Diversity Representation in MU*ing
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Whew, this is a heavy subject but also a very important one, and it certainly makes one go through a deep thinking. This is also a subject I have contemplated with myself, certainly much more often in the second decade of being in this hobby than the first when I was more young and stupid. Despite being a minority in the US, I was lucky enough to be a minority that wasn't as looked down upon or discriminated against as some of the other minority groups. There was discrimination, definitely, but the discrimination I faced was a thousand times less harmful than what African Americans or Hispanic people face on a daily basis. However, growing up in the US since the late 1980s and on, my brain certainly has gone through a whitewashing through education, media, and just the atmosphere around me. Sadly, I did not fully embrace my own origin until I became more mature because growing up in the states, it is inherently viewed that being white is the pinnacle of our culture and that was subtly taught in this country.
When it comes to this hobby, I have been incredibly guilty of playing predominantly white characters. In fact, I don't recall playing a non-white character until HorrorMU where one of the story arcs (the one allowing you to be a deity) that I was going to swap to an Asian deity which means an Asian art portrait as my character PB, my first non-white character that I can recall. However, RL waylaid me and I couldn't log on much anymore so I never actually got to play the character even though I had it mapped out and ready to go. It wasn't until I came back after my year+ hiatus that when I returned to the hobby on Savage Skies where I finished creating an Asian character and started playing a minority as a main character for the first time.
Now, here are the reasons from a non-white person's eyes on what lead me to the decisions I have made since I started this hobby. When I select a character, I want to play that character well so other people have fun when they interact with my character and aren't repulsed by the character's actions or the way I write. One can make a character more challenging to play by having odd quirks or hooks that are inherent roadblocks to a hero's story and I've found that I had no issues tackling any of those kinds of character challenges except for two characteristics, namely Race and Sexuality.
I don't play gay, bi, or trans-gendered characters because I would suck at them, mainly because I was never in their shoes once. I don't know how to properly play a character like that properly and what's worse, because of the lack of experience and accurate understanding, I could easily come off as offensive in my character's actions just because what one learns about them from an outside point of view is often misleading or just offensively incorrect. This is the same reason why I have yet to play a person of color (except Asian), for the very same reason except this time it is a racial characteristic and not a sexuality characteristic. What I learned about minorities (both racial and sexuality) when I was young was very, very different from what I've learned since growing up, and still learning about to this day. I don't think anyone can fully understand with all the learning they do because they lack one key element which is actual life experience (the good and the bad), which is why white privilege is such an important term that is being brought up heavily today.
Now why didn't I play more Asian characters in the past being an Asian myself? Because an Asian character isn't as easy as playing a white character, unfortunately. People often say (and I have been guilty of this in the past without fully understanding what I was saying) just play normally. Even the term "normal" is skewed heavily to where you grew up. In the US? Being normal is being white. In my opinion, you can play a POC character "normally" because you would be doing it wrong. Also, since growing up, Asians are rarely the lead protagonist in American movies or shows and if they are, sometimes they are portrayed inaccurately or even racially insensitive because it's amusing. Am I offended when I do that? Personally, no. I look at it and go haha, that's so dumb. Then move on. But it has certainly whitewashed what I think are easily acceptable elements in a movie, a show, or a story. It's easier to pick a white character and play it "normally", it gives me less stress and one less thing to consider when choosing an appropriate action. It is a bit sad that this is the way I look at things but it is also due to all the teachings and experiences I soaked up since I was a kid.
So will I play more PoC characters in the future? Unfortunately, probably not. Is it because I don't care about the lack of diverse IC demographics on games? Of course not, it's the opposite. I don't want to try to help balance the diversity in a game by introducing a character that is horribly played that brings shame to myself and discomfort to those that interact with my character.
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@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I don't want to use my fleeting RP time to break biases or shift my viewpoint. I want to play characters that entertain me and others. I spend my entire life learning about cultures and experiences both extant and extinct. I don't want to do that when I get to play make believe with my friends.
So again, people are going to play what they want to play.
