#this art is so messy i can’t wrangle this style

[braisedhoney]

iron lung trailer… iron lung trailer…

[itadorisgf]

dress up.

inspired by this art

wc: 1.2k

fushiguro megumi x gn!reader x itadori yuuji

fluff

Your boys know how to clean up nicely.

You quietly watch them fumble around, tugging on nice sleek slacks and hastily buttoning up freshly dry-cleaned dress shirts, from the entrance of the room. Leaning sideways against the door frame, already fully dressed in your respective outfit, you’re surprised that neither has noticed your presence yet, but then again, they are rather preoccupied at the moment. You don’t say anything, not quite ready to reveal yourself just yet and continue watching them shuffle around the room.

But when Yuuji trips over his tangled trousers pooled by his ankles and flops down to the floor with a pained yelp, you’re unable to stay quiet any longer as laughter tears its way out of your chest at the sight of Yuuji splayed out on the ground. The attention of both of the males in the room is quickly drawn to you, hunched over and clutching your stomach as you try to suppress your laughter enough so you can ask if your boyfriend is alright.

“You’re laughing at me! What if I was really injured?” Yuuji pouts. He scrambles and pushes himself up off the ground before swiftly leaning over and tugging his pants back up to his waist. He quickly zips them up and buttons them closed so he’s no longer at risk of tripping and falling over again.

“You’d survive,” Megumi wryly comments as he fixes the top few buttons of his dress shirt. You notice a hint of a smile cross his lips when Yuuji makes an offended noise in response. Megumi pauses, lifting his hands from their place when you stride across the room to stand in front of him.

“Let me,” you murmur underneath your breath as you smooth out of the creases of his dress shirt, neatly folding over his collar. Megumi straightens up underneath your touch but relaxes as you continue to fuss over him. You take your time, looping his tie around his neck and knotting it properly while Megumi goes back and forth with Yuuji, who’s still in the process of deciding what shirt to wear.

“Thank you.” The apples of his cheeks burn a shade darker than usual as he averts his gaze away from you. It never fails to amuse you how flustered Megumi can get even though the three of you have been dating for so long.

“No problem, ‘Gumi.” You smile brightly when his cheeks redden even more after you press a chaste kiss on his lips. You lightly giggle before turning your attention away from Megumi and allowing him to compose himself and finish getting ready. Facing Yuuji now, you snort at how messy his attire is. “Yuu, come over here so I can help you.”

He perks up and is by your side in an instant. “You look really good.” Yuuji punctuates by squeezing your hips. His eyes roam your body, paying close attention to how well your outfit suits you.

“Thanks, babe,” you absentmindedly say, too focused on flattening out the wrinkles in Yuuji’s shirt. Once you’re content with how it looks, you help him with his tie the same way you did Megumi's. “You don’t look too bad yourself,” you tease once you’re done with his tie. Looping a finger around the silky material, you gently tug on it so you can steal a kiss from Yuuji. However, one kiss is not enough for Yuuji and before you know it, he’s littering kisses all over your face until you’re pushing against his chest in protest.

“Yuuji, stop! We-we-quit it!-we gotta go soon.” You try to be firm, but you can’t stop the giggles from escaping you. You feel the curve of a smile against your skin before Yuuji leans in to press one last kiss against your lips.

“Fine,” he complains but he does pull away from you to go fix his hair and grab his suit jacket. You shake your head in fond exasperation as you wait for Megumi and Yuuji to finish up the last few things they need to do before the three of you can head out.

You carefully take a seat on the edge of the bed and admire how handsome your boys are.

Megumi’s stationed in front of the mirror, running his fingers through his hair and attempting to wrangle its unruliness before he gives up with a quiet sigh. Truthfully, you don’t know why he bothered in the first place. His hair has a mind of its own and even if Megumi was able to style it with some product, it would go back to its natural state in a matter of hours.

Your gaze shifts over to Yuuji, who’s bent over and searching through the clutter of clothes gathered on the floor for his black suit jacket. You most definitely do not sneak an appreciative glance at his backside.

“Quit staring at Yuuji’s ass.” A wide shameless grin stretches across your cheeks as you look up Megumi. You accept his outstretched hand, pushing off the bed and standing up on your feet with his help.

“Don’t be jealous, ‘Gumi. You have a nice ass too.” Megumi immediately drops your hand, letting it fall to your side, and gives you a deadpan look while Yuuji snickers in the background. “If you scowl any harder, your face is going to stay stuck like that forever. How about you give me a smile and let me admire how handsome my boys are?”

Megumi’s brow twitches in feigned annoyance as Yuuji slings a heavy arm around his shoulder and gives you a thumbs up, beaming brightly at you. Megumi’s scowl does soften into only a slight frown as you look them up and down appraisingly.

Their suits fit both of their frames perfectly. 

Megumi’s dark green suit complements his skin tone nicely and you don’t miss the fact that he’s wearing the expensive watch that Gojo gifted him a few years prior. If you comment on it, Megumi will probably just say that it’s the only nice watch he has, which is true, but you know that he’s fond of the accessory since it’s a gift from Gojo. The color combination of orange and black for Yuuji’s outfit was unexpected, but you’re not surprised that he manages to pull it off so well. Yuuji could wear a trash bag and you’d still think he was the most handsome person ever, besides Megumi.

Occasions, where the three of you need to dress so formally, are rare, but you enjoy them immensely. The actual events that you attend don’t really matter to you, you’re just happy for the opportunity to ogle your boys all night long.

“I guess you guys don’t look half bad,” you innocently remark with a slight tilt of your head. Megumi rolls his eyes at your comment while Yuuji outwardly protests. You sigh dramatically before continuing on. “Alright, alright. Calm down, Yuu. You guys look so good that I’m going to have to worry about all the people who are going to flirt with you two.”

Yuuji reaches out and tugs your arm until you gently collide into his chest with an audible exhale. With an arm slung around your shoulders and the other around Megumi's shoulders, Yuuji happily says: “Too bad for them. I already have the greatest partners a guy could ask for.”

