Diversity Representation in MU*ing
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@silverfox said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:
I think it is an important conversation - maybe too important to be dismissed as a peeve.
Maybe too important to be left in the Hog Pit.
He/Him
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Upvote doesn't express my agreement enough.
I have have this gut feeling it doesn't belong in a politics section either. Because while laws can help with racial injustice they aren't the end all. It begins with things like what @Sparks was saying - confronting our personal biases. This shouldn't be dismissed because it is "politics," it goes way beyond that.
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@silverfox said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:
This shouldn't be dismissed because it is "politics," it goes way beyond that.
I think that the politics section should be used for such things, still. It can be confronting, and I don't imagine everyone wants to come home from work, or protest, or whatever only to find a huge discussion on race relations and diversity popping up anywhere they want to hang out on the internet.
ETA: Not that it shouldn't be talked about, of course. It should, and it's important. It also, in my view, may require more strict supervision, and/or be put in a place where only people seeking such discussions can see it. (ETA... again: Not in life, but on MSB specifically. This is still a hangout spot, rather than an actual important place for important discussions.)
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@silverfox said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Could this conversation maybe be split off into its own conversation called "Diversity in Gaming"
Making me do things is a surefire way to ensure your doom in the future Catbot uprising.
“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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That is the perfect death. I am going to make more requests now, thanks.
I can see your viewpoint, and it is valid.
I have to disagree though. By allowing people to opt-out of the discussion (said with the understanding that people can ignore, block, unwatched any thread they want) before it can even be started (such as people who ignore the whole politics thread for perfectly valid reasons) then we are complicit in allowing them to stay unchallenged in their viewpoints. I think this discussion should happen in a place where people have to actively look away to preserve their own bias.
Where a thread is put is not going to be the hill I die on though. I'm just happy that this got it's own thread.
If you will excuse me now; I need to make more work for CatBot.
(Yay new thread!)
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@silverfox said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
That is the perfect death. I am going to make more requests now, thanks.
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@silverfox said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
By allowing people to opt-out of the discussion (said with the understanding that people can ignore, block, unwatched any thread they want) before it can even be started (such as people who ignore the whole politics thread for perfectly valid reasons) then we are complicit in allowing them to stay unchallenged in their viewpoints. I think this discussion should happen in a place where people have to actively look away to preserve their own bias.
I entirely disagree. I think there are plenty of valid reasons to ignore such a discussion on MSB without it having anything to do with biases. I sure as shit wouldn't want to have to opt out of seeing what some of you lot think about gay rights after I get home from a Pride event, for example.
If the topic is purely about Diversity in MUing, then sure public free-for-all. But if it's about race, the current racial climate, the history of racial abuses and ignorance in literature stemming therefrom... I don't agree that it should be opt out.
But this isn't a hill I'm dying on either, just explaining my point a little clearer so the Daily Mail doesn't think I'm buying a subscription.
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I mean, if we're talking about opting out of sections, I don't opt out of the Politics group because I don't care about politics, I opt out of it because I don't view MSB as a place I particularly want to discuss politics (there are a GAZILLION places on the internet where I can do that with more tailored mod standards to that kind of thing and a population with different interests), and I feel negative engagement with my fellow humans rather than positive engagement every time I go in there for some reason (usually because there's some C-O-Ntroversy blowing up on the board and I don't understand why until I check the Politics group).
Do think it's good to have this in the Constructive section rather than buried in a Hogpit peeves thread that's going to freak out about a new thing in 4 hours, though.
ETA: I try to play what I think is a broad mix of character face types, in part because it helps keep them distinct in my head and I do like my character not looking like a photocopy of a dozen other MU characters. I try not to do this badly when it comes to characters outside my own basic American white girl stereotype. Do I succeed? IDK. One continues to try.
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One of the many issues in diversity in MU*ing is the setting.
Here's a WoD/CoD example:
Yes, there are Black people in New England, but when every single game is set in Small New England Town, New England State, it is a reach to figure out why my Black Vampire/Mage/Changeling/Werewolf is in this area. Everyone has to come up with reasons, and I have. But knowing that realistically my character would, at the very least, stick out in a crowd, makes upholding that IC Masquerade difficult in Small New England Town.
Sure, put your game in a place that you want. But when you look at the character roster and it looks like the campus of BYU...maybe it's your setting.
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I like to play diverse characters on games in no small part because I don't like the idea that the racial/ethnic makeup of the story that my character is in will be so fricking white. Empathy is good for you.
Do agree that if everyone is white but the bad guys, problem. Also characters that are just stereotypes, gross.
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@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I opt out of it because I don't view MSB as a place I particularly want to discuss politics (there are a GAZILLION places on the internet where I can do that with more tailored mod standards to that kind of thing and a population with different interests)
^ This.
This is the hobby space for me, not the politics space. Politics is not among my hobbies; I take it a lot more seriously than that.
It spills out all over the board in almost every single thread sooner or later in some form anyway much of the time, but in those cases at least there's a place it can be contained.
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It's a text based medium, isn't the idea of color based biased kind of moot? Like are we ANSI coloring our desc blocks to make it more obvious? Isn't the idea of marginalized classes also kind of negated by settings that aren't modern or alternate modern?
For example I'm latino, I'm Puerto rican, my grand parents were born and raised in Puerto Rico, my mum in chicago, me in chicago. That's right if Puerto rico were a foreign country and not a US territory I'd be a 2nd generation immigrant!
