Posts made by Rinel

Given where MUDs fall into the development of pc gaming, and given the increasingly (awesome) automated systems of games like Arx, it's hard for me not to justify calling Arx at least a video game. The fact that you can more easily Chinese room it through accessibility isn't very persuasive. Online chess and other board games can be rendered into audio form (and in the case that someone protests on the grounds that those are merely board games ported to PC, we may hypothesize a similar but original game made exclusively for pc).

This isn't a particularly interesting semantical argument, though.

@roz said in Who are you?:

@three-eyed-crow Don't Be A Lawyer!

OI. Copycat.

@ganymede said in Who are you?:

@gangofdolls

Advanced science degrees + law degree = patent law practice = exorbitant amounts of money.

It's hard to exaggerate how exorbitant said amounts of money are.

@gangofdolls said in Who are you?:

I made it past 1L in law school and fucking quit. I crushed my 1L fall exams (the hardest set of exams in law school or so they claim but I think its mostly because you're properly traumatized after that) and then realized that I hated everything about the idea of being a lawyer and quit.

I have considered going back because I could use this skill set for something else. I can't fucking make a decision about this.

Tough choice. If you did 1L and you're willing to keep working as hard you'll do fine. But law school is just generally a boring, miserable experience. The good news is that it's nothing like the practice of law whatsoever. The bad news is that if you don't really love what you're doing as a lawyer, the practice of law is also a boring, miserable experience.

The law market is still incredibly saturated from the 2008 financial disaster, and getting jobs in lucrative and/or rare positions remains difficult. I think law school should be approached somewhat like grad school. If you love the idea of it, and you think that's what will make you happiest--go for it. You'll have a great time (not during law school, but as a practitioner). But if you're just doing it because you're smart and clever and like to argue, there are tons of fields where those traits are valuable and don't require you slogging through three miserable, expensive years.

Honestly, Crazy Ex Girlfriend summed it up best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-UEqJ85KE

• Last year I developed really, really severe agoraphobia that prevents me from driving more than five minutes from my house without having the mother of all panic attacks. Boo.
• I'm slowly getting better. Yay.
• I somehow managed to get sworn in as a lawyer and spend part of my days working for a nonprofit and feeling like Mr. Magoo. Yay?
• I play a rabidly conservative religious character because I like stretching my limits and doing things that feel alien. Yay?
• Because IRL I'm a rabidly leftist religious person. Your mileage may vary.
• Dogs and cats are equally amazing. YAY.
• I play flute okay. I sing with enthusiasm and without skill. I am learning how to draw and am very poor at it.
• Fat is tastier than sweet. But both combined is best. Ice cream is sublime.
• I don't have tattoos or piercings, and at the present time the only plans I have for any are a traditional Jerusalem cross on my arm if I ever make a pilgrimage there.
• I frequently get agitated that I don't have the time to learn every language.
• I'm theoretically learning Mandarin but am really on an indefinite hiatus.

And most importantly I've never let inconsequential details like my ignorance or basic facts get in the way of my opinions, of which there are many.

I generally am too worried about my mistakes to worry about other people's. There's been precisely one person I can really think of having ever had a problem with, and we just sort have avoided each other since the problem was resolved. And even then, on my part the avoidance is more a "wow I don't think they like me; I ought to stay clear unless/until it looks like they have an interest in RPing with me." And that may never come, and I'm cool with that.

Also, I think there are a few differences between me and the average MUSHer:

1. I'm new to mushing (less than a year) but as far as I can tell I started mushing later in my life than a lot of people (late twenties. I am baby). So I haven't seen a lot of the really crazy shit that's happened in the past.

2. I work in criminal defense and am probably broken at some level in determining what constitutes a bad thing.

3. I make mistakes all the time and hope that forgiving other people means they'll reciprocate when I inevitably put my foot in my mouth.

4. I am a bear of very little brain and forget a lot of stuff.

@sab said in How old are MU* players?:

I think there's a huge market to bring younger people of that sort into the hobby, it's all about marketing and offering the right thing, we just haven't yet.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I don't know if Gaia Online is still the incredibly active flaming dumpster-fire it was in my teens, but there's no shortage of younger people eager to RP through a text medium. Quality, of course, is highly variable, ranging all the way from horrible to unspeakably bad. But it's not as though people born in the 90s are incapable of RPing through a purely text-based medium. Forum RP is still pretty popular.

@arkandel said in How old are MU* players?:

I'm pleased to see a wider demographic of younger folks than I expected. Not sure how newbies get into MUSHing these days but somehow it's happening.

Someone randomly recommended Arx to me after I quit an absolute disaster of a Neverwinter Nights RP server. But generally speaking, I'd done MUDs before (mostly Achaea), as well as forum RP. And Arx seems a bit more MUDdy than most MUSHes, thanks to the absurd coding powers who work there, so it was an easy transition.

(28 years old, for reference. So not really young by any standard, but younger than you decrepit antediluvians)

@tinuviel said in How old are MU* players?:

@arkandel More importantly, who brought them here?

Bad luck and worse choices.

@thenomain said in RL Anger:

Alright, fun's fun, but can we please take this to the Politics thread?

Everyone knows the personal is political, but for those without privilege, the political frequently becomes personal. There's a valid reason for anger.

