Posts made by reversed

I don't have the exact words I used handy but it was something to the extent of: "They were very close to the point that she was Katarina's personal bodyguard for a while during a recent thing, and Katarina is one of the people with a copy of her will in case of horribleness. Also, they were lovers, but if you have no interest in that, it's all good, no worries." Just kinda ripped the Band-Aid off.

Eta: and honestly the main reason I mentioned it was because the relationship had come up in RP with other people and I figured better to hear 'oh these two had a thing' than to have someone go 'oh, but I thought you and Kat' or something in RP and then they have to figure out wtf people are talking about. I've had similar situations on both of my alts and hated that worse!

@Ganymede said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

My PC on Arx is quite openly bisexual, and literally no one fucks with her shit.

And I’m happy with this so much.

Same.

Though, a woman Katarina was lovers with rostered, and someone new (AFAIK?) took the character. And they haven't logged in for a week so I've been in the limbo of "ha ha ha how are they going to react to this @mail of 'well, here's a summary of our past interaction.'"

ETA: I'm fine if they're like "oh, well, I don't really want to pick up that thread," because that's fair and no hard feelings, I just hope it doesn't make any weird drama or whatever.

@Ganymede said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Don't make sexuality the only thing your character advertises in order to invite others to interact with the character.

Well, exactly.

Maybe this is why I don't think anyone's ever complained about my PCs' sexuality.

I've definitely heard complaints about how my bisexual character was clearly only around to do lesbian TS stuff because I wasn't receptive to the advances of a male player I had no interest in pursuing anything with.

Of course, I heard about these complaints second hand, because they weren't said to my face. Of course.

@Auspice said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

So, most of my characters remain bi and I just gravitate to whoever's RP I like best

You can just say "@reversed" you know

@Saulot said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

(seriously, something is up with WoD players and a love of New England)

Lovecraft.

Also, Salem witches.

In the WoD plots I was running recently, I did my best to include POC characters -- the plots were mostly set in Mexico, so obviously there were a lot of Mexican nationals, but also just... anything I could think of that fit and WASN'T a standard-issue WoD-type character. I didn't set out to go "okay, this plot needs a black woman," but when coming up with the NPC background stuff I did say "okay, what if this NPC joined up with the other ones in Atlanta while they were going cross-country, so why not make the Atlanta NPC a black woman..." and so on.

I'm not going to act like some kind of genius or savior or anything, but at the very least it was more fun to try and reflect a lot of different experiences and voices in my plots' NPCs than just another group of dickhead white vampires.

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

She's a former IDF fitness/combat trainer, and knowing nothing about you, I'm pretty confident to say she'd beat your ass.

I've been waiting for an excuse to use a gif of this scene in the Arx thread, since Gal Gadot is one of my character PBs, but I guess it can slot right in here instead.

Edited to a smaller one so that it's easier for anyone at work to hide a gif of nine-foot-tall Gal Gadot bullying someone in her underpants.

My sexuality is just posting gifs of one of my Arx PBs.

I'm generally loath to get into anything beyond that out of the irrational fear that someone will see me goofing around on a forum and page me on-game like "hey, so..."

@Auspice said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I'm an orb-sexual.

@onigiri said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@reversed APPARENTLY

I think I lost my temper at the time because my universe cannot comprehend Lovecraft being so important and life-changing a topic that people have to pull out that word without employing a moment's empathy toward who may be in the room and may feel hurt hearing it in what they may hope is a safe space. BUT NOPE GOTTA VOMIT SEMANTIC FACT, IT IS THE NERDY WAY >:|

I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I think losing one's temper is justified -- people don't get N-Words in Paris passes just because "it's the NAME of the song, CHILL," or whatever.

@Auspice said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@reversed said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

"Still bisexual but now annoyed" is how I'm going to describe Ember on Arx from now on, because it works regardless of context or situation

Teagan is bi.
Yet another perk of Arx: political marriage can be had and you can have your lovers over there, whatever. I'll have mine.

Jeez, you don't have to go on and on about it, I accept your proposal, gosh.

@onigiri said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Conversely, I had to hear someone use the n-word in a lounge because 'it factored into an academic debate about Lovecraft.' Some nerds do not get it.

Sometimes you just have to debate about a man's cat.

"Still bisexual but now annoyed" is how I'm going to describe Ember on Arx from now on, because it works regardless of context or situation

Let's all take a moment and appreciate the orb in @egg's avatar.

Anyway, I'm not sure what else I have to add on the topic, but I feel bad shitting up the thread with jokes. I guess I'll just say that for me, at the end of the day, thinking critically about the character you're playing is a good thing, and being able to recognize when something is weird and not-so-okay is likewise a good thing, whether it's White Wolf 1990s edgelord un-PC-ism, the white-folk-favoring bent of barbarian fantasy stuff, the "faith an' begorrah!" stereotype dialogue of your favorite X-Men comics, or Lovecraft stories all being (in the words of a podcast) "a white man goes insane after learning jazz exists." You don't have to stop liking WoD, or barbarian stories, or the X-Men, or Lovecraft, but you should be able to at least not pay the weird not-okay shit forward when you use that stuff as inspiration.

The cup sizes you don't play get donated to the fetish art community.

@Wretched said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@insomniac7809 But then how will people know my pc got these tiddies?

That's what paragraphs three through five of a desc are for.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

ps my secret shame is that when I play short characters I'm dumb about it. I'm like LOOK HOW TINY THIS PERSON IS. HOW DO THEY LIVE. It boggles the mind. Short people, what do?

I have decided to just lean into Katarina being some kind of 5'1" mogwai

@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

why do people call eyes orbs

Orbs are just neat

Even within the fantasy post-racism, post-sexism, post-isms-in-general (except maybe nationalism and some classism I guess) Arx world I still find myself having to think critically about questions related to this thread.

Ex.: Katarina, for the folks who don't know, was born in the Dune Kingdom, a strange and mysterious land across an ocean from the setting of Arx. When I applied for her off of the roster, I outright said that I saw the challenge of playing the character as doing so in a way that isn't lazy isn't-she-exotic cod-early-20th-century-Orientalism. There's nothing WRONG with her profile as written on the roster, but it would be very easy to take what's there and just kind of play her as the descendant of any number of capital-E Exotic characters from fiction that don't necessarily speak to any particular truth, whether Lovecraft's Arab mystics, Disney's Jasmine, Dejah Thoris from Barsoom Which Is Totally Not Meant to Represent the Middle East or Darkest Africa Honest You Guys Really, Storm from the X-Men, whatever.

I still end up trying to find ways to set her apart as being Not From Around Here because I think it makes for a good character beat in a game where bloodlines play a significant part in determining who has the power, but I do my best to do so in ways that reflect that kind of post-isms vision of Arx -- she has a strong accent and her cadence and word choices are a little weird, as opposed to something stupid like showing up to a dinner party naked and smiling knowingly while trilling, "ah, but you Compact people, you still cling to these barbaric textiles?"

Ember, too, has her backstory where she's the first woman to directly inherit a barony in her fealty, instead of having to rule by technicality or regency. I can't imagine playing her as anything but intensely proud of that fact and ready to bring it up constantly until people are sick of hearing about it, and that pride determines how I travel other aspects of her character (e.g. not taking the always-ready-for-a-war "Bloody Baroness" and making her a force for conservatism in her fealty; if she was conservative, she wouldn't be baroness).

So, even though Arx has the built-in "guys, people just aren't racist or sexist here, so leave that shit outside," it still presents ways to question that kind of stuff -- just without the playing-with-fire aspects that people might perceive about real-world identities or cultures.

I mean, if I'm just talking out of my ass, please tell me.