@GcL Please note that the purpose of NAB is for "topics that should be opt-in, not opt-out". Your preference not to have this topic discussed has been noted and hence moved to NAB. However it is not appropriate to attempt to shutdown sensitive conversations in a room specifically dedicated to them.
@Derpy I just keep getting mentions of various different plots set in the broadly same, and was wondering if the whole concept just caught on in the fandom very strongly.
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Probably. But keep in mind that the "fandom" doesn't actually exist. As the video someone posted time ago probably hinted... the fandom is actually an agglomerate of smaller groups often fighting each others.
@Derpy Aren't fandoms always infighting? At least that's how it felt among fans of WoD, fans of Exalted, fans of Eclipse Phase, and when observing the fandom of football (soccer).
Yep, but one thing is Horde VS Alliance fighting in WoW.... and one thing is MLP fandom splitting.
Here the fights aren't about "Best Pony" or "Equestria Girl is great / bad".
Those exist, mind you... but are just the tip of the iceberg.
The actual problems should be clear just by looking at the video preview picture.
And even avoiding that side, there is a whole set of fiction that is basically creepypasta with ponies. Violent, gore filled creepypasta. There is a reason if I avoid fan fiction as a general rule.
@trogdor I can live with it in some specific cases. A tale of a cursed Oblivion mod could be funny. Some start to feel uncanny - see many Pokemon fictions. Others... just plain wrong.
Ben Drowned is basically a story of a cursed cartridge and a series of odd events tied to a playthru, trying to imply that the previous owner of the cart died "drowned".
Some people genuinely enjoy horror, creepiness and the like. If people reading those are having fun, what's being offered - declaring them having bad wrong fun and clicking the gauntlet to unmake that? (Now, I do remember Jenny pointing out something like the Sturgeon's Law about them, but that's another issue entirely.)
(cont. from above) The story has little to do with the original topic (Zelda games), but it manages to "stand on its feet" in a way. It somehow even show "respect" for the original game - the game isn't evil, the curse is.
Now, for comparison, let's look at some MLP "pastas". The problem there is not the "horror story", it is the ultra-gore. There is a full set of stories **AND ANIMATIONS** that try to turn MLP into Happy Tree Friends.
@trogdor oh, but that would fail one of the purposes of the Dark Side.
Trying to get kids into watching those animations on youtube and get traumatized.
I mean, I suspect that the sole purpose Smile HD was given that name is to try to trick young youtube users into clicking on it thinking it was a remix of Pinkie's Smile song from the actual show.
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica anyway, back to your original question, I should add that basically Snowdrop is one of the few fiction than I watched and liked.
(obviously excluding short fan movies and animations like the one I posted before)
Probably a combination of visuals with voicing chosen.
Mid-episode mentions of sight/eyes made me think either that she has vision problems (initially, before rewinding), or that the episode is setting up something ominous.
There is nothing "ominous" if by that you mean creepy, just a tale of someone struggling to be accepted because they wasn't as lucky as other healthy people.
Nothing like that, don't worry. The only "ouch" part would be realizing that since Luna probably ended up banished soon afterward this event, her words "never ever get to say goodbye" have a special bittersweet meaning in that ending scene.
Remember - the ending scene takes place a thousand years later
It is clear if you saw the show but I'm not sure it will for someone who isn't as quite familiar with it
@Derpy What's with Luna looking angry at the presentation?
@Derpy Yeah, that was the other moment I rewinded back to avoid potential misunderstanding. Because the scene looked like mourning an early demise rather than celebrating a proper-length life that happened a long time ago.
@Derpy I don't have the necessary knowledge of the surrounding situation to evaluate that.
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica because that scene has to take place before she turns into Nightmare Moon, and she turns into Nightmare Moon because she thought the ponies liked Celestia more.
> Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies. But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night. One fateful day, the younger u…
as you can see, actually that actually fits the overall plot. You could see that she was already somehow annoyed at her sister getting al the attentions and doing all the talk.
More specifically, you will notice that Luna suddenly changes expression when Snowdrop says "Celebrating spring is good but winter can't be all bad if it gives us this. It may be cold and dark but that doesn't mean there isn't any good to it"
> Maybe winter is sad that everypony doesn't like it
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica No need to thank me. BTW, probably this will also give you a rough idea about what the "curse of immortality" theme that sometime fans mentions is about.
