@Carex said in The Dark Side of online Role-Playing:
@Cobaltasaurus said in The Dark Side of online Role-Playing:
Telling your kids they should never do or say anything you might disapprove of because you might snoop on them and catch them is just terrible.
People say you’re trolling because you are making up things that weren’t said to rail about and accuse a poster of child abuse.
If people come in sick, I'm usually quicker to blame the company. Do they give adequate sick time? Does the culture encourage or discourage people taking time when appropriate? These are usually the big factors for people being trained to power through stuff like this.
tl;dr blame capitalism
@GreenFlashlight Eh, I think this is very much a case where people's experiences vary. I've been in the hobby for some two decades and I've never run into it on a game I've been on. People just definitely remember the instances where they run into it.
@Aria This is all good stuff. It's amazing and heartwrenching how sometimes people struck by horrific tragedies sometimes see their friends disappear -- because those friends "don't know what to say" and so stay away entirely. It didn't happen to me when my brother died, but it did happen to my dad. He lost his son, and then lost some people he thought were good friends. (Fortunately, he also reconnected with some others who stepped up.)
Worrying about the right thing to say is a distraction. The more important thing is showing up.
@bear_necessities Oh, gross, that guy? Literal harasser/stalker guy? Gtfo.
I feel like the appropriate response to him threatening to post on MSB is "lol sounds like fun drama."
jesus christ what is happening right now, is this really about one silly tech support call
@kk I am genuinely impressed at the clear work and effort you've put into building and internalizing this whole list. Kudos.
@Testament said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Still, nobody wants to say 'your new girlfriend is batty and needs to be medicated'. As much as I hate to say it, they're really good for each other. She's just a nightmare for anyone else to be around. Espeically if a given topic doesn't conform to her views.
Well, nobody SHOULD say that, because you really don't need to say someone needs to be medicated just because they're acting like an asshole. They just need to stop acting like an asshole.
But this doesn't have to be an "her or us" situation. He doesn't need to break up with his girlfriend for you guys to not have to hang out with her. It just means that he may not get to hang out with his friends and his girlfriend at the same time.
I think there's a lot of value in being direct, especially with people that you feel aren't the best at social cues. There is a kind way to say, "Hey, I love our tabletop and I love hanging out, but your girlfriend really goes on the attack in a way that makes me uncomfortable. I respect that she's passionate about her beliefs, but it's tough to feel like we can't hang out without feeling like stuff is going to explode. Can I offer to host our tabletop sessions for a while? I still want to spend time with you, but right now I'm not ready to spend time with her."
This is an awkward situation, because there are levels in which I'd totally support someone in her situation -- girlfriend coming into her boyfriend's space -- expressing discomfort if her boyfriend's friends were being actively gross or toxic. Like if it's a group making shitty sexist jokes, I think it's okay for a person in that position to go, "That's really not okay to say." But, jesus, I have strong opinions about a lot of shit, but there are levels here. I'm not super comfortable with hunting either, but it sure sounds like you weren't being aggressive about it and that you take it seriously. I also have opinions about the dangers of political centrism or wtfe, but I'm not going to attack my boyfriend's friends about it??????
You say that your friend has trouble with social cues and whatnot, so I think the kindest thing is to be kind but direct. Don't bash his girlfriend, but it's really okay to say that you don't appreciate being treated a certain way or feeling like you're entering a minefield every time you hang out.
@A-B said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:
Oh, makes sense. If you actually do have some idea what mistake you made, or one of them anyway, that's different. It's when you're having to "take responsibility" and admit that you're in the wrong for something that you see no way you could have avoided doing, or that you're sure you actually didn't do, that it gets tricky.
You don't have to apologize for things you didn't do. Sometimes it's appropriate to apologize for things you did that hurt someone in a way you didn't intend, similar to apologizing for accidentally stepping on someone's foot.
As for "you see no way you could have avoided doing" -- it very, very much depends on what you mean by that. Because if a situation was along the lines of "I got really upset with people because I didn't feel I had the coping tools to stop or remove myself from the situation," then yeah, that's also something people are generally going to feel warrant an apology later.
Me too! (I knew that already.) That may be why I don't respond very much, except to want to scream, to all the advice about "you shouldn't be saying what you mean, you should be saying these things that you don't mean instead". And possibly why I needed to put that disclaimer at the top of this posting. If I'm only supposed to say things I don't mean, what's the point of me being in the channel at all? I might as well just leave them a tape recording of somebody else saying something else and be on my way.
Can you clarify where you think you're being told to only say things you don't mean?
Will you look at that - it turns out I was right the first time to be hopping mad at being described as "choosing" to be frustrated and to think it was totally unfair, because the thing you did instead, I have no idea how to do, hence I couldn't really have done it.
In general, in social interactions, people are going to expect others to be able to regulate their emotions in a reasonable fashion in interactions. "I have difficulty regulating my feelings" can garner sympathy and support in some situations, but not in the moments where others are having to deal with moments of unregulated feelings. The social expectation is that, if you don't know how to healthily regulate your emotions, it's your responsibility to learn. And, generally, people aren't going to take very well to "Well I can't help it because I don't know how" if they've had to deal with being on the other side of someone else's outbursts.