Your lips quirk up into a warm smile while a slight flush darkens Megumi's cheeks at Yuuji’s honest words. You idly listen as Megumi and Yuuji begin to bicker with one another. Mentally, you completely agree with Yuuji: you really do have the greatest partners a person could ask for.

[eldritchsurveys]

831.

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? >> I don’t eat cereal anymore, but from what I can remember, I didn’t really like having a lot of milk in the bowl.

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? >> Not usually.

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? >> On the occasion that I’m reading a paper book, if it’s my own, I just dog-ear it. If it’s a library book, I use the receipt that I got from checking out the book.

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? >> Black (or in the case of some teas, with a little honey).

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? >> I’m self-conscious of my entire face.

6: do you keep plants? >> I just have the one spider plant in my room. It looks pretty done for, but like... it’s not dead, exactly, so I have no idea what to do with it. Sparrow, on the other hand, has about fifteen plants on the balcony, two in her room, etc.

7: do you name your plants? >> Sparrow has named at least one of hers.

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? >> I just wrangle the written word the best I can.

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? >> Absolutely.

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? >> Side.

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends? >> Sparrow and I have this thing where we just mangle words as badly as possible. Like “chicken” has become “chimkin”, stuff like that.

12: what’s your favorite planet? >> Mercury and Pluto, for completely opposite reasons (as I’m sure is obvious).

13: what’s something that made you smile today? >> I saw a random crop of mushrooms while walking. It was just... random! I don’t know what died there or whatever that made the mushrooms grow in that one little spot, but it was adorable.

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? >> ---

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! >> I don’t feel like it.

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish? >> I don’t have one.

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? >> I don’t.

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. >> ---

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? >> I technically have one, on Dreamwidth, but I never bother updating it. This is my journal, along with my personal blog.

20: what’s your favorite eye color? >> ---

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. >> I don’t have one of those. I have three different bags for different purposes.

22: are you a morning person? >> Sure.

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? >> I usually have 0 real obligations (aside from ones I impose on myself), so I have no idea how to answer this.

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? >> ---

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into? >> I’m not sure.

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit? >> There are no shoes that I’ve had for forever. I only have two pairs of shoes, so basically both of them get worn with every single outfit (the boots in the cooler months, the sneakers in the summer and for walking).

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor? >> Well, isn’t bubble gum only one flavour?

28: sunrise or sunset? >> Both are good. Although I like saying hello to the Sun more than I like saying goodbye to it.

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? >> ---

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? >> Sure.

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. >> I like wearing socks with funky patterns and designs on them, and sometimes I mismatch them on purpose for my own amusement. I do not sleep with socks.

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. >> I can’t really think of one right now.

33: what’s your fave pastry? >> ---

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? >> I don’t remember what I kept as a child. I think I had a lion or two. I only remember that because my father is fucking obsessed with lions so of course I had lion plushies.

35: do you like stationery and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? >> I do like them, but I don’t have occasion to use them.

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now? >> I don’t know.

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? >> I like keeping it tidy.

38: tell us about your pet peeves! >> I’d really rather not right now.

39: what color do you wear the most? >> Black.

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you? >> I don’t really have any stories behind any of the jewelry I own.

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving? >> Well, I reread The Phantom Tollbooth recently and I’ve been fond of that book for almost as long as I’ve been alive.

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! >> No.

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? >> I don’t remember.

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? >> Oof...

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? >> I don’t know.

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. Any burger of the day ever written on the board at Bob’s Burgers. I love them though. <-- I’m going to stick with that, those are just utterly shameless puns lmao

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? >> ---

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? >> I was afraid of thunderstorms and flying insects. I still have a reflexive aversion to flying insects when they’re flying around me (even though I actually like a lot of flying insects, like bees and moths and stuff), but I am definitely not afraid of thunderstorms anymore.

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? >> I don’t buy CDs and I rarely buy records. I think the last record I bought was a deluxe copy of Pearl Jam’s Ten that I found at ALDI, of all places.

50: what’s an odd thing you collect? >> I don’t collect things.

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? >> ---

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? >> I don’t remember what memes came out this year.

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? >> I tried watching RHPS and Beetlejuice and didn’t like either one. Didn’t even finish them, in fact. Heathers was okay. Pulp Fiction was entertaining.

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? >> *shrug* What even is a true look of sadness.

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point? >> I have no idea.

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? >> Meh.

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? >> Listening to Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t really make me feel anything, but it’s fun to reenact sometimes, yeah. Especially in a car, Wayne’s World style.

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? >> ---

59: what’s your favorite myth? >> Oh god, that’s the worst question. I love so many different myths.

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? >> I can’t usually get into poetry, a lot of it is inscrutable in a way that’s just annoying to me instead of intriguing. There are some poems I like, though, but don’t ask me to remember them right now.

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received? >> ---

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? >> Not usually.

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? >> I’m fussy about my everything. I don’t own enough books or physical copies of music to really warrant being meticulous about their organisation, though.

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? >> Pale blue.

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with? >> I mean, sure, why not.

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? >> I used to have a really big one that someone on tumblr made for me a long time ago, lmao. That was good.

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? >> It depends on how I already felt. If I was having an okay day, then it’s just dreamy and ~goth~ and I will probably make 100 Silent Hill jokes. If I’m having an off day, then the fact that the Sun isn’t even out just makes me feel worse.

68: what’s winter like where you live? >> Cold.

69: what are your favorite board games? >> I don’t have one.

70: have you ever used a ouija board? >> No, never got a chance.

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea? >> Ginger, peppermint, etc.

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it? >> No.

73: what are some of your worst habits? >> Picking at my lips, mainly.

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. >> ---

75: tell us about your pets! >> ---

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t? >> No.

77: pink or yellow lemonade? >> Either is fine.

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? >> I can’t stand them.

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? >> ---

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? They are the colour of Nothing and I did not choose it. I rent. <-- “the colour of Nothing” is exactly what the fuck it is.

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. >> ---

82: are/were you good in school? >> I was great as a child. Once puberty (and trauma) hit everything went out the window.

83: what’s some of your favorite album art? >> I don’t even know where to begin with this... there are so many album covers I like, but I don’t feel like expending all my survey energy on one question, you dig...

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? >> No, I’m not planning on it.

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? >> Sure. Promethea, Sandman, Preacher, Doctor Strange, various Lovecraftian comics, etc.

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? >> I do like concept albums. Dream Theater has done some pretty interesting ones, and so did Vanden Plas with Christ 0.

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? >> ---

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? >> I had been reblogging a lot of art recently that had a similar look and feel to it, and I was wondering if they were related, like part of a certain art movement... and then I was watching a Youtube video about the movie Silence the other day and I accidentally found my answer in that video! It was the Baroque movement. I really like the feel of some of those pieces, particularly the darker-hued paintings.

89: are you close to your parents? >> No.

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. >> What can I possibly say about New Orleans that hasn’t already been said by more poetic minds than mine, tbh.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? >> I don’t plan on travelling this year, thanks to the whole pandemic business.

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? >> Er, somewhere in the middle...?

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most? >> I only have one hairstyle.

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? >> Somebody on one of the Discord servers I’m in.

95: what are your plans for this weekend? >> We’re going to the Wayland house for the first time since... early March, I think. Besides that, just the farmer’s market and grocery shopping as usual.

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? >> My computers run on SSDs, so it takes like 2 minutes to do system updates and I’m right back in business. No point in procrastinating that.

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? >> I get a different result every time I take a Myers-Briggs test (which makes sense to me). My Sun sign is Gemini. My Hogwarts house is Slytherin, but being complex-natured like any other human being I know that I straddle both Slytherin and Ravenclaw.

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? >> I don’t remember the last time I went on a true hike. I would love to do that at some point, but aside from the M6 trail (which is just... parallel to a highway and not all that scenic), all the good hiking places in this region require me to be driven to the location first.

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. >> Death Is the Road to Awe by Clint Mansell, Walker by Master Boot Record, Ich dachte schon by Selig, Little Black Submarines by the Black Keys, Nothing As It Seems by Pearl Jam.

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? >> No.

[theonyxpath]

Our next Kickstarter is for the Legendlore RPG, and starts on this Thursday, March the 12th, at 2pm Eastern US time!

From the Kickstarter:

Legendlore was originally a comic, first published by Arrow Comics in 1986 and since procured by Caliber Comics, about four people who fall through a Crossing into the Realm. The Realm is home to fantasy creatures from elves to dragons, and the characters discover they too have ‘fantasy powers’ – the jock becomes a Fighter, while the bookish one becomes a Wizard, and so on. They go on adventures and some of them eventually find their way back to Earth.

This is the basic premise of the Legendlore RPG. You Cross into the Realm, where you become a hairfoot Bard, or maybe an elven Sorcerer. You can change any characteristics you like. For example if you have hay fever and glasses, you choose if your Legendlore self keeps or drops those. Your identity might not always match your outward physique, but your Legendlore character does. We’ve also updated the 1980s setting so Realmborn characters represent all ethnicities, genders, and sexualities. No one in the Realm will bat an eyelash at your agender panromantic self.

This comes hard on the heels of our fantastic Kickstarter campaign for Hunter: The Vigil 2e, which ended up at over 500% of the funding goal and just a couple of folks away from 2000 backers! Truly, the Vigil was a rewarding one, and we’re thrilled so many folks came along with us on the hunt.

Even though we’re jumping right into the new KS for Legendlore, Hunter 2e‘s campaign left us with a number of Stretch Goal projects to continue with, and, for us, Legendlore is such a different kind of project that creatively it is a nice break in our recent string of Kickstarters in the Chronicles of Darkness and V5 game worlds.

Legendlore will also be our newest game line to use the d20 system for 5e fantasy gaming, along with Scarred Lands and (much-simplified) the Realms of Pugmire, so that also gives us a chance to stretch some system creative muscles we like to keep toned up.

If you’re a fan of D&D, etc. then I think you’ll find a lot of fresh spins you’ll enjoy in how Legendlore treats genre expectations and tropes while still providing a sweeping setting ripe for adventuring in. And if you aren’t so much, I still think you may find value in supporting developer Steffie de Vaan and her creative team’s 2020 take on this multi-decade saga and setting.

Like almost every one of our Kickstarters these days, Legendlore is pretty much finished in the writing stages, and backers will get sections of the finished text during the course of the KS campaign. Steffie is working with at least one Twitch streaming group to create actual play episodes showing how Legendlore plays at an actual gaming table, and we’re really looking forward to airing those (and they’ll be linked on the KS page).

So, anyone interested is going to have multiple chances to check this project out in a way that works for them, as we’ve been working to set up with each of our KSs. And, James Bell, our Kickstarter Concierge will be back for this KS to once again provide information and guidance, as well as his patented affable banter!

V5 Chicago Folio art by Felipe Gaona

Items From Our Monday Meeting:

In no particular order, which is a lot like our meeting style!

DriveThruRPG‘s massive GM’s Day Sale has another week to go, and hoo-boy are there a lot of our PDFs for sale over there! All of our game lines are represented, as well as offerings from the Community Content sites!

This was a Twitter note sent out during our meeting by Eddy Webb:

“Thanks to Justin Achilli, I got to be in a work meeting where we talk about the aesthetics of urine and throwing bears at the moon.”

Which is pretty much true.

Mighty Matt McElroy was scheduled to attend Emerald City convention this coming weekend, but the whole con was postponed due to concerns about the Coronavirus (COVID-19). He’d already had a bunch of meetings cancelled out from under him and was figuring on cancelling, when boop! the convention cancelled instead!

You folks all take care of yourselves out there! We’re a virtual office, so aren’t going to infect each other, and we don’t have anything currently being manufactured in China, so I’m just encouraging all our folks to stay in and work 20 hour days at their computers. (I’m kidding.) (But not really.)

