Sexual themes in roleplay

[Wretched]

I kind of have to go with Raptor here. I mean absolutely no disrespect to people who have faced such terrible traumas in real life.

However 'Rape Fantasy' is also one of the most common kinks I've ever come across, online and in real life, even from actual victims of such crimes. Should you force this fetish on unwilling participants? Clearly not. Sexual Rp, as well as most any RP is consent based, most games have FTB rules and those that don't arent worth playing. But the World of Darkness has explored all levels of depravity. The Core of Vampire is all about slavery with often very many sexual under/overtones. I mean, the blood bond forces one to love you. And of course someone who loves you wants to do everything for you, and often will, but lets not forget that that love is false and unwilling. These themes permeate WoD

However, Rape Dramaqueens do need to GTFO.

[Ganymede]

@HelloRaptor said:

Banning a subject of roleplay for the stated reason that it causes people OOC distress and drama, while engaging in roleplay that causes people OOC distress and drama, seems pretty spot on.

But only if I'm engaging in role-play that causes people OOC distress and drama. If I don't, then I'm not being hypocritical. Your argument assumes facts not present in anything I've said so far in this thread.

Regardless, I justify the ban because I don't want to have to deal with the fallout as staff. It is less about others, and more about me. So, you can call me a capricious, unreasonable bitch, but I whole-heartedly deny that I regularly engage in role-play that causes OOC distress and drama -- or have done so in recent memory.

[7Wonders]

Rape fetishes are sexualizing an act that's about power and control but isn't actually about sex. It requires, if we're defining rape here as between a biological male and a biological female, what we generally define as copulation generally set aside for procreation on a strictly non-social basis.

And y'know? That's really fine. It's not my thing but rape kinks if you're doing that right are about consent and negotiation regarding power dynamics and exchange, which is in every way the antithesis of rape. But taboos are titilating, so.

And that's the problem I think with the players who are trying to work through some halfbaked idea of what rape kinks are and equate automatically to actual rape being also about sexual acts because the commonality is the presence of some genitals.

But they don't often tell other players that this is their angle. Taboos being taboos there's no impetus and no social reward to speaking up. So instead, they commit the text version of walking up to someone on the subway and using their shirt to blow their nose. It's a very clod fisted way of dehumanizing and devaluing another player.

But I really wish that many players who favor this sorta thing actually got the important distinctions. You don't need a plot and a scorched earth to explore and justify an idea about power exchange that makes your bits tingle.

[Arkandel]

@7Wonders said:

Rape fetishes are sexualizing an act that's about power and control but isn't actually about sex.

You can't name acts other than rape which are about power and control taken non-consensually in a World of Darkness game?

It's when we start picking and choosing that the hypocrisy manifests. "This terrible act is worse than the other terrible act!", you know?

[7Wonders]

@Arkandel

Oh, I can but I'm not addressing those Ark. Dominate and Telepathy, as vampire and sometime mage and psychic powahs in the WoD, are often referred to as 'mind rape' for that reason. These powers have nothing to do with TS rape fantasies or TS in general, unless players want to make the effort to add them into whatever it is they're doing.

I am specifically addressing why people apply sexual connotations to rape and take it to a fantasy or fetish place, when rape isn't actually about sex or a sexual act and how in my view there are a fair amount of players with these interests that often don't actually know the difference.

And by being ignorant, they create Problems (tm).

[silentsophia]

I imagine since usually when people read about rape or even encounter it in media, most of the time, it's entangled with sex.

[Cobalt]

I think the name of this thread should be changed to: "The Rape RP Thread".

Since it is clearly not about discussing sexual themes in RP.

[HelloRaptor]

Rape is banned from thread titles for the good of the community(TM).

[silentsophia]

Haha, yeah. How dare people accommodate others.

[Roz]

I'm not going to wade into the argument of whether or not rape plots should or should not be allowed on games, or else I'll just argue forever. (FOREVER.)

But God, it just makes me remember this one player I had years ago on a game I staffed on who would clearly, like -- I swear to God, she would seek out sexual assault on plots we were staff-GMing. And it was this weird game of hahahaha no wtf we're not raping you on a plot. No. Go away. (She was a problematic player all around, this was just one wtf facet. She was just very focused on victimizing her character as much as possible in a way that made others super uncomfortable. Most of the time that was just her choice, but we didn't certainly didn't need to enable it through the staff plots.)

If discussion about actual sexual themes is still open -- I've mostly staffed games where the general attitude was "Sure, if you want, just put a warning/notice on the log in case people don't wanna read your TS." I believe pretty strongly that you can absolutely have character development -- even major development -- and real story through sex. (On one game where posting TS didn't seem to be the habit, a friend and I refrained from posting several logs of ours and were actually sad about it just because there was like this major arc in the characters' relationship, it just happened to be intertwined with a part of their sexual relationship. But best to respect game culture, so we kept our sexytimes off the logs page.)

[Thisnameistaken]

I couldn't care less what people do behind closed doors. If they're having fun and no one's getting hurt, more power to them. The problem I have with rape RP is when it's brought public. When other people are forced to drop what they're doing and be a part of it, simply because it's not in their character's nature to turn away. Also, if a person is in an IC relationship, make sure that person is ok with what's going to happen to your character. If they're not, end the IC relationship before putting them through that and breaking their character forever. I feel the same way about suicides/suicide attempts. Everyone should be able to RP what they want to RP, but don't force it on those who would opt out.

