Hydaelyn Role-Players
[Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Printable Version

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RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - LandStander - 09-30-2013

While I don't care what someone is doing OOC because you can speak with them about it. If this is going on IC, then suck it up. You come across all sorts of people in the world around you and RP shouldn't be any different. I play a brute of a character who belches, checks herself for body odor, vomits, curses, and has a bit of sexually charged language. I don't go off the deep end with it, but its there and will pop up occasionally, that is just who she is. And as someone mentioned earlier, there is a profanity filter that is automatically checked for you when you first start.

I had someone say once that they didn't like cursing because they didn't want their children reading it. If your child can read I am sure they have heard a curse word or two or three. Not to mention the massive exposure they get in our violent and sexually charged culture. They will likely learn all about this stuff, and more racey topics, from friends at school, and being concerned about them stumbling across the chat log on your screen should really be the last of your worries.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - LiadansWhisper - 09-30-2013

(09-30-2013, 10:29 AM)Theodric Ironheart Wrote: This is something I've been meaning to discuss for a while now, though I figured now is as good a time as any to spark up yet another debate. First things first, though, let me clear something up: this isn't a thread aimed to excuse genuinely offensive behaviour or commentary that far exceeds anything shown in the game itself. This is a thread intended to try and understand why quite a few players feel offended by the occasional use of mature language in chat channels within a game that makes liberal use of phrases along the lines of 'shite' 'bastard' and 'dead whore's crotch'.

I suspect I'm not alone in this, but I've been waiting for an MMO that took itself reasonably seriously and wasn't afraid to touch upon mature themes and the implications that surround them. I'm sure everyone will agree that FFXIV pulls that off rather well, both in terms of mature language and some of the implications that other games desperately shy away from. 

...and yet despite all that I'm still seeing people kick up a fuss when players crack a crude joke or lace their discussion with a bit of mature language. Again, I'm not talking about the extreme stuff here, I'm referring to the sort of language that is present in the game itself. It honestly baffles me - on one hand these players are 'offended' by crude jokes and  mature language and yet they're paying a subscription fee to play a game that is literally full of them. 

Let's not forget that technically every player should be of or above the age plastered on the game's cover so the argument of 'think of teh children' loses much of it's weight. 

So I'm curious to see what other people think of this and decided to make this thread. I'm personally very fond of the gritty tone of the game and it's actually one of my favourite aspects.

Outside of ageplay (which is just...completely on the other side of the continent in terms of offense/wrong/omgwtfbbq), I don't think that people should OOCly get offended by In-Character subject matter.  It's totally okay for characters themselves to get offended and upset, but for a player to get offended by what was said in RP is a bit silly.

As far as OOC goes, if you don't like the language, turn your profanity filter on.

Edited to Add: A special note, however: If a player is feeling uncomfortable with the way a scene is going in-character, they should speak up and either ask the other parties to tone it down a bit, or fade the situation to black. For instance, I don't have a stomach for torture. I just can't stand it. I don't want to see it. I don't want to participate in it. So I've always either avoided getting caught up in it, or just faded it to black because it upsets me on a personal level.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Swift Nightclaw - 09-30-2013

(09-30-2013, 11:19 AM)Asyria Wrote: Something being offensive is all in the eye of the beholder.
My favorite take on it:

"Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or a collective, or a group, or a society, or a community, your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs. What offends me may not offend you.  I'm offended when I see boy bands.  It's a valid offense. They're corporate shills posing as musicians to further a modeling career and frankly...I'm disgusted."

Great stand up from comedian Steve Hughes.

Tongue

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - sanguineFenrir - 09-30-2013

As someone who tends to have quite the sailor's mouth in real life (but who never tends to use profanity in text), the use of profanity by NPC's does not bother me, and I sometimes find the British-esque dialect interesting.

ICly, Kevaraan's also not the type to swear and has only done so once or twice, I think. Usually, other characters' profanity doesn't bother him, but if it's sexually charged and/or dropped with great frequency, he might roll his eyes or otherwise indicate annoyance. In the worst cases, he might leave, since he's not likely to get along with those types of characters anyway--but he'll never be the "nanny sort" who goes around reprimanding people for language.

