Best posts made by surreality

@Derp Yeah, that's the translation I came to as well. By 'positive relations' I mean OOC, IC popularity/being loved isn't a factor there.

I FEEL CALLED OUT BY THIS MEME.

@RightMeow I'm definitely one of those people that spells out a lot of things, so in a way, I want to offer the perspective I'm coming from on that.

Not everyone's an old hat at this. New people come in all the time, and we have some weird community norms to folks just trying to learn what they are. That ends up making people feel like they're expected to know things they don't, and they have no idea why anyone would do that. (I know I end up spending the most words on 'why this can create a problem', rather than 'grar if you do <thing>, you are a jerk!')

Even with that, things vary a lot from game to game. Is it a strict pose order place? Is it a place where everyone poses in past tense? Etc. This stuff isn't so much policy, it's more... 'this is a guide to how we do stuff on this specific site'. It tends to get lumped into the policy section of any given site since it tends to include things like alt limits/etc.

There's always that asshole who is all, 'it isn't written down as not being OK!' when they do something they know to be shitty and want to get away with it, and are trying to shift blame/make you seem like the unfair one as a staffer. It's childish and stupid, but it's common as blades of grass, unfortunately. Sometimes these tantrums are being thrown because someone does feel they're being unfairly punished because 'nobody said that wasn't OK', too.

It's kinda no win from the staff side on this.

@Auspice That looks great so far, though. Lot of colors for that space (and close together, too, eeee).

Also, owl. I mean, how can you go wrong when you owl!

Yeah, I think documenting patterns of behavior is different than documenting 'we will observe during the hours of 3-6pm Tues-Fri if the wind is coming from the north'. That said, I do think an idea of what would trigger monitoring is a good idea.

Using the examples from before: 'We reserve the right to observe and monitor players in event of a complaint of stalking, harassment, or other serious infraction as determined by the staffcorps.' -- just to make clear it's not a 'well it's in policy and we just felt like it so you can't complain if we do it' sort of situation. There is definitely some middle ground here with means of allowing for unforeseen circumstances.

...am I the only one watching Emergence? It is non-awful thus far. A bit fluff, but it's damned good to see a heroine who is not a cover model and not skinny and is competent as hell, and there's a lot more positives in that vein where that comes from. For that alone I'd give it all the thumbs up, but it's pretty neat. Not over the top sci-fi. Worth a binge if it ever turns up somewhere for such purposes; I was quite pleasantly surprised.

Re: antagonism/playing the bad guy/being cast as the bad guy by someone else/similar circumstances:

I'm up for this when I'm up for it, which is actually the vast majority of the time. How it develops -- though I very loudly obviously insist on it being discussed if it's going to become the bulk of/front and center in my RP face on the regular -- can vary somewhat, but it's entirely viable... when I'm up for it.

When I am not up for it, I am seriously not fucking having it.

Flawed/etc. I'm always fine with. Being a screwup is fine.

Having my character turned into something they're not -- something that I have no interest in playing, and that I am not portraying IC -- by others? Nope.

It's the ultimate 'no sell', and there's good reason to be irritated by it.

@nyctophiliac I am so sorry for your loss, and very happy to see the new twins!

@Kestrel Online Table Top. Roll20 and similar.

@Kestrel said in Separating Art From Artist:

Here's a thought exercise: let's pretend for a moment that Lovecraft wasn't a racist, but instead, was black. Do you think he would have enjoyed the same success he continues to enjoy today? I doubt it.

This is not a worthwhile thought exercise, sorry. Any non-white-male author of the time would have had a harder time than a white male author... duh. The same is true, while somewhat less so today. No one has any illusions about that. (Also, pretty sure more people have actually read Maya Angelou than Lovecraft.)

His 'success' in the modern era isn't even his. It's the derivative works that continue and thrive, and the majority of his 'success' is that other people want to write in that world. He legitimized the fanfic, essentially, and once you view it in that way? Pretty sure there are more derivative works based on Harry Potter or Star Trek than Lovecraft.

