Dec 2, 2019, 11:13 PM

@Auspice said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

There is always, always some level of OOC involved.

This whole 'oh it's just IC, oh we can't let our OOC feelings get-'

You know what it smacks of?

'teehee that wasn't me being shitty that was my character'
'ha ha I didn't do that terrible, horrible thing you didn't like and specifically asked me not to, my character did.'

OOC always factors in to an extent. Always.

This is eating at me, because I'm admittedly pretty tired but this is not what I see people saying. I feel it's setting up a strawman. And I will note, I'm saying this as someone who sees no reason it'd be out of line to page a person and ask whether they're feeling OOCly comfortable with things, even if it's not me doing the Things.

A character hitting on another character, charmingly or creepily or anywhere in between, is being OOCly controlled by a player, yes. But that does NOT mean the player is OOCly being creepy (or, indeed, charming). That doesn't mean character 2's player doesn't feel OOCly creeped out, and this is why IMO it's good for players of not-that-nice/well-behaved characters to check in with the players of the targets of that behaviour and make sure things are copacetic on that level, but it is not inherently problematic.

I have played characters doing things I wasn't entirely comfortable with, but were what the character would do. I've generally checked in with the people involved to make sure they were good with how the story was going, when doing so, but the point is that 'OOC always factors in to an extent' is not true in the way you seem to be implying. If my character is hitting on X hard, it doesn't mean I want to TS X's player. (I write slowly and only have so much energy to spare. I don't have time to TS if I want to get anything else done! Most of my characters still hit on people.) It means my character is into their character, or has some reason to play up seeming to be.

And that's the thing here. Things do get done purely in character. Some of them might look pretty bad. Some of them might, ICly, BE pretty bad. But the issue with your examples is that they don't illustrate 'OOC always influences IC', they illustrate 'some people are jerks who OOCly ignore other players' expressed boundaries, and some of those jerks try to use an excuse of ICness as cover'.

If you-the-player tell me-the-player that you're up for the characters being in a relationship but only if there's no infidelity, and I agree to this and then my character goes out and cheats anyway, that is an entirely different issue than if my character meets yours in a bar and proceeds to ruthlessly mock your character's hair until it's so embarrassed it falls right out of her head. I have no OOC agenda; my character probably has an IC one. I'd aim to make sure nothing was actually being upsetting to you, the player behind the character, but even if I failed to reach out, it would not be reasonable for some third person to report me as an OOC asshole for the fact that my character is an IC one. They can go ahead and ask you if you're OOCly good with things, and if you're not, they can support you in OOCly asking me to tone it down, and if I refuse to modify my IC interaction with you once you've made it clear it's making you-the-player OOCly uncomfortable, well, then I really am kind of an asshole. But not until then.

So sure, page the person you're worried about and check in if you want. Phrasing it probably is going to be awkward. I dunno, "Hey, Bob's coming on to Sarah pretty strong, and I just wanted to make sure you're feeling okay with it OOCly," maybe? But once you get a 'yes' the issue becomes that you don't like Bob-player's style of playing Bob, and if it's not directed at you, well, what I do if someone's style makes me uncomfortable is avoid playing with them as much as I can. I mean, you could ask him to tone it down, but unless it's pretty egregious, that really starts reaching into telling people how to play their characters. And if it IS egregious, then it must be bad enough that you can make a first-person complaint on your own behalf and leave Sarah and her player out of it.

This got long, but I'm too tired to make it short. So I guess that's the long and short of it from where I sit.