MythicFox @mythicfox@vulpine.club

Okay, so, I just flew here from snouts and boy are my arms tired.

So now that half of you have wandered off, eyes rolling, here's my half-assed intro post.

I've been in the fandom for 20+ years, having gotten my start on Yiffnet back in the day. I'm bad at networking or making friends, so don't be surprised if, when we start following each other, I just post tiny little snippets of things at you for a while for fear of coming across as weird. *looks around* Well, weird for this place.

I'm also a writer, and have been for a long time. I've written a bunch of furry cyberpunk stuff, most of which is up on my FA and SoFurry pages and some of which has seen print (including a short story in Fang 9 that won a Leo Award).

I've also done some RPG freelancing for White Wolf/Onyx Path over the years. Most of my work has been for the Trinity Continuum: Æon line, but I've also worked on a couple of Chronicles of Darkness Night Horrors books and some Werewolf: The Apocalypse stuff.

I'm also a dedicated gamer, and I've run a bunch of stuff over the years. There's a blog listed in my profile where I have write-ups of far too many gaming sessions.

I have no clue what else to put here. So, if anyone's got any questions, ask.

It doesn't help much that I often have trouble keeping track of people when I only talk to them online (which was darn near everyone I knew, even before the pandemic). I'll talk to someone, and it'll be a bad time, and I'll make a note to get back to them later and the next thing I know it's been a couple of weeks and I haven't said anything.

Exacerbating the problem is the near-constant fear that I get on peoples' nerves and that if they really wanted to hear from me they'd be reaching out instead of me. Intellectually I know it's not as simple as that, but I can't help it.

Sometimes the only thing worse than fearing I've been a bad friend to someone is dealing with the fact that I'm not sure *how* I can be a good friend to them, and I think it might upset them to ask.

BTW, for anyone paying attention, sorry if I've been a little quiet on here. Usually when I'm checking this place, it's through a particular app on my phone that I've gotten used to, but lately that app hasn't been working right.

In a conversation elsewhere about stuff involving Paradox, their version of the WoD, and Chronicles of Darkness, and I'm restraining myself from getting into a thing about how them deliberately neglecting CofD isn't just so they're not competing with themselves financially.

It's also because the people over at Paradox are really in love with their *vision* of the World of Darkness, which seems to be mostly 90's style /edge/ rebooted for the modern day. And even if they're getting their cut of the action for CofD via the licensing agreement, I sincerely believe they'd rather not be making money off of something that's not going to get them applauded for what they think these games should be like.

I'm always annoyed and a little disappointed when I RP with someone on a MU*, and we both apparently have a great time and talk about doing it again some time, and then the next time I see them a few days later they've already forgotten who I am.

So earlier this week, some rando followed me on Twitter. Okay, sure, whatever, I shrug at those and move on as long as they're not an obvious bot.

Earlier tonight, said rando reached out on Telegram, saying she's new to the 'fur community' and looking for new friends. For reasons that may seem obvious to those of you who've seen my posts before, I went and look a closer look at her Twitter posts. Guess who just happens to be her brother?

https://vulpine.club/@mythicfox/107839386021439925

I have friends (not here) who have no idea how much effort it takes to not just go "You've never even slightly gotten over yourself, have you?"

So you know that bit, often in cartoons and comics, where someone has to clean a room quickly so they just cram all of the trash into a closet -- often with a trembling door -- that bursts open at the slightest touch? That's kinda how I am emotionally a lot of the time.

For the record, I *am* in a good place right now, mentally. But even at the best of times (or what look like the best of times), I have issues, doubts, anxieties, etc. that are just behind that door. On some days that door strains, and sometimes it might burst open.

I just want to take a moment to thank people for their patience when the room gets messy and I need some time/help to straighten things up. And now, having tortured a metaphor enough for one day, I'll let you all get back to whatever.

Does anyone else use the Amaroq client for Mastodon (specifically the iOS version)?

Related, has anyone suddenly had it stop working?

