Shitposting Rave OOC: Anecdata Sharing and Policy Discussion

I'm ok with it. Mostly because I understand how it works and it's not malicious in intent nor does it mean to cause suffering?

 

Well I mean I guess theoretically Badb might do it to cause suffering. But like with purpose as opposed to out of sheer malice.

But yeah that is right yes. Just wanted to make sure where people's boundaries with this sort of thing lay. This does also neatly push the whole Ganth in Tori's head situation firmly into the "Yeah no" category. Which I'm fine with really. Tori's behavior is thoroughly shit even without Dad being a cockmunch in his head and outright control moments are exceptionally rare anyway.

 

/skims thread, like spams
I'm not here here because I don't have an attention span for conversation right now, but I appreciate everyone's input, and the clarifying back and forth about why things work for you and would be best for you.

Advanced ooc notice sounds like a helpful thing to have, if a sometimes difficult thing to provide. It's easier to know if a character is likely to be upsetting, if we have the option to read a summary of what they're all about and likely to do. And since characterization is loose, the summary the player offers may be more relevant than what a wiki about the character says. OCs that we make up as we go along, they'd be a little difficult to give much for.

 

I want to clarify something.

If I'm not actually in the rave when something happens, I can usually figure out a way all by myself that I missed it.

I'm also anticipating that without FL, there will be a lot less shit I NEED to figure out how to ignore.

Most of the things I have had serious problems with have been things that have happened in the middle of a conversation my character was involved in, either because I had to step away for a short period of time IRL, or things that were actually being done by characters that I and others were interacting with while I was posting.

I am like seriously not okay with this shit, BUT I want everyone to understand that I am seriously also not expecting it to happen again. I am only bringing it up because Swirl wants to know where my boundaries are.

When I think rave magic is being abused, it's because people are using it to do things right in front of other people that they can't stop. I...kind of consider this a form of torture, tbh. Most people don't enjoy watching other people do things like eat a live grub and would rather that didn't happen where they have to watch.

If you do not plan for your character to:

• manifest a live sapient person or good-sized sentient animal (not bugs, tiny lizards, and other natural kit/small troll/animal prey--I'm ok with Klingons eating their worms, but I don't want to watch you tear a living critter apart for shiggles) and attempt to eat it, presumably alive, while your character is having a conversation with mine
• start hitting or kicking small children and/or animals while you are talking to my characters
• spend all their time complaining that animals are allowed to chase rabbits through the rave but nobody will let them eat a live grub
• mock other characters because they've been sexually assaulted
• take over the body of another person while they're still inside it themselves, mutilate and destroy it and make us watch while describing in loving detail the suffering that person is going through
• and similar
• oh and let's not forget, egg people on until they do something awful that I and everyone else will have trouble with for the "lulz" so they can watch the chaos that ensues but be regarded as innocent of wrongdoing, which is like, 90% of the instances Norm ever got in trouble for something that happened with one of FL's characters

the odds are good that we will never, ever have a problem that I can't get past with a short conversation.

 

I feel like everyone thinks I'm a total wreck but I've been ok with like 90% of what's happened in the rave with the people in this thread.

I'm just coming down from being more upset than I've allowed myself to feel because everyone has been "oh, those characters are funny" or "it doesn't violate the rules" when I've attempted to bring it up, and then getting slammed with the rest of this bullshit.

 

I'm taking a break from this due to outside stress, I'd appreciate no pings unless something comes up with one of my characters specifically. I'll probably be back tomorrow sometime tho

 

@cryptoThelematrix Just as a note the above (longer) post reads to me as being kind of unnecessarily spiteful in tone and it singles out FL a lot and I'd rather we wouldn't drag fightyness into this thread? We seperated the threads out to try for a more productive tone here :c I get that you are still upset over it, but this doesn't particularly help right now, especially since FL already said he'd leave!

 

IDK, I mentioned stuff Ipuntya did too. I'm not trying to be fighty, I just don't know what else to say to all the people who are afraid they're going to have to figure out how to hide stuff from me, to get across that they're not, can you help me with that?

 

I dunno, the thing is I think there's a disconnect where you seem to think of the rave as more... bound by the laws of physics than I do for example? So if like Idk, Someone ate a really stinky cheese* sandwich in a post they were also talking to my character, who hates stinky cheese, in, then if I didn't wanna play out a fight about stinky cheese I'd just assume there's several iterations of the other guy's character rn and one of them not eating stinky cheese was talking to my character because reality and causation are optional???
Meanwhile if stinky cheese killed my pet dog I'd be going to the spr ooc and go "Hey can we spoiler mentions of eating stinky cheese and ideally not involve my characters [link to a masterpost compilation] in stuff with stinky cheese in it?" and then we'd find a solution for it so I don't even have to see stinky cheese before enacting the initial solution.

