Posts made by surreality

@Sunny ...can I bring my ADD along? 'cause... yeah. (If I had a nickel for every time I forget something... )

ETA: The irkiest part: some things I recall in dazzling clarity. The list of things I'm supposed to do today? Fuckall knows...

Pandora mentioning vodka for nerve pain elsethread reminded me: I have whipped cream vodka and Simply Limeade. I can make boozy key lime pie beverage. (I swear this is so much better than it sounds, y'all.)

I am prepared, MSB. I am prepared for you today!

...does this mean vodka in the drinking game is for 'getting on my last nerve' pain? Because I could get behind that.

Seconding Derp here; lying involves intent. Being mistaken is much more likely and doesn't involve subterfuge.

@Auspice Virginia Madsen is too good for those shenanigans!

@Auspice It really is a melange of impressive and terrifying, isn't it.

@Coin Especially if it's on that game where the headwiz or whoever makes breeder kinfolk for every wuff with a dong that shows up. That'd likely lead to a poor experience.

Holy crap has it been a hell of an awful day, and it's barely 7am.

One day to decide the insurance crap for the next year, and it's more confusing than ever.

We were supposed to have time to look all of this over -- like, at least a week or so -- when they gave the info packet to my husband YESTERDAY.

TODAY, they tell us they need it TOMORROW.

Even if W/C/nWoD is not my cup of tea, it should be interesting to see how this adapts to Ares over time. Definitely ambitious, and I'm hoping it works out well!

@SG Will always upvote Burn Gorman. Always. One of my very very favorite 'that guy's.

@Ganymede My brain immediately went to 'but what if it was pros and cons' and that autocorrecting...

...I needed that laugh.

@Derp 'Tis the big blue book!

In all seriousness, it's fantastic. Once you have your base flat pattern created, it shows you how to do all manner of variations based on that.

It sounds complicated until you do it once or twice, but a LOT of it is tracing things off, pinning your base pattern down and spinning it to connect different bits or add splits in different areas, etc. It's actually pretty fun.

One of the things I did was make a mini base pattern for an antique doll* I had way back then, and went through doing the examples in the book based on that. It was a pretty easy way to figure out the basics without using tons of materials up in the learning process. I dunno if that'd be useful to either of you, but it does help. (Also a quick fun way to make doll clothes as gifts for any family kids and such that play with them and such if that's relevant.) It meant being able to do quickie tests with a simple pad of graph paper (and you could use normal cheap copy paper, even, but graph paper helps to keep the lines straight you want to keep straight) on the bus on the way to class and such.

• Technically, I still have her... somewhere. She is very creepy. Ended up on the cover of a horror anthology ages ago a friend of mine did a photo collage for. Mwahaha.

@JinShei That is awesome. I will see if I can find it in the library of doom over the weekend while we do some cleanup in there. Mine's from 1991, so there's likely new editions of it since. (Amazon is not showing 'the big blue book', which is how we referred to it back then, which is not a surprise... )

ETA: I say that, and then... https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Apparel-Through-Flat-Pattern/dp/0870057375

@JinShei That is amazing! I love the color and fabric choice, too.

Pattern sizing and human beings are just... not sane. Patterns rarely line up with anything you'd find in a store, either. I have the same problem, and even when I was smaller, I'm all different sizes on all the parts, so I feel you on the '?!?!?!?!' factor. So never think this is a just you sort of thing.

Some bits of basic patternmaking are less hellish than one would think, but you'd want help making the core pattern to work from. (It's hard as hell to get your own measurements exact and fit it, which is especially important when it's a tool to make other things from later. Many tailors will happily work up a basic sloper/basic block with you, though, for a very reasonable cost, and you can work from that flat pattern to make TONS of cool things.)

If you ever decide to look into something along those lines, give me a nudge. I may be able to track down one of my old textbooks on it that was SUPER HELPFUL and explained how to manipulate that basic pattern (also one for pants, one for skirts, princess line styles, etc.) pretty well, and I'm betting you could still find a copy out there.

Ammonites.

@Apos said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Someone that's a raging asshole can actually be pretty healthy for a competitive environment in some circumstances, where even someone that is merely unconcerned about whether a shared story is fun for other people is detrimental in a collaborative one.