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

@secretfire said in A (Mildly Complete) List of Current Games:

This is almost depressing. This is it for mushes? ...thats sad. Its like watching the last few dinosaurs meander around the rats scurrying at their feet. Remember when the number of active, real mu* seemed almost endless?

...I play a character named Rinel on Arx.

@arkandel said in RL Anger:

My best friend from childhood has turned into... not a great person, and it bothers me even though we haven't spoken in years. But we used to be really close, and it's upsetting to see him on FB (I guess I should just unfriend him) posting really inane things.

A few days ago he was making posts about Athens Pride 2018 that were ignorant at best, he supports goddamn neonazis openly. The hell, man, you were never like this when we were 14. Dammit.

I have had two friends go down this path. Both disclaim being neonazis, because one says neonazis fail to follow Hitler's ideology sufficiently and the other prefers the ideology of George Lincoln Rockwell.

The first one cut off ties with me because I wouldn't let him say things without calling him out on his bullshit. The other, I'm still trying to be friends with, because I really, really don't want to lose another person to this evil.

@coin said in RL Anger:

Some of these are legit.

Some remind me of Douglas Adams and his, "the spaceships hung in the sky in the same way bricks don't."

I always actually thought that was a pretty inspired line. Like, yeah, it's funny on its face, but it also gets you to imagine bricks hovering motionless in the air and really underscores how incredibly unnatural the scene would be.

I was going to say I don't really have a theme--my characters that stick out most in my mind are a vengeful paladin, an "ends-justify-the-means" warlock, a lich dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge who does nice things because he runs cost-benefit analyses, and a chatterbox scholar who won't shut up about the gods--but I suppose they're all convicted, in their own way. Most of my characters have very firmly set ideals, and they don't tend to listen to others trying to persuade them otherwise. I don't do passive very well.

I did RP a slave once, but that was... squicky. In a lot of ways.

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

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

I cut a frozen onion and forgot to wash my hands afterwards and my itched and I scratched it a bit and oh no

Really almost no matter what body part was supposed to follow after the 'my' is bad, but I'm assuming eyes and

Yeah it was eyes.

I cut a frozen onion and forgot to wash my hands afterwards and my itched and I scratched it a bit and oh no

@ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:

@rinel said in Good or New Movies Review:

What I did not like was the feeling of "African American culture bad, fictional Wakandan culture good" that I got.

I can't argue with a feeling, but I think you may have missed what the writers were getting at.

What I got was that Wakandans find African American culture "bad" because it was born out of a history of oppression. What I saw T'Challa wrestling with was Wakanda's part in that history. What I understood was that T'Challa discovered and concluded that Wakanda was as responsible for that oppression as the oppressors because they let it happen when they could have intervened and ended it.

I understand that in the abstract and agree with it. But the viewers' interactions with Black Americans are limited to Killmonger, his girlfriend (who gets maybe two lines?), and an assortment of children. Killmonger seems to go heavy on the AAVE dialect when he is engaging in "thuggish" behavior. At best, the movie is putting forward some sort of "Wakandan man's burden," where a fictional country must elevate American blacks through advanced technology and intervention. I don't think any of this was the intended message of the film. It just seemed like it was sort of implied in the way that the director emphasized certain things.

I agree that it is a good thing the movie was made. Watching Infinity War yesterday made me realize how much Black Panther got right--for instance, not making a female villain for female heroes to fight while men do all the important work.

@theonceler said in Infinity War [SPOILERS]:

If anything I was annoyed that twice in the movie Proxima Midnight was sectioned off for a chick fight. Guys, it's okay for the girls and guys to fight. No one's going to get upset.

I watched Black Panther for the first time a few days ago, and this in Infinity War stuck out like a sore thumb. It felt really hamfisted and unnatural, and it took away from the female characters by relegating them to "fighting, ladies division."

Proxima Midnight had such amazing design, though. I loved all of that group.

As for Death, yeah, if you aren't going to make her a goth girl with a dry sense of humor, best to leave her out of it. And I'm pretty sure DC beat you to that one, Marvel.

One of my favorite things about Black Panther was the architecture of Wakanda. Skyscrapers reflecting Sahelian aesthetics? Yes please. That was so, so cool. Seeing afrofuturism on the big screen was indescribably awesome.

What I did not like was the feeling of "African American culture bad, fictional Wakandan culture good" that I got. There's something vaguely skeevy to my mind about having the only AAVE you hear coming out of the mouth of a psychopath. I don't think Killmonger's violent proletarian black revolution was a good idea, but I also am really deeply skeptical of the idea that setting up a couple of schools and tech centers is a meaningful response to the massive structural inequities of American racism.

I think superhero movies in general are sort of reactionary though.

The only things I've found that make me less inclined to seek out RP with someone are

1. When they act controlling OOC ("don't pose like that," "be more/less active," "don't play with that person"). Absolute turnoff. Obviously pointers and corrections about theme are fine, but if you're unhappy I'm not saying anything in a council of nobles and the king? I'm playing a blacksmith's daughter. She's not going to be offering her opinion unasked. I'll talk later.

2. when they act clannish and uninterested in RP. This is less a "I don't like you" and more a "this doesn't seem to be working" thing. Sometimes you get the vibe people would rather RP with someone else. No harm, no foul--but if it happens a lot I'll generally stop looking to RP with that person.

This is a good thread. Though now I'm going to be on the lookout for all these behaviors in my playing. Except short poses. I'm going to keep doing short poses. You people are crazy.