Had this linked to me on Discord, made me lol:

I don’t have a horse in the Star Wars MU* race, but I do have a very vested interest in not hearing after the fact about how underage porn happened on a MU*.

(And yes, I do consider it EXTREMELY LIKELY TO OCCUR when underage characters and players are permitted on a MU* with an R-rating.)

You are setting yourself up for potentially serious consequences. So let me make it clear:

DO NOT ALLOW UNDERAGE ANYTHING

@HannahBananna said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@Pavel Thankfully if you had any of the four you’d be smart enough not to start shit with someone who’s obviously always been above you. This ain’t my way of asking. My way of asking was going onto the discord server and politely asking, like an ADULT, something you are STILL proving you’re incapable of being. This is my way of continuing to be an adult and taking away the toys of people who want to be spoiled brats. Like you. Daed.

If this is your way of being an adult, you have a very misguided definition in your mental database.

@Roz said in People Doing Things:

i don’t know if most arx folks have noticed the number of code contributions @dvoraen has made to arx, but i have

@Ashen-Shugar So let’s see if I can explain why I disagree with a metaphor. This is how your point comes across, to me:

I own a building. A crime happens in my building. I’m culpable for the crime because I own the building.

So I suddenly am expected to a) track what goes on in the building; b) had any control whatsoever about what happens inside the building.

That’s ridiculous, and most certainly not how it works in today’s society, otherwise companies and schools would be liable for the mass shootings that happen inside their areas. It’s an absolutely absurd take.

I reject the idea that I need to tacitly monitor everything that happens on a MU* I run because someone might do something illegal. That’s like saying I should wiretap my neighbors because they talked about where to hide a corpse, because I live in the same apartment complex. Oh no, they did something bad, clearly I need to have been more responsible to make sure it didn’t happen so I could tell the cops, to the point of being unethical and invasive in my methods!

No.

Preface: This is not a request for sympathy, forgiveness, or even understanding, because I have no right to ask for any of that.

To start off, I’m posting this because my brain will not shut the fuck up about it even over a week later. I’ve tried to distract myself from it, but the issue will not stop harassing me. It keeps resurfacing. I do wonder if it’s a byproduct of being on the autism spectrum and/or ADHD (and the fact I really take rejection hard), but I don’t know. All I know is that I have to get this off my chest.

I’m not going to answer questions about the details. I’m deliberately leaving out the who and where and focusing solely on the what. Some of you already know about this, because you were involved and/or can guess from my username, which I use in multiple locations (Discord and more), but I don’t want to sweep what happened under the rug and assume everything will be fine. Because it’s not, in the abstract.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I had my first experience with being disinvited from a game. I still can’t really identify what it was I said or did that led to me being approached and told I should go because of my conduct that made other people uncomfortable. There were no sexual propositions or anything of the sort, but the discussion was that my conduct on channels as a guest and during chargen had been noted, and the sum of it led to me being effectively asked to leave.

I was absolutely shocked and anxious over it, sitting in my chair reading that, because no one had voiced any explicit concerns to me saying there’s an issue until that moment, but at the end of the day what mattered was that I did something that bothered other people to the point that staff had to get involved and say this isn’t the place for you. My response was “Alright.” and that I’d take my leave, and I logged off right after.

I can only remember talking on public channels and paging three people, two of which I’ve spoken to multiple times on other games and/or Discord. One of those two explicitly asked me when I was getting my butt approved. I’ve come to the conclusion that matters have silently changed with the second of the two, and as such I needed to keep my distance from them, including Discord. So I chose to silently break contact, left DM groups, and have tried to not interact with them.

Anyway, I peeked at the game site, got the message my site was blocked from the portal, and wondered why I went there in the first place, even if it was just to hit the logout button. It was a stupid thing to do, but I still did it.

So yeah. I did something, the aftermath is bothering me still, and the worst part is I still can’t identify to myself what behavior of mine is the problem.

