@auspice said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
I played a heroin addict on a game once. I made sure to be careful of who I played it around (since I know it can be triggering), but what surprised me more than people who it bothered (which I get)...
... was how lightly other people took it? Like to some it was this cutesy 'oh your character has the addict flaw? Mine does, too! To caffeine!'
....wat.
I think that this mostly stems from two things:
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People being unfamiliar with real addiction.
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Addicts in fiction being treated as little more than set pieces unless their struggle with addiction is the main focus of the story.
This flaw always struck me as weird, because addiction is by its nature a selfish beast. It's one of those things that, if it's not demanding the spotlight because of the attention the addict needs and the trouble they tend to cause in the lives of the people around them, then it's being played unrealistically. (Not wrong, mind you, just unrealistically). Sometimes, that's what you need to do in order to make it viable, but then they get treated in the equally unrealistic manner of being little more than interactive scene furniture. It's a hard bargain to strike to make it both poignant and not annoying as fuck.