Best posts made by surreality

In a little under an hour, we're heading off to pick up a flouf. I am so nervous!

Our current flouf is a very social, gentle, loves-other-kitties cat. Alone, she was floundering badly and rapidly. We are pretty sure we've found her the perfect companion after a fair bit of heavy duty searching.

She's a 3 year old momma cat, now spayed after having raised her wee ones, and she is perhaps the most adorable beastie ever.

Aside from a few wee freckles on her nose, she is poufy and all white. (All the black tees in the house screamed out at once.) As a result, we've decided her middle name will be 'Gothsbane'.

Will try to get some pictures when she starts to settle in.

ETA: OMG, y'all. I will have to get some pictures later. She is such a doll, I'm utterly speechless. She was singing little chirps along with Queen (and only Queen) in the car, y'all. Otherwise just lounging and chill. I think I just won the cat lottery or something. o.o

This is incredibly tragic.

Suicide or not, goddammit, I will be happy when the 'it's just the internet' isn't a way people who bully, harass, and torment others online excuse their behavior, or minimize how truly Not Fucking OK their garbage behavior is. No one deserves that. No one.

@Quinn said in Sexuality: IC and OOC:

The only people that have ever made me feel uncomfortable about any of that in the hobby have been male players playing lesbian/bisexual lady PCs that come after mine. I've only ever felt like someone was being really pushy about things like that a handful of times in the entire hobby, but in all those times that was the scenario and I noped right out of there quickly. Everything from "The PC is close minded if they don't go for this" to "You as a player are close minded if you don't go for this" and it's like you do you, but I am just not interested and neither is my PC. Sorry! Then they never RP with me again and that's fine by me.

This is a real issue and it's one I run into more than I have any patience for.

For one thing, if someone -- no matter who they are -- is trying to push me into bedding down with them with some kind of negging or guilt-trippy nonsense like this, it's going to be a no. I don't care if they're the second coming (pun not intended), it is simply not going to happen, because this behavior is horrible.

Where I get annoyed with myself is that, in person, if someone said this to the real me, I would have zero issue telling them to go fuck themselves in as creatively florid a manner as possible.

On a game? For some reason, it's harder. I have no idea why, and it goes beyond the simple territory of 'my characters do plenty of things I never would'. My brain tells me this should be way easier, but it's not. On a game, I just feel incredibly uncomfortable and awkward and bother trying to be polite about the 'no, no, no, and fuck you for being gross' and get highly avoidant instead.

Part of the issue is that the kind of pressure tactics you're describing are rarely IC. When they are, it's a bit easier to disentangle in some IC fashion. They're usually OOC guilt trips and negging, and wow is that shitty behavior that sucks.

@moth said in Depression Meals:

emotional support cheese

I am stealing this phrase to shamelessly exploit when I get side-eye at the overkill on the cheese aisle at Trader Joe's, because this expression is a serious truth of my life.

Looking for vindication or redemption on a game is not something that's typically going to end well. It's also 'not what these games are for'. I empathize with the idea of regaining confidence by earning a second chance, but! ...it sounds like the kind of play going on on the game isn't something you're comfortable conveying/engaging with, which, even if the second chance was granted, would be a likely source of continued stress and reasons to be anxious.

If OOC interaction is a common issue, you may want to look for games that allow for play with minimal or no OOC interaction required. You're more likely to find that on an RPI than a MUSH, from what I gather from other conversations on the forum.

The tale of Egypt Air is the only place I can start dropping any of these bombs. For folks who haven't been around the various forums forever, my original handle 20 years ago was 'surreality vortex', rather than just 'surreality'. That was my term for 'weirdness magnet does not even fucking cover it OK?!'

So! My mother apparently had a tradition in her family that, between 8th grade and the start of high school, over the summer, a grand vacation would be had. We argued about what it would be that entire 8th grade year. She wanted to see the Holy Land and Egypt, preferably on a cruise. Welp, that was the year a cruise liner got taken hostage and it was probably the only reason my preteen anime-geek ass won the argument: I WANT TO GO TO JAPAN, MOM.(1)

Not gonna lie, this trip was epic. It went all around Japan for 7 days, then on to Bangkok, Singapore, and Hong Kong for a few days in each. There are wacky WTF tales from every single leg of the journey, but none of them -- NONE -- could possibly compare to the story of our transit from Tokyo to Bangkok.

