Posts made by Ghost

@Macha I think there's sometimes an issue with self-blindness and dishonesty across this rather small community. While on one hand it's somewhat nice to see people being open about being callous to mistreatment of people they don't like (or openly admitting that less popular people are easier to mistreat or bury due to people's unwillingness to listen to them when they defend themselves), it's also somewhat of a shame to know that this isn't going to result in some self-willed enlightenment that will urge people who "oft wield the truncheon" to place greater responsibility upon themselves to empathize with mistreated people and avoid abusing accused people who aren't their favorites.

On one hand, the community rushes to defend the alleged "victim" and will vehemently attack anyone who dares to question or blame the "victim", but is open to repeatedly abusing people who have been accused, the accused turns out to be the victim, and behaves as if little wrong had been done by them because it's the fault of the victim's "clout score" with them. One too many cases turn out where the alleged victim is actually the attacker. Then, on the other side of the coin, people will be fucked up to the point of publicly diagnosing others' mental or emotional disabilities (or armchair-diagnosing people with mental or emotional disabilities) and it's okay because they're unpopular...but unleash the fires of hell for not being empathetic (or accommodating of) to some self-diagnosed autism spectrum disorder so long as the person "harmed" is their friend. Let's not get into just how much potential RL damage that can cause a person.

In the end, it's really no different from any high school clique or fucked up church scene. Roles of "who is allowed to abuse" is decided on a social hierarchy and those who don't fall into line with the doctrine are responsible for their own abuse, looking down upon them is justified, and those who think they're at the top of their pathetic social hierarchy become blind in the belief that their purity is beyond reproach.

None of this is actual, normal, real-world behavior and only persists within secluded/insular communities where healthy, reasonable outsiders are too smart and healthy to subject themselves to.

@kk That's the hardest part; setting boundaries.

On one hand, you don't want to say something that will judge/dodge you out of roleplay, so you (rhetorical you) do your best to come across as easy to work with and accommodating. On the other hand, not setting boundaries up front is something 10x easier to do with someone you already have rapport with. Sometimes players will outright decide not to RP with you if you say you're not looking for TS or relationship RP. There's definitely a subtle art to asserting your boundaries -and- coming across as worth roleplaying with.

It would appear...that no one...wants to answer questions.

@Tez Question

Do you care about people name-calling or bullying, or was your intent to thumb your nose at policies and people?

1. Whether or not you think a person is annoying does not by proxy make them a sexual assaulter. Take it off line.

2. Remember that scene from Underworld where Viktor was this dry, dusty, dessicated pile of twigs under the floor, but then Selene fed him her blood and alla sudden there was this animation of veins filling, cobwebs disappearing, and he was brought back to being an evil, juice-filled and no longer dry, dusty villain fuckhead intent on killing whoever didn't follow his commands? No one wants to be a tired, bored, dusty, cobwebby vampire. Anyway, I just randomly thought about that (totally unrelated), but I think it's great how much a debate about whether or not it's okay to bully or accuse someone brings out so much energy in people.

Sometimes when I don't want a conversation to exist, I interrupt it with off-topic accusations and pictures of food to make it stop.

@Cobalt Sorry if it got buried but I'd love to hear your side of things, have those questions answered, and if in the end if Macha was clearly in the wrong I promise you I will hold them accountable for it (alas, without attacking them for anyone's enjoyment, but you get the point).

@simplications said in The Pack Discussion:

Y'all should rename this thread to "a handful of exceptionally awesomely problematic human people meat popsicles cluelessly demonstrate improvving why they are pariahs considering going to Subway for lunch but are also considering one of those make-your-own-pizza places idk."

Fixed it for ya. Good on you for having villains to provide conflict for you in a terribly mundane and virus-ridden world.

Give me a VPN and two weeks, and half of everyone who hates me will think I'm their new best friend depending on whose ass I kiss and who I dogpile on. Scene is flimsy and predictable af.

@Cobalt Let me explain, here. You're not being attacked and I'm deeply sorry for why things were triggering for you in the log. Your past experiences are your business and you do not need to justify whether or not they are valid.

