Best posts made by Sunny

Friends who write descs for you are the best kinds of friends.

There is one group of people that I know that is scared of vaccinations, and a LOT of work is being done by leadership of that group to get them educated/unscared. They are frightened because they were medically experimented on and murdered via that medical experimentation by the US government, within living memory. This is a reasonable fear. I do not think "let them die" is appropriate. It hurts me a great deal to hear people I care about expressing this sentiment, because these people DO NOT deserve to just die.

There is another group of people that I know that is also scared of vaccination. My step-brother-in-law got COVID, after thinking for a while it was a hoax. He got a positive diagnosis, then two days later went to his daughter's wedding. He didn't mask up, he didn't tell anyone, he didn't alter his behavior at all. His 93 year old grandmother was there. My parents were there (including my medically vulnerable mother). The majority of their family was there. I skipped it because I don't trust them. Three days after the wedding, he was so sick that he had to be hospitalized.

They didn't tell anyone. They didn't tell a soul until two weeks after. I am still seeing white with rage when I think about it. I still don't think "let them die" is an appropriate sentiment. I don't know how to fix it? But "let them die" just isn't a solution that works for me.

"If you were more mature then I would be more mature" is never a selling point if you're reading this, dude.

@bear_necessities said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:

Anyway, we have had this discussion like 300000000 times. The hobby isn't dying. The tentpole games are out there. Ares has several active games.

Like clockwork. It's September, of course we're having this conversation again. It literally happens every single September on this board and all previous mush tabloids.

ETA: Next one is scheduled for late November-early December, when the holidays hit, and after that, it will happen again over Spring Break, and then once more in June. Then we'll have it again next September. Almost like it's predictable based on some esoteric, strange, mystical and unknowable (school) schedule, the death of this hobby.

I hit a trigger of one of my players at a meat-space tabletop game I was running once. Full on straight up triggered her. It was possibly the worst experience of my gaming history, it tanked the game completely, and we never picked a session back up. If I could have a do-over...I wish, wish, wish, wish, REALLY wish we'd had a conversation at the outset of the game for what sorts of things people couldn't handle, but the group I was playing with at the time went LOL a lot about people being "offended" (rather than harmed) by content in "just a game".

I felt so small, like such a jerk, like a terrible person, because while it was all in good fun, it was directly my words that had that impact on her and it was awful.

ETA: I cannot overstate how awful it is to be engaged with somebody's trauma like this and KNOW that you're the one that instigated what's going on. Save yourself this trouble and communicate potentially sticky shit BEFORE you get into it. I knew the content was problematic in general, but my players loved the twisted/dark stuff, and it was not any worse than any of the rest of it (was tamer, really) EXCEPT that it related to actual trauma somebody had personally dealt with.

Was it my job to communicate first and be aware of this? I mean, probably not in the strictest of senses. Would it have saved my table and a lot of heartache? Absolutely.

Would I have rather had my players laugh AT me for having the conversation, than upset one of them like this? yes. yes. yes. a million times yes. They're gonna laugh at me and my funny voices anyway.

So, let's say we sit down to have a plot, and my plot is the investigation about a murdered kid. One of my players is genuinely upset by violence to children, particularly of the sort that we're looking at. They let me know this two seconds before "game on".

If I can substitute a fully-grown cousin instead of somebody's kid without it materially impacting my plan / ruining the evening, there's really no reason for me to not do it.

If it can't be changed without ruining the whole night (clues and motivations and things don't make sense, whatever), then we work together to give the player a comfortable exit and then we go on with the original plan.

#1 doesn't hurt me. It doesn't hurt my other players. #2 isn't bad, either -- it sucks for the traumatized person, but I would so rather sit a night out without my friends hating me for it (or feeling like jerks for it!!) than try and stumble through this sort of mindfield.

I feel like there's a lot of confusion around the differences between "being censored" and "not being owed an audience". People refusing to pay money for a product because the themes are racist isn't stifling anyone, and them TALKING about the themes being racist (and thus, why they aren't paying money for it) isn't censoring and/or shutting anyone up.

eta: if you care about people not saying your shit is racist, then put the work in to make it not be racist. if you can't write your genre without being a racist jerk, then pick another genre.

I disagree.

It is a shared responsibility.

@ZombieGenesis

It's okay. I am super excited personally still, and am HAPPY to be patient. Thank you for taking your time. Everyone will ultimately have a better time for it.

Broke down and finally self-advocated firmly and asked for rescue anxiety meds. It is a hard ask, much like asking for narcotics this day and age. But I got to the point where I really, really needed the help.

Doctor gave them to me, no fuss. Agreed they were a reasonable ask and was OK with what I laid out for it.

Whew.

If literally no one is capable of meeting your expectations, it is probably time to examine the expectations in question, determine which are vital and which you can compromise on, and go from there.

ETA: For example, people who do well with administrative work.are not always (or even usually) the people good at storytelling, as they are very very different skill sets (and it's the same in reverse). Expecting one person to be good at both limits your possibilities a lot, when you can find highly qualified candidates for the individual tasks a lot easier.

How the hell do I prove that I got cornered in a bathroom at a convention by a guy twice my size?

How the hell do I prove that I was at a LARP game and some guy was all over me, and then when I objected, he hid behind 'it was in character' and all that was done was 'hey, you know, no touching' -- so he promptly found a different target that wasn't going to speak up?

Proof is being asked for things that THERE IS NO PROOF OF besides my word, besides the fact that a bunch of other women have had nearly identical issues and have stated the same things.

You're part of the problem when you start demanding proof because you're saying 'I don't believe you without evidence that doesn't and can't exist'.

@RDC

Thanks for telling us. I will do my best to remember. It's totally ok if you change your mind about that, too! No worries there.

I am going to repeat myself here because the point seems to have gotten missed in the rest of what I said:

I do not care about my privacy because I am worried about someone reading my pages and mail, or watching my TS. I don't have anything to hide, I don't share stuff I care about being seen, etc.

I care about my privacy for my privacy's sake, because I value it.

My issues don't trump the safety of the other people on any given game. Period.

Ask other characters about things that their characters are clearly into. Their history. Their job. Whatever. If I as player pick up on the character having a gimmick, I lean into that.

TRY to every pose a- react to something directly in their pose, by reference, and b- give them something to react to, or a not-subtle place for the conversation to go, or a lead of some sort.

Drop the pencil. If I have to make my character look stupid to get interaction going, fine.

These are what I find to be the building blocks for a successful social scene. The rest of it is pretty much limitlessly negotiable.

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.

@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?

I think it's fair to say that people are going to lose their shit no matter what choices the mods ultimately make. I am of the opinion that this should not be a deciding factor in what they end up doing, cos seriously.

In order of importance for me:

1. What CAN they do, mentally, emotionally, and physically? What do they have time and energy for?

2. What board do they want to run? What does that look like?

3. What role do they want this board to have in the community?

You'll notice that nowhere in there do I even include my own desires. I honestly think that as long as we ultimately get some clarity and consistency with the above, as long as these things are communicated, whatever we end up with would be great.

STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE.

STOP MAKING GAMES WHEN I DIDN'T TELL YOU TO.

You're not allowed to have fun! If you have fun then there will be less fun for me!