Emotional separation from fictional content

[surreality]

@Ganymede Honestly, I really just don't know at this point. The characterizations of people who really just want a heads-up on things they would prefer to avoid (so that they can do that most effectively) goes beyond 'a bit much' for me and into areas of entitlement and ugliness and bigotry that I'd really just rather not engage with, and has a lot of 'playing the victim' undercurrents that are straining my irony tolerance harder than normal.

I wouldn't fault any other place for not doing what seems like common sense to me, especially if it's something nobody's done before.

I will explain why it seems like common sense to me -- which is, in part, why all of my files are ninety miles long. When people see a new what, generally, they're going to want to know why. And that's fair. I would want to know what the rationale was for something new or different that I hadn't encountered before.

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

I will explain why it seems like common sense to me -- which is, in part, why all of my files are ninety miles long. When people see a new what, generally, they're going to want to know why. And that's fair. I would want to know what the rationale was for something new or different that I hadn't encountered before.

Do your thing. Just as an aside, though: no one likes reading legislative history.

[Thenomain]

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

I think that if there are reasonable, simple steps we can take to minimize the risks that exist, they are worth exploring.

I'll say this again: What is reasonable to one can be insulting to another.

Saying "this is what I think is reasonable and why" is absolutely part of what we're here in this thread to do. If someone else doesn't think your idea is reasonable they are not necessarily being insulting. If you think someone else's idea is not reasonable and you're not insulting about it then you shouldn't be talked down to.

Clearly "you" in this has become everyone, in every universe, ever, of all time.

It's one of the harder things I've had to learn; how to take someone disagreeing with me because like many people here, I can mistake passion for...a thing that is also passion. Passion is passion.

A lot of my online friends are people who can roll their eyes at even their own passion. Sometimes with a "your mom" reference. I'm looking at you, @COIN.

[surreality]

@Thenomain I don't think it's insulting until someone tells me 'if you even think this is a good idea, get the fuck out of my hobby because you're making us all suffer with your exorbitantly demanding entitlement just because you clearly are unable to do things the way I think they should be done at all times the moment you have a glimmer of a sad; you are explicitly not welcome here, GTFO'.

Which is kinda an issue, and there's reason to be offended by that kind of attitude and characterization.

[Arkandel]

So to go back a step a bit and maybe work the issue from a different angle...

If you are staff, what is the best way to investigate an issue like this? Consider at that point they are probably dealing with defensive people regardless of who's right or wrong (the accuser doesn't want to be labeled as a creep, the accuser is likely triggered), evidence may just be logs and the narrative itself matters.

To rephrase: How do we prevent someone from being unfairly portrayed as the bad guy (there was an incident earlier where someone was explicitly asked to play one, then afterwards was accused they should have 'known better') and at the same time to not blame the victim and protect an asshole as has been the actual case many times in MU*?

We all know in advance there's no way to do this 100% of the time, but how do we improve the chances of getting it right?

[SparklesTheClown]

WoD games are some of the few places in MUs that actually needs a prefs system and doesn't have one. I hold to what I used to say back on WORA, which is that the WoD part of our hobby is always like 10 years behind much needed innovation, and is highly resistant to common sense things that other games have done for the longest time now, because basically ??? "It doesn't work fuck that/slippery slope/I won't even try it/but the principle of the thing!"

Granted, I said "actually needs", not every game needs such a system, but most of the ones that do, usually have one (typically ones with potentially mature themes). Like, let's have some self-awareness here, WoD games are like a step or two above Shang as far as mature themes go. Not having a preferences system in such games is insane to me. And I've always found such systems to only make having a dialogue about preferences less stigmatizing.

I've been on plenty of games where the sorts of perspectives here on, like, what is essentially basic human social interaction and setting up expectations based on that, would be considered downright alien. Saying "This is unacceptable and I shouldn't have to adhere to the basic social etiquette of every day life in a MU, because <insert worst case scenario here>", is a bit outrageous. Basic social etiquette and communicating expectations is many, many steps removed from "being someone's therapist".

I personally think that if one is unable to communicate at a super basic level without it being distressing or making them feel the burden of a thousand therapists, GMing is probably not for them.

[Thenomain]

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

@Thenomain I don't think it's insulting until someone tells me 'if you even think this is a good idea, get the fuck out of my hobby because you're making us all suffer with your exorbitantly demanding entitlement just because you clearly are unable to do things the way I think they should be done at all times the moment you have a glimmer of a sad; you are explicitly not welcome here, GTFO'.

If someone is saying that, they can take both hands and stretch their anus until they can fit their head up into it.

