Posts made by Groth

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Stuff like this is usually pretty easy to explain, since I see it all the time and have had this discussion a lot. To put it simply, Asian-Americans and people who live in Asian countries are living extremely different experiences. You can't expect someone who grew up in China who has only lived in China to have the same experience and opinion as a Chinese-American. Considering that in China you grow up literally in the dominant ethnic group, why would the concept of cultural appropriation or anything like that even be something that you think about?

"Americans got mad, but people in China didn't" is just not a good argument and displays an overwhelming amount of ignorance on the part of journalists. Like, I don't see American journalists looking to see what the opinions of people who live in Lagos are about African-American issues. It just makes literally zero sense to me and has always been my least favorite line of thinking.

While I do think cultural appropriation is a real thing in a lot of contexts. When it comes to X-Americans in particular I think it's really somewhat silly and a good way to point out that silliness is to put it into a European context.

Some people from the US seem downright fetishistic about the idea of them having some degree of ancestry from Ireland, Italy, Germany or what have you and often attempt to celebrate holidays and icons in ways that are downright absurd to the people who still live there.

To me my traditions are simply things me and my family have been doing for long enough that it feels natural to continue doing them, they're not an attempt to celebrate my heritage. I have no reason to care about anyone else partaking in these traditions beyond the fact it's obviously annoying if someone uses a symbol without knowing what it means.

To tangentially address a random stranger quoted in the NYT article

I wouldn’t wear traditional Irish or Swedish or Greek dress either. There’s a lot of history behind these clothes. Sad.”

The reason you shouldn't wear the traditional Swedish dress is that it's pretty lame. The history behind it is that peasant clothing got regionally standardized during the 17th and 18th centuries for economical reasons and during mid to late 19th century there was a period where everything had to become 'gloriously Swedish' as part of the national romantic movement and suddenly peasant clothing was a national treasure. You can blame the same movement for a lot of the viking fetishism and a bunch of history revisionism I'm not sure we've fully untangled yet.

There's a second season of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. Time to find out if it's as enjoyable as the first one.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

The race aspect might still apply though -- is there any reason the Baratheons could not be black?

Offhand, the only ethnicity I remember mattering in Game of Thrones are the Targayens because unlike everyone else they're inbreeding immigrants though even then they only have to be different so in theory you should be able to mix them all up and it should still all make sense.

I just found The Titan Games on Netflix and I'm pleasantly surprised. It has some pretty inventive and intense competitions.

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I've been working on some huge official tabletop projects that I'm not allowed to talk about yet for a few companies (NDAs), but multiple of them involve basically structuring a very POC centric setting and writing things in a way that makes them easier for people who aren't POCs to digest. Like, a part of it is teaching people things to be mindful of or to consider, and presenting a POC-centric setting in a way that fully explains the setting to people who didn't grow up in them, and how people who live there think about them rather than how outsiders do.

Wouldn't all the techniques involved in writing a good POC-centric setting also apply to writing any other fantasy or science fiction setting?

After all a well-written setting should portray unique and interesting cultures in a way that teaches the reader how to portray it and tell their stories in it. This is something I think a lot of setting books do a rather poor job of, often they're written as little more then an atlas giving geographic and demographic information while giving you almost no advice on how to properly portray someone who is from there.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

There's a writing exercise I recommend if you're in doubt (like many others here, I am a writer). Write your story with every character as a white male (or whatever your default is). Then roll dice for gender, ethnicity and sexuality. If doing so fundamentally changed your story, then you're not writing people but tropes. Obviously works best in a setting with at least some equity.

I think there's a worthwhile caveat here that there's a lot of story-lines where the gender and ethnicity of the characters are crucial to the plot. Take Game of Thrones for instance, if you switched the genders of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon then their children couldn't be Jaime's kids anymore and that entire story is gone.

@KDraygo said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Now why didn't I play more Asian characters in the past being an Asian myself? Because an Asian character isn't as easy as playing a white character, unfortunately. People often say (and I have been guilty of this in the past without fully understanding what I was saying) just play normally. Even the term "normal" is skewed heavily to where you grew up. In the US? Being normal is being white. In my opinion, you can play a POC character "normally" because you would be doing it wrong.

I don't think 'normal' is quite the right advice. I think you first and foremost should try to make sure your character is a person and try to avoid bad stereotypes. What you can do and I've found work for me is to play unusual minorities. The only time I've played an African American was after watching Las Vegas and thinking Nessa Holt (portrayed by Marsha Thomason) was bad ass and wanted to play a character like her, the time I played a Korean I made them act British because that way I didn't have to worry about my lack of knowledge about Korea.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@egg blue eyes are coveted because they are rare. Just like being 'the tallest' is coveted because it is rare (and generally accepted to be attractive, most people don't covet rare things that are NOT.)

While you're checking demographically funky stats. Check out the number of men taller then 6 feet and women who are close to 5 feet tall as well as the number of people with green eyes.

Generally unless they're seeking to challenge themselves, I would expect most people to play what they're comfortable with which I would expect would tend towards what they know. I also suspect that Mushers are overwhelmingly white because PC gaming in general is overwhelmingly white.