This was the mid-80s, so there was no 'news in English' available in every hotel. We had to just guess at news from pictures and diagrams in Japanese. Three stories dominated the news every night we were there: the Bakers (Jim and Tammy Faye) wailing about their air-conditioned doghouse and disgraces, a coup that might or might not be going down in Manila (this will come up later, y'all), and a doomed flight from Japan to Hawaii on Japan Airlines.

The 80s were the early days of 'cute stupid graphics to illustrate the news in simple form'. They were actually pretty good in Japan, as one might expect! It's that last story that could have benefitted from a... less detail-oriented team of animators, though. Y'see, while we don't know specifics of what happened, we could absolutely glean the bullet points from that animation they kept showing over and over and over and over.

Picture if you will, a little chibi plane flying merrily over the ocean, sun sparkling in the background, waves rippling below. There is a comic-book explosion effect on one side of the happy little plane, and one wing breaks off and goes down, down, down with little motion lines until it hits the water. Small bubble-like rafts begin to emerge from sad little chibi plane, after which sharks rise from the water with their mouths open before it cuts back to a newslady who looks very serious and somber for a moment before perking up like someone blasted literal sunshine up her ass from under the newsdesk.

<insert horrified face gif of your choice here>

Never had I prayed like I prayed we would not be on any Japan Airlines flights for the rest of that trip. If this trip taught me anything, it is that there is a god, and it's definitely Loki.

We naturally discover that our flight is going to be on Japan Airlines. 12 year old me is trying to not panic, because I don't want to be eaten by sharks. Is that really too much to ask for out of a vacation? To not get eaten by sharks? (Oh, god, please, I will be your BFF FOREVER if you get us on a different plane!)

Our tour guide for Japan pauses. He looks distressed. Many things distressed this man, to whom being 15 minutes early was being five minutes late for his liking, but this was a special sort of distressed. He explained to us all very calmly that our plane had been grounded for extended inspection -- presumably to check to ensure the wings weren't going to fall off of it -- and that the tour company was seeking an alternate flight with enough available seats for our tour group.

(OMG YOU LISTENED I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE REAL!)

We get shuffled around the airport for over an hour, and go through the most detailed security three times. Every item in our carryons was individually inspected, and we were physically frisked each time after going through the metal detectors. (Did the DDD cup 12 year old get the weirdest looks ever getting frisked? YOU BET. One lady just had this look on her face like... '...but how.... ' as she stared at me with her head tilted like a confused puppy for a solid half minute as she went 'honk honk' on my boobs, convinced I had to be smuggling food or SOMETHING in there.)

All the while this is going on, we are told we have a flight, but nothing about that flight until we're on the actual plane -- just that they're going to make a refueling stop in Bangkok to drop us off. Have y'all ever seen The Golden Child? Remember the plane in Nepal, with the goats? Just remove the goats, and you've got it nailed. We only learn the name of the airline when we see it embroidered on the seatcovers. Everyone is split up, and sent to their seats, scattered all over the plane. I'm planted next to a woman who resembles rumpled leather, who is already asleep. She sleeps through 'what to do if we crash and what your seat belt is for' in 22 languages -- they played it twice, 11 languages each time, a process that took well over half an hour.

We are already in the air when the pilot comes on to tell us where we're going and what we're doing. (Again, this is repeated in several languages... not 22, but it was up there.) This is Egypt Air! We're flying from Tokyo to Cairo, with a stop in Manila.

Wait. What? I immediately see two problems here. First, we're directly en route to the airport that we've been watching stalked by men with guns in paramilitary uniforms all week on the news. Further, and perhaps more pressingly, there is no mention of Bangkok.

...at least we finally understood all the extra security?