However, this incident was described as "extremely traumatic" and as an "attempt to rape/seduce a character who is under the influence of drugs". I read that you didn't want to name names, but specifically named @Macha 's character and omitted the name of Isaac's bit. I also read that you said that there were "other creepers", that OOC drama was involved in the situation, and it was enough to close the game altogether.

That's a lot to wrangle.

So as someone who is trying to understand the full scope of things, I have the following questions (and you're in a place that won't personally attack you, which is a bonus):

• Were any of your PCs intimately/romantically involved with the Isaac bit and were you and @Macha both potential victims of a harem building situation?
• What is your reason for not questioning the accused to get their side of things? Options for course correction, etc
• Were you aware that MacKenzie was helmed by @Macha and why did you name them specifically in your account of things despite there being multiple alleged creepers on the game?

Because from what's been said, @Macha did not intend for their RP to come across as rapey in any manner, has posted their side of things, and sounds like they would like to reach an amicable solution. It does not sound like they intended to (or are callous to) any triggers that were tripped. There seems to be an opportunity here to learn something and move forward without people being attacked.

But to be 100pct transparent...if you had characters ICly romantically involved with this Isaac bit, I am going to ask why @Macha was specifically called out in a situation in which you had a personal stake in (and why this was never disclosed), and am going to ask whether or not you were upset when you learned that the Mackenzie and Isaac bit were RPing intimate things privately.

@Macha Question.

When the SA accusation/ban was handed down, were you able to explain your side of things?

The reason I ask, is because from what I've read here and the logs, if you had no intention of hurting anyone or triggering anyone, it feels reasonable to be able to say "hey, this wasn't my intention, etc" and work towards some kind of resolution. We've seen some pretty heinous shit in logs and what was in this logs didn't seem agregious, at least from a "forcing self on someone" context.

@Cobalt No one has accused you of anything, but situations like this have been seen before. Best to understand the whole scope.

Were one of your PCs on this game ICly involved with this Isaac bit (in some sort of intimate/romantic character arc)?

@Derp Yeah. Just giving the whole thing a 10,000 foot view, I feel like "Why did this result in a banning and an SA accusation coming to staff?" and "Why is the owner of the game saying this incident is involved in the decision to close the game?" are strange, unanswered holes in what is clearly a caustic situation. Having not just started MUing last week, I've seen situations like this before, and in a good number of those situations there is some kind of triangle factor where one person is more invested in it than they claim, or are invested in the situation for reasons they're not making known.

Obviously, with the site closed up there's no log evidence to pore through and (shockingly) the accusation was taken to the one place where people don't need much empirical evidence to "seek rational justice and discourse" (airquotes), there's no way to really figure it out...

...which is why I think the answer to the question if Cobalt had a PC involved with this Isaac bit is pretty important.

Alas, if someone is being accused of sexual assault roleplay, popular or not, they deserve to at least be able to explain their side of things before they're marched off as horrible person #32 this week. In this case the logs don't contain SA and I think it's fair game that they shared their receipts. We are clearly not dealing with some shady person that's surprising people with rape rp.

And for what it's worth, I still wanna know if the "SA accuser" had a PC in some kind of IC relationship with this Isaac character. Not accusing anyone of anything (yet?), but I think it's important information while trying to responsibly get down to the bottom of what has happened here. Something is definitely off.

@Macha I just question that "crap talked people", "contributed to the MSB/BMD split", "has minions", and "has been accused of being toxic" are a qualified list of offenses on a forum full of people crap talking others with their minions, who have been accused of being toxic, who were also part of the MSB/BMD split...makes any sense at all.

That's kind of like Kool-Ade accusing Tang of being a powdered flavor-drink.

Also, I prefer Dark World to Ragnarok.

@simplications said in The Pack Discussion:

and there's a healthy discussion about the long problematic history of the author of this thread.

Lol yeah I felt the list of their totally nonbiased misdeeds including "has minions" "crap talked someone" and "was a contributor in the MSB/BMD split" was both healthy and empirical.

Let's not use that term "healthy" too liberally, now, lest "Played Hogwarts Legacy on PS5" and "Prefers Thor2 to Thor3" end up on their "rap sheet" lol.

