who stays and who goes? Is it a democracy? Will people be voted off the island if they're unpopular? Or is it a dictatorship, where people who don't conform to your standard of 'nice' are fucked even if they have something worth saying?

Like, I'd personally never be vouched for by the crowd I expect this server to attract, even though I have plenty to say on the topic of discrimination in games and what can be done about it & have never actively discriminated against anyone on any basis other than being willfully stupid as hell.

The last items needed for my guinea pig cage have been ordered. Once I have the cage set up perfectly, I can start looking for two pretty sows to live in it. GuineaDad fleece covers are so.fucking.expensive ($85 for a 2ft by 5 ft fleece is highway robbery) but I am assured it will be worth it to not have to scoop soiled bedding ever again.

I'm nervous - mammals have care requirements that are much more rigorous than those of my reptiles. But I'm so pleased to finally have enough space for two little adoptees.

When you do something nice for someone ICly on a whim and they express their appreciation; that warm, fuzzy feeling is amazing.

@Ghost said in Fandom and entitlement:

Apparently not. You mean the one from 11 hours ago? Uh, sure? Anyway my response was to insomniac's post but it wasn't directly to him so I didn't tag him.

Yes, 11 hours ago. We can't all be around 24/7 like you, @Ghost some of us have real lives.

I'll TS anyone my character finds interesting enough to fuck, I don't care what they're doing on their side of the screen & I have never really understood the desire for trust or OOC communication in roleplay but I do understand it's a prevalent thing in this community, so I don't dispute it. I do think it'd all be that much more fun if we didn't open ourselves up to the weirdness by inviting false familiarity with unknowns only to be let down when they're fucking creepers, especially when they're so often fucking creepers. Live, learn, and keep it entirely IC?

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

I'm so excited. Is anyone else excited? I fucking love Harry Potter.

@Ghost said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Why would they get weird/sexual about it if it's just text?

As an erotic fiction writer, some of my most heartfelt comments from readers have been about their masturbating to my stories. My first comment along those lines, I'll never forget it, was from a reader that said she had to change her panties before church. I laughed so hard I nearly died. It was a compliment, and it was harmless, and my point is that text can be sexy and inspire sexual feelings. If you've never visited asstr or Literotica or any erotic fiction/fanfiction repository, you're probably better off, but also probably in the minority.

And if someone CAN get weird/sexual about it, then does that mean that these scenes could involve OOC titillation? And if the prior two statements are true, then...
...could establishing an Oocly titilating line of roleplay with a staffer result in preferential treatment than others don't have access to?

What is the difference between writing good text sex and getting a staffer's love and attention, or writing good combat text and getting a staffer's love and attention, or writing good adventuring text and getting a staffer's love and attention?

This obsession with TS like it is some unholy grail of moral depravity is crazy levels of shaming.

@silverfox said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

It doesn't sound like people are able to work when he goes on these rants. Thay is what I would report to HR.

No, he's not usually keeping anyone from doing anything, if anything these topics come up when there are lulls in things to do.

@Coin said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

This is not to say that I think you should change your behavior, but I do challenge the idea that he's not a shithead outside of the moments and places where he chooses to behave that way, because if he doesn't behave that way outside of those places and moments, he's doing so consciously. he's either cherry picking when he espouses the views, or cherry picking when he shuts up, but either way, it shows a deliberate discrimination between when he feels he can get away with it, and when he can't.

Or maybe he goes on those rants on Discord and you don't care. I don't know.

I don't know what he does when I'm not around, but he never starts these conversations with myself because I've made it pretty clear I don't agree in the past. He has these one-sided conversations with colleagues who are open to discussion but aren't armed with statistics or the level of bullishness required to uphold their end of the conversation, which turns it into a very one-sided lecture of sorts.

@Kestrel He doesn't believe women aren't people, I mean it sincerely when I say he is sweet and friendly, he'll walk you home drunk in the rain without a second thought and he's never what I would consider overtly or willfully disrespectful, he doesn't even talk about people who don't like him behind their back. But yes, there's some deep-seated misogyny that he doesn't cop to, and while he's no incel blaming women for his lack of a love life, he's definitely got issues I have no real interest in probing due to a lack of general empathy. I don't care if he ever gets laid, I just want him to lay off, you know?

@Ghost 'You're being inappropriate' gets me a solid 'If they don't want to talk about it they can say so, we're all adults here' or a 'We're just talking about a holiday, it's not that big a deal'.

Keeping in mind, this is happening in jolly old England, where political correctness isn't the wave that it is in America, and many attempts at curbing things I find inappropriate, like mocking foreign accents, calling every brownish-skinned person a 'Paki', or referring to soccer as football, are met with snickers, eyerolls, and 'Go back to America with that shit', as I've mentioned here a time or two before.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

I mean, is he really a friend? Legit question, I see a vast difference between friendly acquaintances you hang out with and friends. If you ended up the victim of sex discrimination, would he have your back? If not, he's not a friend and if a grievance isn't filed, someone needs to at least let it 'slip' to on eof the scarier men in the office that he needs a refresher course on what is and isn't appropriate to discuss at work.

Yeah, he's one of my closest friends on this bloody isle. This, and his preference for Xbone over PS4, are my only complaints, and it just fucking sucks that this is big enough to cut him loose over if it doesn't stop pretty much immediately - father's day was the last straw for me, as someone that celebrated father's day with my daughter because dad was in another country for years and years. Again, he's not a He Man Woman Hater at least openly, if I was discriminated against for any of the several minority tick-boxes I can check off he'd be in my corner and he has been, another colleague was drunk/high and initiated a homophobic attack during a night out back when I was in my probation period & he was instrumental in getting him moved out of my area of the office and then removed from the business entirely - and this attack (verbal, but encroaching on my personal space like whoa) happened outside of work.

