Best posts made by Rinel

@Ganymede said in X-Cards:

That’s how improv works. And that’s how MUSHes work.

And, more generally, how decent people work.

Modern fantasy is actually quite popular. Sabrina is getting rave reviews on Netflix, and The Magicians seems to be doing well (though boy oh boy did they shake things up at the end of the last season). People aren't too happy with American Gods, though (personally, I love it, but my taste in shows is terrible), and I can't imagine that the Lakeside arc will make people any happier.

I think the lodestar for whether epic fantasy will continue on TV in a big way is going to be Amazon's LotR project. Whatever it is. The maps show Númenórë, so it's gonna be Second Age. If it does well, then I think things will improve.

@Jennkryst

Just play a changeling who looks like a mummy

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Which, I mean... makes sense. WIthout clarification, it does come across as a bigoted thing to do. I asked on this board a while ago if not allowing trans characters would make me a bigot. The answer here was a resounding yes, even though the sensible answer is no.

Uh. I mean, I don't think it makes you a bigot per se, but as a trans person I'd certainly be wondering why you'd decided not to allow people like me to exist as PCs in your game.

I mean, I almost always RP as a cis woman, so it's not like my RP would be stymied... but I'd certainly be a little concerned.

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Not a lot of trans people were in the WW1 trenches

Not a lot of openly trans people, no.

ETA: I'm necroing this because I just submitted an app and was interested in what people had to say and then suddenly OH GOD TRANSSEXUALS WITHOUT LEGS

@Ghost

Late to the party re: fluency.

I think you misread the statistic, or the statistic was improperly reported. Susie Dent (she of 'Countdown' and '8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown' fame) estimated that the average English speaker's active vocabulary, i.e. the words you use, is about 20,000 words, while your passive vocabulary, i.e. your active vocabulary plus the words that don't have you reaching for a dictionary, is about 40,000.

So yes, you absolutely do know 20,000 English words.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had 7,908 unique words. Extract a few dozen fake words (squib, muggle, etc), and you see just how many words you read without thinking about it. And there are so many words in English. We have words for everything. Plus, once you hit a certain point in vocabulary, you start being able to put together words by looking at their etymology and related words. For instance, say you know "hemo-" means "relating to blood." Suddenly you know hemoparasite, hemoparasitology, hemoparasitologist, hemopathology...

You've probably never seen the word "hyperpermeabilized" before in your life, but I'm positive that you instinctively know it means "the state of something that has been made really permeable." Because you know "hyper-" means "really," you know "-ized" means "done something to," and you know what permeability is.

I'm making a LOST BOY.

Character generation is hard when engines don't hold your hand

Having derailed this thread, I'm going to do my best to re-rail it.

I like the Dark Men but I'm struggling with how to thematically have them pose a threat. In my last scene I wrote it so that their attention was displayed by a small area of woodland going totally still in the middle of an oncoming storm making everything windy, and a fog rising out of the forest edge. But I'm not sure if that's too physical for them?

Of course I can just retroactively have it be done by a shadowy human working for them, so it's not a huge deal, but it does have me wondering.

@TiredEwok

I had to have my mother committed a little under a decade ago. I was 22. It was terrifying. She didn't want to go. She cried, begged, pleaded. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. She was out after a couple of months, and is now fully recovered. We have never been closer, or more loving.

I have one thing of advice. Go see him. Every day, if you can. It is scary in those places. Even if he doesn't want to see you (and he will want to see you), keep going, every day, in case he changes his mind. Just knowing he has the option to see his parent will mean everything to him. Being there for him during visiting will help so, so much.

Good luck. I know it's hard. It will get better.

I have been playing boatloads of Gloomhaven via Tabletop Simulator with friends, and it is awesome. So fun!

@Bananerz said in Map Making Skills:

Can I just be that person and say ask permission before you take a thing and do something with it if it isn't yours. There's quite a few folks here that would be able to chime in with their legal background too.

Legally, whether something is free use or not relies on a whole host of factors that aren't readily apparent from the initial post. If that map was released under a full creative commons license, he can do whatever the hell he likes with it. If it's copyrighted, then technically speaking it probably shouldn't even be up on the board (not that it matters; that sort of copyright violation happens all the time).

