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/

@Alamias said in Liberation Drama!?:

@Aria I can log in via cell phone, so it’s definitely something IP or provider related. I wonder if I was collateral damage in an IP ban or something…

It’s possible. I have no idea who you played, but if you want to PM me, I can always ping a staffer the next time I see one online and try to ask.

@Alamias Game is still up and accessible for me.

@Jenn said in Celebrities We've Lost 2025:

Andrea Gibson

Ohh, man. I literally have You Better Be Lightning sitting on my nightstand. I’ve never been able to make it through that book without weeping in both the best and worst ways.

@Dreampipe

But also, that seriously sucks and I’m sorry that happened to you!

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

I’ve had to turn the auto-convert feature off in Word for when I do my – (that is two hyphens, often converted to a dash of some kind, be it en or em. I never learned the difference.) because it was getting pulled up by the anti-AI checker on my submitted work and it’s easier to just… not deal with that.

Em Dash (—):

Roughly the width of a capital letter M. It’s used to create a break in a sentence, similar to how you’d use parentheses or colons.

En Dash (–):

Roughly the width of a capital letter N. It’s used to connect two words or show a range of numbers.

That’s literally it.

Y’all also look to have a couple of weird bots in the user list that I went ahead and reported. But I dunno, maybe someone actually does want to buy the best hair transplants in Pakistan from really real actual human Zoey Draven.

@Gashlycrumb said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:

So I tried to get it from Chewy, and they said I needed to mail the paper Rx to them. I didn’t want to wait the extra week for this.

Ohh, yeah, I’ve had to deal with Chewy Rx before, too. You can mail a script in if it’s not urgent, but they’ll also do the whole ‘enter it online and call your vet’ thing for most prescriptions. We get our dog’s prescription food and immunosuppressants from them, but had to jump through the same hoop of calling them to ask what was up, being told our vet didn’t answer, then having to call the vet and get them to call Chewy even though our vet was the one who said to use them for cyclosporine because it’s so much cheaper. The upside is that once they get what they need, they’re fast. I’ve almost always had them ship out same day or next day and get here within 48 hours from shipment with no extra charge if I was spending more than $50, which our dog’s food and meds are.

@Gashlycrumb said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:

But why the hell is it happening to my DOG? I’m paying out of pocket. I’m paying extra for expedited shipping. And I still can’t get four dewormer pills, ffs. Call up my vet, tell them my dog’s shedding tapeworm proglottids, they get me a rush-appointment the very next day, but it’s been three weeks dicking around trying to get somebody to fill the script and I am still waiting for it to get here.

Are you using Wedgewood? We had to use Wedgewood for our senior cat’s methimazole for years and I despised them. The only, only good thing about his passing was thinking I’d never have to deal with them again…

Until our vet had to prescribe compounded antibiotics rather than the regular kind for our dog that’s been struggling with other major health issues since March. It took them over three days to even acknowledge they’d received the prescription from the vet, let alone do anything with it. But hey, it’s cool. It’s not like my dog has an uncontrolled infection or anything while they’re sitting around with their thumbs up their collective ass.

We had better experiences for mail order prescriptions with Covetrus, but I’ll warn you they were also way more expensive.

A lot of times I’ll use Pinterest, but the endless stream of AI that Tez mentioned is really getting on my nerves.

Other times, because my characters tend to pull a bit of inspiration from this over here and that over there and then maybe a touch of this movie or that song slapped on top of it, I already have someone vaguely taking shape in my head. So I’ll look back at what I drew inspiration from and see if there’s someone from one of those sources that fits the vibe, even if it’s a side character or a similar piece of media.

If I’m making characters with someone, they’ll get pulled into the decision process to make suggestions or veto something if it reminds them too much of someone they know, a PB they used, or a standout character from another game. I recently vetoed one of the names on a friend’s list because it was the Shadow Name of a Mage that I played for, like, almost four years. It just would’ve been weird to be on the other end of that and I want to show my friends and RP partners the same courtesy.

@Pavel said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:

@insomniac

The alt text for this image is fantastic.

‘A close up of a man with a mustache and a suit.’

I, uhhh, I think someone missed some important details here.