Not that it is something specific to MLP in the first place
@AncientSwordRage yeah, looks like it can be deleted. I went to a question i've asked and didn't select an answer and it looks like i can delete. But you bet if it's deleted, i'm voting to undelete.
@Derpy Oh, the idea that the big leadership lives very long, and that Twi is destined to live long too, was indeed something that got brought up in discussions I've been in. Though I think the 'curse' angle is overhyped, possibly due to being a sort of 'sour grapes' thing people tell themselves.
This was made in 2014, and even yet the theme wasn't that new.
The idea that Twily is cursed with alicorn basically came as soon as she was turned into one.
In the show, alicorn seem to be either immortal or at least very long lived to the point of seeming immortal to others.
Now, take the show progression
First you have this purple pony be Celestia student, sent to another city where she finds real friends for the first time.
Slowly your actions turn this pony in what will be the Princess of Friendship.
You notice that this will mean that basically she will outlive (almost) everyone she knows.
And not by a few years... nope, we are talking centuries. The Princess of Friendship will have time to make friends, lose them, make other friends, lose those too....
Now... if this was just a very-probable headcanon... one could easily forget that.
But there is a problem. Thanks to the old staff leaving the show and the new one wanting to close the story probably without the required insight in the original plan.... they choose the easy out option
So, basically, this whole situation is made cannon in the last episode.
@Derpy Well yeah, that's the usual implication. But I think people tend to exaggerate the curse value, and underestimate minds' ability to adapt, to such things. I've outlived some people of my family I knew all life; I've seen friends drift apart into zero contact (effectively as lost as someone outlived); I don't see why combining those two is supposed to be any more of a curse than normal life is.
(Now, the first time I realised I'm enjoying the music of someone younger than me - that was disorienting the first time, but got normal real quick.)
it is not like she asked to be made into the new Princess of all Equestria. Up to the end of the show, she was an artificially made alicorn at best... not born as an alicorn, given the powers of one, you could think she didn't share the long life of natural alicorns.
She was the "Princess of Friendship", which basically was a made up title to give her some status so that she had some autority in going around and tell ponies that (to quote the Hitchhiker guide intro) maybe world would be a better place if everyone was a little nice to others.
Last episode, they have to close up the story so suddenly Celestia and Luna retire and with a big "Congrats, Twily, you won Celestia's Chocolate Factory!" she finds herself to have to take the place of BOTH sisters.
Which, btw, by cannon means that she wouldn't even have time to sleep.
Do you notice how all the other characters (except Spike) do indeed look old in this fast-forward scene from the last episode?
And did I mention that she had to move back to Canterlot because of the new responsibilities she won at Celestia's lottery? Meaning that she has little to no time to actually see her friends?
Recently it's been a room that's more-or-less full time discussion about MLP (and sometimes tangentially related topics), which is fine and something I love us having a space for, but it probably undermines its availability as an overflow room to shift into for serious topics. It also undermines its availability as an overflow room to move messages into, so as to shift the whole conversation, if it's highly likely those messages get interleaved into existing conversations.
My recollection is NAB getting used less often than this, and for actual overflowed conversations.
Feels like we need this to become TRPG General 2, and for a new NAB. Or for this to re-become the overflow room that's used for overflow topics, with a new TRPG General 2 created as a home for, among other things, extensive conversations about ponies.
(Which, again, are not themselves the issue—I don't want anyone, Derpy included, to feel bad about those conversations. Just that them happening so reliably in this specific space might be an issue.)
@Rubiksmoose I think the recent comment on our current meta discussion needs a good response from a mod. I know what I want to say, and if you read the comment you probably know what I want to say, and then we both know I shouldn't say anything else.
For the record, I chat here about FiM, and Ordinal Markup, and Doom, and the like, and not in the Sugarcube Corner or the like, because I would be overwhelmed by a full-depth dive into those channels. About a half-dozen participants and an expectation of incomplete familiarity with all the canons is the level at which I consider myself capable of participating in a conversation meaningfully.
I think the room can serve both purposes. I'm not totally seeing an issue unless the folks who congregate here normally are very concerned about the intrusions.
To be clear my concern is along the lines of "maybe we need to grow from 1 room + 1 overflow, to 2 rooms + 1 overflow?", so as to better facilitate these conversations while also better facilitating ourselves still having an overflow channel
@Derpy No, no! That wasn't the gist as I understood it and I frankly love having a place for this kind of discussion here. Not least because I'm tracking enough chats as it is that tracking the actual pony chatroom is likely not going to happen
@NautArch Well, like, I can't really invite someone to talk with me over in NAB about something so well when it's already presently engaged—and it being so frequently used as to be engaged the majority of the time is an issue.
