Posts made by faraday

@Wretched So much this. “Oh my kid does X too and they don’t have ADD.” :headdesk: Aarrrgghhh.

@Kestrel said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

Like, upfront, just gonna say, I don't want to do it and will probably leave a scene if that happens.

I probably would too, but my point was that there's a difference between saying "I don't personally want to interact with this concept" and "Nobody should be allowed to play that concept". Both approaches are completely understandable, but ultimately the latter is a call only the game admin can make.

@Kestrel said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

I know that as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I feel upset when I encounter people who don't know the facts about it, most especially if they actively dismiss, minimise or deny it. And I feel sympathy for the people on this thread who feel gaslighted by the treatment of a similar atrocity against their own people.

I'll just echo this and add that I sincerely hope my attempt to explain American cultural bias is not taken as an attempt to gaslight or to justify said bias. What happened in Asia during WWII was abominable. (specifically directed to @marsmrsmars and @juneko)

I do think we have to be careful about demonizing with too broad a brush though, because that's a slippery slope to racism. And certainly no side has its hands entirely clean (firebombing Dresden and dropping the a-bomb on civilian cities was pretty abominable too).

The leader-admiring thing? That's a subtlety and I can see both sides. Personally I would not be bothered by a character who had been convinced by propaganda that their country's leader was a good guy, even if that leader were Stalin or Hirohito. Especially if it were coming from a place of wanting to explore that character learning the truth and coming to grips with the reality that their beloved leader was partaking in war crimes. Admittedly, though, that might be too subtle for most MU stories and I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to nope out of it on principle.

All things considered, I think the game has good policies in place.

@marsmrsmars said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

@Groth said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

I'm not seeing people express the idea that Hirohito wasn't actually all that bad as much as I see the expression of the idea that the characters wouldn't be aware that Hirohito was actually that bad.

Really?

@juneko said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

don't see why there is any hand-wringing about ex-IJA characters.
Second of all: people in this thread are weirdly veering toward outright revisionism whenever they question whether or not Hirohito had any involvement in his country's crimes.

I can speak only for myself, but I am certainly not wringing hands or attempting to defend Hirohito or the IJA's war crimes in any fashion. I don't even play on the game, so I have no vested interest here one way or the other.

My point earlier was about a general cultural perspective. Someone said that learning about IJA war crimes is "elementary school history" but it isn't - at least not universally in America. I'd venture to say that the average American knows almost nothing about the Japanese war beyond the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Holocaust is discussed extensively in our schools. Nanjing is maybe a few sentences in a chapter somewhere.

Again, I'm not saying this is right or fair - just that it's reality.

Then there's the Hollywood portrayal. Here's an interesting commentary on the recent movie Midway:

As a historian, the most interesting thing about the recent Second World War blockbuster Midway is director Roland Emmerich’s portrayal of the Japanese enemy in a largely sympathetic light. Nowhere is this more apparent than the parting dedication onscreen: “This film is dedicated to the Americans and Japanese who fought at Midway. The sea remembers its own.” ... The Japanese are depicted as courageous, professional sailors fulfilling their patriotic duty, in some cases nobly sacrificing themselves for a cause that they believed was just and honourable.

This is a general trend in Hollywood, no more apparent than in the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, which presented the IJA perspective in a mostly favorable light. It won widespread critical acclaim, including a nomination for Best Picture.

Knowing these cultural factors at play, I can completely understand how somebody might want to play a "noble Japanese soldier" PC on a MUSH with no ill will intended.

Knowing a fair bit about the Pacific theater myself as an armchair historian, I can also completely understand why folks would be upset by this. The author of that Midway article mentioned as much as well.

Clearly, Emmerich’s own familial experiences and position as an ‘outsider’ helped engender this perspective. However, this characterisation is sure to test the limits of empathy for many audiences, who will view the entire exercise as somehow seeking to gloss over Japan’s reprehensible record of wartime atrocities.

@Auspice said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

I have one shelf of my bookshelves at home of just notebooks, but there's more on the built-in shelving behind my desk. My backpack and purse both have a notebook (.... I think the backpack has 3 tbh) in them.

:eyes the mountains post-its scattered all over the house, notebooks in drawers, backpacks, purses... so many notebooks:

No, I can't relate to that at all.

