Diversity Representation in MU*ing
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Thank you for that nightmare fuel picture.
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All of this talk about people getting involved in drama about sex makes me think I put off really unapproachable vibes. I've had that happen precisely once, and it wasn't stemming out of organic RP. A friend and I decided to try something and a third party got upset.
Now I just have to figure out whether my unapproachable vibes are of the awesome variety or of the not awesome variety. Am I an imposing tiger or am I stinky cheese
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@mietze said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Until--I saw people like totally throwing themselves at him, and also being super hostile towards me because they were sure that I'd found it and was riding on it.
In my brain, were I playing that male character, if you found it, it likely would have been in a dusty old shoebox in the pantry, covered in cobwebs, and mistaken for a freeze-dried mole rat before the 'back away slowly and don't think about it ever again because suddenly there are just so many questions' became the better part of valor.
Because I'm just the super serious hotness like that.
(Rinel, if you put people off... ? Observe the above, which also... yeah, that stuff about 'sense of humor' a few days ago, yes, that. We can start a sisterhood or something.)
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@Rinel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
All of this talk about people getting involved in drama about sex makes me think I put off really unapproachable vibes. I've had that happen precisely once, and it wasn't stemming out of organic RP. A friend and I decided to try something and a third party got upset.
Now I just have to figure out whether my unapproachable vibes are of the awesome variety or of the not awesome variety. Am I an imposing tiger or am I stinky cheese
Without knowing your characters, I'd guess it's presentation. It's not hard to spot the characters who are meant to fuck. If you don't send out those vibes, you mostly don't get picked for it.
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@Rinel
Limps and atrophied limbs don't exactly make people's fun bits feel tingly.Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Ominous said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Limps and atrophied limbs don't exactly make people's fun bits feel tingly.
I'm sure both of those things are listed as kinks on flist or whatever.
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@Ominous said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Rinel
Limps and atrophied limbs don't exactly make people's fun bits feel tingly.It's just one mangled, shriveled, withered leg! Sure, it makes horrible popping sounds when she bends her knee; just get a squeaky mattress.
No love for wounded warriors ;_;
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@Rinel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
All of this talk about people getting involved in drama about sex makes me think I put off really unapproachable vibes. I've had that happen precisely once, and it wasn't stemming out of organic RP. A friend and I decided to try something and a third party got upset.
Now I just have to figure out whether my unapproachable vibes are of the awesome variety or of the not awesome variety. Am I an imposing tiger or am I stinky cheese
It seems to be like, 50/50 for me.
Some characters get hit on all the time, some don't.
Teagan never gets hit on. Ever. I began thinking it was something about me. And then I made Ephrath and she gets hit on a fair bit (and she usually has a bit of an 'oh no what do I do now' internal panic over it because she's hella shy).I could not tell you what it is that causes a character to be hit on or not.
Except redheads.
If you play a redhead it is the milkshake that brings all the boys to the yard. -
@Rinel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
No love for wounded warriors ;_;
Uh. Nooooot really true? Chicks dig scars, as far as I can tell. My wounded warriors got laaaaaaid.
Maybe it's just --
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Getting here late, but uh, my 2 kroner.
I create characters that fit the story I want to tell. I do the research I need to, in order to get the basics right. I don't sit down and think long and hard about their skin colour and culture because I am not giving a presentation on it. I'm playing a person. Even when I play literally a white guy whose home address is 10 minutes over from where I live in real life, he's nothing like me. Different experiences shape different people. There are no two members of any ethnicity who are the same, have had the same formative experiences.
I love seeing diversity. I hate diversity taking priority. Play the character you want, and if they're a member of a different nationality, ethnic group, gender or sexuality of your own (and you want to make this an issue in the first place) do some basic research, avoid the most obvious tropes and clichés.
There's a writing exercise I recommend if you're in doubt (like many others here, I am a writer). Write your story with every character as a white male (or whatever your default is). Then roll dice for gender, ethnicity and sexuality. If doing so fundamentally changed your story, then you're not writing people but tropes. Obviously works best in a setting with at least some equity.
