MU Peeves Thread

[Coin]

@Meg said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Cobalt these tactics have worked on me in the past too, when i was insecure with my place on a game, etc. find the right target, and they do work. and most of the time, even with a bad target, most won’t report you because they’ll second guess if you actually meant what you said the way they read, etc. or if it is reported, you can often spin it into things like ‘oh she’s just upset because i asked not to have a relationship with her’ like the dude tried to do.

but the hobby is getting smarter. we have a lot of good admins and smarter players. these guys better fucking change or perish, i guess.

that’s a lot of ‘we’ for someone who doesn’t play.

[tugs at meg’s cheeks to see if it’s GHOST UNDER THE MASK]

(this is a jk)

[Meg]

@Coin said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Meg said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Cobalt these tactics have worked on me in the past too, when i was insecure with my place on a game, etc. find the right target, and they do work. and most of the time, even with a bad target, most won’t report you because they’ll second guess if you actually meant what you said the way they read, etc. or if it is reported, you can often spin it into things like ‘oh she’s just upset because i asked not to have a relationship with her’ like the dude tried to do.

but the hobby is getting smarter. we have a lot of good admins and smarter players. these guys better fucking change or perish, i guess.

that’s a lot of ‘we’ for someone who doesn’t play.

[tugs at meg’s cheeks to see if it’s GHOST UNDER THE MASK]

(this is a jk)

we you nerds that still play text based rp games have a lot of good admins and smarter players.

[Rinel]

I’m being very vague on purpose here, and I’m not going to elaborate.

I play on a game where someone is playing a minority character. The way they are playing that character strikes me as not quite right. It feels stereotyped and almost offensive. It does not feel natural to me.

I’m not a member of that minority. I definitely don’t have the breadth of knowledge to even guess as to whether the player is a member of that minority. I have very vague vibes that make me uncomfortable, and because I’m not directly affected by the portrayal I’m unwilling to get others involved.

“But Rinel then why are you talking about it here—” Because this is venting and it’s a situation where I feel guilty for any action I do or do not take and I want to vent about it.

[Smile]

@Rinel This isn’t advice about what to do. But to be honest, someone /can/ be a part of a minority group and still play a PC from that group offensively.

[mietze]

The best advice I have is to bring it to staff, point out the logs in question and let them decide if it’s the sort of thing they want on their game.

Then you decide how much comfort you have in interacting.

There are a couple of things I can feel very sensitive about on a game. Most of the time they only rise to an annoyance level and I can acknowledge that I don’t own how x is portrayed. If they get to the point that I can’t focus on much else because my enjoyment is ruined seeing what I saw or continued stuff as the person gets more comfortable and lets loose than I bring it to staff attention. Depending on in/action I may show myself the door.

I’m glad that you are trying to be sensitive about this than to rush in to tone police on your own. As has been said just because someone IS/has experienced something in RL doesn’t mean they get to do whatever they want in portrayal on a game. Whether that is something based on race, religion, background (best example is references to abuse and SA in play).

Different places will have different cultures and allowances for different things. If you are enjoying a place I would err on the side of bringing it to their attention so they can talk about it and decide.

I’ve had someone tone police me before about a biracial and multilingual pc’s portrayal, because she felt she could decide that since she had biracial children and had chosen to not raise them speaking both languages, it was inappropriate of me to reference my character bring bilingual as a child and lecturing me about that in the middle of the scene. I’m also biracial and experientially most of my career have cared for kids who significant numbers are bilingual. It felt really gross to have a player make assuming accusations about who I was and it would have been nicer for her to go through staff. Yes this is a ridiculous weird tale of hers but it still felt gross even though I knew in this case it was stupid.

Just contact staff let them decide.

[Rinel]

@Smile said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Rinel This isn’t advice about what to do. But to be honest, someone /can/ be a part of a minority group and still play a PC from that group offensively.

That’s true, but it feels inappropriate for me to police that, you know?

ETA: @mietze, for sure the only thing that it would even occur to me to do would be to involve staff. For right now, though, I think I’m going to sit and wait.

[icanbeyourmuse]

@Rinel You are not policing anything by just telling staff what a person is doing feels sketchy to you. You are just giving information for them to decide how they handle it.

[mietze]

@Rinel why sit and wait? Why let it simmer? Iirc sometimes that starts to make problems of its own. Especially if there’s anxiety or discomfort over it. I understand the impulse, but I hope you consider not having this creep in to ruin stuff. If you are going to feel guilty no matter what might as well err on the side of helping preserve your comfort long term maybe? In either knowing that yeah you did spot something deemed inappropriate! Or knowing that your radar and the game’s are two different things. Imo its valuable info either way. But also I know how hard it is.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Rinel said in MU Peeves Thread:

I’m being very vague on purpose here, and I’m not going to elaborate.

