@Tinuviel

When you're going through a thing IRL and completely independently, by sheer coincidence and not even your own initiative, a thing happens on a MU* that just 100% resonates with that RL thing you're processing and actually really helps.

In this particular situation it's a thing I feel like I can't talk to anyone about IRL, but then someone else's character decided to talk to my character about that exact same thing, through the lens of their own experience and fictional IC circumstances.

I've heard people say you shouldn't use MU* for therapy, and at least consciously, I don't. But I think that storytelling has therapeutic capabilities that even the staunchest of separatists can't/shouldn't deny. I have favourite books and shows and movies I return to in times of need; RP offers similar, yet without control or predictability. That's surely why in part you shouldn't use it for therapy, (plus not expecting/demanding/asking anything of other players) but when the stars align and something just somehow hits, it hits. It's powerful and it's precious.

So a scene today has left me really emotional, but in a really positive, helpful way. I feel seen — and by someone else's fictional character, at that, whose player had no way of knowing that their story could strike this kind of chord with me.

This hobby is great, and storytelling is fucking magic. For all the gripes and peeves this forum in particular is so well known for — those lows wouldn't be felt if not for the capacity for such ecstatic highs.

I worked in field science; which, for the uninitiated, is the jocks' table of the science world / academia, compared to the nerd's corner that is lab science. It was white male-dominated and physically demanding, with a strong bro-culture of whey-chugging rugged-wildman-machismo, casual sexism/homophobia, etc. The toxicity ruined what was otherwise a dream job for me.

You can't expect to change something like that overnight, but you also don't need to overthink it. The simplest tips that would have made a world of difference for me are:

• Listen to women
  &
• Read a room

Women aren't an alien species. We really don't have any kind of unique set of wants you need to be particularly attentive to. We just wanna be treated like people (i.e., not on the basis of our sex/gender) and it's really that simple.

In theory, women should let you know if something makes them uncomfortable, but the problem is that calling something out often puts us at risk of being conflated with the issue we're drawing attention to; the blame is placed on us, for complaining about it, rather than on the source of the actual problem.

e.g., Kestrel is a loud-mouthed feminist who's constantly complaining about how we do things around here.

Rather than:

Our sexist work culture is making our valued employees feel unsafe and unwelcome, and impacting their productivity/satisfaction.

Women know this. Any woman who's ever held a job, especially in a male-dominated field, is likely to at some point have been the target of inappropriate sex/gender-based harassment, and learned the hard way that attempting to resolve the issue often puts them, rather than the person they're complaining about, at risk.

@Arkandel, even if you think that's not a concern that women should have under your employ, they aren't going to intuitively know that and if they're older than say, 18, are going to err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting themselves vs. just being willing to put up with a certain amount of shit.

This is why it falls on you, as someone who cares, to listen to women and read a room.

A woman who's uncomfortable at work isn't likely to outright say it. By the time she does, you can bet it's because she's already reached her upper tolerance limit for politely ignoring the issue.

So if at some point during a meeting she says, politely, even with a smile, playing it off as humour, any statement along these lines:

• 'Don't interrupt me.'
• 'Thank you for your input. As I was saying ...'
• 'Let me finish.'
• 'That's not appropriate.'
• 'Yes, I think I suggested that earlier.' (after someone tries to play off her idea as theirs)
• 'Is that all you think about?' (in RE: sex jokes etc.)

Or if you notice she's been trying to say something for a while and keeps getting cut off, or is looking uncomfortable, leaning away from someone who's "being hilarious", frowning at their jokes while everyone else in the room is laughing ...

Don't assume it's harmless. Don't assume it's all in good fun.

If you're arbitrating a discussion, it's your job to let people know when they're taking up too much space. If you notice someone's been trying to speak for a while, cut off the person who's interrupting them and express that you'd like the other person to have the floor. I'll do this even if I'm not arbitrating; point to a person and say, 'I think x had something they wanted to say.'

If you're in doubt, you can always ask your employee/colleague to catch up with you in private later, after a meeting, to touch base. 'I notice [potential issue], is everything OK? Would you let me know if [person/issue] was making you uncomfortable?'

And if someone comes to you with a complaint without invitation, even if they do so with a smile and assure you it's no big deal — take it seriously.

That's really all you need to do to create an inclusive work environment for all genders.

