Decriminalise Pretty
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I'd like to try to articulate something that has been on my mind for a while regarding how we treat female characters in RP games.
When we meet a new RP partner, we are lowkey looking for ways to judge that RPer and work out if they are worth hanging around. Are they an OK writer? Are they interested in the same kind of RP that you are? What about their character's design? Does their character have some kind of motivation that makes sense? Does their personality make them interesting? And if their character is female... are they too pretty?
I can't be the only person who has noticed that having a pretty character counts for negative points. We as a hobby... kind of hate women who want to be pretty. I can't count the number of times that a new character has walked into the scene and one of my friends has OOCly referred to that character as a whore because she is described as being willowy and slender with cerulean eyes and perfect lips or whatever. I can't deny that I've felt this same sort of knee-jerk reaction.
People take you a lot less seriously when you are playing a beautiful character. You're assumed (in a very derogatory manner) to be a vapid sex character. A larger proportion of people just don't bother to interact with you, I suspect because they aren't interested in cybersex and assume that's the only kind of RP that you have to offer.
I've played with some pretty fucked up communities. I once played a game where the admins overnight decided to retcon the majority of female roles to be obese and/or elderly. The attitude was very much that if you then didn't want to play them anymore, that just proves how shallow and vapid you are. It couldn't be because you were irked by the obvious targeted mocking. My characters were murdered a lot on this game. I left as soon as I figured out that I wasn't doing something wrong to deserve this. I was just playing attractive or young female characters in an openly misogynistic community.
Here's the thing though.
From birth, women are brutally indoctrinated to tie in our own self-worth with our physical attractiveness. We are given dolls as childhood toys. Our cartoons feature physically perfect role models who are mainly preoccupied with their own appearance. Our parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties tell us to alter our behaviour, appearance and weight based purely on whether it's what "boys like". Because if you're not beautiful, you're worthless. Some of us manage to decouple attractiveness from our self-worth and find fulfilment in other things. Others will struggle with it for a lifetime.
With all this in mind, is it really surprising to anyone that many women have RP power fantasies that involve being pretty? Why do we have so much disrespect for the stereotypically feminine desire to be pretty, while respecting more stereotypically masculine power fantasies, such as being capable combatants or owning ridiculous and cool weaponry? I don't think that's fair at all.
I think it's time to recognise that playing Igorette the hunchback doesn't make you automatically more serious and intelligent than playing Isabella the princess. I'm here to defend people's right to play pretty characters without having nasty and misogynistic assumptions made about them.
To decriminalise pretty.
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all my characters are hot, idgiaf
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Huh. I don't discount your experiences, but I can't help but wonder if they're emblematic of a particular type of game or set of games rather than MUSHing as a whole. Where I play, almost nobody cares in the slightest if you want your character to be pretty. Most of them do too. The characters (both male and female) are almost universally represented by "hot" PBs. So much so that it's almost a cliche in the other direction (the Battlestar full of famous hotties).
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I don't mind pretty. I do have a bit of disgruntlement with players whose alts are all app 8, plastic surgery disasters, who not coincidentally have NSFW sections on their wikis, Merits that all lend themselves to fuckability, and tend to play evil fomori-Possessed sorority girl/livestream gamers/OnlyFans page-havers.
I will gladly just deal with garden-variety pretty over the glut of the above. Please, app in more pretty PCs with interesting stories.
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This is why I love the superhero genre. Yes, my character is pretty. She can also punch out your liver, set you on fire, throw you into the sun, deconstruct your mind, or whatever else other kickass power she might have. Judge by looks alone at your own risk.
*empirical 'you', not pointing any specific fingers!
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@faraday said in Decriminalise Pretty:
Huh. I don't discount your experiences, but I can't help but wonder if they're emblematic of a particular type of game or set of games rather than MUSHing as a whole.
I hear a lot that the more simulationist type MU*s are filled with unpleasant people, which is unfortunate, because it's the kind of MU* that I enjoy the most.
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@juniper said in Decriminalise Pretty:
I hear a lot that the more simulationist type MU*s are filled with unpleasant people,
I guess I don't know what this means.
