The State of the Chronicles of Darkness
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@Derp said:
But to the levels that it's usually taken on MU's? The poor orphaned battered sex slave that was kidnapped by the fae and then came out to find that all the things she loved and held on to are gone and everyone hates her and she lives on the streets, etc, etc, etc.
This is pretty close to my last Changeling alt's background. The difference is that she didn't talk about it.
People don't seem to understand that abuse generally goes unreported or is accepted by the victims. That's why it's so insidious, and why studies underestimate the number of actual victims.
I see nothing wrong with the concept or idea. I can accept your premise that players will fuck it up, but I see no wisdom in crafting an idea based on the ignorance of others. So, I rather like this approach, which I consider impressively nuanced for gaming-writing.
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I feel like that Curse writeup needs some serious pronoun clarification.
ETA: Although it's also possible I just need to read it when I'm not sleep-depped.
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There's a bunch of basic spelling/syntax/etc errors through the whole thing. It's like a first scribble of a draft, really.
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@Derp said:
@Ganymede said:
@Derp said:
That's just begging for everyone playing Changeling: The Trauma Victim to drive every Ogre around them into a dark spiral.
I thought that was the point of it, actually. I can see how being around the abused only feeds into the cycle of abuse further, or causes the victims to lose a sense of how the world is supposed to work.
Maybe. But to the levels that it's usually taken on MU's? The poor orphaned battered sex slave that was kidnapped by the fae and then came out to find that all the things she loved and held on to are gone and everyone hates her and she lives on the streets, etc, etc, etc. There could be a new sob story every ten minutes, and there are tons of people around that love to talk about how they've got it worse than everyone else.
That would make ogres impossible to play, in an online environment. TT, sure, you're around a limited group that isn't bellyaching all the time, but on a MU?
I think you're misunderstanding the curse. Ogres insist that they don't feel pain and they don't show it off much. Iron Stamina is probably super-common. They have Clarity breaking points when their own pain is presented to them (or to their friends) in a way that they can't deny. They're the abuse victims who keep themselves safe by showing no weakness, because they have learned that any crack in their armor is just ammunition for those who want to hurt them. Like the ex-boyfriend in the example, who probably just means that the Ogre should come to terms with his parents' deaths before trying out relationships with living people. From the Ogre's perspective, it's a personal failing to be that hung up on someone who has died, and having that weakness brought up in conversation is terrifying.
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See... that reads an awful lot like it's the source of the ex-boyfriend's pain that would cause the break. Perhas that's where I'm getting disconnected.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@Derp There are multiple angles from which to approach this.
- Changelings are messed up. If there's a changeling and an unidentified person in a scene, and only one of them has emotional issues, it's almost certainly the confirmed changeling.
- Examining the grammar. In this case, the male pronoun has been used to refer to the Ogre previously in the same paragraph. We have the introduction of an ex-boyfriend, then a reference to the Ogre, then more pronouns. When there are two individuals with the same pronoun in a narration, you refer back to the previous direct reference. In this case, the "he" follows "an Ogre".
- Look at the sentences following that. "Bringing up those dead parents again won’t do it. However, pointing out that he’s broken his fist in a fight about the honor of his dead mother, that’s a new break." First, it would be absurdly crippling, not to mention unthemely, for the fightingest of the Seemings to get broken up about other people being physically injured. It does make sense if the curse is about needing to remain stoic, because breaking your hand is a point of weakness. Second, how does this sentence make sense if it's the ex-boyfriend whose parents died? That would be going into pretty deep characterization for a character who is essentially a throwaway (used here to indicate that the Ogre's emotional issues are getting in the way of his love life). The "he" is still coming after "an Ogre" as the most recent direct reference.
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@Derp said:
See... that reads an awful lot like it's the source of the ex-boyfriend's pain that would cause the break. Perhas that's where I'm getting disconnected.
What Sammi said. The above is def not the case. It's being forced to confront their own pain and its sources, not other people's.
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I read it as @Sammi and @HelloRaptor did (and I still read it that way now that I'm awake), though I hope the final edit improves on this version's, er, clarity. Pun not intended.
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For once, I'm not the one getting the reading entirely wrong. People can pick on you, especially the more they know about you, but not just because it's Tuesday.
Also, someone recently pointed out to me that physical appearance and Arcadia escape agency are permanently linked, which means if you want to be a bully you have to look like an Ogre. Neh.
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@Thenomain said:
For once, I'm not the one getting the reading entirely wrong. People can pick on you, especially the more they know about you, but not just because it's Tuesday.
Also, someone recently pointed out to me that physical appearance and Arcadia escape agency are permanently linked, which means if you want to be a bully you have to look like an Ogre. Neh.
No?
