Best posts made by Pacha

@Ganymede

As a gay man I hate a lot of the (supposedly) positive stereotyping that goes on too.

I mean, you get the traditional homophobes who think that all gay people are depraved predators who are coming for your kids, but there is also another set of people who have unreasonable standards that you should be their own personal 'Queer Eye' or whatever. You should be an expert in art, fashion and design, an expert cook and have perfect hair/skin/teeth/abs and whatever else.

More than once, someone has accused me of not being a 'proper' gay because I don't meet some standard of gay perfection they have in their head. It is not as immediately dangerous as, for example, being black where some policeman might just shoot you for fun (though it still isn't safe to be 'obviously' gay in a lot of places --even in Europe). However, it puts pressure on a group that struggle far too often with not feeling good enough that they are meant to meet some unattainable standard of perfection.

@kanye-qwest

That is something we thought about actually.

As a group we were really keen to do something non-North American and Ibiza has a really interesting history that stretches back the best part of 4000 years, meaning there are loads of interesting bits of history and backstory that can be included, as well as some cool themes we think we could explore.

Historically, you have periods of Phoenician and Carthaginian settlement, Roman and then Moorish occupation, pirate incursions and then in more modern times the influx of tourism and the rise of club culture that is prevalent today. So there is an interesting mixture of cultural and historical elements.

It's also a really beautiful location - most of the island is designated as a UNESCO world heritage site. We did think about including werewolves, but we ran into the fact that none of us are really that 'into' them as a concept and that the landscape and wildlife of Ibiza don't really lend themselves to large, wild predators. It is something we might revisit in the future though.

Although the permanent population of the island is small, approximately 3.2 million tourists visited in 2017 and it was our feeling that having such a high transient population, especially with a very rapid turnover as most of them are staying no longer than 1-2 weeks, would probably be able to feasibly support a small supernatural community.

I hope this helped to answer some of that!

@surreality said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

...because nothing gets somebody perky in the nethers like 'this person is an egotistical jackass without a clue about how the world works'. Or, they seem to think that's how it works.

That's the fatal mistake. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them living out their fantasy. They are the star. You are at best an extra, if not a prop.

I am living in hope for the day when someone makes WoD (properly) available on Ares. I think that will revolutionise it as we won't be beholden to the same tired old cadre of people to build and run them.

This looks like a fun game. Very good luck to the makers and those who made it in before it closed. I hope it turns out to be a lot of fun.

To those who missed out, we all know that MU people are notoriously flakey, so I am sure there will be some spaces before too very long.

@insomniac7809

I mean it's even grosser when you remember that people have been getting away with literal murder for decades making basically that argument.

Like many people, I have been low energy during the last few months, especially about RP. However, today I was 'in the mood' and got three good scenes pretty much back to back other than a pause to eat and was offered a fourth I had to turn down because I was tired.

There is definitely RP to be had, but I think a lot of people just don't have the energy to go and find it right now (and rightly so).

I definitely could not have got Crystal Springs up and running without help from Faraday. She is always very patient, especially considering that I am totally technically inept, and is always happy to help if I run into a problem. I have a lot of respect for her.

I play Artur on Arx. I have had some alts, but none that really stuck.

I am feeling drawn in a sort of vampy-campy black velvet vibe right now though, so I might try an acerbic older divorcee at some point relatively soon.

@Tori

Back in the midst of the Lockdown, I had a strange fit of nostalgia and decided to go back and play on one of the old RPI MUDs I used to enjoy. I made a relatively quick and simple character and was lucky enough to get in the game within about two or three hours.

What I had not remembered was how difficult it was to find RP on those places—no OOC communication to organise RP, no +where command. You had to either linger in one spot hoping somebody would cross your path or wander the grid until you found someone and then try and fabricate a reason to be there. I used to enjoy it years ago, but now it was positively nightmarish.

I think the beauty of a MUSH is just being able to page someone and go "Hey would you like to go to X and RP about Y" even though a lot of us get in our heads and worry about doing it. It is a big luxury when you try playing without it.

ETA: In a MUSH, you are much freer to direct your own story about your character. In other formats, you are inserted into a world which will dictate a lot of your story for you. Even just in terms of which characters you will meet and what opportunities for scenes you will have.

I had tried Gray Harbor and not gotten into it. I will totally give it another go I think.

I will just also say with reference to social stats that (at least to me) posing your character as making these sweeping, dramatic, highly persuasive speeches when they are (as an example) presence 1, expression 1, is equivalent to posing your strength 1 character tossing around cars for fun.

If you don't have the social stats to support it then, in my opinion, your character has no business making those compelling speeches as it's simply not within their capabilities. Ignoring social stats means the game is no longer about our characters and role-playing what is on our sheets, but about which of us is the better writer or debater OOC-wise.

I think actually this game is fairly unique in the market at the moment.

There are urban fantasy/horror things, yes, if you want to be a hapless mortal at the hands of powerful monsters.

There is Arx, which has elements of magic, but not easily accessible or widely available and not for everybody.

There are superhero games, but that is a different sort of niche for the most part.

There is a real dearth right now of 'wod style' games where you can app into an urban fantasy setting and have magical powers or whatever available from the outset and I think this is what it has tapped into and appealed to.

So just to set a scene I am a gay male and I nowadays nearly exclusively play gay male characters. I very occasionally play female characters but when I do I will generally go for someone 35+.

