@ghost I have to admit, I find myself agreeing with you more today than I have in years. Thank you for saying a lot of what I've been thinking and haven't been able to articulate.

I've rarely had chars outright die, but I always seem to lose them long before I consider their story done. Sometimes, (not all the time, just sometimes,) I have someone where I can do private RP outside the game, exploring the what-ifs or the last of the story until something new replaces it. Not all the time, though.

The rest of the time, I let myself grieve because stories get a little too real to me and losing them is HARD.

@Ghost Look. You keep defending Spider, but numerous people brought evidence. They brought logs. They brought anecdotes. The staffers came in and told their tale.

None of that happened in a vacuum. If you need to defend someone, (in my opinion,) pick a better subject. Spider is a lot of the reason why I want evidence before I'm willing to ban someone. I've seen too many people hounded off a game because Spider decided they were doing something wrong and told Spider's in-crowd. (Edited to fix pronouns.)

@Macha I've been through this. When you need to, take off to the bathroom or someplace private, have a few minutes of tears or whatever, then go back to work. Rinse, repeat. Then go home and have a good shower and a big cry. Rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

You can do this. For me, it helped to remember that the Victorians used to have a two or three year period where you were /expected/ to grieve intermittently, it's part of the wearing of black for that time period. We don't allow ourselves enough time to properly grieve in this day and age.

I'm sending virtual hugs.

The thing about VASpider is this: she's friendly, cheerful, personable, charismatic, helpful, kind, and will run lots of plot for you.

That's how she gets her minions. And staff friends.

And she's that way for a good long time, up until one day, someone does something that upsets her or she feels like she's been thwarted or she just feels like overturning the apple cart. And if she doesn't have any visible enemies, she'll turn on one of her own, and get all her minions to do the same. And suddenly, that person is being targeted with no clue why.

Sound familiar to anyone here? All of you people claiming that wanting evidence is evil? You're absolutely wrong. Because Spider had a way of making it so that even asking for the logs was 'mistrusting' her. And if you think other people won't do the same thing...well, I've watched it happen on other games.

"People are complaining," says Staffer A to the headwiz. They don't mention WHICH people. Just people. The headwiz decides to take action and come down hard on the person that "people" are complaining about without ever asking for evidence because Staffer A is trustworthy. Thing is, it's not "people." It's just Staffer A, who's having a bad day or a bad year or a bad life, or isn't getting enough attention that week, whichever. But because that staff is a closed circle and an echo chamber, no outside dissent comes into it.

Always ask for evidence. Trust, but verify. Don't assume that because someone is your friend, they're entirely objective and unbiased.

@GreenFlashlight And again, we have this argument.

Bring. Receipts. Is. Not. A. Bad. Default.

I don't know you from Adam, you could be a liar of the highest order. How do I know this? I've run afoul of VASpider and her at-the-time coterie and they sure as hell did a number on me on her say-so. For over two years. So you may not trust authority but I don't trust a mob mentality OR authority, even when the authority is mine. I second-guess myself so much that I annoy people and myself.

It's not about litigation, it's about bringing ANY kind of evidence.

Also, the people no longer welcome on this board are the ones who want to bring the personal attacks. Personally, I want to hear from the people who've been scared into silence for the last few years.

@greenflashlight I can provide one.

The argument over wanting evidence to ban someone on a game, even minimal evidence. There were a great number of those that were banned who were arguing that no evidence was needed, believe victims wholesale just because they said it.

Derp came down on the side of "Uh...that's not ok." (So did I, so did a number of people who I'll not name out of courtesy.)

Derp was the only one who was told what a terrible, misogynistic, evil rape apologist he was for wanting basic facts. But a HUGE percentage of people who were arguing it did it. What is that but brow-beating, name calling, and bullying?

No one called me a rape apologist for saying believe-but-verify. Why is that, do you think?

As long as there's a place that sells cabbages.

No one's mentioned this yet, but Knives Out was a fantastic amount of fun for anyone who's ever vaguely liked Agatha Christie type mysteries. The cast is phenomenal, the acting is brilliant, and several of the cast seem to be having the "I'm getting PAID for this? This job is the BEST!" kind of time in their roles.

@wizz I didn't get lucky, I called it to Dev's attention. I spoke the fuck up. "Hey, I think this is that guy from Other Game and he's pulling that shit that annoys me again." And Dev joined a scene and witnessed it for himself. He's the one who said, "Uh...this is predatory, he's weaponizing stupidity and if you say something, you're not kicking a puppy."

I don't begin to think for a second that my experience is universal. Nor do I hold it against people for not keeping receipts.

But WORA was originally invented to STOP the kind of behavior that y'all are advocating and I don't want to regress to those times.

Trust, but verify. Back up your assertions. Communicate.

Also, @Faraday AGAIN said it better than I did. And there's one more thing: sometimes, people can be wrong. I'm usually pretty bad at spotting people from game to game.

@Hella He was wonderful!

And I finally let myself finish it. And cried. I really want season 2. I want ALL the seasons.

@Runescryer Admittedly, every time Martin Tenbones came on the screen, I had to yell "MARTIN TENBONES!" Like he could hear me.

@ZombieGenesis Oh, no! This one hurts!

@Runescryer I'm on The Collectors right now. But I concur!

Only finished the first three eps, but holy shit.

The Sandman is fulfilling all of my wildest dreams.

I love that Ares has the ability to do asynch RP. (I mean, whether I like the "takes freaking forever and a month" scenes or not, some people love that so the fact that the capability is there makes me happy.)

But I also very much like the way XP is handled, it keeps people from advancing too fast and you can't rack up 100 XP and then spend it all at once.

I also like the ease of making a cha...ok, if I start talking about everything I like on Ares, we're gonna be here all day.

I'm not on any Ares games right now and while I have now discovered the joys of BeipMu, I am missing the Ares interface like whoa.

According to a tweet from George Takei, we lost Nichelle Nichols today.

@Selira @Mietze Well, if they'd made the choice to behave here, they wouldn't be there, now, would they? I mean, seriously, for a bunch of people committed to protecting mental health, the banned people didn't give much thought to who they were harming when they continued to throw their temper tantrums and then got banned for it.

So, they made another board where they could do what they want and be as mean as they wanted and STILL ended up with rules like here, but they're not enforced.

You can say what you want but your board is public and anyone can read for themselves. Just like the boards here are public.

However, again, feel free to respond, I'm pretty done with this idiotic argument.

@TNP I disagree. I know too many people who won't come to MSB because it was downright mean. And people who still won't because they don't trust it. Can't say I blame them, given how many times we've had to point out that people are attacking the person instead of the idea.

The fact that a whole group went and formed another board just so they could continue being really mean to people says more about them than this place, really.

@TNP Then they can rename their board "WORA" and no one's going to give a damn. Not sure why they didn't, to be honest. I'd be all for it, myself. Take back the original name rather than trying to take a new one, you'll get all the people who liked that kind of thing.