Best posts made by SparklesTheClown

Hello! Not that anyone's particularly curious about what I'm doing, I've been a bit more active in MUing after numerous brushes with life outside of the internet. I figured I'd write an update just in case I've somehow underestimated who even knows who I am at this point (I actually have a playlist here, by the way!).

So, let's talk about Hello!Project, the manchild who grew out of trolling but still watches wrestling and Power Rangers, and mass-consumes Japanese idols.

Well, a secret I've kept for virtually my entire time MUing, and one I also often kept irl, is that I only went to school up to about 4th grade, and am almost entirely self-educated. This is something I was ashamed of and insecure about for a very long time (astute readers might recall how hair trigger I used to be about my intelligence being insulted, if one played with me a while back).

Anyway, I say this to explain how getting a GED, while I know isn't that big of a deal, became this thing of validation for me for quite a while. I'm actually currently registered for the HiSET test (It's basically the older GED before a for profit company made it expensive and insane to pass). I'll be taking my first three in about three days (assuming a force of nature like a meteor doesn't fuck everything up).

Some might remember that I was seriously considering computer science. My plans for the future have almost never particularly involved college, but I always figured, "I'll do what ensures that I'll have the most money". Until, of course, I discovered either the death or the boon of all millennials, which is a passion.

I realized after a bizarre three week extended mental breakdown that I spent learning music theory, that I have an apparent passion for learning the inside and outs of music. Like, I don't even care about necessarily being a musician, but my obsession with producers and music production apparently carried over into it academically. So I actually found this great two year course at our awesome community college that teaches music production.

Like, you learn financial accounting and all sorts of stuff, on top of music theory and how to use expensive equipment I wouldn't have access to on my own in a million years >_>.

Anyway, since college isn't make or break for me, and community isn't particularly expensive, I figure this is a harmless pursuit. Not like going to a $140,000 to become a scholar of the Twilight books.

I've also been hanging out with people in two entirely different indie music sub-cultures in Philly, it's been interesting. I went to an album release party, but I drank my first long island iced tea, so I mostly spent the party wandering around and being confused.

But anyway, I guess that's all the important stuff for anyone who was possibly wondering if I was dead or something. Oh and I both picked up and quit binge drinking in the time I was gone. It was a good run. I also occasionally hang out with the headwiz of Mega Man MUSH and his wife, since they live near me, thus proving that I won't murder anyone if we ever meet.

Here is a gif to prove my identity.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/a11a7a20d97538cb94242f595f633293/tumblr_mmcamvbX7w1rrckvao1_400.gif

The Reach and a few WoD games used to do XP incentive things. But ultimately I think that on the topic of basically real world ethnicities and stuff (even if the names are changed), I'm not sure that I would want it to be done that way. Like, if you want to play it you should play it, but it just seems weird to me to have people playing certain races just because there's mechanical incentive.

In addition to that, I'm perfectly fine with the fact that they chose to do a euro-centric theme, because I've seen what happens, even on the professional level, when even well-meaning people try to do a feudal Asian theme or feudal African theme or whatever else in that way, and there's like a million unfortunate implications or just absolutely yikes oversight happening.

Which isn't to say that white people shouldn't do those things or attempt those things, it's more to say that if you're gonna do it you should do it because you want to do it, and I believe the desire to do it should come with some desire to do it correctly. Which, again, I'm not saying no one here or Arx's staff wouldn't have that in mind, I'm more saying that I've encountered, both in hobby and in professional tabletop writing, a grossly high amount of people who enjoy the aesthetics and surface level aspects of cultural things, and just dive headfirst into it.

Like, you don't even have to be like "hurrhurrhurr historical accuracy, rabblerabblerabble!!!". To me, Black Panther's Wakanda is a perfectly great example of a fictional African fantasy society that goes a bit deeper than surface level "who are these mysterious brown people that do cannibalism and worship golden idols and evil gods!!!"

Incidentally, Mwangi in the original version of Pathfinder is absolutely goddamned atrocious and reading it absolutely disgusts the shit out of me. Modern Mwangi in the current Pathfinder is great though, definitely a massive improvement, but original Mwangi is the perfect example of just completely fucking up and diving into some old timey ass racism and othering of an entire fictional society set in fantasy Africa. The entire original setting is literally written from the perspective of colonizers exploring and learning about the "savages" lmao.

