@Tinuviel said in Firan Secrets:
@Pandora said in Firan Secrets:
It's too bad he grew up; being able to fuck people is what fucked him up, I think.
Sounds like pretty much any post-adolescent male.
I don't ascribe to the idea, even in jest, that males as a whole are brainless slaves to their testicles. It takes active choices, for which people must be held accountable, to become abusive assholes.
I'm an openly and flamboyantly gay, black female. When I mentioned casually that Acheron and I were dating (this was like, 9 years ago, mind you) I had a male player flat out accuse me of lying and then go into some pseudo-academic rant about mixed race dating. I had female players 'jokingly' assert that I was being greedy by dating a guy when I'd previously only dated women as an adult.
Discussing baby names OOC on Firan, I was informed by some old whore (that's how I think of her in my mind, 'some old whore') that naming my kid the name I'd chosen would 'make her gay'. My kid is non-binary and gives talks about gender identity in elementary school. If it was the name, OH WELL. I only mention this one because deep down it still bothers me, a lot. Keep your judgments to yourself, even if the name is Mabel or Gertrude, you just say 'Oh, that's pretty!' or keep your trap shut.
I mostly play gay male characters. I usually play them on yaoi-based sites, and by tacit agreement, most people pretend to be male in real life. Openly female players are often shunned due to a lack of 'authenticity'. This leads to very weird shit, like dubiously-male players making assertions about masculinity that are often wildly off-base, and sometimes harmful or abusive.
When I play gay male characters on a MU, no matter how openly gay they are, they're still hit on by females with varying degrees of aggressiveness, in what feels like a double-standard in that if a guy was actively pursuing a character that identified herself as a lesbian, he'd be considered skeevy. I've only heard the jokes about not having met the right woman yet IC, so no abuse OOC that I can recall.
When I play straight male characters, life is great. Drowning in attention, can be as much of an asshole as I want free of most repercussions, and any IC or OOC blowback can be attributed to the other party being a hater. My OOC harem, unrecruited, will back my every utterance. Being 'male' and a decent writer will honestly get you wherever you want to go in this hobby because the dick-drought is real and it isn't going anywhere, any time soon.
There is a pejorative term 'mesbians' that relates to male players playing their fetishized female lesbian characters that are usually some sort of 'exotic' mixed race of white + whatever, average height, average build (but with big tiddies) shuns makeup because she's a natural beauty, wears thigh-high stockings with every single outfit, reads comics, disdains monogamy, and is an expert combatant. (This is an oversimplification for the sake of KISS, and I mean no overt offense to anyone male/female/otherwise that plays these types of characters) When I play lesbians, I feel fucking weird because the lesbian community in many games is often made up of female characters that don't feel relatable to me personally, so I wind up with fraudulent lesbian characters that aren't attracted to most women in their vicinity.
My straight female characters are almost universally spaghetti-sexual - they'd only be straight until they meet a hot female and things get steamy. That rarely happens, sadface. So if and when they wind up dating a guy, this introduces a whole new level of awkward. Will my natural tendency toward being the aggressor scare them off? (Not usually, but it's still a fear) Will they bring up the idea of threesomes way too soon because they're assuming it's what I'd want? (Far too often, but I feel like this is less to do with me, and more to do with people living out their best fantasy life) Step the awkward up a notch if the player knows I'm gay. Will they be gunshy about hitting on my character, thinking she's not interested? Will I be FRIENDZONED? These last two seem most common for me, mostly due to my habit of only really RPing with people I know.
Needless to say, my female characters almost never get laid. There is much weird going on in my head & I feel like most people are female-ing better than me.
THIS IS A SPOILER
***Spoiler tags suck and are not intuitive.***
When your character meets another character purely IC, you've never spoken to this player before in your life. And they just click. On the same wavelength, with the same views, you find yourself nodding as you read their posts, and an adversarial group scene turns into some action-flick movie moment where the two of you are back to back, firing on all cylinders. Yes.
