Character pages are still in the works, but coming sooooooon. Basics should be in over the weekend, and I'll let folks know when it's safe to poke them.
They won't have all the planned bells and whistles to start, but the planned bells and whistles are pretty involved, and there are oodles of them. (Some of it's pretty neat, or at least I think so.) We'll see how many of 'em we can make happen, and I'll keep folks updated on the new stuff going in when it's ready over time. 
@Ninjakitten I know, right? That is classic. That's CLASSIC board lore. Anyone who missed it from previous boards should be required to read it as initiation: if you can survive this, you'll do just fine.
Don't ask me, "what can I do to make this better?" and then get twitchy at me when I give you a list of basic suggestions of things you could do that would help without snark, bile, viciousness, or nastiness of any kind because "you don't want to be told what to do".
THEN DON'T FUCKING ASK ME WHAT YOU COULD DO.
I'm not telling you what to do and listing demands, I am answering your motherfucking question: "What could I do?" with things you could do.
Jesus motherfucking christ on fire while pogo-sticking across the Sahara, this is just too fucking much.
@Arkandel <calmly wipes the coffee from her monitor>
@Arkandel I wouldn't limit it to that. Head-voices come in many flavors, and they don't necessarily bear any relationship to what anyone else is saying (to someone, behind their back, or otherwise).
"Huh, they didn't respond to my page. Are they ignoring me? Their idle time suggests they're active... "
"S/he keeps gushing about my PB. Do they like my roleplay, or are they just fantasizing about what my PB looks like?"
"I didn't get included in the @mail for the faction event... am I not welcome?"
"Oh, shit, staff is paging me, I must be in trouble!"
"They're super active on their alt, but really slow posing back to me. I must be really boring and shitty compared to that other person."
^ Brain monsters.
That's a really, really short list, and we've all seen those things often enough.
@Coin You git on the game right now, mister. Right now. Hmmph!
(I am absolutely dyin'. Oh, man.)
@Ganymede That is fantastic, but the sentiment is quite different in many respects. I'd take the one you quoted more to be indicative of folks who need an external source to demonize, vs. folks who end up falling victim to horrible things that they're simply imagining to be true of themselves. They're opposites, after a fashion, on an axis of 'self-image, out of whack with reality'.
My other favorite quote on this point is from Desiderata, which, while cliche as hell, I still like.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
^ This. This is one aspect of the King quote: we can -- and often do -- imagine ourselves into corners when there's nothing truly keeping us there just as easily as we can succumb to actual failings and vices. More the paper tiger, cornering us as easily as a real one might, and less a case of 'well, I may be a man-eating tiger, but look at that baby-eating dragon over there!'
@Ghost Git on, man. DO THE THING. And check your PMs, dork. There is a reason. 
@Ghost And this is why I keep telling you:
@Botulism I humbly suggest 'Vincent van Coque'. Just for the extra-ness.
So, this is a step aside from the few preceding posts, and is not in reference to them. Just want to be clear about that before addressing something that's tricksy to put into words, and -- well, I hope it's not as depressing as it may initially seem. That isn't the intention here.
Whenever I start to think about these issues, and I think about them more often than I'd like, there's a quote that comes to mind.
It isn't a happy quote. It is still one of the truest things I have ever seen put into words.
It's this:
There are a few quotes, poems, songs, bits of art and similar that I come back to pondering often, for one reason or another. This is one of them. It's what I'd call a 'frequent companion' when these specific feelings emerge.
For a long time, I looked at it as commiseration. It was, at least, a reminder that I am not alone in having these feelings.
My thoughts and feelings about it have evolved considerably since, without losing the bits that were useful before.
The second realization it helped me internalize was that: this is natural, normal, and human. We don't have to have a mental disorder or illness to experience this. It's part of life for all of us. Nobody has a perfect record of victory in this regard, no matter who they are. That does not make any of us lesser in some way, and it's important to remember that. We talk a lot in this hobby about the opportunities provided by failure in the course of a story, or for a character, and we liken it to life as a nod to 'realism'. And then we promptly forget that when it comes to our own failures much of the time, because those monsters and ghosts are very, very loud, and they speak our language like little else ever will.
So we're up to: you're not alone in this, and this is part of being human; it does not make you broken, sub-par, or lesser. It's the third one that's big, and it's the third one that's -- cliche as it may sound -- the charm.
Sometimes they win.
It isn't going to be every time. Not unless you give up trying. It is so important to remember that.
Being so upset I go on a cleaning binge.
Being already so upset I am on a cleaning/organizing/purging-old-crap binge that has persisted for over two weeks, and two more major things happening that make me more upset on what I can only imagine is now a geometric progression of up-fucking-set-itude.
Look, universe, my body is not built for this shit, and we only have so much Lysol until Monday, OK?
