I am not dead. As noted, health issues have contributed to life issues, and I am a mixture of unfit for human company and pity party atm. Best for everyone (but especially me) if I do not engage with stuff. I am having a rough time (and let me tell you, saying that in public is hard) but this too shall pass.

I am having heart problems, but they are not of a sort that are likely to be fatal as long as I do what I should when I should. Stress contributes, and the mental health issues surrounding being this sick turns weird things into stress. Thank you for thinking of me. Sorry if this was TMI, I am unable to figure the right line out right now.

Everyone say something nice. She is being harassed because she told somebody 'no' on a feature request, and it can get tiring. Given how much she has done for us and our community, I think we should counter the harassment with saying nice things.

Go.

I'll start: Ares has made it a million times easier to start a game. We are seeing a lot of new, intriguing content now from some of these smaller games. It is so cool, and it wouldn't be possible without all her hard work.

I am officially down 5 pants sizes from when I started working this job a year and a half ago (and by officially, I mean I am not having to wiggle to zip the pants up). Between activity levels, far less stress, and healthier eating (both in terms of what I eat, and also how I eat it)...I've just steadily been getting better. Is pretty cool.

Putting up with somebody's abuse is not a reasonable accomodation.

So, I'm sure no one is surprised to hear that I am one of those people who likes to sit with my feelings, make friends with them. A significant appeal for me with mushing is the emotional connection/content, just like it is with video games, just like it is with television. If I'm not crying at some point, I'm not invested enough to really enjoy myself, and I have a problem with being able to play if I'm not wired to my PC's brain on some level. While I'm 'plugged in', part of my enjoyment is experiencing my character's emotional content. I wrote a private journal-y thing a few days ago and made myself BAWL with it. Nobody will ever see that, I just like crying I guess.

It becomes a problem for me when:

a- the emotions continue after time away (turning the game off doesn't make the feelings stop)
or
b- I start making my feelings other peoples' problem (people on the game, people who share meatspace with me)

Sometimes problems are OK; something falling through after a RL year of work, I'm GOING to be pretty inconsolable, whether it's a tabletop character or a mush plan. If I strip mush-context out, can I explain it to a non-gamer and they'll understand? This is OK. These emotions get dealt with just like the same emotions that are caused by other major disappointments or loss or whatever. Friends, self-care, distraction, whatever.

Sometimes it's just unhealthy, particularly when you're talking about anger or SPECIFICALLY, feeling personally wronged by the choices of other CHARACTERS (not players, even though yes, players are behind them) -- this stuff is awful, and it's bleed that needs to be addressed immediately. If self-coaching / reminders of what I'm dealing with doesn't make the feelings stop (talk myself down out of the tree, these people did not just kill my darling), then I need to unplug and walk away until I'm feeling like a reasonable human being again. This actually includes the feelings that happen in reaction to genuinely being wronged, to be clear -- in the moment, it can't be addressed in a healthy fashion, so you really just do need to unplug until your behavior is at least under control.

ETA: I mean, I am still fucking broken about (spoiler) in FFXIV. I played through that eleventy billion years ago, and my ass takes my PC to the in game grave with some regularity. I LIKE CRYING.

My new job is amazing. I've stepped into an entirely different culture, and in every way it's the best work environment I've ever been in. This job is pretty much unreal; I have a hard time believing it. I'm being paid what I'm worth for the first time, my benefits are fully paid for (and they're ridiculously good, too! 200 deductible? 2k out of pocket max? what?!), and the sick/leave time is super generous. There is daily a spread of food that people bring in from home, everything put in the particular area is open season. Just because. I have eaten so much fry bread the last week, even if it IS bad for me. There is going to be little to no stress -- this last week my new boss has apologized to me multiple times for how stressful/hectic it has been, it's not usually like this -- and it's fucking NOTHING. Like, I didn't even feel any pressure, let alone actual stress.

And to top it all off, I'm doing something I love. Not only do I get to devote a large portion of my time to training, I get to choose what I teach, make my own material and lesson plans, and so on. When I'm not doing that, I'm getting to play with setting up computers and troubleshooting and stuff. Like. What. This doesn't qualify as work. It's nuts.

So. 3 day weekend, starting today. Yesterday, get an email at about noon from the big boss. Go home, have a good weekend.

Paid.

I keep waiting to wake up. o.o

So, I had another heart attack after nothing for 2 years, having been pronounced 'cured' by virtue of the final cardiologist saying there was nothing apparently wrong with me and the attacks had stopped (I had 3 back in 2015).