Mirthful Mike Chaney wonders how that’s any different than his usual day, anyway?

They Came From Beneath the Sea! Heroic Land Dwellers art by Brian LeBlanc

We’re still getting folks asking about whether projects that come out as Advance PDFs will be released in PoD versions or if Backer PDFs will be sold to the public, along with PoDs, on DTRPG. First, we’re always glad to answer folks’ questions, and second, yes, our sales strategy has always been to deliver PDFs and PoDs of projects on DTRPG and so we have been releasing them that way for the whole time we’ve been in business.

The only caveats to that are projects we might do like printed Screens offered on Kickstarters, which DTRPG can’t create in PoD form, and recently with the V5 Cults of the Blood Gods Stretch Goal rewards which will only be available in PDF as the V5 managers at Modiphius do not want PoD versions made available.

We’ve scheduled a nice surprise for the backers of Exalted 3rd‘s Dragon-Blooded KS that should put some folks’s concerns to rest about getting their rewards. So keep your eyes open for that, DB backers!

I’m out next Monday, so Dixie Cochran will be in as our guest MMN blogger! Please be nice to her as she wrangles the rusty and arcane controls for this blog, and I’ll talk to you in two weeks about our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

On Thursday, March 12th at 2pm Eastern US Time we start the Kickstarter for Legendlore!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday the Onyx Pathcast Terrific Trio take a deep dive into Vampire: The Requiem 2e‘s Spilled Blood! Messy, but fun!

As always this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

We’ve got a stupendous number of shows on Twitch this week! Tune in for V5, Chronicles of Darkness, Scion, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition, Scarred Lands, MORE Vampire: The Masquerade, Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, even more Scarred Lands, Werewolf: The Forsaken and a third Vampire: The Masquerade game! We’ve even got Eddy Webb’s Workshop, which takes you through the development process of our books! Hail Ming!

A big shout-out to our three Vampire: The Masquerade games running this week, which have been running week-in, week-out! You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed! This Ming’s a psycho.

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find the following videos uploaded last week alone:

The Onyx Path News: https://youtu.be/zKo1h7bLPE0

Scion: Behind the Screen: https://youtu.be/v9Wo38rl5-Y

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/hxSbemynBLs

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale: https://youtu.be/gKAm-zGxTW4

Even more Scion: Behind the Screen: https://youtu.be/QDSIS_ClFbE

A special shout-out to the Scion: Behind the Screen series, which has provided a wonderful entry point for people new to the game! Flying blind on a rocket cycle!

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online! Spare me the madness.

In case you missed it last week, the Story Told RPG Podcast continue with their excellent Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition chronicle right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/the-78-laments-episode-3-riders-in-the-sky

And back once again, the Story Told‘s review of Trinity Continuum: Aeon http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-40-trinity-continuum-on-overview

Red Moon Roleplaying‘s V5 Cults of the Blood Gods “The Family” chronicle continues on their YouTube channel, Spotify, their website redmoonroleplaying.com and everywhere else good podcasts and New York City girls might be found! https://youtu.be/J1qCIhMPn7Q

Now, the tributes from Ardentia.

Even more shows from Occultists Anonymous for all you Mage: The Awakening fans out there!

Episode 86: Risky Business Wyrd the Seer prepares to found a legacy and shape her soul. Songbird makes contact with the Carthian Movement. Atratus meets with the Phantasm Society who have a daring plan.https://youtu.be/9XWLaxl_B-Y

Episode 87: New Lives Wyrd the Seer pays the price for tying herself to the Rookery. Songbird makes himself useful at the Arrow Armory. Atratus kills Emily Miller.https://youtu.be/ZZklb6-fC7o

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

Update: the devs are working on the updates for the roller in both Android and iOS – here is the rundown from them:

1) Redo the UI for system for android.  It will look the same as the current design.  My goal is to have something ready by Saturday to send out to the Facebook users, asking them if this fixes the issues.  This will be a beta type thing.  This will break several of the fancy dice.

2) If the above worked out and the android users give all the clear, we’ll redo the graphics system to fix the fancy dice that got broken.  We’ll do another android beta through Facebook.  This might take up to two weeks, as my schedule allows.

3) If everything worked well, we’ll release to android for real at that point.

4) Port all of the existing stuff to iOS and release on that.

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

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We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

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Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero AND Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

The massive GM Day’s Sale continues for another week with huge savings on PDFs from all of our game lines!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/rpg_gmsday.php

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we will be releasing the Advance PDF of Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed for Mage: The Awakening 2e AND the electronic, PDF, and physical book PoD releases of Haunting Shadows: the Wraith20th fiction anthology on DTRPG!

Conventions!

Assuming these conventions are not postponed due to plague, here is our current list:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

RUST (Working Title) (Scarred Lands)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

The Book of Endless Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Second Draft

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Editing

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Indexing

They Came From Beneath the Sea! (They Came From…!)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant – Awaiting replies to pings.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e (KS)

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Mummy 2 – Starting to contract the rest of it.

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Some finals in.

Deviant

Legendlore (KS) – KS prep of bits.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS)

TC: Aeon Terra Firma – Contracted.

WoD: Ghost Hunters (KS) – Cover in, getting rest of KS art set.

Tales of Aquatic Terror

Pirates Extra Adventure – Loboyko lined up for this one.

Scion Titanomachy – Contacting artists.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Ongoing.

Contagion Chronicle – With Josh, interior proof coming.

Vigil Watch – Ongoing.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

TCFBtS! Screen and Booklet

Ex3 Lunars – Yep, pretty much my March right here.

Scion Companion

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – Sending back to Aileen for errata input.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

Chicago Folio – Creating PoD files.

Pirates of Pugmire – Fixes in, working on cover.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – At WW for approvals .

Geist 2e fiction anthology – Backer PDF out to backers for errata.

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 – The Silence of Our Ancestors (Exalted 3rd Edition) – Backer errata being gathered.

Distant Worlds – Errata being gathered.

VtR2 Spilled Blood – Errata being input.

