Posts made by Ganymede

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

So what does staff do for those situations? THOSE are the ones that staff actually deals with, not, 'hurr durr someone used a slur'. That stuff is so easily resolved it is a non issue. The above is way more common, and it is -not-, and does not in any way involve, 'oh sure I allowed some player to make a homophobe.'

I disagree.

One case arose recently on Fallcoast. Sonder took steps to address the "hurr hurr someone used a slur" problem quickly.

Another case arose less recently on Fear & Loathing. Staff took no steps to immediately address the "people are engaging in passive-aggressive, disrespectful bullshit OOC chatter-mongering in public that's destroying a group's desire to stay and play on the game."

And then, there's here.

My experience on games as staff is that I get far more complaints about the OOC nastiness and pettiness than any character-altering IC choice.

But, see, you get to play with Arx players, and I tend to get relegated to the WoD slums.

sigh

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

If it were an R-rated movie with more of a historical bent, would you have been surprised if that stuff had been turned up?

I would expect there to be some sort of reason why the writers and directors chose to use that language, rather than engage in a similar, effective portrayal that did not use the language. And I may or may not disagree as to whether that choice was arbitrary.

@auspice said in Good TV:

Netflix has done stellar keeping properly on the dark side without being 'teenager who just doesn't like mommy and daddy right now'

Netflix knows its audience: people that have disposable income. They tend not to be teenagers.

@auspice said in Good TV:

Is Stranger Things 'edgelord emo dark'?

No, but Shadowhunters is, as is The Immortals and The Vampire Diaries.

I consider Strangers Things to be "80s horror." I hope that The Witcher is similarly a horror series. Netflix is good at putting out darker series that appeal to a certain audiences.

I think "edgelord emo dark" is going away, or being relegated to The CW.

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

And good writing never included IC discrimination.

Touche. Critical fail on my expression roll.

Yes, there are plenty of great, timeless stories about discrimination. But, no, the average MU*er is not writing at that level, and likely will not.

Yes, I'm being judge-y about this.

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

"Killing that guy so I don't have to deal with him again instead of letting him linger to potentially interfere with my future plans," has long been considered an acceptable reason to PK with no consent, no discussion, no staff permission, on every WoD game I am currently aware of.

Right. And, in my elder years, I have come to realize that this is a puerile simplification. By that logic, life among the Invictus should be a raging bloodbath; however, it isn't because murdering your lesser without full consideration of their uses is generally frowned upon. The cost-benefit analysis in any vampire game suggests that the best course to domination is to purge everyone, and then re-populate with blood-bound childer. This doesn't really happen, and is a sphere-destroying gaming style that staff ought to curb.

I remain very firmly and aggressively (so sensual) in the position that WoD games out to be non-consent-with-FTB; however, that position doesn't mean I haven't thought long and hard about the thematic implications of adopting policies.

With that in mind, a bar against killing other PCs is far different than staff acting when players engage their PCs in IC discrimination based RL identity groups or barring it entirely. And, also, that's different than my general eye-rolling at seeing the same old unimaginative "edginess" in characters.

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

Man, you must have hated Skullface.

I'd like to think you made Skullface that way for humor value or satire, rather than a genuine attempt at creating an adversarial character.

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

Nobody would be asking this question, as @surreality already pointed out, about murdering another PC.

I would ask the question, actually, because on many of the games I play on, murdering another PC is unthematic. Take, for example, Werewolf 2E. Written into the Oath of the Moon is a prohibition against killing other werewolves. So, if the PCs are werewolves, murdering a werewolf is verboten.

We don't murder people on BSG:U, and killing is generally frowned upon on comic book games, from what I've heard.

What if the 'point' of engaging in IC discrimination is to demonstrate that the PC is a sexist or a racist?

If this is the case, congratulations for perpetuating that horrible truism about art imitating life.

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

Unlike @Ganymede, I disagree that this is an all or nothing case, though I don't entirely disagree with her logic. I agree far more with @faraday because her thesis is that its harm can be mitigated, even eliminated, with respect of the people involved and recognition that this is not really happening.