@Sunny said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

ETA: The reason I have not addressed the topic of being concerned that the hobby is going in this way is that I have no way to express my objections to 'we care about harm to human beings now' being a problem in a fashion that is appropriate outside of the hog pit.

In fairness, I remember the infamous Rex/Sovereign thread. I remember just how many people were utterly incredulous that someone like him even existed and that this shit was actually real, not whiny hyperbole from women being too emotional or histrionic, which is how people treated these reports for nearly twenty years. (And, again, plenty of places still do.)

The Rexes, Ravauns, Jeurgs, DownWithOPPs, etc. do tremendous damage, and frankly, it's invisible to a lot of people that are not in their target demographic.

It is way easier and more comfortable to believe the complainer is just oversensitive.

Guess what: they're really not. These people are around, and they are real. They will grief, threaten, bully, neg, demean, play victim, etc. all specifically in order to get the things they want out of people in ways that make people doubt themselves or the validity of their discomfort. They'll call you a 'bad player' if you're not down for that rape scene, or being forcibly impregnated. They'll insist 'you agreed to dark and that's dark, you have no leg to stand on in your objection'. They'll try to force the issue through code. They will proactively contact staff in some cases to say 'so and so is starting drama' when you tell them NO, or act like they are so fucking magnanimous if you say 'NO' to their egregious bullshit and they don't press the issue -- "THIS TIME".

I'mma go calm down.

@Meg I mean, it could even have something like a +nope/rl flag version with a 'oh shit RL just exploded I need to go right now' message, if, say, you suddenly looked outside and saw your shrubbery was on fire and do not feel like taking time to write out an explanation of why you need to duck out at record speed.

Not like that's ever actually happened to me only to have the person scream at me for idling on them when I finally got back or anything...

@Derp said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

the form of abuse that we are most concerned about

Here is your issue.

The form of abuse you are most concerned about is not the same as the kind of abuse people in this thread are most concerned about.

There is no happening on a game that is worth traumatizing a real human being, full stop.

No one is demanding that you not remove players from your game that are not a good fit for it, whatever your game may be. No one is demanding you adopt any of these methods.

You are seeing people finally give a shit about the idea that human beings are actually important, which is not something that has been traditionally the case. Only a handful of years ago, when Rex first showed up on Reno and brazenly bragged to a member of staff there (HI!) about how he loved WoD games because they were full of emotionally damaged female PLAYERS that he could OOCly manipulate into doing whatever he wanted, only one member of staff (HI AGAIN!) thought this was something worthy of paying any goddamned attention to or possibly take any action about, even when he started to drive players off of the game through IC and OOC harassment.

This was not forever ago. That isn't ancient history. It is still the norm in many parts of the hobby.

I give a much bigger fuck about that than I do Miss Never Goes to Jail, because one is annoying, and the other is doing real harm to real humans. So, yes, that is my priority, and it sure as shit ain't changing.

Meg: In part, it's the abuse factor, and tracking. If somebody is constantly ducking out of scenes? If various people are constantly ducking out of scenes when they're alone with Bob? This information is pretty useful to staff.

I could also see something like +nope being used in group scenes/plots/etc. If something genuinely triggering to a player pops up on the screen and someone is having a panic attack or flashback? It happens. People may need to check in re: how to proceed, or staff may need to ask the player about how to handle consequence X, inform them of the outcome, etc. if an intermediary is ultimately required. It's like fading one person's presence in a scene with details to be determined after a cooldown period while others carry on as able, vs. everything in the scene fading out or coming to a halt.

I think something like the initial 'red' is more or less only viable for one on one social scenes, to my thinking. I see little issue with it in that case, but I think I'd still implement it somewhat differently.

I would see value in something like a '+nope' command that:

• removes the character from the scene and drops them in the game's OOC Quiet Room
• emits a message to the room they were in to state: that something in the scene has exceeded their personal comfort levels, to carry on with the scene as needed if appropriate, and to allow the person who has removed themselves some time to cool/calm down before trying to speak with them about it
• pings the staff channel that this has happened, mentioning the name of the character who removed themselves and the other characters present at the time this occurred