At Press

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Prepping to go live with PDF/PoD versions on DTRPG a week Wednesday (the 18th).

DR:E – Shipping to backers, PoD files uploaded.

DRE Screen – Shipping to backers.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

Memento Mori – PoD proof ordered.

Scion Mythical Denizens – PoD files uploaded.

Wraith20 Anthology – ePub, PDF, physical book versions all live Weds on DTRPG.

MtAw2 Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Advance PDF on sale this Weds on DTRPG.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and that’s certainly worth celebrating today as well! (Especially since here in the US we lost an hour from yesterday due to the return of our Daylight Savings Time. Typical).

Today, we heard of the death of actor Max von Sydow at 90. The man who played chess with death, acted in just so many roles in mainstream and genre films that I’m not listing them here, and, just for Matthew Dawkins, starred as Ming the Merciless.

[0100100100101101]

There’s a revolution afoot, and you will know it by the stripes.

Earlier this year, a group of Berkeley researchers released a pair of videos. In one, a horse trots behind a chain link fence. In the second video, the horse is suddenly sporting a zebra’s black-and-white pattern. The execution isn’t flawless, but the stripes fit the horse so neatly that it throws the equine family tree into chaos.

Turning a horse into a zebra is a nice stunt, but that’s not all it is. It is also a sign of the growing power of machine learning algorithms to rewrite reality. Other tinkerers, for example, have used the zebrafication tool to turn shots of black bears into believable photos of pandas, apples into oranges, and cats into dogs. A Redditor used a different machine learning algorithm to edit porn videos to feature the faces of celebrities. At a new startup called Lyrebird, machine learning experts are synthesizing convincing audio from one-minute samples of a person’s voice. And the engineers developing Adobe’s artificial intelligence platform, called Sensei, are infusing machine learning into a variety of groundbreaking video, photo, and audio editing tools. These projects are wildly different in origin and intent, yet they have one thing in common: They are producing artificial scenes and sounds that look stunningly close to actual footage of the physical world. Unlike earlier experiments with AI-generated media, these look and sound real.

The technologies underlying this shift will soon push us into new creative realms, amplifying the capabilities of today’s artists and elevating amateurs to the level of seasoned pros. We will search for new definitions of creativity that extend the umbrella to the output of machines. But this boom will have a dark side, too. Some AI-generated content will be used to deceive, kicking off fears of an avalanche of algorithmic fake news. Old debates about whether an image was doctored will give way to new ones about the pedigree of all kinds of content, including text. You’ll find yourself wondering, if you haven’t yet: What role did humans play, if any, in the creation of that album/TV series/clickbait article?

A world awash in AI-generated content is a classic case of a utopia that is also a dystopia. It’s messy, it’s beautiful, and it’s already here.

Currently there are two ways to produce audio or video that resembles the real world. The first is to use cameras and microphones to record a moment in time, such as the original Moon landing. The second is to leverage human talent, often at great expense, to commission a facsimile. So if the Moon descent had been a hoax, a skilled film team would have had to carefully stage Neil Armstrong’s lunar gambol. Machine learning algorithms now offer a third option, by letting anyone with a modicum of technical knowledge algorithmically remix existing content to generate new material.

At first, deep-learning-generated content wasn’t geared toward photorealism. Google’s Deep Dreams, released in 2015, was an early example of using deep learning to crank out psychedelic landscapes and many-eyed grotesques. In 2016, a popular photo editing app called Prisma used deep learning to power artistic photo filters, for example turning snapshots into an homage to Mondrian or Munch. The technique underlying Prisma is known as style transfer: take the style of one image (such as The Scream) and apply it to a second shot.

Now the algorithms powering style transfer are gaining precision, signalling the end of the Uncanny Valley—the sense of unease that realistic computer-generated humans typically elicit. In contrast to the previous somewhat crude effects, tricks like zebrafication are starting to fill in the Valley’s lower basin. Consider the work from Kavita Bala’s lab at Cornell, where deep learning can infuse one photo’s style, such as a twinkly nighttime ambience, into a snapshot of a drab metropolis—and fool human reviewers into thinking the composite place is real. Inspired by the potential of artificial intelligence to discern aesthetic qualities, Bala cofounded a company called Grokstyle around this idea. Say you admired the throw pillows on a friend’s couch or a magazine spread caught your eye. Feed Grokstyle’s algorithm an image, and it will surface similar objects with that look.

“What I like about these technologies is they are democratizing design and style,” Bala says. “I’m a technologist—I appreciate beauty and style but can’t produce it worth a damn. So this work makes it available to me. And there’s a joy in making it available to others, so people can play with beauty. Just because we are not gifted on this certain axis doesn’t mean we have to live in a dreary land.”

At Adobe, machine learning has been a part of the company’s creative products for well over a decade, but only recently has AI become transformative. In October engineers working on Sensei, the company’s set of AI technologies, showed off a prospective video editing tool called Adobe Cloak, which allows its user to seamlessly remove, say, a lamppost from a video clip—a task that would ordinarily be excruciating for an experienced human editor. Another experiment, called Project Puppetron, applies an artistic style to a video in real time. For example, it can take a live feed of a person and render him as a chatty bronze statue or a hand-drawn cartoon. “People can basically do a performance in front of a web cam or any camera and turn that into animation, in real time,” says Jon Brandt, senior principal scientist and director of Adobe Research. (Sensei’s experiments don’t always turn into commercial products.)

Machine learning makes these projects possible because it can understand the parts of a face or the difference between foreground and background better than previous approaches in computer vision. Sensei’s tools let artists work with concepts, rather than the raw material. “Photoshop is great at manipulating pixels, but what people are trying to do is manipulate the content that is represented by the pixels,” Brandt explains.

That’s a good thing. When artists no longer waste their time wrangling individual dots on a screen, their productivity increases, and perhaps also their ingenuity, says Brandt. “I am excited about the possibility of new art forms emerging, which I expect will be coming.”

