I may not know Kopecup from a bar of soap, but I’ve lurked long enough to see familiar names I trust saying “Yeah, this checks out in my own experience.” I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me that’s kinda all I need to know.

If someone says “I saw this bird at the lake and it walked and talked and looked like a duck. And I just wanted to make sure you all knew it was a duck”, and people I trust are saying “Yeah I’ve been to that lake, I know that bird you mean and it definitely seemed like a duck to me” then I’m going to happily assume it’s a duck.

And if by some unlikely twist of fate it turns out to be a pigeon and not a duck and aaaaall those people just happened to be making shit up for no good reason? Well, this isn’t a court of law and the pigeon isn’t going to end up in duck prison so I’d prefer to assume the far more likely scenario that the victims are in fact victims rather than create an environment where they are too scared to speak up because they feel like nobody’s going to believe them unless they publicize a bunch of embarrassing and uncomfortable receipts.

ETA: Missed the opportunity to try add a ‘fowl’ pun in there somewhere… :C

Semester 1 finished, great grades all round. At age 38, on my 4th attempt in 2 decades, I’ve finally successfully completed my first semester of a bachelor’s degree.

That’s definitely a big happy.

Although, I was hoping that big success on the first semester would make me feel more confident about, you know, the rest of the three years I’ll be doing this for. Apparently not!

Still, it’s a start and it’s proof that I absolutely can do this. My brain no longer gets to point at my past failures as if they’re evidence that I’ll fail again

I’m 38 years old and am two days into a Bachelor of Information Technology.

That in and of itself isn’t super amazing really I guess. Not in the context of me being me at least, I’ve flunked out of multiple universities multiple times.

But, at the risk of counting my chickens before they’ve hatched, this time feels different. I’m actually managing my time properly and not procrastinating.

I even noticed today that I was so invested in reading the stuff I was meant to be reading that I didn’t even notice the time going by. It felt good.

So, knock on wood, maybe I’ve got this!

So going back through the thread, I’ve counted 6 different individuals saying they have now or in the past have had issues with Cujo’s lax leadership specifically on AoA, and 5 individuals saying they now or in the past have had issues with Hadrix along similar lines to those described in the original post, specifically on AoA.

One of those people who mentioned issues with Cujo didn’t mention issues with Hadrix, and one who mentioned issues with Hadrix didn’t mention issues with Cujo. There were 7 individuals in total.

And all that is not counting any people who may have been mentioned in Kopecup’s post who haven’t individually come forward themselves.

There’s a further couple people who mentioned they had had bad experiences with ‘that person’ on other MUs but I wasn’t as focused on counting those and the lack of name made it a bit unclear who they specifically meant.

Additionally one of those people who came forward with accusations about Cujo and Hadrix, in the fourth post of this thread, said something along the lines of ‘Hey, I’m one of the people referred to in the OP, I have receipts and if it becomes necessary I’ll present them if I have to’.

I’m not sure how much stronger actual receipts could make the case at this point though. Because at this point either you think all those people are lying and bluffing for… some reason I guess, and so wouldn’t trust the receipts anyway. Or you already believe the allegations and don’t need the receipts.

So for those out there disbelieving the allegations I would genuinely suggest asking yourself why these people are creating a conspiracy against this random popular dude and the head wiz of this game. If you can’t find a compelling and reasonable answer for that, then that should probably tell you something.

And if by some chance you are actually able to come up with that compelling and reasonable motive for why these people have created a conspiracy then that seems like something you should share with the class?

When you finally screw up the courage to reach out to someone about RPing with them, and they’re like “Sure that’d be awesome” and you set it up for the next day because just reaching out took so much of your mental fortitude and you need to recharge before you actually do the RP. And then the next day comes and you page them and get no response. And your anxiety and insecurity just immediately kicks in full force and convinces you that nobody gives a shit about you or your character or wants you around. And so after waiting a few hours with no response despite the person talking actively on a shared channel, you quietly log out and don’t log back in for over a year.

It’s been a year, you’re not logging in to play, mostly just to say Merry Christmas to someone. You start reading through all the bulletin board posts that you’ve missed.

You read a post by someone dated like a month after you last logged in mentioning that they struggle with anxiety so if they seem like they’re uninterested or they aren’t reaching out it’s not because they don’t want to RP, and then that one person who never responded to you has replied to the post like ‘Same >_<’. And you get a sinking feeling in your stomach. And you keep going through the BB posts and that person who never responded has made a post 2 months later explaining they’re going on hiatus and dropping their characters because their anxiety has made it almost impossible for them get RP and play.

And you sit there feeling bad because maybe if you’d had the confidence to at least just page them a second time to make sure they hadn’t just missed the first one then maybe they’d have had someone else to RP with and not felt so isolated.

And then you feel even worse because you realize that even with the knowledge that other people are going through the exact same struggle and all you need to do is reach out, nothing will change because your anxiety doesn’t care about logic and it’s always just going to assume the worst and you’re never gonna get to enjoy this hobby that always gets you so excited when making a character because your brain is a jerk that hates you.

That’s like, I dunno, a peeve or something I guess.

Today my peeve is: People who I don’t know, and have never interacted with before, paging me out of the blue with single word greetings.

Bonus creep points if your character got approved less than 15 minutes go.

Even more creep points if you’re doing that from a male roster character who tops many (most? all?) top 10 strongest marvel heroes lists.

@sao “But how do we know bitches ain’t lying” and then in x amount of years once it’s no longer cool or socially acceptable to support that person? “Damn them, if only we had known what they were really like!”

Seems to be how this shit goes, yeah. It’s fucking exhausting.

ETA: I realized I wanted to say something positive.

