Shitposting Rave OOC Content Controversy

ETA: the below is the post which started the whole thing, and it happens to be my post. So, @swirlingflight is the SPR mod...but I am the person who can edit this post.

Nothing below the line of tildes has been edited since Saturday. I'm only editing this post to respectfully request that if you are not either a player in the SPR or a former player in the SPR who left because of content (any kind of content; we've got some people riled about sex-related content and others riled about the level of violence and nastiness) you stay out of this thread.

Please do not come here to white-knight for someone when you don't know what the actual situation is, because that's how the whole shitstorm got started.

The purpose of this thread is to help @swirlingflight make decisions about the rules for SPR, not to determine if any person on any side of the argument is the offspring of a hamster whose partner smelt of elderberries.
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OK, this is annoying and I have no idea how to respond to it. The "rules" of the space are there for the players, not the characters, to read. None of my characters are even aware that they're on a freaking forum. It's my job as a player to follow the rules and none of my characters have had this experience. I can't tell if this is IC or thinly veiled OOC, but I feel like I'm being told what experiences my characters had here, and while Kankri can have had whatever experience he likes and it's his job to be annoying, it rubs me the wrong way. Not least because I think his interpretation is bizarre.

Underage people have the complete right to say "I'm 15 and what is this" if a conversation upsets them. Additionally, anyone else has the right to ask a conversation that's upsetting them to stop.

But right now, given that I'm getting shit from Kankri and TNFL is your self-insert, I don't know whether I'm making you uncomfortable and/or doing something you think is breaking the rules, and it's making me really uncomfortable because you are a minor.

At the same time, I can't possibly know what would make you uncomfortable because your characters make me uncomfortable all the freaking time. It's IC for them as they are 50 Shades of Cronus, and you spoiler the kitten-eating, so I don't complain about it. But I can't gauge your comfort zone in RP because you do stuff in the SPR that I wouldn't allow in a game I was running.

It's probably not the Pines family you have a problem with, it's probably me. I try to separate IC/OOC and I think I do a pretty good job, but at the same time there are character traits and character actions that I couldn't write a POV character ever approving of, because I would upset myself--I write and run villains who do stuff like that, but they're villains and I don't have to live in their heads while I'm playing. So you have many characters that none of my characters are ever going to like unless I bring in my villains, but I don't want to have interpersonal troubles with you?

It is my opinion that sexual information (no my species doesn't have knives on their dicks) properly spoilered, or comments like "any two sapient beings can find a way if they really want to" do not in any way constitute hitting on minors or showing/sharing porn with minors. None of my characters in the cat dick discussion were addressing minors and Ford didn't say anything to TNFL that he hasn't said IC in WT to Dipper, who is dating a troll pitch and a catte flushed. And it embarrassed Dipper a little, because talking about sex with your parental figures is always embarrassing, but he didn't feel abused, probably because he knows there is no way Ford would ever ever in a million billion years want to talk as a peer with him about sex, or to gods-forbid hit on him.

If this is not IC/OOC blurring I apologise. But it feels like it is.

 

i was reading through some of this thread and the SPR and i'm really uncomfortable with how i saw some things go down yesterday. i feel like the boundary between what is acceptable and unacceptable to post in the SPR wrt to NFSW material is greyer than it should be, and i think that should change. some of you did spoiler your material, but some of you didn't, and what i saw was multiple pages talking almost exclusively about NSFW stuff. (with very few exceptions, i don't know who's playing who).

also, i don't think it's appropriate to argue with minors about their preferences to not see NSFW material in a SFW thread. IMO, the onus is primarily on the adults in the situation to create safe environments for minors, not for minors to argue whether or not they should have to see pages of discussions of 18+ material.

i agree that many, if not all, of the posts in the SPR were within the rules stated on the front page. but i still think harm happened, and boundaries may have been flounced on. because while the material was mostly correctly spoilered or vague or impersonal, what resulted was a thread-wide, pages-long discussion into topics that minors could not engage with. and when a minor possibly tried to advocate that "hey maybe this isn't great," they got debated with.

i think we need clearer rules, and i think we should have a NSFW/18+ SPR specifically for NSFW interactions and discussions. i think if characters are talking about something that's edging past grey, said characters should take it to the NSFW thread.

 

Agreed! But the problem is that TNFL is a self-insert so us other rpers are unsure how much he says are things FL himself is saying. Everyone wants to have appropriate boundaries here, but it can be hard to tell exactly where that is in some cases. Thank you for your input!

 

I also don't see the problem with spoilering NSFW material. Switching threads can be pretty hard esp if you've got attention or brain problems, but you're right in that NSFW material shouldn't be out in a thread where minors frequent. Anything too explicit is faded to black, but there's some things that are more in a gray area, like characters talking in a sex ed way to other characters, which should be spoiled and tagged.

I don't want to have to ask you to go back for specific examples of what you were uncomfortable with untagged, but I am curious if your boundary of 'this should be spoiled' is different from the players in those cases. Not saying you're wrong there, but I think everyone is TRYING to keep the spr accessible.