On the subject of characters getting hit up for the horisontal mambo? Never happens to me. My characters tend to stay single for the duration of their run. I am a slow burn kind of player, and I think I give off a very obvious vibe that I'm not interested in RP relationships that last three days at best. I use a male top model for a PB on two out of three games so it's not about the looks. Have seen old, disabled, pointedly not attractive characters get pounced on by hornies (yes, old and disabled is considered 'bad' by a certain demographic. I am old and disabled in real life, I get to say it). It's about the way you act, talk, and signal.
And then of course there's that demographic of players where the only thing that matters is that your character has a pulse, but that lot tends to get bored and wander away from me after about three minutes of me pretending not to notice their cleavage or long eyelashes. I am not displeased with this.
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Just a take here as a literal black guy, or I guess a general story about my experiences, and some recommendations for white or non-black people in general.
When I first started MUing, I played exclusively white characters because when I was younger I had some internal racial issues that I hadn't worked out yet, and my previous experiences irl led me to believe that people simply wouldn't want to play with me because of the race of my character, and I also hid my irl race, which was easy because everyone naturally assumes that you're white on the internet if you don't say otherwise.
That said, I have on quite a lot of occasions across quite a few MUs experience people wanting to RP with my black characters less than others. Could be the culture I was in, could be that the characters coincidentally weren't as good as my others, but it is an experience I have 100% had and noticed, and in games like that I usually just drop the black character and end up getting a white one, mostly just because I don't feel like the frustration on an OOC level. They aren't really feelings I come to RP to have. And just to reassure you, this is not a common experience, just a few places I've been in.
There's also various things I've noticed just off-handedly. Like on Arx how there's literally a rule saying you can't just straight up race swap a character, and it happens there all the time. Pretty much characters get pretty drastically shifted away from their description when it comes to racial stuff. But, that said, Arx is still more diverse than the average MUSH I've played, that's just a minor racial peeve I have with the overall culture of PB selection there.
I have indeed many times played a white character as my first alt on a MUSH because I just felt it would be easier to acclimate myself and get a feel for the game, and I always have a bit of an OOC anxiety that I'll have to deal with some nonsense or people fetishing up my pages (it's definitely happened before). I feel that I need to trust a MU on some level before I can play a black character there, which I know sounds weird, but as I said, I just don't go to a MU to feel the same things I do on an OOC level. If I'm gonna play a black character I just like to know that it's "safe" to do so. That the people around me are gonna be cool.
The word microaggression gets thrown around a lot, but holy shit does playing a black character flip on that switch on an OOC level if you're somewhere people just don't know how to act.
As far as white people playing black characters (I don't wanna speak for any race here, just mine from my own perspective), I think it's totally cool as long as it's not some crazy shit like on Shang where people take that as a bizarre license to say the N word and all kinds of stereotypical shit as loudly as possible (this shit has definitely happened in Shang's square, when I used to play that MU years ago).
When it comes to worrying about being accidentally offensive, I'd say that if you're a generally mindful person it probably won't be that big of a deal. For the most part you can play a black person more or less how you'd play a white character, there's just little differences like the way we have to deal with our hair or how we might approach certain situations on a cultural level. But there are all kind of quick research things if you're ever unsure. Or hell I have literally nothing against answering questions like that, as I really don't generally find sincere questions to be offensive when I know you're really trying to learn something.
I'd say that Doctor Who (well I've only seen up to Capaldi, I'm behind still) is a great example of how to handle black characters. Hell, Martha being black only really comes up a few times in the whole series, as there's just more important and interesting shit than her race going on. And the one time I do remember it coming up was in a historical context that was done really well. Or hell even the way black characters are handled in the MCU, as they show just how diverse people can be within the same race. And if you really want some extra credit, watch Living Single (great for seeing the diversity of both black men and women as just normal ass people), Fresh Prince (posh ass black people), or every season of A Different World except the first season (the first season is Bill Cosby's trash ass season, just skip it entirely). And if you want more modern stuff, Black'ish is great (even though they had Chris Brown on one episode which I'm still wtf about), as it really captures a lot of very minor nuances about black culture. And Jordan Peele's modern work seems to be on point (probably skip Key & Peele for inspiration. It's a show I love but it's a cultural minefield).
I know this is getting a bit lengthy, but just let me name a few probably unlikely and unexpected pieces of media that I just don't think are good to take inspiration from.
