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Started by Emily, March 10, 2019, 08:20:31 AM

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Pick your selection for the most brutal faceoff combatants, the top two will be the fight of the century

Vanessa Carlton's sentient and self-driving piano
7 (53.8%)
Bill Gates, but with spider legs
6 (46.2%)
The singer of the original Pokemon intro with no additional powers
4 (30.8%)
Pope Formosus in his present condition
2 (15.4%)
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, as The Thing from Fantastic Four
2 (15.4%)
The rotating crew of BBC personnel that pose as David Attenborough
4 (30.8%)
Elizabeth II, where every current object bearing her likeness may be an additional combatant
6 (46.2%)
Conor McGregor
2 (15.4%)
A crazed Theresa May, visibly bleeding from a gut wound but in posession of a light saber
3 (23.1%)
Meryl Streep with no additional powers
4 (30.8%)

Total Members Voted: 13

Emily

Hey everyone, I noticed we were lacking a general discussion thread in this area!

Emily

Hello friends. After recent events, being on Discord gives me some intense anxiety. I adore all of you and the CalRef chat is home for me. That being said, for an indeterminate future I'll be taking a break from discord while I'm at work so that I can write and deal with other things instead of staring endlessly at a chat screen :P

So here I am, and I'll check this thread during my breaks  :heart:

Emily

It started with a small static sound, but it didn't stay that way for long. Soon, it was too loud for us to hear customers ordering things, and that's when my co-worker looked. She pulled one of the fridges away from the wall and we saw water spraying everywhere.

We were told to shut down the Starbucks while they figured out why the water line had busted. But we were only closed for five minutes because after they just shut the water off to that machine and we got the standing water mopped up, they ordered us to reopen. And just not use that one espresso machine.

Ignore the muted buzzing below the fridge, where the wires had been partially submerged. Ignore your instincts telling you this isn't safe. Because no matter what happens, one thing is certain.

Starbucks is always open. Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

Luca

Quote from: Kyrie on March 10, 2019, 08:21:36 AM
Hello friends. After recent events, being on Discord gives me some intense anxiety.

Up to you, of course, for what you feel is most comfortable for you. But just remember that CalRef is a safe place with many neat-o people who all like you. Outside of that, you're an independent person and you can decide who you talk to. If someone or some group is giving you stress and having a negative impact, it doesn't have to be there, toss it out. You're only feeding the people who feed off of others.  :rofl:

Emily

I know, I'm gonna leave the other servers that I share with them. Hopefully I can cut it back down to calref and zf. But for now it's just... I don't know, I'm not comfortable.

I think I just need to be quieter for a bit. I'll get a lot of writing done at least.

Emily

Wednesday, 13 March 2019.

To whomever finds this message,
The blizzard has begun. For the next 12 years, it will snow at an increasingly rapid pace and an increasingly intense thickness, until it eventually buries us all. I do not expect to survive this storm, for it has rained significantly between 20:00 and 8:00, and the ground is set to become a solid sheet of ice by today eve'.

The rain this morning was unpleasant to walk through, but I braved the elements so that I could harvest currency from the great, espresso-soaked foliage of the Star Bucked Willow, and buy my darling wife Luca the shoes and chocolate that she desires. Her smile is my world, and it was the thought of that that kept me walking even when I wanted to get a towel or something.

My once-straightened hair has become wild and uncontrolled, freed from its thermal prison by the drip dropping tears from the great sky mother. My carefully manicured and coifed appearance has begun to crack, revealing my true form underneath. I fear it is only a matter of time before I am found out to be a monster of the truest and most sordid sort. Through the rainy streaks along my visage, the charred husk of an eldritch horror can be seen. My true form waiting to emerge.

It is only a matter of time.

My dearest Luca, if you find this message, do not weep for me, for it was your love and warmth that kept me going this far. I now brave the unknown and oncoming storm, secure in the thought that your love will continue to see me through. I will see you again, bathed in white and ice and freezies.

Emily

I'm tired. I'm at work right now, but our least reliable co-worker didn't show up again. So I could just close this place myself, I guess, since I leave at 20:30.