@marsmrsmars said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

To judge that it was "just as bad" or not is in bad faith. You would not be saying these things if you researched what the Rape of Nanking was. Even the Nazis took issue with it

To be clear, I am not making a personal value judgement here. I am familiar with Nanking and a number of other things that happened in the Pacific theater.

I am merely stating what I believe to be the pervasive American cultural viewpoint, based on what our public education covers, what our popular media covers, etc.

@marsmrsmars said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

No one ever said they were.

Not directly, no, but there was a statement that the game had an "issue with racism against Asian people." That's a pretty strong statement.

I think @Autumn raises a valid point about cultural bias/perspective/whatever, because on reflection, in America we (generally as a society) really don't equate the Imperial Japanese as being "just as bad" as the Nazis. There were war crimes, sure, but I don't think we generally view them as being in the same league. In fact, I'd say that equivalency would be frowned upon here as calling back to the anti-Japanese sentiment that led to Manzanar and other badness.

The fact that Asians may have a different perspective does raise valid questions about what concepts should be allowed, if the goal is to be as inclusive as possible. But realistically, I think a historical game is never going to be completely inoffensive. Heck, we can't even manage that on modern-setting games. It's actually quite impressive that Savage Skies has come up with an alt-history that is as inclusive as it is.

@Autumn said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

I think the argument to be made there is that Imperial Japan is every bit as offensive to Asian people as Nazi Germany is to westerners, and that therefore permitting one but not the other indicates a cultural bias.

That's a fair point, but as someone else pointed out - the game (appears to) allow you to play Germans, just not Nazis specifically. It's unclear to me from the policy file whether that would cover a Luftwaffe pilot who was not a member/supporter of the Nazi party. That's something that could certainly be clarified.

But if a non-Nazi-supporting Luftwaffe pilot could be allowed then that would seem on the surface to be on par with the Japanese Navy pilot who was likely insulated from most of the war crime type stuff by nature of their military role. If the Luftwaffe pilot is off limits just for being on the wrong side of the war, then I agree it seems oddly inconsistent to allow the Japanese one.

Either way, though, it's a far leap from "oddly inconsistent" to "racist".

@bear_necessities said in The Savage Skies:

the idea that I have to go through EVERYBODY'S wiki page on a daily basis and click all their links and make sure they aren't being stupid/racist/whatever is EXHAUSTING.

Seriously. If something is offensive, report it.

Forgive me if I'm missing something, but I don't get how an ex-navy pilot with a specific RP hook of being benevolent toward non-Japanese people is racist? Should the game ban all Japanese characters?

@Darren said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

When I first got into MUSHing, it was an attempt to replicate the tabletop gaming experience I lost when I went away to college and was separated from my gaming group. I quickly figured out that that RPing online was a totally different thing from the tabletop games I was used to.

That's pretty much how I started as well. I do like TTRPG, but it's a wildly different experience.

But from there, my early games were mostly lightly or no-coded, cooperative/consent story-focused games. We just hung out and told stories. Sometimes we'd use dice or skills to figure things out, but often not. As @L-B-Heuschkel alluded to earlier - it's a creative writing outlet that's more social, more chill, and more immediately gratifying than writing alone (which I also do).

That's not to say that these places were grand utopias - people are people, and petty drama can happen anywhere. Every few years I get burned out by something and take a little break, but I keep coming back. Because on the whole? I've met lots of good people and written (yeah I'm still sticking with that one) lots of cool stories with them.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Gap between RP fantasy and RP reality:

Personally I like to torture my characters. They are flawed people, making mistakes, drawing the wrong conclusions, and going the wrong places.

@Kestrel said in Gap between RP fantasy and RP reality:

Tying into that other thread, people who are here for the story are out there, you just need to find them.

+1. For me it doesn't matter if "most" of the other RPers on a game are only interested in being do-no-wrong player-avatar heroes, as long as there are enough story-focused players for me to have fun. And they are out there. If they weren't, I'd have given up on MUSHing ages ago.

Some novels are really really awful. Some RP is really good. Not NYTimes bestseller good, but still "good enough I'll go out of my way to read it" good.

Quality is not related to medium.

And even though MU writing is not the same as novel writing, you can use MUs to practice certain aspects of the mechanics involved because they share a common core.