This isn't me defending his behavior, for the record. I am fed up and sickened by this particular habit of his. It's more my trying to paint the picture that it's not as clear cut as 'He's trash, cancel him.' and a frustration that misogyny isn't solely the purview of knuckle-dragging woman beaters, but sometimes the world-view of men who, wanting to believe men aren't as bad as they're made out to be, look to sources that pander to that outlook and wind up brainwashed by statistics that make it look like women are out to get them.

The answer is pretty easily and immediately 'No' for me. So much of my IC time is spent trying to be relevant that I am actually pleasantly surprised whenever I have an interaction that is just fun. I enjoy the moments that I enjoy, but they are fewer and further between than the payoff I get from any other hobby I have, whether it's writing, editing, reading, or redecorating my guinea pig enclosure.

When you add on top of that the fact that people begrudge you the fun you have or accomplishments you achieve, through passive aggressive IC or OOC communication, turning moments of happiness into the chore of carefully spot-checked and proof-read responses to bullshit accusations...

The less time you devote to this hobby, the more the bad stacks up versus the good. I don't have the free time/friend group I once had to MU for enough hours per day to break even, let alone come down on the side of 'yes'.

I love the hobby, don't get me wrong. But it's a bit like cigarette smoking I think, with the disclaimer that I've never been a smoker & am speaking from second-hand experience. I'm so used to doing this that I get antsy if I don't do it for a while, and I recognize that while the short bursts of pleasure are pleasant indeed, it's not great for my health.

@Kanye-Qwest (& others, I won't @ everyone again since I just did in a recent post)
Sound advice, truly solid, and while I didn't do the whole pulling to the side thing (because heart to hearts make my teeth hurt) I did point out that we'd celebrated father's day & that was when he went on his tangent about my already having mother's day and cheapening the holiday by celebrating it needlessly and yeah.

This father's day thing isn't even something I'm particularly passionate about, but reading this thread and seeing how common sense workplace decorum should be, or what efforts simply make sense for promoting equal voices & shutting down things that are obviously upsetting people, and then realizing my office really doesn't have that going on... I feel bitey about it.

@Arkandel said in X-Cards:

Absolutely not. I can't imagine many things less savory than people - who already feel bad and who're obligated to stand out for themselves and say "ahem, sorry guys, this feels awkward" to have to either hide the fact or broadcast their vulnerabilities somehow (what, their wiki?) just in case they come up.

I don't think RP Prefs: No blood, gore, extreme violence, or rape. is 'broadcasting their vulnerabilities'? Are preferences vulnerabilities now? I think there is something empowering about owning your triggers and taking control of your exposures rather than being a wilting flower victimized by circumstance. I invite anyone with a particularly hard-line trigger (not someone that knows someone with a trigger, first-hand experience only please) that is willing to discuss it here or privately, to explain to me why it'd be better for them to leave a scene-in-progress - thereby inviting speculation or requests for explanation at that time, than to avoid the matter from the start.

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.

... That's oddly specific.

Don't kink-shame me, ok??

I've been staying under 20g of carbs/day for the past 3 weeks, prepping for vacations & holiday dinners in the next couple of months. It's been going well, I've lost 17 lbs & that size 8 dress is on the horizon.

But I ate a burger on a bun made of actual white flour today, with Heinz ketchup, and it was so delicious I don't even feel bad for cheating. #YOLO.

@surreality Firstly, that's awful. Second, that's a good point, about it being an alt-outing preference due to how niche it would be. All rules have exceptions, and I think throwing a red flag on the play regarding something happening to you rather than something happening in your character's vicinity are absolutely different beasts.

If someone were being choked in front of you, it'd be my well-intentioned advice that you leave, but if it was your character, I'd hope you (or anyone in any relevant situation) could nope out of it (not out of the ICC, but the IC method) without being hassled, and I'd be the first to sharpen the pitchforks and light the torches against anyone that hassled you about it OOCly.

@Ghost said in RL things I love:

@Pandora said in RL things I love:

@Ghost 1. You're a terrible person.

2. I'm literally watching this with my bestie right this second.

Yeah we're about 9 episodes in. It's not bad, although I wish it were more grim dark. I think Somerhalder might be underrated.

I think his eyebrows need to win an award for best supporting character, they are so expressive.

@farfalla Not looking at peoples' descs is a good way to wind up whitewashing people's characters of color, to miss character disabilities, to miss someone's MAGA t-shirt, someone's neo-Nazi tattoos, someone's 'I Beat Breast Cancer' pin, and so on.

I'm not saying you have to look or care, I'm just saying descriptions aren't just there as empty fluff, a lot of meaningful character information won't come up in every single pose.

@nyctophiliac So, when I see someone say they don't like video games, I go into full-on panic mode of 'I must fix this disturbance in the force.' Have you ever checked out Secret World Legends? It's free to play now so there's no monetary commitment to try it. But you play someone that's been inducted into one of 3 secret societies and you work your way through this massive, globetrotting collection of conspiracies involving aliens, supernatural creatures, ghosts, paranormal stuff, etc. with some amazing writing and quests that sometimes require you to do some paranormal investigation online/off-game as well (there's a working in-game browser too). From tentacle monsters to haunted carnivals to cursed Native American burial grounds and yes, even Bigfoot, Secret World Legends has it all.

(This is not a paid ad.)