My muddy chaos demon

My peeve is me. I want to get back into MU*ing, and have not one, but two games lined up that I want to check out. (Maybe even three if for whatever reason the first two don’t work out!) Both are run by friends whom I respect and admire; whose creative projects I want to support; and whose ability to run good, healthy games that I’d enjoy I have complete faith in.

It’s just been so long since I’ve fully invested in a MU* that I feel like I’ve practically forgotten how to. I’ve been in creative lulls like this before, and I know that if I just get my foot in the door, roll up a character and get myself into a scene, it’ll all come back in an instant, like I never left the hobby at all. I’m just finding that initial step weirdly harder to surmount than it should be.

To the multiple friends who might be reading this, and to whom I’ve made empty promises about rolling up to hang out with on a MU* in recent months, I’m sorry. It’s really not you, it’s me. (A phrase I know always feels like bullshit on the receiving end, yet is legit, in this case, true.)

Marginally related peeve that I’m sure other alumni of this game can relate to: I hate the extent to which PHSD (Post-HavenRPG Stress Disorder) lives rent-free in my mind. Experiences on that game have made me intensely skittish at the very first sign of red flags on any other game I’ve checked out since, and permanently damaged my ability to put faith in game staff on the whole. It’s not the main reason I’ve been flakey about checking out the two aforementioned MU* run by friends of mine, but it has made me bail a lot quicker than others deem reasonable, on other projects, recently.

When there are so many good gamerunners out there whose proven track record makes me feel safe to put my complete trust in, it just no longer feels worth it sticking around after the first sign of trouble anywhere else, hoping/expecting things might get better or continuing to make excuses for staffers displaying strong red flags. I did that for years longer than I should’ve on HavenRPG, and I’m not prepared to do that for a day longer anywhere else.

It also makes me feel much stronger appreciation and gratitude to those gamerunners out there who’ve proven their commitment to their players’ safety time and time again. And to these boards as well, which promote healthy communities & staff practices, and which hold the hobby to a higher standard than I’m regrettably used to seeing.

There are a number of posters here on these boards who don’t know me at all, whom I’ve never spoken to one on one, whose positive contributions to this community have meant a lot more to me than they could possibly realise.

Every few days I wake up feeling creatively inspired and motivated to start something new. Roll up a new concept, join a new game/community, maybe even start my own game. The ideas and plans really turn into these full-fledged beings and worlds just begging to be written. Sometimes I even reach out to friends on Discord and let them know that I’m warming up to dive back into MU*dom or that I want to embark on an ambitious project.

Unfortunately, then I look at the date and realise I’m already late to meet RL deadlines. In the background, my mysteriously athletic Siberian Husky (seriously, how and when did my pandemic puppy get this buff?) makes her stance clear that if I’m awake enough to be sitting at my laptop, I am definitely awake enough to be giving her the first of 2-3 hours of exercise she’s owed, and no amount of focus will be permitted today until she’s been tired into a coma. And so the muse continuously dies unspent.

I miss escapism and creative writing.

The inevitable paranoia I constantly feel when friends talk shit about our other friends, and then I can’t help but wonder what they’re probably also saying about me.

Part RL peeve I suppose, but we are a gossipy hobby.

@Testament said in Bannings:

@Herja While I realistically wouldn’t expect it, I however would not be surprised if they somehow did the mental gymnastics to allow either Cullen or Dropkick to start posting there(I’m pointedly not including DWOPP in that because I can’t imagine any MSB staff being so oblivious to be okay with that). I would rate the things that Cullen did and what Hella/VK did to pretty near each other. So if they let one of them there…

Like I said, I’m not expecting but, also my expectations are exceedingly low at this point.

I would just like to say, loud and clear, in case anyone missed or somehow doubts this memo, that Cullen’s player is an actual, literal, real-life rapist.

I would love to post receipts. Dearly I would. Unfortunately that would be A) doxxing him & B) not my story to tell, not my receipts to share, and not one of his victims’ duty to publicly bare their trauma for the satisfaction of sealioning, misogynistic chodes.

I cannot adequately express the degree of livid I feel at some of the insinuations made on MSB these past few weeks; or how much it sickens my stomach to imagine that anyone would argue he deserves to be allowed back into community he’s abused for years to do it all. Over. Again.

I do not believe in second chances, not for him. He’s had a hundred already and abused them all. No.

But I hope making that case, or at the very least making light of the notion, is worth the internet points that MSB’s new boys’ club gets to reap at the expense of other people’s trauma. A categorical fuck you. Check your privilege, “simplications”.

My snow dog is not enjoying the scorched English savannah right now.

I’m not sure why that photo came out with a lens flare. I didn’t do it on purpose, so I think it’s her natural radiance emanating them wherever she goes.

She is, however, remarkably well camouflaged for this weather. As you can see, in this picture she’s completely disappeared. I bet you can’t even see her now.

The last two threads on MSB serve as an excellent reminder that misogyny and Authoritarianism often go hand in hand. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and neither should be trusted in a position of power.

That was sinister to watch, but I’m glad they’ve at least revealed themselves.

simplications if you’re reading this:

I’m sorry, I fucked up. The way you showed up on MSB, the timing, and the group of posters whose statements were being mutually borrowed as fuel for each others fires, made me assume the worst about your intentions.

There are actually a fuckton of literal fascists in this hobby; Cullen for example had an iron cross as his forum avatar on HavenRPG for a while, and I’ve posted receipts elsewhere of someone going on a very explicit antisemitic & misogynistic tirade about me. On the recent thread, I also linked an example of what was basically an attack thread against me for wanting to start a pro-intersectional community for other MU*ers. So yes I am very prickly about this subject, and I like to think I’m generally good at spotting the talking points of people trying to manipulate the discourse in that direction, but in this case I misfired. Because yeah: I was there to address misogyny and victim-blaming, and in that context, the discussion about privileged groups while seemingly siding with the people doing it, looked to me like a very common tactic.

I now understand this was a misunderstanding.

Sorry I went for the throat; I was in attack mode, and attacked the wrong person.

I’d DM but lol, banned. (Which is for the best, because that was not healthy for me.)

Belittling rape, misogyny etc., doesn’t make you look like less of a misogynist, Devrex. If it hurts you that people would say this about you, then stop fucking doing it.

I called Cullen a rapist because he is a rapist. Like, I would love to share his criminal record with you, I have it right here, but it’s against the rules.

And I feel compelled to drive this point not to be hyperbolic, but because that fact has been questioned incessantly, here:

And because the undertones of MSB’s discussion, prior to me posting there to make that point explicit, very much were of the fear-mongering suspicion that Hog Pit threads might contain false accusations, and that receipts are necessary, and oh no, what if all these poor innocent souls have been damned because you all didn’t do your due diligence. These points were made in particular by Ghost, and upvoted by you, and Derp, and the rest of your sealioning fanclub.

Which by the way, I think is despicable, and dangerous. And not despicable in the sense of, ‘Oh I don’t quite like the theme of this game, perhaps I should play on a different game instead; each to their own.’ But in the sense that makes me feel compelled to say something about it because people could get hurt, have been hurt, and are hurt, by the delegitimisation of their trauma and the benefit of the doubt you wish to confer to predators with multiple accusers. Such as Rysen too, for example, which is why I assume people other than me felt the need to rebutt the comments about him, too. These are not assumptions; this has been made explicit.

By the way, Ghost, still paying attention? This is why I do not accept your apology, why I doubt your intentions, and why I bring up the fact that you’ve always done this, dating back years ago and are still doing it right now.

So don’t act like you’ve always been an ally or that it’s disingenuous of me to bring him up.

