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MU Peeves Thread
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AS A TRANS PERSON…
I get the argument, vis a vis fetishization and I’m certainly not unsympathetic to it. I think it’s worth considering in plenty of contexts when it comes to constructing characters/stories/et cetera.
It’s just odd for me to square it in THIS specific case, at least for the reasons stated. Ultimately, it’s not a big deal to me - I have removed the offending penis! - so much as a weird one. It’s a game where the primary thrust is ‘what if we just lean into the usual environment on cape games and acknowledge that people like writing smut’, with lax theme/continuity policies to accommodate such, so while there are definitely arguments to be made about fetishization, it strikes me that they by rights ought to apply pretty broadly here, shouldn’t they?
Or, to put it crassly: If I can do a series of scenes in which Wonder Woman sets up shop at a truck stop men’s room for funsies, and that is not disrespectful, inappropriately fetishistic, et cetera, then drawing the line at one of the sets of dangly bits aboard this hypothetical train being Hawkgirl’s feels weird, to me personally. It would probably feel LESS weird if it were not inherently a game where players are encouraged to fetishize a myriad of other aspects of comic book characters for the sake of titillation-- or even if the line was more along the lines of ‘don’t JUST shuffle parts around, put like five seconds of thought into it’, I would get it.
(For the record, ‘how exactly does this make sense’ was indeed part of my thought process, because I’m the kind of weirdo that likes to be able to tie her smut-writing to, like. SOMETHING tangible.)
Anyway, all that having been said, to reiterate: I as one of the affected parties am not ANGRY or whatever, so much as a little bummed/bemused. Nobody was banned. Trans characters are in theory appable, but given how few such characters there are, it’s a very tenuous theory. Pls don’t send hate at these people who I am charitably assuming made a well-intentioned but clumsy decision against the backdrop of being a small staff on a game that wasn’t expected to take off at the rate it did. Choices get made quickly sometimes under those circumstances, and they aren’t always ideal.
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@renaveleigh said in MU Peeves Thread:
Trans characters are in theory appable, but given how few such characters there are, it’s a very tenuous theory.
we actually looked btw there’s one who we’ve ever seen played anywhere ever and half of them are characters who showed up once in one of the yearly Pride specials
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@Prototart I can think of two off the top of my head. One is a hero, and one is Batgirl’s normie roommate, so I’ll assume no one is knocking players down in a rush to play her.
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@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Jennkryst Fetishization versus empowerment/ownership of desirability is a moving target, mostly dependent on the individual parties involved. I have book recs.
Sad for the staffer who had to write that superheroes don’t lactate. No matter what the story behind that ruling was, sad for them.
I know exactly whose fault this is.
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@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
Sad for the staffer who had to write that superheroes don’t lactate. No matter what the story behind that ruling was, sad for them.
my year was distinctly lacking in absolutely hilarious sentences like this and I just want to thank this hobby from the bottom of my heart for finally delivering the content I crave, 10/10
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@Jennkryst said in MU Peeves Thread:
HONESTLY the biggest warning flag is the ‘if you have an issue do not complain on channel, talk to us in private’ thing. Not that I’ve had issues with anyone, but every time I get a ping from staff on any game with that kind of policy, I get a ‘oh god what rule did I accidentally break that they are about to ban me for?’ reaction.
Honestly, I’d usually be in your boat but I’ve anecdotally seen an uptick in the amount of passive-aggressive not-quite-complaints about staff decisions on channels lately so I can definitely empathise with these people not wanting to put up with that kind of bullshit – especially if it happens during a period they’re not available to immediately quash it.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
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@Pavel especially considering people who take what should be private discussions with staff to the public channels are usually, in my experience, not representing the private interaction accurately.
It’s usually some inflammatory bullshit. Like the last time I saw Jennkryst do it!
fr fr
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@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
It’s usually some inflammatory bullshit. Like the last time I saw Jennkryst do it!
