A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like
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I know I've played characters of mixed race, but I don't think I've ever played a character that isn't either white, or half-<something else>. I have had a lot of 'there are like twenty things going on here' characters that are deliberately hard to pin down re: a specific racial origin. This model is one of the most jaw-droppingly stunning women I have ever seen, and there's a lot going on there and it would be easy to read other things into it all, too. (She's part Irish, part Jamaican, from what I recall, but it would be easy to guess at other things, too.)
I don't pretend to have a clue about the experience of somebody who isn't white, and don't trust myself to play that well. Somebody who is facing 'you don't fit either "side"'? That I can empathize with more due to some other stuff in my life, even though on the surface, it seems more complicated.
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I played a Belgian once. That's like half-French, half-alien. Close, right?
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I've played white for most of my MUing career, mostly because it just felt like the default thing to do. I think that's the sort of mindset one gets in American culture. I recently changed that a few years ago, since I've been exploring who I am as a person and getting in touch with my "roots".
It used to just feel easier. Playing my own race frequently felt weighty, or like maybe I didn't want to be judged in my fictional fantasy roleplaying? I'm kind of over that now, but that's how I used to feel.
Tonight I was out with a white friend of mine, he treated me to Pho. But like, he kept walking up to people's houses in the middle of the night, picking plants and shit. I was like, "Dude are you nuts we shouldn't be walking up to someone's house in the middle of the night?" and he was like "Nah it's fine".
It took me a moment to remember that he has an entirely different perspective on something like that. I'm mostly thinking I don't wanna get shot by someone who thinks I'm trying to break into their house by being too close to their property >_>. Even being in that neighborhood makes me uncomfortable, so I definitely don't wanna be up too close to people's plants and shit. And he's like totally carefree about it. I can't even remotely wrap my head around what that feels like, but I can certainly pretend to for the sake of RP.
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@HelloProject said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:
Tonight I was out with a white friend of mine, he treated me to Pho. But like, he kept walking up to people's houses in the middle of the night, picking plants and shit. I was like, "Dude are you nuts we shouldn't be walking up to someone's house in the middle of the night?" and he was like "Nah it's fine".
That sort of blows my mind. o.o I mean, I'm white, so I get the 'yeah I could get away with it,' but I grew up in a heavily mixed population area (outside of DC), so it just... wasn't really A Thing so much.
There's a lot of "white" behavior that baffles me just as much as there's a lot of African American or Asian American etc culture that I don't comprehend.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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I think what you mean is"people are weird".
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On the list thing (yeah I'm late to the discussion) -- I don't like it because people can truly be cray-cray for a brief moment of time. Life is hard. Stress is hard. People 'blow up' at things. I like to think I"m pretty level headed (I could be way wrong).
However, late last year/early this year -- I was pretty batshit insane myself and was behavior blind to my own crap. I had suddenly lost a job, I lost friends that were like family, I ended a relationship, I had ZERO income, I was denied unemployment because I worked at a non-profit, I was getting in debt, I got suicidal, I got super depressed and couldn't see my own behaviors, I felt constantly like I was drowning -- like I really felt like I couldn't breathe most the time, I took MU* things harder than normal, I couldn't see beyond my own life falling around my ears, that doesn't even touch my issues that happened with my child during that time -- I was fricking cray-cray.
Now - if anyone took time to know me. They would know I'm really not that person. People that are in my life would think you were crazy suggesting it. I'm super happy, laid-back and optimistic ALL THE TIME. So then I would be on this list because there is at least one set of game staff (cough cough Arx cough cough) that the time frame was my ONLY interaction with them. They have no clue to my honest personality now that I'm employed, moved, etc. --- So I would be on this list for a really SUCKTASTIC part of my life that I was not myself at all. How would that be fair?
Sure there are a million and ten reasons against people. If I staffed a game (I have refused to do so for like a decade now), I would be suspect if I knew some people were XYZ. However, I'd wait until they did something on the game. I like to think people can change. Really, if I'm honest, I would rather be screwed over by people thinking they can change and they didn't; then to live paranoid of what might happen.
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@HelloProject Reminds me of this:
http://www.complex.com/life/2017/05/womans-facebook-post-about-her-white-privilege-goes-viral
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@Auspice I sorta just can't imagine doing that as a measure of 'that isn't my property, and I wouldn't think it was cool if somebody did that to me, no matter who they are'.
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@Thenomain said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:
WORA had a wiki. The WoraWiki. It was, I admit, hilarious. It was damaging, and full of rumors, and as far as I can tell had no lies in it that anyone came forward about (and when they did we deleted the lies, but not the rumors, I realize the irony and that was the point). It was also about the only place people could go to say, "Hey, I remember that game!" or, "What was that game with that thing? Oh, that thing was mentioned here. Huh!"