My sincere apologies to simplications for getting them mixed up in the crossfire; on the other hand, Cullen is a crypto-fascist, as is ppurg, the other dude I’ve been known to harp on in the general MU* community about being a fascist, and your mockery of my willingness to call people out on that certainly makes you look like someone who’s either in their camp or tolerant of it. Which is further backed by this thread of yours from three years ago, which was directed at me. And it’s relevant to bring that history up because you’re still doing it. The only “apology” for it you’ve offered was coupled by an untrue accusation, simply another of your classic attempts at DARVO. The aim of that was not to apologise, but to justify.

P.S.: Thanks for successfully getting the person who posted the exact account you referenced in your reddit comment, the one about him threatening to send nudes to her boss and stalking her on social media, to delete her testimony. Your actions have material consequences, and it is not hyperbolic to say so, nor to react to them.

My RL and MU* peeve right now is feeling a loss of any capacity to trust anyone at all.

BMD seems like a very chill, welcoming space. I have no reason at all to feel uncomfortable here. Absolutely no one has been unkind, entirely the opposite. I would like to like it here.

But currently, I still feel like I can’t talk. And again, I acknowledge that no one at all is making me feel this way except me. I find myself second guessing before every post, typing things up and then deleting unsent, etc. I’ve been doing it on MSB these past few weeks and I’m still doing it here, out of a gut level concern that maybe this community isn’t better, maybe the same patterns will play out all over again that I keep seeing over and over in these spaces and IRL in general. People seem safe and then they’re not, anything I say can and will be used against me, and then things I really, deeply care about will be threatened because of it.

There are things I really wish I could say, express and talk about, but I can’t. Because I won’t be believed, because I’m too unlikely of a person, because the way I talk to people is sometimes unintentionally condescending and it will be easier to assume the worst. Because I fear that people don’t see the things I see exactly as they are, and I’ll look crazy if I spell it out. So I keep my mouth shut and grit my teeth. I used to be so outspoken when I was younger, but now I’m a coward. It has quite frankly never gotten me very far, I instead feel punished for speaking the truth, and there’s a limited amount of punishment a person can take. Sometimes I deserve to not care, to not get involved, to not speak up, to just have fun, and to be selfish, and not be expected to carve up pieces of myself for a collective pot. It’s tiring.

I’m immensely relieved when someone else speaks up and points out the exact thing I’d noticed but didn’t want to say. So now it’s not coming from me, this respectable and reputable person with less skin in the game and less reason to be disbelieved saw it too. I want to say thank you every time, but I usually don’t even do that.

Not a subtweet about any recent specific event. There are surely some recent events it applies to, but it’s an everything post. This is how I’ve felt increasingly for the last few years, and it’s getting worse.

I wanted to post in RL Happy initially, but I’ll post it here, since although immense gratitude is involved, it’s rooted in struggles.

It’s been rough. It’s been really, really, really rough. If you know what’s going on right now, and if you know my personal connection to what’s going on, then if you know, you know. I’ll leave the specifics at that. I have thought of scarcely else for the past 25 days. I’m conscious I may have become a drain on my friends because of it. I feel depressed. I don’t think I’m clinically depressed, but I feel I’m experiencing symptoms of depression, temporarily, as a consequence of events. Minor provocations feel like hurricanes. I feel like I’m turning into a hurricane. I am angry and raw.

The happy — kindness is never not appreciated, but in times of need, it’s appreciated that much more. The silver-lining right now is how clearly I’m able to see and feel the love, care and compassion some of my friends, and even some distant acquaintances, have for me. The goodness I can see in people. Friends I haven’t spoken to in ages who reached out, out of the blue, to show solidarity and support in a sea of trauma. In a time when it would be so easy to believe that the entire world does not care, there are people who haven’t just told me, but emphatically shown me how wrong I would be to believe that. I think back to history of stories of people who’ve really stood up, and I see them echoed in people I’m glad I know today. People whom I know, in those historical shoes, would’ve done the same and profoundly right thing.

I’m emotionally overwhelmed, and holding onto hope against bitterness when, as Mr Rogers once said, I find the helpers. Or in many cases, when they’ve found me.