Kitty is a girl with the right allocations. She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack. She has a mind like a diamond — she knows what's best. You can tell from one look at her, with her eyes that burn like cigarettes, that she is the kind of girl who gets up early and stays up late. You bet she has uninterrupted prosperity and good dividends. As she's touring the facilities and picking up the slack, she's putting up her hair and playing with her jewellery, which is when they catch the righteous sun and you notice that her fingernails shine like justice. She has a short skirt and a long, long jacket, with shoes that cut, and she uses a machete to cut through red tape. Her voice is dark like tinted glass, with a smooth liquidation. Her car has a cupholder armrest — it's the kind of car that will get her there. She traded her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron and her name is now Karen.

(the song)

I try not to be a codependent RP partner but:

That one person you can scene with any day, any time, and no matter what the game, situation or character is you always have chemistry.

Even years later with adult lives and busy schedules, reuniting on another game, even briefly, brings that energy and magic all back.

Like at this point I realise I'm not even here for the game in question so much as here for the person. Which may sound obsessive and weird but I told them and they were just like, 'same tbh'.

Make a thing on a game.

Walk away from that game.

Come back to the game literally years later and see that not only is the thing I made still there, but that people are actually doing stuff with it, enjoying it, customising it, and making it their own.

God. My heart.

Not having a great time unfortunately. I've been trying to join leftist action groups in my area to organise and I keep walking out within the week because they're so often plagued by antisemitic garbage.

It feels like the most acceptable form of racism on the Left and it frustrates me because it pits minority groups against one another and unpacking the propaganda/myths all over every single time is incredibly exhausting. Not everyone perpetuating it knows what they're doing but the toll on me as TokenJew to respond to and address it is the same regardless.

On the one hand, I kind of want to stick around and make things better? On the other, I value my mental health. The ubiquity of this problem really can't be overstated.

My favourite person: I wanna write with you.
Me: Same.
My favourite person: I'm playing in this place.
Me: But that place is a shithole.
My favourite person: OK, I will roll in where you're playing then.
-Literally a day later-
App submitted.

feelsgoodman

Andi on our morning walk today; she's now exactly 9 months old.

We met a father with 3 young daughters, all of whom looked to be under the age of 10. The youngest was at first terrified and hid behind her dad going, 'omg it's a wolf!' But I reassured her that Andi's a good girl and then a few minutes later they were bounding down the street asking for permission to pet her. Andi loves the attention, the kids loved getting to pet a dog, the dad loved seeing it, everyone came out a winner. The girl who was at first scared ended up being her biggest fan to the point where it was hard to eventually move along.

She honestly makes me feel great not just for the immediate interpersonal benefits of unconditional love, but because whenever I take her out I feel like I'm accompanied by this beacon of sunlight who spreads joy everywhere she goes, putting smiles on people's faces and brightening people's day. A teenage girl once stopped me to say, 'Can I pet your dog? Please I've had a really shitty day.' Just ... this dog is such a source of goodness. I love her so much. A perfect being.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@TheBigD said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

"Okay, dude wants to play X, ban his ass because obviously he's a Y."

Where does this happen?

@TheBigD said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

"Okay, dude wants to play X, so let's hear their reasoning and what they want to get out of it."

Or this.

You know in practice what actually happens is that nobody gives a fuck who or what you play until you do something overtly racist/misogynistic/queerphobic with your character archetype, like giving your Jewish character a hunchback and a hooked nose and making them a diabolical banker with gold telekinesis powers, at which point someone rightfully calls you out and you can do one of two things:

1. 'oh my bad I did not think critically about how this would look, you are right to point out I am furthering antisemitic stereotypes and although that was not my intention, I will take steps to rectify this mistake and educate myself so I can do better in future.'
2. 'omg how dare you call me racist that's so insensitive not everyone who disagrees with you is racist why are SJW snowflakes so easily triggered these days, I need a safe space away from these mean callout culture PC brigade unfairly accusing me of racism for your information my half-grandma was Jewish and so is my best friend's dog's vet.'

In the free marketplace of ideas I could not possibly make a judgement call as to which is the better response, just you know, think about it a bit and do some soul-searching and hopefully you'll arrive at the left conclusion.

But I'm just saying, actually nobody has ever asked me why I sometimes play men & non-binary people even though I'm neither of those, or sometimes use Maggie Q and Zoë Kravitz as played-bys even though I'm not black or Vietnamese either. Someone once told me to change one word in my description as (unbeknownst to me) its usage is sometimes controversial so I just did that and then everything was fine. MU cancel brigade, where you at? I'm waiting.

@simplications

I'm calling bullshit on all of this. You're a phony. Using the language of the oppressed while siding with the oppressor is textbook fascist baloney, and while the current crop of useful idiots might eat it up, I am not buying any of it.

We can skip past the fact that you have such strong opinions and intimate knowledge of MSB's Hog Pit despite supposedly having only registered an account here after it was done away with. I'm willing to bet that one of the threads you're determined to see expunged is about you, but as that's speculation, let me instead point out the factual inaccuracies:

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

At what point did the forum protect someone? If Jerkface gets banned from the game he's on, it's not because he's somehow been identified as Jerkface without having engaged in bad behavior. The identification requires the bad behavior to occur. The behavior, and the toll it takes on the victimized, has not been prevented.

1. Cullen/Azazello/Surtr was banned from at least two games as a direct result of the thread that started about him in the Hog Pit and was later cross-posted to Reddit. The two games I know of having done this are TI: Legacy and After Earth.

He preyed on players on both games. On TI, from the forum post, I presume that his target either didn't come forward at the time, or that it was an isolated incident and therefore not treated as actionable. With regards to After Earth, I actually know a little more: he made it to the staff team despite rumours of abusive behaviour, was eventually banned by the head dev, and then managed to talk his way out of it and get the ban reversed.

The head dev had doubts about him, but because he's a serial gaslighter and making people doubt their own reality is what he does, he was able to suppress them. Seeing the thread helped corroborate many people's individual experiences as being part on an overarching pattern and realise that no, they're not the jerks for disbelieving him, he is for lying to and manipulating him. He was then rebanned, this time permanently.

Never mind what he did on some stupid game though, because my real issue with him has always been that he uses these games to form real-world relationships with the women on them, and then uses game mechanics to further stalk, harass and control them in their communities. He's driven good players out of this hobby, some of whom never returned, and I for one am sick of it. How does the thread protect people? Because when you're being gaslit in an abusive relationship and asking yourself, 'Is it me, am I the crazy one?' Seeing a bunch of other people screaming from the rooftops, 'No, you're not, get out!' can absolutely make a difference between life and death.

lol I know life and death sounds so dramatic. His criminal record includes a Class B felony, but I think sharing that with the class would be against the rules. Sorry, no receipts.

DWOPP and @ZombieKerouac were also successfully banned from multiple games thanks to identification on MSB, and I for one do not think any of these people deserve any more chances to further poison this hobby or hurt anyone else.

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

In order for that behavior to be reported, it has to have been done to or in the presence of someone that is reporting it. Did they skip reporting it to the game runners and instead came to the forum instead? This doesn't make any sense.

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I wouldn't want to see any of these as posts. If someone is acting in a problematic way on a game you're on, you should take it to the game runners. They have the opportunity to hear what you have to say, possibly compare it to other reports they may have heard, and get the other side of the story from the accused. This protects all parties.

2. What if the abusive person is staff? As has been the case on Firan, Sindome, and After Earth. Or good friends with staff? As is the case on HavenRPG. Or staff just won't, for whatever reason, do anything about it, as is the case on many games where people don't check their privilege, and plug their ears imagining that since they don't see it and aren't directly affected — and may never be affected, for example because they're men — then it isn't happening or doesn't matter, because IC is IC, and there's surely no way for OOC malice to tarnish that without the victim being to blame.

3. When abusers are banned, there are always people who are like, 'Wow that seems unjust. I happen to know his cat's uncle and he's a great guy. Maybe staff are the real abusers and banned him for no reason?' But when there's a public thread full of people coming out of the woodwork to put their hands up and say, 'This happened to me too,' it's a lot less sus.

But I don't think you care about players at all. I think protecting shitty staff and the abusers they harbour is entirely your goal, and it's a goal served by ... look I need to brush up on my political lingo, and you seem very well educated. What's the phrase about something something silence oppressor?

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Remove them from your circles instead of just warning the people around you. Tell staffers, share information, cut them out of the community. When they come back under a new name, find them (perhaps find out about them on a board like this) and remove them again.

While I understand and concur with most of your responses, doesn't this sounds a little bit witch hunty?

Call me old-fashioned, but when I hear the term "witch hunt", I tend to think of the hostility women are frequently subjected to, in hobby spaces and in the real world, for refusing to adhere to a gendered social hierarchy. For calling out misogyny when they see it; for setting personal boundaries; for refusing men who feel entitled to their time, kindness, labour and therapy; for trying to warn others about powerful and popular abusers, and exposing them for the charlatans that they are.

You and @Ghost are living in a fictional world if you think that doing the above is ever easy, let alone rewarding, that it involves coasting by on "popularity currency" and doesn't carry serious risks and consequences for the accuser. A smear campaign that was launched against me, to discredit the thread I made about Cullen/Azazello/Surtr, has yet to be recanted by a then-advocate of his, even though she's since come out as a victim; it cost me a real-world friendship at the time. A staff member on the game I was playing used her position to consistently grief and troll me for exposing him. I can't imagine how much worse all of this would've felt had I been one of the many women he'd harmed more directly, or lured into an RL relationship. I can't imagine what it's like to be Amber Heard right now.

An inkling is perhaps why I myself never told anyone about the well-liked Chad in this hobby who abused me personally, not until he was long gone, and even then only to a select few. (Some of whom still managed to disappoint me, based on how they responded.) I would also point out that Azazello coasted by for literal years in this hobby before he was banned anywhere, his reputation very well known, by which point the harm he had already done was immeasurable — and that he was able to continue committing harm for his sick pleasure long after that, too. The backlash against his accusers, however, has always been instant.

A very mild example of the above happened on TSS, too; but because of these boards, and because of excellent staff policies on that game, it didn't go very far. This guy didn't like being privately told no, so he tried to publicly torch me. Thanks, @Seraphim73 and @GirlCalledBlu, for not putting up with that. Thanks for conferring with other witches to kick a witch-hunter off your game.

Even typing up this post, I feel the exact same way I've felt every time I've been in that position before. Does this make me look dramatic? A mean girl, a bully, just plain crazy? And worse, because until my name was brought up in connection with it very recently, I hadn't realised it's what I'm now mainly known for on these boards — will that lead others to question the validity of other claims I've made before? Because that would now carry consequences for more than just me, and it already has.

I'll give @Tirit the benefit of the doubt, actually, because I don't know them, and maybe I'm misattributing sentiment to their relatively few words on this topic.

@Ghost, though? I'm still waiting for receipts. Who have I bullied on these boards? Because I've found myself rereading old threads as a sort of post-mortem for MSB, and realised I was actually incorrect when I claimed I hadn't responded to most of the conflicts you've initiated with me over the years; in point of fact, I have never responded to any of them until the last few days, after you'd decided to label me a bully.

I can recall exactly two people I have ever antagonised on these boards: one is Azazello, and the second is Discordance, a staff member on Haven, for abusing her position to antagonise his detractors. I'm no longer terribly confused by why you see me and so many other "mean girls" as villains, however, because I think the safety of this newly witch-free space has allowed you to start making your agenda entirely clear.

It's curious that we're told "the clique" can't be named, and their crimes can't be listed, because so many people fear their terrible retribution, and therefore receipts can't be produced, either. It's to protect the victims, mostly from women witches.

It's curious that a dearth of receipts seems so much more suspect, and so much less understandable, when it relates to at least a dozen women (and I really think that's an understatement) who have things to say about a single man.

It's curious that @hobos can continue to publicly harass someone who's publicly told him to not contact her, and to cease giving life to malicious and unfounded rumours about her, but that publicly calling him out for doing that is apparently against the rules, and invites hostility from admin voices. Incidentally, the "receipts" he presented, which have since been spun into "omg someone falsely accused him of a literal crime, how damaging", were of a woman — not the one he was harassing — stating that based on his observable behaviour, she would personally distrust and feel uncomfortable with him. I wholeheartedly share this view. I would never trust my drink in the hands of anyone who defended a predator, who has multiple accusers, on the grounds of, 'But my friend from another game knows him and he's a really great guy, it's just the mean girls who hate him for no reason, because they're jealous!' Personally I wouldn't trust my drink in the hands of most men, because we live in a society, but definitely not with someone who shows repeated, continual disregard for others' right to their boundaries, while feigning remorse and vilifying them for it.

I personally have no association of any kind with @Roz, the main "mean girl" I've seen insinuated as a presumed leader of this clique, but I've frequently upvoted her posts on MSB, because I've generally found them eloquent, classy, and intolerant of misogyny or abusive behaviour without herself needing to resort to aggression in the process. From the sidelines, it strikes me that this is what it takes on these boards to now be labelled a "mean girl".

I refuse to take this thread seriously because it's a lie, an exercise in public gaslighting, and a witch-hunt.

I think the way "we" fix the hobby (tbh, not you, but people who are actually walking the walk) is to take the approach I saw outlined here by @Apos.

Lastly, I would just like to commiserate with @Sunny and @GreenFlashlight for prophesying the future of MSB with Simpsons-like clarity two years before we reached this state, even when we were at its peak. You both knew better than me.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

while I think you are a bully

Any receipts, or are those waived for members of the anti-clique clique? It’s been a while since high-school, I don’t remember the club rules.

Thank you also for the armchair psychoanalysis, it was kind of you to take time out of your day to reflect on my wellbeing. As a return gesture, I would like to suggest that I think you’re projecting.

@Misadventure said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

The question for you becomes: what if people disagree with you and feel people were accountable enough?

Then I suppose we agree to disagree and make peace with the outcome. I still don’t think you’re being disingenuous, but I have a lot less confidence in those you put yours in, and must live with the incorrigible impulse to call a spade a spade.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Kestrel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I'm a person who's been paying attention to the discussion on both of these boards and over on @Ghost's Reddit thread

Oh that's riiiiiiiiight I'd almost forgotten.

After that thread was necro for 3 weeks or so Kestrel decided to "check in" and throw barbs on that because things must have been boring.

Poke. Poke. Poke.

That's what's going on here and I don't think it's constructive at all.

Yeah I liked how you implied my throwaway troll comment makes me part of some secret cabal or that I've bullied you personally, even though literally the only conflict we've ever had on these boards was:

1. When you decided to persistently attack the creators of the 100 MUSH and everyone posting their support for the game on their ad thread, even though to my knowledge you didn't even play it, over some ancient beef with how they ran their last game.
2. When I advertised a pro-intersectional MU* community.
3. When you wanted to cast doubt on Azazello being exactly who everyone says he is.

Each of these conflicts being initiated by you, most of which I did not respond to.

Bruh if these boards have a bullying problem, you are it.

@Misadventure said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Solstice I agree with what Derp said, and it's not benefitting me one bit.

Am I a sycophant, or am I someone with their own opinion worthy of consideration as a human being?

The latter; I have no reason to doubt your sincerity and have never personally assumed any statement of yours to be inauthentic.

I would like to go on record however saying that I've never played Arx, have no intention of doing so (L&L not my theme), nor have I ever privately communicated with its staff members on any platform, nor with BMD's staff, or any of the usual suspects generally insinuated to be part of this "clique".

I'm a person who's been paying attention to the discussion on both of these boards and over on @Ghost's Reddit thread, and was able to arrive at her own conclusions after quite an extended period of sitting on the fence and letting people reveal themselves.

As I too was then swept under the label of "clique" (initially, ironically, for having stated that I wished to stay on the fence), I note that there's quite a lot of what you're describing going around, @Misadventure, though to be clear I'm not implicating you personally in it.

I think this broader conversation is being controlled by people peddling a lot of absolute fucking horseshit, and I don't need anyone else's borrowed opinions to smell the stink.

This is not a tale of two warring tribes, nor as @Derp puts it, friction resulting from "two very different groups of people interacting in the same space". This is a whole bunch of people cut from the same exact cloth, some of whom now have the weight of a banhammer behind their desire to win internet arguments, and some of whom don't. And, somewhat more enviably, the apparent wealth of mental fortitude with which to keep the spin going for this long, instead of just admitting to an ounce of accountability.

lol. lmao.

Is this the part where I take your thread seriously, invest the time and emotional energy to respond in good faith, only to then receive a veiled warning from our new admins, accused of being in a clique with people I don’t even talk to, and told that my choice to answer the very question that was asked in the first place makes my motives suspect?

Fast-forward to the thread lock and paternalistic lecture IMO.

When you help a confused newbie get settled into a game, and then a few weeks later see them helping a different confused newbie get settled in, resolving the exact same obstacle you helped them past.

I'm like a proud mama.

The lil bit of magic that happens when someone's style meshes so well with your own that you're both just elevating each other to a whole other level every time you get to share a scene. Separate you're OK. Together? Whoa, I actually didn't know I could write like this. Or that they could!

I've been a little insular lately on the game I play for anxiety reasons; just haven't been up to braving big social scenes. But there's one person I've had an abandoned plot thread with for so long, at this point, that the prospect of finally getting around to following up on it has somehow managed to turn into just another daunting chore I've been dreading. Well, today I finally did it, and what the hell was I so afraid of, damn?

Related MU* thing I love: chill people being chill about RL obligations. Sometimes I stress myself out trying to write fast for people, but the person I had this scene with today just let me cruise through a mutually busy day. Sometimes one/two poses per hour peppered throughout the day with regular intervals and not having to rush is actually just fine by me.

First World Problems, but I'm frustrated by how much I still like Joss Whedon and how much his creations have irrevocably influenced me despite ... everything.