Right about the time we're served sliced tongue sandwiches -- yes, really -- the woman beside me wakes up. While boozing it up, we start to chat. She's a lovely person! We bond immediately over talking about the Great Barrier Reef; she dives there often and I've always wanted to see it. (Still do!) I mention the sharks on the news.

"Oh, that's nothin'!" <pulls up pantleg, giant chunk missing from leg, teethmark scars>

<insert your favorite internally screaming gif here>

At this point I am relatively convinced I have developed telepathy, because my mother was able to sense my frantic stare from a few seats over and a row up, and she came to rescue me and swap seats. This plants my woefully awkward preteen ass between what must have been the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in person, and a French male model, who know each other and are chatting merrily and including me which is super awesome of them and makes them amazing people but holy jeebus, I must have been a truly 80s-appropriate shade of magenta the entire time.

They depart in Manila when we land. We are searched again. The entire plane is searched by men walking up and down the aisles with automatic rifles. Everyone still on the plane is trying very hard to not make eye contact with anything but their shoes.

<insert your favorite internally screaming gif here AGAIN>

Once they leave, my mother shoos me up toward the front of the plane to sit with 'the Italian ladies' that are on our tour, as she insists I escape the smoking section. (Yes, younguns, planes had those back then!)

Sitting between these women -- still entirely unsure if we were simply now en route direct to Cairo -- was like being immersed in an episode of The Golden Girls in real life.(2) Many a sentence actually began with 'Back in the old country... ' It was clearly not enough that I grew up with my own Italian grandmother every day of my life up to that point, she was not there and they clearly felt the vacuum. They had four hours to instill me with all of their old world wisdom and they were not going to shirk this sacred responsibility. There were recipes. Gardening tips. How to know if he's really a nice boy. How to tell if the olive oil has gone off.

I could mostly deal with this, even if it was a bit frenetic, until they got to the part about exercise.

"It is important!" the big, brawny one insisted, and she went on to detail how she had, as the girl among all the brothers, done all the same drills as her siblings since her father was some sort of military muckity-muck under Mussolini. It is at this point I begin dying inside with internal wincing, because she is half-deaf and thus quite loud.

"Is most important, so you boom-boom no droop!"

(Is she talking about... )

With great big Italian Granny arm gestures in the tiny-ass cramped plane, she hefts her boobs and lets them fall.

The entire plane is now staring at us.(3)

With even greater big Italian Granny arm gestures, she begins to demonstrate all of these exercises, and demands I follow suit so she can check my form.

(...can we maybe just have the sharks please oh please anything to make this end?)

Finally, satisfied, she settles back into her seat, nodding proudly. I have a thousand yard stare and my face feels like it's literally on fire, but... it's over!

"Oh," says the tiny Italian lady, "you should meet Bobby, he a nice boy!"

(Fine, fine, I'll meet your grandson, lady, whatever, just don't tell him any of THIS happened- )

She turns around, and tugs her seat forward a little. Sitting behind us is the most attractive man I've seen to this day, yes, prettier than the French male model by far, if he had kids with the woman I was seated beside earlier, I am convinced they'd take over the world with the force of combined gorgeousness and radiant charm. "Bobby, this is Dee! She is on our tour! Meet Bobby, Dee! Meet Dee, Bobby! You both so nice!"

They weren't totally wrong. I had a real connection with Bobby. Possibly the most real, honest and true connection I'd ever had with a man in my life until that moment, or since.

'HELP! Save me!' was written in precisely the same way across both of our faces.

1. This was the beginning of my familial role as 'patron saint of vacation planning'. No, really. My luck in life is hot garbage in nearly every possible way except when it comes to 'pick a vacation/place to stay on vacation/vacation ideas/choice of vacation restaurant' and soforth. Dear Loki: I know you're listening, but couldn't you help with the cash to pay for the kickass wacky vacations, too?

2. These two bickered like only lifelong friends could manage. They did not actually meet until the trip started. If this doesn't help you understand Italians better? Think about it a bit; it will.

3. OK, probably not the entire plane, but it sure as fuck felt like it.

@Groth Are you seriously trying to... <just stares at the screen>

AND EVEN SO. Now I will.