I know this is not the place for politics but I’m just going to say it’s making me cry, and I guess more context isn’t needed than that.

@imstillhere said in Getting and Staying Connected on New Games:

@Kestrel said in Getting and Staying Connected on New Games:

like there’s an established pecking order and I have something to prove.

Can you elaborate on that some? I’m not sure I track what this means.

This is a difficult one to elaborate on beyond saying it’s a “vibe” and you’ll know it when you feel it, but I’ll try.

Games tend to fall into these natural social hierarchies, which and of itself, I don’t have a criticism of. It’s normal to have friends and favourites, and I honestly don’t expect people to pretend they don’t. But typically it’s staff at the very top, “staff clique” one rung below, staff clique’s clique & TS partners slightly lower, and at the very bottom people who’ve already started stepping on toes and are one shady page away from being shown the door.

If the game has a skewed gender ratio, then playing characters whose gender’s in higher demand confers a slight social advantage as well. This is especially true if you write well, but honestly, I’ve seen pretty abysmal personalities given a social pass to be abysmal on account of gender ratios despite that.

Where it becomes a problem for me is when, as a newer player or unknown personality, you start to feel like you’re constantly being tested, other people are waiting for you to fuck up, and are more interested in protecting their pecking order than being inclusive. There’s a constant vibe of mild hostility & jealousy where some established players will act like they’re being charitable for taking you under their wing and because they’ve been here longer, your gratitude should be propping them up and mostly staying out of their way. This isn’t everyone everywhere, but … it’s a thing.

A memorable instance for me involved being invited to join a private yet meaningful scene with people who were fairly well-known/established on a game. It had the potential to be a lot of fun, and I was in fact flattered they’d asked at all. But in all honesty I didn’t think that the person running it was super clear on the details of what exactly we were supposed to be doing, and I made a few missteps in interpreting instructions and/or following the expected conventions of how to roll or use my skills. They could’ve simply clarified and said “no worries” when I apologised, but instead the OOC vibe turned hostile, temperamental and shamey. They were pretty upfront about expressing open frustration with me. I fucked up, but I still think this was unreasonable when it was an honest mistake that I was immediately apologising for and could’ve been easily corrected. It just felt like being put in my place by a scolding teacher who still wanted me in their classroom, but with my head bent.

After the scene, I apologised again, then ghosted.

If I decide to join a game, then I’ve already decided that it has themes and features that are likely to be compatible with my tastes, so I won’t offer details on that. The question is what will make me stay, and on that front, it’s 99% down to community.

Incentives:

• Either I know/trust the staff, or they have a trustworthy reputation among people I know.
• I’m at least semi-familiar with the existing community, or they give me positive, welcoming vibes despite that.
• People respect my desire for anonymity/privacy if I express it.
• Other people take initiative to pull me into scenes — or, if I’ve taken initiative myself, they express enthusiasm about continuing from there.

Deterrents:

• People I know are making a very big fuss about me being there. Even when it’s positive, I find this unpleasant. There’s a big difference between being welcoming, and preestablishing expectations. Let me quietly exist, don’t crowd me.
• People I know are all up in my DMs trying to figure out who/where I’m playing.
• People I’ve previously TS’d are acting like me joining this game means we’ll pick up where we left off last time.
• People I don’t know are cliquey, closed-off, give off a judgy vibe.
• When joining a scene (with permission/invitation), I feel unwelcome, or like there’s an established pecking order and I have something to prove.
• If I make some minor mistake (misunderstood the lore/culture or something), and people default to uncharitable assumptions instead of offering a gentle correction/explanation, anxiety/shame-spiral means I will leave and never return.
• Staff act like a personality cult; care more about establishing an image of dominance, or lofty apathy, than communicating empathetically.
• Characters fall into very heteronormative gender roles; lots of tiny dainty subby pixie girls, and big strapping angry macho muscle men.
• Interactions between characters seem predominantly sex-driven. Note that this is not a criticism of romantic storylines; there’s a big difference to me between those kinds of long-term arcs, that usually take place within a social context, and just feeling like anywhere I show up is basically Tinder, with people hungry to pair off.
• Excess OOC chatter about RL. I know some people like it, I don’t judge you, it’s just not for me. I wanna escape, and keep our private lives private. Interact with my character; you don’t need to ask about my day.

