Furry MUCKs, or, how I got talked into trying 12fold and it was fun

[trish]

circuit_four  and friends managed to convince me to give the whole MUCK thing a try again. For those of you who aren't dirty, dirty furries, a quick primer: MUCK stands for multi-user creative kingdom and basically means "a whole bunch of nerds telnet into a server where they can type at each other and have cybersex roleplay accordingly." The standard furries-having-cybersex MUCK is called Tapestries, and it's what I'm used to, social rules wise, though I haven't actually been on for more than a "keep characters active, check for new messages, log out" in years. It has a pretty established way you interact with other people, and I can break it down into a list of steps:

1.  

1. Log on, and see if there's anyone on your watchfor list you're interested in chatting with or totally text-banging. Page them (that is, send them a message saying Hi) and see what happens.
2. Choose one of the public areas where large groups of people congregate: the city square, the back room of the gay bar (if you're playing something that can be reasonably construed as a boy, otherwise you will get harassed), the Tavern, sometimes the BDSM club if it's a busy night.
3. Hang around there expressing interest in people by looking at them, smelling them, and whispering to them. If you're feeling adventurous, you could also pose things like "Trish waves at ObjectOfInterest." They might scare off, though, lest anyone realize that they are looking for CYBERSEX. Oh noes. Traditionally, the word "smirk" is overused. There's a thing called wixxx (which I've talked about before, actually) that lists everything someone might be interested in, so you try to use that to find someone compatible, too; if their wixxx says "female-only" then you probably shouldn't hit on them if you're packing tonight. (Of course, some people lie in their wixxx, because they are uncomfortable with a bunch of internet strangers looking for cybersex knowing what their fetishes are. I'd criticize them, but I absolutely do this.)
4. Once you've gotten a bite in whispers from someone in a room, or someone on your watchfor list, one of you (usually the top, but sometimes the person with better muck building bits, which let you make your own areas) picks a location where no one else is, and whisks you off to that location, where you proceed to have cybersex. If you are lucky, you find someone who is interested in creating a shared fun time and you have a good couple of hours and then say "Hey, mind if I watch for you?" and then you can look for them again in the future, though a lot of people wind up never being interested again because it's not the kill, it's the thrill of the chase.
5. If you're unlucky, the person you've found has their One True Fetish and is only interested in scenes that have anything to do with that, so after fifteen minutes of mediocre cuddling all of the sudden "RandomFurry waves his magic wand! Your breasts are now size GG!" "Trish mews. "Um?"" "RandomFurry says, "YOUR BREASTS ARE SO BIG NOW."" This is the time for you to say "Oh no the fire alarm is going off" and find something else to do with your evening. ("Anyone want to order a pizza?" "I thought you went to bed." "Bed was boring.")
6. If you're an interesting combination of unlucky and lucky, the person has their One True Fetish, but they're actually really good at scenes involving their One True Fetish and you find yourself awkwardly but encouragingly aroused at the thought of being cross-species impregnated by some sort of jackal thing while he threatens to make you into a pelt with an old rusty knife. (Hey, he was really good. I'm just saying.) But then every time you see him again, since you played along, he impregnates you again, and bear traps are involved, and eventually it gets boring... but not to him. Awkward!
7. You log off and say that next time you're horny, fuck it, you'll just go to a singles bar, but you can't log off if real guys get boring (you don't actually do this, it's rude, unless they're just terrible and not willing to change things that aren't going well), and no one on Tapestries has syphilis, so sure enough, you're back in two weeks...

Aaaaand that's Tapestries in a nutshell. (I've made two what I would consider Real Person Friends there, but have fallen out of touch with both of them after informing them that No, I Would Not Sleep With Them. Cool people, though.)


But that's not what I'm here to tell you about! I'm here to tell you about 12fold, which is a furry and suchlike MUCK for people too weird for Tapestries; the wixxx list has things like "low-causal" and "oviposition" instead of "anal" and "watersports." It's set up as a series of planets, each one somehow futuristically modified and terraformed, each one appealing to different interests and fetishes and, oddly, species. I visited two: Earth and Neptune. Earth is basically the gathering area, no real boundary between in and out of character, people whispering at each other while talking about video games kind of area. It felt to me like Tapestries except cyberpunk and surreal. That's not necessarily bad (apparently E had quite a good time there!) but it's not really for me; I've had that experience and got bored with it. It's like the Tavern, but everyone is dressed in latex instead of fur. (The grammar quotient was also pleasantly high, to be fair. It's the social dynamics that seemed familiar. If I were looking for cybersex with random furries, the pickings would be more or less strictly better, but... I'm not.)

Neptune though! Neptune was awesome. The idea is that it's a mostly-water planet with lots of psychoactive kelp, and you eat the kelp and then you can taste colors and sing shapes and that sort of synaesthetic stuff. At face value it sounds kind of silly, and I guess it is, but sitting around and writing that sort of thing with other people for an hour or two was actually a lot of fun. It worked on both wordplay levels and visual-construction levels and that in and of itself was pretty neat. I felt really rusty --- I hope I didn't come off as terrible with language, horribly slow, or horribly boring, but I had a good time. As I was sitting there, thinking and editing, I was like "Wow, I used to be able to do this faster while getting off? Really? Jeez." At some point the scene sort of dissipated and there were just three of us, and two of them were totally going to have some sort of wacky computer-sex, and I'm pretty sure I could have joined in with them if I wanted to, but I didn't, so I excused myself politely and played a board game with my housemates. (And got trounced. They're getting too good.)

This isn't something I'd want to make a main hobby, but I definitely appreciate the chance to participate in some surreality and meet some new people. For some definition of people. Thanks, 12fold!

Comments

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

More commentary later, but... which board game? :D

If it was Agricola, we should chat about basic strategies sometime. I think I have a pretty fair grasp about what to do beyond "breed!"

Which is kinda appropriate, hmm, to the rest of the post. I should get back to work on that 12Fold board game...

[trishkitten.livejournal.com]

It was RftG. No one here will play Agricola with me. ;_; I played solitaire once, but the setup and takedown were only marginally worth it. I'd still be curious to hear about strategies though!

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Tragic! I need to fix that once the holiday madness is over... (Not that it's much fun with two, either, but the mooncat's surprisingly into it.)

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Also, there's a reason why Earth is a dingy Midwestern airport lounge. :) I was hoping it'd encourage people to Leave. It. Promptly. after warming up a bit, and go explore the more exotic areas. No accounting for taste!

[trishkitten.livejournal.com]

The familiar can feel safe, and if that's where ten people are, that's where everyone will end up, unless someone pushes them to migrate somewhere else. It's much like the Tapestries problem --- even if you're not there for hot steamy typing, you're going to want to be where the people are, and so you go where the people are. If you wander around where no one is, you run into no one, and even when the room descriptions are really good, that gets boring fast. I actually think Earth is a good call --- if everyone hung around on Neptune, and people were both trying to Be Neptunian and lounge around saying hi to twenty people, it would be a mess. You could solve this problem with a five-room Neptune, maybe, but you're not big enough for that... so Earth is a starting point. I would have left it even sooner than I did, except I suspected no one was on any of the other planets, and I think I was right?

(And of course you've probably thought of all of this, having run the MUCK for how long and I got an account how many hours ago? :P But just saying.)