[MUD-Dev] Same-Sex Marriage (was: Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens)

[Ananda Dawnsinger]

----------
>From: J C Lawrence <claw at cp.net>
>To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
>Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Same-Sex Marriage (was: Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens) 
>Date: Mon, Apr 24, 2000, 2:17 PM
>

>On Mon, 10 Apr 2000 01:43:37 -0700 
>Ananda Dawnsinger <ananda at greyrealms.com> wrote:
>
>> I've seen a lot of this as a player on a MUD where the races range
>> from 18-inch fairy-like beings to 12-foot-long dragons -- where
>> not only is marriage often culturally infeasable, but sexual
>> contact is sometimes wildly implausable.  ...
>
>Define your terms and principles _without_ also defining or
>constraining human behaviour.  ie, you define WHAT something is, not
>WHETHER or not it can happen.  To a large extent people/players are
>going to do what they damn well please.  Direct force cultural
>definition/modification rarely to never works the way originally
>envisioned (like the french revolution "worked").  Standing up on
>your MUD pulit and preaching to the massed players has no greater
>probability of success ("cool" is rarely dictated).

I have to agree with this, which is why, personally, my optimal text-based
solution would be to have everybody sexually interoperable with everybody
else.  That way I don't have to worry about Tiamat buggering the pixie
(actually, his name wasn't Tiamat, but even after eight years I don't think
his girlfriend's let him live down that youthful indiscretion, so I won't
name names...)

>>From what I've seen players go for "marriage" for one or both of two
>reasons:
>
>  1) They want to play house/family.
>
>  2) They're very good friends

This doesn't seem to take into account tinysex.  I can definitely imagine
games (especially ones with a predominantly male playerbase; cf. MUME user
statistics) where tinysex doesn't enter into things, but let me tell you, in
the commercial games I've played, folks boink like tinyrabbits.  And not
everybody cares if their choice in boinking partners makes any sense...

When people in these commercial games want to play house/family, they start
adopting other players into an extended family.  (I'm not sure where this
came from, because it wasn't part of the "scene" pre-1994 to the best of my
knowledge.)

If they're very good friends, and they care about suspension-of-disbelief,
they'll either have their characters just be very good friends, or they'll
have two 'compatible' characters marry.  If they don't care, they'll marry
and tell everybody else to get stuffed.

>I suspect if you redefine your terms (as you have total editorial
>control over your world story), and create two distinct
>relationships which exemplify each of them seperately, make the
>constraints on #1 purely physical, and then sufficiently support
>that definitional difference in your world, the problem will largely
>fall out.
>
>  You wanna play house/family?  You have to physically fit.  
>
>  You wanna be good friends, even extremely good friends?  Have at
>  it.
>
>Note that #1 is not going to need much support.  RL, players
>imported conceptions,a dn the simple implict fact that all those
>NPCs and in-game characters came from somewhere (which is always
>unconciously assumed to be some minor variant on RL) do that for
>you.  

Never overestimate the taste of a set of horny typists.  (I was going to say
'a pair' but that would be too limiting.)

>So, support #2.  Create fables and myths where #2 plays a
>significant role.  Inject the terminology into the game lexicon.
>Build it into your quests and in-game structures.  Make it as
>implicit as you can in the fabric of your game world so that players
>tend to reflect that fact by default in their social structures.
>The idea is to make it "assumable".

Again, this is a very good idea and one I'd like to do in my current project
with "legal partnerships" and religious/social marriages.

>People will wonder why the Lion doesn't eat the lamb, and whether
>the lamb sleeps well or with one eye open. but they will in general
>be much more willing to accept the idea of that "friendship", even
>if with some amusement, than they will Tiamat buggering a pixie.
>Self control can be understood and is comprehendable.  It is
>conceivable for a lion to befriend a lamb, just as is is conceivable
>for a Turk to befriend a Greek, an Auschwitz jew a Hitlerian nazi,
>an Irish protestant a catholic, or a Serb a Croat.  There's a long
>standing tradition for such unlikely friendships.  People love the
>idea of interpersonal affinity overcoming such ingrained hostility.

Yes, though I would also argue there needs to be the potential for
consequences of such an unlikely friendship.  Otherwise there's no reason
for the friendship to be unlikely.

>Sexual congress between Tiamat and a pixie (outside of the Pixie
>being a procurer/pimp for Tiamat (which has its own interesting
>aspects)) OTOH is not so conceivable and will not only raise moral
>eyebrows, but will raise arguments of the, "That can't happen!" and
>"Square peg round hole!" variety which are really tough to argue as
>basic world views are sundered.

Oh, the discussions got much more detailed and tasteless than that.  Didn't
help that our game had our very own Howard Stern-alike via Zelazny (funny,
in the one Amber book I read, Random wasn't quite as rude as he was in the
game...).

I remember a group of us trying to decide whether or not the bird-people had
cloacae.  We eventually decided they had to have penises, but not before my
character struck on the idea of "fertile farts."  (Yes, she was a ditz.)

>"All X's hate Y's!" will get along just fine in people's minds with,
>"But for some odd reason Bubba the X gets along great with Boffo the
>Y!".  Blame it on confused genetics, Olaf Stapledon ("Star Maker"),
>or too infrequent diaper changes as an infant.  They'll believe it,
>or at least not fight it outside of the game world.  Exploit that
>fact.

Again, there needs to be some support/control for this, lest it turn into
"All NPC X's hate all NPC Y's, but all PC X's just love PC Y's, and if
you're an X who hates Y's, or a Y who hates X's, you must be some sort of
horrible racist."

Unless that's what you're going for, I suppose...  (hypothetical you, not
personal!)

   -- Sharon



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev