Best posts made by Pandora

@Ghost said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

@Arkandel said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

Should it be? I don't mean that as a rhetorical question.

I think the point is moot.

(I havent seen the latest Fantastic Beasts movie so correct me if this is inaccurate)

The author chose for the details of the sexuality of these characters not to be the focus of the story. The camera, it could be said, isn't focusing on that in either the books or the movies. It doesn't matter if a character is gay, straight, or anything. If their story isn't focused on their romance and relationships, then their personal sexuality may not even matter to the story at all. It's like those people that are quasi-demanding Poe and Finn in Star Wars be a couple because they love the idea. If romance isn't their story arc, then daydream whatever you want is happening off-camera, but not at the expense of the story the author has chosen to tell.

This is J.K. Rowling's fault for Twitter-inserting canon into her stories that she's not actually putting into the books and movies. She's dangling source material, then not including it in her works.

Could there be good story in expounding on Dumbledore's romances? Sure. Is it the story the author is telling? No.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald's past relationship is a huge plot point in the latest Fantastic Beasts movie, you'd have to see it or at least read the synopsis to really wade into this one, this is past the point of Twitter posts now, it's canon af.

@Testament said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

This doesn't account for interactions with staff either. Staff may care, they may not. There's also the potential that a staffer is the person who might be causing the discomfort.

I'm going to bet a shiny nickel that staffers who don't care or who actively/knowingly put players in uncomfortable situations without recourse wouldn't implement this system in the first place.

Relationships are so rarely important to movies that aren't billed as romances, yet so often gay relationships seem to have this expectation of relevance, like gays are a distraction that had better have a good excuse for existing.

@faraday I'd like to agree, but sometimes the idea of initiating the FTB can be fraught, especially if you've had too many bad experiences of a request for FTB being met with the Spanish Inquisition or wild assumptions being made or guilt trips being initiated. 'Adults just need to adult' doesn't take into account the very real fact that not all adults have the same level of confidence, maturity, or level-headedness. Code won't stop people from being unreasonable, but the same way dots in strength keep everyone from being able to lift + throw 18-wheelers, code here can help.

@Rinel said in Good TV:

@Pandora

I'm just flat out not watching it. I'm sure it's amazing and deserves everything I'm hearing about it, but the last thing I want to do after spending my day trying to get people out of jail is watch a documentary on the Central Park Five.

I can't begrudge anyone an unwillingness to watch it when I'm not watching it myself (yet. maybe one day. not today. prolly not tomorrow either.) but supporting it is important, lest people think it's not supported because it's not important.

Met mine on a MUD. His rl girlfriend's character bullied mine (broke both her arms actually) and his character took care of mine while she was in double-casts (yes it was as cute/ridiculous as it sounds).

We didn't get married until like 10 years after that incident, but it still counts.

I lost my job recently, redundancy is a bitch but it happens. Other than that, everything else is fine except for this weighted-blanket of depression I have no excuse for because everything is fine. No one has outright asked me 'Why are you depressed?' yet which I'm grateful for, but I keep asking myself and have no good reason. Went on vacation a couple weeks ago and literally spent most of the time curled up in bed at the hotel for no good reason. Depression feels a lot like laziness, looks a lot like laziness. Got myself a Switch & Pokemon Sword on my S.O.'s orders and my starter is Sobble because I can relate to crying for no reason right now. Hoping it's just the weather + performance anxiety about spending the holidays with the in-laws, who knows though.

@faraday Does your policy specify what comes after ooc Hey I'm uncomfortable with this. in any way? Does that mean they don't have to RP anything further in that scene? Is the culture expectation on your game that they negotiate what happened after the FTB, or is it that the scene is retconned? Are they expected to discuss it right that moment while possibly upset? Does your policy specify what staff member should be contacted, or what to do if the person in question is a staffer? Does it say what to do in the event there is no staffer available at the time of the incident?

If every single one of these questions on any game doesn't have a clear-cut, immediately identifiable answer, then I can see the benefit of a Stop Now & No Quibbling About What You Get Out Of This Until Staff Is Available option, whether it's a coded command or a line in a policy. Different strokes for different folks, but I really don't understand this sentiment of 'What we're doing is fine' when the point of the thread is that what we're doing isn't working for everyone.

I've no intention of putting words into anyone's mouth but it reads a lot like 'No further consideration will be taken for all of the people who, historically throughout our years of discussions of the Spiders and Custodiuses & the like out there, have not felt comfortable using ooc Hey I'm uncomfortable with this.'.

@Roz said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Cheesecake is gross. Enjoy your LACK OF DOWNVOTES.

OOC raging assholes are pretty much never a good thing. Please, all raging assholes avoid any MUDs I am associated with, we do not need or want you. Quiet Storm Assholes and below, please.

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I have nothing to add, but a mere upvote didn't show an appropriate level of solidarity.

