MU Peeves Thread
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@Kestrel I finally got tired of being the initiator so I stopped. It was informative.
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I’m very bad when it comes to paging people - even close RP friends - and asking for RP. I was raised to never be a bother, and paging people to say ‘Would you like RP’ feels like being a bother unless there’s a specific arrangement already in place or something that needs to be directly discussed - and, like STD, I really don’t want to be That Player Who Seems Kinda Obsessive.
I’m much more inclined to drop myself on the grid, hit an LRP flag, say on channel that I feel like RP if anyone’s interested, and so on. I try to be available, rather than seeking specifically.
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Salutations!
I know for me that I have in life been told I’m too much. If you know me, then you know what I mean. I get very VERY excited when I’m excited about things and I babble in pages or I want to RP. I’m just very excited to write a story with the other person or find out what happens next, etc. I am also very hyper and optimist IRL and it carries over to my paging. So, as someone who has been told that I need to calm down. I take that as a part of my personality to fix. I’ve been told it IRL and MU life. Thus, I don’t always know that line on how much is too much and get stuck in a paralysis pattern. Then in an overthinker pattern. Online is worse because I can’t see the other person’s non-verbal cues. I can’t see if you smiled when you saw me. If you frowned or hesitated, etc. Thus I’m left with words that I have to figure out and probably not well.
Then if you suddenly stop inviting me to RP (with the hopes I’ll reach out), I panic the other way. I feel like I’ve upset you. As I’ve been told in MU realm that if I upset someone, you shouldn’t contact them unless they contact you or it can look like inadvertent harassing; I’m again in decision paralysis. Do I reach out? Do I assume there is an issue and that makes it worse? Normally the second because the behaviors suddenly changed.
I know I’m not the person in question, because I’m not really playing anywhere, but that would be why I personally was doing or not doing what was happening. Although, now I try to lay out my crazy to people up front. Like, hey you are going to have to tell me if I’m paging too much or inviting too much - because I might get so hyper-fixated on writing the story - I don’t read the clues or misunderstand the ‘tone’ of the text.
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I want to ask people to RP but I have 0 ideas for scenes and so I wait around hoping someone will have an idea and ask me instead or an idea will magically come to me lol
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I entirely forget that people exist until they’re right in front of me.
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I’m so used to being the one that asks people to RP with me that nowadays I look sideways at anyone who reaches out.
Like how dare someone else actively enjoy roleplaying, they must be some kind of weirdo.
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It’s like in a social hobby somebody needs to expend the social energy to make stuff happen, or it…doesn’t.
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I brazenly page people. But unless I have a scene in mind that’s story-relevant, I usually don’t directly ask for RP straight off. It’s more, hey how you doin’, what’s up, just sayin’ hi, lookin’ for a scene, how was your day.
It seems ridiculous to me that people would have a problem with That Player Who Seems Kinda Obsessive. I’d just think that they want to play the game. Naturally. It’s why they’re here. Or even That Player who just won’t leave someone the fuck alone, given that the someone doesn’t ask to be left the fuck alone.
But sadly, tragically, stupidly, people are not wrong to feel anxious about this.
There was a player I’d page who’d respond and chat. And ask about my own state of mind and how the game was going for me. Meanwhile, bitching to others that I wouldn’t leave them alone. While actively engaging with me. While distinctly not saying, “not now please,” or the perfectly acceptable, “I don’t want to continue the connection between our characters.” When I eventually found out I stopped contacting them entirely. And later they told me how it was partly their fault for not communicating, leaving me thinking, “Partly? WTF?”
Of course, on that same game I was accused of ‘complaining’ on the Looking-For-RP channel. By joining it and saying, “Anybody wanna play?” when I logged on. This did, admittedly, look kinda bad because the in-game channels linked to discord which meant that a newcomer could see that months of LFRP-channel activity consisted of nothing but that. But that is surely not my fault, nor does it turn “anybody want to play” into a complaint.
However, in spite of this absurd shit being real, I encourage people to remember that it’s absurd and inappropriate mean-spirited bullying bullshit. Hell, ‘it’s your fault that you keep talking to me when I respond, chat, and refuse to ask you not to’ player was also, “you’re cheating because your character can’t be blackmailed by mine threatening (and obviously bluffing) to tell someone not-very-scary if you don’t betray very-very-scary someone for me, whaaaa.”
You’re not a baboon and don’t have to let this shit dictate your behavior or culture of the hobby.
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I totally feel for people saying they don’t page people because they feel anxious etc.
My quibble is that, while I have no official numbers, I estimate that if I were to take a poll, 90% of this hobby would say they are anxious/autistic/depressed etc.