@Caggles said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

Yeah, but some of it was still just about Roan's precious hair - the big story is great, but the little stories can be the things that make the game for you.

Lol yeah. But even Roan, shallow hair-obsessed dude he could be sometimes, had a story arc.

@surreality said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

There's overlap, but there's overlap in watercolor painting and oil painting, too, but we'd never consider them the same thing.

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, honest. But I'm genuinely confused.

Watercolor painting and oil painting are both, literally, painting. Putting a brush to a medium to contain the color to make a picture.

I don't see anybody saying that MU writing is the same as novel writing, or that MU writers are anywhere close to being in the same league as James Patterson and Mercedes Lackey. What exactly is the argument here? That we're not writing? That it should be called something else? I really don't get it.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

It's just important to differentiate between mushing because it's a fun and great exercise and social opportunity, and deluding yourself into thinking that your collaborative fan fiction somehow is the next New York Times bestseller. It's not.

Totally agree. MUSHing is writing where I don't have to do ALL the work myself and I can get immediate gratification of having other folks read what I've written and (hopefully) be entertained by it.

@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

but most of the time (in Mu) a scene isnt something you go into with a point, but more to "see what might happen and it keeps going until someone gets bored or has to sleep".

I think that depends on the game, and on the games I've played, that just isn't the case. There are story arcs, on an individual level, a game level and in-between ('seasons' or 'arcs' or what have you). The story thread on BSG:Pacifica was pretty cool, IMHO, and it even had a nice big finale and an epilogue and everything.

I think MUs have more in common with episodic TV show screenplays than they do with novels. Right down to the "crap, Michael O’Hare quit and now we have to write out a big character" type of comings and goings.

Still writing to me. So yeah, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

Mercedes Lackey (ole MMO clanny of mine) once told me "Roleplaying isn't writing". She is 100% right.

Respectfully, I think she's 100% wrong.

At least in the context of MUs. Tabletop RPGing or LARPing is not writing, but MUSHing absolutely is. I mean, we're literally writing.

We have characters. We have scenes. We have plots that sometimes tie together into larger stories. We have dialogue.

It's not the same kind of writing as writing a novel, but all kinds of writing have different characteristics. How you write a novel is different from a short story, or a novella, or a screenplay, but they are all still writing. Also, how you write a story solo differs from how you write a story with a team.

MUSHing is a hobby that blends collaborative writing and gaming together, to a degree that varies depending on which specific game you're talking about. In that, it definitely has unique challenges compared to other kinds of writing. But it is still, inescapably due to the medium, writing.

@Ganymede said in The Art of Lawyering:

But if you are in a legal dispute of any kind, you are best served by going to see an actual lawyer.

Oh it's not for any useful purpose. I just think it's interesting. Some people watch the travel channel. I like legal and writing analysis vlogs. :helpless shrug:

@Ganymede said in The Art of Lawyering:

All I can say is that you should believe nothing you read on the internet about cases. Most of the articles are written by non-lawyers.

Are there even any good sources for laypeople? Something like Legal Eagle - though I know you didn't seem to thrilled with his stuff specifically earlier in the thread. I find that kind of thing fascinating but it's hard to know the pedigree of the information.

I was reminded that I did a blog post awhile back on the Ares dev blog awhile back about learning Ares code by starting small and reinventing a few wheels before working up to tackle a major project. Might be of interest to some.

@Ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

To be clear, I’m not suggesting to not go to the doctor. Yes, go to the doctor. Please go.

Similarly I am not trying to sound alarm bells "OMG get to the doctor immediately it could be something horrible" like the kid from Kindergarten Cop.

I’m taking into consideration that this may not be financially feasible, though, and am attempting to comfort someone who seems troubled and distressed by being in a tough spot.

A noble and worthy goal. Speculating that it might only be a cracked rib or pulled muscle is perfectly fine. That's information Auspice can weigh into their decision making, google and compare symptoms, etc.

Jumping from there to "eh there's probably nothing a doctor could do anyway" (paraphrased) is the sort of thing that might sway a waffling person into not seeking treatment. And it's just not accurate. Bacterial pleurisy might be aided by a round of antibiotics. There are other things it could be that might also be treatable.

Armchair medical advice over the internet is just as bad as armchair legal advice.