@doppelgreener i can see that. We do handle a lot of cross conversation on both channels, but having a dedicated opt-in room might be a real improvement
It was originally Not A Bar because it was a place for casually unkind venting of a kind I'm told happens at bars after work.
Since then it's been used for volume overflow (if one topic is choking out others in the main chat), sharing links that aren't directly related to TRPGs but users might find interesting, and more recently it's been more formalized as an opt-in/overflow space.
But at the same time it's retained elements of all its previous applications; ponies are an overlap of "one topic choking out others" and "interesting non-TRPG links."
Right now, it looks to me like we need a "ponies/miscellany" chat and an "overflowed from main" chat.
Should we leave NAB as NAB, and make a new TRPG Overflow room that is the new "opt-in space we move to when it needs to be separate from (either) main chat"?
NAB continues being used the way it's currently being used (Derpy, ponies, all welcome) and ceases to be the spot we move difficult conversations into, or otherwise invite people into when we want to talk about it in a separate space
@NautArch Well, while I certainly value the thoughts and opinions of those who have made a culture in here, we should also consider how the other purpose is being served or not.
My appologies btw if messages come across garbled. Typing to sliced open finger is hard and I'm trying out voice at times.
@Rubiksmoose True, but my thought was this was the purpose of the room originally, but others have been active in it for other topics. Those topics now constitute the majority of activity here, so their considerations is paramount for me.
I feel like that's the path of least disruption, since it preserves the continuity of the ongoing conversations here; overflow conversations are, by their nature, non-contiguous, and thus more amenable to changing their destination space. But yes, I'd like to hear @Derpy, in particular, weigh in on this because they've put in so much work on room culture recently.
@NautArch [heavily bruised but otherwise mostly dashing actor] "I'm not a fight club, but I play one on TV!" [spits out a tooth into a glass of water, then takes a sip from it]
@NautArch Definitely opinions are important and wanted to reiterate that. Though I don't want to put Derpy on the spot either if they are uncomfortable. So if @Derpy you wanted to stay out or don't have the spoons, feel free to say so.
On the flip side, it sounds like at least some think that a new place would be better for opt-in regardless of whether the culture here would permit it. And I'm inclined to agree with that at the moment. It's hard to have an opt-in only channel that also hosts other fun stuff that people may want to follow and hang out here for.
@Rubiksmoose I think we ran straight into that last night. Someone said a conversation isn't even appropriate for NAB, which I took to mean worse things than just "well NAB is a place I like to hang out"—I took it to mean "this topic is so objectionable that we don't even want to hear about it in the room where we talk about things people might not want to hear about".
(I'm not sure what they meant, and I still really don't like what happened or what was said to me, but I'm being generous here with potential intentions.)
@NautArch @Rubiksmoose I mean, I am just a "guest" there. Found this room many moons ago, noticed that you are a lot nicer than ... the C++ Lounge for example ... and so I started chatting here too. What I mean is that I am perfectly fine with you using the room for what you wish, I don't have any pretense or claim on it. As I said, I have the other room if I need to move topics there, it is not like I can't manage.
@Derpy You've been around long enough that I think you've got squatter's rights, at the very least. We're asking for your input, that means we think your presence is valid.
@Derpy I would like you to remain comfortable as a guest here, and I'm very much inclined toward the approach of creating a new, separate overflow room and removing this room's designation as the go-to overflow room.
@doppelgreener And there may still be conversations that trend that way. I'm honestly not sure what to do when someone pushes the stop button here in NAB. But I think if something starts off in Main and comes to NAB. WHomever didn't want it in Main, should not come into NAB after.
@doppelgreener And we had a similar case a bit earlier where someone said (paraphrasing) I hang out here and I'm unhappy with this discussion that was moved here (with some additional layers that aren't relevant to this particular discussion.
@Rubiksmoose Yes, the overflow room needs to not be a default hangout. Like a meeting room at work. If it's just a room where a bunch of people are chilling out all the time, it isn't really a meeting room anymore.
@NautArch Unfortunately the Stack's handed us a bad hand with that particular mechanic, because everybody whose message gets moved, gets an anonymous invite to the chat it was moved to.
