Best posts made by surreality

@HelloRaptor said:

@Coin

sparkle

I should make a character on your game who runs around glitterbombing vampires.

Can I app in as a Twihard stalker fangirl, trying to stake all the female vampires with #2 pencils unless they tell me where Edward is?

I'm sometimes bad, though -- I also have picked up some glitters designed for custom car mods that work. They're one of the only other solvent-resistant glitters around. It's just sold as 'metal flake' when it is... glitter. Seriously, it's glitter. It's exactly glitter.

They can't say they're safe for cosmetics because technically speaking, by law, NO glitter is in the US. Even though it's everywhere, in everything. (It's a long-winded bag of bull about particle size, and why some companies tell people to never use glitter around their eyes because that's the actual relevant risk.)

If I can find the link to the place on ebay I used to nab those from in small quantities, I'll pass it along. There's a few good solvent-resistant glitter vendors on etsy, too.

Most glitter just melts and bleeds dye into the solution. I got a bunch of tester bottles and dropped some base and some of the various crafty ones I had around to check, and pretty much all of them bled. I let them sit for six months and reviewed, and yep... bleed. Though some bled in a way that made a really nice tint with silver glitter, so if you're willing to experiment, some of those can be potentially useful, too, if you don't mind the soak-and-bleed time. (There was a black like that from Martha Stewart -- it's a black and greenish sparkle -- that mixed amazingly with the holo, for instance for a black rainbow.)

Couples, in the end, are no more likely to 'trade info' or 'abuse OOC knowledge' or anything along those lines than any room mates, friends, or anything else. Depends on the people involved.

There's people who are shady, and there are people who aren't. Couple status has more or less nothing to do with it. If somebody's going to be shifty about their dealings, being in or not in a couple isn't going to change that up any, in the end.

Plus, like @Gingerlily and @Wretched mention, sometimes couples love to play 'best of enemies' or something along those lines. Playful, good-natured rivalries are a thing that can be healthy (if not taken to extremes) in any kind of relationship -- from casual gaming buddy to soulmate.

If you get one of their smaller bottles of base -- you can use gloss or matte, it just has to be one of the clear ones -- and put about 2 teaspoons of the Martha Stewart glitter in it, you're mostly done. (You may need to pour off a small amount of the base into another container, depends on how full the bottle is.)

It's just that that mix needs to sit for a few months to bleed like whoa. It'll come out as a glazy mucky grey with flecks of glitter in opaque black and weird greenish-orange clear, and it will look horrible and scary -- but that's exactly what you want.

All you do when it reaches that point is squirt some of the holo liquid into the bottle. You need less of it than you'll think. It'll give you enough to last the rest of your life (or as gifts for friends, since that's way more than a bottle's worth).

It won't be completely opaque, but if you put it over a single basecoat of black (even a normally streaky black), it will be.

I ended up getting a pyrex measuring cup to use to mix, since they're easy to clean, and a 'paint stirrer' for model paint that's essentially for mixing up paints in the tiny glass bottles miniature painters use. The upside to that is that you can use it to stick right into their base bottles to mix in-bottle, too, if you're not getting too crazy with it. Bonus: they're cheap and fast! I usually just use the pyrex if I need to mix a variety of pigments first/also.

One of the reasons I like this idea as opposed to backgrounds is that it leaves space for people to fill in connections later. The more defined and specific a background is, the harder that can sometimes be to do. Leaving some wiggle room there strikes me as a good thing for people to use to make connections with other characters coming into the game later -- whether they seize on an existing defining moment to, say, ask, "Hey, could I be that dude that stuck up for your character that time long ago?" or "Maybe my character is someone who was one of the people who bullied your character when they were a kid?"/etc. in ways that give new characters a foot in the door in some respects.

I am still petitioning for an addition of a prequel 'What in the actual fuck just... WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!' stage, personally.

Because I waffle between there and grief kinda a lot.

@Gingerlily said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Had to pause though to offer a huge 'screw off' to the people who turned the convo to 'muds are rp lite, players don't care as much' Come on guys be cool. It isn't a contest.

I think it's more a translation issue really, or a 'how people approach the idea'. I suspect since MUD folk are (historically at least per the forum) less numerous here and more or less starting to come by more often and what the unspoken assumptions are are starting to come to light. Which is actually really a good thing I think, because in either group, there are buckets of them.

Weirdly, after the awkward poo-flinging awkward phase, I think a lot of good will come out of this. If nothing else, it'll bring out some clarity on various perspectives and hopefully get a lot of the unspoken stuff... well, spoken. Maybe even articulated clearly enough to go into various newbie guides and such. All of the unspoken rules tend to be something of a barrier to entry for new folks, in both mediums, I'd gather.

@Auspice That sounds like it is a moment like the kitten era broccoli moment: goddammit why do I not have a video camera built into my brain so I could have recorded that adorableness to share with the known world!!

@mietze It might be a case of different circles? Or different permutations, too.

In all seriousness, saying, "Yeah, sex is a part of your character's identity, and you should figure out what your character thinks about it -- even if it is just to say 'my character is asexual'," was met with you have nothing but prurient interest in this hobby and should be removed from all games and similar.

I know I ended up with mountains of, "Who cares what you think, you're just a dumb slut," right out there in the open more or less any time I said anything about anything. (Seriously, I could have been talking about building protocols, and you would see that kind of thing pop up from multiple sources.)

The only person who more or less escaped it at the time somewhat was HR, and this is because his technical RPG lore was so far beyond everybody else at the time it became more noteworthy. (I suspect this had something to do with 'was male' as well, but outright sexism on the actual forums hasn't been as much of an issue as it has been on games, which is seriously frickin' weird to me, but I've noticed that one for a while.)

