Posts made by mietze

@Ghost Minor quibble, when I have seen people go full out card carrying member of The White Knights of Whatever, it's rarely been in pages--because that wouldn't show off their knowledge and research and how they totally are doing it right and should get to dictate how others should play things. It's always channel conversations. Pub or the equivalent usually. Does this happen in pages or skype or whatever, I'm sure. I don't join off site game groups for that reason, while I am happy to be there for friends, I have enough on my plate RL and otherwise than to have to deal with a circling the toilet bowl of negativity parade that those 'venting spaces' tend to devolve into.

I am not sure why MSB does not trigger the same kind of depression (though certainly it has and does, /especially/ some of the harder discussions we have had as a group about blindness to sexism/racism/homophobia) as a real time or coming into a group with 100s of messages. I can't even personally keep up with just general chatty positive discord or skype channels, except for my family one, so I just don't do 'em. I'm a little in awe of people who can maintain/keep up.

ETA: Nah, I don't have a problem on a game when someone is being an asshole to someone on chan, with asking them to stop behaving that way. I always appreciate it when others do the same as well. I usually do that before sending in a complaint, if it's bad enough, asking staff to please take a look at X channel around Y time, because this player is being very aggressively assholish and not really seeming to be willing or able to look at why people are getting upset. I don't think it's fair to send in a complaint without asking someone to stop, unless it's a safety thing or like--instant-nuke levels of egregious (in which case I think one should just take it to staff without trying to get involved in back and forth with that person).

I already said that one cannot and should not assume that the PC reflects the player. When you launched into discussing about how I was assuming that someone didn't have experience, I thought it important to clarify that in my above examples, these were people who disclosed/identified themselves as NOT being part of the group they were portraying, but because of their research and sympathy they could now lecture others on how they were doing things wrong--without bothering to consider that perhaps the players they were lecturing OOCly were in fact members of this group that they were white knighting so hard for.

You just never know. I think most people are very forgiving and tolerant, as long as you're not an ass--I mean they might avoid you, but I have rarely seen people assume actual snidely whiplash levels of malicious intent.

There are always some people though, that need to make sure that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE knows that they are a myopic asshole. Not sure we can ever escape those folks.

@Ghost said in MU*, Youth, and LGBT+ Identity

Gonna be real for a moment here, @mietze . I don't think you can have it both ways. You shouldn't get upset at people for "slut shaming" but then get annoyed because theyre playing something you havent "judged them" to have experience in. Judgment is ugly, and while some judgments are more valid than others this does not make being judgy truly okay. You shouldn't complain about whisper campaigns but then partake in them. There's another thread hitting these points right now so I'll take it there if it's worth continuing.

This quote seemed to be talking pretty specifically to me, using language I had used in the post that you were quoting from as well. Now, I do think that part of conversation is using other people's thoughts to launch their own, and that's totally legit! However, hopefully you can see why given that quote above I thought you were directly addressing me personally.

@Ghost well, you quoted and tagged me, so.

@Ghost Sorry to disturb your assumptions and soapbox a bit, but I'm not talking about me personally judging them for not being part of the group they're portraying, I'm speaking about when they straight out disclose that, but the declare that their research means they can browbeat others about what it is like to be a <insert here> when they in fact have no idea who the other players are, and what their experiences are (and those other players might well be a member of the group that person is white knighting.)

I think people are first writing up stuff, but then waiting, so that they can edit what they've written if other people are doing stuff way different, because nobody wants to be the weirdo that gets things wrong and now it's awkward because of all the other simultaneous posts that either make it look like you copied or misinterpreted OOCly like whoa.

I think what turns me off more when I see someone RPing something that they probably have no life-experience in, is not so much any mistakes they might make in how they go about doing it, but the weird entitlement that sometimes players get, as if because they have done so much research or whatnot, that somehow that means they are now the expert and can speak with OOC authority about the experience in RL that someone in that group would have. Often times not realizing or even taking into consideration that perhaps the player that they're talking down to on the OOC channel, even though the belittled player has a white male PC, for example, the player is actually a black woman. (I have seen that particular scenario happen. I have seen trans players get told what is and isn't acceptable behavior by cis players playing trans PCs. I have been told by someone who claimed to be a white woman that I was portraying my biracial-and-raised-totally-in-the-dominant-heritage-with-no-connection-to-the-minority-hertigate PC wrong--because she had read an article that different from how I was portraying things and it was different than how she was RPing her PCs experience. I'm a biracial adoptee who grew up in a white family and whose background was hidden because of the bigotry in my extended family).

That's more the transgression that bothers me personally the most. I think people should never assume they know what the player is behind the PC, nor presume that because they have done some research or know a guy that they have some clout OOCly in being experts on the experience. That just come across as...gross.

You know what makes me sad a little though is that in the rush to prove FUCK YOU MY PC ISN'T A STEREOTYPE I'M DOING THIS RIGHT!!! I have seen people slut shame on game and in discussions. This makes me super uncomfortable because I grew up being taught that "the gays" should just suppress their sexuality so as to not make people uncomfortable with its presence in front of them, and it was open season for anyone who dared display any tells. That kind of thing is STILL going on, especially against trans people. I have seen my son have to deal with that frequently, though usually not from his peers now that they are 16+ rather than middle school.

I think there is still a lot of disparagement and fear of sexuality on MUSHes, not as much as there seemed to be when I was younger/first starting out, but that could be just that I'm so used to seeing it, I think it's easier for me to sift it out now.

I think open sexuality in PCs is perfectly fine. I do not think it's something that should paint the player with a scarlet letter, no matter what the gender dynamics should be. If the attention is directed at someone who has said no thanks, of course that is way different. And of course, there might be IC ramifications (like a PC being booted from their job/organization/facing IC social sanctions) if they are ICly behaving inappropriately.

But to be honest, I don't see this very often. What I see more often is the whisper campaign or OOC slut shaming or derision. I get why it happens. But it still makes me feel pretty sad. It's a real thing, and I have seen it or had it happen on every game I've played (including Arx) no matter how the theme is set up. Sometimes I wonder if people are even really aware that they're even doing it. And I wonder if that's not a shock to some newer folks who maybe have not yet experienced the joy of pre-gamergate SHUT UP SLUT AND GET OUT OF OUR SPACE normalization of what female or gay or any community other than what a very specific subset of straight male fantasy are and aren't allow to be portrayed like.

I think it's a lot more subtle now, but sometimes I wonder generationally when this is encountered in a situation that I would just laugh off/brush off, if there is a reaction similar to my kids' horrified reactions to the haha-funny-rape-joke stuff in 60s-80s movies that I grew up with/loved (just about every romance movie, it's often a plot point that the best friend/brother of the male protagonist will try to "get his girl"), or seeing people just throw trash on the ground/in the ocean, or parents that are portrayed as normal loving parents slapping their children around (Parent Trap Hayley Mills version), or hahaha funny moments about how the girl can be tricked/intoxicated enough for the hero to fuck her even though she doesn't want him to at the time and then she'll fall in love with him. Rewatching my favorite movies that I loved growing up and that were shown (albeit editied for TV) on network television that I got to watch at friends' or relatives' houses with MY teenagers who are older than I was back when I first watched or liked them has been often surprising to me what they see that I never did, because I knew that's just "the way things were, what do you expect."

Yep. That's why many people have said here and elsewhere that MSB does not equal the totality or even an accurate representation of mushing or how most players feel, ect.

It's not really that the player is different from the character so much as when they are clearly fetishizing not only their character but everyone else RL that they perceive as being that. That is why sometimes it sets off the creep factor, sometimes it doesnt.

Considering how many of the under 30 folks I know work jobs in which they are private contractors or in the service industry professionals I am pretty sure that most have seem pretty bad entitled maladaptive behaviors from people my age and older. Even if they have not yet had the opportunity to be involved with PTA, church, or other community orgs in leadership--and I will hp a step further in saying that I see far more young adults doing that now than I did when I was often the only young adult on a sea of middle aged people.

That may be why people nope out. Not because they are scared away but because they already have to deal with rude middle aged people incorrectly identifying them generationally and blaming them for shit we or older people fucked up after benefitting from what we fucked up leaving them with nothing. They have to deal with that all the time, why would you tolerate more.