Staff being able to spy on players is common, players being aware of it may be less common, and staffers without any coding experience being aware that they could potentially have this capability may also be less common.

There are often good reasons to spy on players, and this often considered a breach of privacy.

Privacy is a debatable commodity on a MU* when you can take your private OOC conversations to Discord, much the same way tabletop RPers can take their private OOC conversations into another room that the GM is not responsible for.

2020 is a very different time than 1997, and people appreciatedemand transparency, often to the extent that it is detrimental to a game's setting, theme, and ambiance if staff allows their vision to be trampled over for the sake of said transparency. (Most do.)

I'd advise that you put the policy back in place, else this thread WILL come back to bite you in the ass at some point, and the accusation WILL be that you obfuscated your spying. Not worth it.

Policy + Clarification, and an outline of what complaint procedures are, including whether or not people are issued warnings that they're being observed, how long the observation period will be for, and so on. If someone is worthy of being spied on 24/7 forever, just ban them. You're making too much work for yourself, especially for a manual labor-intensive code-lite game.

Pierre XO - Avant-garde multi-discipline artist and philosopher. He's thoughtful, well-spoken, and more fair than I could ever be.

Blaire White - My problematic fave - her words. Conservative transgender political commentator. I'm not conservative but I agree with a lot of her stances, plus she's the kind of funny I'm into.

James Charles - Beauty guru with 1000 palettes-worth of personality and charm & I just want him to be happy.

Brad Mondo - Hairstylist and video-reactor & honestly just the loveliest person on Earth.

@Ghost said in Savage Skies Stuff:

Yanno, despite the fact that I'm very openly in agreement with @Pandora and some others in my dislike of PBs I thought of something and I cant shake it this morning.

In the era of consent, #metoo, etc isnt it a little weird to use another human being's likeness to lure or partake in TS? Story/RPG stuff is one thing but technically if you're choosing some hot actor/actress, pasting their pictures on a wiki, and then describing their likeness to other players while cybersexing them, isnt that teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeechnically sexually exploiting that other human being without their consent?

Good luck convincing anyone on MSB that does a thing that the thing is bad.

@Kanye-Qwest
I posted mine really quickly and am now going back to read everyone else's entries (I didn't want mine to be influenced by what anyone else posted) and I am lowkey throwing shade your way for Brad not making your list. Contrapoints did though, so I'm half-tempted to go try and sit through one of her videos, but someone I staunchly disagree with on all-the-things swears by her so I feel pre-biased.

Sans bells or whistles:

Lesbians have a diversity representation problem in mu-ing; in no game of note does the lesbian community ever seem to resemble a diverse, healthy lesbian community.

@GreenFlashlight Butches are very much still a thing, I'm part of a few different butch/stud fashion/relationships groups.

I had an observer bit attached to my character on Firan, which was used by the staffer that played my IC frienemy. It was, frankly, very uncomfortable for me and led to a lot of my plot-involved RP (and yes, some of that was tinysex, I have no shame in admitting that, sex was a huge plot device on Firan) being done through ooc channels or just handwaved and decided on OOCly.
I like being in control of who sees what I type, personally. For the most part, I'm fine with staff seeing my public RP, and so on. But as staff, if you play a character, allow your players the ability to hide things from you, for the love of all that's holy. It'll be less stressful for you than reading what I OOCly think of your clunky combat code, trust me.

@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I like @Wretched's motto:
If someone is OOCLY unavailable, never give them dickish consequences or treat them like an abandoner.

It's a nice motto, but I suppose I just don't see someone not being around for something as a dickish consequence? And at no point did I accuse C of being an abandoner. If B dies and OOCly blames/guilts C for not being around, that's B's inability to separate IC from OOC, aka B's problem.

Edited to add: I'm not knocking any game's ability/inability to work around these types of situations. I'm just noting that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the issue, which is why it's such a good thing that there are many different types of MU*s to cater to different types of players.

I think at this point, there've been so many 'What Ifs' thrown into the equation that the message is lost.

No one is suggesting making up the IC narrative for another player, it's merely suggested that if they can't be around, it's assumed they have some reason, however good/bad that reason may be, and they can let us know later when they log on. Or not. Up to them.

If anyone is giving someone a hard time OOCly about any of this, they are the ones crossing an IC/OOC line.

There is no line crossing if I ICly stab someone, ICly look for the doctor, ICly don't find the doctor, ICly bury someone in the woods.

If that's crossing an OOC line on a MUSH, then there we have yet another charming difference between MUDs and MUSHes.

@Arkandel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

and while your PC was at risk of dying in the Slaughthouse of Horror please assume I was also there fighting valiantly at the back. What, it's time for you to put in a spend for Glory 4? Me too! We're old war buddies, you and I.

So if A, B, and C go to the Slaughterhouse of Horror and die, are you going to log on dead as well? I'm asking seriously, because I'd like to know where the line between plausibility and convenience is drawn in the sand.