@surreality said in Historical MUSHes:
To the generic crowd that behaves this way: Just stop with this bullshit insistance that anyone who DOES NOT DO THAT is an RL *ist troll. It's divisive garbage behavior. The hobby is not solely composed of extremist SJWs and trolls, full stop. Stop acting like it is.
(Moved deleted post as an edit to my previous one)
I don't disagree with you at all. I personally think people assuming that character selection, or language of said character, is a reflection of the author's secret allegiance to something horrible is a WTF-LEVEL 1984 sanitization that will end up doing more harm than good.
I should be able to write an antagonistic character who does horrible, bigoted things as a counterpoint to a hero (up-to and including writing things like the full n-word) without people accusing me of being a neo-Nazi. I think this steps society in the wrong direction and that kind of fascist over-liberal extremism normalizes fascist thought sanitization and punishment of people who refuse to conform to whichever social dominance claims divine right to do so.
As far as I'm concerned, all of you should go IC with your +2 shinai sticks and call each other n-words and PK each other to your heart's content, then laugh about it and pat each other on the back for writing antagonist characters who made it really satisfying for the PCs to defeat said evil. Go for it. Write things that inspire and horrify you.
Authors and actors can do this so long as their forwards or promotional interviews contain convincing explanations of how horrible they think said antagonists are, give or take a few mentions of stuff like "I had to go to therapy after playing this racist character", "It broadened my understanding of...", or "I couldn't sleep some nights after filming." This is stuff our society expects.
But, in all fairness, some mushers can't survive differences on whether or not characters are monogamous, whether or not initiating combat is a form of harassment, or role-playing without the OOC element being constantly pervasive without near constant accusations and explosions on MSB's hog pit. Too many people use their characters as extensions of themselves to the point of barely separating IC from OOC. Too much is taken too personally.
Choices gotta be made. Are people going to play a game that removes the safety nets and let the chips fall where they may, or are you going to choose which elements need to be avoided to keep the OOC-side issues to a minimum? By all means, choose whatever you want for a game...
...but I can tell you which one would make a MU more successful and draw more of an audience (or end up on the Hog Pit less).
