So today is my first day back in the office after PTO. When I was checking my calendar last night, I saw that my boss put a meeting on the books for first thing this morning with her and with her boss. I figured something went wrong with one of the projects I was working on with the boss’s boss while I was out and they needed to get me up to speed.

Uhh, no.

Turns out that when I found out how underpaid I am compared to my teammates last summer and lodged a complaint about that, initially got an ugly response, then they backpedaled hard and asked how much I wanted, only to get turned down? That request stuck around. My boss’s boss’s boss noted the complaint and when they did mid-year adjustments this year for people on the bottom end of salary bands, he personally lumped my name in with the ones that got sent to HR. Even though I was above the cut-off percentage for consideration.

My boss called a meeting to give me a 5% raise, on top of my end of year adjustment from 2023, because of something I bitched about a year ago.

In almost ten years at my company, I have only ever gotten one bad review – one! out of almost twenty! – from a person who was my manager for all of two months. It was from someone who not only didn’t understand what my job was, but who regularly gave conflicting instructions in the same day, would ignore when I pointed this out to her, and then wondered why I couldn’t do both of these things that were in direct opposition to one another. This manager then proceeded to be mean to me for the next two years straight, all the way up until I moved to a different subdivision, and still tries to pull my current boss into almost everything I work on that she’s involved in.

Today she was forced to acknowledge that my work is fast, thoughtful, and high quality despite being related to a request that is urgent, complex, and so confusing to convey to our audience that we need spreadsheets of who gets what messaging, when, and from whom.

And she had to say the nice thing in front of an entire committee.

Including my boss.

We got another dog back on Memorial Day weekend. He was a rescue out of a terrible situation on the Texas-Mexico border (multiple infections, inch deep cuts hidden under matting in his fur, fleas, ticks, you name it) and despite being surrendered by his previous owner, we’re honestly not sure he’s ever lived in a house before.

I cannot stop laughing at the crazy-eyed reaction he has to pup cups, like the sugar high hitting his bloodstream is just the dog equivalent of this child.

I am late to the party because naps, and I think I must have missed something someone said somewhere but…

Please do not doubt someone who claims they have been abused. Not even if you profoundly dislike them. Not even if they engage in shitty behavior themselves after the fact.

NGL, I got way too drawn into Ghost’s personal life and resulting well-being about a decade ago, but it was not in the Regina George “OMG, why are you so obsessed with me?!” kind of way that Dropkick tried to portray it as later. It was in the “As extremely unlikely as it is to be accepted, I feel like I need to (with my partner’s knowledge and agreement) at least offer to put this person up in my spare bedroom because they have repeatedly expressed to me that they feel unsafe in their own home” kind of way.

I’m not going to go into more than that because it’s absolutely not my story to share, and I’m not going to claim that it justifies terrible behavior on his part because it absolutely does not. Believe me, even after confirming there was no bad blood between us – at least not about that and the dRaMa!!11!one!elevn!!! that resulted – there have been several times since then that I’ve wanted to sock the dude in the mouth.

But, like… don’t, guys. Just don’t. Not cool, and A+ to the folks who said they aren’t going to do that.

My coworker’s partner is liquidating a lot of their inventory from their Etsy shop. So today they showed up with a bag full of block printed t-shirts for me and tried to foist them off on me for free, until I insisted on paying something for it.

(Pay artists. It’s a rule, not a guideline.)

My clothes are extra queer now and I am very happy.

In my experience, abusers are going to be abusive regardless of what community, culture, or system they’re in. They will find ways to bend the rules and norms of that setting to their advantage, as well as to blame those they abuse for somehow being at fault for what was done to them. And this is true for any kind of abuse, although sexual abuse is the most egregious.

The key to minimizing this is making it clear from the outset that it’s not acceptable by the broader community as a whole, then enforcing this mandate regularly and consistently when it’s uncovered that oh, hey, surprise, this abusive person is a piece of shit. Officially, yes, but also unofficially, with a general aura of “You fuckers are not welcome here.” that is present from start to finish.

It’s not perfect, not by any means, but no system is and I think it’s the only way to balance the fact that everyone’s experiences, preferences, and desires are their own and that no one else really has the right to dictate that for others, save those who cannot possibly consent for whatever reason.

Final GPA for my Master’s degree. Considering there was a point when I lost track of how many times I dropped or failed out of undergraduate programs, I’d say this isn’t half bad.

@farfalla

I prefer they/them. She/her is also fine. Like, I won’t be mad about it or offended if someone uses that, especially given how complicated my own feelings about gender are and the fact that my body-type adds a lived experience I will always have thrust on me barring major surgery I don’t want, but I do get the warm fuzzies when folks at least try.

Uhmm.

I somehow got an A in the worst class in my entire program, the hell-class that I was seriously concerned about failing in the final semester before graduation, the class that had me in spiralling meltdown mode for two months.

I understand virtually nothing from this class, including how or why I got this grade, but fuck it. I’ll take it.

@Tchotchke said in Liberation MUSH:

I appreciate everyone’s thoughts. Getting that out of my system and finding that a bunch of people with an outside perspective thought it was problematic was cathartic. Thank you.

Dude, my friends and I left that game over way less awful shit than that. And while I sometimes miss my character and regret the amount of setting material I wrote up for a staffer that was very shortly thereafter replaced by a hypercontrolling weirdo…

That policy (? bbpost? whatever it is?) is so beyond the pale that no amount of nostalgia would be worth going back. I suggest taking Roz’s advice and noping the fuck out of there.

