Posts made by surreality

@silverfox I know it isn't the same for me.

It's that I know how utterly furious I have been when people have asserted that I'm not a woman because <insert stereotype about women that I don't demonstrate>, for instance. My happy time goes poof, the escape is now 'is this sexist drivel I have to contend with or is this person just stupid or what'. I wonder if I have to educate this person so they don't fuck this up with someone else who may feel the same way I do.

At a minimum, I do not want to turn someone else's happy fun escapism time into that.

And that's when it's something fairly inoffensive. Some of it is incredibly offensive -- like 'all women are naturally submissive/inferior', or that women have an obligation to provide sexual gratification to men who pay any attention to them. That women aren't sarcastic, or that they always smile and giggle and anybody who doesn't loses their woman card, apparently.

I've been 'the only girl there' a lot. I've also been 'the only girl who doesn't fit in with girls that fit the mold of girl people were raised to conform to when I was a kid'. Neither is comfortable.

It is not impossible to extrapolate based on those feelings of discomfort and constant scrutiny and expectation and assumptions and sometimes horror over the gross stereotypes people throw in my face.

It's that, as a woman, I am hyper-aware of the situations and actions and all the rest that create those conditions and feelings -- because I have to be. It's shitty, but I have to be. This is another point of commonality -- in the broader sense -- that I can understand and extrapolate from.

It's that I don't know what those conditions and situations are for someone else. I am not as ingrained to the danger zones and hot stoves and sensitive places. (Every character is going to have individual ones, but they'll have cultural ones as well.)

While I'm sure none of the guys who offended the shit out of me with their 'but you know every woman just wants a bad boy dom' bullshit gave the first damn about it -- and some were incredibly offended at the notion that they even could be wrong about this as if I was some super rare exception! -- I'm just not like that.

It's not getting into trouble, or people being mad at me that concerns me. It's causing that hurt, that anger, that ruining of the fun escapism time for someone else.

Because that's something else we have in common: we both/all really value that fun escapism time. That feels innately more valuable to me, sharing that, whether we're personally challenging ourselves in the process or not.

I also feel very much like 'my personal challenge' in this instance is potentially at someone else's expense, which, in my view, may stick them them in a crap position in a way to shoulder the personal discomfort my wholly optional thought experiment may cause. I just can't get behind that.

@Sparks I can really only answer for myself here, but if I play a Vulcan badly, it may annoy some fans or make me unfun to play with -- but there are no actual Vulcans in the world that could be hurt by my bad performance. There are real PoC/etc.

@Auspice Yeah, I remember her. I was talking about Taii Gordon from HorrorMU... she definitely didn't look white girl, but.

@saosmash If it makes you feel any better, my eyes are blue and I have central heterochromia. I am also just under 5ft tall. This thread makes me feel super called out for existing RL at this point, and I proooooomise you all no one would ever in a million years want me for their PB/on TV/etc.

@Groth ...and to add to this, 'if you're not sure you can do so convincingly in a given situation, you don't want to offend or hurt someone that way'.

...awkward thought: my most recent PoC PB has blue/grey/green eyes (depends on the photo; she's Jamaican/Irish). But, uh. That doesn't make her a generic white girl last I checked?

See this is where I'm like: <throws hands in the air> . o O ( ...is this something I should be ashamed about that offended someone? )

I think it's hard to pin down real demographics in a visually anonymous medium.

Some games, people are all up in everyone else's RL business and know these things -- most common on smaller games with a small number of people who know each other fairly well or interact often.

Some people would rather not share this information, period.

Some folks don't engage OOC at all if they can help it, here, on the game, on discords, etc.

And MSB represents a small number of people in the broader MU hobby, even if it's 'just MUSH/MUX/Evennia/Ares games' and not RPIs and MUDs.

Plenty of people on various games I've been on assume I'm male -- mostly the adult games, and the reason cited is typically, 'but women are all subs and enjoy humiliation!' Uhm, no, darlin', no. (If I heard about how I was definitely a dude playing women one more time because I didn't giggle or smile enough, I might have broken a knuckle on the monitor.)

I've guessed at unknowns and been wrong plenty. People have done it to me. So I'm really reluctant to make assumptions here about the over all makeup of the hobby.

I think -- as Generic White Girl #367, so apply however many grains of salt you feel appropriate -- we're better off, if we want to improve things, assuming people of all races/religions/genders/etc. are present in the hobby, and we should consider their comfort levels as the default.

Being a healthy, inclusive space is the best invitation and advertisement.