@Jaunt's perspective there seems to be a really good balance of both things. So, yeah, I can definitely get behind that line of thinking. There are definitely things to learn from more experienced players, and what can be learned from the status quo to innovate in a productive direction in the first place.

I blame Taco Bell for inspiring my anti-old guard rebellion with their millennial targeted advertising of forced memes.

In this thread, we will attempt to post five videos that display a full range of our music tastes!

You have a dangerous road ahead of you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-tXl0gajdc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-i-LhRudP4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLwr9-0CdCg

https://youtu.be/zmY8mG4_3j4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih19o9c-xDo

@bored I could have sworn that:

1 I specifically said I was talking about people making bad faith arguments, none of which are among the people you mentioned.

And

2 Pretty sure I made multiple posts literally saying I was wrong for the sexuality stuff when people called me out on it.

Anything else?

edit: And also I made multiple rather massive posts very much advocating for people to follow whatever they're comfortable with. Which has literally zero to do with what BigD is saying or even the central problem with the extremely obvious strawman arguments he keeps making.

EDIT AGAIN: By which I mean, "I'm not comfortable with this" is a very different argument from "I'm not comfortable with this because the world is on fire and the SJWs are out to get me". One of these I'm like "okay", the other I'm going to challenge.

This reminds me of how YouTube and Facebook are horrifyingly bloated sites now, rather than focusing on being simple and functional. They're complicated and more difficult to understand than ever.

I'm one of those people now.

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I have no issue talking to anyone who wants to have a genuine discussion or who raises genuine concerns. I however have pretty much no real patience for what I can only describe as venting at people with no actual aim or goal and implications that "no, it is in fact everyone else who is wrong and being uncivil".

I didn't call anyone uncvil. It's actually bizarre to me that you've jumped to that conclusion and I thought I was trying to de-escalate with the "if you meant this other thing, OK." If you replied "yes I meant that other thing, you misunderstood me" we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Like, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of us are over 30, and we're in a goddamned writing medium. You can't say "i'm not pissed" while making frothingly pissed off posts lashing out at people and showing literally zero desire to actually engage with what they're saying beyond your ability to vent at them on your own terms.

I'd ask what you think is actually 'frothing' but I think its pretty pointless. People here have seen me froth, though. If this is me rabid with hatred, I am seriously off my fucking game.

Like dude, this isn't Facebook,

Is it twitter? I'm confused.

That's the last thing I have to say on it. If you can't chill and be an adult I'm just gonna block you and be done with it.

Bye.

Okay cool, blocked. Glad we could clear up that this is a permanent behavior thing.

@Groth said:

@HelloProject said:

edit: Byond Tabletop allowed you to customize a sheet for people to use, with a shitty version of HTML. You could create different rooms and stuff. And rather than paying for server space, you simply hosted the server on your own computer.

There has never (not even in the dawn of internet) existed a technical restriction that required you to pay for server hosting rather then hosting it yourself. The reason to purchase hosting rather then host yourself have always been the same.

1. It's usually cheaper to purchase a hosting service then pay the electricity bill of keeping a computer on 24/7.
2. It's hard to maintain a good service availability at home between power outages, network disruptions etc.

Minecraft is a really good illustration here. It's utterly trivial to host your own minecraft instance however the virtual hosting providers are ungodly popular because they're really cheap and really easy to use with one-click installs for all common configurations.

The reason you're not going to see 'Babys first MU*' is because unlike Minecraft, you can't really start a MU* by just starting the server configuration of your choice and press 'Go'. After you've put your server online there is a metric fuckton of work awaiting you in making that server into an actual game anyone would want to participate in in digging a grid, writing a rule-set, writing a theme etc etc.

The average RPer is not going to have any idea how to get a modern MU up and self-hosted (Hell, the average RPer is not going to know how to get a MU hosted at all). And stuff like digging and all of that are still not particularly streamlined or intuitive unless you're already used to it. There needs to be something even simpler than softcode, and I have to entirely reject the idea that it isn't possible.

There's absolutely no reason that one shouldn't be able to quickly build their grid and theme without having to sit down and learn a bunch of code first, soft or otherwise. And no, hosting a server yourself isn't going to be perfect, but this is -exactly- how Byond works and I already have an idea of the pitfalls of players hosting a game on their own computer.

