Posts made by Kanye Qwest

I play all the things, and honestly don't worry TOO much about how well I do it. Do I play a good man? IDK, but it's fun for me, so I do it. And then everyone wants to throw fucking costume parties and fancy dress stuff and I get bitter I'm not playing a fashionista girl, but I digress.

I think (based on no evidence) that the heavy prevalence of white characters probably does reflect rl demographics in some way. I could come up with a dozen possible reasons and they could all be valid or invalid for a small portion of people, but is it a problem? IDK. I know I like to see diversity in characters to play somewhere, and it's a must if it is a somewhat RL setting. But I don't like it if that diversity is just "a ton of Japanese girls and one or two strong, tatted up Black dudes". That's a red flag.

But is it a PROBLEM? I still don't know. I think it's so much about preference. Some people like to play what they know. I prefer to play things that are not like me, but without tipping over into playing stereotypes or recreating entire journeys I have no experience with. I have no problem playing a POC in a modern game as long as discrimination isn't a main focus of that game. It just doesn't seem fun. My heart hurts enough IRL.

@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Kanye-Qwest I mean, sure. Let's have a dialogue. That's all I'm asking for here. People seem to want to shut me down for some reason. If you don't agree with me, that's fine. I'm just putting stuff out there.

I bet they don't really WANT to. People have the habit of arguing about their own shit that makes it come off like it's meant to apply to a grand scale. People are talking!

I agree that there's plenty of shitty demographic stuff on games (the ageism thing is a bitch) and it shocks me that it's been this way forever. Also, "athletic with curves" should be banned from all descs.

oh man that one isn't even it for me. It's "lithe and curvy" like those things are direct opposites. what are you doing

@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

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

why are 22 year olds experts of everything that ever could be accomplished by a person

Have you ever met a 22 year old that didn't think they were an expert on everything?

lol well no but I mean. I have also never met a 22 year old with a pHD who is also a master of several languages, instruments, and martial arts.

ps my secret shame is that when I play short characters I'm dumb about it. I'm like LOOK HOW TINY THIS PERSON IS. HOW DO THEY LIVE. It boggles the mind. Short people, what do?

@egg said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Kestrel Why shouldn't I be mad? If I spend most of my leisure hours in a place where "representing yourself" = white (and even moreso, Aryan half of the time), shouldn't I want to see change there? Is it as important as the film industry changing its racial bias? Of course not. Does that mean I shouldn't care at all? No.

nah different things will always bother different people, and that's ok. It doesn't bother Kestrel, good for kestrel! It does bother you, ...well, not GOOD for you, but you know what I'm saying here. That's also valid and worth talking about.

I get annoyed by all kinds of demographic stuff in MU, and some of it you just have to shrug at (no one wants to be over 33 years old, no one wants to be unattractive) and some of it you grouse about to your friends (why is everyone 7' tall, why are 22 year olds experts of everything that ever could be accomplished by a person, why do people call eyes orbs) and some of it is actually problematic and bears examining (why DO people assume 'default' or 'normal' is white? why DO people want the inclusion of RL biases).

since people are upvoting i'll double post instead of edit to add: but that works because it's a fantasy game. I'm not saying all games should be that way. We aren't invalidating anyone's real life experiences in Arx, any more than we are recreating or exploiting them, BECAUSE it's a fantasy.

I can only really speak to Arx, as that's the only game I've had any input on the policy/world of. We wanted people to have representation without having to recreate struggles they face in life. That's why the Platinum Shift (the thing that helped human society in many ways, including the mixing in different skin colors and traits to the point no one would think of discriminating that way) happened in the past. That's just the way things are, now. You can be from Bastion and be very dark skinned, pale, or anywhere in between**. You can be of any gender or sexual orientation, and there's no built in discrimination that accompanies it. We went so far as to bend lore-creation to the purpose of enabling these things. No, it doesn't always make perfect logical sense to us in the framework of our experiences, but I mean. There are crazy elves who ride giant spiders. None of it makes perfect logical sense. It doesn't have to.

** just not of the East Asian characteristics for clarity because that IS a homogenous group that exists elsewhere in the world.

I admit i hesitate in modern settings to play black people, because I worry about doing it in a way that is disrespectful. It's the worry that stops me, not in that I feel like I might actually hurt or offend someone or get 'in trouble' for it, but because I know that added layer of analysis and anxiety will make it harder for me to get into the character.

But in fantasy settings? Yay! My first Arx pb was Zendaya. My only current PC anywhere is Chinese, but born/raised in California, because I can play that. I'm familiar enough with that to not find it stressful, and even then I get it wrong sometimes. I only recently learned that Cantonese and Mandarin apparently use the same written language? Oops.

@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Groth said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Should people challenge themselves more and make more of an attempt to portray other cultures?

We do that, plenty. By playing in fictional settings with their own cultures.

Is gaming a good way to explore things you can't in your reality? Absolutely. Would I trust any random Tom, Jane, or Ashley to explore that with me on a MU? Christ no.

wow excuse you i am very trustworthy

@Waller said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

One of the many issues in diversity in MU*ing is the setting.

Here's a WoD/CoD example:

Yes, there are Black people in New England, but when every single game is set in Small New England Town, New England State, it is a reach to figure out why my Black Vampire/Mage/Changeling/Werewolf is in this area. Everyone has to come up with reasons, and I have. But knowing that realistically my character would, at the very least, stick out in a crowd, makes upholding that IC Masquerade difficult in Small New England Town.

Sure, put your game in a place that you want. But when you look at the character roster and it looks like the campus of BYU...maybe it's your setting.

Here's what gets me about this: those small New England towns will have a ridiculously disproportionate number of strip clubs, opera houses, billionaires, east asian people, etc etc. So the realism is blown from the start - there are vampires and werewolves. The plausibility is blown by what I just mentioned. There's no town of 10,000 in the entire US with like, fifteen bars and strip clubs and bookstores and boutique shopping centers.

@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.)

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

Well, I've been given some options going forward.

Good news: my psychiatrist is really smart and up to date on all the latest neuropsychiatry and pharmaceutical studies.

Bad news: anxiety and ADHD medicines do not play well together.

By "do not play well together," I mean that benzodiazapenes make ADHD worse by depressing all neural function, including the mesocorticolimbic projection, which is what makes dopamine, well, work as a positive motivator. And ADHD medicines hyperactivate the HPA axis, which regulates stress.

So I get to choose between extreme lack of productivity, which is starting to affect my job performance even if I've managed to keep it hidden from others, and extreme, unrelenting terror that makes life literally unmanageable.

Meanwhile my bosses have literally no idea of what's required for the imminently due deadline, keep telling me to take time off because they're worried about my mental health, and don't have the ability to help me do what needs to be done because they never reviewed any of the materials I sent them weeks ago in order to learn it.

I want to quit everything and cry for a week. The only good news is that I'm so terrified of driving that if I ever actually become suicidal I can just get in the car and go to New Orleans because I'm convinced the constant panic attacks will kill me. Boom. Instant exposure therapy.

Or, you know, death.

It's fine. This is fine. Everything is fine. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

This is not my beautiful house!

Hey- my psych (who is also wonderful) put me on viibryd for anxiety. It's an off-label use of a fairly new drug, but as she explained, they did testing for both depression and anxiety and found that it helped both equally...but only paid the money to get it FDA approved for depression, as that's a much bigger market and much more in need of innovation.

It's not a fast acting benzo like ativan or xanax or whatever, but after a few weeks on it, after we stepped it up to 40mg? I have ABSOLUTELY noticed an improvement in my anxiety. Even during the pandemic. Talk to your psych about it. I am lucky my insurance is good with scrips and knocks the price down but drs are usually given discount cards to bring it down to $15 a month if your insurance is not so tolerant. And - no real side effects, which is the most amazing part. I took 2 antidepressants for a couple weeks each and just could not deal with the exhaustion and other issues. None of that with viibryd, at all. The one time I missed a couple doses I got 'brain zaps' (which was terrible, ngl) but that's almost any AD medication.

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

Double posting because I need to vent

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

It has helped me immensely to have a Neuroscience doctor tell me : You are not just lazy. Your brain is atypical.

I spent most of the afternoon of my diagnosis crying for this reason. It was just too much to process emotionally, especially given how many times I'd been told I was lazy by parents, teachers, and professors. I distinctly remember my Ancient Greek professor telling me "you aren't bad at learning vocabulary; that's just a narrative you've constructed for yourself."