Emily

So here are my current projects and plans going forward.

Pulling away from Discord to the extent that I have has been very good for me. Luca and I are spending more time cuddling together and just being happy, and that's wonderful. It's weird to notice how much time Discord was draining from my life just through a few minutes here and there to read and respond to comments.

I've begun writing a few different things. First off is a blog post on social burnout and the evolution of online communication over the time that I've been aware of it. Like my joy in creation post and nonbinary post, I've been selfish enough to put it through the lens of my own experience.

Beyond that, I've outlined the basics of my new AVFtS character, Rizali, and how they will fit into and interact with the world we've collectively been building. I'm doing my best to keep the world building vague enough so that everyone can continue participating in building it. As a family :heart:

I'm not sure what I'll be doing with Síne. She's a stubborn one, and wouldn't easily leave Ceadaichte Mòir. I set it up for her to do so; it's the day before the sewing season begins and she'll have very little to do until the reaping season is past. But she has no special abilities and I can't imagine her easily attaching to an adventuring group. That being said, I'm keeping the option open. She's sort of a Serana, in that she's infinitely curious and would want to be adjacent to important events and discoveries purely so that she might record them for posterity. Even if the initial fireball of interest for AVFtS has cooled, I've got a lot of hope for the story, and will keep pushing it along to the best of my ability.

Finally, I've got my direction for The Oracle. I should have a new post (and hooks for others to join) soon.

Thank you for reading my CalRef development journal entry lol.

Emily

I'm pretty proud of where I've gone with AVFtS. When I started, I had planned for my second post to be morning- this most recent one, actually. We've gone pretty far outside my initial expectations, but I've been enjoying it. This is the first RP for me in a very long time where the plot hasn't been controlled and preplanned. It's bringing me back to when rping was fun for me, back before 2008. Except I have post-2008 skill.

Now we've got a cat and a soldier and a leaf sprite and an elf! I hope people continue to be interested and want to keep posting; I know I do. I'll keep it moving from here on out, since I'm focusing more on writing now and am no longer psyching myself out about other responsibilities I'm putting on myself.

Sorry about getting crazy there for a while, by the way.

The Oracle will be my next focus. I'm going to take Seht the rest of the way to her coffee shop. After all, she hasn't been intercepted! The coffee shop and larger hestia square should provide more hooks to come in on :smile:

My blog post is coming along, it'll be ready when it's ready.

Emily

I've had a few bad days in a row. That's not to say I'm broken, or that I need help, just that the few days preceding yesterday were bad ones. The swirling maelstrom of thoughts and distractions taking hold and refusing to let go were far worse than what they used to be: distractions from a legitimately bad life situation.

Things have been wonderful, actually. I've been spending time with Luca (at least what time work allows) and walking to and from home and not engaging with things that depress and hurt me. It's been me- my own mind, more specifically- that has been creating the issues. I'm prone to distraction and procrastination, the latter of which has always been upsetting to me, and those are very difficult things to train out of your mind. Or at least, they have been for me.

When I talk about "training" things out of my mind, it comes from years of experience dating all the way back to... 2005? I think? I've always been good at self-analysis, and putting together action plans for self improvement. The person I am now resembles the person I was five years ago almost not at all. That person resembled the person I was at 14 not at all. It's been a long and exhausting journey to get here, and I feel like I've only recently started resembling what I want to be. I've gotten rid of a lot of the pettiness, the impatience, the duplicity and lying, the capriciousness. The quiet and sometimes not so quiet rage that bubbled below the surface most of the time.

That's not to say I'm all better. I respond easily and quickly to bait. It's hard for me to see something I consider an injustice without speaking up. Sometimes I speak up in places where I'm not wanted, and sometimes I tell someone they're doing something wrong when it's not my place to be correcting them. I have trouble picking my battles, and when I get into those battles that old pettiness comes back to the surface.