Okay, I actually agree. I just tend to think "characters that entertain me and others" and "characters who differ from my own personal OOC viewpoint and experiences in meaningful ways" do not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, I think—now that I am (probably) sufficiently caffeinated—if I were to boil my overall stance down to something a hell of a lot shorter than the massive screeds I've vomited up so far this morning, it would be that with a bit tacked on the end. So:
I just tend to think "characters that entertain me and others" and "characters who differ from my own personal OOC viewpoint and experiences in significant/meaningful ways" are not mutually exclusive, and the fact that no small number of people seem to have an unconscious belief that they are mutually exclusive—or that a human character whose skin happens to be darker than Pantone shade 92-9c is somehow more difficult to tell a story from as a viewpoint than, say, an alien or vampire or elf or whatever else—strikes me as a thing that maybe we as a community could stand to work on as we cook up characters. Because when there are a lot of people out there who seem to think they can find more common ground with and more easily imagine seeing the world from the POV of literal alien species in Star Trek or Star Wars or Mass Effect or whatever else than they can with their neighbors who happen to have a bit more melanin content to their skin, it's demonstrably sure as hell something we as a human race could stand to work on.
(I mean, granted many of us are very bad at writing 'alien races' that aren't functionally just some variation on "weird humans, often with surprisingly little cultural diversity across the landmass of an entire planet" so there's often less actual distance between "human" and "hypothetical weird alien from outer space" than you'd maybe think, but still.)
a.k.a. Packetdancer (or "Pax" for short)
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@Sparks I can really only answer for myself here, but if I play a Vulcan badly, it may annoy some fans or make me unfun to play with -- but there are no actual Vulcans in the world that could be hurt by my bad performance. There are real PoC/etc.
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I keep reading this thread thinking back to the time I used Mahershala Ali as a PB and my friend (black guy) played his petite white (blonde) girlfriend and it's cracking me up.
But on a personal note: a lot of my PB / char choices are my own form of escapism. On scifi games you'll often find me playing chars with a cybernetic leg (or go down a storyline with that option) because I have had surgeries, arthritis, etc in my right leg and have gone stretches using a cane. Some days I wake up, get out of bed, and my leg gives out on me. Having a personal storyline where a character can get their leg 'fixed' helps me.
Most of my female PCs are over 5'5" because I'm only 5'3" and I hate being a woman in my 30s who has to use step stools and tongs just to get shit out of her own cabinets and even then the top shelves are just unused space.
As mentioned, I don't often play chars with brown eyes because of bullying in childhood (see: Ephrath on Arx, black girl with silver eyes because fuck yeah fantasy).
My go-to on video games (since that has been brought up) is tan (wouldn't say black but I guess brown?ish?) with blue hair and silver eyes...or silver eyes and blue hair. Because why not. Blue and silver are my favorite colors.
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@Sparks said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Because when there are a lot of people out there who seem to think they can find more common ground with and more easily imagine seeing the world from the POV of literal alien species in Star Trek or Star Wars or Mass Effect or whatever else than they can with their neighbors who happen to have a bit more melanin content to their skin, it's demonstrably sure as hell something we as a human race could stand to work on.
So this is a thing I'm going to have to spend a whole long time thinking about. This resonated with me.
Is there a bridge between this and the fear of "getting it wrong" that several of us have expressed? Are they possibly the same idea just wrapped in different colors (which is a weird metaphor in the context of this conversation but I'm gonna go with it anyway because I don't recall the actual idiom)?
I don't know. I'm gonna go think a bit.
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@Sparks said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I just tend to think "characters that entertain me and others" and "characters who differ from my own personal OOC viewpoint and experiences in significant/meaningful ways" are not mutually exclusive
And that was nowhere even near the point I was trying to make.
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@Sparks said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Warma-Sheen said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Just keep in mind there are many flavors of POC who also have many flavors of culture. A lot of people forget the distinction between skin color and culture. I know a few white dudes with chocolate frosting. I know a few chocolate dudes with white frosting. They are people too.
Don't let fear of 'getting it wrong' stop you from playing a POC character.
You are way more concise than I am apparently capable of managing today; apparently I shouldn't have left the reply window in fullscreen mode and watched updates to the thread periodically while I worked instead of blindly writing a small novella while three more pages of thread materialized.
But, yes, this. Upvoted, and then an additional 99 more upvotes in spirit.
Pretty relevant TED talk on the subject of limited perspectives into the cultures of others and why that sucks, I really recommend it!
It also ties into a fantasy trope that has ALWAYS bothered me, that fantasy cultures are usually super-simplified in much the same way -- ie, dwarves are all miners and heavy alcoholics , elves are almost always archers and scouts and live in forest communes, etc. It's become shorthand because it's recognizable and writers are desperate for shortcuts sometimes, but isn't that problematic for most of the same reasons it's problematic in real life?
