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.)

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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.

AI is ruining this hobby. That’s my gripe. It’s ruining my respect for players, staff, my interest in games, my desire to RP. I see old friends whose original writing I’ve always enjoyed, flaunting AI use in a way that makes me feel like they must have never even appreciated their own talent as much as I did. I see promising games lose all promise the second I step on grid and see a sea of AI slop. And I see younger generation, newer players defending it in a way that makes me feel like the future of this hobby is just dead for me, an old fogey whose love of authentic human creativity, warts and all, makes me old-fashioned.

I hate it. I hate it on a spiritual and existential level.

Finding out someone I felt uncomfortable with, but not uncomfortable enough to openly voice my objections to:

1. Actually has a known history of much more serious permutations of this behaviour on other games
2. Was already shown the door on my current game without me needing to say anything

Thank u yes I knew I wasn’t just crazy, and I am so happy to know I’m now playing on a game with safe, healthy, vigilant staff.

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?

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.

eggshells 🫤

Feeling like … I can only scene with you as long as I am very polite and mindful and watch my step and am on my best behaviour. Which is a very reasonable thing to expect of anyone. But also I don’t like feeling tense like that, so if RP always feels like a first date or a job interview, I think I would rather just avoid and hang out with friends who take themselves less seriously and let me fart around.

@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.

Not a meaningful complaint. I know I’m being a silly insecure baby about it.

But I wish the person I’ve been playing with for years, who always expresses unequivocal enthusiasm and joy about our scenes, would sometimes actually initiate them, seek me out, invite me to games they’re on, so my brain weasels would stop making me doubt whether they actually want me there.

They always say yes when I ask but why is it always me asking.

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.

@kalakh said in Bannings:

[derp on breccan, take two:]

OK, let me add more than moral disgust.

‘There’s no such thing as irrefutable evidence,’ says a guy who expects irrefutable evidence, in order for the banning, ostracisation, or public naming and shaming of a predator to be considered valid.

So in other words, it’s never valid. Why not just say that?

Why not just admit you’re setting women up for a no-win scenario, the outcome of which — or preferably prior conclusion of — should be for them to just shut up.

Fuck you, Derp, profoundly, from the bottom of my soul. I actually hadn’t seen this stuff before and was aware of only the most recent reasons why people quite rightly call you a misogynist.

I don’t care if you’re pro-choice and voted for Hillary Clinton; this is less than the absolute bare minimum of allyship.

Joy.

A healthy community needs joy. It’s one of the most vital ingredients, and one that’s too often overlooked.

Some gamerunners and administrators often fixate so greatly on all the many ways that misery can be caused, and must be prevented, that they neglect to allow enough room for people to breathe. A good community isn’t just one where people aren’t actively being harmed; it’s one where people are actively enjoying themselves.

In every community/project I’ve ever run, I’ve started from a point of wanting to offer people as much freedom as possible, and from there opted to limit only what really needed to be. I assume people won’t abuse a system or any trust offered; if I’m proven wrong, then I either handle the individual doing so, or reinforce the boundaries that need to be. I find that people generally want to live up to expectations, or inversely, down to them. If you treat them like children, they will act like children; I think that bad administrators often have those notions of cause and effect the wrong way around. There are always exceptions, but people want to be liked; don’t corner them, don’t make them feel unwelcome, don’t cultivate a hostile atmosphere, and the likelihood they’ll be on their best behaviour is in fact very high. I’ve seen notoriously toxic communities transform entirely when ported into an environment where they understand that both expectations of them, and the treatment they’re likely to receive in turn, are different. They have no reason to be hostile when they don’t feel like they’re constantly being threatened.

Try not to punish people if you can help it. Prevention is better than retribution. Sometimes you need the latter, but the former’s always better. On a game, this means designing systems that encourage positive behaviour rather than simply shaming people for bad behaviour. I’m going to deliberately use a fictional example that to the best of my knowledge doesn’t exist anywhere, because I don’t want to subtweet: a system that allows people to silently vote on your description, and rewards you with some kind of XP bonus upon crossing an approval threshold with other players, would be better than one that allows other players to report typos in it and affect you with some kind of malus for having them. But as mentioned, this is a deliberately fictional example and you can transpose it onto something more vital than a character desc; ideally, unless you’ve reason to be concerned about the quality of character descs on your game, I think it’s generally worth risking the occasional typo or Mary-Sueishness or minor quibbles over taste, and letting players have the creative freedom to do what makes them happy and fuck up from time to time. If it’s not utterly game-breaking or community ruining, then whatever.