I hold it against no one for not making the first move. But I do think that past a certain point of familiarity, if you’ve been playing with someone for a long time, and you care about them, you are morally obligated on some level to force yourself to be the one who reaches out and initiates stuff from time to time. It’s the same with relationships. I’d be sad and insecure if my partner was always dtf when prompted but never initiated. I’d wonder if they actually like me or just like that I’m convenient.
Labour isn’t easy for anyone but you should still make the effort for people you value. Otherwise they won’t know you value them. You wouldn’t like feeling that way. That’s why you like it when they do the work, right?
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@RightMeow said in MU Peeves Thread:
Salutations!
I know for me that I have in life been told I’m too much. If you know me, then you know what I mean. I get very VERY excited when I’m excited about things and I babble in pages or I want to RP. I’m just very excited to write a story with the other person or find out what happens next, etc. I am also very hyper and optimist IRL and it carries over to my paging. So, as someone who has been told that I need to calm down. I take that as a part of my personality to fix. I’ve been told it IRL and MU life. Thus, I don’t always know that line on how much is too much and get stuck in a paralysis pattern. Then in an overthinker pattern. Online is worse because I can’t see the other person’s non-verbal cues. I can’t see if you smiled when you saw me. If you frowned or hesitated, etc. Thus I’m left with words that I have to figure out and probably not well.
Oh, hello, it me (minus the optimism I guess, lol). I’m well aware I’ve got no brakes when I get into a certain level of mood, but there’s being aware I don’t have them and actually finding out where I left them. It means I go off onto long tangents on things everyone else isn’t necessarily remotely interested in, then I realize it and get all anxious over “oh my gosh I wrote like three paragraphs/talked for ten whole minutes on Thing, no one will ever want to interact with me ever again forever”. Which is entirely a me problem to work out, but does mean I’m very, very, very bad about actually asking for RP scenes, because I worry I am being Too Much.
I’ve had some folks be assholes about it in the past, so that certainly hasn’t helped (haha, let me tell you about the time someone backed me into a literal corner to tell me everyone at the guild meet up we were attending was talking about me behind my back), but I’m confident my brain would be making this stuff into a whole deal regardless.
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I didn’t realize I had this peeve until yakking with @Rucket on Discord tonight:
I have no idea what MU*s are out there anymore aside from Ares games, and the occasional peek at Evennia’s tracker.
The peeve: How am I supposed to know what else is out there?! Where are all the MU* trackers?! I’ve forgotten and/or they’ve poofed.
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I feel all the words of your reply like I did the original posting. I think personally, it’s an insecurity of mine. So when it has been pointed out (again not in a loving way) it just makes me even more anxious. THEN add to it that I don’t have an RP community so I have to break into another one. Ugh. I mean. I have y’all but no one on the game that can be my designated RP person/companion cube/support page receiver until I figure out the vibe and flow. Also being blessed/cursed that I type at a fairly quick pace - I can get text blocks out like I invented them. It’s a thing.
It’s good/bad that someone else understands the ‘too much’ comment. Like yay for relation. Boo for the bad and anxiety that comes with it.
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I loved being an adult parent to adult children. Multiple people played Adalyn to Norwood and I enjoyed them all.
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I’m having a Rough Time with the amount of obvious, unedited ChatGPT garbage out there in our corner of the roleplaying world.
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@Third-Eye I wonder how long it’ll be before staff start requiring people defend their applications like one does with a dissertation, just to weed out those who wrote their backgrounds with an LLM.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Third-Eye I wonder how long it’ll be before staff start requiring people defend their applications like one does with a dissertation, just to weed out those who wrote their backgrounds with an LLM.
There are apps that can detect with relative accuracy whether something is AI-written or not.
And I am completely 100% in favour of outright banning all use of AI-generated art and LLMs on any game.
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@Kestrel said in MU Peeves Thread:
There are apps that can detect with relative accuracy whether something is AI-written or not.
I am aware. They’re often crap.
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@Pavel Yeah they don’t work. I think it’s still relatively easy to spot something that was written by an AI, but there’s no definitive way to really prove it, which sucks when you know a student did it but there’s no way to call them on it.
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Just remember some of us write purple prose that is so terrible, that you might mix it up with ChatGPT, or maybe think it’s even worse. This is not a ‘so let them use it instead of being trash’ … this is a ‘don’t ban my hot mess, I worked hard on it!’
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I can typically identify descs written by AI by how they’re surprisingly un-specific to the reality of what they’re supposed to be describing.
Yes, her eyes may harken back to bygone timeless memories hidden within pools of mystery, but what color are they?
Game-runner of Silent Heaven, a small-town horror MU.
https://silentheaven.org
