Best posts made by surreality

@Cobaltasaurus said in Tips on Güd TS:

This one is a yes and a no for me. Comments like "Wow, that was hot", haven't really bothered me. I'm a pretty open person though. I've never felt any shame about expressing whether I thought something was sexy or not. Nor have I ever felt it was wrong to get aroused by TS (Please note: I've also had this weird personal rule where I never actually got off on TS, as I felt that crossed a line).

This is pretty much exactly where I am on things, too. (We can totally be weird together if this is somehow weird.)

Story is critical for me (again, outside of Shang). If it isn't about the story, it's just not going to be comfortable.

Too much 'ooh baby' and... it's demonstrating it's not about the story. I'm not going to ever stress about, "Great pose!" or even, "Wow, that... really hit home, gonna need a minute."

I'm not going to assume somebody needs a minute with some hand lotion and a tissue unless they're super graphic about it or blunt. It isn't hard for serious IC emotional stuff to come up in sex scenes, and that usually takes me a minute to suss out in my head, and I figure it's the same for others. Similarly, it can hit a quasi-triggery nerve with somebody, and they may need a minute to process that -- something comes up in a scene some high school girlfriend said once, something their RL partner says all the time, the list is really endless and I'd never fault someone for wanting a moment to compose their thoughts if something does, for whatever reason, hit close to home -- which is the same for any other RP.

The vulnerability factor in TS can exacerbate this, which is why it's sometimes a little sad that "I need a moment" can be especially frowned upon in that context. This is partly because there's sometimes a hint of player vulnerability there as well, not in an 'overinvested' sense, but in that same basic sense that applies everywhere else -- nobody wants to be known as 'that crappy RPer'. When it's 'that crappy TSer', well, that's just awkward on top.

I keep that same divide in my head @Cobaltasaurus is describing, though; it's an abstraction.

To this day, I will swear the very best writing I ever managed in my life was in a TS scene, on Shang of all places. Almost none of 'the action' was the focus, and it was barely referenced in the posing. (It'd take way too long to explain the seriously weird scenario, or I would.) By the time we were done writing, my scene partner and I spent about an hour just wowing at the level of character development and how all manner of things suddenly made sense and so on, along with a lot of, "Holy hell I didn't know I could write like that!" from both sides. (To this day, my biggest regret in this hobby is not having to deal with the creeper crew, crazy staff, or anything like that, it's that I forgot to log that scene. So much spiky-gloves-wearing facepalm.)

@Auspice I know, right? "It cost them more to print and mail this check to me than what the amount of the check is for, and that will forever be funny." <-- that would be my forever thought.

On the original point, I think this idea would actually help avoid the 'everything is life or death' issue, and allow people to get into the nitty gritty personal details that non-combat risk requires.

With more 'free roaming' antagonists on grid, there's a lot more personal interaction with them during day to day activities, which is a profoundly different dynamic than encountering NPC staff-run antagonists only in events or by request. This is huge.

@Ghost Random bitching really is for game-related bitching, tho.

@Kanye-Qwest Nicely done! That is really, really great work!

@Arkandel said in State of Things:

I think automation is about to fuck our universe up. In the next 15 years or so human kind is going to be changing in a really dramatic fashion; I can't (no one can, IMHO) say if it'll be for the better or not.

There is a great opportunity in this, but it is one we are typically hamstringing ourselves from the jump, re: preparing ourselves to take advantage of it.

That's creativity. Imagination. Art.

These are things with the potential to allow us to grow as a world community, and they are considerably harder to replace with automation. (Automation can help, but it is not and cannot, by its very nature, be the same as human expression.)

They are also the first ones we cut off at the knees the moment money gets tight.

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I've always had a lot more fun on freeform RP sites. Without any kind of coded punishment or measurable e-peen points to accrue, people feel they have less to lose and can just let go in favour of focusing on the story. And since you can only 'win' by emoting a scene so awesome that people happily go along with it, it's in everyone's best interests to strive to win one another over socially, in that way — even if that social aspect is just as anonymous writers with high regard for one another.

^ This. This is actually one of the reasons Shangrila works, and it's the reason the first game I put together over a decade ago didn't have much in the way of stats. (We just requested people write up notes about their powers.) Under these conditions, the whole thing becomes collaborative.

