What efforts does the server take to be accommodating and mindful of LGBTQ players + characters?

I would hope by the 2400s we have some sort of protections in the workplace.

Yes.

I'd assume it's just like real life. Don't bring it up every 5 minutes and be a decent player/have the character be decent, and you're gold. If you start shit over the smallest things every 3 seconds like tumblr, then expect a similar reputation for either player or character.

No.

No one cares if you're straight, gay, furry or a meme. Really. And there's no need to care. We're just playing games, okay?

Characters... No one cares either, but only if you do it correctly. If the character's sole purpose is to shove their snowflakiness down other people's throats, and that character can be described with just one word: snowflakiness, you're doing it wrong. (And by snowflakiness, I mean anything really. It can be gay, furry, war veteran).

A real example: Ages ago, we had a "wave" of lesbian, stuttering, shy, "sexy" nurses in the medbay. You could tell they're lesbian just by examining them. They were cuddling in maintenance or in the medbay lobby, whispering to their mates, and not really doing any work. They would suicide if their better half died. Such characters were laughted at, jokingly called "Suicide Space Lesbians" for being "one-dimensional", plain, boring characters whose only purpose was to sexe other lesbian nurses.

Buuuuuut, there were also normal characters. I remember one bartender, he was great, I roleplayed with him as much as I could. I figured out he was gay after like, a few months? When I was ghosting over him talking to his guy-friend during a slow deadhour shift. And it didn't matter, as he was just a normal character.

TL;DR: Don't be shit.

I'm laughing so hard right now. I really hope this is a joke, because if it's not, I'm afraid I'll laugh so hard that I'll pop a lung.

What efforts does the server take to be accommodating and mindful of LGBTQ players + characters?

None specifically.

And before you jump, read the rest, please.

Policy should never care about what specific social minority a subject for abuse belongs into (or does not). If someone's being abused, attacked, whatever, then that's that. The attacker will be dealt with under the 1st rule of the server, "Don't be a dick." No special accommodation shall be made for any social group: that goes against the principle of fair treatment. (Bare in mind, this is OOCly. IC is a bit more lax, as long as you're not being malicious.)

And please also remain respectful of the rights of others to not give a shit, and to ask you to pipe down if you're being overly obnoxious. As Dreamix very accurately said: "No one has to care about who or what you are, we just want to play a game." So, just play the game, and everything will be fine.

Oh, and it also deserves to be reminded that some memes and inside jokes about SS13 revolve around topics you may perceive as relevant to you. Such as lesbay. Please do recognize that they deal with a specific stereotype of player created characters, and are not, generally speaking, applicable to actual players.

One addendum:

No one shall be shielded from the opinions of others, and no reasonable opinion shall be rendered invalid because it, "Some social group is sensitive to it." Granted, due to the nature of the game and the server, there aren't many instances where discussions like this do arise. But if they do, the staff will not stop fair and even discussion of the subject, or any displays of opinion, as long as they are reasonable.

I have a transgender character. Does any one care? No. Is it relevant at all to 90% of the to I do? No. It's just a bit of fluff. I dont ask for special accommodations for it because none are needed. Just play the game and don't try to shove yourself into people's throats. Most of us in the community don't care who or what is behind the screen, just laugh along with us and have a good time

I'm pretty sure this is a meme because it's your only post and literally doesn't have anything to do with our server. Racial sensitivity has what to with LGBTQ players + characters, again?

From a canon standpoint: it's 2456 and egalitarianism has triumphed. People (Humans and Skrell) generally don't care what gender you are at all.

For Unathi and Tajara, homosexuality is frowned upon, sometimes punished with life in a work camp to cure it. It's part of the lore to be homophobic. So there's not much to do there.

From an in-game/OOC standpoint: SSLs are trash and if you make a pink haired stuttering nurse whose parents died in a horrible potato chip accident and left her permanently with PTSD, you will get laughed at and will be subject to mockery, deservingly.

Remember that it's almost never about their sexuality itself. It's past that, and is more about character design itself, and homosexuality is almost always a cornerstone for cringe. Slightly meta, yeah.

I'm pretty sure this is a meme because it's your only post and literally doesn't have anything to do with our server. Racial sensitivity has what to with LGBTQ players + characters, again?

From a canon standpoint: it's 2456 and egalitarianism has triumphed. People (Humans and Skrell) generally don't care what gender you are at all.

For Unathi and Tajara, homosexuality is frowned upon, sometimes punished with life in a work camp to cure it. It's part of the lore to be homophobic. So there's not much to do there.

From an in-game/OOC standpoint: SSLs are trash and if you make a pink haired stuttering nurse whose parents died in a horrible potato chip accident and left her permanently with PTSD, you will get laughed at and will be subject to mockery, deservingly.