This is another 'let's twist things backward with today's sensibilities', which is the very nonsense people are actively calling very dangerous and problematic.

No one would be saying, today, "Because he was black, we should not allow his work to be read/etc."

People are saying that about creators who came from very different times from our own, and it's very common. It is also culturally dangerous on several levels, not the least of which is removing 'this is an example of how the views of the time, which were damaging to people, were echoed in the creative works produced at that time, and you can better understand the hardships people faced by viewing/reading/etc. the work in question'.

This is happening. It is happening in our modern culture today. As an artist, as someone whose friends are primarily artists, I take major issue with it.

@mietze said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

I think a lot of people love doing horrible things to their PCs so that others will pay attention to them. Sometimes it's not entirely clear where the line of compelling/annoying is.
Like I think almost everyone but the person who generates it eventually grows tired of the PC that is constantly needing to be rescued from kidnappers/rapists/assassins every week. And a lot of people get tired of the being a total unrelenting jerk ic for Reasons You Should Unravel (but forget about reciprocal play)?
But when you are talking about stuff like trauma, ect, you do run into people's leeriness about whether you are a sane person to play or with or running into RL discomfort/distaste. And if you are not very attuned to reading the room you can get in real trouble real quick.

Every character I've ever made has built in traumas, emotional scars, etc. 90% of the time, they don't come up other than the way they shape their reactions to IC events, because they're not front and center on display at all times to seemingly or actually wholly define them. I consider this fairly realistic, in that... well, I have plenty of traumas and they certainly impact my reaction to things, but not everybody walking past me on the street is going to look at me and go 'there goes a survivor of <thing>!' as that's not the way it works.

The way some folks behave -- excessive over the top hand-wringing or an endless melodrama over the top setting as their default -- on a MU, this would be the reaction they get, and they'd expect everyone to Immediately and Vocally Notice and React.

Like many others on the forum, I've been through some shit. People on the forums over the years have heard enough of it to know about it, as it comes up from time to time when discussing certain subjects. The people I run into in the course of daily life are often wholly unaware.

Barring exceptional circumstances, people shouldn't be able to point at (generic) character-you and say, "That person was almost murdered once!" (or whatever your inner trauma) on first (or even second or third) meeting. If they can? (Generic) player-you're doing it wrong, and (generic) player-you should probably fucking stop.

@Pandora Yeah, we've managed to fuck that up pretty badly, too, though...

@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

And why do YOU guys RP?

I liked playing make-believe when I was a kid.

I still like playing make-believe as an adult.

I have a list of more intellectual reasons than that, but it really comes down to the above in the end.

Things I consider positives:

• helps me see perspectives other than my own; increases empathy
• is an exercise in problem-solving
• is a vacation from the real-world problems I have to solve, and sometimes the game generates ideas for this as a bonus
• is good exercise in cooperative creative efforts; I typically work entirely on my own and this can get stagnant from time to time
• people come up with some cool, nifty stuff sometimes, which is neat to see
• sometimes I come up with something cool or nifty, and if other people enjoy that, yay!
• no 'I have to make money off of this somehow' pressures at all (which is a common problem with any other creative thing I do, considering how my family gets; I have lost many creative hobbies to their pressures to monetize them over the years, at which point I stop doing that thing because it's no longer fun or relaxing)

...I need this one.

@Auspice ...countdown to the totally reasonable 'pick imagery appropriate to the game you're playing' being represented as overly picky and bigoted and the reason the hobby is in a death spiral. I'll get the vodka ready if you want some.

@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:

In terms of what you, @Pandora and @Ghost are decrying as "censorship" in this thread, that the Millennial/Zoomer Outrage Machine is going to banish someone's work to the outer dark over a minor infraction? Nah. Not a thing.

