Posts made by surreality

@faraday said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Enigmas can be off-putting, especially when so may folks have been burned by creepers in the past.

^ This. Building on what you said here...

What people don't necessarily understand -- unless it has happened to them -- is how persistent some of these people can be.

I mentioned an example earlier in the thread of someone (Jeurg) who I had never heard of when I played on TR, since I never played on HM and was not active at the time. Being someone who are chill on a game as being chill until they're not, when he mentioned this, it was a case of 'oh, whatever, you seem chill to me, I have no idea who that is'. And I found out the hard way. I also saw first hand as he talked about someone who had put out a 'no contact' with him on HM and had it enforced, and how he'd figured out who they were on TR. He immediately went to join the faction they were in and was needling at them -- gleefully. I don't believe he understood at all that this did not impress me and I did not think it was cute, clever, or some sign of how awesome he was.

I played with someone for ages on Shang, who then turned out to be so possessive they made the idea of even being in a room with another player there, on TR, or on BITN, a very anxiety-laden experience, even if I was just sitting there idle for 12 hours when they popped in to give me crap about what I was supposedly actively doing. (Idling, duh.) And gods help me I unidled. (Normally, I was chilling with Ghost talking OOC about horror movies through the day while he was at work -- pretty sure he remembers this craziness.) This person would, on Shang when CG was easy and open, create unknown-to-me logins simply to go to wherever I was and sit there silently and watch what I did. This was less obvious in big public areas than it was, say, when he'd send one into a cafe where two people were talking over dinner. (Which he also did.) I would get crazy abusive RL emails and text messages from this person -- once involving dozens of texts calling me a slut/whore/traitorous harlot/etc. for, no joke, hugging someone in a public place and saying, "I haven't seen you in ages!"

Someone I played with all the way back in the 90s and was entirely normal at the time? Has started behaving in an abusive manner toward me over the last few years, from out of nowhere, because we have barely had any contact at all between now and then. This persisted to chasing me here to vomit abusive delusions at me that are, frankly, genuinely frightening. Ark and Gany have been champs handling this and they deserve a fuckin' medal, for real. This guy and his penchant for making new accounts once he's banned and PMing from them is... well, see sig. This person is local, knows where I am, and is apparently already known to law enforcement. I had to report this person to law enforcement myself.

So, y'all... it can get bad. I am not trying to throw the bucket of cold water on good feelings here. I am saying: do not underestimate or dismiss concerns when people have them. I am not talking about a few creepy pages in an OOC room where someone says something skeevy, you pagelock them, and you're done[1]. A lot of folks seem to think that's all there is to these concerns when people bring them up, and that is simply not the case.

I know I am not the only one with stories like these. I've heard similar things privately over the years to be tragically aware of that. People tend not to talk about them, because they are scary, they are ashamed of having trusted this person at some point, that they just want it all to be over, and for a variety of other reasons. I have chosen to talk about these things openly because I know I'm not the only one they happen to. (Of all my various and sundry hills to die on, this is the mountain.)

That we regularly only hear about the intermittent bout of creepy pages or come-ons makes it seem to many that this is all that's happening. To be clear: if that traumatizes someone, that trauma is real, and should be respected as such. Truth is, it rarely will. But here's the problem: those are the stories we hear. Those are the issues most folks are able to handle, and in most cases know are not something that's going to considerably scramble their brains or bring on panic attacks or similar.

That, unfortunately, makes it easier than it should be to hand-wave off as 'no big deal' when people talk about creeping or stalking or harassment, period. Because these examples are the ones we hear about on the daily. Are they more common? Absolutely. But they aren't 'as far as it goes'. We would all do very well to remember that, and not automatically assume they're talking about a few pages in an OOC room about how someone wants to bang their hot PB.

1. Please note: I am not saying this is 'nothing' or 'not important'. If this happens, report that shit! It is a completely valid issue.

@GangOfDolls That is incredibly sad on many levels.

ETA: Horrible thought: it could also be some idiotic hate group thinking they're 'preserving the sanctity of their symbol' by stealing it from 'those heathens' or whatnot, too. Bleah.

@Groth I point again to the fact that 'I got blown up in my sleep when I was not even connected to the game on HorrorMUX, and both myself and the other person this happened to were both excited for what was going to happen next for us', which is not the usual reaction to something like that happening on a game. This comes from both the fact that on the game, 'death is not the end', but also the general positivity of the game culture.

It definitely can be done, and when it can be done and it done well, it's actually pretty great.

@silverfox The loudest voices have a way of wanting to universally define others in ways that can be damaging and false, yeah. It's one thing for a loud voice to have and voice an opinion and note it as such, and another to proclaim that someone is <this, that, or the other>.

It's a line I wish there was more of an over all effort to make the distinction between the two, no matter who is speaking.

I think, actually, this community is better with second chances than not. How many times have the legends of horror been allowed back on games? Enough that people freak out on the regular because it has happened.

The key is, you have to actually change if you want the second chance to work, barring the extreme corner case of 'someone really was out to get you for some stupid reason, you did nothing actually wrong, but fell victim to the rumor mill as somebody without a support network of any kind that made you out to be someone you're not'. (This has assuredly happened here and there, too, to various folks.)

Not changing and just going back -- even to another game rather than one that booted you -- to try again with the same shitty behaviors that made you unwelcome elsewhere isn't going to do it. You're just likely to get another place added to the list of places you aren't welcome.

Having seen 'I'm going to pop up on this new game, hide my old infamous identity from anyone who had ever heard of it, and seek out the people who requested I never engage them again on multiple other games to poke at them where I can't see' as something someone admitted to with a childish glee... yeah. That's not someone who has changed for the better, for dang sure.