I see whisper-game stuff, but things like shrieking at people on channels with insults or piling on in that sense no matter the subject I really don't see the way I used to.

In a way, the fact that it's been reduced to whispers rather than a public pillory with piles of thrown rotten veggies is a pretty notable difference. It's far from perfect -- but it is a big, big change.

Ironically, the change you're talking about is just as big, and it does have an impact on and intersection with what you're describing. It's just more nefarious in a sense, since it isn't ever actually about what someone is actually doing -- but instead about what someone else says someone is doing.

I put this more in the defamation/character assassination category, I guess? It tends to be private whispers to destroy someone invisibly, while shaming has that whole public humiliation component to it. I'm running low on words today (I'm probably over quota) but the public/private divide on this one is a factor in my head on this issue.

@Catsmeow In my dream world, it would only activate in cases of dire peril or dire fuzzy creature cuteness. Can that be a thing?

@Deviante For which staffers everywhere doubtless love you more than you will ever know! (Though I doubt they're boring. I've rarely seen a boring one from anyone, honestly.)

Yeah, it's a double post, but it's a different subject.

So, two years ago, I had a plan for a specific set of tools and materials I wanted to get for projects for that year. I had busted my fool ass making enough stock to cover all of the above with sales at a show, the overstock of which was to be bought wholesale by the person I'd sold stuff to a number of times before, so I could do it. It's something I'd wanted to do for a decade then.

But then her bookkeeper fucked things up. She didn't enter the stuff as wholesale, but as consignment. That meant I didn't make $XXXX, I lost about $500, because they discounted things well over 50% and then sent me half, and we'd already spent $XXXX in expectation of getting the cash we always reliably got over the course of a 2+ year business relationship. Uhm, ouch. (There was more or less nothing that could be done. We looked into all the things. We just had to eat it. That's how 2015 became 'the year I came within $200 of going bankrupt' and damn it was a scramble to make up that gap.)

Finally -- finally, after two years of scrambling and playing catchup -- yesterday, we were able to place the order for the first (and much, much bigger chunk) of supply, the material part.

Tools get ordered today.

If anyone's rooting for me to die in a tragic crafting accident, this is probably the highest risk, so y'all should be celebrating this one, too: yay, I finally am ordering the anodizing setup.

We ordered something like 5+lbs of titanium and niobium in rings and wire yesterday. We will simply not discuss the price tag on that, OK?

This is one of those long term dream goals, no matter how weird and relatively small compared to something like getting a first house or even getting a new car, but it means I can get going on some planned product work that I've wanted to be able to do for over a decade, and that is pretty fucking awesome.

It'll be ages before any of it actually shows up, and some part of me is probably not going to believe this has actually finally happened until the boxes start landing on the doorstep. But... OMG!!!!!!

@silentsophia Pretty much this.

I'm not down with the generalizations that kicked this off. This is mostly because I have a notable distaste for generalizations and think they make people look narrow-minded and bigoted.

I realize these statements are essentially conversational shorthand for many people, who don't feel like 'wasting' the words to say something more like, "It seems to be fairly common for many of <group> to do/think/say/behave <thing>," but I don't consider the spending of those words to be a waste.

It's the difference between blindly insulting a group based on group membership alone, and observing that within that group membership exist individuals -- potentially even a majority of the membership -- that behave in a certain manner.

It's not an insignificant difference and it's a sticking point for me personally. I recognize that most people intend the latter even when stating the former; otherwise their logic is shot to hell with the first individual that does not demonstrate <behavior>, and most folks aren't that dumb. Unfortunately, not 'wasting' those words makes the bigots and those using conversational shorthand generally indistinguishable without spending so many more words on the subject than they would have if they had bothered to be clear from the outset.

@Gingerlily said in Good TV:

I did not know you loved Reign also. Will you watch with me if @Coin doesn't get on it and catch up? I like live fashion analysis, it's important to my enjoyment of the show.

I do not know if you mean that in the love it or hate it way, but if you want something deeply funny (either way, honestly), you owe it to yourself to peek at this if you haven't already: http://www.genevievevalentine.com/2013/10/fall-tv-costume-hilarity-reign/

I quote: So! On the left, we have Anna Popplewell in a ballgown from the 1840s, On the right, we have a dress that wants to start a fight with me, because if we’re just going to pretend no historical things ever, don’t you dare show me a front-lacing waist cincher on the outside of a dress. You and I know better, dress; don’t pander to me.

As a former costumer, I sometimes revisit that specific page simply because it brings me such potent fits of the giggles.

You owe it to yourself to scroll down to the bottom ballroom photo analysis, because... you just do.

@Collective Yup! Shit, I would even be tempted to play in that setting as some stoner boho Daeva 'fuck the mannnnnnn' underground (see what I did there?) artist flake or something. (I am super bleah on WoD/CoD/etc. on the whole lately, though @tragedyjones knows I will wiki for him any day.)

@GangOfDolls <clinks bottles> Salut!

@Insomnia Sad truth, every time I read about something like this, even if I liked the thing before, I will almost inevitably start to like it less. Guilt by association, I suppose. This kind of stuff is really that off-putting to me.

@Ashen-Shugar said in The Crafting Thread:

Guess it's not overly crafty, but I write poetry and roast coffee.

This is relevant to my interests. Tell us more!

Also, the hats are gorgeous!

@Derp ...my brain went to exactly the same place on that, so help me.

@Gingerlily I adore the hell out of the show and love the clothes for being just straight up gorgeous -- I just giggle a whole lot over things at the same time. It's like three kinds of fun in one.