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.

@Evilgrayson

Yeeeeah, I’m interested in the game. And I’ve definitely played places where they continued using my writing after I left, with or without my consent. I kind of figured that anything I created was kind of a donation to the game, save the one that lifted from a site I’d been on to use on one that I wasn’t a part, and then lied right to my when I confronted them about it…

But licensing? What? What is that?

@tsar said in MU Peeves Thread:

No call, no shows to stuff. RL comes first, but your GM or RP partner is also a real person.

There is a certain degree of lateness for online that I will ignore or not worry about too much whether I’m the one waiting or the one running late, but like…

In the last few months, I’ve sat around waiting for an hour while trying to figure out if the event scheduler hadn’t adjusted for the time change or if people just weren’t showing up to scenes they asked me to run for them. Or waiting for them to come to their own events, where a half dozen people were like, “Are they coming? Is this moved?” and then the player didn’t even acknowledge they’d blown people off.

@catzilla said in LF various WoD/CofD people over the years:

Was reading over some old logs and got nostalgic for various people I’ve RP’d with over the years and have lost contact with.

Are you the player of any of these people? Let me know, I’d love to RP with you again!

Bliss & Ruin
Can’t remember the name but a male Mekhet that ghouled my mortal after watching her get beaten up.

Ordo Nox
Succubus (ST/Admin handle)
Anathema (ST/Admin handle)
Remy the Orpheus character from Ordo Nox

Fabula Rasa
Pretty much anyone that was in the following games:
The Vegas Hunter game
Maq’s Asheville Mage game
Maq’s Anchorage Werewolf game

NOLA (whatever the latest version was)
Eerie
Muse
Nikola
Seth
Rafael

Wanton Wicked - Savannah
Too many people to list, but if you remember Eve Masterson and enjoyed playing with her/me, this is for you!

Fallcoast
Darwin (ST handle)
Tobin
Alistair
Erika
Sebastian
Rudy
Walker
Isrieal

Tarnished Reflections
Anyone from the Vampire or Changeling game!

Ohh, god. I played on, like, three of them? But it’s been so long since I was on Fabula Rasa and Tarnished Reflections that I barely remember who I played, and there were so many reboots of Wanton Wicked that I’m like, “Okay, but which one?”

@Aria said in Pets!:

On condition of his FeLV test coming back negative tomorrow…

We adopted the kitty they recommended to us - a ten year old little man currently named Steely Daniel, which is absolutely fantastic as a name but we’re generally not jamming out to “Reelin’ in the Years”.

I am trying to convince insomniac that his name should be Sir Catrick Stewart, instead.

He has a snaggle toofs and a wonky eye that we’re hoping is just some glaucoma and will be taking him to our regular vet ASAP to confirm.

Random Update on This Cat:

I do not know why it took this dude five months to get adopted. He’s fucking awesome. Adopt old pets, guys. They’re great.

@dvoraen said in Real life happy:

@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?

I did not. I blinked and said thank you.

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

@Tez said in Real life happy:

@Aria Are you me???

Yes. You’ve been the sheet with two little eye holes cut into it this entire time.

@SockMonkey said in Real life happy:

@Aria Look at you go!

Honestly, it’s really exciting but it’s also really, really annoying for one specific reason:

I spent more than a decade floundering as an administrative/executive assistant, where I had almost all of the same skills that I have now, but was frequently dismissed and overlooked as “just” an admin. To the point that I literally had an executive in a room full of thirty people berate a high level sales rep for not understanding the rules engine dictating our substitution guidelines by her saying “It’s not that hard. Even Aria can explain this and she’s just an assistant.” (Note: It actually was hard, it was really fucking hard, which was why most of our reps went through a day and a half of training about it. The fact that I was explaining it to the head of sales for the entire West Coast should’ve been a mark in my favor, not against him.)

It took one person taking what was perceived as a “chance” on me in 2019, by giving me a lateral move, when I’d spent years managing budgets and projects and writing executive comms and and and and for this to happen. And then I got promoted in 2021. And 2022. And this month.

There are probably ridiculously talented people in your (and I mean general your, not you SockMonkey!) organization that are being overlooked because they don’t fit the mold–they made some mistakes when they were young, or had life commitments pulling them in other directions, or don’t play office politics well, or changed careers…

Take another look. Give them a chance. They have more to prove than the hot shit upper middle class kid with the MBA whose goal in life is to be and “industry disruptor” and who thinks driving a Tesla qualifies as a personality.

I just got promoted for the third time in less than four years.

More real life funny than real life happy, but…

Today, one of my coworkers accidentally made the most wildly inappropriate comment at me and I cannot stop laughing.

I went to see Bush over the weekend. Today, I wore the shirt I bought at the concert to work. She was trying to tell me that she really liked the shirt and the outfit that I put together, but instead she said:

“I keep looking at your Bush, Aria. I really like it!”

It is only by the grace of God that I managed not to blurt out “Thanks! I grew it myself.”