I play on a game where someone is playing a minority character. The way they are playing that character strikes me as not quite right. It feels stereotyped and almost offensive. It does not feel natural to me.

I’m not a member of that minority. I definitely don’t have the breadth of knowledge to even guess as to whether the player is a member of that minority. I have very vague vibes that make me uncomfortable, and because I’m not directly affected by the portrayal I’m unwilling to get others involved.

“But Rinel then why are you talking about it here—” Because this is venting and it’s a situation where I feel guilty for any action I do or do not take and I want to vent about it.

There’s been a long history of people playing what comes across as ethnic caricatures in this hobby and it’s more jarring nowadays because people in the hobby aren’t really drinking from the firehose of 90s WoD sourcebooks (This is a whole topic all its own) anymore. Sometimes they’re just innocently ignorant or a pose comes off wrong, but sometimes it’s a fucking minstrel show. This is a “know it when you see it” sort of thing. Plenty of us have acted out of ignorance in the past and a reasonable person will try to do their best when calmly taken aside and told “Hey, this comes across as demeaning or stereotyping because <X>.” Some people are more reasonable than others.

So anyway, Why feel guilty? I’m not asking this in a negative way, but IMO at the end of the day, the responsibility for maintaining a game’s environment falls upon the shoulders of staff. If something bothers you, bring it up to staff and gauge their response. If they’re on top of their job, they’ll at least make some attempt to address it, whether it’s clearing up confusion or correcting someone else’s behavior.

Now, staff may not be aware of a problem. Or the bad actor in question may have a history of doing this particular thing but is tight with staff, in which case, lolllll good luck. I personally wouldn’t touch that particular poop but now I’m starting to sound like someone with an axe to grind.

[Roadspike]

@Rinel As someone who is white as a sheep in a snowstorm and somewhat frequently plays minority characters, and as someone who has looked at how someone was playing a minority character and felt very sketchy about it, I echo @mietze’s advice. It’s entirely possible that someone else has shared their concerns about the portrayal with Staff, and hearing it from two, three, or even four folks can let them know that it’s not just one person’s feeling, that there really is something wrong with the portrayal.

At that point, hopefully Staff can be diplomatic enough to find out if it’s an honest mistake, or the minstrel show that @SpaceKhomeini mentioned.

[Rinel]

Ugh. Y’all are right.

I just feel like a fucking cop.

[mietze]

I might add that a cop has the power to go over to someone they don’t like and tell them to knock it off and utilize force to make it so. You have neither that power nor the authority, as a player.

Would you report a potentially dangerous or problematic environmental concern (leak, damage, wobbly stair) that you had no way of correcting yourself to maintenance? Personally that’s how i’m starting to choose to view things like this.

[sao]

@Rinel telling someone in authority how you feel about something someone else is doing is the opposite of being a cop. being a cop would involve going to the person and getting in their business about it, with extreme prejudice.

If staff thinks it’s actionable, they’ll action. If they don’t, they won’t. Telling staffers about an environmental issue on their game is always preferable to not in my opinion. Even if they just note your concern in the file, if someone else raises the same concern later, it’ll corroborate. So basically what Roadspike just said half an hour ago.

[catzilla]

This is reminding me of someone somewhere currently using Anna Taylor Joy for their Chinese character.

[Smile]

@catzilla I almost felt a self conscious ping using her for one of my chars. But that char is definitely presented as white. Damn anxiety.

[GF]

@Rinel If it makes you feel better about it, I still grapple with my reflex to police how people are allowed to play certain political minorities; and I do it in ways that, if someone outside the group did it to me, I’d be correctly disgusted at them for doing because it presents us (whichever “us” is in question) as a monolith.

It sucks growing up a racist/sexist/classist/whatever-ist society. They really oughta pay our therapists’ bills to deprogram us.

[Jumpscare]

There was one person who joined Silent Heaven to play a Korean vtuber who spoke in broken English. And not the kind of English one would pick up naturally, but the stereotypically offensive caricature of broken English.

I messaged her player, letting them know that being immersed in English for months should show an improvement in her language, and that she needs to have a better, less stereotypical grasp on English now, with improvements over the coming weeks. They agreed to that.

They stopped logging in shortly after the talk.

[Testament]

@Jumpscare I wonder if this was the same person who also played a stereotypical Asian character on LA2042 that was very off-putting. It sounds like the same vibe.

[Rinel]

The issue has been addressed and is out of my hands!

[hellfrog]