Best posts made by surreality

Just feel the need to say: I did not create this thread as a 'bash Auspice' thread, or a 'debate the merits of Auspice being a mod here' thread.

I'm sure some folks will find that hard to believe, but it is the truth.

I left her name off it when it was originally created for a reason.

Odds are high no one would have a clue who it was if she hadn't managed to rile me up again until I grarred my head off in a different thread like a hair-triggered fool; snapping and yelling wasn't exactly some grand plan, no matter how bloody Sicilian I am. Like bored, I do not have some grand and elaborate scheme to watch unfold whilst I steeple my fingers, twirl my OMG SHE'S SO SICILIAN LIKE REALLY YOWZA mustache, pet my long-haired cat, and cackle maniacally.

So, while I do have a long-haired cat and I do sometimes cackle maniacally, I wax the mustache into oblivion and do not have a plan here beyond 'fess up, own my shit, take whatever lumps for it people feel are appropriate, and try to do better going forward'.

Newflouf is a very slippery-coated cat.

Newflouf tries to sit on me to sleep... and sliiiiiiiiiiiiides down the comforter to land in a flumph.

Newflouf tries to sit on the back of my chair, where the faux leather has all worn off and the underlayer is smooooooth, and sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiides down to flop against my back.

I had a trilly, chirping goofball with her heavier-than-it-looks hind end landing on my shoulder, paws daintily resting on the back of the chair to survey the hall, for a solid twenty minutes of now I can't move or I will disturb the behbeh.

I don't think I'm supposed to be totally d'aww over that, but I am. I so am.

...when a couple people appear as if from nowhere, and are all awesome. Just right out of the blue, pure awesome, and hit the ground running (...smack dab into the fun kind of trouble, usually).

<happy-dance>

1. Go to the furniture store with the most options available.
2. Find one you really love within 5 minutes.
3. Spend the next two weeks going everywhere else in town because you surely didn't find the best option in five minutes.
4. After wasting two weeks furniture shopping, go back and buy the first one that you found in five minutes.
5. Grouse about two wasted weeks while waiting for delivery while fretting about clearing out enough space in time for said delivery that you could have very easily accomplished in that two week period but for whatever reason, did not do.
6. Rip old couch apart in search of stray keys/loose change/jewelry at the last minute when you hear the delivery van pull up in front of the house.
7. Wave goodbye to old couch. Try to not wonder how many friends of yours may have had sex on it without you knowing about it.
8. Embrace wave of gratitude that you'll never have to wonder about that ever again as the old couch departs the home.
9. Chase the cat toy you missed between the old couch and the wall until the old house was gone out of new couch footprint.
10. Stare anxiously at light fixtures in swinging range as new couch is brought in and set in place.
11. Race cat(s) to be the first to sit on new couch.

This is not how one should. This is how everyone I know in person ever has. YMMV.

...when folks are too busy having fun doing things various places (RL or IC) to have to gripe, and this board gets relatively quiet for a good reason.

@Aria 2020 really needs to stop playing 'hold my beer' chicken with 2016.

Fuck me. This isn't therapy?

<goes to sit in the 'doing it all wrong' corner>

(Kidding. Before anyone wonders if that was serious.)

@silverfox Oddly enough... that sounds a lot like my mom. She's both super conservative and 'church every single day + one other church-related activity per day (choir, study groups, Catholic book club, saint study group... ) levels of Catholic.

She decided to come out to see me the first Thanksgiving I was in college, since we only got Thurs-Fri+weekend off instead of a week or two. All my friends were gay, bi, lesbian, or trans, and when she found out they weren't welcome at their own homes for Thanksgiving dinner, she cooked a huge dinner in my tiny studio apartment kitchen and invited them all. (Then spent the night after they went home crying that they were the sweetest people ever and their parents not being so proud of what great and amazingly talented people they were had her bawling and angry-shaking.)

Kinda never been more proud of my mom than I was in that moment, so I know this feel, and it really is among the best.

ETA: This was in 1991, too... so not quite as accepting a time.

@Ghost I am not entirely sure if you have a reasonable notion of how you're coming across in this thread. While you showed your work on the leaps of logic in this case, there are plenty more, along with some spectacularly gross conflations and insinuations. The subject matter is awful enough. It doesn't need your 'help' for others to become aware that it is awful.

Things like 'it requires more staff to manage and monitor, and additional hosting costs' are seemingly not on the radar here. Shang hosts intermittent donation drives to keep the lights of the MUX on alone. (I don't even want to consider what would happen if they were also hosting a wiki for thousands of players with a rapid turnover, or what content would be on it.)

Sometimes it's the simple shit.

Regardless, per Pandora, the game in question does this.

I wouldn't look to you as the voice on this issue for multiple reasons, because the gonzo journalism 'sling out worst case scenarios, absurd conflations, insinuations that no one who isn't screaming the same song you are at the same volume isn't aware of the issues (or supports this stuff happening), and scare tactics' approach is hitting the poor taste mark unto itself.

(Rinel, RDC, Ganymede, y'all have made very reasoned and thoughtful contributions here and thank you for doing so in the face of this.)

...rain incoming, and it's dark just past noon.

Me: puttering with pretty meditative image fuckery.

My husband: <asks very simple question>

Me: <puzzled look, goes back to looking at the shiny>

My husband: What are you-- <gets similarly hypnotized by the shiny>

Me: See, the pretty makes you stupid.

My husband: OK, I have to stop or we'll never get Chinese food.

...there will be Chinese food, and there is rain, and there is shiny so long as we have power. (Won't be long, I'm betting.) But, y'know. Then there will still be food, and naps are good, and I am simply too fucking zen right now to give a fuck about almost anything.

Labeling sites as 'adult content' for 18+ games -- not just sex games, but all games that are 18+ -- is probably a necessary step from the community side. (I wouldn't create a game that wasn't 18+, no matter the content, because I don't want to deal with being responsible for children in that space; there's enough to worry about among adults as it is.)

So is, much as many folks aren't going to want to hear it, reporting it when someone underage is playing on one of these games; people generally don't, and that needs to change.

This is important to protect everyone involved, kids and adults that may not realize they're playing with someone underage on a site where underage people shouldn't be in the first place, because neither group deserves the damage.

I am a hopeless mess at 3d modeling, even if I've been fucking around with it for a few weeks now. (I used to texture, not model. Tweaking existing models is much different, and I used different software when I did that, anyway.)

...but I managed to make a stupid simple bottle before the cat could walk across the keyboard and fire off a dozen keyboard shortcuts and crash the software or turn it into a pretzel well beyond the limits of undo.

I am inappropriately pleased with this stupid, genuinely not-even-good model, because it is obviously enough a stand-in for a basic coffee syrup bottle with a simple metal spout and... if I get brave, I may try to add a label, someday.

Sometimes it's the really little things...

This looks really fantastic. @Seraphim73 and @GirlCalledBlu, y'all should be super proud!

In the vain effort to get a picture of Weaselwobble (sans flowers, alas, because I like not bleeding to death) I swear... that cat can dodge a camera.

The other five were a hopeless blur.

Very wobbly weasel. So round. So plush. The only cloud computing in the house, really.

ETA: Yay, her wee nose freckles show up a lil there. They almost never do.

@Groth And another fucking thing, because now I'm pissed: read it again.

The very quote you cite addresses exactly what you're talking about: people who are not accustomed to this circumstance are unlikely to react with empathy and will instead do more damage.

@TNP I can't finger type too well from phone, but was more neon yellow, yup. Sadly, instead of it being a long awaited callback from that old oompa-loompa audition or an actual invite to a magical chocolate factory (unless the dirt counts), secretly, my gall bladder has apparently been attempting to construct the death star.

I cannot say if this has anything to do with Trump, but I am pretty sure the measure of bile over the course of the past year going all crazy toxic society-wise wasn't helping! So it came up with the ingenious scheme to cook up the death star in house, and it just kept on like a busy little bee until it realized, "Shit, boss, maybe I shoulda checked to see if there was clearance to get my megaweapon out into the world before I done built it so big." (Picture someone having built, say, a turbojet in their barn, started the thing, and only then stepped back to watch in horror as it gets briefly stuck in the doors while the jets continue to fire, blasting the ever-lovin'-shit out of, presumably, the rickety old farmhouse reserved for every mad farm scientist ever in a feel good action flick and this analogy, which is somewhat unfortunate because the rickety old farmhouse is, essentially, 'the rest of me'.)

I need tell no one, I am now sure, that there is no small amount of medication going on here.

P.S. Please please please DO NOT send me a new kitchen or magic chair or an oven not tainted by the dire hand of the gluten. Do go eat something you really enjoy today and spoil yourself a little, though, because solid food is way off in the future around here.

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Like, for example, you can search "man with sword" or any other "man with" things, or search "man wearing suit", and like 99% of the results are white dudes.

^ This.

It's that the 'target audience' for almost all things is -- stupidly -- not just 'white', but 'white dudes'.

A search for female warrior types of any race proves this out depressingly, too, full of 'the law of female fantasy armor'. That specific concept has improved a little over the past few years? But not much.

I soooooo share this peeve and I absolutely see this problem with the 'here is the one point of focus to which everything is meant to appeal', and it's shitty as hell and depressing to navigate through. There's nothing remotely silly about it!

Creepy battle scar finally being healed up enough, with staples removed, to take a very long bath, not an awkward dance between the raindrops in the world's dinkiest shower trying to avoid the staples getting wet.

Bubbles for the fucking win.

@L-B-Heuschkel No, no... she doesn't get ragged on for it. It's that no one guesses, seeing that picture, that she's Brazilian (unless they already know), because she's pale, blue-eyed, and red-haired.

A lot of the assumptions that go around in the US aren't based on anything but appearance. The experiences Coin describes -- people assuming he's the white US citizen -- are good demonstrations of this. Same with people suddenly becoming deferential to me for no reason other than 'oh shit it's a white girl' when they realized I was white and not Mexican.

It's very much 'about appearance' in the US in incredibly disturbing ways.

To all of MSB: