@Ghost said in Meg's Playlist:
@Jennkryst said in Meg's Playlist:
There is a suspicious lack of Mummiez on F&L, but I will look into things.
He'll, even the actual Luxor Casino removed all/most of their Egyptian decor and replaced it with neon purple lighting and Criss Angel stuff.
If the building wasn't shaped like a pyramid, it might not have anything Egyptian about it at all.
It's really sad. :< If we build it I might just make it the version with the Egyptian interior just because.
@peasoupling It is.
Rapists tend to try to target people they identify as 'vulnerable'-- that's why we disabled are disproportionate targets. The problem is that 'vulnerable' can really mean 'being in public' if you present as female (or as ambiguous or trans), because rapists will try to rape you no matter what you wear, what you are doing, or where you are. The standards for this varies rapist by rapist, so it turns into, 'Well, don't do all of these things!' Okay, you can do that and STILL get assaulted, and it still doesn't change how half of the population is required to change all of their behaviors for something they didn't even ask for, and often times are not factors at all.
It's reasonable to take precautions, but holding that over someone's head imo is simply wrong. The only way, imo, you can really fully control the situation is by making rapists wholly accountable and stopping that.
I'm harping, but the intersection of vulnerability and assault (via gender, ability, whatever) is a personal issue of mine. I am in danger every day because I am an intersex paraplegic in a major city (which has had a mass shooting about a mile from where I live), who lives independently, who works on the street, and conducts most of their business at night. I attract people (and often weirdos) like someone who's allergic attracts cats.
(Some of these reasons are why I worry about Bot when she is out alone.)
@tinuviel I have a few stalkers, and I know that at least one headwiz has outed me to them. It's part of why I've limited where I play. Knowing that someone who is known to be vindictive, and shares personal information about others, has access to others' IPs makes me uncomfortable.
I am uninsured. My cancer-related costs have run up to about $40-50k. (For cancer, that is cheap.) I got to stage 3c because we couldn't afford chemo. I only got chemo because my oncologist treated me for free. This didn't mean that my treatment was free, but that he wasn't going to charge me HIS fee, and I went through quite a few before finding one willing to treat me at all (because I was uninsured). My prognosis, because I'd had to wait a year between surgery and chemo, was 'a few months to live, maybe a few more with chemo. We want to try to make you as comfortable as you can be for the time you've got left'.
I went unexpectedly into remission, but I wasn't supposed to. Skip the next section if you need to because it's going to be gross, but I want to try to convince folks to stay insured with my real life example.
The excruciating pain of my tumors coming out of my navel and pressing into my rectum, groin and spine, consuming my reproductive system and junk, the physical cost of major surgery that butterflied me on the operating table and took out a football-sized tumor piece by piece because I would have died if it had all been taken out at once (the thing had grown an artery), my side muscles, part of my abdominal wall, scar tissue all over my abdomen several inches thick, and several other bits that I'd love to have; bleeding every day for over a year until surgery, or how much the double infusion (five hours a shot) and the booster shot fucked me up and still fucks me up to this day with permanent severe nerve damage and other damage. And not just the physical, I was a mental zombie for years and I mostly still am. I still have to take five Oxy a day, and fighting to get that prescription was a nightmare even though I respond well to it, have never felt the need to increase my dose, and respond to nothing else as effectively.
I only got my surgery because my tumor exploded: it had so many tendrils snaking out that it wrapped around part of itself and burst. That qualified as an emergency so medicaid covered part of the fee. My chemo did NOT qualify.
This was and has been my life for the last few years. (This is why I get annoyed when people say I did this or that, like, who has the time when you have actual stuff to worry about?)
If I'd had insurance and regular check-ups, this could all have been avoided.
I strongly suggest trying to avoid the horror story that is getting seriously ill whilst uninsured.
