Vilageidiotx

Help with Advanced Roleplaying

General learning. While not directly relevant to your writing as a dressed up thing it will help out with the background bits. General knowledge of a political system or the processes behind one or a nation's bureaucracy will help out with political drama and intrigue plots. A general knowledge of engineering processes can help frame or establish a framework in something in a believable, well-enough explained matter that you establish immersion by softening a critical reader or participant's rampant questioning of what the hell is going on.

Dinh AaronMk

This is definitely one of the biggest keys. If you are going to get serious about writing, try to become a large scale consumer of knowledge. Everything you do not know is a weakness, and everything you learn is a self-improvement. When you read, try to read like you are an English teacher, finding what you like and what you don't like about everything from the way the subject matter is presented to the way the words are arranged. If somebody seems like they would like to gush about some topic they know, ask questions and seriously think about what they say. Doesn't matter if it is astrophysics or the finer point of bagging groceries.

And don't avoid learning about shit you already know. Different perspectives are what give you a three dimensional idea of how the subject works.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

That'll be cool, but stress that we don't want to rush the poor guy and end up with poop.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

To be honest, Boston would win because it sounds cooler even though it was pretty ridiculous that it happened in the first place.

EDIT: Not that it wouldn't still be cool to see drawn up.

@Pepperm1nts

Yeh, giving it to randoms means they will vote based on what they know, and not what PoW is about. It's one thing to ask shit like that just for fun, but it is another thing when money is involved. Why we want to pay for what a bunch of random motherfuckers want if the don't know anything about this?

I voted Boston originally, but now that I think of it, I think Djibouti would be more visceral. It would make a really neat banner - more so I think than any of the other choices - the sort of image that leaves an impression that drives the audience to want to know more about what this RP is all about.

@gorgenmast

Djibouti it is.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I could always post the poll on somewhere unrelated and have the uneducated pick something.

@Dinh AaronMk

wat? why would we do that?

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

votes froze at djibouti and boston at a tie. what now?

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

In Spain, Swiggity Swooty is a hip new Rockability track that hit number one when an all-white American dance-band migrated to Europe after all the wars in America and President Fernandez.

@Dinh AaronMk

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Swigitty swooty, comin' for Da Booty

@Pepperm1nts

That was written on the nose of the Spanish jet that fought at Djibouti.

Which google translates as "Swigitty swooty, viniendo por el botín"

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I pronounce it Deejeebooty. No idea if that's even close.

@Pepperm1nts

It's French. I'm not sure how the D even got in.

My understanding is that it is pronounced "Juh-booty", but with very little emphasis on the 'juh'.

B!tchfest: a healthy release for our non-roleplay annoyances.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

Could you possibly provide some examples? Something like a man telling another man that he was never raped/shouldn't report it, or a man outright saying that he didn't want to report his being raped out of fear of social exclusion or ridicule that would come from your idea of masculinity? Or even better, some scientific studies about the aforementioned issues. And please don't mistake this as some sort of passive-aggressive "Yeah, I know that you can't" jab at you, I'd really like to know.

@Frizan

It's always a hell of a time trying to squeeze the scientific information from the internet, what with the good stuff being behind paywalls and me not being in college anymore, but let's see what I can dig up.

"Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (1992) reported that approximately 18% of women and 22% of men believed that it is impossible to rape a man - regardless of perpetrator sex." That's nearly a quarter of men believing something rather blatantly crazy, and thereabouts 1 out of 5 people believing this. At least in 1992.

Here is a more generalized article about the problem.

This article, which involves a series of short interviews that includes this harrowing juxtaposition.

James Asbrand Psychologist, Salt Lake City VA

There's the fear that "if other people know this about me, well, then, my life is over. No one's gonna want to be around me. They'll know that I'm less of a man."
-Neal

One of the doctors said to me afterward, "Son, men don't get raped."

"Results broadly conformed to predictions, with men generally more negative than women, and male rape myth acceptance significantly related to female rape myth acceptance, negative attitudes about gay men, gender role attitudes, and victim blame."

Another good link provided by the Ohio Department of Health.

I would keep doing this, but it is sort of a downer and this is a Saturday night. For anybody who doesn't want to look at all of that, the TL;DR is this - it is common for male rape victims to feel stigmatized as weak, or homosexual, and this stigma has had the effect of gumming up the works for men who do want to report, or as one doctor told a victim, "Son, men don't get raped."

B!tchfest: a healthy release for our non-roleplay annoyances.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

I can't help but notice that you're bringing up the "masculinity is toxic" idea, albeit not in such an overt fashion. Masculinity isn't by its very nature "toxic", "bad", "dangerous", or whatever other buzzword you're looking to use. Femininity, in too great amounts (which I assume is going to be your argument against masculinity) can be just as bad or damaging. The eradication of masculinity won't be a magical cure for issues that men face, it's like saying if women stopped acting like women maybe they wouldn't be raped. And the "idea" of masculinity implies male behavior is artificial as well, which would be spitting in the face of biology and the difference that exist in nature as a sexually dimorphic species.

@Rain

I wasn't looking for a buzzword. None of this argument has anything to do with what I was implying, you just leaped lazily for a stereotype. This is like if I said "Sometimes, if stored incorrectly, pancake mixes will mold." and you replied with "What are you saying, that we should never ever eat pancakes ever again?"

Masculinity isn't inherently bad, it's just a thing. There isn't anything wrong with a bunch of dudes drinking beer and lifting weights, for instance. However, like everything else, it can come packaged with some negative things. When I say that masculinity is part of the problem when it comes to men's issues, I mean that it does things like complicates the problem of male rape by making it unacceptable within male culture to attend to it. Like any other cultural idea, masculinity is malleable, so all I am saying is that until men themselves are willing to take these issues seriously, men's rights will remain the purview of whiny do-nothings on the internet.