Welp, the Grammys are starting. *preemptively mutes a K-pop stan friend of his on Twitter*

One potential problem you risk when mining your own personal issues for a story is getting a few thousand words into it and realizing the only valid resolution is for the main character (MC from here on out) to accept things they cannot change and also get therapy.

Which isn't terribly satisfying for readers.

Sure, some issues you can translate into a metaphor for your MC to kick around, but not all of them. Sometimes you can tweak the problem into something solvable, but doing so involves deliberately mischaracterizing someone who was wronged just so your MC can get closure.

I guess what I'm getting at is that of all the stories I've decided I couldn't finish, this may be the one I delete entirely because it's unsalvageable and was a mistake to start in the first place.

For the record, this isn't me randomly being down about my writing like I often am. This is me looking at something I worked on, trying to find a fix, and realizing that the least-worst option is to learn a valuable lesson from the experience and just write something else.

While I wouldn't go so far as to call it a dilemma, I've got something of a situation in my tabletop game I'm trying to find a way to balance out.

One of my PCs has made contact with an NPC who's secretly a member of a cult I've been quietly foreshadowing as an antagonist, and the last session ended off on an implication of his true affiliation. But I worry that I made him come across as little too sympathetic and one of my players might've gotten a little attached to him before that moment.

Not that the guy's been revealed to be a cackling supervillain or anything, but I feel like I may have have unintentionally tugged a little too hard at the heartstrings there and possibly disappointed the player. He hasn't said anything and I'm probably just projecting, but I worry.

I'm currently trying to find a way to walk the line of keeping the guy sympathetic without quietly dialing back the cult connection too far. Make it feel like he can be reasoned with and maybe talked out of the cult. The tricky part there is that he joined the cult because of issues that the characters can't fix without feeling like it's a cheat. (though as I type this, possible ideas come to me).

I'll get it sorted, I just wanted to talk about it a bit. As you were.

My roommate: *spends 10 minutes ranting about the inequities of the universe because he was cooking and the oil splattered and there's droplets on his shirt*

-----

My roommate, 3 minutes earlier: *dumps four times the appropriate amount of oil in the pan to begin cooking*

An acquaintance of mine went viral earlier talking about gatekeeping in D&D groups and gamer culture, and I made the mistake of wandering into the replies. And I honestly felt grateful that I'd never be popular enough to draw that sort of attention, and now I feel shitty about that thought for a few reasons.

Writing confession: By and large I'm not extremely comfortable actually writing material for other people's characters, but at the same time I sometimes get the urge write friends' fursonas into my furry cyberpunk setting.

One of my friends is having a rough day and I'm trying to console them without going into my own. And thing is, while I do genuinely want to offer comfort and help them feel better, there's a little voice in the back of my head whispering that I'm also taking advantage of their pain as a distraction from my own.

And as much as I hate that voice for existing, I'm utterly terrified that it's right and I'm convincing myself otherwise.

I've got friends I can talk to, but most of the ones who'd actually care enough to listen have bigger things to worry about than me having a sad about my writing or being unable to let go of a bad thing I did twenty fucking years ago. I'm not sure I can think of anything I could do that would be worse than "Hey, stop paying attention to your health problems, financial issues, risk of homelessness, the rising dawn of the coming war, and bigots abusing vulnerable people with their political and legal power. Pay attention to me, instead."

I mean, I'm aware that I'm still saying that regardless, just on here. But at least here I can put up a CW so people are like 'nah, I'm good' without having to read it.

It's taking a lot to actually hit the button to post this rather than just going 'select all' and then 'delete,' but... okay, if I finish that paragraph I'm going to lose my nerve. Fuck it.

Just dealing with a lot of issues, but it's one of those days where the call is coming from inside the house, as it were. I wish I were confident that I could afford to consistently get back into therapy. At this point, I'd settle for a "Look, treat me for free now and I'll let you write a book about me in a few years" payment plan.

Feeling better now, for the record.