Posts made by Cirno

@Pondscum said:

There's a starman, waiting in the sky...
RIP David Bowie, such an influence on music, soundtrack of my life.

And so, the Spiders returned to Mars. :C

@faraday said:

GenesisMuds also supports a wide variety of MU* types, but they don't mention Rhost specifically. They do have gcc at least.

lmfao @ the GeoCities-era web design here. What is this, a website for ants? It looks tiny even on my ancient desktop rig, with its 1280X1024 pleb resolution. It'd probably be the size of a notepad on those fancy 4K monitors everyone has these days.

It's like they haven't updated it in decades. As someone who is employed as a Website Manager, that setup is painful to look at.

I'm waiting for the new season to really get a few episodes in so I can enjoy watching a few episodes back-to-back. I hate starting a show I like, and then I have to wait for the second ep for a week or so.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Galaxy Express 999 for the fifth time. It's a very good retro series. It's a rather dark show, opening up [SPOILERS]

with Tetsuro, the young male protag, having his mother killed by a creepy robot dude, but it is softened somewhat by some comedic elements, like the interactions between Tetsuro and the 999's conductor. The conductor is a hilarious guy, but he can kick some serious ass in a pinch.

I'm kinda interested in this Sushi Police show that's supposed to be coming out soon. It's wonderfully topical, since it is about the runup to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, but I'm afraid it's gonna be hella cringey on the premise that it seems to be about people who can't make sushi properly. I can already see the potential "Bwahaha, stupid Gaijin(foreigners)!" jokes a mile off. I might watch it and give it a chance, or maybe read what people have to say about it.

@Warma-Sheen said:

The quality of my social interactions might be far outside of your experience. When I go out downtown at night and hit the bars and clubs with friends and I talk to people, RP isn't being brought up. The friends I'm with aren't bringing it up. And at the end of my night, I'm very happy with that decision. Universally. I've never had a night where I said to myself 'man, I really wish I would have told that extremely attractive woman that I like to play D&D'. Never. Not a single time in over a decade.s.

I dunno, man. This sounds like PUA (Pick-Up Artist) talk - from the "quality of social interactions" line (because, as all PUAs know, you have to Display High Value when talking to an attractive woman (or a HB10, as they call them), and show 'Alpha' qualities, such as not engaging in nerd shit like roleplaying), to the heavy emphasis on clubs and bars.

It is possible to meet women in venues that are not, exclusively, clubs and bars. And if your modus operandi is to sarge (another standard Pick-Up Artist method) clubs and bars with your wingmen in search of extremely attractive women, or HBs, to Display High Value and Alpha Male your way into F-closing them, then that's entirely your prerogative. I'm just saying that I'm not into the whole sarging bars and clubs like an Alpha Male method. If it works for you, then bravo. My method of interacting with people is fundamentally different from yours, that's all. The last time I went to a bar was last year.

Guess I'm not an Alpha Male.

I really gotta ask, though; do you also lift weights and wear TAPOUT branded shirts, and talk about that really sweet Mixed Martial Arts class you take, really loudly, within earshot of the club HB's?

Special thanks to David Futrelle of We Hunted The Mammoth and /r/Bluepill for keeping me abreast (heh) of the latest PUA terminology.

@Ghost said:

Dude, I empathize. Being a white guy, I can tell anyone that I play D&D and unless they were some kind of hellfire and brimstone Evangelical, they wouldn't think anything of it. I had a few black friends back in the day who hid their RPG habit, too, and I get it. I love being able to fly my nerd flag high, so whenever I come into contact with someone who loves it but has to hide it, I try to be supportive.

Thanks for sharing.

I'd just like to make an observation that is not directed at anyone in this thread, it's just a thing I've noticed over the years.

There's a group of black people (this appears to be a phenomenon localized to African-Americans, because you have the black people in Africa who listen to heavy metal, adopt Goth culture, watch anime, cosplay, and go to Hardcore Techno Raves without feeling less black or whatever effect doing things that are Not Traditionally Black are supposed to have on your person) who feel that they are contractually obligated to behave in ways associated with black culture (by whom?), for whatever mysterious reason(s), that I have never fully understood.

On one end of the scale, you have the black people who engage in roleplay and hide it shamefully. Maybe they also do things like listen to rap music, wear Nikes, and watch football because other black people do these things.

On the other end, you have the black people who change their name legally to Imhotep Tutankhamun Amen-Ra and wear Dashikis 24/7. It's a sliding scale, if you will. Google The Hotep Phenomenon if you need more information about these people. They are usually called Hoteps.