Remember that it's almost never about their sexuality itself. It's past that, and is more about character design itself, and homosexuality is almost always a cornerstone for cringe. Slightly meta, yeah.

2458*

For Unathi and Tajara, homosexuality is frowned upon, sometimes punished with life in a work camp to cure it. It's part of the lore to be homophobic. So there's not much to do there.

Wait, when was this changed? Last I remember Tajara were more accepting to homosexuality. They were tolerant on interspecies too - not all out accepting, but tolerant.

For Unathi and Tajara, homosexuality is frowned upon, sometimes punished with life in a work camp to cure it. It's part of the lore to be homophobic. So there's not much to do there.

Wait, when was this changed? Last I remember Tajara were more accepting to homosexuality. They were tolerant on interspecies too - not all out accepting, but tolerant.

It changed a while back and I swear you made a thread a while back asking about that before and hive told you?

Edit: Never mind, that was about IPCs!

Not even gonna touch the IC char part of this cause it's been answered a billion times.

As for the OOC/meta side, I think our server has a lot of gay players and afaik, we haven't had an issue with people being homophobic or hating on people cause of their gender identity.

Sure, people will throw around the typical internet insults 'ur a figgit'...'thats gay' etc. , but I've never really seen it as homophobic. I mean, I'm openly gay and I've never been bullied or anything because of my sexual orientation. I know there's quite a few gay people on staff too. I think at this point as long as you aren't posting 'Im gay, notice me!' in ooc a million times, you'll be fine.

2458*

a head race lore developer

typing 2456

i am a fucking idiot

this is why i should not post first thing after waking up

For Unathi and Tajara, homosexuality is frowned upon, sometimes punished with life in a work camp to cure it. It's part of the lore to be homophobic. So there's not much to do there.

Wait, when was this changed? Last I remember Tajara were more accepting to homosexuality. They were tolerant on interspecies too - not all out accepting, but tolerant.

Homosexuality is illegal on Adhomai.

The civil war has put Adhomai into a military chokehold. On top of all of this, humans have it a good five times better than what people go through on Adhomai, and Tajara who enter human space tend to come back gay, or with human wives, or with neon fur, or gluten allergies, spreading word about how good human space is, instead of the TERRIBLE FUCKING CIVIL WAR destroying the planet. It is disgraceful and is more of a topic of scientific debate on Adhomai rather than sociology.

Gays are sent into work camps until their homosexuality is cured, which is sometimes never. Tajara who return from human space with human wives are shunned. Tajara who leave illegally and flee from their homeworld to kiss nurses have bounties placed on them. This was posted in Adhomaichronicles, something your character definitely should have read by now.

http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=3173#p61273

The Tajaran culture is endangered and every faction of the civil war recognizes this. It gets more and more diluted every day from constant human media and advances seeping into their own. Soon there will be no Tajaran technology left, conservative Adhomaians fear, and merely Tajaran copies of human tech.

This was not my idea but I agree with the reasons behind it. Tajaran nurse sluts and lesbian shells are both things that really piss me off.

By the way, not allowing players to make Tajaran orphans who were raised on human ships and taken to Biesel to live was my idea, though, and pretty much everyone on the team stands behind it.

I've learned from my time as loremaster of the cats that leaving spots open for them to fill canonically usually ends in sexual quirks being added. No lore on the biology and physiology of their ears so that players can put their own idea of ears on their cats? 25% of players make their ears erogenous zones that make them orgasm when stimulated. This is not a joke. So I pretty much amputated a lot of cringey characters by cutting off the source of almost everything bad with the race - the source being Biesellian-raised cats.

It's the reason we are 99% ready to give Tajara sentient scorpions for genitals; so that no one can fill in the blank with anything even worse.

Tajara are the filthiest race with the filthiest players, and as head lore master I have to put up with a lot of gay neon furry knotting clogging my fucking byond pager. These rules are the bulwark, the first and last line of defense, that keeps the sensible players protected from a tide much worse than that of greys, or redsuits. It is a tide of catbeast degeneracy that heavy roleplay servers are victim to more than anything else.

Any other questions?

Well then...I missed that news article.

This will be interesting...I should play my Tajara Tavaku more...

People actually made a fairly big deal of Tajarans "suddenly" (I put that in quotes because I don't give a shit, not because it wasn't sudden) weren't so tolerant of gays.

Like, a way bigger deal than necessary. It's actually really fucking hilarious and it's worth laughing at - the thread's archived in the questions sub-forum.

That said, I wouldn't say that acceptable of LGBT+ peoples is universal. You need to keep in mind that a (and this is important) fascist party, canonically, got a major chunk of the vote last election and formed a coalition government with a center-right humans first party. Going by the outcome of that election, Green parties and left-wing parties in general don't seem to be popular. Make what you will of that.

