Best posts made by GreenFlashlight

I came in to ask a question, but first, mietze is one hundred percent correct. It is not radical or taking politics too far or whatever to cut ties with people who want you to have fewer rights than them. I hope no one in this discussion was even suggesting that and that we're just responding to abusive people in our own lives who like to gaslight us by saying their hate doesn't apply to us because we're one of the good ones, but either way, it needs to be reinforced that this is not a 'both sides' thing.

Now.

I'm not gonna grouse about this, I promise. I just need to set this up so the question will make sense. A friend just told me about a pretty cringey exchange she witnessed, two female characters in an OOC lounge announcing to the gathered masses that their characters are fuckbuddies while perfomatively snuggling one another; the usual. But this time it occurred to me, I can't think of a time I've ever seen people who present as hetero doing that. Have any of you ever seen the players of hetero characters do the kind of aggressive "hey everyone watch me sit in my lover's lap while he strokes me" thing you see so many 'lesbians' do?

@StarChild said in Dead Celebrities 2020:

@Waller Though he's well known for that role, he delivered amazing performances as Jackie Robinson in "42", James Brown in "Get on Up", and one more historical figure I'm forgetting.

Thurgood Marshall, I think.

@Kestrel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Ancient drama archive for your headdesking pleasure, because who needs craniums anyway amirite.

I'm on page two. Why am I still reading this? What is actually wrong with me?

@SixRegrets said in The Work Thread:

Please keep in mind that this is the fault of your employer, not you.

Yeah, and I'm constantly angry about it. Constantly. It shocks and disgusts me that medical professionals who have nearly two hundred residents relying on staff to provide the basic cares and activities of daily life have run a cost analysis to determine the absolute minimum amount of staff they can get away with before they get sued for violating state law by understaffing; this perpetual state of being understaffed both destroys the morale of the people working, and creates undignified and dangerous living conditions for the people under our care.

Also, as I write this, it just occurred to me I've never heard anyone in management refer to them as people; just residents. Fuck me. Anyway.

This greed isn't my fault, but I'm one of the only people serving as a buffer between the dangerous inevitable consequences of that greed and the people who suffer because of it.

@Caractus said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@GreenFlashlight said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Pandora said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I don't hate or fear anyone for having gender dysphoria.

I doubt anyone here is judging you for your private feelings. They're upset because of the actions you take by continuing to post TERF talking points.

Based on attitudes like that, I recently concluded that people prefer Mu*ing as a small, obscure, sparsely populated hobby because they can be bigots in peace.

I might be misunderstanding you, but personally, I don't care about anyone's feelings. If you're* being shitty to trans people, then your shittiness is not mitigated by whether you feel fearful or hateful during your shitty behavior. Even if I were inclined to police someone's thoughts, I still wouldn't want to capitulate to people who change the subject from their demonstrable actions to their undisprovable feelings. That's a trap, and I don't like falling for it.

*generic "you," not you personally

@Ganymede said in Good TV:

I finished She-Ra season 5 the other night.

I watched the final two episodes again tonight.

I don't remember ever crying so hard.

I'm so happy and sad at the same time.

One thing I needed a straight person to point out to me because I didn't really have the perspective to notice it myself was, I cried so hard because of how different the show is from other gay media. I don't know how spoilers work in this forum, so here's hoping they take...

***=NSFW content***

@silverfox Huh. I never thought about the ubiquity of using food to describe people's skin color. In one way, it seems kind of natural, since food is a fairly universal experience and thus makes an easily comprehensible illustration. My problem with it is, why is it so important to you that I picture exactly that shade and hue of melanin when I imagine your character? I know a lot of people like to go into painful detail, and I understand the importance of being clear about major details, but skin hue is something that can usually be described in very loose terms and still convey what it's meant to. For example, if I'm describing a shut-in who doesn't get much sun, "pale" conveys that and no one has ever asked me if my paleness is more akin to cream, filet of cod, or vanilla with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

My favorite technique to describe a person's skin is to do it for ALL my characters. POC descs usually call out their race, so I insist on doing it for white characters too. I refuse to let myself fall into the trap of thinking white people are a default and everyone else is an aberration whose not-whiteness needs to be emphasized. If the level of detail I put into a white person's desc makes me feel like a white supremacist, then I back the hell off and apply that same level of restraint to a POC desc.

When you're on a social media blackout because you don't want to get your hopes up over an event you know will be strung out for weeks or months in court, and your goddamn phone beeps a news alert at you. Fuck you, phone, do you know what my heart did just then?

A game set in the world of the Cowboys of Moo Mesa. MOOMOO.