And that brings me to my next point: is MU* ing such a terrible thing that it must be kept under wraps? Is it as bad as being a pedophile? Because that is the inference being made here. I feel like people are overreacting a little bit here.

If, in actuality, we must hide MU* ing because normal people will think we're weird, that's a bullshit reason, because conforming and trying to be normal is a nonsense objective. We're not all a hivemind. We're allowed to be different and unique, surprisingly enough.

However, I admit that I enjoy being unconventional and displaying my fringe element. I'm one of the Fringe Society people. I get along well with other weird people and shun normal people, to the point where I am openly contemptuous of normal people.

I realize that other people may desperately want to fit in, and, therefore, talking about MU* ing goes against this purpose.

@Ghost said:

@Cirno WORD. AOL RP CHATS. Remember names like Vv_HellVAMP_vV ?

Good times.

And the wackiness we would get up to!

I fondly remember the shenanigans. Castles miles long. Sailing ships that were thousands of feet in length (how did they not warp and splinter apart into matchsticks, like The Baron of Renfrew did?).

Characters so overpowered and twinkish in nature that any normal MU* er would have screamed and fainted upon merely viewing a description of their abilities.

Of course, this is to be expected when you let a bunch of prepubescent kids on the Internet. As Mike Krahulik or someone else said, I was a feral child back then.

Ah, yes, those were the days.

I'm a Japanese Frost Fairy.

@Warma-Sheen said:

Interesting topic this has fallen to on this particular board.

I'm black. I got into RP through reading comic books when I was young and being enticed to try D&D from the ads in the comic books, usually at the back I think.

And while I hesitate to share many of my opinions on the topic, I will say that I don't have any other black friends who know I MU* or RP who don't also do it themselves. Any black RPers I know I met through showing up to RPing events - conventions, tabletops, etc. And not one of them would I put into a social situation with other black people. They would be completely out of place.

This just isn't a popular hobby. Quite the opposite. It will quickly make you unpopular. So I hide it. Like a deep dark secret. You wouldn't look at me and guess I RP. Probably one of the last things you'd guess. But I don't tell a soul about it.

But I love it and just because I won't tell anyone about it doesn't mean I don't love doing it. So I do. As far as characters go, I almost always play black characters. But it seems to me, and this is just wild presumption, that I see a great percentage of black characters than there are black players on a game.

There's no point to any of this except to give purely speculative observations from a black RPer.

I got into RP because I grew up using a computer and was part of the AOL Chatroom Roleplay crowd of the 1990's.

From there I RP'd at a bunch of different venues until I discovered MU* ing.

I would tell people about RPing if they cared. I enjoy frightening both white and black (and Asian, and Hispanic) people with my nonstandard hobbies, but I am also that unusual black guy who has long hair, piercings, tattooes, and sometimes wears trenchcoats and combat boots and cargo pants (when the weather allows for it, anyway).

I play hardcore British Techno music, European Hi-NRG Dance Music, and Japanese Pop Music very loudly in my car, which bugs people no end. I get the world of shocked stares and gasps from people of all races. Click the link in my sig to get a feel for what I'm usually listening to.

Like, the other day I was in a 7-eleven, and the white female cashier was interrogating me. She asked me if I was an artist, "because I look like an artist".

I, excited to talk to her about my writing and drawing pursuits, said, "Yes!"

She replies, "So you're a rapper? Because I know a lot of black guys who rap and make music!"

I said, very brightly, with a big smile, "No, I'm currently teaching myself to draw, via guidebooks and instructional manuals, and I'm a writer."

Her face falls about a foot, and she seems visibly upset - just the way I like to see them when I bust out my unconventional activities. She starts stuttering. "Um...uh...well...what do you write?" she asks lamely, hoping I would say, "Rap music!"

I say, "Fiction of many varieties. Sci-Fi, historical fantasy, stuff like that."

She says, "Oh."

There is a very pregnant pause.

I break the silence with a cheerful, "Well, see ya around!" and leave.

I play characters of all races.

@Ghost said:

@Coin said:

@Cirno said:

[* ] @Thenomain and I were discussing why more black people did not MU* on the old boards, and he said something that is important to consider - most MU* ers are financially secure and either have a good chunk of money and a steady, well-paying job, or are at least financially well-off through whatever methods they have available - friends, family, the Government Dole - that they can afford the equipment and the environment conductive to MU* ing - namely, the things mentioned here. He suggested something to the effect that since less black people can afford these things, less can actually MU*.

This raises interesting questions - is MU* ing a gentrified, expensive hobby out of reach to the poor? Could that be part of the reason why the population of MU* players is low in general? And why is this, since computers have sharply decreased in price? One can acquire a cheap tablet or netbook for 50$ or so.