 

i absolutely agree with the line between IC/OOC was blurry there, but i think there are a lot of reasons that might be, and it's better to lean towards ones that enforce boundaries. there are a lot of ways to read that, but there is a distinct possibility that it was a minor trying to enforce a boundary.

suggestion for the "it can be hard to tell" problem: lean towards being way too cautious of boundaries 100% of the time and the other party can clarify if they want you to loosen up.

i guess part of my problem was that all of it wasn't spoilered. if all of it was spoilered i don't think it would be as big of a deal. i saw multiple people talking about sex and pleasure and kinks etc, unspoilered.

i agree that everyone ideally wants to keep the place safe and accessible. but i also see that when a minor did something that was "maybe stating a boundary, maybe trolling, maybe just roleplaying" what resulted was arguments both in character and out, about both the contents of their arguement and their choice of delivery

 

I don't really think there were arguments out of character. There were people ASKING. In character? Characters argue without it being personal.

 

go back one page in this thread

 

Yes. I don't consider that an argument.

 

Also I don't think talking about sex in the abstract is something that's 18+? Like there are young adult books that talk about sex, and pleasure. I understand your concerns but I don't think FL would want everyone to assume that everything he says ic reflects stuff ooc. I think he's a person who can state his boundaries ooc and I am waiting for him to do so.

 

this gets back to putting the onus on the minor to advocate in multiple ways for their boundaries to be respected

there are multiple ways to read that situation and i feel like if we don't know what was intended we should default to a baseline of "better spoiler or cease discussion of the nsfw thing that might possibly be making the minor uncomfortable"

 

Which characters are you even talking about because FL plays Tugger, who was in a good hunk of the cat dick talk stuff.

What are you rating where the SPR should be at? I view it as a PG13 space + leniency for swearing. What is your definition of 18+? Because that is highly variable even from country to country.

 

Okay but FL plays rum tum tugger in a rather suggestion (but not nsfw!) way and has previously expressed that TNFL is not representative of FL's views. CT asked for clarification about boundaries so that she can keep to them better and expressed that she is uncomfortable with many of FL's characters for trigger-related reasons and that's not in him. You're interpreting that as... what?

 

Also, that would make me uncomfortable if I was a minor. Minors are minors, they're not made of glass, and they can and should be free to express their own boundaries without other people making decisions for them.

 

And this isn't me being mean! If everything FL expresses upset at gets immediately shut down because he's 14, that's telling him that he doesn't have a right to express being upset without huge consequences. That's uncomfortable!

 

assuming what characters say ic is exactly what their player thinks ooc is something that often ends up causing more ooc conflict in rps, and being incorrect as well.

 

I´d like to suggest maybe waiting for FL to tell us/cT whether or not he is uncomfortable and wants something to change? And then we or rather cT and Fl, who are actually involved, could discuss what to do aobut it.

I´m not gonna lie, all this talking over FL is making Me kinda uncomfortable.

 

@Mendacity i looked over the thread again and it's not really anyone in particular but just. a wall of people who are probably adults talking about sex. individual posts weren't spoilered because their contents weren't explicit. i haven't seen what rum tum says so i can't measure but this stuff was clearly talking about sex.
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@unknownanonymous
i think a bit of grey is warranted in this case. and i get that a few pages back someone was asking for clarification on that grey. but overall i don't like how this went down because ->

i mean yes we should get FL's opinion but like. i don't like the precedent that if a minor did something that could be interpreted in a fashion of "possibly communicating a boundary but done in a slightly unorthodox means so as to slightly obscure certainty" and we're not interpreting it in a way that means we back off

@Petra ok. i have problems with "i'm not a minor but if i was, ____" as an argument. but disregarding that. you make some good points. i still think we could stand to have clearer boundaries between SFW/NSFW here.


im sorry if im becoming less coherent but i am getting a bit upset

 

Okay but, you can talk about sex without being explicit and inappropriate. Young Adult books do it all the time.

 

You are going to literally have to point out which characters because unless you do you're going to continue to get upset because no one is going to know what you're talking about, which will upset you and everyone else. If any mentions of sex are what you are considering to be a problem... That's.

Like, I understand your concern but on a whole but without FL here we can't determine where the actual issue lies. Was it that it was cat dicks in particular? Was it that it was dicks? None of us knows. FL hasn't been on in a bit, which could be due to various life things for all we know, and I doubt he wants to come back to drama like this.

We CAN'T reign our boundaries in without knowing what boundary was impinged upon. I care about FL's agency in this situation, that includes the fact that we need to know what too far was to be able to fix it. You cannot determine that for FL. Period. Even by your normal standards for media you cannot determine what is and isn't a boundary for FL.

That is why this is making me, and others, uncomfortable.

 

Spoiler: quotedump

also what FL has to say absolutely matters in this case. for sure. i am not speaking for him. i barely know him. and i am definitely cringing for bringing this up because this is going to suck to come back to

butim kind of arguing as a matter of precendent

like seriously FL could mean any number of things, and he absolutely gets the final say on how this goes down, but when it wasn't clarified i don't understand why we aren't interpreting it in a "back off from the NSFW discussion" light