Let's call it them having better things to do with their time than we do.

I think the most pervasive troublesome thing when it comes to sexuality and gender identification on MUSHes remain the folks who are very centered on wish gratification and fetishization especially when those are deeply enmeshed. I mean you have the often misogynistic creepy dudes playing lesbians issue that seemed to be all the rage to the point of being a pretty good assumption in the 90s, but there have been other instances (ooc female yaoi fans dominating portrayals of gay pcs, some uncomfortable encounters I have had with people portraying non-binary or trans PCs when it was clear that there was some ulterior stuff going on, ect.)

There is often denial or accusations of people being too sensitive when something seems off, though I guess no worse than other parts of the internet.

I do not know that it is better or worse in mushing. My kids (16-almost 18, who are all rpers but do not have interest in mushes because of the real time factor) and I have frequent chats about this and they report a lot of the same behavior to be honest, even though their places are filled with peers or close to it!

@Jennkryst to be clear, I will never make a for profit or fee based mush. Ever. I owned my own business for many years, it is a lot of work. I also though that process became aware of some of the more annoying things about private contracting, reporting online income, how my municipality and state expects the same to be collected, ect.

I also think staffing on a volunteer basis can be bad enough with people's entitlement and pressure, the last thing I want is some kid chasing me around screaming "I PAID my two dollars!!!"

The we fought WWII fo free speech, therefore someone being a nazi is patriotic was a real surprise to me. I'm not really sure why, since sadly the whole whatabout freespeech stuff sadly often does involve bigots claiming to be champions these days but it was a new one on me.

There is a guy walking around downtown in the city that my kids' high school is in (next town over from ours), with a giant swastika and holocaust denial slogans on his signs. We do have a big problem with bigots in the northern (well and southern too really) seattle eastside burbs, usually not visible in the well heeled areas because they prefer to be more genteel about it (unless you mention native american treaty rights, quickest way to get someone to go off on a racist tirade in WA state).

I have seen this guy around usually passing out leaflets, not with a sign. Now that he is more visible, people are expressing "shock" in the neighborhood facebook page, and I guess the new talking point is "it is okay to show nazi symbols and be a holocaust denier because, you know, WWII was fought to preserve free speech!"

It's been a really shitty 2 weeks, it is going to be another very stressful 2 weeks ahead of me, and honestly I just realized today in my reaction to this stupid ass bigot that I am probably the most depressed but functional I have ever been in my life, which is saying a lot.

Sorry we are no fun to troll anymore, but honestly you are kind of boring too. Sorry.

@faraday and we hear a lot about people on mushes or even the games themselves fizzling out due to one person or a few key people dropping out or shifting availability.

Potential pool of people and desire simply isnt enough. I think those same problems will persist.

So I do wish that maybe we decided to be more supportive of more variety. And not handwringing about game "failures" and instead maybe just try and keep a less idealized view of how things "should" look like for something to be a "success." More places and more diversity and less aversion to not looking like what we "grew up with" when we started (there are many very different eras of the last 30 years of the medium) will help.

And I know there's a decent pool of potentials and newbies, I run into them a lot and introduce people to it too. Maybe that's why I am not in the SKY IS FALLING club?

@Tinuviel that is the nature of message boards. I think people can just chill or scroll on by if they choose.

Well that's the thing too. We represent such a small slice here. There are many games that go unmentioned here (probably a good thing). Considering how many people who are a genuine part of this community on MSB are by their own admission isolated from actually mushing either by choice or just time concerns, ect. I dont know that we as a community have a great snapshot on things either. That's not a strike against this community, it's just a natural thing that happens.

I do not think that we shouldnt talk or brainstorm about it, it is a fun topic, and if it reminds people to be friendlier on games they are on or to invite a buddy or like maybe NOT shit all over someone theme for a game they're thinking of opening, it is a good thing.

I see this convo as less about problem solving on high and more of a reminder to keep a open mind.

@Bananerz so make one! It will take you awhile to get the hang of it if you arent a code, or you might get some interested helpers. Maybe even some of those horrible WoD liking people. I am sure if you invest the time and effort that people will come play.