she/they
KB is right. There is nothing to be gained. There is no understanding to reach. There is no communication to be had. The other night I was so profoundly disappointed in what has become of a good place that I was honestly pretty bummed out.
It is what it is. They are what they are. Let them be. And leave them there.
Hi, guys:
Any posts elsewhere will be moved to this thread.
This is not a thread for arguments or nasty debates. We will be closely monitoring and moderating this thread in a way that we usually do not.
This is a thread for grieving, sharing resources and help for people who are impacted by all of this (which is all of us, but some more than others).
I’m just glad Ghost is there to lead the way to a brighter, more positive future.
Let’s not be reductive genitalia-essentialists about gender no matter where we are in the forum.
I think it’s pretty obvious why HannahBanana has been banned, but just in case it’s not obvious, I don’t care where you are: ablelist language isn’t okay, gatekeeping sexuality isn’t okay, none of this is okay.
https://forum.aresmush.com/t/v1-0-0-released/923
I don’t know if you guys have heard about this new fangled MUSH server called Ares–
Ares has brought a lot of new life into the hobby. I’ve watched people who hadn’t even logged into a MU* in their life launch and run games. Congratulations to @Faraday, and THANK YOU!!
While users can create new threads, they cannot create new categories. I believe that’s what you mean when you say new boards, yeah? We made a conscious choice not to include a politics category when we created this forum and right now that is not changing.
Politics isn’t a team sport. It’s life or death for many of us.
It’s not that we don’t think it’s important, so we won’t make space for it; in many ways, it is TOO IMPORTANT. This is especially true given the hands-off moderation stance I’d rather see on this board. We just don’t have the time, bandwidth, expertise, capacity, etc. to be able to moderate those discussions.
I’m sorry.
@Dreampipe said in Bannings:
There are actually a fuckton of literal fascists in this hobby;
There are fascists in a lot of places, alas. Fascists in gaming is an interesting area people are working on, but the far right were early adopters of online spaces (including back in the BBS days). Their methods will only ever get a small percentage of the population, but if you have so many people you can access, you can get to a much greater proportion of that small number and…well.
As someone who is super into history, Norse mythology, Crusader Kings, punk rock, and RPGs, the amount of time I have to spend squinting at people with common interests and going “Okay, but are you a fucking Nazi?” is both alarming and exhausting.
Seconded. I’m a white dude and it’s sometimes really anxiety inducing to talk about those kinds of interests without feeling like, “guys I swear I just like the stories, I’m not a white supremacist”. Double whammy because I also like power metal.
At least a lot of them usually don’t take long to go mask-off. I remember people using SS designs in medieval games like Mordhau or Chivalry. No it’s not a pair of lightning bolts, I know what you are.
Look, I can’t lie. I would use a pair of lightning bolts because I think lightning bolts look cool.
AND THEN I WOULD BE FUCKING MORTIFIED WHEN SOMEONE TOLD ME.
Pour one out for everyone born in 1988 who is innocently making very poor choices about their usernames.
I am glad that we have largely left behind all-white games in the L&L space. I think the expectation that most people have is that you will see a diverse cast of characters. I appreciate that about Concordia, particularly where they have course-corrected with their pantheon. I think they are doing some other interesting things in that space, too.
There is maybe no perfect way to handle the issue of cultural diversity and real-world inspirations, but I still think that what they are doing is worth an upnod. You got your Targaryens, sure, and your red-heads, and your Romans–
But there is also a house that has clear East Asian influences and one with South Asian influences. I grabbed one of those from the roster because I am always dying to see something – anything, please, god – that isn’t just your standard Western French-British-Something take on fantasy. Then I ran into players who maybe had been expecting something more Western in the house, so I popped in a request to get more clarity. I wanted to know what staff’s intent actually was, and I like the answer I got.
Rather than directly copy and paste real-world cultures into the game, they’ve made a choice to draw on multiple places for inspiration to avoid generalizing, tokenizing, or fetishizing any real-world culture. In this case, yes, the house has elements of North India, but also Moorish Spain. I’m kind of curious if there’s a connecting thread of thought in that they were both extension of Islamic power at times, what with the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire in North India, but I haven’t sat them down for details – and I actually enjoy classical India better so DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO DRAW THAT LINE ON MY ACCOUNT.
Right now, at this moment, all I really care about is that they are doing something different, something interesting, and something coming from a place of curiosity and thoughtfulness. I wouldn’t say that they are a perfect game, and there’s choices I wouldn’t have made, but holy fuck please I hope more fantasy L&L games in the future draw from a wider well than the tiny Western European fantasy well.
Now that I know the kids say ‘faceclaim’ instead of ‘playedby’, I found a few other sources thanks to KB setting me on the right path:
Shout out to this one for period appropriate pbs:
I guess I should say fcs now, but y’all will think I mean feature characters instead.
@MisterBoring That’s an interesting point. There do exist models for SD that are fed on images in public domain, but I’m curious how well they really hold up because of the sorts of examples you mention.
@bear_necessities said in AI PBs:
I’m thoroughly confused by what the argument is at this point. Is it ok to use AI as long as i acknowledge it’s harmful to artists?
It’s okay to use AI. Maybe it’s not perfect, but fuck it. I use AI, but I acknowledge the technology has some real flaws, and I don’t try to pretend that it is ethically better than alternatives. I’ve used AI for images and AI for code. I’ve even used AI to help me figure out why an update failed for BMD, so abandon ship if that’s a problem!!
I use it. I do sometimes think about whether I should buy carbon credits or something to feel like I use it ethically, but on the other hand, I don’t worry about the carbon credits I burn playing video games. I don’t know. On my fucks given scale, it doesn’t really rate, but it does sometimes itch.
In this discussion, I find the approach that AI PBs are ethically preferable to using PBs of existing persons hard to swallow.
What is the line of thinking? Many of these models have used those very same images in their training data. Like, you’re just using the exact same images with an extra layer of ‘and also other copyrighted works’, in a way that is still very much under debate for how much actual harm it causes.
Then there are some harmful beliefs out there which make people blind to potential issues:
Secondly, if the model is made for a for-profit system like Midjourney, then they already have the requisite rights and permissions. That’s part of what you’re paying for when you buy a license for Midjourney.
That’s just incorrect. Make your judgments on the matter based on fact, at least.
Agree w/ Faraday and Roz. We live in a world that forces us to make choices and compromise every day of our lives to try to do the most good, or at least the least harm, all while knowing that there are vast organizations constantly enacting destruction on scales we could never reach. We are only human and we have to live. We will never be perfect.
But at least make those choices with open eyes.
I do this. It was a huge inconvenience at first, as it’s really hard to find anything for sale online not through Amazon. Like, I’ve even bought things off Etsy that turned out to just be repackaged Amazon stuff.
Not to hugely sidetrack this thread, but I am also an Amazon boycotter. Most of the things you find on Amazon AND on Etsy can usually be found on Ali Express and other similar places because they all come from various dropshippers overseas. When that’s the case, I usually go straight to AE. I find it really exasperating how hard it can be to find legit products on Etsy sometimes.
@Aria lmfao ty I’ll look. At the hair transplant costs, I mean.
Serves me right for seeing what would happen if I lifted the registration freeze.
Forked out the AI PB discussion to try to keep resources in the other thread, discussion here.
@helvetica I used to use Pinterest (especially Roz’s pinterest collection) a lot but I’ve had issues running into unending unmarked but obviously AI images.
@KarmaBum THANK U. I need more resources like that.