I understand premiums suck, but D and I have been paying over a grand a month just to cover our medical costs out of pocket because I am uninsured and she lost her benefits because of my cancer fundraiser (under Trump's new rules, that counted as income, not medical costs; her choice was to drop my treatment or lose her healthcare).
After all that, I now have to become the aide just to save a portion of that because I also have diabetes and we need to have enough money to keep actual food in the house. Considering that several of my friends have been dying from kidney and liver related ailments in some cases due to diabetes, I find it particularly urgent to eat better.
If this country had any semblance of reasonable healthcare, all of this bullshit could have been avoided. I'm originally from canada (no, I could not return to my home country for treatment), and availed myself frequently of health services there, so I know what actual decent reasonable and available and effective healthcare actually is. I feel for everyone struggling with their medical costs, but insurance is necessary or you can die or suffer really horribly.
@testament I wouldn't. Quite a few MUers are aware of this site, and many many many lurk but never post, but through playing and staffing I've found that a sizeable number (and probably the majority) does not give a fuck about MSB, bad actors, or controversies in general. They sign in, rp, and sign off. Stuff just rolls off.
@AeriaNyx And continuing the TMI, I can personally tell you that lack of sleep makes everything, mentally and physically, worse. I have only been able to sleep a few hours a night for a long time (it's caused by lupus and my meds), and sometimes not at all, and my god does it drag at me. It makes my immune system angrier, it fucks with my blood pressure, and I get these horrible racing yammering thoughts that keep me more awake, and then I get these ridiculous notions like I suck, I'm worthless, I'm broken, etc.
Over time, that shit can cause heart disease and all sorts of ugly stuff. It can impair your insulin function. It's really bad for you!
When I can actually get a good night's sleep, especially a few consecutively, I still feel physically worn out, but my god is there a difference.
Please go see a doctor. 
@surreality I have been dragged into that kind of nonsense on MU*s, but I suspect that's because I've run some and people get salty and make stuff up to get back at folks for staff calls, etc. The average player's less at risk unless they run afoul of a queen bee.
'Why wasn't I enough?' 'Why didn't/couldn't he love me?' 'Why did he choose her over me?' 'What did I do wrong?' 'Why did he treat me so appallingly?'
@kestrel We find fault in ourselves when we don't feel we can be angry at who's really at fault, partly because of this whole 'there's always two sides' shit that causes unnecessary self-blame. If he treated you appallingly, that's not YOUR fault. That's him being a selfish asshole 100%. You can break up with someone who you don't love anymore without being an asshole. Nobody forced him to treat you poorly, that's all on him.
@apos This is actually false, a number of disabled folks play videogames through modified or special equipment, visual enhancements, etc. I am legally blind and play MMOs. I used to have a friend spot things for me when I played games like Katamari Damacy.
What I do is stack most of my information stuff on the left side of the screen, as I am fully blind on my right. I play with my head a few inches from the screen as I have no peripheral vision. I know a number of extremely visually impaired folks who play who use various mods, UI enhancements, or just positioning to play.
I also do the same when I MUSH: my window is on my left, and my font (I wish there were better fixed-width fonts for visually-impaired people) is big enough for me to easily read.
I would use e-readers but they read too slow. I learned to speed-read as a young child and my reading and writing 'voice' is extremely sped up. I also tend to create poses in a few fragments that I then refine, and having it be purely audio is a pain in my ass. I ALSO like to listen to music when I MUSH just to keep my energy up.
This reminds me, however, to go make some spawns to highlight my name, I get nervous in bigger scenes and worry that I will miss poses at me as large, fast-moving blocks of text are a pain even for me to plow through.
My new instant pot.
Now I just need to figure out how to cook rice or noodles + chicken in it at the same time.
I don't think a letter to the MU* community would help with some of its more intractable problems: the people causing the issues know what they're doing and don't care that it bothers reasonable people. And the staff letting them get away with it ultimately don't care, either. There are low- or no-drama games out there, play on one of those or try your hand at running your own.
Ortallus is correct. I also, in addition to all this, suggest meditation. It sounds hokey but it isn't. It actively short-circuits some of the physical and chemical issues with anxiety even if it doesn't cure it.
Bot and I both have anxiety and find that we must actively manage it. That doesn't mean we're cured, it means we take steps to make sure we don't drown.
@lisse24 I find that they're useful for folks to chat, and then RP, with folks they might not have approached otherwise-- if your OOC community on that game is friendly.
Fortunately horrormux is, so it works out fine.
@surreality said in The Thread of Positivity and Sparkles!:
@Ganymede In all seriousness, Best Cat (as mentioned elsethread) once mimicked me, while I was helping my husband deal with a sudden 'omg I got twin charlie horses in my thighs!' incident. She apparently stepped and leaned on the exact spot where he needed pressure, and yowled at him, while I had the other side.
For bonus amusement, my husband is a massage therapist.
(He has gotten much mileage out of this story.)
When my cancer pain was really bad, my cat was unerringly good about finding the owie spot in my abdomen and kneading it. It was really sweet but really weird. She'd drop everything and come running, too. Cats are great. :3
@mietze said in criticism not allowed in ad threads is only enforcing a false positive, prove me wrong:
I don't think random players come to MSB to look for advertisements for a new game.
They do, though. There are many many lurkers who use MSB to stay current on new games.
@tinuviel It is a major one, there aren't that many hobby-wide forum sites about MUSHing.
@thenomain said in criticism not allowed in ad threads is only enforcing a false positive, prove me wrong:
And @Paris, I thank you, I really do, but as many people have said, it's up to me to fix. I won't ask for volunteers, I feel horribly bad talking to friends, because they have their own problems. I feel like shit 99% of the time that I'm not good enough, that I'm not calm enough, that I'm not living up to my potential, that I've failed people who have trust in me, and even through all that I've never publicly mentioned any of this on the board because that's not going to change who I am.
I'm only saying that yes, while it is absolutely vital that you take responsibility for yourself, your self-recrimination that you aren't necessarily really suffering is only going to do you harm, and may be exacerbated by the lack of effective meds.
Also, it is the privilege of a friend to be there for a friend who's struggling. The lie of mental illness is that it tells us that we shouldn't burden our friends with ourselves, that we are shit, and that we must isolate ourselves.
That is dangerous thinking in the long run, and in the short term it leads to emotional self-harm and isolation.
We're not close friends, but I remember you all the way back from the very early 90s on PernMUSH, where we RPed together sometimes and you were a kind and helpful guy. We have all changed, but you are, in many ways, still that guy. I have genuine faith in you, and I really hope that things can improve for you, especially with the meds.
I love you guys, and thank you, but no.
Really seriously, I believe that the bigger problems that developed on F&L are a result of me being too ill to properly oversee what staff are doing to their spheres, combined with us being consistently understaffed. If I had fired or replaced some staffers earlier on, the catastrophe of the vamp sphere might have been avoided.
On a personal level, I got tired of the constant stress from so many players AND staff about XP creep-- nobody was happy about their XP levels, people with high XP levels were viewed with suspicion, nobody wanted it either faster OR slower, etc.
I really loved that game and the players and most of the staff and shutting it down made me quit MUSHing for about a year (combined with my health cratering and it's still pretty dodgy), but the issues inherent to nWoD are just a perpetual headache. It's why I now play on either no-XP or limited-XP games, on no WoD games even though I love the THEME as opposed to the system, and why I'm not staffing.
(I suggest horrorMUX if you like horror themes and a lot of plots and enthusiastic folks, I think we're doing a supernaturally-themed one after the 80s one is done. There is no XP that carries over from theme to theme, and no byzantine system that requires a consequently large bunch of staff to administrate.)
Edit: I'd hoped that that other vegas game would scratch the itch for folks who were not done with the theme when we closed, but that doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. :<