/The way you escaped Arcadia/ and your Seeming are linked, but that does not mean that if you want to be a bully you have to look like an Ogre. If you escaped by stabbing someone in the back, you could just as easily be a Darkling, or if you escaped by transgressing 'civilized' boundaries (which bullies often do) you could be a Beast, and regardless of what you did to escape, that says not a whole lot about the person you've become since then. You can be a controlling Fairest who has become a tyrant and bully, a Darkling who thrives on weaponized gossip, a burly Beast who pushes people around, etc. Just as much freedom as you had before.
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Semantics. Your Seeming is basically who you are now.
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@Thenomain said:
Semantics. Your Seeming is basically who you are now.
If your definition of "semantics" is "entirely incorrect", then yes, I suppose so. And your Seeming is no more "basically who you are now" than it was in 1.0. In some ways less, because before seeming and kith were linked and formed the thrust of a whole identity for a Lost. Now, there's more nuance - your kith is what your Keeper forced upon you, your Seeming is what you took for yourself. A part of your identity, sure, but maybe not a part you ever wanted, or a part that defines you entirely. A Fairest might have had a moment of heroism that left its mark on her, but she could totally be a coward in most circumstances who resents the way that the ONE TIME she managed to step up and take the reins is now stamped on her head for all eternity, giving all these people expectations that she knows she can never fill.
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I entirely disagree with how you're taking this, @Pyrephox, so mark it down to difference of opinion and not "you are entirely correct". I didn't go to the snarky better-than-thou, but if you're opening the door to that then enjoy walking back out through it.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
It's as if the same source material can inspire characters in more than one ways.
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@Thenomain said:
Also, someone recently pointed out to me that physical appearance and Arcadia escape agency are permanently linked, which means if you want to be a bully you have to look like an Ogre. Neh.
Logic fail. Not all changelings who are bullies escaped Arcadia by replacing their hearts with stone and beating their way out. All changelings who escaped by replacing their hearts with stone, etc. are Ogres.
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@Sammi, you have no idea how little I missed our talks.
edit: I know that in logic 'x therefore y' <> 'y therefore x'. This is a fact that I'm pretty sure that I know how to apply in day to day conversation. Getting jumped on not once but twice that I'm not using this correctly without anything else to say? Yeah, that door that Pyre opened up is there for you, Sammi. If this is all the conversation will be, you two can have it without me.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said:
I know that in logic 'x therefore y' <> 'y therefore x'. This is a fact that I'm pretty sure that I know how to apply in day to day conversation.
Clearly X is not Y. X comes before Y in the alphabet, Thenomain.
Alphabet fail.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
-Mark Twain -
It's not about logic (to me). It's a matter of looking at material meant to encourage us to come up with creative takes on tropes and themes then trying to bind them into some very highly refined stereotypes.
That doesn't mean theme doesn't matter - because it does, a lot - but that whether a character fits within a certain scope usually can't be defined beforehand. Unless a player complete goes off the rails with some sort of major brainfart, a PC might look iffy on paper then you end up seeing them in play and go "shit yes, this is perfect".
My rule of thumb: A great player will make iffy concepts work. A bad player will play iffy concepts trying to pretend they're a great one, and prove the opposite.
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@Pyrephox said:
@Thenomain said:
Semantics. Your Seeming is basically who you are now.
If your definition of "semantics" is "entirely incorrect", then yes, I suppose so. And your Seeming is no more "basically who you are now" than it was in 1.0. In some ways less, because before seeming and kith were linked and formed the thrust of a whole identity for a Lost. Now, there's more nuance - your kith is what your Keeper forced upon you, your Seeming is what you took for yourself. A part of your identity, sure, but maybe not a part you ever wanted, or a part that defines you entirely. A Fairest might have had a moment of heroism that left its mark on her, but she could totally be a coward in most circumstances who resents the way that the ONE TIME she managed to step up and take the reins is now stamped on her head for all eternity, giving all these people expectations that she knows she can never fill.
This, all of it, forever.
Not all changelings who are bullies escaped Arcadia by replacing their hearts with stone and beating their way out. All changelings who escaped by replacing their hearts with stone, etc. are Ogres.
Also that, yes.
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@Thenomain said:
@Sammi, you have no idea how little I missed our talks.
I'll still meticulously document every rules point I bring up, just for you. Srsly, though, semantics is huge. Without words having common meanings, and us being able to talk about the manner in which we communicate, our evolution as a species would have dead-ended before the invention of writing. And that is how I justify my nit-pickery.
Getting jumped on not once but twice that I'm not using this correctly without anything else to say?
Something else to say: You were talking about how you couldn't think of any concepts that would fit the new Seemings, but Vera would have made a fantastic 2nd Ed Ogre.