Should people challenge themselves more and make more of an attempt to portray other cultures? Maybe, it's one of the advantages of role-playing. Primarily though this hobby is about having fun and I don't think there's anything wrong with people sticking with what they like.

@Wizz said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Specifically in regards to elves and dwarves, why? If they developed on the same world, in the same geographical regions, there's no real reason they wouldn't, they're not aliens. They've got the other human skin pigments and their bodies are almost identical to human bodies, to the point (in a lot of fiction) that they can even cross-breed with humans.

It's much more common that elves and dwarves with black skin are the evil faction -- dark elves, and (specific to WoW) dark iron dwarves. That's just off-putting and weird to me.

At least when it comes to World of Warcraft, you're not given the leeway to create any kind of dwarf, elf, human, troll etc. You're specifically making a dwarf of Ironforge, Blood Elf from Silvermoon, a darkspear tribe troll etc. Aside from the fact you can't make a dark skinned blood elf or light skinned night elf, you also iirc can't make a green troll because the green trolls are Amani. That only changed recently with the 'allied races' that allow you to pick different origins.

I honestly don't think that's a bad thing for fantasy races, reserving certain pigments for different subgroups is very useful for world building and for computer games especially it makes it a lot easier to visually distinguish the various factions.

@wahoo said in Good TV:

Re: Zoey,

My guess is the choreography is meh because your main 'name' cast aren't actually dancers, they're actors who can ..kinda move. And kinda sing. But mostly not so much.

If watching 'Let's dance' has taught me anything, it's that a good choreographer can make anyone look good.

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https://libgen.lc/ads.php?md5=dc36f341efc47a0d2bb88ceeeb25dfda

Out of sheer nostalgia I'd like to see a 1990's setting. I want to see trench-coats, brick-phones and Usenet.

@Tinuviel said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:

We're also not a monolithic structure that can be dealt with using generalisations.

True

@Admiral said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:

@Groth I get accused of all sorts of shit constantly. The very same people who scream at me for how 'insensitive' I am being through what I think is innocuous chatter feel perfectly fine going on at length about what an asshole I am. Which is, of course. Extremely insensitive.

The hypocrisy is real.

What I'm talking about is not hypocrisy, it's lack of understanding. Whatever accusation is leveled may just be accurate most of the time and in most contexts but neuroatypical people are an atypical context. For a normally functioning human being this isn't a big deal, their interpretation being wrong 2% of the time still leaves it perfectly capable of giving them good contextual understanding the other 98% of the time.

However on the other side of the equation that 2% is their life. Those 2% of situations where interpretations go wrong is their always.

@silverfox said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:

Online I can't understand how anyone is thinking or feeling. I assume that is the same for everyone else. I try to be transparent about my emotions if they are going to be an issue.

That said? Everyone is going to read things through their own filter.

So here's the problem you run into when you have a neuropsychological disorder. Because your brain is wired fundamentally differently from 98% of the rest of the population, when someone interprets you through their filter they're going to be wrong almost always.

Then they're going to use their wrong interpretation to very loudly and insistently argue that you are being manipulative because they at a fundamental level do not understand where you are coming from and they get backed up by the majority because they also do not understand.

It's intensely frustrating to a level that's hard to put into words and it happens constantly.

Ironically the solution here is to be less transparent about your emotions, always back down from any circumstance you may have to explain yourself because statistically it'll always make the situation worse. Being successful in online spaces as someone with high functioning autism involves building a mask that looks normal while not allowing any of your actual feelings and emotions through.

@bear_necessities said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

I still think the real issue is the incredible lack of broad-appeal games. If a couple of people just made a few Ares games that were modern day and weren't WoD, I think it'd be really successful.

I think there's a lot of pent up demand for WoD with the serial numbers filed off AKA Urban Fantasy The Mush. Let people play vampires, werewolves, fairies and wizards without all the excessively complicated rules.

@Ganymede said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:

@A-B

I am repeating because I was probably lost in whatever the fuck just happened a couple of pages before.

Why have you chosen online text-based games as a way to stave off insanity from your isolation?

Online text-based games are one of the more accessible means to learn to become better at communication and social cues. You don't have to deal with any of the difficulties of interpreting body language or the intensely difficult task of figuring out the appropriate time to speak during verbal communication or the pressure of real time communication in general.

It's one of the few places in the world where it's possible to pretend to be normal.

I don't like framing this as a question of 'right' or 'wrong'. This isn't about morals or ethics, being able to effectively navigate chat communities isn't the same thing as being a good person. Some of the worst people in the community have proven themselves to be masters at navigating these social interactions and being bad at handling these things doesn't make you a bad person.

That said most of the advice given in this thread is good advice for success. By trying to be more passive and paying attention to how the others behave you will over time build a better understanding of what is expected.

I'm finding myself neither having the drive and energy to poke people with pages for RP nor do I have any more taste for 'tavern' RP. So I just end up idling all day long checking my watchlist and where while wishing I could find it in myself to make a scene happen.

Maybe someday I'll RP again, who knows.