This, right here, all of us coming together defending victims, refuting insistence that receipts be necessary and explaining why in cases like this they are absolutely not necessary? It gives me hope that, if nothing else, victims will feel confident to speak up and know they can find support here, if even if they can’t on the MU they play.

And that’s not nothing!

It’s Christmas morning here in NZ, so I just wanted to spread some holiday cheer and wish all of you all the best. Have an awesome Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, or just Happy Holidays in general if Christmas isn’t your thing!

Whether you’re with family, friends, or sitting alone in your bedroom wishing an internet forum happy holidays, know that you’re important and loved and a precious and indispensable part of this community!

Wanting to get back into a MU I haven’t really touched in over a year, but I am just constantly getting distracted by fun things that don’t require a ton of effort and focus.

I wish finding fun RP times didn’t feel like such work to me.

My MU peeve is when people in the OOC room are gushing about how awesome their character is and how they have this skill and that skill and put x points into y because it synergises with this other thing that lets them do this thing that is super powerful, and their next exp spend is going to be this other thing because that’s going to stack and make them even more powerful.

I don’t even really know why it makes me so uncomfortable? But it does, and every time I just quietly sneak away without saying anything so I don’t have to hear it.

There’s a time and place for weird and kinky sex shenanigans, and often it isn’t casually in a public space with people who never asked to be involved.

A non MU example, I joined an FC in Final Fantasy 14 and the girlfriend of the FC leader referred to herself as ‘Ize’ because she didn’t believe a submissive should use the pronoun ‘I’ (So like ‘Ize thinks the problem is that the raid was scheduled too early’) And whenever someone new would come along, be confused like “Who’s Ize?” she’d go on to explain that she was Ize. That was strange, made me roll my eyes a bunch, felt maybe a little racist at times though I’m not sure why it made me feel that way, but overall wasn’t SUPER off-putting. What made me tap out was when she started calling the FC leader ‘Daddy’ in the public FC chat.

Like I’ve got no inherent problem with those kinks, have friends who partake in the latter one. But I think it sorta becomes an issue of consent when someone’s pushing their kinks in everyone’s face without worrying whether those people are OK with it or not.

Not necessarily weird in and of itself, but weird in the context I was doing it for. The Higgs boson, field, and bosons in general, when trying to have my science nerd character on Heroes Assemble come up with a logical and consistent (though ultimately inaccurate) hypothesis for how Pym Particles actually work.

Had a ton of fun coming up with it, and the character’s hypothesis, if true, woulda had fun implications for physics and the beginning/end of the universe. In the end though it didn’t ever come up in the little bit of RP I did, and putting so much effort into a believable hypothesis that I OOCly knew wouldn’t be accurate was probably a silly idea.

Still, it was a fun thought experiment

The lack of OC-only Superhero games frustrates me.

Like I guess I understand why people want to play their favourite comic book characters (it’s the sex, right? <_<) but that scene just isn’t for me. I want to play my own character, not be confined to someone else’s. But playing an OC on a game full of actual comic book characters makes it reaaally hard to break in or, y’know, feel like you matter at all.

I mean I suppose maybe there just isn’t much demand. Honestly I’m not even sure myself why I want to play a superhero game to begin with. Maybe I just want a contemporary and/or near future setting that isn’t all dark and cynical? So if you guys know of a place like that I’m all ears.

@DrQuinn It’s even ‘better’ when you do try figuring out a reason only to have every single one of your suggestions shot down because it wouldn’t be ‘in character’ for them, while they continue to refuse to offer any of their own ideas.

Bonus points if when you give up trying they get upset at you for not being willing to be flexible for the sake of RP.

1st type also typically don’t drink tap water.

They get their water from a well, actually.

I sat down to maybe try figure out a character for City of Shadows and get back into the whole MUing thing again. But it has only reminded me that WoD (specifically new, but probably also old?) chargen drives me crazy.

There are so many attribute dots and skill dots to assign even for your freshly made 0exp character. Like I know that Player Characters in many RPG systems are intended to be ‘notably better than your average person’ by design, and I certainly never had a problem with it in D&D or Pathfinder. But something about the modern earth setting, or maybe the social aspect of MUs, just seems to make me want to make characters that feel like they could be normal people (who just happen to have weird supernatural powers) rather than like secretly olympic-level (m)athletes or whatever.

It’s such a silly little problem to have, but gosh darn it if it doesn’t happen to me every damn time.

Anyways, just to be doubly clear: Not an issue with City of Shadows, just me bitching about WoD chargen in general.

@jujube I can’t even manage to be a believable member of the generation I actually am!

As someone who is super insecure and lacks confidence, I’m always thinking “But… what if it was my fault?” in the back of my head without anyone else even needing to make the accusation, no matter how much I try convince myself otherwise. Even about mundane stuff about who left the light on in the bathroom. Even if I know it wasn’t me, the moment someone else says “Well it wasn’t me” the implied ‘so it must have been you’ immediately makes me question my own memory of the event.

That is already a huge hurdle to overcome if I were to think of reporting someone for, well, anything. The fact I could be asked for receipts, and that those receipts might be somehow interpreted differently than I had and used as ‘proof’ that I really had been asking for it kind of just nixes the entire idea of me ever wanting to report in the first place.

But I kinda feel like the people most likely to be victimized are the ones that have that voice in the back of their head already whispering that they’re the one at fault for everything. They’re the people who need to be able to report. So making that process as… gentle, I guess, as possible is important.

That’s my personal take on it anyway.

@Pavel Not only did I never bother to read descs, I also never even bothered to check anyone’s PB. Just like I was never really thinking about what Arthur Dent or Ford Prefect actually looked like when I was reading HHGttG.

We were all just featureless silhouettes interacting with each other as far as my brain was concerned.

@Pax Thank you for articulating all that in a far less frustrated and angry way than I could ever have managed.