@Arkandel said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Also: Anyone who's fucked up big time but wants a fresh start should be entitled to one. Hey, there's nothing wrong with that either.

...there are absolutely limits to this.

@Wizz And in my head, I'm picturing a tipsy person staring blearily at the screen while a puppet argues with itself in front of them when they asked something relatively harmless, like 'do you wish for me to join the battle, commander?' because two different staffers are working the puppet and talking at the same time.

It is Tuesday, motherfuckers. You missed this month's fireworks day. Just accept it, move on, and blow more shit up in a month or so on the 4th.

@Alamias Ditto that. Though I suspect there are only forums for any given specific game, other than the one that was around primarily for RPIs (which makes this place look like a Chuck E. Cheese by comparison, or did the last time someone linked a thread over there and I dared skim around a bit).

@Ninjakitten Yeah, I actually do similar. I should set it up as a code thing.

I tend to run into people doing this on discord or messengers, and insist 'they're just leaving a message for whenever!' even after I've told them about the problems it causes when they do that. (People who, for the record, are on the games at the time and see I'm occupied.)

It's usually presented in full muppet flail mode and only later 'oh, that wasn't any kind of emergency!' is an afterthought, way too late. 'Can it wait?' usually ended up inviting a flood of additional notes and information, enough to completely obliterate whatever I was doing, after I've already asked to please hold it for later.

Some days, I dunno, I'm just inclined to write this off to 'some people suck and have zero respect for boundaries'.

I read that inquiry as not where posters were active on the forum, so much as active on games.

Different games and genres all have their own potential pitfalls/etc., so this can be very relevant to the over all experience someone has.

Plenty of us stick to one genre, system, or a fairly small range. (I do horror but no L&L, I only do WoD, I only do purely consent-based games, etc.)

"To throw a bad vampire orgy, I don't know how one would recover! Half the bats you see, they are just vampires who have thrown terrible orgies and they are too afraid to regain their vampire form. They just flit around. Shame bats. Bats full of shame. And you know them, because they don't fly as high."

@Rinel They do actually show a reasonable facsimile of that in an episode, with an ominous flash or two of it otherwise. The 'full view' version is actually... one of the most endearing scenes in the whole run of the show, really.

Otherwise, she has, uh, a brow scar. Though I can see why they'd have some kind of illusion going to mostly cover that if she's prancing around on Earth as an asskicker who isn't supposed to blow his cover.

@Jaded One of the things they tried to do was keep it not too far beyond what they had on FOX. 'Add a few butts here and there' was pretty much the extent of it. Possibly a LITTLE more language but not much -- this was actually something specifically cited as something they didn't want to push too far.

The reason why is actually pretty interesting: the show apparently had a much more broad than normal demographic of fans, many of which would be put off if they went too far in pushing what the new home allows. (More profanity, more nudity, more violence, etc.) They wanted to stay as true as possible to the show the existing fans -- which were so enthusiastic it's why Netflix nabbed it in the first place -- would stick with it and not suddenly be put off. I get that, and think it's pretty clever; it gives it more of a chance, too, I think, of getting us a potential season 5.

@Ganymede She is especially awesome in the netflix season, too.

@Auspice What you're describing is one of the reasons that, even if I'm not writing (or planning to) or creating anything of this kind, I avoid getting into fandoms, and prefer to quietly enjoy a thing with a few RL friends, my husband, or my folks, or chat about it in a general 'all the things' topic here.

I'm not even someone who may be directly affected, and this behavior makes me really uncomfortable to watch.

If I was ever going to write/create anything, it was going to be a game. It was something designed for other people to tell their stories in it, and provide a framework for doing precisely that. I am so down with that; I think that's great, I'm in full support of people running with properties created for this purpose, or with collaborative creative writing and world-building projects like SCP/etc.

I am hoping the fact that 'people want to create once they see a cool reference to do it with' evolves into more of the latter -- intentionally shared worlds of one kind or another -- over time. I am glad they're catching on.

I'm still dismayed by the level of ownership others take over work not designed for this purpose, and the way some folks behave when things don't go the way they hoped.

@Wretched They are proud of mocking a legitimate full-family trauma that is ongoing, and severe. They are proud they did it with the full intention of causing real world emotional harm, full stop.

@Ganymede I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not even going to try to decipher that.

Welp, I guess we've come back around for me being the bad guy for not wanting to be around someone who, within the past month, went off on an utterly divorced-from-reality and entirely personal abusive rant at me, and topped it off by mocking the medical circumstances that are totally fucking up my family's lives for the next decade, it being the last decade my elderly folks probably have.

I guess I'm out, then.

@Derp said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

I'm not so much a fan of this growing feeling that a lot of "issues" people have in this hobby are a subtle way to manipulate things in their favor by using cultural expectations to their advantage, and the sheer levels of outrage that come along with it, or how so many people seem to have so many different issues that must always be recognized and accommodated.

Part of this, for me, is the expectation that people know.

If I'm here, I am not necessarily going to know who or what or where you have played, ever. If I am on a game, I am not necessarily going to know who you are here or anything you've said or done here.

I am even less likely to know your age, profession, marital status, gender, sexual preference, country of origin, religion, personal life experiences, etc. etc. etc.

Expecting me to know these things is an unreasonable ask, but I regularly see people behave as though not only are others expected to know, but to adjust accordingly. Adjusting to something is sometimes entirely reasonable, and sometimes it's not, but it is a hopelessly unreasonable expectation when no one is aware of these things in the first place.

(Generic) your close circle of friends probably knows these things. Don't assume everyone does just because they do. It never goes well.