Man, I feel weird even writing journals and vignettes. Mia’s were (mostly) private for reasons beyond just IC secrecy and I think the first Ares game I was on that had them, I wrote a total of three of them. Two of them resulted in multiple people messaging me to give me compliments and at least one person told me that they cried reading it, but like…

As nice as they were being and as flattered as I should’ve been, I just felt wildly uncomfortable. Like this was the RP equivalent of dropping unsolicited dick pics in the entire game’s lap and expecting a positive response when everyone else would be sitting there like “WTF? Why did you think we wanted this?!” or something. Not knocking anyone who writes them or enjoys them, but I just don’t expect other people to care about my writing or my characters that much unless they’re actively participating, too.

Robert Redford, 89.

@Hobbie said in Just because it's your fave don't mean it ain't literature:

Star Wars is The Hidden Fortress from Akira Kurosawa.

Ohh, if we’re doing that…

A Fistful of Dollars is just Yojimbo dressed up as a Western. But Yojimbo is lifted off of Dashiell Hammett, with Kurosawa himself saying he based it on The Glass Key. Which, amusingly, inspired the Coen brothers when they were making Miller’s Crossing. So there’s that fun Gordian knot.

Also, you’ll see some folks claiming that The Northman was based on Hamlet. This isn’t true. The Northman and Hamlet were both based on the legend of Amleth from Gesta Danorum. So Shakespeare and Robert Eggers were writing two very different stories from the same legend, kind of like Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory both writing King Arthur stories a few hundred years apart.

Warm Bodies is Romeo and Juliet.
Throne of Blood is MacBeth.
Just One of the Guys is Twelfth Night.
The Big Lebowski is The Big Sleep.
Psych is Sherlock Holmes.
The Nanny is Jane Eyre, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

@Aria said in Celebrities We Lost 2023:

@Rowan said in Celebrities We Lost 2023:

The Pogues lead singer, Shane MacGowan. Christmas was never complete without hearing their Fairytale of New York. Best xmas song ever! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67546785

This one is… sigh. Cry.

Back in March of 2008, right before St. Patrick’s Day, the Pogues were supposed to play a relatively small venue here in Philadelphia. Like, holds about 2000 people small. I had tickets to see them, but at the time I lived over an hour outside the city and this terrible winter storm blew in. We usually don’t get snow that late, but it was piling high, the roads were wet from the day before, and everything started to freeze over. Even the trains into the city had warnings about delays and cancellations and I was afraid that if I tried going to the show I’d either get in an accident or get stuck there with nowhere to sleep. Besides, I was convinced – convinced! – that with such miserable conditions, they were going to reschedule.

They didn’t. The band played on anyway, to a tiny audience of about 300-400 people, and I missed it. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would never have another chance to see the Pogues. They played New York and Baltimore and DC, but they never came to Philly again. That was my one and only chance and I decided not to go.

Buy the tickets, folks. Go to the show. Do the thing. Don’t miss out.

So I finally got to see The Pogues.

There’s only three of them left. And it took five different singers to cover for Shane McGowan. But I got to see them, and it was lovely, and I’m happy.

Buy the tickets, folks. Go to the show. Do the thing. Don’t miss out.

@Roadspike said in Numetal/Retromux:

@sao I was trying to come up with a situation too, but I couldn’t. I did want to leave the door open, because there are very few things I want to be an absolutist about.

I could imagine something like the delirium situation @MisterBoring mentioned, or it being a month or two in between creating a character you never played and creating a new character because you forgot about the first one, or getting so excited about the concept that you forgot that there were no alts allowed and submitted a new character.

But the response to Staff going, “Um… hold on a sec” would be very telling, and would decide if I went scorched earth or just nuked all but one character and gave them a warning.

I can’t really think of a situation where someone would accidentally make a character (aside from the one MisterBoring outlined), but I can imagine someone accidentally breaking a no alts rule by incorrectly assuming that a game regularly conducts idle purges if, hey, turns out they don’t.

I mean, I know that I’ve made characters on a game, not really had them jive before, and then go back to the place a year or more later with a new concept, in a new sphere, with a different group of friends. Granted, I also did check if my old login still worked, but that was more out of idle curiosity than anything else and hey! It turned out that said character had in fact been deleted, so my assumption was correct. But I’ve also made a handful of characters that I ditched so quickly that my recollection of them was, “Ohh, god. What was her name. Uhhh, she was a Daeva, that I made with my friend Matt, and her name started with an I… she was a lawyer… or something?” on a game that I know didn’t purge their database literally ever because I had friends who staffed there.

So I think an easy workaround for what I’m describing and even what happened to MisterBoring is effectively what that staffer in MisterBoring’s case did–check and see if said alt has been played actively or logged in recently. If the answer is ‘no’, then it’s probably a case of assuming idle purges like Ares games do or a foggy memory. If the answer is ‘yes’, then you’ve likely got a deliberate rule breaker and do what you will.

@Gashlycrumb If you’re looking to have it sort into folders on your computer, which is what it sounds like, I’ve got nothing. If you’re looking to have it sort into folders in your inbox, that’s just mail rules and will take all of a minute to set up.

Sad to say there’s another one of these currently running for another member of the MU* community. If you’ve been on Ares games over the last few years, there’s a chance you know Cameron. And hey, if you won’t do it for him, do it for the cats.

GoFundMe: Help keep Cameron, his kids, and his cats housed!

@Ashkuri said in MU Peeves Thread:

I feel like this sums up several many MUSH interactions I’ve had with people over the years

The one I need to keep reminding myself of is “Your feelings are valid. But managing them is also not my responsibility.”

@Testament said in Celebrities We've Lost 2025:

Coming back to post that Ozzy died today.

https://x.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1947720771889205473

My local station is putting on a tribute that started at around 4PM and is running until midnight EST that’s all just Ozzy, Sabbath, and stories and interviews from fellow musicians, fans, etc.

https://wmmr.com/