On the other hand, if any of that disturbs you - i.e the resurgence of fascism we're experiencing in modern time showing up in this server - you could go to Polaris. I hear that their setting is a perfect utopia, ala Star Trek, and right wing ideas are completely extinct.

For LGBTQ players; they're probably covered under the "Don't be a dick" rule to not being discriminated against.

For LGBTQ characters; if it's a concern of yours it's probably worth asking in the lore questions forum what kind of protections NanoTrasen offer to LGBTQ personnel on Exodus.

Despite the year the lore still includes heavy uses of gendered pronouns and nouns which results in my character having to defend themselves on being mis (or unnecessarily) gendered. I really couldn't give a shit about one-dimensional stereotyped characters, but I do when the in-game universe constrains the roleplay potential through how uninformed or undeveloped it chooses to be. IPC's have an immense potential for roleplay when attending to how they establish a sense of identity without a sex + expectations to influence their gender identity.

Okay, I honestly thought this was some clickbait. Let me give you an example as to how the LGBTQ community is perceived most likely on the server.

IC: It's the 25th century, Earth or Humanity in general has had so many things to have come across with, their homeworld slowly decaying, Space colonization, The First Interstellar War. I have serious doubts as to whether they ever had the time to actually hate on LGBTQs that they likely have become accepting towards them as every single Human being counted from that moment on. I've met some fair share of TG or gay characters, Hell I'm quite sure one BI has a crush on my character. Do I hate on it? No, I've treated them the way my character treats every other person. Let's not forget that NT has a regulation which states that "Threatening other people's lifes in anyway" will result into a brig sentence. Which means NT does care in some degree, as threats to people with a different sexual preference can lead to a brig sentence or fine.

Now, let's take it from an OOC perspective;

We have a playerbase composed of people ALL OVER THE WORLD and as grim as it may sound, not every part of the world tolerates the LGBTQ community as much as you think. Will they be loud over it on OOC if even a single mention is made about LGBTQs? Maybe, but we have mods to calm them down. We can't exactly force these people to change their perspectives since they come from entirely different parts of the world where they have been taught and raised to think the way they do now, because that's how they perceive the status quo. But we can direct them to rule 0 or mute them from OOC if they even dare to post threats in any form. Sometimes, jokes will be made too, but don't take them too serious. The best way to hang out with these people is by simply being yourself. You don't have to be loud about the LGBTQ community, preaching about rights on OOC, because it will make you look bad as well. You will give the impression you are attempting to force your own opinions upon others and nobody will like that, especially not on OOC frankly, not everyone is interested. And honestly, nobody is interested in an OOC flame war revolved around politics, ethics etc. We have rule 0 to take care of anyone attempting to threaten people part of this communty.

So finally, what I'm trying to say here is Don't worry about it too much. Everybody is here to have fun, from every new player joining up to the staff. We're all here to have the same experience, which is RP. If you ever encounter somebody who threatens you over OOC, don't be afraid to Ahelp the staff as they'll gladly resort with the incident.

Despite the year the lore still includes heavy uses of gendered pronouns and nouns which results in my character having to defend themselves on being mis (or unnecessarily) gendered. I really couldn't give a shit about one-dimensional stereotyped characters, but I do when the in-game universe constrains the roleplay potential through how uninformed or undeveloped it chooses to be. IPC's have an immense potential for roleplay when attending to how they establish a sense of identity without a sex + expectations to influence their gender identity.

WHAT ARE YOU?

ARE YOU EVEN REAL?

Despite the year the lore still includes heavy uses of gendered pronouns and nouns which results in my character having to defend themselves on being mis (or unnecessarily) gendered. I really couldn't give a shit about one-dimensional stereotyped characters, but I do when the in-game universe constrains the roleplay potential through how uninformed or undeveloped it chooses to be. IPC's have an immense potential for roleplay when attending to how they establish a sense of identity without a sex + expectations to influence their gender identity.

Aw, shit. I bit into the bait...I actually did it....

im gonna guess your penis is so feminine you refer to yourself as a woman or something along those lines

Using incorrect pronouns is encouraged when you're talking to an unfamiliar alien, because sexual dimorphism is hard for most people to catch onto. It's not that big of a deal between humans either. If you are misgendered then simply correct the person and move on.

I identify as an Attack Helicopter. Ever since I was a genderless person I dreamed of soaring over the oilfields dropping hot sticky loads on disgusting foreigners. People say to me that a person being a helicopter is Impossible and I’m fucking retarded but I don’t care, I’m beautiful. I’m having a plastic surgeon install rotary blades, 30 mm cannons and AMG-114 Hellfire missiles on my body. From now on I want you guys to call me “Apache” and respect my right to kill from above and kill needlessly. If you can’t accept me you’re a heliphobe and need to check your vehicle privilege. Thank you for being so understanding.