Best posts made by surreality

@magee101 said in Helpful Spellcasting Flowchart:

@cobaltasaurus maybe it sends gou running for the hills. For me this is a godsend.

@cobaltasaurus said in Helpful Spellcasting Flowchart:

@magee101 It doesn't send me running for the hills. I know how to the rules for casting in mage. I have had multiple people comment to me that looking at that image has completely turned them off of playing mage. @Sparks Is a good example of people turned off on mage. "This is too complicated, I'm going back to D&D." (Paraphrasing here.)

I'm glad it helps you, but it doesn't help everyone and it actively turns off some people.

@magee101 said in Helpful Spellcasting Flowchart:

@cobaltasaurus the book does that too. Yoi know how long it took for me to sit down and say ok lets do it! Mage is a game that is going to take effort to play. If that silly picture turns them off, they might not have really enjoyed mage anyways

@cobaltasaurus said in Helpful Spellcasting Flowchart:

@magee101 Okay, sure. You're way of playing and learning is the One True Way, got it.

This is what I'm seeing, Gany.

Nowhere am I seeing Magee claiming a 'one true way', only that this chart is helpful to them and that they appreciate having it available, whether the chart is ideal or not.

The leap to catty bullshit is not on Magee here. Check your sacred cow bias.

@Arkandel Fast, Cheap, Good: Pick a maximum of two.

@Derp Ohgods, that one is new to us. He was already debating a stormtrooper face, the death star, and the falcon... that's fucking AMAZING, though.

Lottery kitchen will clearly just have to have them ALL for some sort of 'every flavor of waffles' day.

Though re: Taika, I do a variation of the wedding soup, too, but a super easy one with the egg drop method. Nuke chunk of frozen spinach (optional) to throw in; if I am too bleah I don't bother. (I will try, though, because spinach is one of those foods that will help me physically feel less bleah.) Throw spinach in broth while broth heats. Crack two (or more depending on how much you're making at once, 2-3 is good for one of those boxes of premade broth) eggs in bowl, scramble. Drizzle scrambled eggs into hot broth and stir broth to break it all up. Keep stirring like... up to a minute while the eggs cook in broth. Ladle out as needed. Add salt or pepper or grated cheese if you want, mix in or throw on top. (This is how my grandmother would do the wedding soup, she'd just also have meatballs. I tend to not have meatballs around or the patience/ingredients to make them when I make this version.)

Stupid quick and dead simple for quick protein and greens and relatively healthy ingredients on the cheap. Can probably convert to vegetarian relatively easily with egg substitutes and veggie broth/etc.

Also a very good 'I need chicken soup because I feel like garbage' soup.

@arkandel But how dare they render that chart in cuddly Easter pastels in order to conceal the depths of its horror from an innocent child's glance, inviting inquiry and exploration as if such is safe, sir, how dare they, indeed?!

I am marginally pro-OOC room, for one specific reason: I'm not someone who grabs a pile of friends to start off on a game. I usually go alone, even if I ask others to join me there after feeling it out, if I've decided to stick around.

A notable measure of 'how comfortable I'm going to be in a space' is seeing how people relate to each other OOC when not in a scene. Seeing that people are joking around and friendly in downtime is reassuring when shit hits the fan in a scene, and something dramatic or tense goes down in that I usually find it easier to engage someone (IC in potentially tense subject matter, or OOC if there is an issue) when I have observed them behaving in a chill, friendly manner with others in the playerbase.

There are obvious exceptions to this -- if they're only friendly to their in-joke circle, for instance, or only engage those people even when many others are present and chatting freely -- being the big one. The new one on me was someone going on effusively about what a great time they were having doing something that was making me utterly miserable, which made me feel like I could not approach them to say, "Yeah, your super fun times, please knock that shit off." It was a big problem, but it is also in that category of what I'd call 'rare exceptions', in that it's happened all of once in over 20 years.

Not vegetarian, here. Have tried. Became brutally ill despite doing so under a qualified nutritionist's guidance.

Still avoid using animal products when there's a reasonable substitute, more evident in the work I do than what I eat: switched to dyework on cellulose fibers (rayon, tencel, cotton) almost exclusively, and appreciate that people appreciate that.

I live in an area where the organic versions of things/etc. are very much priced up outside of farmer's market season (typically 2-5x as expensive, sometimes even more). This is non-enjoyable. It's not as bad as a food desert, but for 2/3 of the year, it may as well be due to the cost factor.