I think there was a WoD game a handful of years back intended to specifically be a safe space for PoC characters and players. I have no idea how well it went, but I recall that someone did indeed try.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I opt out of it because I don't view MSB as a place I particularly want to discuss politics (there are a GAZILLION places on the internet where I can do that with more tailored mod standards to that kind of thing and a population with different interests)

^ This.

This is the hobby space for me, not the politics space. Politics is not among my hobbies; I take it a lot more seriously than that.

It spills out all over the board in almost every single thread sooner or later in some form anyway much of the time, but in those cases at least there's a place it can be contained.

As Generic White Lady #362 RL, I have played PoC characters in the past and likely would again if I start playing again.

When I do, though, I am constantly anxious that I'm going to do something screwed up out of sheer cluelessness that might offend. I've been lucky thus far to avoid it happening, but even offending out of cluelessness free of any malice doesn't mean offense wouldn't have been justifiably caused if it ever did happen, and I'd really rather not hurt someone like that, ever.

Our favorite local place reopened last month, to much joy and rapture in the house. Knowing they closed due to concerns about harassment rather than an obligation to close? (They were takeout only even back when.) We're ordering from them once a week now vs. the once every 2-3 weeks we used to. They've been there for probably 20 frickin' years, have always been awesome, and there's a whoooooooole lot of pissed-off that shitty people made them feel unsafe remaining open at the start of the chaos. So, yeah. We are super fucking grateful to have them back and are trying to show it as much and as often as the budget allows.

@Testament Virtual hug sent, if welcome. Have been there on and off for the past week or so. If there's something totally mindless and meditative and soothing you can do, it might help? (Pretty sure it has saved my sanity over the last 24 hours.)

...rain incoming, and it's dark just past noon.

Me: puttering with pretty meditative image fuckery.

My husband: <asks very simple question>

Me: <puzzled look, goes back to looking at the shiny>

My husband: What are you-- <gets similarly hypnotized by the shiny>

Me: See, the pretty makes you stupid.

My husband: OK, I have to stop or we'll never get Chinese food.

...there will be Chinese food, and there is rain, and there is shiny so long as we have power. (Won't be long, I'm betting.) But, y'know. Then there will still be food, and naps are good, and I am simply too fucking zen right now to give a fuck about almost anything.

I would still be there if I was planning to play anywhere. None of the reason I'm gone from there is HorrorMU's fault.

Also, it was never a large game. It hit something of a perfect storm of people becoming very busy/ill/etc. all at once last I was there (a bit before the pandemic hit). So just a few people being knocked out makes a big difference, and we had a fair amount of that.

@wahoo Holy shit, that is not OK on any level. I will never fucking understand the ownership other people claim over anyone with any level of public image or body of work, and that's in addition to the HOLY WTF over the creep factor. I mention the former 'cause holy shit that feels like there's some spillover between the two.

Ran into someone when I was much younger who thought 'I want to hire you for a thing' meant 'I can be as sleazy and gross and try to get into your pants as much as I want because of it and you're obligated to put up with it', and holy crap on a cracker, NO.

It's a truly special sort of gross and I'm sorry you are being chased by it.

...can we please not wake up tomorrow in the opening credits of the Watchmen film again, country?

'cause that would be seriously great.

@SuperiorHuron That is a great shot!

I will be a motherfucking adult and not pick up the phone on which my husband is having an argument with a friend of his about whether we should just let piles of people die for the economy...
...that I'm pretty fucking sure started over 'when are you going to come back to the D&D game?!' that she hosts...
...that is 2 hours away in New Jersey...
...near where he normally works -- as a massage therapist, which no one in NJ is doing right now...
...in a specific hot zone area.

While my father is still running a fever, which I heard him tell her.

I will further be a motherfucking adult and not ask him, "So, how grateful are you that you married me and not that hot mess of WTF?"

...but I really want to do both, holy shit.

Not irks. Not anger. Just 'OMGWTF!!!' anxieties and fridge horror.

Kicking off with...

My husband just came back from checking on the folks next door, and my father has a high fever. He's 78, and wasn't in the best health to start with.

Deep breath, calm blue ocean...

@ZombieGenesis Servant wigged me out because the weird group mentioned later in the series would be in my RL neck of the woods, which never comes up in anything, ever. There are areas of the state it would have been fairly plausible... but the one they picked? Not so much. Big ol' farmbarns? Kinnnnnnnnnnda thin on the ground hereabouts.

...except it comes up all the time in Supernatural. For some reason, Delaware comes up in Supernatural like, really weirdly a whole fuck of a lot. (Do y'all know how weird it is doing the yearly art show and being like 'this is pretty much the exact street the devil supposedly appeared on earth in that show' every year? Because it's fucking weird. It's fucking weird and there's no way to not think it every single time I go for a smoke break.)