Posts made by Pacha

@tnp

Ouch

Dame Barbara Windsor, 83. Much beloved actress.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24954672

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.

@Tori

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 will say that every time I have interacted with DarkSouls, they have been perfectly pleasant and polite. They seem to work through jobs efficiently and are enthusiastic about running scenes and stories.

They do have a habit of making statements on the game discord that I would say are somewhat ill-judged in tone, and I know those have irritated people (myself included) but nothing that I would describe as VASpider worthy.

Of course, there might be problematic behaviour that I am entirely missing, but I just thought I would give my personal experience.

Completely off-topic, but my family and I would go walking along by Wheal Coates (in the picture above I am pretty sure) every year on vacation when I was a kid. It made me smile to see it.

@silverfox

I also found that blog recently, based on some digging around I was doing as a result of this thread. It has a lot of (what seems to me) really useful/helpful information on it about various tropes and things as well, which was informative.

I was searching because I was thinking about making my next PC black, based on the conversation have been having here, but I had some wariness about writing a description, as I was aware that there were some issues about the way that is commonly done -such as the food thing.

There are useful pieces on describing hair, facial features and so on too, which I found helpful.

@reversed

That's really awesome! She seems like a really great roster character. I hope somebody will pick her up soon and have a lot of fun playing her!

@Kanye-Qwest

Yeah, I have re-read that, and I don't think I was very clear on what I meant at all. Sorry if I was not clear.

I was more referring to the idea that because a character on the roster isn't specified either way or is hinted at being but it is ambiguous that you can (as a player) place an LGBTQIA identity on them after the fact and that would be representation. Which is what I meant about the Dumbledore thing. It still wasn't actually that great of a point now I read it again, but that is what I was getting at.

It is nice that there is representation in Arx and in the backstory and clues and so forth. I have had lots of good experiences playing on Arx. My particular point is that I think it would be nice if there were more roster characters that were unambiguously written as being LGBTQIA.

Which, I suppose I could take the plunge and try and write a couple, which would be a positive action.

@Roz

Thanks!

@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!

@saosmash

I would like this. I think my point is that if you read through the available characters rosters, there are plenty that specifically mention heterosexual relationships. I will grant you that most do not mention anything at all, but almost none mention anything specifically LGBT. I get that there were some specific ones that @Roz mentioned and that you have written some that are intended to lean that way. But there is not a diverse representation.

It is kind of like the (and I am definitely not comparing you to her in any other way) "Oh, Dumbledore was always gay and I just never thought to mention it" thing. If it doesn't say it, people can just ignore it.

To be clear, not a criticism of you or of @roz but just a general observation.

@Roz said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

There are definitely LGBT rosters @saosmash has written. Jasher is explicitly gay, although I know that generally when she writes non-straight rosters she leaves it more "they definitely have same-sex attraction but whether that means gay or bi or pan is up to player interpretation." Lysander is like that, and I know there have been a couple others that now I can't remember off the top of my head. I also wrote Holden as a roster to have a deceased husband, and I leave where on the sexuality spectrum he falls to his players.
EDIT: Oh I also remember Filshiar is written to indicate leaning ace/aro.

Cool, happy to be corrected then! I just never recalled having seen one. Which I suppose it is good that there are some. It would be nice if there were more than four out of however many hundred though. (obviously there are characters where it is not mentioned either way and you can take them either way, which is what I had done.)

@Ominous

On the subject of roster games I know there have been problems in Arx, for example, of people taking non-white characters off the roster and just rewriting them as white. Though I believe staff there have cracked down on this a lot.

I don't recall ever seeing a specifically non-cishet roster character on Arx. There are plenty of characters that specifically mention heterosexual stuff "He was always flirting with ladies" or so forth, but I can't remember ever seeing a roster character specifically written as LGBT.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

Yeah, I don't think it is the same people.