On the subject of creeps & creepiness:
In much the same way we often quickly close out our porn browser tabs once we're uh... done with them, what is or isn't sexy or welcome can vary wildly with one's mood or willingness to be exposed to it. So what one person may consider creepy behavior, someone else might find alluring in that moment even if they would probably agree it was creepy from the outside looking in.
There needs to be a line drawn between 'creepy in a "I'm just not interested" way' & 'creepy in a coercive/manipulative way' & we should definitely handle them differently. Context matters, and situational expectations matter.
Someone hitting on someone in a bar is expected behavior, and if they do it badly they might be creepy (IC) but that's not by itself indicative of OOC creepiness. Someone hitting on someone in a way that indicates there will be negative repercussions for the player if they choose not to engage, while IC, could certainly be a sign of some OOC creepiness that warrants further action.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the issue of creepiness, but shout-out to all the creeps out there doing it the fun and friendly way, I appreciate some good old-fashioned awkward.
I've got so much to love right now I'll get it all out in one post.
My kid is not only incredibly well-behaved, sassy, smart, adorable, and clever, she's also tested her way into being moved up a grade. Children are loud, messy, and expensive but they're so worth it; like the Holy Grail of Steam Achievements if you play your child-rearing cards right.
After many months and many thousands of dollars, my immigration woes are over and we've got our visas - SO LONG, TRUMPMERICA. Course, I still have to deal with Theresa May but at least she's not orange during winter months and her tweets don't make my child cry.
I'm moving next week, which means missing Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving, but my family has made the decision to have Thanksgiving a day early to make sure we get one last authentic Turkey Day feast. I'm no fan of Columbus but if you got to eat like my family gets to eat when the moms, aunts, and grandmothers get together in one kitchen, you'd be lining up to give thanks, too.
Far be it from me to discourage name-calling and shade-throwing, but I think calling a group of staffers the sexually frustrated rejects from some other game in their own ad thread is one of those things where common sense might tell you that's going to get moved.
If you want to voice a complaint in an ad thread there are informative, non-biased ways to do so. Every opinion won't be a 5-star review but they can at least strive to be civil. And no amount of unbiased moderation is going to please 100% of everyone 100% of the time; there's a level of human error allowed when judging what can stay, what has to move, and when to step in.
So be sure to do your best, MSB administration, you don't want this thread to have to move into the Hog Pit - entertaining as the thought may be.
I'm finally moved into my new house and (mostly) unpacked and my room is far enough away from everyone else's room that I can finally, after almost two years in that apartment, MASTURBATE IN PEACE.
This is in the mildly constructive thread for a reason; if you don't have anything mildly constructive to add ('Fuck this idea, fuck this discussion, I'm out and you should be out too!' is not constructive, useful, polite, positive, affirmative, or any other positive word other than adamant) then please kindly see yourself out. No one here is obligated to like any idea posted here, the point is to come up with ideas and see what might help. No coded tool will be a 100% effective solution, the same way no policy has ever been a 100% effective solution, but damn if I'm not heartened to see people trying to bridge the gap. I might not be the friendliest or most sober member of this community, but I do appreciate you people, or I wouldn't be here.
@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
I think @Pandora brings up something that this thread is definitely capable of discussing.
The fact that the vast majority of lesbian characters in MUSHes are literally the same ultra horny sexpest character. Not that I have room to talk about sexpests, but I feel like I so rarely see lesbian characters who aren't obviously a dude RPing a fetish. If this was black characters they'd all be sitting around eating watermelon and nailing all the white women (I know it seems like I'm throwing stones from a glass house, but I definitely do things in MUSHes other than nail all the white women on most days).
Exactly this. I'm not going to lie, the idea of a bunch of white people sitting around chatting for 20+ pages about how to artificially inflate the diversity in games makes me nervous for what that artificial diversity will look like, and the continuing chatter about how the community is too insular to invite in minorities so it's better to pretend to be them instead is tragic as fuck.
Fix the culture if you want diversity, and if you can't be bothered, leave us out.