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The times I have played non-white characters in WoD games and the like I'll admit I've never really thought of them as wholly different from any white character I have played. But if we're being honest most of my characters are pretty shallow and based around singular concepts of like "Oh, I want to be a warrior poet or a mafia wizard." or some other bullshit rather than anything deeper.
To me the problem of being afraid that you'll play it horribly can only stop you so far. I mean I am sure I play a terrible american period, but since basically all games are set in america I tend to play them. Despite not having any real in depth knowledge of what it is like to grow up over there beyond consuming the entertaiment media since you've got that stuff on lock.
I do realise it is a bit different since questions of race/ethnicity tends to be more sensitive than general culture, but still.
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I'm going to take a stab at speaking for @Tinuviel because that always works out well for everyone.
- People play what is fun for them
- People can be convinced/inspired to play something that is fun for them and also challenging/progressive/whatever
- People should not feel as if they MUST play something that is challenging/progressive/whatever
- As long as someone can play something that is fun for them without being wrong fun'd or told to "think about it more" than all is well.
EDIT - That's been my take away from his posts.
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@KDraygo said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Now why didn't I play more Asian characters in the past being an Asian myself? Because an Asian character isn't as easy as playing a white character, unfortunately. People often say (and I have been guilty of this in the past without fully understanding what I was saying) just play normally. Even the term "normal" is skewed heavily to where you grew up. In the US? Being normal is being white. In my opinion, you can play a POC character "normally" because you would be doing it wrong.
I don't think 'normal' is quite the right advice. I think you first and foremost should try to make sure your character is a person and try to avoid bad stereotypes. What you can do and I've found work for me is to play unusual minorities. The only time I've played an African American was after watching Las Vegas and thinking Nessa Holt (portrayed by Marsha Thomason) was bad ass and wanted to play a character like her, the time I played a Korean I made them act British because that way I didn't have to worry about my lack of knowledge about Korea.
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I mean, I honestly don't mush for the challenge of it. Difficulty/challenge/work are just not things I want to do. Sometimes they're required to get to the good stuff, but I want this fun to be (relatively) easy for me, because everything else in my world is so damn hard.
ETA: When I want a challenge, my go-to is challenges that involve SKILL and objective success/failure metrics. Not my collaborative hobby. Not roleplay. If I have to work to portray a character, I'm at least halfway out the door already.
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@Sunny said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I mean, I honestly don't mush for the challenge of it. Difficulty/challenge/work are just not things I want to do. Sometimes they're required to get to the good stuff, but I want this fun to be (relatively) easy for me, because everything else in my world is so damn hard.
ETA: When I want a challenge, my go-to is challenges that involve SKILL and objective success/failure metrics. Not my collaborative hobby. Not roleplay.
Agreed. I want my characters to be interesting, obviously, with things that are occasionally challenging to play with without being a challenge to think about. If I wanted to challenge my preconceptions or my biases, I'd read a book, not play a game. And I think that's perfectly okay. So sure, partly it's escapism. I don't want to turn off the news and go to a game only to have to deal with the same damn thing. But mostly it's about my interests. I play old characters, generally, because that interests me. I play characters of cultures that interest me. I play characters with quirks that interest me.
And I utterly detest the suggestion, however mild, that I have to seriously consider the real world and all its flaws when making a character that is supposed to interest me.
He/Him
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Yeah, you said what I meant better than I did.
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To add to my last: I'm not afraid of getting my portrayals wrong or causing offence (seriously, has anyone thought of me as someone that cares about that?). I'm afraid of being bored. I never play myself, or a version of myself, or much really resembling myself (aside from general intelligence and wit. Playing dumb is dull for me.) because I am myself, and I'm boring.
I think that if we, as a community, really want to have our conceptions challenged and our biases tested... we really need to stop talking about what we think we should do and instead get actual people with actual stories to tell and give them a place to tell those stories. Nobody gives a fuck what a middle-class white (though not White, technically) person thinks about how a black dude from the Bronx would deal with a situation. But I'd be fascinated to see what an actual Black person from the Bronx does differently to me.
I'd love more gay characters. But I sure as shit don't want straight people trying to tell gay stories.
