Posts made by Pandora

@BlondeBot said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Again, my solution is this: Staff need to consistently and relentlessly enforce mutual respect and toleration for other players distress, within reasonable limits.

Again, staffers on most games are already attempting to do this. If it worked just fine we wouldn't be having this conversation, because everything would be wonderful and every single player would feel respected and every single limit would be expressly tolerated.

This thread is not about staffers not making an effort, I know damn well many of them are & I applaud and approve. @faraday makes a good point that people should be able to speak up and deal with their issues & I entirely agree, but again if everyone was doing that, we wouldn't still be having these same issues on a regular basis.

This thread is about how we help, as best we can, the people that fall through the cracks for whatever reason, and how we make it more abundantly clear and more immediately accessible than a line in a policy file that says 'Any player may request a FTB (fade to black) at any time.' but does not specify what the FTB process entails or if they are obligated to deal with negotiating through some creep's 2-paragraph paged description of every sordid detail of what his character did during this so-called FTB.

I don't know why this thread is devolving into 'What we're doing already works' when it so obviously doesn't work for everyone.

I am open to all opinions here, whether in favor or wildly against. I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do, I'm asking what can we do & offering my 2 cents toward a potential solution to a problem that is not going to go away by doing absolutely nothing different and continuing to say 'People, just be better.'

@BlondeBot said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Pandora said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@faraday I'd like to agree, but sometimes the idea of initiating the FTB can be fraught, especially if you've had too many bad experiences of a request for FTB being met with the Spanish Inquisition or wild assumptions being made or guilt trips being initiated. Adults just need to adult doesn't take into account the very real fact that not all adults have the same level of confidence, maturity, or level-headedness. Code won't stop people from being unreasonable, but the same way dots in strength keep everyone from being able to lift + throw 18-wheelers, code here can help.

I don't think it does help, in this instance. It doesn't harm, but it's basically just another FTB system. If there's already FTB no questions asked in place, then this becomes redundant.

The initial issue stated wasn't even about people being unreasonable, it was about people being afraid to speak up. An extra command can't make people feel safe enough to speak up. Typing '+codered' is going to be just as terrifying as 'ooc I'd like to FTB.' or 'p staffer=I'm having trouble with an uncomfortable situation Player B is putting me in.'

Sure, if there's already a policy in place that says FTB = No Questions Asked, but in how many places is this specified in the policy?

@faraday I'd like to agree, but sometimes the idea of initiating the FTB can be fraught, especially if you've had too many bad experiences of a request for FTB being met with the Spanish Inquisition or wild assumptions being made or guilt trips being initiated. 'Adults just need to adult' doesn't take into account the very real fact that not all adults have the same level of confidence, maturity, or level-headedness. Code won't stop people from being unreasonable, but the same way dots in strength keep everyone from being able to lift + throw 18-wheelers, code here can help.

@TNP said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Pandora said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

"Let's fade to black" is fairly often met with 'Why?' or 'Oh, I wish I'd known you didn't TS before we let it get this far.' or 'Lol, let me just do one more pose, your character will get a kick out of this.' or a dozen and a half other things.

Point. And I just added clarification to the news policies that a request to fade to black should be accepted without question and ending the scene at that point.

You're a good egg. That made me smile.

@Testament said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

This doesn't account for interactions with staff either. Staff may care, they may not. There's also the potential that a staffer is the person who might be causing the discomfort.

I'm going to bet a shiny nickel that staffers who don't care or who actively/knowingly put players in uncomfortable situations without recourse wouldn't implement this system in the first place.

@surreality said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

FTB is useful, but as BlondeBot says, it isn't enough for the other extreme end of abuses.

As it stands, with FTB, any unreasonable or extreme someone can imagine is permissible, it just isn't explicitly RPed.

Also, some folks -- when hearing 'FTB' -- will escalate the extreme awfulness of whatever it is in order to try to force the RP and leave the character more viable afterward.

Example: Someone asks to FTB being slapped around and insulted; the other player really wants to RP humiliating the FTB-requesting character, so after the FTB request, they decide that 'slapping around' now includes carving insults all over the other character's body in visible places they'll walk around with for the rest of their RP experience on the game, and throwing acid in their face, mutilating and blinding them in the process.

Questioning and grilling and default-doubting the person saying, 'wait a minute, that's a bit extreme for someone who took your barstool or didn't want to fuck you and that's not the kind of RP I have interest in' is pretty ridiculous when there's zero examination/suspicion given to the people who come up with over the top nonsense, and these folks are by default given full benefit of the doubt and all possible protections.