That’s all.

I don’t feel like copy-pasting from MSB, so I’m just going to go into recent history as I can remember it, with a few special mentions.

UPDATED - Feb 11, 2024

Current

• Concordia - Alistair (& Ser Silvertail)

Inactive

• Luminiferous Aether - Anthony

Past

• Various Wheel of Time MU*s - Svoran*
• The Fifth World - Jor
• Crossroads - Svoran*, Jaeden
• Flight of the Golden Crane - Jaram
• Kushiel’s Debut - Piers
• Arx 1.0 - Bhandn

* Everywhere I transplanted Svoran (most of them WoT games), it was for character research. “How does he think and react to X situation?” In my personal writing, Svoran is the one character where I could not get into his headspace without character research. Plus, I could not figure out how grumpy he was on average, and to whom, why the fuss, etc. I think I’ve finally figured him out, but this was a 20+ year endeavor to iron him out into his current form in my writing.

MU*ing has been a godsend with figuring out character mindsets, to the point I stopped doing character research because my writing felt more mature as far as figuring out how to write people as people, if that makes sense? But for a while, I was playing some characters from my personal fiction of Aldera to try and figure them out. The irony of this is: THEY ALL CHANGED DRASTICALLY DESPITE THE RESEARCH. (Now, they’re nothing like the “researched” versions were.) Go figure.

@crawfish I think I speak for a lot of people when I say this:

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I LOVE THEM

I just want a tl;dr of what dragon colors and styles mean, since I haven’t read any Pern books.

@Pyrephox I would advise you not to force it, as someone who’s been in this position for a number things (although my depression tends to help a bit here). Point being, I was trying to force my enjoyment of games (not just MU*s, any games), and I ended up becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Months passed of this and I eventually got tired of that feeling and took the plunge to step away.

About two weeks ago I suddenly had the urge to restart one and it’s enjoyable again. Because I’m not forcing myself to sit down and do it; that’s for schoolwork.

On a MU* note, I’d all but quit from lack of drive. I wasn’t planning to start any new characters or anything, but one day virtually out of nowhere a character concept dropped into my head, latched on like a barnacle, and I find myself excited to take him for a spin when the time comes.

But again, it wasn’t because “Oh I HAVE to do this”; it’s because I let it come to me. Did I want to play games and other MU*'s while feeling in a slump? Yes. But forcing myself into something to try and enjoy it felt like work, and that’s completely counter to the idea that it’s for fun.

So yeah. Give yourself permission to take those steps away and if it comes back to you and excites you again, yay!

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

I’m still waiting to wake up and realise that this was a nightmare.

Just the possibility gave me a massive uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. I’m not sure if I had an actual anxiety attack at work because of it, due to how uneasy I am over him (and more importantly, those associated with him) getting a second crack at the steering wheel.

@Jennkryst As the creator of this thread about SILLY drama, this post is worth five downvotes to you, and an injunction of all Mummy discussions lasting for a duration of 1e-5 seconds. It’ll be over before you know it.

Getting back on topic, the latest silly drama I know about is telling people on a MU* I have been possessed by my fictitious cat. Reasoning as given: “No no. I am more than okay to identify as a cat. I would get pampered, naptime whenever I want, the bed and every other thing in the living space would be mine, and I wouldn’t ever need to worry about money.”

Discuss.

@Roz said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

oh also, important update, since one of the rook faction backgrounds are the ANTI-SLAVER LIBERATORS i made my rook aleksei

Excuse me, did you just talk about Arx in a NON-ARX THREAD???

Anyway, more seriously I just want to know if you mean in terms of character choices and/or appearance, because in the latter case you have to supply a screenshot of Rook-Aleksei. I don’t make the rules.

@Pavel said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

Played it, finished it, and smooched Harding.

I agree that they sanded it down a bit too much, with very little resolution or development on several thorny pieces of lore from previous editions: the ghettos, casual anti-elven racism, Tevinter slavery, etc. But it has been a decade, and I’d wager most folk these days are after more joyous fantasy escapism than the grittier fantasy-like-reality.