This hurts more than I expected it to. I'm trying to comfort myself with reminders that dying at home, surrounded by friends, and probably being given the best painkillers money can buy after having lived eight decades is one of the best ways to go, but... still. I didn't know Alex Trebek, so it's not like this is a personal loss, but it feels like a cultural one; like American society as a whole is diminished by his absence.

Oof. Great, now I'm going to work crying.

@runescryer said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

But, I mean, it's not like there's any real interest in an Avatar MU, right?

no i dont want that at all
i bet you dont either
you can just give me your share and ill throw it away for both of us

@atomic said in Critters!:

Aw! Looks like a teenager who hasn't grown into their ears yet.

@puppybreath said in Critters!:

It's probably just that I'm old but I love that he looks like he's about to say "Hey there, Wilbur."

@arkandel said in Balancing wizards and warriors:

• Aes Sedai PCs used loopholes they didn't in the books. "I can't burn you alive but I can immobilize and gut you with this here sword", "I'll use magic to throw a boulder at your head, how's that?"

This one, at least, sounds like you can nip it in the bud with a "don't be a jerk" rule:

"You can't magically throw boulders at humans. Your magic can't harm humans."

"It's not harming a human! It's just throwing a boulder! GRAVITY is hurting the human!"

"Don't be a jerk."

@testament "dis pillow smells like mah favrite butt"

@derp Do you feel as if I am being unfair to you?

As if I am talking past you without listening to what you're saying?

As if I am allowing my bias to trick me into advocating for something hateful and hurtful while thinking I am advocating for the innocent?

Maybe even as if I am using the specters of some vague group of unnamed victims as human shields in a cynical attempt to make it harder to disagree with my position because anything you say will seem like it's targeting those vague victims rather than my positions or even me?

That must be terrible. It's so unfair that I can't relate.

@buttercup I'm sorry. I hope you do take some time for yourself. No matter what the diagnosis, it sounds like you could use some decompression.

Thank you for sharing your vulnerability with us. We are strangers, but we are also cheering for you.

Is there anything you need from us, or that you feel more comfortable asking us than others?

I think racism in fantasy gaming is unavoidable, and I can't talk about why without explaining my perspective.

I'm American. In my culture, racism isn't just the presence of racial stereotypes on others; it's also the lack of racial stereotypes on the majority. For example, if a black person is angry, then that is because they are black and all black people are angry; but if a white person is angry, then that is an individual character trait which has no relationship to their race. A rich Jewish person is rich because of their Jewishness while a rich WASP is rich because of skill and bootstrapping; an Asian honor student is smart because of their race, while a white honor student is smart because of individual merit.

That lack of racialization applied to the majority is a part of racism that I think is invisible to most members of the majority, and I think that invisibility makes it very difficult to confront. To use D&D as an example, it's not just racist that elves have a specific set of racial traits applied to them, it's also racist in a supremacist way that humans--the majority race, the ones free of racialization--have completely customizable traits to pick from. Elves can only ever be good at what elves do, but humans can be just as good as elves at what they do, or what dwarves do, or what orcs do, or or or.

The reason I think racism is unavoidable in RPGs is because when you declare a race to be not human, you have to define what separates them from humanity; and if you're a good game designer, that definition has to include mechanical benefits that support the definition you create. The problem is that this same standard is never applied to humanity. Human characters are never defined: there is nothing a human can't be, can't do, can't have experienced. Humans are individuals, who have varied and individual experiences. Other races, by the nature of not being human, are a collective who are incapable of existing outside of that definition of not-human.

As you're reading this, perhaps you're thinking to yourself that I'm overlooking an obvious possibility here: that it is absolutely possible for writers to apply the same level of racialization to humans as they do to non-human races, to define what humans can be and therefore what humans cannot be. And yeah, sure, that's technically possible, but I've never seen anyone do it yet. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong RPGs.

I don't know how to embed the image directly. https://twitter.com/SU_ggushi/status/1289095539682734080

@lotherio said in Something Completely Different:

It was a 'hey can we stop this until I talk with another admin to get a handle' and then it kept going, and going, and was still going even this week.

To people who perceive it as an injustice, "Hey guys please allow this injustice to carry on until I can consult with someone who actually matters (unlike you) about whether this actually is unjust" isn't a super reasonable request.

@solstice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I just had to share the absolute groan-fest of accidentally grousing about a bad psychiatrist... to the same psychiatrist. Cringing just thinking about it again.

I kind of get why that makes you cringe but also kind of don't. It sounds like she's the one who should be cringing, not you.