But it’s not hard to see how this creative explosion could all go very wrong. For Yuanshun Yao, a University of Chicago graduate student, it was a fake video that set him on his recent project probing some of the dangers of machine learning. He had hit play on a recent clip of an AI-generated, very real-looking Barack Obama giving a speech, and got to thinking: Could he do a similar thing with text?

A text composition needs to be nearly perfect to deceive most readers, so he started with a forgiving target, fake online reviews for platforms like Yelp or Amazon. A review can be just a few sentences long, and readers don’t expect high-quality writing. So he and his colleagues designed a neural network that spat out Yelp-style blurbs of about five sentences each. Out came a bank of reviews that declared such things as, “Our favorite spot for sure!” and “I went with my brother and we had the vegetarian pasta and it was delicious.” He asked humans to then guess whether they were real or fake, and sure enough, the humans were often fooled.

With fake reviews costing around $10 to $50 each from micro-task marketplaces, Yao figured it was just a matter of time before a motivated engineer tried to automate the process, driving down the price and kicking off a plague of false reviews. (He also explored using neural nets to defend a platform against fake content, with some success.) “As far as we know there are not any such systems, yet,” Yao says. “But maybe in five or ten years, we will be surrounded by AI-generated stuff.” His next target? Generating convincing news articles.

Progress on videos may move faster. Hany Farid, an expert at detecting fake photos and videos and a professor at Dartmouth, worries about how fast viral content spreads, and how slow the verification process is. Farid imagines a near future in which a convincing fake video of President Trump ordering the total nuclear annihilation of North Korea goes viral and incites panic, like a recast War of the Worlds for the AI era. “I try not to make hysterical predictions, but I don’t think this is far-fetched,” he says. “This is in the realm of what’s possible today.”

Fake Trump speeches are already circulating on the internet, a product of Lyrebird, the voice synthesis startup—though in the audio clips the company has shared with the public, Trump keeps his finger off the button, limiting himself to praising Lyrebird. Jose Sotelo, the company’s cofounder and CEO, argues that the technology is inevitable, so he and his colleagues might as well be the ones to do it, with ethical guidelines in place. He believes that the best defense, for now, is raising awareness of what machine learning is capable of. “If you were to see a picture of me on the moon, you would think it’s probably some image editing software,” Sotelo says. “But if you hear convincing audio of your best friend saying bad things about you, you might get worried. It’s a really new technology and a really challenging problem.”

Likely nothing can stop the coming wave of AI-generated content—if we even wanted to. At its worst, scammers and political operatives will deploy machine learning algorithms to generate untold volumes of misinformation. Because social networks selectively transmit the most attention-grabbing content, these systems’ output will evolve to be maximally likeable, clickable, and shareable.

But at its best, AI-generated content is likely to heal our social fabric in as many ways as it may rend it. Sotelo of Lyrebird dreams of how his company’s technology could restore speech to people who have lost their voice to diseases such as ALS or cancer. That horse-to-zebra video out of Berkeley? It was a side effect of work to improve how we train self-driving cars. Often, driving software is trained in virtual environments first, but a world like Grand Theft Auto only roughly resembles reality. The zebrafication algorithm was designed to shrink the distance between the virtual environment and the real world, ultimately making self-driving cars safer.

These are the two edges of the AI sword. As it improves, it mimics human actions more and more closely. Eventually, it has no choice but to become all too human: capable of good and evil in equal measure.

[armsinthewronghands]

Avonelle Wing’s “Mad Mystics” Thread

https://plus.google.com/100315432818170150233/posts/eb9ZGxgWz8m

Avonelle Wing (Avie) Public Nov 14, 2016 This has been a very clarifying year for me.

Shortly after +Living Games Conference, I was in a conference with a fellow key-noter where the phrase "tending our mad mystics" got stuck in my head. and it stayed there.

I've been rolling the idea around and around in my head.

Along with my sudden burst of motion where hygiene boxes  at our conventions are concerned, I've been sorting out what parts of our community I consider the most vital, the most vulnerable, the most in need of my energy and protection.

I had a conversation with +Mark Diaz Truman before Gen Con, right after The Post, where he infuriated me by dividing my world into "my constituency" and "his constituency". but again, he forced me to clarify my position, and to rethink my actions, my position, my purpose.  (Mark and I have fought viciously a couple of times since The Post. Our current peace has been hard-won and isn't because I think he has made right on the fallout of The Post, so please don't misinterpret me acknowledging his pushing me to be better as anything other than that.)

Then, I went to Hive (hive.org) - while it was nothing like I thought it would be, it was also clarifying and galvanizing.

Before Hive, I told +darren watts that one of my panels for this year's Metatopia would be "Tending Our Mad Mystics..." and Vinny said "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???"

after wrangling back and forth, I was able to state clearly that our community excommunicates people with big, messy, inconvenient or uncomfortable emotion, with a disproportionate burden placed on women to keep their reactions tidy.

And if our community is going to be truly intersectional and to support all gamers (game designers, game artists, game professionals, game verbers), that we had better start building better responses and developing better mechanisms for coping and redirecting the damage inflicted by a mad mystic, and fast.

At Hive, I was able to state clearly that my life's work is to redistribute entrenched, toxic power structures to protect the most vulnerable and most under-served of our community. That includes our mad mystics especially.

In an earlier post tonight, I mentioned that I saw an online community burned to the ground - it went down in flames because there wasn't anybody who was prepared to catch and redirect the energy behind the fury, and to help us navigate the field of hurt feelings, backlash, *shame* and conflict that happened during and after that scorching. We weren't any good at tending our mad mystics.

Since then, I've been able to help ease at least one community through the fraught early days and to sidestep the "BUT MY FEELINGS ARE BIG AND THEY HURT!!" test to validate the feelings and put responsibility back onto the person feeling them. It's terribly important for us to learn how to support somebody who is emotionally compromised, and to help them interact with the world in a way that protects them and the possible recipients of that energy.

Treating our mad mystics like damaged goods and pushing them out the door abandons our most vulnerable community members, and that isn't acceptable to me. It sets a precedent for punishment over rehabilitation, for excommunication over reconciliation. That is not acceptable.

