How should IC discrimination be handled?

Arkandel

@thenomain "Bad things, such as murder, regularly happen on games so why limit some but not others?" versus "Certain bad things trigger players on a personal basis so they shouldn't occur, or emphasis shouldn't be on them, on games since they're played for fun".

Lithium

@arkandel @apos I personally run into situations where people are making light of heroin addiction, when I have known people who have had it ruin their lives and/or kill them.

It's just one of those things where I know I am ultra sensitive about it. I can understand others being ultra sensitive about other things that have happened, either isms, or obia's, or whatever /but/ that doesn't mean the onus is on the game to do something about that. It's on me/others to know when we need to step back.

If I knew a place served only beer and I hate beer (totally hate beer, side rant), I wouldn't go there to partake of what they offered, especially if I knew it was beer in the first place, and then demand that they serve mixed drinks instead of beer.

Auspice

@lithium

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.

Derp

@auspice said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@lithium

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:

People being unfamiliar with real addiction.
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.

Auspice

@derp said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

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

This isn't true of all addicts, either. It can often depend on the person and the stage of addiction. And the type of addiction. But I totally get where you're coming from.

For many it's set dressing. And that desire, too, for viewing it as a cheap flaw for extra XP.

Ganymede

@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!'

If you're going to play an addict, I'm going to take it lightly not because I would make light of it, but because I happen to live near the county with the highest per capita death-from-overdose rate in the country. (We made the news.)

Addiction isn't funny, but I handle the grim reality with absurd laughter. To do otherwise would make me either severely depressed or violently enraged. (I've had a couple of friends long ago who died of overdoses to other drugs.)