I've read the logs in question and agree that it's characters making bad choices, but the leap from that to SA (which I think is unfairly accused) sets off some red flags when paired with the fact that the other player wanted to keep info about your scenes private.

I'm curious. Was the admin who banned @Macha and turned this into a super public SA accusation involved romantically with this Isaac character on one of their PCs? It feels like something critical is missing from the equation.

• Player doesn't want to make details of your scenes public
• Macha reaches out to admin to ask questions about player
• Suddenly, admin bans player, explodes in SA accusation publicly, decides to shut game down

I've seen similar situations before where a player wanted to RP "intimate" stuff with other female characters, but wanted to compartmentalize who knew the scenes were taking place out of fear of ramification. Eventually the person they don't want to find out about the scenes does (which could have happened when you messaged admin), and it turns into an explosion, accusations, etc. If this player told the admin it was "forced" on them to save their own skin, this whole thing starts to make more sense.

I feel like my gut telling me that "game owner" was ICly involved with this Isaac, found out by player who accidentally asked questions, Isaac gets questioned, says it was forced on him, admin explodes in SA accusation but closes the game down due to feeling betrayed...makes a little more sense than calling what happened in these logs sexual assault.

As for the accusation and what's going on at that other place? Don't sweat it @Macha . Thems just a bunch of confirmation bias sharks reveling at the scent of blood in the water so they can claim moral high-ground with eachother after bullying the shit out of someone. Apparently abusing people for a "good reason" excuses people from being abusers so long as their peers/fellow abusers give them high fives for it!

Edit: I've been informed the site was taken offline? So no logs, details, etc can be researched. Yeah. Somethin isn't adding up. This feels fishy

@Ganymede said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

I will hear no more ill of Unicron.

Lol TBF I had to take a moment to think of a staff naming convention I hadn't seen before to avoid making it look like I was targeting a specific admin.

"Zeus? No. Jupiter? No. Optimus? Probably already used. Unicron sounds safe?"

@Misadventure said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

seems to be a repeating pattern across a few places. Staff keeping their predator friends protected and inflicting damage on players.

Yanno, I've always kind of done a sort of mental "head math" when it comes to how often games are plagued with the same inappropriate behaviors on staff, be it a power-clique, sexual harassment, or other unethical issues.

Take the number of truly active non-sexMu mushers. Ballpark? Let's say less than 100.

THEN consider how many of those are willing to take the time to be on staff (not just HEAD staff, but any form of staff)

THEN consider how many of those people are willing to take the time to create a new game, if even from a stolen/copy-pasted code base, build a wiki, write policies, figure out cute little staff naming conventions, etc. Then they actually commit to administrative/decision-making staff positions (i.e. not simply a scene-runner or creative resource, but admin-type "keep the lights running" staff who approve characters, bbposts, set policies, dispute the inevitable hesaid/shesaids).

THEN consider the truly low number of people who understand code well enough to create or modify a code base so that the game actually works (honestly I'd put this at less than 12 total and why these people don't charge money for it is beyond me).

One might say it's almost as if...the same repeat minor population of people are coding, staffing, and running games? That "Flublywub" at HorribleGameA shows up a year later as "Unicron" at HorribleGameB? It just seems highly logical to me to consider that the reason why these staff behaviors are so common is that the same refreshing pool of people actually take the time to set up free entertainment for people who dislike them, anyway?

Just a thought.

@ZombieGenesis Same. There's something very relaxing about the game while also having good puzzles and exploration. In the last few years I've really taken a shine to "lower stress" games like the Lego games or games with a "story" difficulty. I probably needed more relaxing games after being the "Soulsborne" gamer that I am.

Importing your WizardingWorld stuff was neat. Turns out I'm a Gryffindor. Huzzah

@Ganymede That's fair. Rowling is a fucking moron. There were probably hundreds of reasonable ways to approach her concerns but she went and took probably the 2nd worst way possible of going about it.

Regardless, it IS a good game and I enjoy the setting.

Ok so...first impressions? I'm about 8 hours in and there's a shitload of stuff to do. Game is gorgeous and very low stress. Absolutely encapsulates the feeling of being a student at Hogwarts. It'll be hard not to see this game as a competitor for GotY.