@arkandel If I had $20 to spare, you can damned well bet it would have been before I finished typing this.

ETA: Also, cat videos. Don't forget the cat videos.

@eye8urcake This is incredible news. I am so happy for all of you!

@arkandel 'Where it belongs' and what qualifies is a huge area of disagreement, though.

Someone walking into a goth club or biker bar wearing a leash, for instance, has come up more than once (I can think of at least two or three instances of it off hand) as 'unacceptably forcing kinks on others' who are simply present.

This is a predictable thing to witness in those environments, full stop. It is RL, too. Slut-shaming these people and throwing rapey accusations at them about forced participation through just having to see it happen is by no definition 'sex positive'.

ETA: TR had more public strip clubs than clothing stores. People have an expectation of being allowed to go to any location on grid that isn't faction-locked or a private residence. Someone entering a strip club and claiming their limits are being violated because someone is posing being on stage and stripping is the one in the wrong, here, not the person engaging in RP involving sexual content in a space outside their private bedroom.

I've known two people in my life with a profound hatred• of cheese. I always chalked this up to a sense of self-loathing so deep that even in my most depressive states I can't comprehend it.

• Not allergy or lactose/other food intolerance problem, which I'd understand, obviously.

@carex said in Let's talk about TS.:

It dosen't matter if someone walks in wearing a giant, neon purple, strap-on it isn't "forcing a kink" on someone unless that viewer finds it arousing and is made uncomfortable by that arousal.

In some cases, sure. But I wouldn't call this one a universal. (It's often easy enough to spot in the 'methinks thou dost protest too much' sense when this is true, but that's also not any sort of certainty.)

Some people are hot for gore and mutilation for sexual gratification; someone being made uncomfortable by that isn't necessarily going to be ashamed of their own secret sexual woo from gore and mutilation, they may simply find it horrifying and gross if they don't like gore or mutilation period. There are people into racist or sexist themes in fetish play; someone being put off by that isn't necessarily put off because they are ashamed they find it also hot, but because they're not fans of racism or sexism.

Even some of this is a RL vs. VR thing. If I walked into a fetish club and people were engaging in scat play, and that's allowed there, I may just be plain and simple put off by the smell and leave. Until we have smellovision in VR (OH PLEASE GODS NEVER NO PLEASE NO), that's not going to be an issue in the same way.

There are fetishes for damned near everything, so the reasons for an objection are going to vary a lot.

@Auspice You need to see this. https://peacockandfig.com/product/mermaid-tales-stitchalong/ (Warning for general audience, not politically correct by miles, but oh gods I will order these some day because I laughed so hard and they're awesome to me. The struggle and rock ones are definitely the best.)

@derp She could just love me to death, though! I mean, that would be really scary.

(I don't actually know her and don't think I've ever met her, so obviously no offense intended here, just wordplay on the name.)

Per my icon, I could just be a grumpy moon and wait for the deluge of

@Auspice I pretty much injured myself laughing when I saw the rock one. Pretty + Snarky + Mermaids = win.

Because I am a lifelong, next level weirdness magnet.

I still have those 36 hour days for just me and the handful of people I know who truly need them on backorder.

@salty-secrets That's more a 'one alt period' problem.

It's more a matter of 'I get the idea of one FC to start so people have to be initially selective and not hoard a bunch of chase FCs'. That's a fairly sensible concern for a game starting up.

If OCs are allowed, though, they're not taking up one of those chase FC spots at all, so limiting people to one alt period creates the problem you're describing fast.

'Two characters, no more than one can be an FC to start' just seems to make more sense to me; it preserves the 'no early rush to hoard the chase FCs' problem ZG is describing (which is a reasonable concern) without penalizing people who opt for an OC as their first character in any way, and doesn't inherently limit anyone to just one character -- someone with a FC could pick up an OC as well initially and have more options to pursue RP.

@Auspice These were freeform embroidery... which when I started the first one, I had never actually done before. I would try to get newer/better pictures but I am pretty sure my mother has this in a vault somewhere, wrapped in acid free paper.

(For folks who don't know, I used to make designer doll clothes for a living. One of many insane jobs I've had.)

...it's all couched in metallics and then... overkill. I adapted a design from a Dover clip art book of art nouveau borders for it.

I am still hunting for more of that fabric.

@apos That's not remotely what happened. Not even close.

@Ghost said in RL things I love:

PENIS MAN

Who is "Penis Man" and why has he come?

^ That really is the only way that article should have opened, and I am quietly proud of them for going there.