Best posts made by surreality

@ganymede The best example I can think of is actually one from RL.

When I was... nine or so? Before boys (or girls) were even a second thought ever and the very idea of kissing was still super duper gross, the folks sent me to a snobby all girls school. The older sister of a friend of mine went there, and her parents spoke of it highly. She thought it would be the funniest joke ever to write a note to another girl in my class, telling her I wanted to see her naked, and sign my name to it, during the first week I was there.

You can guess how many people wanted to talk to me -- ever -- in the two years I attended that school. This included the teachers, and the counselors I was sent to to 'fix my unholy deviance'.

This kind of mean girl bullshit is pretty commonplace on games to this day -- which isn't even high school drama, it's gradeschool drama. It's not as troublesome as it is RL, obviously! But it's pretty commonplace, and we need to do a much better job, as a community, of standing up to it.

@Arkandel I have to be able to empathize, at least to some minor extent, with at least one character.

Barring that, there has to be some hook of other interest -- for instance, if a book included egregious costume geekery I might like it for that reason.

Some authors I'll give more leeway than not. Clive Barker can almost always hook me in, even if it doesn't happen immediately (rare), so it's worth getting to page 200 before the wow hits, because I have a reasonable certainty that even if delayed, the payoff in terms of 'wow factor' is going to be there.

I don't ship character pairs. Not in books, not in series, not in movies. It's just not my thing. I'd rather see the story play itself out as intended and appreciate it for what it is than set up additional hopes or expectations like this that could otherwise interfere with my enjoyment of it.

@paris And the purplest of throbulating-<saves it for the grand moment, whenever it occurs>

@Arkandel They really didn't have any question in mind of his guilt. Or of the threat he posed to them. It had already been strongly implied that Bran had seen everything he had done with the recitation of the 'chaos is a ladder' line in the earlier episode. They have a real means of determining the truth or falsehood of accusations in the form of a dude who can actually see the actual past to verify whatever could be necessary.

Not really feelin' the injustice.

Sure, he could have asked for a way out -- combat or the wall -- but. Everywhere he's been, he has been an insidious threat, full stop. Even at the wall he would have remained no less a threat than he had consistently been everywhere else. Hell, they could have Man in the Iron Mask'd the dude in an oubliette and he still would have been a threat and everyone was painfully aware of this.

We're also talking about execution by someone with an actual hit list of those she deems responsible for her father's death, that she aims to carry out no matter what anybody thinks about it. Even if he made it through that scene in some manner with an 'out', dude was just not going to get past Arya the moment she became aware of his part(s) in betraying her family in pursuit of power in the longer term without more complex machinations that they likely have time to explore in what remains of the screen time for the series. This may end up being a different path taken in the books, since they are known to be divergent, but for the medium and intended limitations, it makes a lot of sense.

Edit: In my head, the last scene of this series does still somehow end with Littlefinger rowing past Gendry, still rowing in circles, with an awkward wave as Westeros burns behind the both of them.

@arkandel I think it's a lot simpler than that. It's not about the 'a different person'. It's 'would do whatever I want'.

Yeah, that is a different person than the person who would be willing to say no, so I see what you're getting at there, but it's not so much about changing the person on a fundamental level, but about getting that person to do what they want with zero regard to what that person wants.

@Auspice That is wonderful! Congrats!

Seconding @Goldfish completely. This one was really wow -- and the first two were also spectacular.

Definitely a good time to pop in!

@Lithium I just look at that and envision an un-stompable spider and predict the end of our species within a decade as we all burn the world down screaming when we drop a phonebook on Charlotte and she just catches the motherfucker and tosses it right back at us.

As a quick reference, this is the list of spots currently available:

http://horrormu.com/index.php/Archetypes

12 currently, which is a great range of options.

Creative problem solving with repurposed objects.

There are about a dozen long-winded explanations that would be required for it to make sense. The tl;dr is that I like a certain kind of yarn, because it is neato-keen. I have studied various means of producing it and can do all the ones I've read up on or been taught by my former mentor and came up with a few more variations on those themes as well. None of these methods are without their share of 'that is a lot of hoop-jumping pains in the ass' or 'more money than you could ever afford to spend or would ever make back' on a machine that can only be described as 'you didn't really need a living room, either, did you?' or 'oh, you really think you can get one of those vintage refurbs they only ever made a dozen or so of in the 40s in the first place and there's only one presently known of on earth known to still work?'

Over the past two weeks I have found a way of drastically reducing the amount of ass-pain this causes with a weird little widget ordered from the UK, a cordless powered screwdriver, and a combination ash tray/trash can. It isn't quite on par with the speed or ease as the thing that'd cost as much as a brand new luxury SUV and take up roughly the same amount of space, but it's one hell of a lot closer than it was and it takes up the amount of space as, well, a 12 inch diameter, 3ft tall trash can.

