Does anyone here even LIKE comic books?

There's a lot of that. At the risk of offending practically everybody, it always amazes me how touchy Americans are when it comes to genders in language, considering English has almost no genders in the entire language, and yet they still find ways to be pissy about it.

I speak a language where every single noun has a gender, be it animate or inanimate. A chair is male, while a table is female, just as an idle point of fact. A knight is male, but a ninja is female. Oh, and bicycle is of a "middle" gender, which we use to refer children out of context and certain objects perceived to be "smaller" in any sense. It all comes down to what suffix a noun ends at, and it defines what suffixes adjectives referring to that noun have.

It's a bit clunky to learn, but it's actually easier to tell what an adjective is referring to most of the time.

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I refuse to use made-up gender-neutral pronouns which don't exist in the English language because I disrespect the imaginary sexism presented here. Men don't get called the wrong gender? I do in this game. All the time. For the last few years, I've played predominantly female characters, and I never correct people when they call me "she," because it is irrelevant. They don't know me, and they can't be expected to walk on eggshells just in case I'm not what I seem. In fact, it feels more awkward for people who don't know me at all to call my female characters "he." I refuse to live in a world where people have to constantly walk on eggshells for fear of insulting someone over such trivial information.

And, yes, gender is trivial in this context. In a general discussion about fiction and game systems, gender is irrelevant, unless we want to actually imply sexism, in that women are incapable of enjoying the same fiction as men, or are incapable of playing the same games. Where gender becomes relevant, such as how female characters are treated in-game and how the person behind the characters feels about it, then this can be addressed as it becomes important. But it does not matter out of context.

Simple example: I am not American. I live in Eastern Europe. Because I have a fairly good command of the English language, however, people who don't know me always assume I'm American anyway, and expect me to feel patriotic about the 4th of July, to be interested in presidential election debates or know what happened in Season 3 of Family Guy. I don't make a point of correcting them unless my ethnicity and nationality becomes relevant, such as when discussing which servers I can play on (East Coast, as West Coast ones lag too much) or why I don't know the meaning of certain words in English.

I know this whole thing will probably make me sound like a giant dick, but I refuse to foster a community and a world where people have to be afraid of accidentally using the wrong word.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Not at all. Some people just don't care for today's political correctness to the point that they think a new word has to be invented for such a trivial thing.

Not to mention, using the word sie in the english language.

It just adds to the confusion that IS the English language.

Deer...Dear...

Right...Write...

Slay...Sleigh...

Way...Weigh...

ect...ect...

Pretty sure, it's people getting sensitive over nothing.

I'd say the root cause of the problem is that while City of Heroes may have started out as being about Comic Books specifically, it has grown into a much broader spectrum of themes over the years, including genres like sci-fi, fantasy, film noir and even anime. Even within comic book themes, you make fun of spiky shoulders and other "dark age" costume elements, when the fact of the matter is that some people still very much do like those themes. Dark age comics were popular for a reason, after all. It wasn't just because comic book readers lost their minds for a few years.

About the most damaging thing you can do in this game is criticise other people's concepts as being "inappropriate," because easily the game's greatest strength is the ability to create characters that at least feel like they are really and truly our own. And if we so choose to not make four-colour tights costumes, but instead walk around in jeans and a tank top and if we so choose to not call ourselves Something Man or, say, Samuel Tow just to bring up a random example, then so be it. The game's settings really don't discriminate against any of that, even if the actual signature heroes tend more towards tights and cape than anything else. However, we still have people like Foreshadow (Hollows trainer) and Back Alley Brawler (Galaxy City trainer) who don't really look like heroes at all.

Granted, there will always be people who care nothing for concept and call themselves something like iPwn, give no bio, use a random costume and just dive into min/max optimization head-first, looking for the best DPS to get the most XP or Shards per given unit of time. That's the nature of the beast in any online game. And, yes, I roll my eyes at those, too. But it just feels to me like you're throwing a LOT of legitimate concepts under the bus just because they don't fit in your vision of what the game's theme should be, and that's a really bad thing to do. Some of us are pretty defensive about our concepts

Really, when it comes to fiction, I would treat City of Heroes as the land of anything goes. If you can think of it and give reason why it exists, the game world will support it. And that's where the fun's at, really.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'm a very touch, very angry person. If I expected people to psychically sense what upsets me and never do or say it, then I would expect no-one to ever say a word ever again. Because I understand how absurd that it, I make it a point to NEVER TAKE OFFENCE at people saying or doing anything that I have not specifically stated my distaste for.