* I'm using a kinda ridiculous mundane example on purpose for this hypothetical and I hope it doesn't come off as condescending???If I'm sounding like a total dick pls tell me.

Anyway the thing why we're nailing down policy right now is that that kinda stuff is sorta among the list of things I'd think require much more careful checking in and ooc communication to not be real easy to hurt people with so I don't think it's suitable for fast and loose stuff like the spr anyway? That kind of stuff should involve the kind of tags and content warnings you'd give if it was a fanfic too, which is why the frames of reference floated around guidelines wrt potential rating classification are so useful and also making a personal commitment to actually clearly communicate in the OOC Thread if any of us are uncomfortable.

(If I make no sense it's because it's 1am, oops)

 

You're absolutely right about the disconnect, but it's not because I think of the rave as a specific thing as being bound by the laws of physics, it's because my brain doesn't do that thing that yours does. I have not been able to make it do the thing. I have tried.

 

That's fair and I'm sorry! It's just unfortunately only going to be able to be resolved by a lot of communcation OOC in that case, probably?

 

@unknownanonymous: I think you'd work better in a situation where we didn't add much more in the way of rules but encouraged people to bring up things that they had a problem with?

 

yeah, probably

 

The biggest problem I have with "no rules, bring it up if you have a problem" is that I'm used to hearing a lot of "there's no rules that says they can't do that" and then I just shut up again until the next time I get to the point I can't stand it.

 

@cryptoThelematrix I think what I'm getting from that longer post is, some character actions are more upsetting and difficult to tolerate when the ambiguous hand-wavy rave magic is the only offered or available way for you to respond to it? That, in all those examples, you believed the players would not cease, or in any way help by finding a way to specify that they were in a secluded area, and that all the burden of tolerating upsetting content was on you with the more upsetting method of "just pretend it's not happening even though other characters are acknowledging it" ?

 

Well yes.

(Not to be fighty, but you can't seriously think FL would have ever stopped doing anything just to make me feel better.)

We talked about it several times. All anyone ever said to me was "pretend it isn't happening". Valiska actually snapped on Itch to the point where I took her out of the rave for my own sanity. People knew that. We had a long talk about it where I promised everyone that I would in the future make it clearer that I, as well as my characters, were upset, because I *had* been trying to deal with it in character by having my characters react and try to stop it, since everyone else seemed to think a lot of it was funny, and when that didn't work, by having them say they would find somewhere else to hang out, and then there was that day I just got too upset to deal any more. I know you can't have forgot this.

My brain won't do that. I don't know why. It might be because my mother is a champion gaslighter and her favourite tactic was to tell me that things that were happening right in front of my face weren't real. But it could also just be my flavour of brainweird.

Unfortunately, I don't play characters who can just decide not to care about terrible things happening in front of them, and unfortunately, I can't just "pretend it isn't happening".

At the same time I want you to know that I'm not the only one who has serious problems with the level of emotional, physical and verbal violence that has become the norm in the Rave. I won't ping Kit because she's been having a lot of problems and drama sends her into terrible depression spirals, but you should ask her why she's never in the Rave any more and really listen to what she says.

Jamoche isn't around much at all any more but if I can get her back you should talk to her too.

That said, I really think that things will get a lot better at least for me because the primary source of my Rave-connected pain is gone. IDK about Kit and Jamoche.

 

Right. You might be surprised by the way my memory works and doesn't work at times. It kinda sucks at stuff sometimes.

To compensate for that, I'm trying to not rely on my memory, but to say the thing here, clearly, so I can easily reread it in a relevant context. I summarized my understanding from this and other conversations, to confirm that I now understand you correctly. Because all this time, until UA made that comparison for me, I have not.

 

I have a suggestion if you guys are having trouble coming up with a system for boundaries in the shitposting rave. I've been involved for several years with a story gaming group that does does high intensity roleplay (story games we've done include domestic abuse and honor killings, so it can get too heavy), the game masters developed a system to keep people from getting stuck in scenarios that are uncomfortable/triggering for them.

The gist: Everyone in the rp wears a name tag with a green, yellow and red dot on it. The wearer can point to different colors to signal to the other people in their group what they want without breaking character or interrupting the flow
: Green is 'yes keep going' to encourage the delving into a direction that might be problematic for other people
Yellow: "I'm not comfortable, back off" signalling to the other person to back down from the current thread if something becomes too much for the other person (back down as in change the subject, soften the action)
Red: "Full stop" drop the current thread, back up and discuss OOC.

The gist is that everyone can't be excepted to intuitively know everyone else's boundaries, but everyone should be able to have control over their experience. The above is used specifically for Story Gaming groups in face to face/tabletop scenarios, but it could be adapted for online play. I am going to a big gaming convention tomorrow so I could look into more ways to communicate boundaries in RPs.

 

I understand. I don't mean that you should remember the epiphany you just had. I just thought you might remember previous conversations.