I’m glad they’re mad.

I was looking for this thread.

I found myself reminiscing today on the ADHD thread we used to have over on MSB, and contemplating what a shame it is we don’t have one here. I benefited a lot from the camaraderie in that one, before everything spontaneously exploded.

I thought to myself, hey, I should make an ADHD thread over on BMD! Then I (wisely) decided to use the search function first, to check if someone else might’ve already had the bright idea. Turns out we do have an ADHD thread. Yay!

… But on the worrying side, it turns out I already knew that, I’d just forgotten. Because upon finding this thread, I also found I’d upvoted a bunch of posts already, which I don’t even remember having read. I reread them today and then upvoted some more.

I’m too young to be going senile, but I guess that’s ADHD in a nutshell.

So as for why I was actually looking for this thread, my tale of derpery aside — I’m sure this question must’ve been posed before, but what the heck is it about MU* that seems to have attracted so many people with ADHD brains? I feel like half the people I know in this hobby have the diagnosis or are in the early stages of looking into one.

Second question, does anyone feel like their ADHD might’ve gotten worse over time, in particular in any part due to their online habits? I feel this way, and I’ve been thinking lately on ways I should maybe try to undo the damage. As a personal anecdote, I was a voracious reader when I was a kid. I was always reading — I’d hide books under my desk in class to read rather than paying attention. Now? My hobbies are still very literary, namely this one, but I feel like I struggle to keep my eyes on a page. What gives? Reading brings me such joy when I’m able to do it, yet I feel like I’ve broken my own brain into only having the capacity for it in the short bursts of social, instant gratification that takes place during RP.

I have a book face-down on the table in front of me this very second, as I type this.

I don’t play HavenRPG. Just gonna clarify that upfront before I get the usual response of ‘omg then stop playing’. But I wanna say something about the gaslighting that takes place on its forums, and how that makes me feel about like, life in general and stuff.

So, one of the reasons I don’t play is it has a long-standing policy of never banning bad actors. A few examples of this of particular relevance to me is a guy called Ppurg who’s targeted me with virulent antisemitic remarks over the years, and a friend of his defending Holocaust denial on the game’s OOC channel.

Recently-ish … like 9 months ago now, but the fallout’s still being felt … the game was brigaded by a Neo-Nazi Discord group called Darkchat. People may have heard of them because they made some waves on Reddit when someone joined, disclosed an extensive cache of screenshots concerning their activities to multiple game-runners, and got them mass-banned from multiple games, including Armageddon, TI:L, the Free Zone, etc.

You would think that given Haven’s longstanding policy of never banning bad actors, they wouldn’t care, but they did. Specifically because this group of Nazi brigadiers had a stated mission of attacking the game itself, motivated by their disdain for its policy of permitting underage characters (and sexual scenes involving them), and by a personal feud with Ppurg, a former friend of theirs who actually invited them to the game in the first place.

I can sort of appreciate, tentatively, the hypocrisy of not giving a shit what happens to players on your game, as long as they aren’t actively out to harm the game itself. It’s myopic and self-interested, but that’s how (some) people be sometimes.

The part that really fucks me off, as a Jew, is where staff (namely Tyr and Discordance) will pretend they actually gave half a single shit about the group in question being Nazis. And this is to me a microcosm of a trend I see out in the real world, too — token allyship of convenience. If that were really your concern, you would ban Nazis on your game even when they’re actively contributing to your game or endorsing it, not just when they’re detracting. You shouldn’t get to pretend like you’re an antifascist supersoldier, when you only start caring about Nazis in your community once you yourself become their target.