@Tinuviel I think the argument, such that it is, isn't for invalidating anyone's enjoyment in a problematic author's work, because all that's going to do is piss off people who want to enjoy what they enjoy. The point, and this is where I roll my eyes because I don't respect the idea at all, is to promote the idea that these works should be erased from the future. Not lauded, not awarded, not recommended. Thus, the future is bias-washed and only works by clean, wholesome, stamp-of-approval artists are available for sale and promotion.
They do this in the People's Republic of China; it works really well to get everyone on the same page - you know, or else.
Games where what you do is important and your surname isn't. Games where time is relevant. Games where your titles are earned. Games where your writing skill carries more weight than who you're boning.
If thou art comfortable using OOC Whatever then by all means please do so. This thread is not about those of you/us for whom this is already working. This thread is for the people for whom the current system is not working.
Once upon a time, the NYC metro lines (back then called the subway) were all in greyscale on a white background. This worked fine for almost everyone. The maps are now color coded with icons and it's the same damn map but many people are like OH, this is MUCH EASIER to navigate, yay!
This is the new subway. The redcard/metrocard of OOC barriers. The 'this isn't really anything new, but someone out there lost, confused, and anxious might find it just a tiny bit friendlier to use' and if you don't really care about this hobby being a little more friendly that's fine, but don't act like your opinion is the only one that matters.
@silverfox It used to be that there was a difference between an author and a roleplayer in that an author controlled all the characters so no one's feelings were hurt when something bad happened to a character & the author avoided most flak for writing the hurtful, worrying thing - while a roleplayer needed to be at least somewhat mindful of not hurting other roleplayers' feelings lest they lose a roleplay partner.
Nowadays, authors run the risk of getting 'cancelled' for writing anything too far beyond cute bunnies having birthday parties, and roleplayers who play villains are practically paralyzed in terms of their roleplay unless they're willing and able to expose their real, OOC selves in ways they may not be at all comfortable with in order to ensure other players that they are in fact a nice, sweet, caring, nurturing person with your best interests sincerely at heart and that there is no risk of anything bad happening unless you actually want it to happen - and that they're willing to be crucified ICly when you play up the victim angle IC without confirming to anyone that you've gotten all these cuddles and assurances from the villain OOCly, thus leading to the crusade for their OOC head on a platter for being problematic.
Ahem.
@Taika WoD so I wouldn't touch it with someone else's finger, but kudos for setting it in Chicago instead of some backwater New England village, so when there are inevitably 4334645 strip clubs, biker bars, and B&Bs, it at least makes sense.
Filled toilet paper rolls with celery and strawberry chunks, then capped off the ends of the rolls with slices of cucumber. Watching my guinea pigs come out of hiding to gnaw through it all like 'WHAT IS THIS MAGIC?!' has been sheer, unadulterated delight. Would have paid upwards of 10 bucks for a single dry, stale 'guinea pig chewtoy' at a pet-store, these two cost me nothing but leftovers.
Parental Unit: "Bedtime."
Willful Child: furiously clicking on keyboard "Just one moment, I have to win this round."
Impatient Parent: What's so special about this round?
Troll Child: grinning evilly "I just called everyone 'peasants', so I have to win this one."
I'm doing well at this parenting thing, clearly.
Historical accuracy isn't going to happen in the current era of gaming, where certain themes aren't allowed due to being A) unpleasant and B) a pain in the ass to moderate.
There's also the fact that most people are not experts in one bygone era, let alone enough of them that they'd be able to just jump in and immerse themselves.
There's also the fact that the average game-runner would run themselves ragged trying to correct unthematic behaviors, and likely wind up being accused of 'wrongfunning' their players. Alternatively, they can let things slide if they aren't 'too problematic' and that's how theme-slip begins and you wake up one day and your Period Drama has turned into a modern-day cosplay tea party.
Also for most of history, people were really dirty, didn't wear particularly nice clothes unless they were rich or a whore, lice were more common than having all your teeth, and women were treated kind of like shit. So have fun making that game.