And yet, if you think someone saying that means that they get to say what you can and can't do, then I honestly think that it's time to take a break. At least, this is what I've said to people who have thought this.

I honestly don't know if you are; this has become a He-Said/She-Said situation.

[Coin]

@Thenomain said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

A lot of my online friends are people who can roll their eyes at even their own passion. Sometimes with a "your mom" reference. I'm looking at you, @COIN.

Your mom rolls her eyes at her own passion.

[surreality]

@Thenomain said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

And yet, if you think someone saying that means that they get to say what you can and can't do, then I honestly think that it's time to take a break. At least, this is what I've said to people who have thought this.

I have been for a while. I haven't played anywhere in a few months, actually, precisely because I do know 'there is unhealthy crap going on in the brain and I'm not going to subject anyone to that'. It's something I've been pretty clear about with folks for a while. Which, in part, is why it's so offensive to hear the characterizations I'm hearing about the default setting for anyone who may potentially have an issue with a specific type of content, and would like a heads-up if it's going to be included in something, so I can properly avoid that thing.

A clearer example, perhaps, on the broader point, would be something like this: instead of a restaurant, picture you're that person with the food allergy again.

Now imagine that it isn't a standard for the ingredients you buy at the grocery store to be listed on the packaging, which is all sold in uniformly sized white boxes, so you don't even actually know what you're getting.

A notice on the front of the store that says it sells every kind of food and basic home good a grocery store usually sells with only the most minor variances is not going to help you any, especially if quite literally every store extant today functions this same way.

You can pick up the box and shake it. You can squeeze it and see if it feels like it's solid or squishy. You can smell it. It's still sealed and opaque, and you can't tell if it's milk or rat poison.

You know you're in a store. It has items that can keep you alive (because you have to eat), and things that can kill you (even if you don't have a food allergy that could kill you for buying the wrong food). You have some methods that may help you guess at the contents of the opaque white box, but at best, you're guessing. Yes, you can ask the person at the counter every single time an event is posted if the contents of this box contain gluten or rat poison or peanuts or shellfish, and they'll probably tell you if you can catch them, and maybe they'll be nice enough to, like @mietze, ask you if you know there's rat poison in that box, not the milk you might have been intending to buy, and help you find the (equally unlabeled) milk if that's what you were looking for.

It would, still, just be far simpler to put some kind of basic labels on the boxes, if not a little window somewhere, to make them less than completely opaque.

[mietze]

If you want actual participation you need to be very specific and brief in your presentation. Few people are going to read a screen long overly justifying news file. They just aren't.

If you make it too "wah WAH wah" Peanuts adult voice then people will actually be more confused not less.

Probably some definitions are in order though to make sure everyone is on the same page.

[surreality]

@mietze I tend -- tend -- to stick the instructions in one spot, and the explainer/rationale behind an expand tag/etc. for most things. So it's there if people are curious about the why, and they can find it easily, but it isn't typically all in one giant textblort. Usually. There are some exceptions, but they tend to be on the rare side. The whole preference writeup page I linked a ways back, for instance, is the 'if you're curious about why we're doing this, here's the big explainer'. The actual instructions for using them are just a couple of basic lines on the chargen and character page form.

There's also a notable XP incentive in CG for filling out the very basic ones -- general prefs, timezone/availability, GMing prefs -- and a smaller one for any of the general subject ones. It is work to write those things down, even if I think it's in someone's own best interest to do it even without the carrot. But it's also beneficial to the game in that you get a general idea of what the currently active crop of players is looking for -- amongst themselves, in storylines from staff, in PrPs from GMs -- and that's genuinely helpful reference for the game on the whole, and contributing to that information pool in that way, with the effort it requires, is worth a carrot or two in thanks for helping to contribute to that shared resource, IMHO.

[mietze]

For example: Incest. Is that blood relatives only? What about legally permitted relationships like between second cousins. Is it incest if two step siblings hit it off, even though they did not live together during most of their childhood? What about a person marrying/fooling around with their sibling's partner?

Suicide: Off screen okay? Is staged to look like suicide homicide ok? Is it acceptable for pcs to commit suicide in the scene?

Child abuse: Actively in front of the pc is not okay, what about mentions? Does this only encompass physical violence (and does that include spanking, or denial of food, etc) and sexual violence or does it also include yelling/name calling?

I don't think you have to think of everything but if the goal is to truly protect people and allow them to participate without having to ask for clarity, then making sure there is a uniform expectation of what falls into that category for all scene runners/participants is a good idea. Otherwise it makes it meaningless; and things might be mislabeled (lowballed or highballed).