It has its own failings -- people refusing to agree to reasonable things or refusing to ever lose (face, a fight, the girl, etc.) -- but it definitely has its perks.

Trying to find the sweet spot between that and 'code everything to deal with consent twinks without throwing everything to the stat twinks' is more or less the core thing every argument eventually comes down to in a lot of ways. I don't know if anyone's managed to do it yet, and I'm not entirely convinced it can be done in any sort of fool-proof fashion.

It can be done amongst groups of players with some measure of consensus about what they're looking for in terms of 'what do I want to get out of my RP time', which is what you touch on a little later. I don't necessarily see it in terms of a scale of conflict-welcome to conflict-averse, though; I see it more as having interest in different types of conflicts. With the examples there, I'd say you'd see a lot more social challenges and conflicts in the former, with more physical challenges conflicts in the latter, with political conflicts and challenges present about equally in both settings.

@Meg said in RL Anger:

@surreality
I have actually come around to thinking that @Catsmeow actually has a better answer of talking to the couple directly and engaging them without engaging the other person.

This is a much, much better idea. Positive support is a full positive.

Do you think it would have been rude to ask your great aunt 'Is there a problem, ma'am?'

Yes, actually. She passed in her 90s over a decade ago. She grew up in a time in which she had to fear being placed in an old-school asylum if people thought something was 'wrong' with her, even something much less than that. She was typically in tears any time she was in public, or near it.

Let's ask this another way. As a woman, I face microaggressions daily from men. If a man is staring at my chest, do I say nothing? Do I just accept it because I am a part of this world and I am the stupid one for getting offended and upset and putting me in a place where I feel threatened or uncomfortable? I mean, he might legitimately have zoned out and just started staring at my chest without realizing it. Should I do nothing?

Completely different issue, and I'm saying this as somebody who was wearing a DDD cup by age 13 and is now in her 40s and has experienced plenty of that. Socialization and culture can change, and that behavior is within the person's control. Physical things that someone cannot change or control about themselves are not in the same category by a considerable margin and should not be conflated.

@Apos said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

I wasn't really thinking how the larger guild of Arx would appeal to explorers bartle-types, even when I wrote in a bunch of easter eggs- I just found it fun to do from a design standpoint. I kind of figured explorer types would need something meatier, so we focused on a dynamic generated/explorable outside world as an extra little mini-game.

I think most mushes could do this with softcode but it would probably be more difficult, someone would probably have to make a dozen different random types of rooms with then a few dozen random types of events happening as you find the rooms, generated automatically when a character discovers them and is then able to leave their mark in some way based off the encounters.

This is kinda how it can be done -- or, it could be done that way, I'm sure. Some of the kinds of things I was looking at for the old project concept involved doors that only opened at certain times (sometimes portals), lots of other emits on timers that would go off on specific days and times -- whether players were there or not, really. (Especially effective to emulate things like residual hauntings, which the game's concept focused on a lot; the place was unstuck in time and hints about how to get out would be revealed in these glimpses of its 'history' that people could then later explore/etc. or track down, sometimes on their own and sometimes with staff help/+jobs/etc. It was a super esoteric and abstract theme, which was why it got dropped eventually; the overhead/dev work for it all would have taken forever and that's with the knowledge that a fair 80% of it might not ever get discovered.)

@Meg I'm 100% behind showing support; I think that's all positive.

I am just really uneasy with calling people out unless it's obviously a case of deliberate behavior. Maybe it's because I grew up with my grandmother and great aunt, maybe it's because my mom worked as an occupational therapist for kids with a dizzying array of difficulties, I dunno, I just have seen too many things that could easily be read as 'acting funny' or 'looking mean' or in the case of someone with Tourette Syndrome, for instance, using a lot of harsh language or slurs or profanity, when there's absolutely no animus or intent to cause harm behind it, and there's often a lot of guilt and self-consciousness already associated with all of these things that makes it pretty hard.

Usually, a little careful observation can tell any of those things from deliberate asshat behavior, but a quick glance or two really just isn't enough if it's already really vague. And the whole 'being stared at' thing can be extremely uncomfortable for people who have any sort of issue to contend with -- or, hell, anybody who doesn't, even.