It's not a big deal and games go down. When someone decides to really commit, they might find cheap hosting, they might not. But actually hosting is an option and it's super easy. Of course Byond itself has its own programming language, so it wasn't particularly easy for non-coders to make a game, and they stole code a lot >__<.

But either way, if creating a simple package to create a MU without knowing any sort of code is not seen as viable by MUers themselves, I guess I'll have to make it a future project myself. It would make sense for me to do it anyway, since I already have a clear idea of the scope of what RPers outside of MUs would want anyway.

The idea that people need to pay their dues or whatever and learn to code just so they can create a MU is a ridiculous barrier to entry, and a part of why our community isn't as large as other RPing communities. Creating a simple package and throwing it out there to be used doesn't hurt anyone, so I'll make it my own pet project.

Every time someone goes "THESE FUCKING SJWS ARE AT IT AGAIN!", I'm like, man, do you not even remotely recognize the irony here?

As far as a women's only event, it's like, the complete and utter willful disregard for the greater context of why these kinds of events even exist makes that sort of argument come off as just disingenuous blind anger. I say disingenuous because I know that anyone else knows why these kinds of events exist, so pretending that the context doesn't exist is pretty much opening one's self up to others assuming malicious intent.

Let me give a hypothetical example.

News Headline: "Multiple schools have now banned peanuts and peanut products from being used in their free lunches."

Angry Person: "Omg wtf, this is absolutely ridiculous. Peanuts are perfectly fine, this is just some health nut bullshit. This is completely dumb."

Obviously with gender, race, culture, and all other "triggering" information removed, one should be able to critically read into this and see what's wrong here. Yes, the headline is missing context, but most people would easily be able to discern that kind of context from the shared experience of, like, living in the same country.

The angry response to the news headline outright ignores what is extremely common context, so the outside observer's logical conclusion would be, "Wow, this person doesn't give a shit about children with peanut allergies". Their thought isn't going to be "Wow, this person literally has no idea what a peanut allergy is".

I may occasionally be unintentionally condescending, but I have never insulted someone's intelligence to the point of assuming they were like, "HMMM, I WONDER WHY WOMEN'S ONLY THINGS EXIST, I'M GONNA HAVE TO REALLY SCRATCH MY HEAD OVER THIS ONE!!!"

But the expectation seems to be that I am supposed to assume that someone lacks common knowledge and general cultural context to the level of assuming that they literally have never spoken to another human being or left the house.

And as a result, I'm supposed to assume a lack of malicious intent, because of what I can only assume is because the person on the other end of the discussion is some sort of test tube clone who is only just beginning to learn about the world around them.

I just wanted to put this in context so that it's understood that "Omg teh wimmins and their private event" is not an argument that is ever going to come off as innocently thoughtful.

Unless, of course, I can see proof of one's freshly grown clone status.

@Pyrephox said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):

I wouldn't mind an Erotic MU* with a stronger theme, as long as the theme doesn't get in the way of having erotic play, if that makes sense? Although there's nothing wrong with having an Erotic MU* that focuses on a single small set of kinks. Like, I think there are niche MUs like...Shoujo Ai MU? Or that m/m superhero MU* I don't remember the name of. Where they lean into a specific kink constellation.

But, I admit, one of the things that appeals to me about a huge 'wide theme' MU* is the ability to get a whim, create a character for a specific scenario, and be able to (theoretically) find that scenario until I get bored with it, then drop the character without causing any distress to anyone else, or messing up any sort of plots.

I have nothing against games like that, it's just that when it's pretty much nearly every game of this sort that gets made, I'm like, I'm ready for new shit.

I'm also apping right now! I'm just lazy due to writing an article today and now doing a Free Code Camp project.

@Jim-Nanban said in RL Anger:

@HelloProject I refuse to accept what's communicated in your post: That you cannot figure out why someone might be opposed to all forms of discrimination.

And I refuse to accept that you sincerely don't understand the context of the situation and that you're actually making a sincere argument about discrimination. So I guess we're even!

You sound like someone who also doesn't see color and believes that "we're all one race, the human race".