Family Matters, while I really genuinely love Family Matters (Urkel), it has some pretty questionable politics when it comes to cops and stuff. It does try to address cops and race and all that, but I just don't think it's a good reference point if you're already going in confused. Plus it's got a lot of that bizarre borderline conservative Christian values thing going on like a lot of shows from back then (Fresh Prince does that to a far lesser extent and actually stops doing that at some point). And The Cosby Show, like, the fact that no one should be watching Bill Cosby to begin with, Cosby's work often had this very judgmental wag your finger at not being a "proper" black person thing to it. It's the same reason I say skip the first season of A Different World, as it stops being his show after that.
Also, never Tyler Perry. Never any Tyler Perry, ever. Also no Wayans' Brothers movies or shows (even though I love them).
You also might be noticing that I didn't really list dramas and stuff. But that's almost entirely because dramas get super bogged down in a way where I just often find the portrayals of black people to just be far too heavy handed. A Different World and Black'Ish do handle some pretty serious issues, but I just can't in good faith recommend a drama outside of Jordan Peele's work. Luke Cage on Netflix might also work pretty well, has a nice balance on characterization.
Man who remembers when I used to write these spammy ass posts on WORA? Hopefully this is helpful rather than nonsense.
Now I'm tempted to play a black characer on Arx, as I've been thinking of an OC. I do play a POC in general on Arx, Theo. So far that's been pretty chill.
@Rinel Also excuse me, I totally tried to bang Rinel.
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@GreenFlashlight said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Without knowing your characters, I'd guess it's presentation. It's not hard to spot the characters who are meant to fuck. If you don't send out those vibes, you mostly don't get picked for it.
WTF. You do not have to send out Fuck Me Vibes to be subject to people being gross. You do not have to have a conventionally beautiful/handsome PC, you do not have to "invite" it, and people who are "picked" for being gross towards are not secretly inviting it.
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@mietze said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
WTF. You do not have to send out Fuck Me Vibes to be subject to people being gross. You do not have to have a conventionally beautiful/handsome PC, you do not have to "invite" it, and people who are "picked" for being gross towards are not secretly inviting it.
You sure don't. Creeps gonna creep and to the real creeps, what you do doesn't matter one bit.
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@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I know this is getting a bit lengthy, but just let me name a few probably unlikely and unexpected pieces of media that I just don't think are good to take inspiration from.
Your post is awesome, actually.
How do you feel about Roc? If you have watched it.
“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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@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Rinel Also excuse me, I totally tried to bang Rinel.
Wait... what
More substantively: your post is really good. Playing a black American is probably the thing I'm most afraid of doing. Living in Louisiana and seeing secondhand how fucked everything is just makes me feel like I would have to do a prohibitive amount of research on almost everything. But I am probably oversensitive due to working in one of the worse environments as regards racial equality (criminal law).
And as someone else pointed out, even good faith portrayals can call to mind blackface if you stumble.
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I tend to play things I think I understand or can reasonably extrapolate. I understand or can reasonably extrapolate the experiences of white men and white women in the UK across many time periods, sexualities, etc. I can reasonably extrapolate on a more narrow basis for a few other backgrounds and cultures, too, either because I have enough data points, or because no-one who isn't an expert has enough data points to say I'm too far off base.
I don't have enough data points to extrapolate for a not-white character of US descent in the modern era. I just don't. There's a whole lived experience I don't have, and if I have no starting point I won't learn anything in the process. I barely have enough data points for a white character of US descent, never mind a non-white one.
MMOs, though? I've developed a habit of playing darker-skinned characters in the last year or so. Because fuck it, why not.
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I've always been hesitant since I tend to play flawed characters, and I wouldn't care for anyone taking my takes the wrong way.
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@Ganymede I remember Roc being pretty solid! I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I recall it being very working class black American when I saw it, and it seemed to be very down to Earth and not too heavy-handed in a way that I would complain about. I might take a look at an episode or two again just to refresh myself, but that's my memory of it.
@Rinel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Rinel Also excuse me, I totally tried to bang Rinel.
Wait... what
Theo totally tried to make moves and Rinel shut him right down lol.
More substantively: your post is really good. Playing a black American is probably the thing I'm most afraid of doing. Living in Louisiana and seeing secondhand how fucked everything is just makes me feel like I would have to do a prohibitive amount of research on almost everything. But I am probably oversensitive due to working in one of the worse environments as regards racial equality (criminal law).