I never said anything about an all-or-nothing policy.

I'm saying that anyone trying to justify their choice to engage in IC discrimination probably took lessons from the Dan Brown School of Writing. And, no, I don't mind being judgmental about it; there's good writing and there's terrible writing.

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

Thing is, the same would be true for the choice to attack someone instead of negotiate, to murder a rival, etc. We wouldn't -- rightly -- think the player is violent or murder-happy RL based on this choice, and it's also a choice that is reasonably going to create some unhappiness or discomfort or upset on the part of the targeted player.

You've moving the goalposts. I wasn't talking about assaults or murders; I was talking about IC discrimination, which is the topic here.

If the point of engaging in IC discrimination is to demonstrate that a PC is a bastard, there are innumerable ways to do the same without engaging in IC discrimination. For me, the key question is: why would a player engage in IC discrimination? And as I have yet to hear a solid reason as to why a player must engage in IC discrimination, and cannot find any situation where a player should engage in it.

So, as an idea, then, I would say that there is no objective in portraying a character that cannot be done without engaging in IC discrimination based on RL "classes." And, if this is the case, then there's really no harm in banning that kind of behavior everywhere.

It's just an idea. I don't know, maybe people will pick up on it.

@arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

(Spoiler free) For me, Justice League succeeded on the character bits but failed big time on the story itself.

This is probably a good way to look at it, but I will go back to WB's impatience as the real problem here.

Justice League could have been broken into three movies. (See it; you'll understand why.) It probably should have been. There was just so much in it that I thought they could have explored, and I wanted them to. If they had just done what Disney/Marvel did, we could have had a really, really good series.

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

Of course. But that's OOC abuse. We were talking about IC behavior.

This is true, but the choice to engage in IC discriminatory behavior or language is an OOC one.

If we presume for a moment that PCs have no real existence or life outside of the player behind the screen, then a PC engages in IC discriminatory behavior at the behest of the player, and is an OOC choice regarding how to engage in RP.

As another example, if I'm doing on-stage improv and a partner decides to use derogatory or abuse language I am well within my rights to stop what I'm doing and demand that the partner stop as well. Even if that language is reasonable within the scene in which we are acting, the choice to demand the cessation of such language is also reasonable.

I know you're not arguing to the contrary, which brings me to the next point.

What's being debated is whether and how people should be allowed to avoid such parts of the theme entirely - and what impacts that has on other players.

Even if a theme has discriminatory elements -- i.e., in BSG, the Tauron-Caprican conflict -- I do think that a Tauron player can demand that a Caprican player cease engaging in some RP, even if it is within the theme and setting. I think it is reasonable to presume that the Tauron player understands that there could be discrimination and accepts it, but, at the same time, I don't think that means that it is unreasonable for them to expect the Caprican player to stop.

But this is different than if the Tauron player blithely ignores that part of the setting, and expects that every Caprican is going to treat them nicely; in that case, while the Tauron player can ask to avoid that kind of RP, it would probably behoove staff to step in and politely inform the player that he/she/it shouldn't expected to be treated as an equal ICly, if his/her/its PC ends up on a Caprican crew.

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

Really? I would say people do that all the time.

Do what? Force people to deal with unpleasantness?

From a certain perspective, yes. You have to deal with unpleasantness on many games out there, such as the unpleasantness of watching your PC get torn apart by Cylon gunfire or failing at something they ought to be really good at. And I would agree that we do so when we step on games because we accept a game's resolution system when we engage in play.

But there's a difference between accepting a PC death in combat and being forced to witness racist, sexist, or derogatory slurs. As an analogy, consider a Call of Duty multiplayer match. I'll accept getting shot to pieces by some 12-year-old kid, but I will log the fuck out in a second when he starts crowing about how he "raped" me or how girls shouldn't be gamers.

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

I'm not sure why somebody would want to make themselves unhappy in real life for the sake of RP verisimilitude.

I don't know why either, but I'm pretty sure this happens very rarely. I'd like to think gamers are smarter than this.

I'm not sure why they'd expect others to do that, either.