...except as someone working in the arts community, I can tell you, it's a thing. It's a thing people are talking about, are actively being threatened about (mostly older artists, yes, mostly boomers, but the point stands).

@KDraygo I think there's definitely room for some anime style PBs. For instance, some of the card games that are done in a painted anime-inspired style are absolutely realistic enough to mix in with most else. (I forget the name of the card game I'm think of at the moment, but it has a ton of neat imagery.) For fae creatures or monster forms or similar, it's prime image hunting ground, too.

Throwing a chibi magical princess as a main image into a WoD game where everyone else has photos, though? Nnnnngh, plz gawd no. It's also really awkward re: apparent age there, as much of this specific style of chibi imagery looks very child-like even if the characters are supposed to be adults. This tends to be the kind of thing I personally notice or take issue with, for both the 'age' issue and the mental jarring of it. (I'd have the same problem with someone throwing a photo PB onto an anime game where everyone is using anime style pics.)

@nyctophiliac I honestly fear the point that people are so intensely policed on 'oh this must insinuate <thing>' or 'when some people use the phrase <blah> it might be a dogwhistle!' or 'thirty years ago you said <crap> therefore anything you say now should be discounted immediately, even if you believe totally different things now!' that the backlash turns more people into the 4chan and 8chan crowd out of sheer exhaustion at and frustration with it all.

I believed Santa was real when I was five. I do not think I need to explain to a therapist that I no longer believe in Santa before my perceptions of reality as an adult are not dismissed out of hand because of it. This is the sort of problem society is presently having re: 'things people did at a different point in their lives' or 'during a completely different era in history'; we're essentially demanding that people explain their childhood belief in Santa and affirm they no longer believe in him before we'll take their adult perspective seriously.

A prime example: Sixteen Candles may as well be a horror film today. It absolutely wasn't when it came out, which was not exactly back in the ancient days of yore.

@Groth ...again, you are dead wrong. Just... completely and totally wrong.

"Join the fucking club!' --> NOT MOCKERY. It is an expression of 'everyone has that problem right now'. WHICH IS ALSO NOT MOCKERY OH MY ACTUAL GODS WHAT THE FUCK.

BEING DENIED EMOTIONAL SUPPORT OR EMPATHY IS NOT MOCKERY. BEING DISMISSED AS THE QUOTE DESCRIBES IS NOT MOCKERY OR ABUSE OF ANY KIND.

Again, Sunny gets it. I have zero clue where you're coming up with this mockery shit. I have even less of a clue where you're coming up with this:

@Groth said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:

people on this forum keep inventing excuses to not care about people on the spectrum

There are not special rules for me because of my depression, anxiety, social anxiety, ADD, PSTD-inducing life trauma(*), or isolation. I don't get a different set of rules to go by that make allowances for those things. You seem to be arguing that we should have a special set of rules for folks on the spectrum, allowing them to do things no one else is permitted to do, and not being reprimanded for things anyone else would be. That would be the special exception here, not 'everyone has to follow the rules and if they can't, they can't be here'.

I don't get to have an anxiety day and go on a hate-filled screed on a public channel. I don't get to have a panic attack and verbally rip the head off of someone -- even if something that person did IC or OOC is what triggered a PTSD flashback and the panic attack.

I am still absolutely responsible for all of those behaviors and I don't get a pass on them, even if they are not within my direct control.

• Some games DO have some trauma triggers they allow people to opt out of, such as rape policies. That isn't 'about me' any more than it's also about 'oh god not this again' from plenty of people who have not gone through that. Plenty of other traumas don't get a pass.

@insomniac7809 Not the same thing, either. Someone individually deciding 'naw, you peed on a guy in an alley, I didn't know that when we became friends, I can't get past that' is one thing.

This is a crowd broadcasting 'no one is ever allowed to associate with this person, hire them, be their friend, or view their work again without getting harassed about it by we broadcasters'.

ETA: I don't support the 4chan trollstorm approach. Not even when it's 'my team' doing it.