@Seamus The flu is only more lethal if you're considering lethality on the basis of overall deaths and ignoring the relative speed of infection. However, that entirely ignores the differences in rates of deaths to infection; by that standard, COVID-19 is considerably more lethal. Yes, it doesn't have high rates of infection that the flu has built over many, many decades. However, its spread right now is clearly at a much higher rate. Our healthcare systems are very used to handling the flu. I'm sure that flu season isn't fun or easy for medical professionals and those in the healthcare industry to handle, but it's very clearly different from what they're dealing with right now. The death rates in Italy are in part because their healthcare system is overloaded. It's not just about the virus itself, it's about not having the infrastructure in place to handle the rate of infection that's happening. Choices are being made about who to let die because there aren't enough doctors, nurses, and supplies to keep the number of survivors where they could be if everything else where equal.
I don't know what else to say. The flu is a serious constant that people absolutely forget how deadly it is. But, at this point in our battle with it, it no longer causes the sort of overwhelming of healthcare that COVID-19 is doing right now. And that's the real danger.
So I haven't watched Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, but I did religiously watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which also had full musical numbers every episode. CXG took good advantage of its cast's differing capabilities both vocally and physically, but tbh a number of its lead cast are Broadway, musical theatre vets. But even then, you're gonna have differing levels of capability on the triple threat spectrum. Vincent Rodriguez, who played Josh, has a solid voice but is a dancer, and he was given several dance numbers over the years to show that off. Santino Fontana (the original Josh) and Donna Lynne Champlin (Paula) both have ridiculous voices and they're strong movers, but neither of them are known as dancers in New York. (David Hull, who played White Josh, is a really strong dancer, but actually barely ended up showing it off.) CXG's choreography was also fantastic at evoking and honing in on specific styles. The other thing it did was just -- you know, have backup dancers filling out a number, as solos were the more common. When someone is just there to dance, you get someone who's fantastic at dancing.
I cannot speak to Zoey's choreography. But CXG did it very well! (Hello, I loved CXG so very, very much, and everyone should watch it.)
@HelloProject Yeah, you just gotta think of the size of Arx. Objects of unthematic nature proliferate, character images get changed all the time, etc. Assume staff hasn't seen something before you assume they've seen it and declined to enforce a policy.
It came out last year, but I just watched Unbelievable this week on Netflix. Definite content warning, which will be very clear if you check even the briefest synopsis, but damn, it is an example of how to do stories surrounding sexual assault in an empathetic manner that respects the weight of its subject matter. It centers on the experience of women, both in the victims -- who are diverse both demographically and in their widely varied responses to trauma -- and the detectives who work this case. And it's all based on a true story (and very accurate to it, in fact).
@Goblin said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
- I'm sure there's similar examples all over the world, but here's the Swedish one: 'You know you're from the NORTH if you eat icecream in the winter, and the closest neighbor is a twenty minute drive away! etc etc'
Hey so, I eat ice cream in the winter, I'll eat it in the snow, IDGAF ice cream is delicious.
Where do I apply for my remote Swedish mountain cabin?
@Derp said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
@Wizz said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
I'm not sure that I do love it anymore. The books have had sentimental value to me because I grew up with them, but how I feel about them as an adult has changed a lot, and especially in the light of the author's views that I personally find hateful a lot of that fondness for them has dried up.
Also, I dunno, I wouldn't exactly compare a former fandom to a former religion. But if I'd gotten a bible verse or a cross, just speaking for myself I'd probably feel pretty strongly about altering or removing them too when I became an atheist.
I mean, you do you, but personally I don't think you can judge the value of a work by the character of its author, no matter how popular that seems to be in the cancel culture movement. If that were the case nobody would ever read anything at all. Most works considered to be masterpieces were written by authors with some serious problems by contemporary standards. Distinguishing one from the other is perfectly acceptable.
That's a very personal decision for each person, and it can be really dependent on your relationship with the text and the issues with the author. The idea that an author's character is somehow completely independent from the art they create is a very simplified view of how art is created in the first place. I don't tell people to abandon art when they come to realize that the creator holds beliefs they find deeply offensive, but on the flipside, I get really irritated when people argue at others deciding they have to put away something beloved because they can't stomach it anymore due to the author's words or actions. Art and artist are intrinsically interwoven, and you don't have to cry "cancel culture" because one person is navigating their personal relationship with a piece of art. @Wizz isn't telling anybody else they need to toss their copies of Harry Potter. He's talking about rethinking a permanent mark on his own body.
See, I read the comments about the commoner alts more from a game design standpoint, like, "Is this something you want to open up on the game when they're not designed to be able to engage with the main story of the game," not that people were leaping to play commoners. The question of "What character types do we allow and encourage" is pretty fundamental, and it's a fair for people to ask the wisdom of allowing character types that aren't going to be allowed to engage in the central story, because I imagine we've all played on games where something like that has been the case but there's still been friction with players wanting to pick up those types and still feel central, etc. It was just a question of game focus.
@Auspice said in Dead Celebrities 2020:
He was a great actor and, by all evidence, a great man.
Sean Connery has always been my favorite Bond, and he was a total favorite actor of mine for much of my life growing up, but that last bit is sadly almost certainly not true.
@kestrel So just yesterday I realized that, when I was 21, I had made a character who I felt was a bit "older." He was grouchy, lived-in, etc. I couldn't remember how old he was when I first apped him, so I went to check.
He was 36.
Two years older than I am now.
I wanted to die. I have literally never felt so old.