People knew it for what it was. It was about as an official representation of the community as I am. And it still had some pretty awesome side-effects. Replicating those side-effects as a stand-alone wiki would be great; that the wiki was tied to Wora accounts was even better. Almost no anonymity.
The WORA Wiki also had the BEST collection of terms and definitions for oddball slang we would throw out there, if I remember correctly.
Mav, PHB, Cabana boys, snowflake... all terms whose definitions could be found on the WORA wiki. I was sad for that loss as there are now MUSHers that weren't around for it so still don't know what some of the terms we fling around mean.
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WORA and WORA's wiki were also sorta terrifying to me very early on, when I was only maybe five years into MUing or so. Being so new, you think, "Oh man I hope I don't fuck up and end up here forever".
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@HelloProject said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:
Jamaicans and shit, "African-American".
Since I picked it as a forum name I kinda have to be that guy and point out Jamaica is just as much American and the United States of America, the Caribbean is part of North America.
I understand your point about the different cultures but both would count as different American cultures. -
@ThatGuyThere They're still not African-American 0_o. So I'm not sure how that contradicts literally anything I said.
edit: Also yes, you are being "that guy", in a nitpicky way that entirely misses the point.
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@HelloProject said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:
@ThatGuyThere They're still not African-American 0_o. So I'm not sure how that contradicts literally anything I said.
How would they not be African-American?
They are descended from Africans living in America. Like i said different culture from the US, different experience, etc but the term would still apply.
The US is part of America but not the entirety, every one living on the continents of North or South America are Americans.The subset of those with African roots would be African American. -
@ThatGuyThere Alright, then you go call a Jamaican "African-American".
Have fun.
edit: The only reason I'm not actually explaining is because I literally just explained this in an earlier post.
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@HelloProject
If I knew they were Jamaican I would refer to them as Jamaican.
My point is not saying they are the same, my point is American means two continents not one country.
Yes I know that is unrelated to your points about culture but people from the USA, of which I am on, referring to other parts of the land mass as separate from from "America" irks the hell out of me.
I do not deny that the African American culture in the USA is different form the African American culture that exists in Canada and both of those are different from the African American culture that exists in Jamaica etc.
Just because the descriptor is not used as often for those cultures does not make it less accurate. -
@ThatGuyThere Except that you're entirely marrying yourself to the technicalities of how the words should work rather than how the words are actually used, which is pretty much a gross misunderstanding of language.
I no doubt agree that "America" is not technically the name of the country, and yet I'm going to continue to refer to the US as "America", because it's a commonly accepted way to refer to the country, to the point that "America" is a commonly accepted word for the US in multiple languages. Getting bogged down by such a technicality to the point that it "irks" you would be like me being irked by the fact that you're colloquially using the word "hell" in a way that technically makes no sense, which would be a real argument I could make if I decided to entirely ignore how language works too.
You know what does irk me?
When people who have no clue how language works talk about technicalities that don't actually apply to everyday dialogue all the time, as if suddenly having complete and utter cultural blindness to their own language, for reasons that could only be described as "no goddamned reason", or "I like to think I'm a really smart dude, surely no one can deconstruct what's wrong with my argument, it's not like languages are a science or anything".
You know damned well how the term African-American is commonly used, just like you know damned well how the terms "America" and "American" are commonly used. You can be irked all you want, and I'll just be irked by the fact that you don't seem to understand the fundamentals of what I assume is your native language.
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"American" has always applied to the United States by default, not the North/South American continents themselves. This dates back to the American colonies when the English crossed the Atlantic.
If you use "African-American," the vast majority of people out there know and understand this to be talking about a US Citizen.
If you really want to differentiate it that much, you need to be using "Americas" or "the Americas." By itself, "America" is understood to mean the USA.
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That moment when you're not sure if you're experiencing deja vu, or if this same reasonably obscure argument didn't happen in another thread just the other day, I have just had it.
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Those are all fair points, though we all have those hills we are ready to die on. One of mine is this one, I have no problem having this argument over and over. (trust me I have)
I fully know how language tends to be misused but I will continue to (ineffectually) rail against those parts that annoy me. If this annoys you then there is not much that can be done.@Wolfs said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:
"American" has always applied to the United States by default,
Actually the term America was first used by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 to refer to all thing in the "New World", this is 78 years before the founding of the first English colony at Roanoke
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@ThatGuyThere Okay, maybe not always, but at this point you're pissing into the wind (and apparently content to do it) because you know exactly what the meaning is now to the majority, yet you insist on trying to tell people it really doesn't mean that. Sometimes, the usage of words and their meanings does change.
There's trying to argue a point, and there's being willfully stubborn. Guess which one you fall under?
Do you also go around trying to tell people "gay" really ought to mean someone's just happy?