Stop acting like people who say 'no' are the only people worth side-eye or suspicion. It is so far from being a balanced or reasonable perspective, it's ridiculous.

I'm not really sure what you're arguing for or against here. If people are going off the rails, that's all the more reason to get staff involved. I've not said anything about anyone being side-eyed or viewed with suspicion here, I don't think?

@Testament said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

What worries me is that a system like this could be abused so that someone could make sure that nothing bad ever happened to their character ever.

There are already enough players who feel that any negative consequences to their actions on a game is infringing on what they believe they're comfortable with.

@Pandora said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Hopefully this also addresses the 'no veto' concern as well; if RED is being used in a way the other party feels is unfair, they've of course got the recourse of taking this up with staff. There is no circumstance I can think of where it's better for a player to try and force another player into something than to let staff intervene.

@BlondeBot said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

While the end goal is laudable, I don't think this implementation would work at all. I think it's the kind of thing that can only be established by fostering a game culture of mutual respect and tolerance for people's boundaries.

It seems a slap in the face to game owners who are already sincerely trying their hardest to say 'you're obviously just not trying hard enough to foster a game culture of perfect mutual respect and tolerance & that's why it has not been achieved yet'. So I can't in good conscience agree it's better to do nothing than to try something.

@Carex said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Wait, you are talking about your character's boundaries being violated?

No offense but... suck it up cupcake.

I'm talking about your OOC boundaries regarding IC circumstances. So if for example I don't want to flesh-out a sex scene, or be involved in waterboarding someone's character, or anything that I am uncomfortable on an OOC level with writing.

@TNP said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Pandora Serious question: if someone is so reticent about making waves that they're unable to type 'Let's fade to black.' do you really think they're able to type +codered to mean the same exact thing?

"Let's fade to black" is fairly often met with 'Why?' or 'Oh, I wish I'd known you didn't TS before we let it get this far.' or 'Lol, let me just do one more pose, your character will get a kick out of this.' or a dozen and a half other things. RED is meant to be understood and enforced as an immediate halt, with any objections immediately going to staff, not the player, taking the pressure off of themselves to have to explain or excuse anything.

Hopefully this also addresses the 'no veto' concern as well; if RED is being used in a way the other party feels is unfair, they've of course got the recourse of taking this up with staff. There is no circumstance I can think of where it's better for a player to try and force another player into something than to let staff intervene.

@GreenFlashlight said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Pandora I mean it has been my experience that telling staff my boundaries have been violated is more likely to result in nothing* being done than something, which makes me wonder how effective red cards would be.

*or worse than nothing, but I don't want to get into that again right now

Ah, that's unfortunate. This is meant to inform the other player that your IC boundaries have been violated, and that you no longer wish for the scene to continue. Generally speaking, staff would only be involved if the other player contacted them to say you were using RED in order to break a rule or avoid ICA=ICC.

I think what you're referring to is more in-line with someone crossing OOC boundaries & staff failing to respond adequately, and unfortunately there is no system other than walking away that can deal with staff failing to uphold their end of the player-staff agreement.

@GreenFlashlight said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Pandora My only thought is that these measures can only be successful to the degree that staff can be trusted to enforce them without bias. I can't tell if that's a separate issue from your proposal, but I don't think it is, because the idea has to be enacted within the culture we operate in.

Can you offer a bit more detail? What sort of enforcement are you looking for from staff? Or do you mean in terms of the negotiation when the players can't come to an agreement? Because I feel like if staff on a game cannot enact unbiased player mediation when requested, your roleplay experience isn't safe on that server no matter what system is in place.

With a fairly regular frequency, it comes up that people either don't know their boundaries until they've been crossed, have trouble standing up for themselves, are stressed out by the idea of initiating push-back against uncomfortable IC interactions, and so on.

Within the MUSH community, there don't really seem to be many (if any) concrete steps taken to address this matter, so I was wondering what suggestions people might have for ways that game-creators could facilitate this in a concrete, effective way.

One thought I had was borrowing the concept of safe words from the BDSM community. In a scene, someone could use the command RED to signify that whatever's just happened or in the process of happening has affected them negatively (I don't like to use the word triggered, it has distinctly mocking connotations when used about other people & this isn't that kind of thread) and they'd like it to stop immediately.

There shouldn't be any requirement for them to specify why they want it to stop, that would just be it. This has to stop, now. The onus would then be on the other person to stop & if necessary seek arbitration from staff.

