Posts made by Solstice

Topic. This appears to be broken.

@Misadventure

Look, I see what you're getting at with this, but the optics are a tiny bit different because you're not someone who was deputized by the very party I'm criticizing.

I don't appreciate that dissent is being categorized as dehumanization, so yes, you're very much a human being - every bit as I am. We're just having a disagreement over who's shaking the keys to what was once a community and now is experiencing a painful rip through its center.

I am not someone who thinks people who I disagree with are somehow subhuman.

Cheers.

@Ghost

It's a direct response to a post on the topic.

@Derp

I can very clearly see why you'd think that, when this schism was largely along the lines of whether you were suitable to hold power.

Now you do so nearly unilaterally, with two admins racing one another to upvote your every take.

Best possible outcome for you. Thus, healthy.

@misadventure

Gosh, yes. I can think of nothing more lame than losing a character to completely mundane threats. My example has always been 'bandits'.

Very real risk of this happening in an armed robbery in real life? Definitely. But having it happen in a story is quite the anticlimax unless handled with absolute precision.

No one can convince me that anyone failed in the new trilogy except for J.J. Abrams.

And Colin Trevorrow, for losing his chance to direct one of them, for which I am eternally grateful.

@macha

Ah. Welp.

@macha

I don't endorse data exfiltration.

That being said, copying the PST file to a thumb drive is less likely to set off alarm bells than a massive amount of forwarded emails to yourself going through the mail server.

@ganymede

Thank you for this.

Transparency is arguably the most important element to these proceedings, and I think it's been where some of the major heartburn has stemmed from. I would urge the three of you to reevaluate some of the decisions that were made in the heat of the moment, and I hope that's being considered.

Bannings, especially, should be reserved largely for people who have gone far beyond the pale, and I think when the door was locked to the hogpit, it's quite natural that it spilled out. Some folks in that initial wave got slapped down for what were, ultimately, pretty innocuous statements.

I don't think it's impossible to restore goodwill, and I do think that even if unbanned, plenty of folks wouldn't come back anyhow, but it represented an inconsistent application of moderation, and I think everyone involved struggled with keeping a level head about it as the situation compounded.

I'm nevertheless glad to hear that course correction is being considered, and codifying the rules of engagement to be less floaty (to avoid inconsistent application of moderation) is something that should be considered. It needs a second pass to remove some of the ambiguity, which can currently be read as, "You can be banned if we feel like it."

While that's generally true of any online space, I don't think that was quite your staff's intentions with revising the rules of engagement, and it's how it reads from a mostly-neutral stance.

I do hope this is taken in the spirit it's intended, with the intent of being constructive.

@rightmeow said in Something Completely Different:

Don't forget to be kind.

Honestly, I'm cool with just this.

There's people behind the keys. That goes for people who were banned, and people who did the banning.

I think locking threads was iffy, but fine. I think locking MSB was a huge mistake. I think the bans that went out were almost entirely uncalled for, and should have been reversed. I think insisting on DMs was also a mistake, because people are inherently mistrusting of what happens in the dark. That's where the fear and mistrust and the idea of cliques and whisper campaigns comes from, warranted or not.

I'm as far from part of the 'clique' as it's envisioned can be, because I often disagree with the broad consensus, but I think at some point, we need to confront that mistakes were made, and doubling down on them has only harmed the site's credibility.

@saosmash

Thanks. I'm getting the help I need, but this individual's other victims were treated even more poorly and were even younger than I was at the time.

There's no turning over a new leaf on things that are unforgivable, and I wish this person would get out of this hobby so I'd stop having to warn people about them.

Gratitude to staffers who have believed me.

Oh boy, where to start.

But mostly, trusting someone with things about me only to have them turn around and use that knowledge against me in ways that were emotionally and sexually manipulative, and exceptionally illegal.

Fucked me up for years, and made me reject my bisexuality until my 30s because I associated half of my attraction with being made a victim.

Fuck you very much, you fuck.

Well, I see this as an absolute win.

@tinuviel

It can be legitimately heartening to go back on one of your off days and see that you are indeed capable of words.

@seraphim73

Hey, every now and then you need dodge as a stat as a politician.

I think of min-maxing your character's specialization as a pretty organic way of telling a given character's story. I'm not going to say that no one is interested in a story where a character works really hard to improve themselves, and then gets killed by a gnoll because of a really bad series of botched dice throws, because... well, come on, that's funny.

But it's less funny in the context of a story-rich game where you've spent literal years building up a character. The specter of possible death is a good motivating force, and the dice won't always be on your side, but I can say that on slow-burn games, having a bad dice day on something your character is supposed to be good at can feel gutwrenching.

"Aw, man, I only get to do this maybe once a year, and I failed every roll."

So people tend to drift towards trying to mitigate that feeling. This is especially true for combat stats, I feel, because they tend to directly impact whether you're killed. Failing a seduction roll isn't quite the same stakes (usually) as failing a roll to see whether the fragment of meteorite that just fell on your head kills you or not.

This is all completely mitigated when playing with a trusted GM, who knows that what's funny isn't always fun, and what's realistic isn't always preferable. I can and have fudged the numbers in campaigns so that my crew can get through by the skin of their teeth rather than having two of them get killed by a random mob at the start of a dungeon. Permadeath is scary, yo.

I think it's extra difficult for players to feel safe with that rapport on a game where you don't know who's GMing for you, especially when you're a new player. Thus, min/maxing is a pretty natural outcome. Sometimes the people who have the highest stats in something aren't trying to be master of the blade, they're just trying to not suck when it matters most.

But yeah, I side-eye people who want to be good at everything, and drift through scenes with perfect poise. If it's fun for them, cool. But goodness is it stale to react to as a player or a scenerunner.

ETA: In short, It's complicated. I think the best-intentioned min/max categories are people wanting their character to survive (or other bad-luck protections), and people will do this in environments where they don't feel super duper safe for any number of valid (or perceived) reasons.

@arkandel

They're canceling themselves before they can reach a satisfying conclusion. Their specialty.

@bloodangel

I haven't read the manga, but goodness it's wholesome and funny in the first three episodes, so far.

Okay, I'm bad at thread upkeep, but I would be absolutely remiss not to signal-boost one of the shows this season that probably needs it least, because it's just such an absolute good time.

(Spy×Family) - (Comedy) A master spy is tasked with keeping tabs on a politician, and the best way for this to happen is through his son. Unfortunately, his son goes to a super locked-down private school, and no matter how good a spy he is, he can't pull off being a kid. His only choice? Assemble a family on short notice, and get the child past the school's rigorous and uptight entrance requirements, giving him the first foot in the door he needs to monitor his mark.

By virtue of 'short notice', he just so happens to accidentally surround himself with the worst/best candidates for this task by happenstance - a spy-thriller-loving telepathic young girl whom he chooses for adoption based on her intuiting his criteria for wanting to adopt her, and is absolutely on to all of their plans because... well, telepathy...

...and a perfectly average government employee who just happens to be an assassin.

Hijinks ensue.

Spy×Family is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

@crawfish

So happy for you! Just make sure the stretch rewards don't eat too much into your bottom line!