It is so hard some days to keep swimming upstream. So, so, so hard. The medical professionals are doing their best, but nobody really knows what the hell they're doing when you present with something that doesn't fit the mold.

THIS IS NOT GOING TO KILL ME, for the record. The nature of it being what it is, I am gonna manage to survive it as long as I don't give up. Which I won't, because I've stubborned through everything else like this in my life. It just sucks. Like really, hardcore, incredibly sucks.

I don't want to be broken any more.

It's almost like people have differing experiences and place different weight and import on matters related to sexuality. Weird.

Doubleposting because today is a day for winning.

My short-term disability claim was approved!!!!! FINALLY.

My ex husband actually tried to pull this stalker sort of shit. Threatening me with various things and all of it would just go away if I would sit down and TALK to him. Why wouldn't I just be mature and have a ten minute conversation? He wouldn't try and break into my house in the middle of the night if I didn't MAKE him, after all.

Y'all know where to find me.

Presently, I am still Natalia@Arx; it is unlikely I will ever be any other characters, as I'm winding down in the hobby.

Take care out in the big world out there. I'll miss what used to be here.

@misterboring

the optics are more important than the protection of real, vulnerable people who had actual bad actions taken towards them

it's pretty simple, dood

@lotherio

Or maybe the person who caused the entire issue to begin with could apologize for their awful behavior and folks could start to move on.

How is the size of the protest proof that it's a problem? How does that even make any sense?

me not letting you punch me in the nose is not bullying no matter HOW many people object to you taking a swing

It has been suggested to me that this may be about Testament instead of Auspice. If that's the case, he quit/took a break because of a RL personal tragedy and it's really really really really really really gross to use him this way if you are.

How is reacting negatively to somebody's cruelty and harassment bullying wtf. Gaslighting nonsense as proof of wrongdoing.

Let me guess, next you're going to use how mean folks are to poor, poor Spider as proof? Or Cullen? Yeah, gosh guys, you REALLY need to be kinder to the bad actors of our hobby that try desperately to ruin it for other people for the FUN of it. How DARE anyone call people out on their actions. How DARE.

Maybe if Auspice didn't want to be "bullied" she should have...

wait for it...

...wait some more...

...stopped bullying other people. Or maybe just, you know, stopped lying about folks? That would have staved off the consequences of her actions for a while.

eta: And that was BEFORE I read the reposted links from Prototart. You'd rather have THAT behavior than people objecting to it?!

Yes. When people do TRULY SHITTY things, there's a group of people here that tend to agree with each other that that shit is shitty. If somebody is mean/nasty/cruel to other people, it is NOT dogpiling or mean to call them out on it. When people misbehave, consequences are not bullying.

Slut shaming definitely gets people "dogpiled". Is dogpiled actually the worse behavior, here?

Unrealistic demands of staff teams also get people "dogpiled", yes.

Poor behavior by admin on games get people "dogpiled", too. Which was once upon a time the whole point of the hogpit.

There's a whole lot of whining by parties that abuse other people that they're not allowed to just abuse other people, and their inability to slut shame or whine about TS is because they're being OPPRESSED or BULLIED.

they're not.

It's probably best just to wait and see until folks have had the chance to calm down and think about things before anyone makes any assumptions about what that should or shouldn't look like. Discussing/arguing it now is rather putting the cart before the horse, I think.

@il-volpe

I was there, he hurt me, and he's one of my favorite people in the hobby these days. That is an absolutely untrue statement.

@ganymede said in The Worst Thing You Have Done in this Hobby Thread:

@sunny said in The Worst Thing You Have Done in this Hobby Thread:

And: I participated in PillowFort.

Remember when PillowFort ran me out of Denver by going to the owner?

Yeah, good times.

No, I actually don't. I don't even remember who the owner was any more. I do remember fairly shortly into the Denver stint is when I had my first round of PF blowups, but I don't know if that was or wasn't connected to you. I was in the midst of being a survivor during that time period, so a LOT a lot is completely gone from my brain. I stopped looking at logs a couple of years ago to quit torturing myself with memories that didn't serve me any purpose.

@buttercup said in The Worst Thing You Have Done in this Hobby Thread:

@sunny You done some heavy crap!

Yeah, it's why I say that most everything in this hobby, you can come back from. If I can be reformed, I'm pretty sure most folks that aren't actively, intentionally malicious could be.