Diversity Representation in MU*ing
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@egg I only play women because 1. I'm shit at playing men; 2. it's important to me to play female characters that include some of my experience of being a woman as reference. Therefore, to some extent, I am always going to be playing 'something like me'.
I have zero interest learning to play a dude better. Zero. So far as I know, that isn't some kind of RP sin.
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@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Kanye-Qwest I mean, sure. Let's have a dialogue. That's all I'm asking for here. People seem to want to shut me down for some reason. If you don't agree with me, that's fine. I'm just putting stuff out there.
I bet they don't really WANT to. People have the habit of arguing about their own shit that makes it come off like it's meant to apply to a grand scale. People are talking!
I agree that there's plenty of shitty demographic stuff on games (the ageism thing is a bitch) and it shocks me that it's been this way forever. Also, "athletic with curves" should be banned from all descs.
oh man that one isn't even it for me. It's "lithe and curvy" like those things are direct opposites. what are you doing
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@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Auspice So the two choices are to play someone exactly like yourself or a stereotype?
It doesn't have to be like this. People can educate themselves. I don't even run a game so I have zero power to "shove" anyone into doing anything at all. All I'm doing here is talking.
No one is even saying those are the only two choices.
We're saying: why is it SO BAD if we play a white character?My current characters:
white (roster)
native american (fc)
white (oc)
black (oc)
white (fc)I DO play a spectrum of character types. I even play male characters sometimes! I've played white men, black men, hispanic men. I have no male chars rn, but I have. But the thing is, I don't fault anyone for 'I don't feel comfortable playing that because I don't think I can grasp it properly.'
I don't play gay men. It's not something I can get into the mindset of. I've tried! It just didn't really work for me.@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
"athletic with curves" should be banned from all descs.
athletic with curves is fine! (look up the 'dances with fat' blog for more on this) It's the 'lithe with curves' one that makes me grind my teethe because the very definition of lithe is THIN AND SUPPLE.
You can be curvy and athletic, sure. Most athletes are kinda bulky. BUT LITHE IS NO. -
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@Kanye-Qwest True, I'm glad people are talking at least. It's better than nothing!
"Lithe and curvy" lol. It's because people are afraid of their characters being "fat."
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@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I mean, sure. Let's have a dialogue. That's all I'm asking for here. People seem to want to shut me down for some reason. If you don't agree with me, that's fine. I'm just putting stuff out there.
We've already been talking about it. At length. In circles. With bells on.
You just aren't adding anything, except that you're mad people aren't playing what you want them to play. -
@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Play a POC, it wouldn't kill you.
The character I've roleplayed the most in my life (Rinel Tern, theologian, literal Godbotherer, and generally cantankerous individual--come get into a fight with her on Arx today) is brown, and when I'm playing MMOs I tend to make my characters POCs.
Here's the thing, though. Those are fantasy worlds. It doesn't matter if my Jane Shepard is black, because by the time of Mass Effect it's species that matters, not race. It doesn't matter if Rinel looks like someone from India (except that maybe she'll not sunburn as easily?), because Arx is actually color blind.
But Marion, my second-gen Chinese immigrant character on Gray Harbor? I like Marion a lot, but playing them is hard. I have functionally no idea what it is like to grow up Chinese on the West Coast. I read a story as a kid about a girl who was embarrassed that she liked to eat fish eyes. I went to high school with a lot of first, second, and third gen immigrants (this is probably the most helpful thing). I try to read up on general cultural trends. But in terms of that lived experience?
I am not exaggerating when I say that it is easier to get into the head of Rinel Tern, a woman who literally punches demons, magically sees the movement of the wind in the sky, and yells at 800-year-old avatars of death and destruction for being rude than it is to play Marion. I don't mean this to say "oh wow people of color are totally alien and not understandable!" I mean it to say that if I fuck up on Rinel (and boy have I fucked up), I'm just someone who doesn't understand Oathlands culture. If I fuck up on Marion, I run the risk of being really offensive.
That doesn't mean I won't play POCs in real-world-adjacent settings. Obviously, I'll do that. But white folks should be aware that it deserves time and effort.
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@Rinel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I mean it to say that if I fuck up on Rinel (and boy have I fucked up), I'm just someone who doesn't understand Oathlands culture. If I fuck up on Marion, I run the risk of being really offensive.
^ This right here.
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I play all the things, and honestly don't worry TOO much about how well I do it. Do I play a good man? IDK, but it's fun for me, so I do it. And then everyone wants to throw fucking costume parties and fancy dress stuff and I get bitter I'm not playing a fashionista girl, but I digress.
I think (based on no evidence) that the heavy prevalence of white characters probably does reflect rl demographics in some way. I could come up with a dozen possible reasons and they could all be valid or invalid for a small portion of people, but is it a problem? IDK. I know I like to see diversity in characters to play somewhere, and it's a must if it is a somewhat RL setting. But I don't like it if that diversity is just "a ton of Japanese girls and one or two strong, tatted up Black dudes". That's a red flag.