I would say that a few of the key writers (such as Mary Kirby) no longer being at the studio is another reason for this. I mean, they literally announced it as Dreadwolf, then a whole lot happened in terms of staffing there before reannouncing(?) the fourth flagship game as The Veilguard.

I finished Final Fantasy XVI last night (without DLC) after waiting for the PC port to drop. I have feelings.

@Babs I just want to know why that game didn’t have short rels. You could have convinced @Meg to play then.

RISE FROM THE ASHES SO THAT I MAY POST.

It’s rare that a trailer presentation will get me instantly interested in something, but Sandfall Interactive did it with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. They are even releasing tracks from the score (on YouTube and Spotify) before release, as they give out information. And, um, I really like everything I’m seeing so far. But I’d rather the content speak for itself.

It’s a turn-based RPG inspired by a number of titles.

• Reveal Trailer - Why you should care.
• First Look Gameplay - 6m gameplay trailer with a couple (edited?) cutscenes
• Cast Reveal Trailer - Was not expecting one of those names.

BGM Tracks Living Rent Free in my Head
(These all link to YouTube.)

• Une vie à peindre
• Shadow of the Monolith

@Roz said in Inuki Ban Thread:

@dvoraen said in Inuki Ban Thread:

@Meg said in Inuki Ban Thread:

i have to admit, i feel like this is a situation where it deserved at least a warning. i get that the behavior was gross. i called it out as gross.

but i think there’s a line where like, idk, i think that it wasn’t a clear cut ‘would i expect to get banned for this if it were me’ in the rules.

of course, i’m not a mod and i don’t make these calls and i understand it can be frustrating to make these calls and no call is going to make everyone happy. that’s my disclaimer. just speaking an opinion, even if it is from the minority.

tbh, I’m of the opinion that this (the ban) was warranted. Much like how some games have banned players for their behavior in other places, that felt applicable here. It was really pretty apparent, from multiple threads, that this person’s behavior has involved multiple questionable decisions and comments at best, with questionable intent attached to them.

Mm, don’t totally agree there. Games do preban, or ban based on behavior on other games, but the forums generally haven’t. I think they’re pretty different venues with different risks.

Yeah, I think I can agree with that on the surface (meaning, I trust our admins as far as this forum is concerned). I think, speaking for myself only here, that my mindset has changed on certain things, namely giving chances, especially when the scenario is: “Person X has repeatedly shown ban-worthy behavior in the past, and is clearly showing signs they haven’t changed, in the present.”

@Aria said in Real life happy:

Today I was called “an affront to the system” and I have never been so flattered in my entire life.

Did you ask “how many systems?” and flutter your eyelashes?

@Meg said in Inuki Ban Thread:

i have to admit, i feel like this is a situation where it deserved at least a warning. i get that the behavior was gross. i called it out as gross.

but i think there’s a line where like, idk, i think that it wasn’t a clear cut ‘would i expect to get banned for this if it were me’ in the rules.

of course, i’m not a mod and i don’t make these calls and i understand it can be frustrating to make these calls and no call is going to make everyone happy. that’s my disclaimer. just speaking an opinion, even if it is from the minority.

tbh, I’m of the opinion that this (the ban) was warranted. Much like how some games have banned players for their behavior in other places, that felt applicable here. It was really pretty apparent, from multiple threads, that this person’s behavior has involved multiple questionable decisions and comments at best, with questionable intent attached to them.

There’s jokes in bad taste (I’m certainly guilty of these), and then there’s threats of self-harm and violence, however implied or circumspect. You should never treat the latter lightly, as I see it. Combined with what I’ve read of inuki’s past, receipted behavior, and that was enough for me to agree that they needed to be removed, because inuki struck me as a “can’t stop won’t stop” mindset, even if there were time gaps between events.