I play a guy on Arx I describe as "painfully pale" in complexion. Why? Roster system. Meanwhile on horrormu and grey harbor I played people PB'd by Pedro Pascal because he's a good latino/hispanic stand in and not to crazy attractive.
My Pedro pascal PBs and my painfully pale white guy with redhair PBs have never been treated differently. Ever.
I get the idea broaden your horizons, do some research, maybe think about what kind of language and tropes you are using to write something you aren't. On the same hand I would never condemn RPers for just going with whatever setting or personal nationality they are or whatever nationality they think is cool. Given the primarily text based medium and settings that have almost none of the systemic issues of our own.
EDIT - Neither condemn RPers or make it a reflection on the hobby if people just played whatever even if it ended up being majority white.
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Is there something about our playspaces that makes this a predominately white hobby? What can we do about that? Because I think it'd be more effective to work towards making the hobby itself more diverse, rather than just encouraging whitey to play POC. So what can we do?
ETA: I think games like Arx where racism is not just not included, but strictly written out are a good step, because it offers some escapism from that? But I don't know if that's ACTUALLY helpful, or if it ends up actually being hurtful instead. I don't know, in the gaming context. I don't know how we can make these spaces better / more appealing for folks.
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Modern setting - Singapore , Dubai, Hawaii, Israel
Fantasy Setting - Deserts, Islands, rainforests
The closer people put setting environments and locations to popular culture (which is predominantly white) the more adherence you will see to that culture. Placing things in modern and "other" places will promote a more diverse cast of characters. As for people getting into the hobby, iunno MUs are pretty niche as for Tabletop I've run tables with like 1 white person and a bunch of not white people so maybe we need to go poach some adventurer's league and pathfinder society.
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I think there was a WoD game a handful of years back intended to specifically be a safe space for PoC characters and players. I have no idea how well it went, but I recall that someone did indeed try.
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I know there's a LOT of work to do, and I know/understand a fair bit of what I have to work on personally, and in a larger sense as well. But when I take a step back and I try to apply like ANY of what I know about making inclusive and safe spaces to mushing, and it falls apart. I don't know how to make this hobby better for RL POC. If the best we can do, really, is playing characters of varying skin colors, then it's the best we can do, but I feel like there should be something better than that. I just don't know what.
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@Sunny said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
ETA: I think games like Arx where racism is not just not included, but strictly written out are a good step, because it offers some escapism from that? But I don't know if that's ACTUALLY helpful, or if it ends up actually being hurtful instead. I don't know, in the gaming context. I don't know how we can make these spaces better / more appealing for folks.
I think Arx is one game in a fantasy setting and, honestly, it's weird to me when fantasy settings DO reflect American (because it's somehow usually American, unless it's British) racial attitudes. Supposedly there's an in-theme reason there's such a mix of skin tones and maybe when we figure that out it'll be interesting!
It would also be weird to me if there was racism on a Star Trek game, except in a historical context, because...that's not the setting. When I was big into BSG games and had a couple of staff bits on a few of them, some of the things we had to reinforce thematically the most often were that stereotypes about gender and sexuality did not exist. It is very hard for some players to grasp this (though most often when it comes to gender, in that setting skin color-based racism wasn't really something people seemed to need to pretend was a thing).
Considerations on modern games or historical games are different, though whenever a thread about a historical game comes up there're always a lot of questions about how to approach realistic-for-the-time-period attitudes about race, gender, and sexuality.
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@Sunny said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Because I think it'd be more effective to work towards making the hobby itself more diverse
Just to pick apart your phrasing for a moment, and add some points.
I don't think anything can be done to make it more diverse. In this instance it's not a case of "build it and they will come." It takes a decent amount of up-front investment in terms of learning before one even considers making this hobby more than a passing fancy. New blood crops up, of course, but we're not going to see a flourishing of a POC community simply because we made it so. I think, seriously, that the major way we're going to see such a change is for our source material - that is to say pen-and-paper RPGs to become more palatable to a diverse audience. Which they're doing, slowly.
Of course, that isn't to say that we can't start laying the groundwork now, I just don't want anyone to have exceedingly high expectations.
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@Wizz said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Specifically in regards to elves and dwarves, why? If they developed on the same world, in the same geographical regions, there's no real reason they wouldn't, they're not aliens. They've got the other human skin pigments and their bodies are almost identical to human bodies, to the point (in a lot of fiction) that they can even cross-breed with humans.
It's much more common that elves and dwarves with black skin are the evil faction -- dark elves, and (specific to WoW) dark iron dwarves. That's just off-putting and weird to me.
At least when it comes to World of Warcraft, you're not given the leeway to create any kind of dwarf, elf, human, troll etc. You're specifically making a dwarf of Ironforge, Blood Elf from Silvermoon, a darkspear tribe troll etc. Aside from the fact you can't make a dark skinned blood elf or light skinned night elf, you also iirc can't make a green troll because the green trolls are Amani. That only changed recently with the 'allied races' that allow you to pick different origins.
I honestly don't think that's a bad thing for fantasy races, reserving certain pigments for different subgroups is very useful for world building and for computer games especially it makes it a lot easier to visually distinguish the various factions.
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@egg Ok, so the blue-eyed quotient on that game is more like 40-45%. That's still insanely high when you consider the relative rarity of blue eyes IRL.
Also, this is on a game where you could play literally any kind of person and it would make sense. So people are choosing a whitewashed reality in this case.