@Ghost said in MU*, Youth, and LGBT+ Identity:

There are people who don't want to see (example) white straight men play anything other than.

The problem with this is that a lot of times people put out feelers about their IRL identity in games. The fact that I've always gravitated to RPing women, along with the facts that I don't participate in TS and don't get anything sexual out of roleplaying women, was one of the (many) puzzle pieces that led to me coming out to myself.

@Ghost

Without knowing more about the laws of your state, all I can say is that she should get a legal consultation. I'm not comfortable giving any advice that would give you or her the belief that she does or does not have a claim, because I just don't know.

It sounds awful, though. Is there any way she can have it replaced?

@Auspice

Original post edited for accuracy.

Having a scene with people with whom your IC relationship is very tetchy and your OOC relationship might be but you're too much of a coward to ask, and the scene is really nice and everybody seems to genuinely enjoy themselves.

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

Some people do have real, documented issues with this, as something that really exists in the real world -- and if you're so bloody aware as you present yourselves to fucking be, you know this already -- and I'm one of them. So fuck you really hard, you sanctimonious, 'read only what you want to read into something', pre-judging shits.

Interestingly enough, there is at least some research indicating that males have long-term (i.e. not daily) hormonal cycles as well--it's simply that they don't exhibit obvious physical symptoms of such cycles.

I come closest to @RDC on the issue, though I think they and I somewhat disagree on the ideal societal nature of it, what with me being rather personally prudish on the matter.

If we're going to have a discussion about writing erotic fiction collaboratively, we need to accept that almost all societies view sexual activity as unique, and American society views it as especially private to the point of being taboo. Whether or not one agrees with that is not really all that relevant, if the discussion is how TS works in the context of larger interpersonal dynamics.

It also means that most analogies to other kinds of human behavior are going to fail, because they simply aren't going to be appropriately analogous. I understand that we have our characters murder people and we don't murder people. I understand that we have our characters do all sorts of things that we don't do. But I think we should admit that certain behaviors between humans can lead to strong feelings of intimacy (go sing a duet with someone. or dance with them. You're gonna feel something, even if you're waltzing the most chaste waltz ever waltzed), even when those behaviors aren't happening face to face.

Personally, I felt weird having my character engage in a romantic relationship with another character while I was dating someone. My girlfriend knew about it and was not opposed, so I continued--but I (and I believe she, though I never felt the need to ask) would have felt like I was cheating had I not done FTBs when things got steamy.

@Thenomain said in Good TV:

I’m getting burnout on a considerable amount of nostalgia bait.

I don't think sequels are nostalgia bait. If every episode is "focus on an old character," then sure--but it doesn't look like that will be the case.

@insomniac7809 said in TS - Danger zone:

If we're talking, like, magical timeline duplicates... now, that's a question that gets into the teleporter paradox. If I go into a machine, Scotty vaporizes me, and then I come back together on the other side, am I still me? If yes, what if he saves the data and pops out another of me? If no, that implies either I stop existing when my component atoms are replaced--which happens every few years--or when my consciousness stops functioning--which implies I did die during my appendectomy (or, rather, he died, I started existing when the anaesthesia wore off.) Do "I", in a discrete sense, actually exist, or am I just a collection of processes that shuffle around in the same general vicinity for a few decades, and if so, isn't a second identical bundle of processes just "more" of me?

Did you seriously just take a smut thread and turn it into a discourse on the problem of personal identity?

Fucking hell. Go read some Parfit and get out of here, nerd.

@silverfox

Well, if it gives you any comfort, I used to adore LaCroix and now I'm just sort of "eh" about it. I've certainly never felt off without it.

I think people sometimes forget that for those of us who are trying to lose weight, anything that is even a bad facsimile of something we like can be a big deal (e.g. halo top, which is terrible if you've had ice cream within recent memory but is amazing if you're on a diet).

For me, at least, having cold fizzy drinks that are low calorie and don't taste like aspartame is really helpful--though I've recently found a brand that has a small amount of real juice in it. That is worth the 10-20 calories.

Even after all the shit she's done, people still coming to Rinel for information. And, rarely, but still horrifyingly, for advice.