I think this is what most of us are dancing around.

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

Somebody losing their cool because they got called a fag IC while playing a homosexual character, it's perhaps the most pathetic thing ever.

And this is why we're still discussing things.

My brother and I were going to write a science-fiction book where white American nationalists were rounded up and dropped into Syria to serve their hate crime sentences. We stopped because we weren't sure if it would be understood that it was satire and not a true modest proposal.

@collective

You're avoiding the very clear, basic question.

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

So for the fourth time (as you said - thank goodness this isn't a drinking game) ... I am simply soliciting ideas for how folks (this is a general query) suggest implementing this "opt out" policy idea in actual practice.

This goes beyond something as trivial as "hey can we not use the n-word/f-word" "oh sure". I'm always in favor of folks being nice and working things out, but I'm not talking about that.

I may be misreading things, but I think you've got the gist of the policy. The "opt-out" is, I think, that players can opt-out of that sort of stuff by informing RP-mates that they would rather not have the slur used. I can't see any practical way to implement a pre-slur opt-out policy, as no one other than me is omniscient.

The conflict arises where there is no official "opt-out" policy, and the offender tells the offendee, "hey, buzz off, i'm just playing my character." But, in that case, my preference as staff would be to punch the offender in the mouth.

@auspice

I don't know your parents, and I don't know you well.

But the instant my parents started telling and expecting me to act like an adult, I started to do that.

Adults don't tolerate raging dicks, and tend to deal with them with shovels.

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

ETA: Is it really that big of an OOC ask for you (generic) to not use that particular word in reference to my PC?

I don't see anyone disagreeing that with the premise that if someone asks you to OOC stop something, you should stop it.

But I'm beginning to lose the point between the goalpost-shifting here.

I play homosexual characters. I don't expect people to know if I will take a slur right or wrong OOC. I'd prefer if they didn't use slurs IC, but I can understand that their PC might do so. I'd probably avoid RPing with them in the future.

But, because I don't really know if someone's going to take the N-word or a slur well OOCly, I try to avoid using them. And, as I can't find any particular reason to use an "-ist" when building a PC, I don't see why people don't try to use other tropes and ideas to create their edgy antagonists.

I probably wouldn't create a game with a policy of DON'T USE THESE WORDS. But I might.

@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

look I got really frisky with some cardboard last night okay

If it didn't want to be used as it was, it shouldn't have been corrugated.

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

So this is literally a complaint about one single game putting as off limits a sort of RP that some of us don't want to deal with (represented as ALL THE GAMES EVER), and it becomes a BFD.

I'm wondering which game that is because I'm confused now.

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

I don't dodge it.

Succinctly, I know. I think you misread my comment. It was calculated to concur with you, on almost all accounts.

You clearly recognize that, between two ends of a binary construct, there's a whole swath of space to exist in. What I'm saying is that others may not agree or recognize this, so they fall onto the tropes we're lamenting. And some people who do* recognize the other ground still enjoy playing concepts that hang off of the ends.

@surreality

You may dodge the dichotomy, but that doesn't mean that others do.

I find the entire "-ism" thing to be trite. It isn't novel; it isn't edgy; it isn't interesting. If someone picks "racist" just to have an antagonistic side to them, that's like a girlfriend-in-the-fridge protagonist motivation to me. It's been done, and, frankly, it's kind of boring.

If someone's character is racist or sexist as a side-note or a background bit, then there's no reason why it can't be overlooked or ignored, or made to be just as aspect, not a center-piece. And if a character aspect is not a center-piece, then it can be ignored in interpretation.

Still, people fall back on time-enduring tropes because there's a reason they survive: they are simple, over-valued, and as American as apple pie.

@derp

Act II

Him: There's a problem with your memo.
You: What is it?
Him: Why did you include all that information about Civ. R. 41(B)? I just wanted to about voluntary dismissals pursuant to Civ. R. 41(A).
You: With my last memo, you told me to include everything.
Him: Next time, use your judgment, and only give me everything related to the facts of the case and the assignment I brought you.

Welcome to my world.