Best posts made by surreality

@Auspice It is not, but I feel it should be. It so, so should be.

@peasoupling said in Historical MU*s:

have some reason to pick a setting other than "it's a neat time period and I want to play a craftsman who specializes in belt buckles and dying of tuberculosis."

^ possibly my new favorite MSB quote.

@apos That was pretty much how I was looking at it, yeah. I had to pause to wonder on this one when it came up earlier in terms of the dice roll itself giving it away -- and then thought how freaked out I get if somebody accuses me of doing something I didn't (and how freaking out makes it look true), how people fail lie detector tests all the time due to anxiety, etc.

@Derp sorry, but no. Have the wank elsewhere. It is not remotely relevant to this hobby, and it's fucking tiresome and juvenile.

Go refer to the youtube classic 'it's ok to not like things' often referenced here and recognize it applies in full.

For anyone not familiar with it, if's pretty fucking simple: 'it's ok to not like things but don't be a dick about it'. You, Ark, and WildBabboons could use a refresher course on that little tune, because this is truly needless dickery being slung at fellow members of the community.

@seraphim73 It's tragically more complicated than that. I'm still fussing with it through the weekend, but will toss you a link to the WIP some time this week if you want a peek. (Seeing it would explain it better than I can in summary here.)

@mietze Oh, were there ever.

One of the things that is quite heartening now is the level of involvement common with the parents and any therapists, counselors, or psychiatrists working with the kids in question.

This was not how it worked when I was younger, when it was more 'kid gets dropped off at professional's office to have the problems the parents descibe fixed'.

...the problems with the old way are incredibly obvious, and yet.

I eventually lucked out. The psychologist I was seeing had seen my mother for years. As a result, she knew she wasn't getting the whole story from my parents. It made such a world of difference; I probably wouldn't have survived though high school without her. No one else had ever even considered -- in almost ten years -- that my folks might have serious issues they were not disclosing because in their minds, I was the problem for not conforming to their world view.

@The_Supremes said:

I was just thanking him for the clarifiction and well wishes, and noting that given his reaction to our concerns that WoD is a product of the 90s and rife with racist themes and problematic cultural appropriation, our game was very likely a poor fit for him, as a player.

Adding smug condescension to the already holier-than-thou hilarity that is the absurdity of some of the things on the werewolf page?

AND casting aspersions on someone for questioning any of it?

Shit. I wish most games were this honest about the way their staff was going to handle their business.

(In this case, my interpretation is: very poorly, YMMV.)

I don't mind the outfit posing thing save for in one specific case: when it's all label name-dropping and no practical description of what anything looks like.

Usually, the people doing this will be label name-dropping something in every frickin' pose ever even if it's not about their clothes, though, which makes me constantly have to fight the urge to drop OOC and be like, "Look, I don't even know what McGuffintyre Special Reserve Gold XVIII Louis Gourmand Edition is supposed to be from the context of your pose beyond 'expensive', so could you stop name-dropping brands of shit no one either of us even knows can probably afford to just let me know if we're drinking bourbon or beer right now so I don't have to google random shit thrice per pose just to know if you're talking about your shoes or your dinner?"

(I have the same eyetic about some of the anime characters on Shang using the Japanese terms in poses for mundane objects that have perfectly serviceable words for them in English, like 'bowl' or 'dinner' or 'shoes', which was a huge trend a handful of years back. Do not make me slog over to google translate just to understand your pose, people. Please. It is not impressive, it's obnoxious.)

Please, tell me about every frilly petal embroidered on your jeans if you want to, down to how many hours the couture embroidress slaved over it all and then studded your character's tasteless signature heart in real diamonds right across the crotch, but please, oh please, for the love of all things holy, unholy, and somewhere in between, do not be that guy/gal described above.

@Rinel Not only do I not get this, I can't bring myself to care enough to try.

@Misadventure This actually is a thing. Not a 'hot button' or personal peeve.

@seraphim73 Yeah, I am a costume design geek and that one proved a challenge even for me without getting super wordy. There are a few wild and really out there experimental designers and such I can see really needing the pics for to help make sense of things.

Other than stuff that far out there, though, I get all, "USE YOUR WORDS."

@Griatch Friends of my husband's still have a pile of Amigas running. The part names were, iirc, amazing.

@Misadventure If you want to actually apologize for your own actions by doing so, yes, because you aren't apologizing for your own actions when that's what you're saying.

http://jezebel.com/sorry-not-sorry-how-to-non-apologize-5993101

@faraday It isn’t just tech, too. Cannot even count the number of jewelry commissions that are exactly like this.

We will just not discuss the lady who pitched an actual public screaming fit that her $20 earrings were not 24k gold. (Lady, I can’t even get a single 24k gold ear stud for that at bulk wholesale, let alone make a pair of earrings covered in vintage glass and swarovski on top!)

Ahem. So maybe I will discuss her a little. But it’s good to know that like this lady, most people have no damn clue what they’re asking for, or even how plausible it even is —forget time or complexity. Just, uh, be prepared.

Also be prepared for people like the lady who gave the (30+ hours of delicate hand beading) necklace to her dog to play with for a month to expect you to fix it free... but she saved the poops with most of the missing parts for me, so that’s totally cool, right?

In short: people can suck in ways that will make you hate life and the things you love sometimes once $ enters the picture. Be careful, and choose your customers wisely if you can.

• Watching people who have zero compunction or remorse about hurting others or causing harm (intentionally and otherwise, but mostly intentionally and often for sport) cry about how someone hurt their feelings would be far less grating to my soul if it didn't get followed by a swarm of people (who know the above about the 'wounded' party) offering support. Where are they for the people that person hurts? Usually, nowhere to be found, or joining them in their sport.

• People who only pretend to be good people in public. (True character is what you do in the dark, when no one's watching.)

• Being that sucker that believes in giving people second(/third/fourth/fifth... ) chances. Being that fool that believes people when they say they're trying to change for the better, and dumb enough to be surprised when they prove they haven't.

• Thinking people I think of as friends care about me and my feelings a fraction as much as I care about them and theirs.

• Coming to the realization that I'm close to losing my voice. Not the physical one, but the more abstract, larger concept of such. This is especially painful because after years of theater and silly accents and even being asked regularly about voice acting work, my speaking voice was one of my last remaining things to be proud of, and the dental surgery has completely devastated my speaking voice to the extent that I cannot speak with any volume whatsoever and typically have to repeat myself several times. This is not 'retrain and it will be fine', it's structural and permanent.

• One of the last few folks I considered a good friend going completely off the rails into attacks that were inappropriately personal over stupid shit on a game. This would be bad enough if they were accurate and just required reflection to accept; this was not the case. Trying to forcefully shove them down my throat as elements of universal truth has likely ended that friendship. I will certainly never trust that person again the way I once did.

• Dodging stupid or random potential death on a daily basis since the 18th, from narrowly avoiding neurotoxin lung paralysis by toxic cone snail sting to various traffic accidents to the luckiest bannister-rail catch in recorded history as I was about to go face-first down the full flight of stairs into a running fan. This is not a sequel to Final Destination, universe. Knock this shit off.

@fatefan If you're using mediawiki (I can't help with wikidot) I may be able to help toss a few templates and whatnot your way if you let me know what you need.

@auspice Well, it's usually food that barely qualifies as food and spectacularly godawful sex, so I think it works as an umbrella definition.

It is the last 12 hours for one of our kitties. We have to take her in to the vet in the morning for her final trip out.

She is in pain, and she is unhappy. We know this is for the best.

It still sucks a whole lot.

"I AM HELPING Cat", in her younger days.

That's... not really what I was getting at. I'm saying: unless it's directly related to something that occurs on a game, parental/institutional/domestic/etc. abuse really are apples to oranges here.

Abuse of policy is a thing.

It isn't even necessarily something that'll ever do someone any harm; sometimes it's even for the best. (Banning someone who does something truly horrible or damaging at that point instead of waiting for 'strikes' to accumulate if the game has a 'three strikes' policy occurs to me as an example of what I mean by this; it's still technically an abuse of policy.)

I think @Ghost is specifically addressing abuse of trust. I've never played on one of their games; I have no idea personally, or from experience.

Creating a sandbox seems to be the right call here. I know that personally I'm going to be running a beta some time later in the year that'll be invite-only through beta; that's the same kind of thing. If anyone finds that somehow abusive? Oh, well. But I don't think that's what he's getting at, but rather a sense of joining a game and expecting that things are going to work differently than they do in reality, without any warning to that effect.