Know what? There are studies on this shit. There are warnings all over the press about how people who aren't accustomed to this are also actually suffering, even if their circumstances are temporary. They are also sudden, traumatic, against their will, and outside their control.

They may be suffering in a different way, but it does not minimize or remove their suffering.

If someone is talking about 'isolation' and 'anxiety', those things? Apply to all variants.

For some people, 'talking to your friends for a couple months' is their difference between life and death, mental health or major depression. Is this mentally healthy? Nope, but plenty of people base far too much of their identity on this sort of thing, and some are genuinely tailspinning because of the abrupt change. That is real.

For some people, 'can get out of the house' is the difference between 'I have to stay home and be beaten by an abusive partner' and 'I can get away to a safe place when I see the warning signs'. I shouldn't have to lay out why this is a problem. Domestic violence is up on a curve that is utterly terrifying.

There are endless permutations of this and all of them are real. I would ask you, how dare you delegitimize the suffering those people are going through?

Because none of this exists in a vacuum. None of it is a competition. Suffering and mental health challenges can come from different sources and causes, but that makes them no less real. 'Bob's suffering is worse than Jane's' doesn't mean Jane's becomes irrelevant; maybe you should stop talking like that should be the special case here.

People speak from their own personal experience, like I did. Which you promptly tried to mansplain the shit out of, telling me what my actual life is like, as though you know it better than I do. That is some dire bullshit, right there.

ETA: Sunny nailed it.

My flurfy snow white doofuscat just sniffed around the takeout, and ended up with a red jello blorb on her snoot.

Even if I couldn't get a picture, this tiny bit of silly is made of pure joy and goddammit did I need it right now.

@Cirno said:

http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/

There's actually a whole book on that now, I think. I half recall hearing about it many moons ago, anyway.

But the situations I'm talking about aren't what I would at least personally consider to be abusive on the part of the target -- as in, "I just don't feel like my character should have to be intimidated no matter how big the other guy's dice are" or "but I wanted that position, too, and it's not fair he won the vote and not me!"

The situations I'm talking about are more like this:

1. Z takes a look at B's wiki page, and decides the PB is hot, they want TS. Z starts using +where and other OOC means to constantly show up wherever B is and push this agenda out of the blue. B is not into this and is already leaving scenes wherever possible to avoid Z, who simply will not stop and has escalated to creepy pages and OOC comments, and won't stop doing that either after being told it's unwelcome. Once B pagelocks, Z continues the pursuit with another alt -- repeatedly.

2. Q is new to the game, and her ambitions are to become Prince. C is already Prince, and has been around for a long time and invested time and effort organizing the faction and puts in time to make sure they create RP for others, STs often, and has always played fair. C is generally well-liked and considered fair and a benefit to the sphere. Q decides to start a whisper campaign OOC, making a number of false claims about C in hopes that OOC anger and upset over their crazy stories will get C ousted from the spot so she can claim it.

3. D is constantly abusive on channels, and drives people off of them in droves. They pursue anyone leaving the channel in pages to continue to mock and deride them for leaving the channel and not listening to their crazy ranting. Newbie Y asks if this is the norm for the game channels, and starts getting the worst of it, and is pursued to further the OOC harassment through any means D has available.

4. H's girlfriend, N, breaks up with him IC. H promptly goes to the wiki and defaces the wiki pages of N and everyone on her contacts list.

5. J pages every female character on the game with explicit and lewd propositions and won't stop when told no, and continues this behavior with his alts if pagelocked. If they ever are in OOC areas, he insults them and calls them whores.

6. M really hates that one splat. She cannot ever shut the fuck up about how much that splat is full of cheaters and horrible people and you'd have to be terrible to ever play in that splat. Any time she comes across a player in that splat on grid, her OOC dislike of the character type causes her to behave in an aggressive manner toward the other character until it is unplayable or her OOC negativity makes the players miserable. She has driven half the splat sphere off of their characters already with this behavior, and since she's been thus far successful, chooses to redouble her efforts to wipe out the rest.

7. V is the prima donna of Public Faction. She does not want any other female characters to steal away her attention in Public Faction, so any time another female character joins, she goes out of her way to sabotage the other player's experience OOC through rumor-mongering and bullying.

Other than the wiki example, I've seen all of this shit go down first hand. Every bit of it is actively damaging to a game, and none of it is 'fair play'. All of it is deliberate and the people doing it know damned well it's at the very least, Not The Right Thing To Do.

If you want your games made up entirely out of these people, yes, absolutely, 'If somebody does something you don't like, leave the game and never come back' is the perfect solution for you to suggest for the players who are the targets of these behaviors.

The dentist who does not suck can fix my filling with roughly zero notice, affordably. (The filling that fell out within 48 hours of the dentist who does suck putting it in.)

Bonus: maybe the lovely assistant who keeps showing me her growing collection of pinup girl tattoos will be there.

@mietze said:

@skew said:

I also can't stand the OOC angst, anger, snide comments, etc, that I've seen an OCC/RL partner pull, when the other partner's IC persona is flirted with!

I don't know. I've seen that far more strong/toxic from online-only people than I ever have with MUing couples (though of course there are exceptions). But all the most crazy ass attacking people for messing with their "wo/man" and +where stalking and all that? Almost exclusively online only people.

Thirding this.

I suspect it's stronger in these cases because this is the only connection these couples have. When there's an RL co-habitation thing going on, you can get whatever reassurance you may need that your partner is 'still there' and so on by just looking across the room, if that's something you feel you need to be reassured about. (As in, when said partner is still sitting there eating a bowl of cereal in his underwear, being super glam sexy, as they most assuredly do while watching cartoons on youtube, you know he hasn't run off with that hussy.)

That's the kind of emotional security that people get very weird and fickle about online, if online's all they've got -- which is something I can wrap my head around and understand, even if it sends me over the moon bonkers when I have to put up with the absurd extremes of it.

(I have my own cereal-eating, cartoon-watching-in-his-underwear guy. I don't need somebody else's.)

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

A lot of people -- especially kids whose schools haven't taught it properly -- think freedom of speech means 'I can say whatever I want whenever I want and no one can stop me.'

It should shock precisely no one that I have a 'don't be a dick' footnote just for this somewhere.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Everyone knows what we're getting at, here. Everyone has experienced the completely clueless idiot -- and that is, without question, what they are -- who rails about FREE SPEECH!!! the moment someone tells them to behave like something other than a shrieking howler monkey on a MUX.
I hate to break it to them, but the owner of the site and the person making the rules is not a member of congress. (I know, shocking, isn't it?) That, alone, makes their entire argument invalid.
But wait, there's more! ...the MUX is also private property, and is not a government or public resource to which one is entitled access under law. So that's two strikes against this being in any way relevant.
We're not going to have this argument. Don't even go there.

It's one of the subjects on which I feel entirely justified in being thoroughly snarky as fuck to preemptively shut that shit right the hell down.

Going to mention my long-standing request again: a constructive dedicated dev section for brainstorming and games in development. This isn't the same thing as constructive generally, and I really would like to see it get a home. I genuinely think it would be a net positive for the forum. It'd be useful for startups, idea pitches, and existing games looking at adding new systems they want brainstorming and such for.

I'd really, really like to see this. Add about forty more 'really's there.

@Miss-Demeanor said in The Apology Thread:

@surreality said in The Apology Thread:

@Miss-Demeanor said in The Apology Thread:

@Misadventure I'm not a millennial pansy that needs a 'safe space' from 'scary words', so no.

Yeah, sorry... I have to agree with @Misadventure on this one, the dismissiveness here is a bit much.

PTSD is a real thing, and if people could control what sets it off, I'm pretty sure 'those millennial pansies' be much happier about it than the people who are in proximity when it's set off and feel the need to look down on them for having a delayed emotional reaction to trauma.

Agree all you want. I will totally answer dismissively when asked if I was 'triggered' by a mean person on the internet. If I couldn't handle someone being a jackass on a game, I would have lost my mind decades ago. And considering I've been gaming RL and online since my early teens... I would say I'm doing okay. Angry? Absolutely. Triggered? ....AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The fucking problem is, it's not him you're being dismissive of. It's people who have a real fucking issue.