[Thenomain]

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

A clearer example, perhaps, on the broader point, would be something like this: instead of a restaurant, picture you're that person with the food allergy again.

No, no, stop, see, just stop. Everyone has their example. Several people are countering with one example with another. There's a point—often starting with 'for example'—where those examples confuse the issue. And when someone else chimes in with their example, you end up with people telling others that they are missing what you're saying, and they say that you're missing what you're saying. More examples doesn't help. Addressing the confusion helps. "Talking past each other" is a thing that is happening and you are violently agreeing with things that at least half a dozen people have said.

[surreality]

@mietze That actually brings up a good point. The way I'm looking at implementing the flags is through a web form that will generate the event data, and it'd just be checkboxes for 'contains this sort of content' that would be right along side things like a 'for <sphere>/<faction>/all/etc.' dropdown and so on to fill in the usual sort of info. (Then a temporary event object people can sign on to can be generated on the MUX itself, and when the event is complete, a few clicks can preload the event log page on the wiki with the event data that was entered before.)

It'd be possible to scale some of these things, and it's relevant, too. Not just 'includes the content', but something like a none - mild - moderate - severe selection could help narrow things down.

For instance, a subject could have examples of each level for extremity.

Taking the archetypal rape example, mild might be 'encounter a group of people who have been assaulted at a previous time and are fleeing an area where they had been confined, investigate a serial rapist in an interview with a victim with no graphic details', moderate might be 'encounter a very recent victim, hear an account including more graphic detail, free a group of people trapped in sexual slavery from a cell where they're being held', with anything beyond that 'severe'.

It's definitely an option just as easy to implement, really, just means more examples to write down. I don't know if that would lead to more or less confusion or more or less rules lawyering, but it may help clarify some of those things.

Taking a less dread-inspiring example, something like 'sexual content' could be something like 'mild - speed dating/school dance', 'moderate - scene takes place at a strip club or on lover's lane where the hook man hangs out/college party with hookups', 'severe - BDSM orgy a-go-go'.

[Ghost]

I kind of feel like a color-coded list of what is Amber level sexual content versus Red level sexual content would only result in arguments about whether or not certain situations belonged in which category, and will drive us further away from the point.

Also, constructively, I feel like a complex system that players would potentially need to consult a chart to determine how to code the content in their scenes, tag them appropriately, and label them to avoid offending anyone, would just lead to confusion and a grand amount of work that would dissuade players.

When someone posts an event and lists the rating as "R"-rated with elements of violence, sexual situations, and gore, I think this gives the players a definite idea of what to expect from the scene. I really do think that this system is simple, gets the point across, and does a good job as it is.

But when it comes to non-events, such as random pickup scenes, the majority of people don't exactly know where the scene is going to go.

There are rules and guidelines as to what is acceptable or not in the game, and I feel like roleplaying in this nervous environment where people have to be constantly careful and pre-approve player decisions with other players works against the concept of healthy emotional disconnect, and instead encourages a lack of OOC emotional detachment.

Why aren't the rules, guidelines, some well-placed ratings and warnings before +events, and proper conduct behaviors not enough?

On a long enough timeline, if the expectation is that we are pre-approving already pre-approved roleplay behavior with the OOC personalities who control the characters, then aren't we technically creating an environment where extreme levels of OOC emotional attachment can fester?

Being communicative is one thing, but having to fear people with a lack of emotional disconnect is a whole other ball of wax.

[surreality]

@Ghost said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

On a long enough timeline, if the expectation is that we are pre-approving already pre-approved roleplay behavior with the OOC personalities who control the characters, then aren't we technically creating an environment where extreme levels of OOC emotional attachment can fester?

For a very simple reason.

When someone hits a trigger in the course of RP, it isn't that they suddenly think they are their character, and what is happening to the character is happening to them as a player. That would, yes, indicate an attachment problem.

The reality is almost entirely the opposite. Events in a scene hit a real life traumatic memory, and forcibly jar the player completely out of the character and the scene, and in the case of flashbacks, entirely out of the actual reality they are experiencing at that moment, and into the traumatic memory.

At that point, the person really could not give a damn about the game, the character, other characters, etc. and will probably become completely incommunicative at least for a time until they can withdraw (sometimes with an explanation, though some people I've seen just log out and explain at a later time) to deal with the RL issue. Some folks in the midst of a panic attack may wig out on game, but I haven't seen a lot of that; usually typing is a bit beyond the capabilities at that point. Folks having a flashback? Generally speaking, they're really just not there right now, leave a message at the beep, so it's unlikely they're going to communicate much if at all.