I could quote shitty Facebook memes all night, but I have to go eat.

@mietze said in RL Anger:

Having been witness to the peanut butter in elementary school lunches "debate" now for like 10 years...actually, yeah, there are plenty of people who say quite literally "Fuck you and your fatally allergic child, my kid will only eat peanut butter sandwiches, and YOU want him to STARVE!" I have seen it in email, as well as seen it screamed in person.

Oh yeah, that's my point though. It's willful dickishness. No one's going to buy it if they sit there trying to pretend to have literally never heard of peanut allergies while arguing against banning peanut butter.

Talking like someone literally dying from peanuts and someone who thinks jelly sandwiches are icky are somehow equal things are dickish as hell arguments, pretending to have no idea what peanut allergies are is just ridiculous, which is why I (presume) no one does that.

Ignoring literally all context for why women would want a women only event is equivalent to going "Well, fuck you, I've never even heard of a peanut allergy. #allsandwichesmatter."

@Pyrephox Everyone is TSing everywhere, so it wouldn't be more drama than the average MUSH.

@Jim-Nanban This is actually very helpful, and a part of my interest in computer science and such. So I think that I -can- gain something out of using MUSHCode, to be honest.

Hell it's not like men's groups don't exist. Freaking men's only groups have existed since the dawn of freaking society, and still do, for various reasons. Not all of those reasons are even bad. I have seen men's groups that exist for perfectly justifiable reasons that have nothing to do with discrimination against women. It's actually possible to make an exclusive group for reasons that aren't "I hate all the people who aren't in this group".

For example, I know that the Community College of Philadelphia has this group, I forget what it's called, but it's like a group for black males. It exists because black men have statistically insanely high dropout rates, moreso than pretty much any demographic, even black women (black women actually have super fucking high graduation rates).

So the entire purpose of the group is so that these black male students can support each other against the statistical odds that say they won't graduate, even if it's stuff like home life, personal problems, or lack of money for bus fare and things like that. Basically the group is there to counter anything that would commonly cause black males to drop out of school. (This school has many groups, fyi, this is just one of them)

From what I've seen, since I assume we're talking about WoD, there's nothing inherently wrong with social combat rules. In MU*s, it's treated as optional just like regular combat is. People freeform when they feel comfortable freeforming.

If you want to solve the problem of twinking as far as people avoiding social combat when it's convenient to avoid it, then make it not optional, and regular combat too. Simply say "We are not a freeform game, dice rolls are used for combat and social combat".

Make sure that there are thorough idiot-proof explanations for how social combat works. Don't try to get too fancy with your house rules, just try to thoroughly explain. "This is/isn't mind control. As a guideline, the following things are the following difficulty", etc.

People need to understand the limitations of what social combat can do. They need to understand what it means in the context of their character. And they need to understand that it's something that is used on your game. A lot of people seem to have a problem with social combat because they want an extremely high measure of control of their character in relation to other people's characters.

A lot of people aren't cool with social combat (where dice are involved), because if they fail a roll they think, "Well, my character was outsmarted, but my character would never be outsmarted by this!"

Making social combat mandatory means attempting to create a culture that does not yet actually exist. People within that culture will be from this current one. Some will like it, some won't, or maybe it'll fail entirely. That's the risk you run with trying new things. You can't make everyone happy, you have to find a vision and run with it.

There is no social combat, like, ever, anywhere, that exists, period, that people will magically be alright with. The problem is not the system, but the culture. So, you can address the culture by making it mandatory, clearly explained, and seeing what happens, or you can go in infinite circles wondering "What's wrong with social combat?"

@faraday Isn't Evennia straight up Python? Nothing wrong with that, just asking.

@Thenomain But for a long time CNN has given a voice to absolute nonsense, like taking climate change deniers seriously enough to give them a platform to talk about that nonsense.

They're also dicks with the way they conduct themselves, but that's just my personal experience from when one of those assholes interviewed me (I didn't really have any interest in telling the guy exactly what he was telling me I should say, no thanks).

@surreality That makes a bit more sense in that context. As it's more opt-in than opt-out. So yeah, I can support that position in a system that isn't made specifically for PVP social combat nor revolves around it.

It would make no particular sense, with what you described, to make it mandatory. Though I do stick to my previous post with stuff like WoD.