One size doesn’t fit all. Sometimes you need to test the waters and figure out as you go what kind of community you’re dealing with, and what management style’s best suited for it.

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I agree with @Roadspike’s commentary about missing stairs. This helps preserve joy. Let’s say you have a community where adult language is allowed, and you don’t have rules against sex jokes. Occasionally someone cracks a sex joke, and it’s funny, and people laugh; joy is up. One weirdo shows up and starts making the kinds of inappropriate sex jokes that make everyone uncomfortable instead. The difference is subtle, but felt. You may choose to let the occasional incidence of bad actors ruin what’s until now been a fun and relaxed atmosphere for everyone, and say that sex jokes are now against the rules, all comments must be PG. Or you address the missing stairs, the one person who’s calling every woman they talk to a bitch/cunt, and go back to the relaxed approach where people can otherwise laugh, joke around, and lovingly call their friends rude names without it causing issues.

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Briefly, I want to address the topic of “receipts”, because it has been a hot topic of late, and I think it is worth touching on in good faith. I’ve deliberately not brought it up before, because I don’t want my words to be misused by people who mean ill.

Receipts are good. Keep receipts. Share receipts. Ask for receipts. That’s fine. If I hear about a bad actor, I want to know the specifics of what they’ve done that’s bad, not because I disbelieve you, but because that information can help me further protect myself and others. For example, there’s a thread about Breccan. Prior to reading it and some of the receipts @kalakh posted, the stories I’d heard about this person made me wonder if it’s someone I’ve dealt with before. When I read the screenshots, I could see that their writing style wasn’t a good fit, and am now less worried about the person I know (even if they still make me uncomfortable enough that I wondered).

Of course, there is a difference between wanting receipts and needing receipts. I don’t need them to believe someone’s been made uncomfortable, especially not if I hear from multiple people that’s the case. I’m not owed receipts when there are a myriad of reasons why they may not be available, or not available to me. And if I’m not a member of staff, and it’s not my job to handle and review the complaint, then I definitely don’t need them to just be a good community member and offer empathy. If I hear that Alex is pursuing Charlie and making them uncomfortable, then it doesn’t really matter how well I know either party, or what I know about the situation; I’m going to tell Alex to fuck off if I see them asking after Charlie. (With varying degrees of respect, depending on the discernible extent.)

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Nice is different than good. Wherever possible, we should try to be nice. We should avoid personal attacks. We should address each other respectfully. But I’m personally not interested in respectability politics, or in tolerating intolerance. We’re not obligated to be polite to those looking to abuse civil standards.

Tell people to fuck off, loudly, clearly and firmly, if they choose to actively engage in fuckery. Don’t let others run circles around your moral standards. I was recently on a game where a very obvious troll showed up and started breaking systems in ways that a newbie simply wouldn’t know how to, while endlessly asking questions on the newbie channel. A friend of mine chose to engage them in good faith, was unfailingly polite, and answered all their questions as best as possible. I told them not to; the “newbie” was clearly, and wilfully wasting their time. My friend said, ‘You’re probably right, but how I respond reflects on me more than it does on them.’ I disagreed; I ignored the newbie, and did not give them the attention and amusement they were there for. Bad faith doesn’t deserve good faith in return; don’t reward bad behaviour.

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These are my opinions, for all that they happen to be worth.

People who are consistently always nice to staff.

… And only to staff.

When you presume to godmode/metapose certain assumptions about another player’s character … and they don’t mind at all. They roll with it and make it canon. You just have that kind of energy going between you. A ‘yes and’ permissiveness.

I’d almost never attempt it with a total stranger, but I love the friends I’m in sync enough with to pull it off.

People who are mad about dark-skinned Harfoots clearly didn’t actually read the books they claim to be sticklers for. Ironic outrage is ironic.

So far, I adore the way Hobbits and Dwarves have been portrayed, and holy shit Khazad-dûm is goddamn majestic and beautiful.

I dislike the adaptation of the Elves, and wish they were a little more ethereal and otherworldly. They encapsulate the main problem I have with the show altogether, which is the HBOificiation of Tolkien’s work; adapting an adult fairytale into a modern edgy fantasy for modern edgy teens. LotR is vastly superior to GoT in my eyes, and has no need to imitate the latter’s success. The parts of the show I’ve liked best are the ones that really lean into the magic of Middle-Earth instead of hamming up the grit. So like, less of Galadriel chopping up trolls with a giant sword, more of the weird guy whispering to fireflies please.