There's a site called Gaia online. I'm sure you've heard of it by now if you've been on the discord server, lol. It's... not great, honestly. It used to be the most active forum I'd ever seen, and while it still is the people on it have dwindled, and radicalised. They're insular and angry, fighting and trolling one another in this endless, fruitless cycle of egoism and unnecessary strife. It's frustrating to watch, but incredibly addictive and easy to fall into. I became an older version of myself, one that looked for the fights.

I don't like that.

I need to pull back even further.

I'll keep working on me, and keep doing my best to be the person and friend I should be. But it doesn't involve this path.

Emily

I wish I had more time to write. I wish I had more time to be at home.

Emily

So I'm thinking about redoubling my efforts into this forum. I know we don't get a lot of traffic and most of our community is entirely uninterested, but I still like that we have the forum and I think it could be a cool place to react.

I love forums because they require you to think a little longer and harder about what you want to say. If you want to make a message, you can't just hit enter between lines. I find that method makes me a little looser and my message overall a bit less cohesive. But doing it here? Like this? Jeez, if my messaging starts to shift, I can edit that earlier line so easily! Not to mention you can format things and have a lot more freedom. And, you know, we don't steal our own information through this product, so

Anyway, consider this me being motivated once again to do something here!  :zyqxuwy:

Luca

Quote from: Valkyrie on November 03, 2019, 09:17:20 PM
So I'm thinking about redoubling my efforts into this forum. I know we don't get a lot of traffic and most of our community is entirely uninterested, but I still like that we have the forum and I think it could be a cool place to react.

I love forums because they require you to think a little longer and harder about what you want to say. If you want to make a message, you can't just hit enter between lines. I find that method makes me a little looser and my message overall a bit less cohesive. But doing it here? Like this? Jeez, if my messaging starts to shift, I can edit that earlier line so easily! Not to mention you can format things and have a lot more freedom. And, you know, we don't steal our own information through this product, so

Anyway, consider this me being motivated once again to do something here!  :zyqxuwy:
I'm fine with developing the forum and other web-related aspects of CalRef again if the seasons say it's the thing to do. There's always something to work on. For example, I just noticed that Natalie is yellow despite that not being the correct role  :laughing:

Natalie

It's so weird, as soon as I poke my head in here again I get this rush of nostalgia for times passed. Structured discussions. Forming entire thoughts more than half a sentence at a time. It could be fun to get back into this habit. I actually did a bit of journaling today for the first time in a couple years, and it got me thinking about missing longform conversation.

Emily

Quote from: Wisdom on November 03, 2019, 09:23:17 PMI'm fine with developing the forum and other web-related aspects of CalRef again if the seasons say it's the thing to do. There's always something to work on. For example, I just noticed that Natalie is yellow despite that not being the correct role  :laughing:
Yessss! I've missed forums so badly!

Quote from: Natalie on November 03, 2019, 09:34:00 PM
It's so weird, as soon as I poke my head in here again I get this rush of nostalgia for times passed. Structured discussions. Forming entire thoughts more than half a sentence at a time. It could be fun to get back into this habit. I actually did a bit of journaling today for the first time in a couple years, and it got me thinking about missing longform conversation.

Right? I've been feeling kind of down lately, and every time I feel bad about the internet as a whole, I find myself coming back to this forum and just looking at it. All my old forums are gone, and probably never coming back, but there's so much potential here. It also just feels so much more comfortable. I was just telling Maddie at work the other day that once I left the work chats, I instantly felt less awful about it. Chats just have a way for me of inspiring ever-increasing levels of anxiety and dreads, while forums give me a lot of serenity. :laughing:

AlexiCat

OwO hewwo fwiends. It's your favorite neighborhood spam lady: Alexis Cat! (aka Alexis)

I've not used a forum since Neopets, so this is kind of new to me. It's like traveling back to the 00's and getting banned for posting gibberish on those old boards. Speaking of old boards, CalRef BBS when?

Emily

Welcome Alexis Cat /hug

I'm happy you're here with us ^-^ if you need any help figuring out how to use the forums, just ask.

Luca

Congratulations to Emily for her

Emily


Natalie