Can you give an example?
Because my experience runs completely counter to this. If your PB isn't hot, you get docked for RP points.
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Maybe this differs on games with Attractiveness stats? IDK, I don't play those. But pretty much every character is soap opera-level attractive and that's fine/not really remarked upon unless someone is overbearing about it OOC one way or another. I've always assumed we're dealing with worlds where characters are actor/model-pretty and that's just normal in the cinematic reality we play in.
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I played on an X-Men movieverse game where the PCs were secret government agents all working at a front company and we'd lampshade it by having the townies occasionally comment on how attractive all the company's employees were.
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@derp said in Decriminalise Pretty:
@juniper said in Decriminalise Pretty:
I hear a lot that the more simulationist type MU*s are filled with unpleasant people,
Can you give an example?
By simulationist MU*s I mean RPIs, or maybe to a lesser extent, MUDs. Games that lean towards mechanics to support and enforce play, and lean away from pure theatre of the mind. Examples are The Inquisition: Legacy, Armageddon, HavenRPG, and I think Sindome?
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@juniper said in Decriminalise Pretty:
I think it's time to recognise that playing Igorette the hunchback doesn't make you automatically more serious and intelligent than playing Isabella the princess.
Isabella, your boyfriend's here!
Time for dinner!My current musical obsessions aside, though, may I ask for clarification on the kind of pretty we're talking about? Because not to get all gay about it, but there's pretty that's meant to impress straight men, and there's pretty that's meant to impress gay women, and a whole wide spectrum between; and I don't think it's necessarily unfair for someone outside the target demographic to get the sense the character isn't meant for them, you know?
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@greenflashlight Hmm. You forget the pretty that's to please oneself.
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@greenflashlight I've never designed a pretty character with a specific audience in mind (other than myself) and I've never been able to pick this out in anyone else's characters just by appearance so I'm not sure how to answer this question.
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My characters are pretty because I use male models for PBs. It's not because I want to RP pretty (I'm not male attracted anyhow) but because there's metric buttloads of costume pics available of them on the internet -- funny, interesting, sexy, exotic, you name it, it's there.
If someone feels put off by that, well, odds are they're too edgy for me anyways.
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@il-volpe "a whole wide spectrum between"
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Isn't this kind of a natural consequence of every Hollywood-produced movie, TV series, etc having exceptionally attractive and/or charismatic actors playing every role?
There's next to no one who is ever average.
So we're kind of playing along to that paradigm.
As for comic books how many heroes and heroines aren't drawn to be absolutely gorgeous? It's not like you'll read an X-Men issue featuring Rogue and then go play her as a rather normal looking girl.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in Decriminalise Pretty:
Isn't this kind of a natural consequence of every Hollywood-produced movie, TV series, etc having exceptionally attractive and/or charismatic actors playing every role?
At least to the extent that it's considerably harder to find suitable pictures of perfectly ordinary people that can be considered 'public' enough to warrant some semblance of fair use. Even stock art models are rarely plain or even ugly.
http://keys.aresmush.com -- Come to Chincoteague, we have ponies.
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@l-b-heuschkel I don't think that's true. For example you can definitely find buff guys who aren't great looking online to use as models, rather than pick Chris Hemsworth for your warrior type of character.
There are lots of athletes (less well known ones, even), character actors with interesting features who don't look like supermodels, etc.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in Decriminalise Pretty:
@l-b-heuschkel I don't think that's true. For example you can definitely find buff guys who aren't great looking online to use as models, rather than pick Chris Hemsworth for your warrior type of character.
There are lots of athletes (less well known ones, even), character actors with interesting features who don't look like supermodels, etc.
Maybe I need to amend my take to, I can't find anyone I consider to be 'ordinary' without feeling that I'm coming too close to violating someone's privacy. An actor or model, on the other hand, has 'volunteered' to be publically visible -- (yes, I know, that still doesn't give us the right but).
I've had a little more success with thispersondoesnotexist.com but that also implies only ever having one picture of the character available.