@doppelgreener This isn't a bad assessment. But people tend to congregate on their own as what happened here. I don't want to get into the habit of generating new rooms each time a room becomes something new. But I'm also not totally against that yet.
@Rubiksmoose This right here is why I think we need an well-defined opt in topic room not meant for just hanging out in (unless you want to consent to whatever may come in). The topic being discussed at that time was perfectly appropriate as an opt in topic.
@ThomasMarkov The problem I had was not with that topic perse was that it had crossed the line into arguing against someone directly who had wanted the conversation moved. It's not really fair to call it opt-in when people are talking about you and what you said. That's why I stopped it.
Speaking purely personally I don't love that the topic of a room changed such that we need to create a new room to serve the original purpose and would prefer that we created a dedicated space for those that use this room for other conversations.
@BESW I get that - I just wanted to point out that the "RPG crew" probably knows what this room was intended for far better than I do, so I am fine with request to move to some other place, be that a new room here, my room over at SciFi and so on.
However I also understand that I am not one of the regular users and won't object if we transition to this room being for the things it is being used for and creating a new overflow space.
@Derpy To be perfectly clear here, this isn't a "you" thing either. Plenty of people have used this space recently for lighthearted overflow and hang out for this reason.
@Rubiksmoose (this is what BESW refers to, I think, when saying Derpy's done work on room culture — it's become what it is, which is a fine thing to be)
@ThomasMarkov I think it was originally the first. But there seems to be basically universal agreement that the two rooms purposes are incompatible therefore we have moved on to the second.
@linksassin That's what Im seeing too. Which seems to be a pretty trivial question. Just make them new room and it shouldnt matter which room gets which purpose.
@ThomasMarkov That's what I'd think. Though I do think the least disruptive thing would be a new room with the opt-in purpose. Just because this room has alrready changed into something different and I think it is fine to leave it as such. Also, creating a new room means people have to intentionally join it anew. There is no risk of errant hang-outers.
I think the question has changed over the course of this conversation, and has gone through: 1. should we change something? - yes 2. do we need an overflow space still? - probably yes 3. which room will be the overflow space, and what happens to this room in regards to that? — we seem to be converging on "a totally new room, and NAB stays the same and ceases to be the designated overflow space" because it's undisruptive and embraces what the NAB has become.
@ThomasMarkov There is always a risk in moving communities to a new space. It can change the visibility and patterns of the space and has the potential to be disruptive in non-obvious ways. What I'm trying to assess it whether the risk of harm to the community using this room is less disruptive than changing the room purposes.
@ThomasMarkov Agreed. It's just feels non-intuitive to me to change the purpose of a room and create another room with the original purpose. But that is purely a process thing and no one is harmed by it.
@linksassin valid, though also "everyone, pack up your bags, we're demolishing this house, and you need to go live in this other, completely identical house over there instead" is weird to ask
@linksassin I'm inclined to say yes—it has gone from the kind of after-work bar where people vent, to the kind of after-work bar where people chill out and talk about their favourite TV shows.
I suggest: - This room stays named Not a Bar, but since the name is less important, it's free to drift as seems appropriate/funny. - The new room doesn't use Bar or Not-A nomenclature, so as to avoid confusion.
The new room's going to be its own place and anyone arriving later might not get the in-joke
@ThomasMarkov i think we've learned from Mos Eisley that if you name something after a pit of scum and villainy, that's what you get, so let's avoid that one lol
@doppelgreener Sounds like a reasonable suggestion. We probably also need to select new room owners for this room and the remaining chatizens can name it as they please.
Sounds like we are all in agreement to create a new overflow room tentatively named "Here There Be Dragons". Once separated each room can determine its room owners and exact purpose independently.
@NautArch the laser game was good. The nes port.... I consider myself lucky. I lived my childhod looking for a shop that sold it, thinking it was good. IT WASN'T - I was saved and didn't had to spend money on that. Really, it is horrible, trust me.
@Derpy it's zero obligation, just a tool for keeping things orderly. You're not on call for it. Mainly, it'd let you kick people being jerks about ponies, and enable you to update the room title/description/tag for kicks.
It was something of a relationship activity for me and my then-SO but life started throwing so many other time sinks at us we were a few seasons behind without even trying to "conserve" episodes
@Derpy yeah I actually like being able to go to as few channels as possible and still being able to see you talking about,.. whatever the newest thing you bring here happens to be :)
XD
and I don't want to track more than a couple or so rooms
not that I am against adding another one which would be another sort of secondary room to RPG gen either