There's nothing about attachment -- inappropriate or otherwise -- going on here, and it's not about being too emotionally invested in a character at all, or even necessarily in what is happening to the character you're playing. Look back at @Ganymede's RL example for a good reference point on this.

These people are really not the melodramatic, entitled drama queens that throw around 'triggerzzzzz!' every five seconds when they don't get everything they want while stomping their feet like petty tyrants. Those people? Have hijacked a real issue to use as a manipulative tool and sacred absolution from any consequence for their behavior, have muddied the waters considerably, and to say my opinion of them is unkind would be an understatement.

What you have been consistently describing, I would agree, absolutely applies to these people. I can't say it applies to the people described above who are actually experiencing a panic attack or a flashback, because odds are pretty high they're not going to be communicating with you very much -- to yell, explain anything, stomp their feet, apologize, or anything else, because at that point, reality has taken precedence to the game to such an extent that the game is just not all that important, and that's pretty much the polar opposite of attachment.

[SparklesTheClown]

I should just note that I am noticing something that I've noticed in other threads that are supposed to be constructive, which is saying "No, this idea won't work", and then not offering a viable alternative.

If you don't have a viable alternative, then figure out how the idea that you're saying can't work, can work. I personally don't find it constructive to pick apart why everything can't work but never have anything to constructively offer after that.

[Gilette]

@Arkandel

To rephrase: How do we prevent someone from being unfairly portrayed as the bad guy (there was an incident earlier where someone was explicitly asked to play one, then afterwards was accused they should have 'known better') and at the same time to not blame the victim and protect an asshole as has been the actual case many times in MU*?

TBQH, you can't. An issue like that is going to require diving into the histories of the people involved and it'd almost certainly devolve into hurt feelings and she said he said.

@HelloProject said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

I've been on plenty of games where the sorts of perspectives here on, like, what is essentially basic human social interaction and setting up expectations based on that, would be considered downright alien. Saying "This is unacceptable and I shouldn't have to adhere to the basic social etiquette of every day life in a MU, because <insert worst case scenario here>", is a bit outrageous. Basic social etiquette and communicating expectations is many, many steps removed from "being someone's therapist".

I personally think that if one is unable to communicate at a super basic level without it being distressing or making them feel the burden of a thousand therapists, GMing is probably not for them.

I agree with this. The problem is, there aren't many normal people with a decent grasp on social interaction on MUs anymore. TBQH, I think we're truly into the twilight of the medium and the only people remaining are romantics who can't let go to a dying pastime, coding wizards and people with issues they're trying, and often failing, to work out. The demographics are hilariously skewed, as this thread is proving.

Also, if you're going to pull a I NEED TO STEP AWAY FROM THIS THREAD then please fucking leave and not post ten more times. This thread has the potential to be really interesting but there's like half a dozen people trying to turn it into their personal truth and reconciliation committee. I'm sorry that there are things that trigger you, severely or otherwise -- but I don't actually care, either.

[Ghost]

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

When someone hits a trigger in the course of RP, it isn't that they suddenly think they are their character, and what is happening to the character is happening to them as a player. That would, yes, indicate an attachment problem.
The reality is almost entirely the opposite. Events in a scene hit a real life traumatic memory, and forcibly jar the player completely out of the character and the scene, and in the case of flashbacks, entirely out of the actual reality they are experiencing at that moment, and into the traumatic memory.

I understand that distinction. You're saying that it isn't about emotional attachment, but that in the event of an anxiety episode, there's a trauma that takes place on the other end of the keyboard that can be quite disabling and painful for the person experiencing it.

The logical debate that is happening here seems to be between two high-level viewpoints:

1. That the people who suffer from these kinds of PTSD/anxieties/etc are a part of the community and that specific policies or practices should be in place to allow them to participate in a way that's comfortable for them.

and

2. That some of these extended OOC emotional needs can result in dangerous, disruptive, or unhealthy situations outside of the expected behaviors of the playerbase, and that many of the themes central to these games include content classic to many emotional triggers. Reasonable attempts can be made to help players with these needs, but in the end, the responsibility for the emotional response of players to in-game, within-bounds content ultimately falls onto the player.

[The Tree of Woe]

I would say that there is also a frequent occurence, in my observation, that people don't feel like they have the right to say "no", such as "I don't want to play with VASpider, and no, I don't need to give you an explanation or an excuse, I just don't want to, and I have the right to not want to."

Or, worse, people don't feel like another person has a right to say "no." Specifically, to them.