un: theball | text

[stresstokens]

Hey. Hope everyone's recovering from that stupid maze okay.

I'll just get right down to my point of inquiry. For a place that claims that we're meant to save the universe, I've noticed a pretty dramatic human-bias around here that strikes me as kind of odd, considering how diverse the universe actually is.

So I'd like to get a show of hands. Who here is from a world where humans are the only sentient species around, and who here is from a world with more than just humans kicking around? What other sorts of species are around? I'd like to know how much of it is selection-bias based on who's running this place and how much of it is them drawing from places that just don't have any non-human populations. I wouldn't mind hearing about what sorts of non-humans you have around either, but that's probably less important, statistically speaking.

Lastly... what do you see when you look at this picture?

[ Inserted is a photograph of a suave looking goblin man in a tuxedo with a pencil-thin moustache. He's holding a champagne flute towards the camera with his arm around -- something. If you've been infected by the curse, you'll see the goblin man's arm is around a black tabaxi woman, but if not, his arm looks as though it's simply hanging in mid-air. ]

[ OOC NOTE: due to the extremely low likelihood we'll ever get kalina in-game, the picture is just for flavour! if you'd like your character to be infected by the shadowcat and thus able to see her image in the photo, it would be due to any circumstance in which any of riz's bodily fluids were absorbed into their own body in some way, i.e. blood or saliva. feel free to handwave a circumstance in which that could happen, even if it's riz's blood lingering on one of the labyrinth's traps that then got into an open cut of theirs, a glass in the labyrinth he drank from that they then used, etc., etc.! Please see this comment for more information! ]

Comments

[equivo]

Or more pragmatic. As long as you're not the first to cross the line, you have more leeway in how you respond when someone else does it to you first. A lot more if you're a hero, a little if you're a villain.

I actually can't tell you what all the cases are. Some of them are still classified, others are hard to get a hold of. Most of them aren't important. It's just the numbering system the PRT uses for potentially parahuman-related anomalies.

As for if there's equality laws, I think that would depend on who you asked. Legally speaking, they're people. Practically speaking, that doesn't help much. There are a lot of ways people can find to make you feel unwelcome that don't count as crimes.

It's a hard life.

[stresstokens]

Yeah, how things wind up turning out functionally speaking is pretty different from what the law lays down. But it's better than nothing. I get how it is, though. I'm a Goblin, remember?

[ Maybe Krouse doesn't. But Riz has cottoned onto a few things by now, and he's pretty certain that even if his people are fictional in Krouse's world, Goblins probably have more or less the same reputation. ]

Your world got kind of fucked over, power-wise. No offense. It just sucks that you can get stuck like that when you're already not having a great time.

[equivo]

Yeah. I hear you.

[ It's shitty, but there's a kind of relief in knowing he doesn't have to get into it past that. He supposes the least life experience can do is abbreviate some fraught conversations from time to time. ]

And no offense taken. I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the status quo, if the glowing picture I've been painting hasn't given it away. Knowing most other worlds with powers don't work like this is really just the cherry on this particular shit sundae, but it's not exactly surprising. Some people have to come from the rough neighbourhoods of the multiverse.

That's most of the highlights I can think of right now, but if I come up with anything else that seems relevant, I can drop you a line.