Deliberately being an asshat is not a condition, and is well within someone's control. Still, I'd suggest the 'support the target' approach, in part because nothing pisses off a condescending, judgmental bully harder than realizing they aren't the one who has the perceived majority or backup. That's a big damn deal to the tsk-tsk crowd, and in supporting the one they're trying to 'other', you're denying them the support they're craving by doing so at the same time.

@Arkandel said:

@Wizz Go to Shang and someone has already played that out, only with more ball gags and penis infusions.

And all the dwarves are hermaphrodites, with at least one of them having secretly having been an anime character all along.

@Ataru said in RL Anger:

I wanted to throat punch him.

(snipped just because that core sentiment is so where I am right now with someone)

I empathize with this so much right now, there are simply no words. I sincerely wish I had them to offer.

The short form: over the course of my life, I've had someone attempt to strangle me. I've been raped twice, once violently. I've been stalked -- not online -- for several years by the person responsible for #1 and the violent take on #2.

I've been stalked online, too, but that is a much different animal; the physical threat level distinction is a big one. Emotional pain is pain. It's no less pain than physical pain. Threats of humiliation and exposure are very real and they are frightening and they are rightly impactful.

For someone without a comparison to make between that and the physical threat of, say, someone who has tried to actually kill you driving past your house every day for over a decade and calling to berate you for days and banging on your door whenever there's a new car in the driveway? It's different. It's all pain and it's all fear but it is a very different fucking fear when you know for damned certain that an irrational motherfucker is standing on the other side of and inch and a half of cheap wood door and hammering at it with his fists while he screams obscenities at you, threatening harm he's already tried once before that nearly killed you.

(And believe it or not, that isn't the shit far too personal and ugly to post here.)

Recently, someone I care about decided to pull the rough equivalent of what you're describing. It wasn't even accurate, but the hyperbole factor was over the top and the comparisons being made were... well, no, they just didn't track on any fucking level.

And he would not let this comparison go. Not for months. Not when asked to stop doing it, because it was bringing some incredibly ugly and uncomfortable shit to mind. Not when it was clearly explained why the logic didn't track. Not when told it was, actually, kicking my PTSD into high gear with full on flashbacks and nightmares, for over three months, until I had to actually draw a hard line and say if it continued I would not be speaking with them again. (For all that useless, brain-dead, soulless fuckheads like Tempest try to mock me for shit like this, thinking it's fucking cute or clever to do, it was the second time in 20 years something like this has ever occurred, and none of it had anything to do with something going on in any RP scene.)

He could not grasp why this comparison was not just inaccurate, but actively damaging, and not even conveying the point he was trying to convey in any effective way.

Scale is a thing, and it's fucking relevant. The dirty look or nasty comment someone slings around on facebook or in the hallway is, yes, still hositility/a threat/a cause of suffering, but holy fuck am I tired of people acting like it's on par with a violent, physical assault in terms of trauma.

@mietze I think, to some extent, it comes off a little bit like this: "This hugely important person who has done real studies and stuff says this is pointless."

I don't actually think that's the intention, but I had to read a couple of times to get around that impression, since I don't think that's what the intention was at all.

(I think the intention was, "Hey, I just read this thing, and it makes me wonder how it relates to what goes on here. What do y'all think?")

@dontpanda There is pretty much no feeling worse than feeling like you've been convicted of some kind of thought crime about which you have not taken, and would never take, action.

It's terrible. It's seriously fucking terrible.

There is no better way of telling someone their positive actions, or their resistance of negative (in someone else's perception) ones, matter worth a single damn.

And that is not a good message to send, ever. Among the well-intentioned, it creates a sense of helplessness; among the poorly-intentioned, a sense that since they've already been 'convicted', why bother resisting 'committing the crime' if you're going to endure the punishment anyway.

@Cupcake I think the broader idea of shaming, ultimately, isn't so much what this place is about. It is a factor -- or it is in the cases of people capable of experiencing it, but as mentioned... that's not really everybody, so it's not terribly effective.

Generally, just telling someone 'hey, you're doing a crappy thing, here's why' is going to work just as well if someone is the kind of someone disinclined to doing crappy things.

More often, people just justify it, try to turn things around into 'look at how I am being victimized oh noes handwring (sometimes out of an attempt to dodge blame, and sometimes because they have the self-awareness of the average turnip and zero desire to examine their own behavior ever or question their rightness)', or already know they're doing something crappy and don't care. Totally useless in such cases.

The only time traditional shaming works in these cases is if they're trying to keep it a secret -- and that's ultimately more a case of exposing the truth in most cases I've seen rather than trying to humiliate someone.

In that last case, I think the boards have traditionally been useful. There are a lot of people who will talk a good game, and are charismatic enough to play spin doctor or manipulate any given situation enough to get away with murder for ages -- until someone posts a log, or enough people who have encountered the same thing in multiple places all come forward at once and a fuller picture can be seen.

That experience may humiliate someone in the process -- but it doesn't tend to be the real goal.

@kitteh I have a weird scale on this one, too, relatively speaking. My mother is super repressed. She hated that her child got that kind of attention. I am very fortunate that she didn't take me to see a doc about a reduction until after I was 18 so I could legally refuse. She was intending to force the matter, and they told her that legally, she no longer could do so. (I didn't want one; I do not consider this 'there is something wrong with me', though I understand why some other folks might in their own cases; if people can't deal with me how I was made, fuck 'em.)

Compared to that? Double-take dude is zero stress.

Pretty much, @Ghost.

Here's an example. This is why I'm calling you out, @Kestrel.

@Kestrel said in The Shame Game:

The 'culture of bitching' that's been explained to me as an integral part of these boards, while perhaps cathartic for some, is really not something I consider healthy or productive for anyone involved. Why bitch for the sake of bitching? Why get angry for the sake of being angry?

Observe. You take a quote, and make assumptions. All negative. Further, you use them to generalize about the community at large.

These are your words, and your behavior.

This is your advice:

But I think it pays, when you feel the need to shame someone, to try and connect with them as a person, first.

Did you do that? Did you follow your own advice? No, you didn't. Not even a little. You grabbed a comment, ascribed a lot of additional negativity to it, and attempted to use it against an entire community.

And nowhere do you address this when called out on it. You wonder why I'm calling you a hypocrite? Own your shit. This is your shit. It stinks. Be aware of it.

Instead of behaving like an adult and going, 'D'oh, maybe I should consider that!' -- which, by the by, earns people a lot of respect around here when they do it, because owning your shit earns a lot more respect than pretending your shit doesn't stink -- your next comment is, instead, a continued attempt to tar the community at large.

This is also entertaining because it includes the following inherent contradiction:

@Kestrel said in The Shame Game:

I think your thread sparked some poignant debate.

...which would not have happened if:

I guess the first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about the Fight Club?

I mean we're two for two here, in both cases, assuming moral superiority and trying to put down an entire community, while not just ignoring what's been said by multiple parties, but doing so in a way that thoroughly ignores the advice you're saying everyone else should take.

Yes, I find that incredibly lacking in self-awareness, and I have zero qualms calling it out. If this means your buddy brigade and the hate squad I've called out before decides to pile on the downvotes, hey, I have only this to offer:

I mean, shit, the text is right there, there's a reason I keep asking if you're really reading anything, and I'm not the only one who has asked you this.

Maybe it's really time to read shit that's been written, at the very least.

@Rook The big problem with the type you're describing -- people basically just trying to rile others in ways they know they'll rile them regardless of whether they actually believe other races/sexes/etc. are inferior -- is that their vocal behavior gives tacit support to the people who have quietly believed those things, but recognize that society generally does not agree with their view or find it the ideal to embrace.

It's basically cheerleading and empowerment for the actual hatemongering shitheads, and that it's hollow trolling doesn't really matter to the actual hatemongering shitheads.

@Thenomain Swap staff to 'everyone' and it's perfect.

@Rook I don't disagree.

What ultimately frustrates me about it is that what are generally a bunch of childish shits trying to stir the pot end up stirring up real negative consequences.

And those consequences are almost never, ever for them. Which is intensely frustrating.