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@GF said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Prototart I can think of two off the top of my head. One is a hero, and one is Batgirl’s normie roommate, so I’ll assume no one is knocking players down in a rush to play her.
the only trans char either of us had ever seen played is Sera, Angela’s girlfriend who hasn’t appeared in, like, a decade
the entire thing is dumb and the whole “we hear you. you are valid. here are the six characters you can play.” makes it even dumber
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@Prototart I honestly forgot Sera. I was thinking of Nia Nal, who as far as I know is only trans in the Supergirl TV show.
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@Prototart It’s absolute dire, and the funny thing is that several of the already meager list of options are off the table because they’re villains.
Like, having had more time to sit with it: it’s a tacit ban on trans characters. OCs are not available; outside sources offer a handful of extra options (most notably/readily offhand: Viktor from Umbrella Academy) but are subject to approval. So maybe?
I don’t want to ascribe malice, and, I don’t, but this is not a well-reasoned policy at all.
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@renaveleigh said in MU Peeves Thread:
I don’t want to ascribe malice, and, I don’t, but this is not a well-reasoned policy at all.
in the posts people made about ~continuity~ and rosters and inherited characters what i think maybe got missed about the place in question is that it’s literally a superhero fuck MUX that when i looked at it had a continuity that was literally “someone’s continuity is what they say it is, batman can be 20 and Nightwing can be 30”
it’s hard not to ascribe malice when it’s a place literally built on fucking and then sharing logs of your fucking that decided one particular kind of body was unacceptable for fucking unless it was completely hidden and unacknowledged
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I had your words in mind when I did a lurky-lurk dive of the game that’s being discussed.
I have this empowerment versus fetish question regarding people of color on that game.
they | them
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@ten The Black Body in Ecstasy is a good read on that subject. Obviously it centers Black feminism, but a lot of the discourse can be applied elsewhere.
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A book rec, thank you! 🤩
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I think it is really difficult on a game like that. Like…I glanced at it because I like sex as much as the next person, but (happily!) a lot of the canonically LGBT characters I might have wanted to play were already taken.
Under their rules, I think I could take a canonically straight character and gay them up, but that feels weird - especially on a sex-focused game.
Like, if I played the gay Scott Summers and Jean Grey showed up wanting snoo-snoo, I think I would kind of feel duty-bound, especially since they are such an iconic pairing.
Obviously, I would not be, and their rules make that clear, but I think the weight of social expectations would certainly be there, and I would feel like I was taking something away from that other player. Maybe that is a weird hangup only I have.
I am sure it is worse for anyone who would want to play a trans character because I can’t even think of one (granted, I am not a huge comics person).
I do not think it is sufficient to say, “You could play a shapeshifter character, who can be any gender,” because unless the character is also trans, it is not equivalent.
It seems like a really difficult knot that could be easily untangled by allowing OCs.
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Just all of this!
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@Pacha Part of why it stands out so glaringly here is that it is pretty commonly accepted on comic games in GENERAL that people are gonna hook up how they’re gonna hook up, and canon pairings don’t - really, CAN’T, given the myriad of logistical/interpersonal headaches it would cause - ever be assumed to stand. This includes slash-y romances: FC orientations fly pretty wildly, and for the most part nobody cares.
So to see a game in this genre that probably ought to be even more lax, more open to experimenting with orientations, relationships, and - yes, bodies, up to and including sexual characteristics/gender identities - leaves a strange taste, compounded by the flimsy nature of continuity there meaning that nothing is actually ‘lost’ long term in the sense of changing a character beyond a point of being appealing to hypothetical future appers. Opening OCs would help solve the specific issue of there being nearly no viable trans characters to app, but not the greater break with the norms of the genre or the inherent disappointment of being able to tweak a beloved FC to fit personal tastes in a dozen ways EXCEPT one fairly significant one.
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I wonder if Desire from Sandman could count as an app.
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