But is it a PROBLEM? I still don't know. I think it's so much about preference. Some people like to play what they know. I prefer to play things that are not like me, but without tipping over into playing stereotypes or recreating entire journeys I have no experience with. I have no problem playing a POC in a modern game as long as discrimination isn't a main focus of that game. It just doesn't seem fun. My heart hurts enough IRL.
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And even if the setting does not have racial bias or discomfort, it doesn't mean ick stuff doesn't crop up.
On one of my attempts to get started on Arx I picked up a roster who had PC parents, looked at their descriptions/pictures and picked a biracial PB. The first conversation ooc I had with her PC father was how great it was I'd picked a mixed PB and arent people like that so attractive. Did that player mean anything bad, I dont know, because it was sufficiently close to other weird racial fetishization I'd experienced elsewhere that I noped out and just did not come back to that PC.
So it's not like you escape shit even in an IC setting that it shouldn't be an issue. The amount of time needed to try to explain to people no really, purity culture/male strong woman weak/racism ect on games where it does not exist in IC culture can be really exhausting sometimes.
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I could make a game where everyone is an agender/asexual pale blue blob of protomatter and someone will 1) find a way to fuck and 2) find a way to make race/gender/sexuality/abelist/etc mess.
He/Him
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I'm not necessarily sure that the lack of representation in MU*s is a PROBLEM.
I do think it's worth thinking about, and discussing for ME personally. If conversations don't happen then there's no way for me to realize my biases.
@plov The Bluest Eye as just recommended to me by my aunt today! It's next on my list when I finish Bad Blood.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Do I play a good man? IDK, but it's fun for me, so I do it.
Word, but I think there's a really important difference here between you, a woman not particularly caring whether or not she portrays a man well, and some other person, a white person not particularly caring whether or not he portrays a black man well. At least as far as it relates to real life settings.
I'm not saying that every second of a POC's life is filled with ANGST and DRAMA and RACISM. I'm just saying that, you know. The way my black friends are talking right now is really different from the way my white ones are, even the white ones who are really good and respected allies.
EDIT: On Arx, of course, these things mean fuck-all, because you in particular did so much work to make it a safe place, for which you do not get nearly enough credit.
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Being the member of any minority is so exhausting at times that I will not begrudge people wanting to avoid playing the same.
We're playing make-believe, and while I would love to make-believe a utopia I am more interested in make-believing a pleasant experience for myself.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I am more interested in make-believing a pleasant experience for myself.
Is that why you do it alone?
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Is that why you do it alone?
I am my own best friend.
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@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Kestrel Why shouldn't I be mad? If I spend most of my leisure hours in a place where "representing yourself" = white (and even moreso, Aryan half of the time), shouldn't I want to see change there? Is it as important as the film industry changing its racial bias? Of course not. Does that mean I shouldn't care at all? No.
Because the kinds of people who predominantly play white characters, especially in such a way that telegraphs their obsession with "white heritage", aren't the kinds of people you want playing people of colour. If their biases are apparent when playing their own ethnicity, imagine how gross it would be to see those biases apparent when they portray a different one.
I know an honest to god fascist in this hobby, and by that I don't mean 'some dude who is kinda racist', I mean, 'uses an iron cross as a forum avatar, obsessed with authoritarian and nationalistic themes, checks every item on the Ur-Fascism list.'
His characters are all, without exception, male, significantly above 6', muscular and athletic, and have descriptions that wax lyrical about how fair his hair is and how structured his strikingly white face is. Ideally, I'd kind of like him to, I don't know, catch fire or something, fall into a woodchipper, leave the hobby, whatever. But insofar as we're stuck with him (on games where he has yet to be banned), I'm just GLAD he only plays this one type of character, both because it makes him easy to identify and avoid, and because if this is his idea of white masculinity, just imagine what his idea of asian masculinity might be. (And I already know what his ideas of women are, based on a persistent pattern of harassing them.)
He's a pretty extreme example but he has little red flags I tend to notice in other people in the hobby who aren't as awful but, shall we say, mildly suck.
Researching your character is a good idea, but research can't undo biases. I know a seasoned anthropologist who will tell you this quite glibly -- many of her white male colleagues find foreign tribes entirely fascinating, and know a lot of facts about their culture, but that doesn't change the fact that they fetishise, objectify and exoticise them like they're some interesting little growth on a petri dish, a cute pet or a fashion accessory.
Should white people work to undo their biases? Of course. Are MU*s the battleground on which we can help them do that? I am doubtful.
I know plenty of people in this hobby who play characters across the full spectrum of the human experience, and do it well. These are people who, for the most part, don't actually need more encouragement -- they already take it upon themselves to read up, ask people from the culture they're roleplaying for feedback, and do it because they just want to, not because they want some kind of medal.
And then you also have people who never have and never will, and you know what, it's probably best they just stick to that, too.
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@Kestrel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
but research can't undo biases
I mean. It can, but that doesn't mean it will.
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For those wondering what crazy facist @Kestrel is talking about, pretty sure she is refering to Az from HavenRPG aka Cullen.
