The fear of being seen as The Whiner is real. I’ve avoided reporting things that seemed non-reportable - constant and intentional passive aggressiveness, for instance - because I didn’t want to seem like a complainer who was out to get someone. Only to later find out that knowing that would have been valuable to staff.

When I started on Arx, a player pressured me to TS and then when I declined IC with reference to her sexuality he said, OOC, that maybe the right dick would fix her. I didn’t report this, because I had invited him to my room (to look at a painting we had been discussing!) so it was probably my fault and what else would I have expected. It wasn’t like he paged me out of nowhere. @sao (lovingly) bullied me into reporting and he was banned like 10 minutes later - in part because someone else had also reported him being borderline creepy but not instabannable. Would he have been banned if there wasn’t already a report about something more minor? I don’t know!

After several years, I know and trust Arx staff enough to report and let them decide what to do with it, but only because I have gotten to know them and I’m pretty sure they know I wouldn’t report maliciously. But there’s no way I’d do that immediately on a new game. It’s a tricky line to walk, for sure.

when you’re on the fence about reporting a scene for someone’s inappropriate behavior
but then the person deletes the whole log before you decide
that does not make you look better bud, but it does make up my mind about reporting

Every single log shared in order to provide proof of harassment will, by its very nature, be exposing the thing that harmed the victim. Always.

One of the fucked up things about abusers is that addressing it must involve some level of exposure of the victim. We either accept that and do what we can to mitigate it (remove the name of the victim, etc.) or we let it continue unchecked. It is impossible to address a problem if we don’t talk about the problem.

Do you all think I enjoyed having everyone read my DMs with Macha? I sure didn’t!

It’s all logs or no logs.

I want to RP but I don’t want to RP.

@crawfish don’t worry, the DMs in question are available for all to read and judge so I sleep fine at night.* some people should keep my name out of their mouths though.

• I don’t but it’s because I’m worrying about other things, like telling the waiter “you too” after they said “enjoy your meal.”

Unless chunks of RP are retconned, it wasn’t really “time wasted”. It’s a narrative, cooperative game. If things don’t work out the way you expected it can definitely suck, but it just changes the direction of the narrative. It doesn’t erase the time previously spent on a story. If I spend hours wooing another character, but in the end that character runs off with a princess instead, I didn’t waste that time. I still had the (presumably enjoyable or why did you do it) RP, and now I have material for more RP based on what happened if I want to keep playing out the story.

If the goal of RP is to make a story and have fun, the invested time can’t be wasted because it was 1) fun that you had for hours and 2) more story, just not what you expected.

Or the problem was entirely OOC and about OOC relationships and unrelated to any time spent on RP, in which case it’s just nice guy women are gumballs in a gumball machine thinking.

Nobody owes you anything in games or life, other than basic respect.

@farfalla said in MU Peeves Thread:

When you know it’s time to retire a character, but you can’t make yourself let go.

Finally giving up a beloved character and knowing it was the right choice doesn’t make you less sad about it.

@icanbeyourmuse Not to get too off track, but sex work doesn’t make someone poly. Sex workers can be monogamous. It’s just a job it has nothing to do with their relationship preferences. Polyamory is about romantic relationships. Also just as a note, the term ‘hooker’ is not preferred by full service sex workers.

@Tat said in Bannings:

If they change their behavior, great. If they don’t, then I’d ban them for continuing to behave in a way that they were asked not to, because it was harmful.

This is the #1 reason we ban people from the library. Not because of the initial thing they were doing that we had to ask them to stop doing (no mask, playing music without headphones, drinking alcohol, yelling, whatever) but because they don’t do what we ask. The vast majority of ban violations are “Failing to comply with the reasonable direction of a staff member.” Idk what my point is, here, but it seemed relevant when I started writing.

@GF

There’s a subtle difference between telling someone “Don’t be a jerk” and “Be respectful of others.”

Very true. Humans (and dogs, tbh) are much better at following positive instructions. That’s why you tell kids “walk please” instead of “don’t run”.

I think that to really go anywhere we need to acknowledge that the Hog Pit didn’t exist just to protect against jerks and predators. Sometimes you just wanna rant about a peeve. Sometimes you really need to tell someone they’re wrong about something. Sometimes you wanna make memes about something negative that happened, so you can laugh about it. Sometimes it’s just fun to argue. I do not believe this makes the people engaged in that cruel or mean or bullying. I would argue that the majority of the hog pit was that kind of thing, but the things we remember are the big blow ups.

It’s extremely normal to want to talk about our shared hobby, and it’s extremely normal to have complaints about things in the hobby, and it’s extremely normal to sometimes complain or rant about it. If you’ve never complained to your friends about the guy in tabletop who’s always in his phone (I’m that guy), or gotten pissed off by all the messages about buying gold on an mmo - well I commend your inner zen. But it’s not a terrible thing to discuss something including negative aspects.

As for how to navigate where those discussions cross the line, idk man. Try not to type things you’d regret in the morning, I guess, but that does depend on a certain level of self-awareness and self-control.

I don’t think everyone is entitled to my civility, kindness, or respect - though I try to start from there. But there’s a bug gulf between that and cruelty or intentionally hurting people. We can try and live there, when we get to levels of disagreement that verge from ideas into fundamentals, as others have discussed.

I forget my point but my point is we can allow that most mu* forum engagement is just because it’s enjoyable. It doesn’t need to have a higher moral purpose.

@Testament said in MU Peeves Thread:

All I know is that I’ve done shit and it took me multiple lessons to figure my shit out. I’ve been there. I get it. Not everyone learns the first time and to imply otherwise is a lie.

It’s not my job to be someone else’s learning experience and I don’t have to accept it or forgive it.

@Whisky

Also, any moderation and policy decisions should be based on what’s good for BMD, not what MSB is going to think about it.

@Testament I mean, it’s a very common male response to lesbians in RL. I’ve heard it before. But it is absolutely still super fucking gross and idiotic.

love being lumped in with the predatory DMs ban, very cool and legit

Clearly there’s a wide range in personal preference, and I can see all sides of them tbh. But unless we’re talking about something non-consensual, I think all the approaches discussed are fine. Your comfort matters as much as your RP partner’s, so if you will be uncomfortable if you don’t stop to discuss, stop to discuss. If you would prefer to play Cock Chicken, the other person can also decide whether to stop or continue. Etc.

I’m perfectly fine meeting someone in a bar and going back to my place - I’m not going to discuss TS preferences with them as soon as I walk in the bar. But someone else might prefer not to have sex scenes with new people.

I think as long as everyone is proceeding with respect and care, any approach is fine.

How can I be expected to know and remember this many things.

@Aria Thank you for sharing! I think a lot of us are more than willing to try

Slang is born in the Black and Queer cultures, and then because it’s cool, the youth start using it. Around this time, the Black and Queer cultures sigh and move on to some new slang. Then people notice that the youth are using it, so the wider culture starts using it. At this point, the youth stop using it and move on to the new slang the Black and Queer communities created. The wider culture will not stop using this slang, until the new slang (which is actually now old slang) created by the Black and Queer cultures percolates down to them again.

Thus is the cycle of slanglife.