This just might work. Yay.

I'm another 'no'.

There are some very old text-based video games that some MUs may have similarities to, and there's little argument the roots of MUDs with a high level of automation likely flow from there.

The kind of games predominantly discussed here branched off from there, and took a decidedly different direction over time, with a few exceptions. We don't really get into the RPI and MUD style games here (in discussion; I'm sure plenty of people posting here play on them also), however, so the MUX/MUSH style games are fairly distinct at this point.

Some are closer to simulated tabletop RPGs, but those aren't video games. There are formats now to play tabletop games more directly online, but those are relatively newer than MUX/MUSH for the most part. Other MUs are completely freeform, and could arguably be played on IRC or anything else that allows people to throw text at a shared document or website, like a forum or email chain. And while these two far-end-of-the-scale approaches are possible in and by other means, the experience of them tends to be different in ways that people have discussed at some length. Most MUs are a hybrid of these things, anyway.

Are there more 'interactive fiction' style video games now? Sure. They're more along the lines of a 'choose your own adventure' format, for the most part, though, which is more or less like going back to the old old old text games of this kind and adding visuals to them.

So... pretty much no. In the same way that someone can RP on WoW or similar, it's not the point for which the game was primarily designed. Ultimately, that's where we are with MU.

Hugs offered in spirit to both @Lisse24 and @Cupcake.

Lisse: I'm not a parent, so I don't fully get it; at the same time, will keep all the fingers and toes crossed for you and yours.

Cupcake: ...yeah, that. Absolutely that. It has less to do with what the other person is saying, and more to do with what the voice in the back of the skull is relating through the translation software.

Taking compliments is actually learned behavior; if you don't really get many or don't get them during certain formative periods, it's really easy for them to become this to the brain: 'uh... attention! Attention is usually bad! Time to dive under the desk and hope the potential threat goes away!'

Having gone off on a few manifestos of grar regarding the state of things as I see them, I'm the last person who would tell someone to refrain from doing the same.

Every time I've done it, I've been surprised to see how many people agree with or recognize some of the things I described, at which point something that may have been overlooked before begins to be taken more seriously and at least becomes a topic of discussion, and also how many people can provide reassurance through example of how other things are not as dire/bleak/shitty as they seem to me.

It's not fun shit to read. It's not fun shit to write, either, and the state of mind someone has to be in to get there isn't exactly fabulousness incarnate. Shit may never get back to a fabulousness incarnate headspace, but at least in terms of my personal experience, it's shifted my perspective from believing there's nothing but a hopeless abyss.

@auspice I am still convinced Dilaudid is Satan in pill form.

Yes, it makes the physical pain stop.

It also makes me exhausted 24/7 but unable to get anything resembling restful sleep, makes me irritable to the point of actually violent, and totally dizzy and disoriented (yes, the clinical interpretation of 'disoriented') the whole time.

Cannot even begin to express the hate for that stuff.

@mietze ...more:

Failed=No one picked up on all the clues being thrown out for plots even when handed them directly.

Failed=Staff got overwhelmed and couldn't keep up.

Failed=People not recognizing 'there is nothing going on!' is not the same thing as 'I am not personally interested in the things that are going on right now'.

Failed=Someone else was getting attention I wanted.

Failed=Instituted a policy/house rule I dislike.

Failed=Was <larger/smaller> than X players at any given time.

@ashen-shugar I would swear that is our old black cat. He had that magic power of being everywhere at once and five times as loud as any cat ever.

@thenomain The wiki is still at weeks. But not many. Otherwise, all correct.

(ETA: I think tHM is full up at the moment, believe it or not! Wait, there are two spots open, but only two.)

I think "I didn't know we were dating!" is the appropriate response to this no matter what.

1, it's true; 2, it's a hell of a slap in the face if they thought you were, and this twit sounds like he deserves one. And, well, 3, if they did mean to send that to someone else, they can 'd'oh!' and you can both laugh about it later.

@arkandel said in criticism not allowed in ad threads is only enforcing a false positive, prove me wrong:

@thenomain said in criticism not allowed in ad threads is only enforcing a false positive, prove me wrong:

Either 'ad and updates by the poster only', or make it part of the constructive forums in general.

It's already been done. I prefer the wiki route but it will need to wait until the personnel exists for it.

...need a week or so still. See also: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:UserPageEditProtection <-- handy with a plan to use user pages as the ONLY place for people to voluntarily post their own playlists/data about themselves/etc., and the rest locked down to game ads only.

@lithium No lie, these days, with the current administration (and, frankly, for the past forever, even), I can't say I wouldn't be terrified of what could happen if the standard infantryman could be prosecuted for just being in active service.