Be as snarky about him as you want -- but doing it by categorizing anyone who has ever had their PTSD fire off on a game is not insulting him, it's insulting them.

There is absolutely a motherfucking difference between the two.

@sunny We may have our differences, but I am genuinely -- no snark whatsoever -- happy to hear this, and was sad to hear you were thinking of leaving the hobby all together. (I figured you were just busy off playing somewhere and didn't have time for forum bullshit.)

I've been in the same boat and had been feeling much the same.

Sincerely, I hope these recent trends take root. They seem to be good things, and I hope they continue to get better.

This site is quite different from its predecessors. Having been around since before day one of the original WORA -- I tossed a guest essay over for the original site before the forums existed in any incarnation -- I may have a better grasp on this reality than a casual observer with admitted bias.

Each permutation of WORA/SWOFA/etc. had its own uniquely irritating flaws, for one. That's not to say this place probably won't evolve them in time, but it's managed to avoid the worst of them, since, generally speaking, people have grown up considerably. Without having been immersed in that over the years, it's likely invisible, and unfortunately, that means the differences -- which are notable to the people participating here and the many people who have joined this community after having avoided the previous incarnations of it -- are similarly difficult to discern.

You can choose to see 'just more of the same thing', but really, this just demonstrates a lack of experience with this particular bolt-hole of a forum-chain that no amount of dev cred is going to compensate for when you're making judgments about this forum community. In other words, you kinda proved you don't really know what you're talking about when it comes to this particular crowd. Maybe some folks will shred you for it since the post has the air of a 'bring it!' in the subtext, intentional or not, but I suspect most won't care enough to bother, and just write you off as being somewhat confused or ignorant of the reality on the ground.

Either way: admitting bias is actually helpful. It suggests an awareness of it, which surprisingly few people actually have.

If this perception is shared across the board, well, that would explain rather a lot.

Part of the problem y'all may have is the number of times 'the horrible reputation' seems to keep coming up, really, but I can't really say for sure. Some folks definitely react more viscerally to the impression that puts off, which can rather easily come across as, "We're coming to offer a hand to you poor savages," rather than actually attempting to interface with the community itself or attempt to learn what it's about. (Hint: it's not about what even you seem to think it's about.) This goes over roughly as well as a group of fervent evangelist ministers showing up at the doorstep of a pagan commune, if you need a more concrete analogy.

Essentially saying you realize you're slumming it to even deign to talk to someone and then wondering why you might come off condescending, though, well -- that's that self-awareness problem cropping up again, I'm afraid, no matter how noble, positive, or wholesome one's intentions may or may not be.

I'm still just not on board with this theory that incivility or poor behavior on games is the fault of the forum. I just can't get behind that one at all.

I'm not going to weigh in on what brought it up, but I will say: I do think @Misadventure asks a fair question.

Plenty of people think I'm a horrible evil bitch, for instance, when I genuinely think I'm doing the right thing. Sometimes, they're the kind of people who just don't like being called out on shady bullshit or just don't like being told 'no', but other times, I am absolutely wrong, and am just bull-headed.

Happened with a friend the other day, in fact. An issue arose, and while I recognized it and took it seriously? I immediately dove into Optimist Problem Solver Girl mode to try to make it right, because I did feel bad about what happened, and wanted to see what I could do that could help make ammends.

This is not any sort of bad intention, but it kinda actually skips the I'm really sorry, though I didn't know that would upset you, I did upset you, that is not cool for me to do; thank you for being honest with me and letting me know so I can do my best to ensure I don't do something like that again part, which is pretty fucking important.

@arkandel Some of those ways are valid in civil discourse, and some aren't.

Those examples aren't unclear.

"I don't like giant monsters, so I don't like this game because it has a lot of focus on giant monsters showing up all the time."
"I don't like giant monsters because they're stupid, anyone who likes them is stupid, and that means this game is stupid."

There's zero call for the latter.

ETA: The former is an opinion. The latter is an attack.