Posts made by surreality

The Order was not good TV really, even in the first season. The second just dropped, however, and...

...the 'as themselves' are killing me. I don't care if the rest is hot garbage, they made me laugh so hard it's worth it.

@mietze said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

If someone takes it upon themselves to go all out lecture/"I shall educate you how to RP this right" mode without even asking questions or finding out more (and especially if they seek to do it publicly first) tbh most of the time at least they're full of shit.

Some of these folks may know the subject, but that's independent of this behavior. This behavior -- as described, the 'I'm going to complain about this other person's RPing their character 'wrong' loudly in front of the other players' bit -- is not about whether they're doing it right or wrong. It's about elevating themselves and putting the other person down.

@Ganymede I feel this. The husband was genuinely stunned over the past few months at home re: just how much meat I have to eat to not be constantly asleep and sick as a dog.

To him, 'food with meat' is 'here is a casserole that has a small amount of meat in it'. I mean, technically, that is food with meat.

It is not what works to deal with the 'I NEED MEAT NOW.' He doesn't quite grasp that that's fine for filler or a baseline, but it doesn't deal with the 'my body needs meat now or I'm going to zombify' whatsoever.

"But you had casserole that has some meat in it yesterday?" <-- does not mean I can just skip the meat foods for the next three days.

It's not like the monuments are from the time of the Civil War, either. Some of them go omg so far back in history to... the late 1970s.

This alone should prove the intent behind them.

I am not a syrup fan, either, but waffles as the bread of a sandwich/wrap of a taco sounds pretty frickin' amazing.

@saosmash @Alamias Yeeeeah, it's pretty gross. At the same time? It's not the kind of damage/harm done re: the appearance-based expectations and demonization out there.

@bored The glamorization of organized crime in film and television, too, among all ethnic groups. And I really couldn't say which is worse here: the demonization of the ethnic group by suggesting they're all in organized crime, or the glamorization it. Both of these things are one of those third rail topics that send me into death glare territory.

I partly blame this conversation having happened about a hundred times (not even an exaggeration, gods help me):

Person: "OMG, you haven't watched The Sopranos?"
Me: "No."
Person: "But you're Italian! And it's about being Italian!"
Me: "...no, it's about organized crime, and tries to normalize and glamorize it. It is not about 'being Italian'."
Person: "But aren't you even part Sicilian?"
Me: "...and still not part of organized crime, nor is any member of my extended family."
Person: "...oh, I get it, you have to say that."
Me: "..."

@Goblin That's a lot like 'redneck' jokes in the US, at a glance. Which are also gross.

I'm going to double to expand on that, because it's actually something we see very often in MU.

For instance, I have seen exactly one Italian character since 1996 that was not somehow mafia-affiliated. ONE. It's the same for Russian characters -- except in that case, I haven't even seen the one that isn't somehow involved in organized crime. Not all Roma live in wagons, either. When there are less offensive stereotypes on 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding' than are common on MUs? You know that shit's really bad in our hobby.

Yes, people, this is really offensive shit. Yes, it does affect people in real life, and we should think twice before propagating it.

I'm also going to second what Gany's saying here; I've seen it in friends up close, even if it's not within my own family. I do include that in 'lethally dangerous', at least in my head. The friend that was impacted the most was from Taiwan specifically, but the pressure he was under was extreme. Even as clueless high schoolers in the 80s we could see it, and...

...that brings me to another point. I really don't have a ton of empathy for people who 'don't see it'. I need to work on myself on that, but it aggressively frustrates me. Again: clueless high school students in the 80s could see examples of sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and other bigoted gross all over the place without any trouble. Less enlightened time, even!

But these things are not fucking subtle.

I genuinely do not understand how people 'don't see them'.

All the things and all their permutations? Yeah, people are not going to be aware of all of them -- . Maybe it's gone underground enough, or people have become so much more socially segregated since then? I mean, I get most people's lunch table probably didn't look like the model UN (if it consisted of class clowns and art/drama folk and cheerful geeks, just of all demographic descriptions), but holy shit.

I mean, I grarred about this in the irks thread, but... still, grrrrrrrrrr. All the people insisting there are no systemic problems and that society is all fair and equal and bigotry-free seem baffled that 'they can't choose a date for something that doesn't fall on the anniversary of an *ist atrocity of some kind, because there are so many of them'. Holy fuck, people. Does that not demonstrate that there is, indeed, a fucking problem?

ETA: Adding cat for Gany.

@Tinuviel They still happen in the US and they're pretty gross. They are absolutely offensive.

They are just not lethally dangerous, like the visual stereotyping so often is.

@GreenFlashlight <calmly wipes down the monitor> Costumer dude in that series is the real hero, no lie.

