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(08-21-2015, 10:28 AM)Diskwrite Wrote:(08-21-2015, 08:06 AM)LadyRochester Wrote: I brought up a discussion to spark debate, predictably, people got offended because they took it as a personal attack. I have never said I was one to judge wit, however, it shouldn't be difficult for anyone with half a brain to properly assess who can properly roleplay at trait. OOC and IC dissonance is easily detectable. It doesn't require an I.Q worthy of MENSA scores to see this.
It's kind of a cop out to act like the people who are disagreeing you are offended by what you're saying. Especially because later in the thread the people you thank for "providing the thread with sensitive arguments that didn't fall to personal insults or the 'Your opinion offends me' spectrum" are the two people in this thread arguing most prominently in your favor.
You say you're looking for a discussion, but when you then discount in this manner the people arguing against what you're saying, it comes off as a bit disingenuous.
My point ultimately is that while this discussion is well and good, this thread is not, in fact, constructive criticism.
It is gatekeeping. It is saying, "if you do not posses 'x' faculty, you cannot do this."
So this raises a number of questions, which include:
1) Who gets to judge whether or not someone has 'x' faculty?
2) Who gets to judge whether or not said person's character portrays 'x' faculty correctly?
You seem to be saying this is a personal attack, questioning YOUR capabilities to determine who is and isn't "witty" or whatever other faculty we're talking about here. You say this is easy to determine. That, perhaps, people are calling you stupid when they call this capacity into question?
But I don't think this question is so cut and dry. I don't think this is an easy thing to determine, and I'm unclear as to what the standards of possessing "wit" are even being defined as here.
Whether or not someone has it or not seems pretty subjective to me. So, whose standards are we going to follow here?
But let's say we all come to an agreement on what this means and who has it. That doesn't change the fact that this entire discussion says, certain people are allowed to play a kind of character and... others aren't.
This IS a form of gatekeeping, and gatekeeping is not a healthy part of an RP community.
As I said before, this doesn't mean you have to play with people who do not play this sort of character convincingly to you. But that doesn't mean you should tell them they can't play their character the way they want to play it.
It's one thing if someone's IC/OOC behavior is harmful. (e.x. if someone's self-professed "lady-killer" character is actually harassing every female character in sight and making other players feel uncomfortable and potentially unsafe.) But no one's being hurt if someone's witty character doesn't quite seem like the bastion of wit they're made out to be.
When we start saying to people "don't play this," we're stymieing an avenue of their creativity. We make them self-conscious of their own abilities and whether or not they pull it off. And as I said before, this is supposed to be a hobby. A fun hobby. Nothing rides on people's characters coming off as smart as they're supposed to be.
The more gatekeeping rules we throw in, the more people start to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. And pushing people away not only doesn't help them, but it makes our community smaller. We become more concerned with evaluating each other or ourselves instead of... you know, just having fun.
Gatekeeping is not a good thing for an RP community.
Which is why I resist, and will continue to resist, assertions that someone just shouldn't play a character because someone else says it is so.
Except that we very clearly ARE answering those two questions. Â It not only IS the audience's place to judge whether a character has a certain faculty and whether the player is displaying it correctly, but that WE ARE ALREADY DOING IT! Â We are already gatekeeping; we will freeze out a player for doing exactly what is being stated in the OP. Â The problem is that we won't tell the person that, we'll just freeze them out.
It happens all the time. Â There's nothing worse for your RP than trying to tell someone that your character is something that you aren't pulling off. Â They simply get shunned, and we at best assume they're not very good company and at worst simply assume they're trolls.
And this is an exceptionally important point to make, because it is not the responsibility of the community to sacrifice our own fun and performance for someone else's performance. Â If you feel that's a good use of your time, that's you're prerogative. Â However, you are making every single person that might enjoy RPing with you have to grind their teeth and suffer through a far less entertaining hang-around.
I'd never ask nor expect anyone to sacrifice their fun so that someone else doesn't feel slighted. Â This is an active and social activity that we all engage in as a contribution. Â There's no storyteller to say that someone's witty. Â If the player's not witty, and it comes through in the character, it's disrespectful to tell someone that they're in the wrong for not playing along. Â It's their time, and if the player is limiting the character's potential wit, charm, and intelligence, then they're under no compunction to laugh at jokes that aren't funny or nod at wisdom that isn't wise.
Hell, we aren't doing that here between players, why on Earth would it suddenly change between player-character interactions?
The point is that you can play what you want, but you can't complain when you're shunned, skewered, or ignored. Â And it's probably better for us, as a community, to make sure that, if a player tries to get around his lack of wit by saying, "My character has wit," that we correct them. Â You can't make a debonair and charming ladies' man if you are as charming as bog water, you can't make an intelligent character if you can't even think around a basic problem, and you can't play a witty character if the best you can come up with are Xbox Live insults in debates.
There are limits to what a player can do, and other players shouldn't be sneered at and shamed for acknowledging that. Â It's their bestowal that is not only being talked about here, but demanded by your argument.