And as someone else pointed out, even good faith portrayals can call to mind blackface if you stumble.
I can understand your concern here, certainly. But I do believe that the fact that you're even concerned about it to begin with generally means you've probably put significantly more thought into it than even people who probably already play black characters well enough. For African-Americans specifically, they come from such an overwhelming amount of backgrounds that portrayals really can bounce around greatly. I do think that there are a lot of shared experiences and such, and those little nuances can be tricky to capture or portray, but you also don't have to do that either.
A good exercise I recommend is watching some media with black characters where them being black isn't necessarily the central point of the narrative, but is an important aspect in making the narrative work. One of my favorite examples of this is The Last Dragon. It's a bit of a campy movie, all things considered, but the main character is a black guy who is somewhat of a weirdo in his community for basically being a proto-weeb, even though he still has friends and stuff. And this movie portrays a rather large variety of black people from different backgrounds. And yeah a lot of this movie is over the top, but I think it's over the top in a way where it's obvious what isn't realistic (like the Shogun of Harlem lol).
I think it's a good example because it is fundamentally about African-Americans, and is generally set within African-American culture, but it's just kind of very chill, is basically urban fantasy, and I think that the vast majority of the characters in that film could be RPed by anyone without really thinking super hard about it.
Not sure if my point gets across here, but maybe it'll make sense if you watch the movie!
@Arkandel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I've always been hesitant since I tend to play flawed characters, and I wouldn't care for anyone taking my takes the wrong way.
Fun fact: I actually pretty much never play black characters with gang type backgrounds, or anything like that. Not because I don't want to, because I think it's worth exploring, but because I just feel weird about it due to not being from that kind of background myself.
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I probably should relate some of the reasoning behind my 'if I think I could hurt someone, I will not do it' stance, because as I was thinking about it last night, I really couldn't think of much else.
The first two schools I attended through 6th grade -- and we're talking about the late 1970s here, into the early 80s at the tail end -- were not what I'd call bastions of tolerance or diversity. Both were Catholic schools. The first (1-4) was pretty much nightmare fuel; there was zero protection from (sometimes very violent) bullying, and they were so genuinely backward they tried to keep someone back a year 'because they were too short to move on to the next grade'. (Not me, but you can imagine why being a short kid in this place was, uh, not fun.)
So my first 'real world hero' -- not someone from a book or a movie or even documentary TV (I was a Cousteau nerd) -- was that student's mother, who came in to read the nuns the riot act about how completely absurd that was so loudly we could hear her all the way across the stone and brick building.
It had nothing to do with race, gender, or any of the 'big bigotries' we think of, but -- hell, maybe the ADD did the usual blender routine on it in my brain, maybe because it was a stupid 'otherism' that affected me as well so it was more personal than something completely abstract would have been -- it was a very early formative example. 'How tall my son is has nothing to do with the capacity of his brain or his ability to learn, and if you're too ignorant to understand that, maybe I should find someone smarter to teach him.' Go Mrs. McGonegal!
It was a low-to-mid middle class school. 5-6 were at an all girl's upper middle class+ school, and it was so much worse. Everyone in the first school save for one student was white; that improved slightly at the second, but to say the experience those students had there was worse would be a profound understatement. I was 'the poor kid' in that group, and the impact of that was similarly obvious. Catholic Mass and sacrament participation was mandatory. The Jewish girl didn't get a pass. The Hindu girls didn't. The latter had parents who had filed a court order to prevent them from being forced to participate and the school forced it anyway, and fellow students shit all over them along with the teachers.
Again, maybe I only saw it -- and other things I won't relate here because they're egregiously awful and I don't want to dump those into a post where they could trigger someone who has experienced similar -- because I was being shit on by the same people, albeit for a different completely stupid excuse to shit on someone.
But I couldn't not see it. I spent a lot of my childhood feeling batshit crazy because the people in authority -- who were supposed to be our role models and the authority figures we could turn to for help and advice and protection -- were behaving in what was so clearly a harmfully nonsensical way. It was not possible to not see that, either.
That's generally what I draw from, along with the observations I've made over the course of my life since then, when I do make an attempt.