So for example, if someone has been harassing people in the streets on a game and gets arrested and they use the RED command because they don't like being arrested, the roleplay stops and the arresting character contacts staff to explain what's happened and now the onus is on staff to deal with someone being problematic & come up with some negotiated solution, rather than the arresting player having to deal with the headache of someone being OOCly uncooperative regarding their ICA=ICC.

And as another example, if someone has responded positively to another character's flirtatious advances and everything's been fine up to a point but suddenly they're no longer comfortable with the direction/speed of things, they can use the RED command and the scene stops. Again, no explanation or awkwardly apologetic conversation needed, it just stops. And should the other person object (I can't think of a situation where objecting here wouldn't be patently gross but okay, come at me) the onus would be on them to quite literally contact and explain to staff why the scene in question needs to have some third-party negotiated ending.

YELLOW would be 'Can we negotiate?' This puts the brakes on the scene and opens up an OOC dialogue where boundaries, if spotted in the near distance, can be discussed. Even something as simple as 'Hi, I'm fine with being disciplined for the mistake but it feels really bad when your character piles on the insults, could we dial that back a bit?' or 'Hey, things are getting more serious at this point, I'm open to the idea of them hooking up but could we FTB once clothes start coming off?' YELLOW means the person isn't OOCly trying to avoid the IC situation, but instead trying to work with you to keep the IC as comfortable for all parties as possible.

I think YELLOW would be especially important because oftentimes one of the reasons people don't speak up is because they think the other person will assume they are overreacting or just trying to get out of ICA=ICC if they object to anything. We are all adults here, granted with varying levels of empathy, but I think it'd be hard for anyone that isn't a world-class jackass to see a clear-cut indicator that 'This person is struggling with this scene in some way' and not want to help fix it if possible. And maybe there's an impasse, or what they're requesting isn't IC for you - well now you both know, and can end the scene or seek third-party mediation and handle it like adults that tried.

And last but not least, GREEN. Many of us have been in the position of being the aggressor or antagonist in a scene and while it seems like everyone is engaged and consenting on an OOC level, you don't really what people are thinking and it'd be nice to know if they're okay but asking oocly 'Are you still enjoying this?' can be taken as fucking creepy as hell. GREEN simply means 'I'm okay with what's happening here.' Anyone can use it, it means nothing needs to stop or slow down, everything is fine, and everyone can continue without fear that they're bothering anyone on an OOC level.

So, that's my suggestion - any thoughts? Or perhaps you've thought of or heard of similar game-side efforts to facilitate standardized OOC consent for people who struggle to initiate with others?

On the subject of creeps & creepiness:

In much the same way we often quickly close out our porn browser tabs once we're uh... done with them, what is or isn't sexy or welcome can vary wildly with one's mood or willingness to be exposed to it. So what one person may consider creepy behavior, someone else might find alluring in that moment even if they would probably agree it was creepy from the outside looking in.

There needs to be a line drawn between 'creepy in a "I'm just not interested" way' & 'creepy in a coercive/manipulative way' & we should definitely handle them differently. Context matters, and situational expectations matter.

Someone hitting on someone in a bar is expected behavior, and if they do it badly they might be creepy (IC) but that's not by itself indicative of OOC creepiness. Someone hitting on someone in a way that indicates there will be negative repercussions for the player if they choose not to engage, while IC, could certainly be a sign of some OOC creepiness that warrants further action.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the issue of creepiness, but shout-out to all the creeps out there doing it the fun and friendly way, I appreciate some good old-fashioned awkward.

Without context it seems like we're just spreading someone's sexting now. There's at least one person on MSB that could show you all a screenshot of my suggesting sexy cannibalism at them in response to a message they sent; that doesn't make me abusive, just a creep.

@Lotherio That's awesome, I definitely don't have the temperament to do what you do so I appreciate you all the more for it. I wasn't casting aspersions on your desire to help in the MU* context btw, I was pointing out that while you may be trying to help, plenty of people reach out in that same way trying to be instigators or gossip-gatherers & it's hard in a moment of high-pique to tell the difference.

Jesus. How do we prove anything, anymore.

@Tinuviel MU Soapbox has a Discord?

@Groth AFAIK you can't change your #tag to the same one as someone with the same name, but there's nothing stopping you from doing so if you're one letter off.

I'm looking at the IP match to another player. Sure, it's a small world or whatever, but not that damn small.

Also, has anyone cared enough to check if between the two Shalooonsh names on Discord, one of them is spelled shalooonsh and the other is spelled shaiooonsh? Because I've definitely seen people in Discord groups make duplicates of someone's name using the capital-i-looks-like-lowercase-l trick for 'funny hijinks' like sending dick pics.