@Prototart There was Champions MUSH for a real long time, too.

@Colette It’s the same people, doing a variation of the same theme. It is the post-Crisis version of LnL.

@Starr-Saphyre It’s nothing more than a reboot of L&L.

@Prototart said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:

On comic games? Not so much. When Claremont and Ditko were first outed on UH, maybe 20 people left total and most of those - including Chaucer - eventually just went back.

Just to expand a little, even though I know you know:

Notably, Chaucer took the lead on trying to construct the theme for an alternative game, with these people as the seed playerbase. After a few months of putting together a sprawling multipublisher comic book theme animated primarily by hubris (fine, it’s a mush), a lack of knowledge of the constituent parts, an innate loathing for most of those parts, and a little bit of random cultural stereotyping, he started receiving feedback on his masterpiece. Prospective players noted that his theme would probably be confusing and inaccessible to most players looking to play a comic book game, because - again - the theme was constructed from the ground up by someone who both did not know and did not care for most of the material he was working with. This included needing to be told that rewriting Wakanda to be the result of an Ancient Aliens-style uplift and interbreeding program via predominantly white space aliens (instead of ongoing, conscious effort on the part of its native peoples to utilize miraculous extraterrestrial materials) would be wildly unacceptable.

His response to being criticized was to go back to the game which he knew was run by sex pests, buddy up with some of those sex pests’ friends, and - once the depraved Eye of Sauron turned to those sex pest friends - push his Jenga’d together theme onto them while they were getting HAM together.

I’ve met worse people and worse administrators in this hobby, but I wouldn’t trust this guy as a head administrator anymore than I would any of them.

@Colette

@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.

@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.

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.

@bored

@bored said in MU Peeves Thread:

From the other thread I get that you’re a squad and I have no interest in litigating shit on those games I had no part in,

I dunno, man, you seem pretty invested in uncritically taking serial liars who you don’t know, at their word about a situation you weren’t involved in, involving someone else who you also don’t know, for being uninterested in litigating shit you had no part of.

@bored You’re crossing streams or something, because I can pretty safely say that Tart’s biggest ooc room crime is posting lots of panels of her characters. Unless ig she ONLY behaves this way when I am not in her presence, which is possible? But feels unlikely?

Let’s be clear: She was banned from HAM because she sent a complaint about Chaucer.

Why did she send a complaint about Chaucer? Because he enthusiastically approved her pitch for Miss Sinister, saw a sheet that placed her at ‘pretty powerful; limited by extreme inexperience and not actually being Essex’ on a game where Jean Grey is fully integrated with the Phoenix, Kryptonians abound, and Selene is freely avail, then promptly denied the app and told her thar she was not sufficiently worth his/the game’s time to warrant going to the trouble of revising.

Oh, and prior to that, he refused to let her pick up Titania because he felt that she should branch out from what he felt her norms were.

So she complained, left when nothing was done, came back months later to try again with friends, and then was banned upon picking up a character (played by one of Chaucer’s friends in the sense that a dog plays with the drool-saturated, shredded and discarded doll it remembers it left behind the couch once a month or so, and on the idle list as a result) due to her past disagreements with him.

As for the thing about trans characters, that had nothing to do with her. I wanted to play Wonder Woman as (probably??) trans on a game where the central premise is that it is a sex positive environment to the extent of it being a free for all of posting ts logs to the wiki, and canon is otherwise extremely loose and improvisational. I was told that a ruling had been made that characters would need to be adapted according to their canonical gender/bio sex traits; I am going to change it at some point today when I get to a keyboard. She posted it bc I vented to her about the situation and she had Feelings about it.

@Roz She isn’t staff, at least, so that’s something.

I mean, listen, we can debate the merits of where precisely the lines should be drawn in specific real or hypothetical situations like this one all day. That’s fine and fair.

But divorced from all of that, my gut feeling is that Rogue is some kind of weirdo chud or consciously covering for the feelings of one, so while I’m happy to not get wildly political in public, I am also never not going to find it funny that her knee-jerk reaction was to clutch her pearls over the very controversial statement that Alex Jones Is Bad, Actually.

I’ll also note that there are players who have cart blanche to whine about how sensitive people are nowadays, and how there are too many genders, and pronouns are hard - all of which feel like more inherently political dog whistles and/or statements than acknowledging that a lying scam artist is a lying scam artist - so while I do appreciate the value of not talking about certain subjects because they can cause friction, it’d be nice if that standard was applied more evenly.

The context for the Alex Jones stuff:

<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Alex Summers wishes he was a telepath, he’d fix the world.
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “I wish I could forget that Alex Jones exists.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Doug Ramsey says, “Eh, well.”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Anyone for arpee?”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Probably best to just realize there’s a lot of people in the world you probably would like not to exist.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Doug Ramsey says, “Is it with Alex Jones?”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Fair enough Rogue.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Talia Wagner says, “I listen to far too much Knowledge Fight, which started out as two comedians tearing down his bs and making jokes and now one of them made a deposition at one of the sandy hook trials and is regarded as the foremost expert on his grift. It’s still hilarious.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane says, “Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to have platforms, alas”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Lets talk about something else.”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Dongers?”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Doug Ramsey says, “I went to an edible book festival earlier and made myself sick. I got Bookitis :(”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane says, “I don’t think ‘people who deny horrific tragedies and encourage others to hate minorities’ is controversial, but sure!”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Really?”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Poor Doug.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane says, “*are bad, even.”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter hugs Lorna
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Patty Sloan says, “>.> This is why books are a nasty habit to get into :p”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “See, Lorna, you turning it in to that, is what I’m trying to avoid.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane just sips on her tea and writes her pose.
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Excellent plan.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Betsy Braddock grins and protecc Lorna with her alt.
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Betsy Braddock says, “Since apparently Bishop can’t handle Philly girls.”

And then, a bit later that day, I made a petty crack in reference to it:

<X-Men-OOC> \/// SNIKT Logan says, “I’m going to this UN thing. Any other X-Men want to pretend we’re part of the world and come with me?”
<X-Men-OOC> GreenPeace Lorna Dane says, “Sorry, I just got done fight Hydra outside. :(”
<X-Men-OOC> GreenPeace Lorna Dane says, “Not to get too political by talking about fighting nazis or anything”

Making a remark about it wasn’t really the best choice, I don’t mind owning that. It’s still really strange to me, though, for the reasons outlined by @Apos/the reason I tried to get at: Alex Jones is pretty objectively a shitty, fucked up person. It’s weird that just saying that much is controversial and considered political, because one would think that if someone is now legally proven to be an entertainer/liar who makes shit up to scare people into paying him money, acknowledging it ought to be fair game.

But it’s not my monkey or circus, so, whatever!

@Roz It was in the post that I, uh, deleted after getting enough perspective to feel uncomfortable with dumping a large quantity of barely contained spite directed at one person, in public.

(thank you, @bored!)

I’ll edit this post with that snippet when I’m at a keyboard though. Sorry for the confusion.

@Apos said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:

Politics rules really aren’t about what is considered politics. They are about what is considered controversial politically, and what is likely to start a fight, and to avoid anything that’s going to start an argument or make someone feel unwelcome.

It is manifestly obvious that Alex Jones is a far right wing extremist and conspiracy theorist. I don’t think anyone could look at him saying Sandy Hook was funded by the Democratic Party and George Soros as a false flag operation and think that is in any way apolitical. But what I think feels off is that he’s so far outside the normal range that condemning him should not be considered controversial politically, anymore than claiming that really hateful ideologies are bad. It’s just too uncomfortable a move of the Overton Window.

@GF

It confused me in the moment, and it still confuses me now. Making weird comments about there being too many pronouns is NOT politics as far as I’ve seen, mind you, which does help with figuring out where the line is.

I guess politics are in the eye of the beholder.

@bored said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:

@renaveleigh re: the Xaviers stuff, this is tricky. I think your frustration is valid but that you’re probably misreading things a little, including the idea that Shakespeare is actively protecting Rogue.

So, for the record, I don’t have any opinion one way or the other on whether Shakespeare is protecting Rogue. That was Prototart, above me.

My understanding is that they’ve long since fallen out. Shakespeare’s only friends are her ever-shrinking personal RP circle.

I clicked over to the MSB log linked up top and reading myself talking to Ruby about UH is mind-numbing. So I appreciate frustration in dealing with her. But Jean & her alts and Nathan & his alts are among the tiny few players left on the whole damn game running actual comic book stuff with any kind of regularity or quality, and they’ve both seem like shockingly sane, adult people in every interaction I’ve had. It’s notable you give him a pass while turning on her, even though you admit he fundamentally agreed with them.

Thank you for being straight up, first of all. I wanted to try and be as honest as possible about things from my perspective, including the parts that make me look bad, because at this point, I’m old enough to at least attempt to be, like, mildly self-aware about being way less than perfect.

I didn’t really focus on Nathan’s part because - while I don’t agree with his POV on things, and do believe that it plays right into the same theme of ignoring the actual, stated issues as the posts that I chose to focus on - Nathan isn’t a leader of the group, as far as I know. My primary point, and the reason that I give any kind of a shit at all about random people not being able to behave themselves, is that the leaders of the group seeing a post from the admin citing recent complaints about the atmosphere and responding by first ignoring it, then turning around and biting at those who speak up about their concerns is, well. Concerning. I was less interested in interrogating every single dissenting opinion than I was in focusing, specifically, on the screwed up attitudes that seemed liable to conflict with my own broader self-interest of having a functional X-Men/Xavier group to interact with. I don’t care if someone’s got a different opinion from me; that’s fine. It’s not something worth worrying about in and of itself, here.

So it comes across as personal vendetta & hate directed at Rogue/Ruby, and anyone else who dares be friends with her. In this, I urge you to reconsider your zeal, because it’s easy to pick a side in these these fights, stake your hill to die on, and end up not looking much better than the other guy (I used to do this a lot). For instance, that log involves 1) people talking politics, which they’re not supposed to, 2) Rogue asking them to stop, and 3) you sniping back at her instead of stopping when asked. To be clear, that means Rogue’s the one following the rules in the Shakespeare post you supposedly agree with, and you’re the one violating it, right? So are you toxic? Or would you agree with Jean/Nathan that maybe people just sometimes get emotional.

I would definitely agree that - objectively speaking - I should not have sniped at her about Alex Jones; that came from a place of genuine bewilderment at the premise that saying he’s a bad person could be offensive, more than any real malice towards her. Not talking about anything political on the channel is a rule that I’m happy to abide by.

And I would also agree that people do get emotional! I broke the post buffer limit here because I got emotional. I’m not an unbiased actor here in the slightest, and I don’t mind copping to that because beyond whatever lingering distrust I might have had for Rogue/Ruby based on past exposure, I have felt uneasy and uncomfortable in the wake of my own hubris earning me a faceful of gaslighting directly from her. I think that multiple things can be true: it’s true that people can be emotional and act rashly because of it; it’s true that more open communication would be a great way to avoid interpersonal issues, because they’re rarely so serious that they should need more than that to resolve them; it’s true that I do not care for Rogue’s player in the slightest; and it’s true that her approach to managing a large group of people is, to say the least, flawed to the point that it’s worth commenting on.

Not to come down too harshly, and to tie it back, I’m going to reiterate that this is all Shakespeare’s fault. Shakes is 100% checked out, and has been for much of the game’s existence. Without knowing all the grudges, I can imagine that there are many valid and real things that you are upset about, that Jean is upset about, that Warren is upset about, etc., but that all of them have been left to fester because Shakespeare will never take action on anything, ever. That’s really something you have to internalize, especially when taking her ‘side’ in that argument. Understand, that post is a nothingburger, and it’s her usual MO of shifting blame to the players rather than taking any responsibility for staff action.

I think that you’re broadly right that this is a lot of energy expended over something that isn’t worth the trouble, and going forward, I’m not going to sweat this stuff. It’s pointless: at the end of the day, all I really want to do is eat hot chips, be magnetic, charge my phone, and compact Purifiers. I reacted so strongly here, I think, because while I saw the initial incident that spurred that post, I wasn’t around while it was happening; it bothered me then, but I let it go. So once it was clear that nobody was going to address any of the various elephants on the room, I got frustrated and started Posting.

Whatever comes of Xavier’s and the X-Men and such as a whole is super not my problem. I hope things keep working out well for them, and am just gonna do my best to play with the people I do vibe with.

@Roz Thank you so much! I went through and fixed all the blocks. Spacing is off, but I will take that a million times over those unscrolling blocks.

@Coin

Is there a better option than the code blocks for pasting long sections of text in a way that’ll offset it from the rest of a post? Annoyingly, they wrap just fine in the preview, but not in the actual live post.