I am not a big TS hound, but I am happy to go there if there is some element of story involved. However, TS involving female anatomy (either as or with) is a squick to me, hence playing older women as this generally (sadly, wrongly) eliminates most of the attention I don't want to deal with.

Before I came to MUSH I played a lot of MUD games, especially RPI MUDs (particularly Harshlands and Shadows of Isildur) which happened to be set in medieval fantasy settings (Harn and Middle Earth).

On both of those games (much more so on SoI) there was a policy of strongly discouraging nonheterosexual characters, on the basis that they did not 'fit' within the settings. This basically took the form of a staff member pulling you aside before approving you and making it clear that if you were discovered to be gay IC, it was basically open season for you to be subjected to any level of discrimination (up to and including your character being outright murdered) and that no complaints about it would be entertained.

As you might imagine, this had a chilling effect on anyone rolling up anyone that was nonheterosexual and of the few attempts that I did see (including the only gender non-conforming character I ever saw rolled up there) most ended up getting brutally tortured and murdered almost as soon as they were discovered. I will say that I generally played on 'team evil' there, so I am not sure if this was less pronounced in the more heroic areas of the game, but it was made clear that it was discouraged and opened you up to any level of IC discrimination wherever you played.

So, I will say that following that experience, coming to MUSH it was a breath of fresh air even for it to simply be non-controversial to app in as a character that reflected my OOC gender and sexuality. I realise that this is an incredibly low bar to set but it is genuinely where I started out.

I have still had some pretty shitty experiences, my most recent one was being accused (since I was at the time playing a female character) that as I was a gay male this was 'obviously' part of some fetish I had about luring unwitting straight boys into having TS with my character. This despite the fact that my character was single, not engaged in any romantic RP and not seeking any romantic RP.

I will say that generally (generally!!) I find most MUSH people to be really cool, welcoming and friendly people and it is very seldom I feel uncomfortable about being open and honest both IC and OOC about who and what I am. Reaching out to other LGBT characters (where you can find them) tends to find you a group of pretty cool people wherever you go, honestly, and I have been lucky to meet a few people who have actually become close RL friends of mine through MUSH.

I will still sometimes feel like I am getting a strange vibe off of a channel, or an individual or a clique, but rarely anything I can put a finger on and honestly as a gay person there is an element of that which is just sort of the background noise of life. This tends to be much more pervasive in spheres where there is more of an alpha male, or very very heteronormative theme (looking at you, werewolf) going on, honestly.

@headery

I have totally been accused of trying to ensnare poor innocent straight boys by my wily homosexual ways when I have played female PCs in the past. It is one of the reasons I very seldom do any more.

@mietze

That's cool. I obviously am not familiar with every character, so I am totally open to the idea that there are examples I was not aware of and actually, we have come up Jasher, Lysander, Holden, your Knight where it is explicitly stated and Filshiar where it is strongly implied -- which frankly is more than I thought there were but still really low considering the number of PCs on that game.

I know that there are more LGBTQIA characters than this IC obviously. There are many many characters where there is no expression of any kind of sexuality in their profile, and those are obviously open to interpretation either way (I have such a character!). Some are sort of strongly coded to be LGBT but it is up to the eventual player whether they are when they come on screen.

I do think it would be nice (especially on a game as big as Arx with such a huge number of roster characters) if there were more that were written as unambiguously LGBTQIA. Because it is nice to know "People like you are present and wanted in the setting" rather than "You can take the character in that direction if you want and nobody will object"

I hope I am not coming across combative here because that is not my intention at all. But it is like the point I made about Dumbledore. It is all very well to say "Oh and he's gay" after the fact once you've sold your books and make your money but you didn't put it IN THE BOOK (and let's not even get into the rest of what a trash person you are). It isn't representation if it isn't stated there unambiguously.

All I am really saying is: I would like it if there were more!

@phase-face

I can say that in my (limited) experience Ares has been an absolute godsend. It costs around a Starbucks a month to run if you use the recommended provider, and as long as you are willing to read and carefully follow instructions, it can be done with zero knowledge of coding. The FS3 system was really customisable, and it is relatively simple to include (or not) the combat module. I went from being sort of sceptical about Ares to somewhat evangelical about it as I was working through and getting everything as I wanted it. Whenever I did get stuck, Faraday was always extremely helpful and supportive.

I feel like roster characters for WoD could be a really good idea, honestly.

@GreenFlashlight

When I see this I generally see it more with people that are in a 'harem' type situation (can be same or different gender but I have to admit it DOES seem more common with 'gay women'). ETA: Also these are often people that (while I do not know for sure) if I had to put money on it, I would say they are straight men playing gay women because it is kind of typical of the way that lesbian relationships are often fetishised by straight men.

I use harem specifically because it usually (reads to me) like there tends to be one central character who is being chased/competed over by multiple other characters and so they are performatively affectionate to the person who is the 'hub', but it is in this weirdly gross, passive-aggressive, competitive sort of way. ETA: Specifically on channels/in OOC rooms.

As an afterthought, as a gay guy, I tend to avoid PDA in any public scene if I am with an IC partner, which is a habit from real life because...safety. I have no real expectation I would ever get a comment in a MU, but all it would take is one comment and I think that MU would be ruined for me, so I would rather not risk it.