He/Him
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I think it is valid to challenge yourself by playing (respectfully) outside of what you know. I also think it is valid to not want to do that.
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100%
I think the only thing that IS unequivically wrong is to paint people who think differently than you personally as a "bad person" for having that viewpoint. It's okay to coexist with different viewpoints.
Er, I shouldn't hit enter before I finish my ideas.
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My long-term MMO character on SWTOR is a pink twi'lek. I once had a guy who was trying to corner me for ERP tell me that it was bold of me to play such a beautiful ethnic character.
Dude. She's pink. She has head tails. She shoots lightning out of her fingertips. She is NOT a person of color. Unless that color is PINK.
When I played FFXIV with @pax, both of our characters had dark skin, and I was regularly complaining to her about how stupid some of the costuming and lighting looked on my character, and she had much sympathy.
In a lot of MUs, though, I try to play locals. And depending on the game, this can give me tons of options for PBs or just white people. (I should probably amend this to Europeans, as I've done several historical games, and generally one wants to pick an Italian looking PB for an alternate-history Italian noble.)
I have a playlist: http://musoapbox.net/topic/91/tributary-s-playlist
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@silverfox I know it isn't the same for me.
It's that I know how utterly furious I have been when people have asserted that I'm not a woman because <insert stereotype about women that I don't demonstrate>, for instance. My happy time goes poof, the escape is now 'is this sexist drivel I have to contend with or is this person just stupid or what'. I wonder if I have to educate this person so they don't fuck this up with someone else who may feel the same way I do.
At a minimum, I do not want to turn someone else's happy fun escapism time into that.
And that's when it's something fairly inoffensive. Some of it is incredibly offensive -- like 'all women are naturally submissive/inferior', or that women have an obligation to provide sexual gratification to men who pay any attention to them. That women aren't sarcastic, or that they always smile and giggle and anybody who doesn't loses their woman card, apparently.
I've been 'the only girl there' a lot. I've also been 'the only girl who doesn't fit in with girls that fit the mold of girl people were raised to conform to when I was a kid'. Neither is comfortable.
It is not impossible to extrapolate based on those feelings of discomfort and constant scrutiny and expectation and assumptions and sometimes horror over the gross stereotypes people throw in my face.
It's that, as a woman, I am hyper-aware of the situations and actions and all the rest that create those conditions and feelings -- because I have to be. It's shitty, but I have to be. This is another point of commonality -- in the broader sense -- that I can understand and extrapolate from.
It's that I don't know what those conditions and situations are for someone else. I am not as ingrained to the danger zones and hot stoves and sensitive places. (Every character is going to have individual ones, but they'll have cultural ones as well.)
While I'm sure none of the guys who offended the shit out of me with their 'but you know every woman just wants a bad boy dom' bullshit gave the first damn about it -- and some were incredibly offended at the notion that they even could be wrong about this as if I was some super rare exception! -- I'm just not like that.
It's not getting into trouble, or people being mad at me that concerns me. It's causing that hurt, that anger, that ruining of the fun escapism time for someone else.
Because that's something else we have in common: we both/all really value that fun escapism time. That feels innately more valuable to me, sharing that, whether we're personally challenging ourselves in the process or not.
I also feel very much like 'my personal challenge' in this instance is potentially at someone else's expense, which, in my view, may stick them them in a crap position in a way to shoulder the personal discomfort my wholly optional thought experiment may cause. I just can't get behind that.
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@Tributary said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
Dude. She's pink. She has head tails. She shoots lightning out of her fingertips. She is NOT a person of color. Unless that color is PINK.
Well. She was a slave, and is occasionally still treated as second-class citizen in spite of her achievements...
ETA: This is not a serious contribution to the topic.
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@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I'd love more gay characters. But I sure as shit don't want straight people trying to tell gay stories.
This is why I keep asking about making a better place for the players. The message I've gotten is that I ought to be amplifying the voices of POC on these topics. How do we do THAT, here?
Solid things I can think of:
As a GM, use POC as NPCs more often. Increase visibility and inclusion.
Create a wider variety of roster characters if/when I'm making roster characters.
Specifically create/write down rules/policies that make it very clear that ANY sort of OOC racism earns a swift ban from a game
When creating original theme stuff, work hard at making it EASY to be diverseWhat other things can be done to make the OOC environments more comfortable/safer for people in the context of race?