Also, Ppurg is currently pretending that I’ve somehow victimised him by disclosing personal information about him, somewhere, somehow. I’d like to go on record stating the only thing I’ve disclosed about him, to anyone, is screenshots of antisemitic tirades he’s made about me.

You’re not a victim for suffering consequences for your own actions.

My peeve is me. I want to get back into MU*ing, and have not one, but two games lined up that I want to check out. (Maybe even three if for whatever reason the first two don’t work out!) Both are run by friends whom I respect and admire; whose creative projects I want to support; and whose ability to run good, healthy games that I’d enjoy I have complete faith in.

It’s just been so long since I’ve fully invested in a MU* that I feel like I’ve practically forgotten how to. I’ve been in creative lulls like this before, and I know that if I just get my foot in the door, roll up a character and get myself into a scene, it’ll all come back in an instant, like I never left the hobby at all. I’m just finding that initial step weirdly harder to surmount than it should be.

To the multiple friends who might be reading this, and to whom I’ve made empty promises about rolling up to hang out with on a MU* in recent months, I’m sorry. It’s really not you, it’s me. (A phrase I know always feels like bullshit on the receiving end, yet is legit, in this case, true.)

Marginally related peeve that I’m sure other alumni of this game can relate to: I hate the extent to which PHSD (Post-HavenRPG Stress Disorder) lives rent-free in my mind. Experiences on that game have made me intensely skittish at the very first sign of red flags on any other game I’ve checked out since, and permanently damaged my ability to put faith in game staff on the whole. It’s not the main reason I’ve been flakey about checking out the two aforementioned MU* run by friends of mine, but it has made me bail a lot quicker than others deem reasonable, on other projects, recently.

When there are so many good gamerunners out there whose proven track record makes me feel safe to put my complete trust in, it just no longer feels worth it sticking around after the first sign of trouble anywhere else, hoping/expecting things might get better or continuing to make excuses for staffers displaying strong red flags. I did that for years longer than I should’ve on HavenRPG, and I’m not prepared to do that for a day longer anywhere else.

It also makes me feel much stronger appreciation and gratitude to those gamerunners out there who’ve proven their commitment to their players’ safety time and time again. And to these boards as well, which promote healthy communities & staff practices, and which hold the hobby to a higher standard than I’m regrettably used to seeing.

There are a number of posters here on these boards who don’t know me at all, whom I’ve never spoken to one on one, whose positive contributions to this community have meant a lot more to me than they could possibly realise.

I’m very late to this party, but I watched Our Flag Means Death on @Selira’s recommendation and loved every second of it.

It’s largely known as the gay pirate show and I’m not a gay man, so I’ll leave better equipped individuals to express what that representation means to them. (Other than just, from my perspective, the romantic storylines are all wholesome as heck.)

What I wanna say is that for a show with (expectedly) very few women characters, it’s kind of amazing that every single one who shows up, without exception, is genuinely three-dimensional, interesting and fun. My favourite character ended up being Mary Bonnet and I didn’t expect to like or even care about her. She could’ve easily been sidelined as a joke character, and instead ended up a dark horse frontrunner for me.

Spoiler

After an endless parade of gritty shows like Game of Thrones, at every turn I also expected shock value and trauma, and was pleasantly surprised by how it subverted expectations by … not trying to subvert expectations so hard? Man it’s just a nice show to watch. It’s endless smiles. I feel like we need more of that, actually.

I’m voting out the most overrated plant on the planet. What’s taters precious, eh?

Listen, would I steal your fries at every opportunity? Of course I would. Would I eat a family pack of kettle chips and call it dinner? Sure. I’m not denying these are delicious foods.

But what makes a potato good isn’t the potato, it’s oil and salt. You can put oil and salt on anything to make it good, and most of the alternatives pack a lot more flavour. Give me fried spinach, tomatoes and mushrooms over that mealy lump anyday.

Ban potatoes. Apple crisps are better.