@saosmash ^ This. I take cymbalta now to handle depression and anxiety and my perma-aches-and-pains. There's xanax for immediate panic attack crises as they emerge. The former has made a world of difference, but it isn't a magic bullet. It doesn't prevent every instance of these feelings or anxieties.
It does, however, help. Immensely.
If you (and I mean generic you reading this thread because you have these same feelings in your life) haven't looked into something like this and the option is available to you, please do so. I'm not saying this from a position of 'go fix yourself, you're broken', but from here: I am so grateful these things have helped me and I hope that if you need help with the same kind of problems, you may be able to find an option that helps you, too.
@Kanye-Qwest ...at least, thankfully, with few exceptions (eta: I'm thinkin' Vault Girl and Elsa here), we haven't seen much of this since happening in the hobby since the 90s, either. So I'm all for leaving the term and what it represented in the rear view, and am glad things are moving in that direction on the whole.
@Thenomain said in When To Stop Listening To Those Voices:
It is not a trivial thing for some people (for me people, but I’m not alone here) to just adjust to the group. If the group is being open then you go with the flow and it’s fun, but tell me if this has never happened to you:
[Appropriate Channel] You: Hey, what’s going on?
[Appropriate Channel] <silence>There are other ways to try to insinuate yourself into scenes and groups, but there is a certain point where you give up, where you wonder if the problem is you, and if it is you what you can do about it. Welcome to the entryway to anxiety and depression, and if you don’t understand this then I am deeply, painfully jealous.
I've experienced this also from time to time. Broadly speaking, I find that it's a solid indication that the game itself is not for me. I may suck, it may suck, but ultimately it's not a good fit for me.
This kind of situation -- where you're joining in things but requests to do things turn into a sonata of cricket-chirping -- can very, very easily create the feeling of 'I feel like I'm forcing my presence on people who don't want me here', though.
This isn't something that's exclusively on the person doing the asking, because the people who are truly unfun persona non grata types are very rare in this hobby, though many of us sometimes feel like we're 'that person'.
This is really something that's on all of us. If you wouldn't mind someone joining? Don't just leave it for someone else to pipe up: say so. If you're doing a private scene at the time but would like to do something later? Say that, too -- then there's a reason it's not a yes right now, not just the deathly silence that feelings of doubt and anxiety and self-loathing and so on feed on like it's an all you can eat cheesecake bar. These things make more difference than you might initially think, and they are worth the time.
@Ghost said in When To Stop Listening To Those Voices:
You're not entirely off. There are a lot of people in the hobby who harbor long-term opinions on players, but if you can't jar an actual scene out of someone, then you don't really need to pry it out of them; people role play with people they want to RP with. Period.
Even with this said, there are folks out there who aren't going to let their personal dislikes or grudgewank get in the way of the RP experience, so you don't even necessarily have to give up on these people.
There are folks who rub me the wrong way, or I am wary of for whatever reason. If the opportunity presents itself for me to help them -- answering a question, offering ideas if they ask people all to brainstorm stuff, finding something cool that reminded me of their character that I think they'd like to see? -- I will still do this, without hesitation, and in good faith.
Mostly because... why not? If it helps them out in some way, cool. I don't expect it to change their opinion of me, and it may not change my opinion of them, but if it's something that helps them have more fun on the game, that fun (ideally) spreads to other people having more fun with them, and so on. Little things count. Little bits of thoughtfulness count, even if they're taken for granted or never actually recognized as being that at all, and the more we do these little things across the board, the better everyone's experience becomes after a while.
@Tinuviel Yeah, the phrase 'dental death' is no joke. It's more common in animals than humans these days, obviously, but. Yeah. Very much a thing.
@RnMissionRun Again, seriously, this is not all about diet and even then it's not just sugar that's a problem.
My father has never had a cavity in his life. He has perfect teeth at 77 years old. He has no crowns, no missing teeth.
He lives on ice cream and soda, which -- while it's sometimes (about half and half) diet soda -- has acids that do substantially more harm to teeth than the sugar in soda does. (There is a reason that if you drop a corroded penny into a cup of soda, within hours it will be shiny clean like new. That isn't sugar.)
He has no problems. Never has. Motherfucker was the guy from Unbreakable until he hit 70, no joke. (Still has never broken a bone, teeth are still perfect. Needed knee replacements finally.)
I drink black coffee all day. No sugar (but high acid content). If anything goes in the coffee, it's half&half when we have it. Salty snacks, avoid sugar. I don't even like sweet foods for the most part. I even take calcium supplements and use special enamel strengthening rinses and so on -- and it does not fucking matter. My mother is the same way.
Seriously, this is a little offensive; please drop this assertion that it has to be a shitty diet. It's not. It can be, but that is absolutely not the problem here.