That little joy was prompted by me coming to him and asking for advice on how to learn vocab because I was struggling with it (and always have, in every language I've studied. I have studied five languages).

Fuck you, Esposito.

I did the same thing. I just sat in my car and cried and I wasn't even sure why I started. All my life, it was "you're lazy" "you aren't living up to your potential" "why can't you just take care of it" and my favorite from my dad, "you're worthless". I think it's impossible not to internalize that stuff, and have it color all your feelings about YOURSELF. So I've been stuck in this decades long loop of :

1. I'm finally going to do it. I'm going to get my life together. I'm going to make a list, and I'm going to check things off it every day, and I'm NOT GOING TO PROCRASTINATE ANYMORE. Starting tomorrow, everything changes!
2. try to change everything tomorrow, fail, become overwhelmed
3. hate myself for being unable to just life my life like a normal person until I circle back to 1.

@kk

lol yeah, his name is Patrick. When he tried to be skeery on Arx we easily found his Facebook.

Sleep is not a choice!

@faraday @gingerlily

This. Stimulants absolutely have differing effects on brains with ADHD. I mean, you don't have to believe it, but I got my testing and my info from Duke University Neuroscience center, and I feel like they probably have a lot more data than either of us.

@Ninjakitten said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

Idle curiosity. Any pathetically 'skeery' PMs here to any staff he clocks as male, or is this just a special service for ~the ladies~?

He is abusive with dudes but reserves the stalking for those he perceives as 'ladies'. He also found out the real name of an Arx staffer...and then matched it to the wrong staffbit, enabling us to find out HIS REAL NAME TOO OOOOH SKARY. But yeah. He dropped 'her' name to a male staffer in some pathetic macho hur hur i threaten ur lady stupidity.

@Gingerlily Seconded. The neurologist diagnosis makes it much easier get the medications you probably need, as they are largely schedule I.

And beyond that, having it helped me with a lot of things I internalized. When I was a kid, most people thought ADHD was something only boys had - if they didn't think it was outright fake, or had even heard of it. So I always heard I was lazy, or unmotivated, or just bad because I wouldn't do the simple things I knew I was supposed to do. It has been very eye opening to look at my life and behavior against the data on this disorder. Lots of "oh so THAT explains a lot" moments.

@scar ...one of snails?

@Roz said in A Lack of Imagination:

I remember some things very well. The way I sort of collect knowledge in a mental repository on Arx can also be reflected in my work, which is a good skill to have.

I don't visualize stuff habitually almost ever, but I can? Like, if I consciously attempt, I can visualize an apple, sure. I was actually just driving home listening to Quadrophenia in the car and visualizing how GREAT A STAGE MUSICAL IT WOULD MAKE and how I would design it and shit, so I'm definitely not incapable. But I don't generally visualize, like, RP scenes as they're happening for the most part. I'm somewhere in the middle of that -- apple scale or whatever.

I don't have the voice in my head, though. Like, the idea of that is honestly HUGELY WEIRD for me to consider. WHY DO YOU HAVE AN INTERNAL NARRATOR?! My thought process all feels a lot more abstract. Like, feelings and impressions and such.

Oh my god brains are so weird. I absolutely visualize scenes. Sometimes I get held up because I'm like wait but they were right HERE and now they are posing being THERE and arms don't work like that!!!1 And I realize it's my deal and I don't push it on other people but it slows my poses down as I adjust and try to figure out how to describe plausible animation I see happening.

I also have an internal narrator, and it narrates things like I'm a character in a book, sometimes. If I'm not DOING something, my brain fills the silence and dead space with actual narration. I can also hear this narration in different voices. I was doing mantra meditation for awhile but just saying the word mentally, and the voice I was doing it in kept shifting. Jeremy Irons, Cate Blanchett, Tim Gunn...

@krmbm said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

@Taika said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

Wonder if it's the same guy I'm still having problems with on CoS.

Does he send you PMs that are probably meant to be sinister but just reiterate that your decision to ban this dude was the right one?

(Or, really, it's @ZombieKerouac, if that helps.)

He logged on to Arx and asked how we were, it was nice. Not sure Apos got around to answering him, but if he reads here: the game is totally still run by cunt rags and they are doing really well, thanks for asking!