I suspect there's also just less black people who roleplay tabletop, too, for the same reasons--roleplaying books have always been notoriously expensive. Keep in mind that tradition and generational inertia helps: if your parents are geeks and gamers and had access to it, it's far more likely you will be, too.

The monetary thing falls apart a little bit when you take into account demographic numbers for video game players (who require even better PCs than MUers, or even consoles, and expensive games). I don't actually have any numbers and it's possible that the ratio remains the same between white and black video game players--but I doubt it (with absolutely no fundament by my own gut).

I used to know a black musher. We called him The Unicorn.

If I had to take a stab at why you don't see many black mushers, it's for the same reason you don't see a lot of black RPG players or metal fans. There's this thing in American black culture where black people give each other shit for not being black, or supporting black culture enough. I've talked to plenty of black people (SURPRISE! I AM NOT BLACK!) who've told me stories about getting made fun of, or the pressure received, for liking rock more than R&B. There is definitely an element of belief in the subculture that some things are black things and some things are white things.

And then, on some fabled dark and stormy afternoons, white people like me introduce their shadowy bruthaz to Killswitch Engage and D&D and it opens a whole new world of imagination...

...I love my black brothers and sisters who RP. I wish more did it. It's like adding a girl, or a gay person, or a foreigner to your gaming group. Fresh perspectives are awesome.

There are a decent amount of black mushers on this very same forum. Some of us have even made, or will make, games.

@Coin said:

@Cirno said:

[* ] @Thenomain and I were discussing why more black people did not MU* on the old boards, and he said something that is important to consider - most MU* ers are financially secure and either have a good chunk of money and a steady, well-paying job, or are at least financially well-off through whatever methods they have available - friends, family, the Government Dole - that they can afford the equipment and the environment conductive to MU* ing - namely, the things mentioned here. He suggested something to the effect that since less black people can afford these things, less can actually MU*.

This raises interesting questions - is MU* ing a gentrified, expensive hobby out of reach to the poor? Could that be part of the reason why the population of MU* players is low in general? And why is this, since computers have sharply decreased in price? One can acquire a cheap tablet or netbook for 50$ or so.

I suspect there's also just less black people who roleplay tabletop, too, for the same reasons--roleplaying books have always been notoriously expensive. Keep in mind that tradition and generational inertia helps: if your parents are geeks and gamers and had access to it, it's far more likely you will be, too.

The monetary thing falls apart a little bit when you take into account demographic numbers for video game players (who require even better PCs than MUers, or even consoles, and expensive games). I don't actually have any numbers and it's possible that the ratio remains the same between white and black video game players--but I doubt it (with absolutely no fundament by my own gut).

Precisely. If anything, more people should be MU* ing now - especially since ironically shitty, low-res, retro games called 'Indie Games' are popular.

Visual Novels, which are basically glorified text adventure games with preset input, are hugely popular in Japan. I think that one of the ways MU *ing could update itself for 2016+ is by adopting a format similar to visual novels - current-gen style GUIs, more pictures, more animations, more shiny, sparkly stuff to attract the Web 2.0, FaceTwitter Mashable Le Reddit generation, while hingeing upon the basic premise of reading words on a screen. Furcadia is kind of like this.

Chalk this up to the list of cool things you can do with this software, but nobody uses, like the Friends lists:

You can set a wallpaper in your forum profile.

@Ghost said:

@Cirno This is the best question since "Does soap get dirty?"

You're making me think at 06:15. I hate you.

Glad I could help, bro.

If by chance we go to sleep at the same time, you're welcome to use your Sleeping God/dess Powers to make me die in my own Sleeping God-dream or have something equally humiliating occur to me.

Put me through the Death/Resurrection experience, it'll be fun and rad.

@Ghost said:

My favorite was the guy who was this sickly, frail, bed-ridden thing, and the reason he is so sick is because of overuse of the drug that makes him powerful. When he takes the drug, he astrally projects as a ghost that shoots these badass lasers that murder everything and cause explosions, but the drug is KILLING HIM.

Adventure Time stole this guy and turned him into Prismo, except it's sleeping that made him an immortal god.

That makes me wonder. What if we're all Gods while we sleep? Or what if we're all individual parts of (a) God/dess's mind, kind of like how we have pieces of our brain that work on their own - left, right, cerebellum, stem, etc., - and when we dream we return to the whole?

"If we are Gods while we sleep, why do we have painful and deadly-seeming dreams, Cirno?"

Well, aren't death-and-rebirth God/desses popular? And don't many deities experience uncomfortable things?

And he's got a face in his hand! HE HAS A FACE IN HIS HAND!