What does a mystic do? They connect to the divine. They see the world in ways the rest of us don't. They're unbridled joy and enthusiasm when they aren't a whirling vortex of other emotions. They test us and push us to do better, to be better, to be more patient and more thoughtful. They bring an intrinsic value to my world, and the idea of them being shut out by the community because we're not willing to learn how to work with them devastates me.

(This thread WILL be tightly moderated. No picking fights with me. I'm not in the mood for anybody unloading their baggage onto me.) 54 plus ones 54 no shares Shared publicly•View activity Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +10 Somebody has asked me if MDT is a mad mystic in this context.

No, this post isn't about him, even though I mentioned him as another influence in my path. He pushed me to clarify my position on who my "constituency" is, if we're carving the world up into "my problem" and "not my problem". (as if. Anybody who knows me knows that isn't my style.)  

This post is about everybody who gets shamed for mental illness or processing disorders. Mark's post was something else and maybe one day I'll be ready to talk about THAT in public, but I doubt it. Nov 14, 2016 Christo Meid's profile photo Christo Meid +2 Probably I'm tired --- I usually understand your posts right away, but I'm not sure who exactly fits into the category of mad mystics. I'm thinking the mystics are emotional, creative types, who by their nature might periodically hurt others obliviously with their outbursts, but then they probably apologize when the outburst passes.  And yet in this community, excommunication happens easier than accepting apologies? I hope I'm getting at least part of this right... Nov 14, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +1 that's the overall gist of it, yes. Nov 14, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +1 I see where the confusion came in. I rewrote the section that starts with "And if our community is going to be truly intersectional" to clarify with some verbs and a complete thought. I think I'm the tired one here. Nov 14, 2016 Misha B's profile photo Misha B +2 Sub Nov 14, 2016 Gretchen S.'s profile photo Gretchen S. +1 I wish to subscribe to this newsletter. Nov 14, 2016 Jason Pitre's profile photo Jason Pitre +1 . Nov 14, 2016 Cam Banks's profile photo Cam Banks +1 Potent. Nov 14, 2016 Chris Shaffer's profile photo Chris Shaffer +1 . Nov 14, 2016 Rob Donoghue's profile photo Rob Donoghue +2 Pre coffee, but that have been wrestling with some things adjacent to this, so very much listening. Nov 15, 2016 Josh T Jordan's profile photo Josh T Jordan +3 As a mentally ill creative person of faith, I am listening with interest. Nov 15, 2016 Anna Kreider's profile photo Anna Kreider +7 So I'm confused by "coping and redirecting the damage caused by a mad mystic", because on the one hand it sounds like you want to care for mad mystics as a vulnerable population with valuable contributions to make, but on the other hand saying that you need to redirect their energy to prevent damage sounds like the sort of rhetoric that is used to shame and excommunicate them in the first place.

Am I misunderstanding? Because tbh, as a mentally ill creator who got pushed out of doing something I love because it was unsafe for me to continue, it hurts hearing things that sound like the rhetoric that was used against me. But I know I'm in a sensitive place right now. Nov 15, 2016 William Nichols's profile photo William Nichols . Nov 15, 2016 Rob Donoghue's profile photo Rob Donoghue +3 The rhetoric is going to be tricky, because walking the line between "I acknowledge harm has been done/is being done" and "I don't want to simply excommunicate/demonize perpetrators" is hard.  We have no shortage of examples of both denying harm and zero tolerance, so there is no way that seeking an alternative is not going to touch live nerves. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +5 +Anna Kreider :  As someone with skin in the game, I don't percieve it that way (but I understand why you feel cagey about it).

I think most tactics (including validation) can be used in bad faith in order to silence someone.  But I 100% don't believe that that's what Avie is doing, and I think that, in the long run, gaining a more complex understanding of human interaction (and of humanity) is a good thing. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +2 When Avie is talking about "mad mystics," I don't think she's talking about everyone who acts in a way that causes other people hurt.  She's not talking about schoolyard bullies, or people who make calculated PR moves in order to gain status at someone else's expense, or everyone who's having a shitty day and says something that they probably shouldn't, etc. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +3 In other words, you know a mad mystic when you see one, and they are largely people who know that they are "crazy" and they censor themselves a lot because they are profoundly invalidated by their environments.

For example:  I am seriously considering just deleting this entire chain of posts because I have a hard time telling if I'm being crazy or being crazy like a fox. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +6 If you think "well it's really hard to find hard-and-fast rules," then I also think you're right, because these people don't fit into society well, and there's a reason why we all went to the madhouse or the convent or lived on the tops of mountains and spoke only words of dire prophecy or whatever.

I know that people who can't fit into neat categories or be dealt with by using extremely clear-cut rules make gamers and lawyers sad but

this is an art and not a science. Nov 15, 2016 Josh T Jordan's profile photo Josh T Jordan +5 +Dymphna C. Thank you. I feel like this sums up how I feel, even though I think I present myself as fairly high functioning. I can see the madhouse from here. I can see the mountaintop from here. And if I have a bad month of self destruction, I hope my friends will still be my friends at the end of it. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +4 +Anna Kreider - It isn't my intention to hurt you. In fact, I want the people around me to get better at handling anger and hurt, and to learn to listen, not to take it personally when it isn't personal. I can't change your past path, but maybe I can help make an easier path for the next person to come along.

+Dymphna C. does a good job of capture the essence of what our roundtable on the topic resolved before I got called away by an emergency at Metatopia.

It is absolutely NOT my intention to silence anybody; I want to validate in healthy ways, to listen and learn what there is to learn, and apply that learning productively. I feel like being better about listening would reduce the damage done by people who are expressing well-earned anger to themselves and their connections.

If we create filters for receiving and processing anger and/or hurt, or other "crazy" experiences, we support people having those experiences rather than "othering" them.

Is that making any sense? If we don't practice, and don't practice mindfully, we won't ever get better at it. (for some value of 'it' covered above.)