If I don't want people calling me a certain thing or doing a certain thing on a team, I will say so. If they stop, it's all good. If they continue to do it anyway, then I take offence. But I don't expect them to know what my sensitivities are, and it actually bugs me greatly when people try to dance around a subject for fear of offending me when I don't care either way and all it does is make things awkward.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And it's not as if COH is that much more diverse than comics, even *superhero* comics.

I mean, just in Marvel we have magical adventures (Dr. Strange, Thor and back in the day, Conan) we have sci-fi (Annihilation) we have all sort sof things inbetween.

COH isn't any more diverse than the MU, really. Certainly not than the DCU (which has stuff like Sandman in it)

This, for the most part.

When I'm referring to a character I see in the game, I refer to them based on the gender of the character. If the in-game character is female, I say she. If it is male, I say he. The gender of the person playing the character is irrelevant.

Kinda funny that the OP goes on about roleplaying, and insists on using gender neutral pronouns. Any roleplayer I know of would prefer to be referred to by their character's gender while playing said character.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

then how exactly do you pronouce sie? or hir for that matter?

Sie = See? Say?

Hir = Her? Hair?

Not all roleplayers write up bios. Some of my characters have bios while others don't. Depends on how hooked I get on the character.

[quote]* To those who have expressed preferences for alternative comics outside the capes and leotards variety, I like those too: Sandman, Maus, the Invisibles, anything by Robert Crumb, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Promethea, and so on. It's just that, like a lot of folks in the alternative and independent comics scene whose work I respect, like Grant Morrison and and Alan Moore, I also have a nostalgic love/hate relationship with the Golden and Silver ages of comics -- Superman + red kryptonite = Ant-head Superman! (Read Grant Morrison's brilliant Flex Mentallo for his psychological explanation for the weird, psychedelic nature of that Red Superman/Blue Superman stuff from the Silver Age.) Morrison in particular loves to deconstruct the Golden and Silver Ages, but always with respect.

Let's see I've always liked Sgt. Rock, Haunted Tank, G.I. Robot, Knights of the Dinner Table, Judge Dredd, Men Of War, Wierd War, G.I. Combat, Rogue Trooper, Marshal Law, X-Men, Samuree, Ghost Rider, Tigers of Terra, Appleseed . . .

It's a delicate topic that can easily be taken the wrong way so unless you are very careful on how you bring it up it's probably best to not say anything. As far as the bug reports go, have a blast. If we don't report the in game typos the gm's and devs won't know they made them.

Yeah MMORPG's do have to cater somewhat to video game community to be successful but I think this game is closer to the traditional PnP RPG's than any other.

People will agree with almost everything you mentioned here. I think the only touchy topic you listed is the vehicles. If you use the Search tool you can probably find a thread over in Suggestions where someone has listed a cut and paste of the cons and why they shouldn't be added. But if you can think of solutions to the cons feel free to post a reply. Fresh ideas are always welcome.

Since you're on Virtue now may I recommend you consider joining "The Cape Radio" as one of your global channels. They are a nice group of players and they have their own online radio station.

http://www.thecaperadio.com/

I can't offer more help than that right now as my video card died and I can't play until I save up enough cash to replace it. But good luck on Virtue. I hope you enjoy your time there.

Well, when chatting about the player in globals, I also tend to refer to them as the character I know them as the most too, but that comes about because I'm not going to switch it up with every new character, and well, I never cared to ask before.

Just use "it" for everyone.

"It picks the bag up again or else it gets the hose again"

... What?

(I actually use "they and their". I've never had a situation where someone has gone "Hey, I thought you were talking about loads of people").

Their sexual preferences are none of our business.

In globals, if I know what their real gender is, I'll refer to them by it. If I don't, I'll refer to them by name (because I have not necessarily teamed with every person on a global channel in order to know what gender their main character is)

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Well, at 3 months you can get a nice Kilt costume piece as a Veteran Reward. If you really want to make a character that could possibly be viewed as a monstrous mountain of a woman you could do something like this with the Huge body type.

One very butch looking 'woman' called Brenda Dearheart

You'll have a lot of fun if you ever study Russian, or any of the other Cyrillic languages, then

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yes.

The only time I really make an issue of gender is when I'm helping folks while playing my signature character (Eiko-chan), because her name has a giant "I AM A GIRL" tag attached to it. And yet people still insist on calling me "he".

Otherwise, I don't get ruffled, even though I do play pretty much exclusively female characters.