she/they
KB is right. There is nothing to be gained. There is no understanding to reach. There is no communication to be had. The other night I was so profoundly disappointed in what has become of a good place that I was honestly pretty bummed out.
It is what it is. They are what they are. Let them be. And leave them there.
Hi, guys:
Any posts elsewhere will be moved to this thread.
This is not a thread for arguments or nasty debates. We will be closely monitoring and moderating this thread in a way that we usually do not.
This is a thread for grieving, sharing resources and help for people who are impacted by all of this (which is all of us, but some more than others).
I’m just glad Ghost is there to lead the way to a brighter, more positive future.
Let’s not be reductive genitalia-essentialists about gender no matter where we are in the forum.
I think it’s pretty obvious why HannahBanana has been banned, but just in case it’s not obvious, I don’t care where you are: ablelist language isn’t okay, gatekeeping sexuality isn’t okay, none of this is okay.
https://forum.aresmush.com/t/v1-0-0-released/923
I don’t know if you guys have heard about this new fangled MUSH server called Ares–
Ares has brought a lot of new life into the hobby. I’ve watched people who hadn’t even logged into a MU* in their life launch and run games. Congratulations to @Faraday, and THANK YOU!!
While users can create new threads, they cannot create new categories. I believe that’s what you mean when you say new boards, yeah? We made a conscious choice not to include a politics category when we created this forum and right now that is not changing.
Politics isn’t a team sport. It’s life or death for many of us.
It’s not that we don’t think it’s important, so we won’t make space for it; in many ways, it is TOO IMPORTANT. This is especially true given the hands-off moderation stance I’d rather see on this board. We just don’t have the time, bandwidth, expertise, capacity, etc. to be able to moderate those discussions.
I’m sorry.
@Dreampipe said in Bannings:
There are actually a fuckton of literal fascists in this hobby;
There are fascists in a lot of places, alas. Fascists in gaming is an interesting area people are working on, but the far right were early adopters of online spaces (including back in the BBS days). Their methods will only ever get a small percentage of the population, but if you have so many people you can access, you can get to a much greater proportion of that small number and…well.
As someone who is super into history, Norse mythology, Crusader Kings, punk rock, and RPGs, the amount of time I have to spend squinting at people with common interests and going “Okay, but are you a fucking Nazi?” is both alarming and exhausting.
Seconded. I’m a white dude and it’s sometimes really anxiety inducing to talk about those kinds of interests without feeling like, “guys I swear I just like the stories, I’m not a white supremacist”. Double whammy because I also like power metal.
At least a lot of them usually don’t take long to go mask-off. I remember people using SS designs in medieval games like Mordhau or Chivalry. No it’s not a pair of lightning bolts, I know what you are.
Look, I can’t lie. I would use a pair of lightning bolts because I think lightning bolts look cool.
AND THEN I WOULD BE FUCKING MORTIFIED WHEN SOMEONE TOLD ME.
Pour one out for everyone born in 1988 who is innocently making very poor choices about their usernames.
I am glad that we have largely left behind all-white games in the L&L space. I think the expectation that most people have is that you will see a diverse cast of characters. I appreciate that about Concordia, particularly where they have course-corrected with their pantheon. I think they are doing some other interesting things in that space, too.
There is maybe no perfect way to handle the issue of cultural diversity and real-world inspirations, but I still think that what they are doing is worth an upnod. You got your Targaryens, sure, and your red-heads, and your Romans–
But there is also a house that has clear East Asian influences and one with South Asian influences. I grabbed one of those from the roster because I am always dying to see something – anything, please, god – that isn’t just your standard Western French-British-Something take on fantasy. Then I ran into players who maybe had been expecting something more Western in the house, so I popped in a request to get more clarity. I wanted to know what staff’s intent actually was, and I like the answer I got.
Rather than directly copy and paste real-world cultures into the game, they’ve made a choice to draw on multiple places for inspiration to avoid generalizing, tokenizing, or fetishizing any real-world culture. In this case, yes, the house has elements of North India, but also Moorish Spain. I’m kind of curious if there’s a connecting thread of thought in that they were both extension of Islamic power at times, what with the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire in North India, but I haven’t sat them down for details – and I actually enjoy classical India better so DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO DRAW THAT LINE ON MY ACCOUNT.
Right now, at this moment, all I really care about is that they are doing something different, something interesting, and something coming from a place of curiosity and thoughtfulness. I wouldn’t say that they are a perfect game, and there’s choices I wouldn’t have made, but holy fuck please I hope more fantasy L&L games in the future draw from a wider well than the tiny Western European fantasy well.
@Muscle-Car Why do you think I’m always so eager to fork threads?
@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Ominous said in MU Peeves Thread:
@spiriferida For L&L, really play up the politics, intrigue, animosity between rival families, and management aspects to the level that no one has time to knock boots on screen.
Demand characters have so many administrative skills, they become virtually unfuckable.
Joke’s on you, I’m into that shit
@howyadoin said in MU Peeves Thread:
Alright alright alright.
I just didn’t want this to turn into a discussion about policy when it’s not a matter of the policy involved but of obtaining consent under false pretenses.
You’re right. That sucks.
I just had the same reaction as @helvetica and was leaning back in my chair thinking about the the wild world of policies. Thinking about comic games making unfortunate rules about character gender and sexuality. IDK.
Our hobby sure is a place sometimes.
I’m dying out here. What’s the policy?
ETA: Okay, okay, okay. A good and wise friend has pointed out to me that perhaps it makes sense to not want to say in all cases. Obviously lying to get TS is really fucking bad tho, okay?
@Faraday IDK, I’d just continue to call them imperfect tools. That just puts it at 1 false flag in 11 samples instead of it’s 0 false flags out of 10 samples. Still not garbage.
I think there are real issues in these tools, but I think it is a mistake to write it all off as garbage. Use it as a tool alongside human judgment. Try to use the best tool you can.
I don’t agree with your conclusions. From the same article:
The results varied widely, and in some cases, dramatically.
Pangram and Originality.ai were the most reliable performers. Pangram returned 0 percent across all ten articles. Originality.ai returned 0 percent on eight of ten, with 1 percent on the remaining two. Both tools correctly identified every piece as human written.
Grammarly performed nearly as well, returning 0 percent on eight articles and flagging two at 7 percent and 9 percent respectively—low enough that neither would likely trigger concern in practice.
3 out of 5 did okay? They are tools to use alongside human reasoning. But demonstrably they aren’t garbage.
@Muscle-Car said in Age Verification & Games:
@RightMeow Discord tried to roll out user age verification by ID or facial photo in the US and were met with massive backlash
@Prototart said in Age Verification & Games:
They haven’t asked for mine bc my account’s so old, but I’m 100% out if they ever do. I don’t even trust them enough for to pay for Nitro, no way am I giving them my ID.
I’m not even talking about Discord’s age verification. I’m talking about RP servers on Discord being like ‘verify your age by sending us your ID’. I’m talking about users feeling like they need to do it.
ETA: I need to clarify. This is on top of Discord’s systemic age verification. This is an additional layer of USERS asking OTHER USERS in SHARED SERVERS to send them their ID.
Guys, do you know that if you want to RP on discord, people want to send you a picture of your GOVERNMENT ID?
It made me think about our community, age verification, age verification attempts of yesteryear. I feel like at a certain point I stopped saying all players should be 18 or older because I just assumed that anyone who showed up would be.
Do people still try to verify player ages? What do you do?