@GreenFlashlight I mean, maybe she's mad that somehow she found a hat and a dress that coordinated perfectly and fucked it all up with a horribly clashing necklace? Because finding something that so perfectly matches that hat or that dress is no small feat, the colors are not common combos by a mile.

Also, that hat is more than most skirts. I mean. Seconding 'how can you even be grumpy in that hat, how?!'

Unless it's a 'lost a bet' hat. I would not totally discount that as a possibility. Or 'omfg that evil cow over there has an even larger hat and it just put someone's eye out, now I seeeeeethe with envy and rage'.

...or someone else showed up in the same hat. "And that's when I shot her, your honor."

@L-B-Heuschkel The initial thing is appearance. I mean, that's pretty basic: <person> resembles <collection of physical stereotypes>.

It gets more insidious past that, since within every group of people with any given physical stereotype, there are the cultural or national or specific differences.

There was a point in time -- not terribly long ago in the historical sense -- when Spanish, Irish, Italians, Greeks, and some others 'weren't white enough'. You'd see despicable stereotypes about these groups spread around widely. You see relics of it today: 'Irish are all violent drunks', 'Italians are all greasy mobbed-up womanizers', etc. despite these people now being ushered under the 'white' umbrella in the US.

These groups were 'brought in' to the white umbrella when it came time to object to immigration from Asia and Latin America, and to ensure African Americans would not achieve any real equality after the end of the Civil War, over time. These groups had been treated poorly, and were essentially exploited into a devil's bargain of 'we'll sorta let you in to the respected people group with some side eye if you step wrong, if you shit on the other people we shit on'. It stuck in part due to the cycles of abuse we see play out psychologically with those who have been abused: some become empathetic due to their experience, but others become abusers themselves. The latter was dramatically encouraged, and so it's little surprise it became dominant.

It's that cycle you see playing out endlessly through every possible level of difference, from the macro of 'how you look' to the micro of 'you're from this specific town in this specific country that did that thing the one time 200 years ago and the rest of the country has been in a feud with your town ever since'.

@L-B-Heuschkel No, no... she doesn't get ragged on for it. It's that no one guesses, seeing that picture, that she's Brazilian (unless they already know), because she's pale, blue-eyed, and red-haired.

A lot of the assumptions that go around in the US aren't based on anything but appearance. The experiences Coin describes -- people assuming he's the white US citizen -- are good demonstrations of this. Same with people suddenly becoming deferential to me for no reason other than 'oh shit it's a white girl' when they realized I was white and not Mexican.

It's very much 'about appearance' in the US in incredibly disturbing ways.

@Macha Fear not, Kavanaugh was still shockingly gross, surprising no one.

@Coin The easiest example of this, to me, to someone who doesn't get that? Cintia Dicker. We've all seen the PB around, everywhere.

People generally don't guess 'Brazilian'.

ETA: most painfully relevant GAP tagline ever for this convo.

Skin tone and 'what I guess you are from 20 paces' has a lot to do with it in the US.

I'm normally eerie goth pale because I hide from the sun like a vampire, but when I get even the tiniest bit of sun, I bronze up fast, in a deep olive tone. When I lived in Los Angeles, pretty much everyone assumed I was Mexican, including my Mexican-American friends when we first met. People initially addressed me in Spanish more often than they did in English, and only the classic baffled deer-in-the-headlights 'I only speak English' expression -- still convinced this explained it in a nanosecond -- clued folks in. This never bothered or offended me, obviously, but holy shit was it eye-opening in other ways. Like, 'suddenly the person addressing me would stand up straighter and sound apologetic' kinds of eye-opening.

@Derp I recommend the animated version of The Tick. It suddenly makes flawless sense.

@Ominous This lines up in no small way with today's irk:

"It's not like you can pick a day that isn't the anniversary of some racist or homophobic attack!"

...really should be all the fucking proof we need that...

"There are no systemic discriminations in the modern society!"

...is complete bullshit.

I mean. Isn't the former proof that the latter is bullshit? I know that old saying about how 'genius is the ability to keep two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time' but I think this is sometimes something that needs to be pointed out as an indication of profound stupidity.

<deep breath calm blue ocean>

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Like, for example, you can search "man with sword" or any other "man with" things, or search "man wearing suit", and like 99% of the results are white dudes.

^ This.

It's that the 'target audience' for almost all things is -- stupidly -- not just 'white', but 'white dudes'.

A search for female warrior types of any race proves this out depressingly, too, full of 'the law of female fantasy armor'. That specific concept has improved a little over the past few years? But not much.

I soooooo share this peeve and I absolutely see this problem with the 'here is the one point of focus to which everything is meant to appeal', and it's shitty as hell and depressing to navigate through. There's nothing remotely silly about it!