That said, if people need other sexual themes to comment on, there are plenty. What about monogamy/polygamy on MU* vs RL? What about sexual-theme coercion/extortion, which is use a huge NO RL but is a prevalent theme on MU*s? What about the prevalent stereotypes often found on mushes (the 5' tiny submissive ghoul, the large and feral dominant werewolf, etc)? And, someone please clue me in, what about vampire and sex? Do they or they not have/enjoy it? I'm not a vampire player and I've often wondered.

[Arkandel]

There are a lot of conflicting opinions on whether vampires 'really enjoy' sex and to what degree compared to say, drinking blood. You can find (and probably will in this thread) people who feel one way or the other about it.I'd say most people play it up as a mixture of both. I.e. IC sex is still fun, but sex + feeding is better.

As for other themes, it depends on the characters (and even the players) but I see them as modified human behaviors. For example however someone might feel about polygamy, vampires - who are naturally paranoid creatures in general - might not trust their ghouls to sleep with others in case they slipped out valuable information about their affairs, or a werewolf might consider their mate part of the domain, something to literally defend against someone else infringing on their territory on top of what mundane people would consider jealousy per se.

It depends a fair bit on each person's take on the genre as well as the individual PC in question.

[Thenomain]

@HelloRaptor said:

Rape is banned from thread titles for the good of the community(TM).

Nah, just the word "advert" because of AdBlocker.

[AmishRakeFight]

Poly in RP: I've never tried it. I think it's probably a very bad idea if you don't have a pretty good handle on yourself as a self and your ability to handle the inherent insecurities and jealousies that will result or if you already know that you as a player aren't good with this kind of varsity-level person sharing. From everything I've been witness to about poly relationships in character/in games it seems to largely take the player's personality flaws, seal them in a bag with hornets, and then beats that bag with a stick. It's impossible to have fun in character with IC Relationship Twister if you're just tortured and miserable as a player.

That said, the venn diagram of gamers and polyamory is a thing so it happens a fair amount. The success rate of it usually ain't great.

Vampire Sex: It mostly depends on the clan and the rules system nWoD v. oWoD. Certain clans in both old/new have progressive ideas about the role and use of sex, but its largely always a lever being pulled to get another means to an end. For example, some Tremere Houses in oWoD canon have an interest in sex as it fits into magical practice but its not about wibbly bits, just magical study. The Daeva in Requiem use sexuality to feed.

It also depends on the age of the character. A neonate is probably going to be more likely to have some interest in sex but I've always seen it as a remnant of their humanity and biological programming. Much older vampires tend to have no use for it and have stopped taking notice a long time ago.

But vampire players are people and we're all biologically driven towards sex, so no matter what the canon might suggest we do, some people always gonna textfuck in vampire. It's just one of those things.

[Bennie]

I've seen that before quite often. Someone pages you for RP, so you RP, even if it is just baRP. But at some point they either page, or OOC the room, about taking advantage of them, and silence fills the virtual space. "Pardon?"

[Roz]

I've actually got a character in a really successful, long-term poly relationship. I'm sure it helps that the other player is one of my best friends and that neither of the characters is at all prone to jealousy. The bumps they've had in their relationship have had nothing to do with their being poly, but rather the sort of things that would still be issues if their relationship were monogamous.

[Misadventure]

If it's a story element, and not your actual affections and sexual desire in text form, you should be able to make fun and drama from anything, including various challenging or uncommon relationships types. BDSM, polyamory, swingers, bi, trans, ... jealous, possessive, low self esteem, damaged, reckless, careless, hurtful, unfaithful, abusive, uncaring, all of it can be story.

Unless it's your affections and emotions and relationships on the line. You figure it out.

[Thenomain]

@Bennie said:

baRP

Someone add this to the lexicon.

[Arkandel]

@Misadventure said:

Unless it's your affections and emotions and relationships on the line. You figure it out.

Given how many times people have been seen investing ego into their characters' well-being or their endeavors' success, I have a really hard time thinking the same won't apply to the romantic/sexual entanglement angle. Obviously that won't always be the case but the potential for drama is certainly there.

Communication is (as usual) a good way to mitigate damage beforehand although it's not foolproof by any means. For example if I was somehow tempted to get a PC ghoul for my vampire I could make the rules clear about what would happen if they ever wanted to get a different Domitor even if it meant something harsh like 'chances are my PC wouldn't go for it because <X> and try to end yours if he found out'. That'd not be an attempt for intimidation if it happened before CG but rather a way to set the ground rules ahead of time and yet does it mean there won't be issues should the ghoul meet the love of their life on the grid (especially if the other vampire's player in question felt strongly about it?). Hah, no. But that's the reason attachments of that sort to PCs are very high risk propositions.

Not that there aren't valid OOC reasons for things like this to happen. Maybe I'm too inactive and the ghoul's player wants out. Maybe I'm an asshole and the ghoul's player wants out. But them's the breaks.

[tragedyjones]

The ability of vampires to enjoy sex varies greatly with edition of the game. Masquerade Revised explicitly said they DO NOT gain any physical pleasure from sex. Requiem 1 stated they can enjoy it, but it pales to blood, and that is similar to 2nd Edition. Sex is about as pleasurable to a vampire as it is to a heroin addict - it feels good, sure. But you know of a much better rush.