The User Map is gone.

@Lithium said:

I have enough time to run something again the hobby might no longer really exist.

• It's going to take you 40 years to have time for this again?

or

• The hobby still 'really exists'?

Pick one.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to disprove that the number of people MU*ing has not markedly decreased from 1990's levels to the current era in 2016.

I will gladly eat my words, braised, with Hollandaise sauce, if this is wrong; I am not issuing a declaration set in stone, nor am I Professor Cirno with a PH.D. and a thesis entitled "Pretendy Funtime Games And How They Grew".

I am not putting words in your mouth, but it seems as though you may think that if the population of people MU* ing decreases further, through lack of interest, death, loss of the utilities or financial clout to support a hobby which requires a house, power, lighting, a computer, or at the very least a smartphone and a power socket*, if you're going to MU* on the street, you will then be able to write off the hobby as "not really existing".

You could say that right now, if you wanted to, given the current climate of player attrition and shrinkage. Granted, you would encounter pushback from others, but the Kubler-Ross model of the five states of grief lists Denial right there in the set, so the players who deny your supposition are to be expected. You could argue that they are exploring these states of grief as they grieve for a hobby which has slowly begun to cease existing, in a long, drawn-out, persistent vegetative state coma-victim manner, supported through artificial means.

And you would be right, in a certain sense. People still reenact Medieval Warfare, so, technically, you can still say that Knights fight each other in plate armor, but you could also truthfully say that the Age of Chivalry and Knight-Fights has decisively come to an end, and that it does not exist.

However, I would not hedge my bets on MU*ing ceasing to exist in the next decade, or even the decade after that, or the decade following that one. These absurd little games survived two decades already, and are still surviving, with relevant, up to date games, such as My Little Pony.

[* ] @Thenomain and I were discussing why more black people did not MU* on the old boards, and he said something that is important to consider - most MU* ers are financially secure and either have a good chunk of money and a steady, well-paying job, or are at least financially well-off through whatever methods they have available - friends, family, the Government Dole - that they can afford the equipment and the environment conductive to MU* ing - namely, the things mentioned here. He suggested something to the effect that since less black people can afford these things, less can actually MU*.

This raises interesting questions - is MU* ing a gentrified, expensive hobby out of reach to the poor? Could that be part of the reason why the population of MU* players is low in general? And why is this, since computers have sharply decreased in price? One can acquire a cheap tablet or netbook for 50$ or so.

@Lithium said:

I can't get into Kill la Kill at all, the art style is just not my cup of tea to an extent that I haven't been able to make it through episode 1 yet.

It's very retro-styled. The art style (and plot) draws from Go Nagai's Cutey Honey, Getter Robo, and Devilman Lady.

There's a bit of Leiji Matsumoto and Osamu Tezuka in there as well - the father of the family Ryuuko lives with looks like he fell out of Tezuka's Black Jack, while Ragyo looks like an insane, evil Leiji Matsumoto heroine, like Maetel or Queen Emeraldas. Ryuuko has horns and exposes herself like Devil Lady.

The SS Naked Sun is basically Space Battleship Yamato Nudist Beach Edition.

Ryuuko is also a little like Kekko Kamen in that she is a scantily clad superheroine fighting at a school.

It is also vaguely similar to Hideaki Anno's Gunbuster.

The whole story is also similar to a retro '80's - '90's anime that you all must watch called Project A-Ko. A-Ko is Ryuuko and Bii-ko is Mako. They even have -kos after their names.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sMaQt27r_k

This is an English Dub of Project A-ko. The hilariously bad voice acting makes it 20% cooler, as Rainbow Dash from MLP would say.

@Luna said:

@Cirno Agreed! I always thought of ToL as a girl. I don't know why. She (maybe?) said nice things about me.

Maybe because they typed like a girl?

Some people claim to be capable of discerning one's gender from their typing style. I disagree, mostly because people say I type like a woman, but I am very visibly male in real life.

I'm a cute girl on the inside!

I RP'd with a chap on Shang once who claimed to be capable of doing this, and HE said I was a woman. I let him believe what he wanted.

FWIW, when I was 3-4 years old, my mother let my hair grow out to the point where people regularly called me a little girl.

I still have long hair, and, amusingly, I was sitting in a chair in Starbucks once, and a white woman approached me and said "Ma'am, your car's headlights are on."

She jumped about twelve feet when I turned around and confronted her with my beard and bushy eyebrows. She probably thought her life had suddenly become a horror movie.

@Luna

I hope nothing happened to them. They were very funny.

I miss the Roasting Pussy Oven (that was what he/she/it called themselves).