Nov 15, 2016 Anna Kreider's profile photo Anna Kreider +1 I hear you. Thank you for taking time to clarify. Nov 15, 2016 Eric Duncan (Dragonsong)'s profile photo Eric Duncan (Dragonsong) . Nov 15, 2016 Jay Treat's profile photo Jay Treat . Nov 15, 2016 Brie “Brie” Sheldon's profile photo Brie “Brie” Sheldon . Nov 15, 2016 J Li's profile photo J Li +13 Having been pushed out of a community for being a mad mystic, this resonates with me.  I have done harm with emotional outbursts-- but usually it was the type of harm that can be transmuted with processing skill.

As a result, I really hold that communities have the responsibility to gain that processing skill.

It's a neurotype privilege differential.  Everyone reacts when hurt, and does something nonstandard-- shouting, accusing, moping, grieving, talking about their feelings, changing the energy level, etc.  Most communities are vastly more equipped to handle the neurotypical people's responses than neurodiverse people's responses.  This results in a situation in which neurotypicals are "allowed" to have a wider, healthier, and more complete range of feelings than others.

Learning to tend your mad mystics becomes a matter of handicap access.  Is this a community that I can interact to a normal degree in because there are accommodations if I am disrupted to a normal degree (either by outside circumstances or the community itself)?

Part of the difficulty for me is that, prior to community I was pushed out of, I belonged to a community of exclusively mad mystics.  We were all mad in different ways.  But we had elaborate scaffolding to support how all of our unique components interacted; and a lot of automatic protocols on coordinating about needs without making assumptions or judgments.

It was, therefore, a deep culture shock to land in a place that didn't have those things.  That moments of disruption, instead of prompting everyone into an opportunity for collaboration and closeness, were actually a cliff to fall off of alone.

The other day, I accidentally fell off of one of those cliffs (a very short one) with a lovely and influential designer in our community.  Even though the differential was minor and ultimately well repaired, the event shook me deeply, as it was the first time I'd felt so unsafe in this community.  Suddenly, all around me, I started to see cliffs instead of friends for a while.

The point is that we need to be very careful.  Refusal to talk about or negotiate social conflict can either be a healthy act of boundary setting, or a profound act of neurotype privilege.

How do you tell a mad mystic from an asshole?

My specific advice is that, if someone does something that bothers you, try to communicate about it ONCE.  A responsible mad mystic will immediately respond to try to stop hurting you.  Depending on what's up with that individual, we may or may not find the path the first time, and if it's really complicated we may need your help, but we know what to do to get started.  

An actual asshole will brush off your concerns.

Considerateness is actually pretty universal across neurotype.  Access to data about how to interface with you is not.  By giving your mad mystics the data we need, you give us the chance to be considerate-- and thereby also give the relationship the chance to connect based on what we have in common instead of what sets us apart. Nov 15, 2016 Mark Richardson's profile photo Mark Richardson . Nov 15, 2016 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +3 If the line between a "mad mystic" and a "harassing broken stair bullies" is the mystic addresses your concerns and admits their mistake, I've never seen a mad mystic. Just people who have friends who value their other contributions and so don't admit it in public and so have a double-standard about what is "acceptable behavior" because they value them more than their victims do. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) There are other lines too. I don't  think it's as simple as recognizing and acknowledging harm when harm has occurred. Nov 15, 2016 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +2 No matter what the lines are I think the failure of anyone to articulate those lines before supporting said Mystic leaves victims of the Mad Mystic looking for all the world like they are being judged by a double-standard. And until someone articulates those lines clearly, they functionally are--because the victim can follow all the rules a community articulates and still be attacked. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +4 The necessity to respond compassionately and with grace when faced with the powerful emotions of somebody who has dysregulated or is experiencing some other dissonance IS a double standard. Absolutely.

It sucks to be implacable when somebody's having strong emotions about, at or to you. But it's what adults and responsible community members do.

The hope is that if I'm able to be a steady presence today when somebody is a whirlwind of emotion, they might be able to anchor me and/or offer forgiveness for a sharp tone or harsh rebuke at a later time when I'm not MY best self. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +5 Frankly, the internet makes it SO MUCH easier for people to tear into each other and be utterly vile. The same people, in person, would find it much harder to do the same sort of damage.

It's easier to respond with fury and vitriol, in my experience, when somebody is typing at me than it is when they are clearly experiencing distress in my presence.

Internet anger is so very toxic and learning to stop and go do something that isn't connected to a keyboard is a key element to learning to respond appropriately when somebody is causing undue harm. Nov 15, 2016 Anna Kreider's profile photo Anna Kreider +8 +Avonelle Wing​ there's a reason why I wrote about acceptable versus unacceptable expressions of anger about marginalization. As mentally ill people, we need to be accountable to not harm others to the extent that we are capable.

But there are people who aren't okay with ANY expression of anger, however righteous, careful, moderated, or responsibly directed. And that's a problem. Nov 15, 2016 Jay Treat's profile photo Jay Treat +1 I want to weigh in, because I have lots of feelings about things being discussed here, but I'm reluctant to because the subject is sensitive and I'm sure I don't fully understand it. Can Avie or others provide concrete examples, preferably fictional? Nov 15, 2016 Oli Jeffery's profile photo Oli Jeffery . Nov 15, 2016 Chloe CD's profile photo Chloe CD . Nov 15, 2016 Blair Fitzpatrick's profile photo Blair Fitzpatrick +7 I'm mentally ill, and I find the label "mad mystics" in poor taste to say the least; dealing with these conditions is not some new-age "prestige class." Nov 15, 2016 Tobias Strauss's profile photo Tobias Strauss +5 +Blair Fitzpatrick is right.  The language here is incredibly offensive to me.  I'm not someone's conduit to god because I have a medical condition.  And I don't want special delicate princess treatment for it.

I don't have the spoons to engage in this right now beyond that. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) I'll work on better language. Message received. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +1 Also, I leave for  a con tmw. So I'm closing comments until I'm back and can moderate responsibly.