I generally have no issue with profanity, or violence/gore/torture/what have you, but it gets a little ironic because what DOES bother me is sexual or hedonistic topics. Going into the "why" would turn this into a psychological post, but I just can't agree with either of those behaviors. I can handle the quips by NPCs because SE doesn't overuse them, but that's about it.

Out of 30+ characters I have in my broader universe(s), I think only two to four drink or smoke, and most are asexual outside of romance (and if they reasonably shouldn't be, any more hedonistic attraction never comes up in the text.) It's just not something I prefer to write about or bear witness to in RP, and I hardly know how to react to it as is. The same principle, although not as severe, applies to drinking.

Kevaraan already dislikes a few characters because of their tendency toward this behavior--but that is, as others have stated, an IC thing. OOCly, I'm capable of putting up with it, but if, for example, a character is fetishistic, I'm probably going to just confide to the player that I can't reasonably be comfortable with the RP for OOC reasons.

I'm also the type of person to get quietly annoyed by things said in chat--in the interest of keeping the peace, I refuse to participate in debates (odd, given this topic, but this is likely my sole post in it). For my guild's IC and OOC channels, if a debate over a topic that I'm sensitive to starts up, I will just announce quietly and without detail that I'm turning the chat off, so people know how to reach me. The same thing goes for discussion of my guild's IC plot in the IC channel, which I want little to no part of. Besides enforcing an "out of sight, out of mind" policy given that I'm poor at tuning things out, this also limits chat scroll, as debates tend to involve long posts that clutter up the tiny chat box.

Probably the last thing that annoys me is something Rock Sandbourne brought up, which is the use of "glomping" and other silly or memetic things in OOC chat. I understand that some people like silliness, but I find that type of speak to be too prevalent in the RP community, and I'm not a big fan of "talking for the sake of it" and don't know how to react anyway. I am in two linkshells that I always keep turned off unless I actually need their help because of this, and sometimes that gets swallowed up in the banter. This is why my "writers' guild" LS has an explicit ban of this sort of silly speech, because I don't want it clogging up what is rightfully a discussion channel.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Nimarhie - 09-30-2013

Offensive is in the eye of the Beholder, but some Beholders are raised with such a thin skin that just saying hello to them is sexual harassment. lol

Whenever someone whines and moans about sex or adult themes in this game (generated by the players), I want to take them on the Eorzea Sex Tour... show them all the prostitutes and flirting and propositioning that the npc's have going on. I can't really fault the players (not that I would anyway) for using coarse language and having adult themes when the game has them out on display in plain sight.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - cuideag - 09-30-2013

(09-30-2013, 11:00 AM)Rock Sandbourne Wrote: Communication is key bottom line, especially while within the large community based linkpearls. You have to be able to talk to each other and at least be able to give people the benefit of the doubt and the respect of at least addressing the problem together privately before anything else. ... Communication should always be the first form of action no matter what.

My personal stance on things? Live and let live, within reason on a public channel.

My thoughts exactly. 

The last thing I would hope anyone would do is harass another player because they said something offensive or were offended in some way by someone else. It will happen but we can all be responsible and respectful about how we respond to it.

Show Content


RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - ArmachiA - 09-30-2013

(09-30-2013, 05:23 PM)Nimarhie Wrote: Offensive is in the eye of the Beholder, but some Beholders are raised with such a thin skin that just saying hello to them is sexual harassment. lol

Whenever someone whines and moans about sex or adult themes in this game (generated by the players), I want to take them on the Eorzea Sex Tour... show them all the prostitutes and flirting and propositioning that the npc's have going on. I can't really fault the players (not that I would anyway) for using coarse language and having adult themes when the game has them out on display in plain sight.

[Image: UeO1gog.jpg]

[Image: 838PEJa.jpg]

This game is filthy.

(It's hilarious)

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Nimarhie - 09-30-2013

Bwahaha!! I knew those three were doing it together! I just never stuck around long enough to verify it. xD

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - K'nahli - 09-30-2013

This topic is actually one that concerned me slightly. I have a character who is an elitist jerk who would have no problem using vulgar terms. The only thing is that OOCly I would have problems using those terms and can see myself avoiding it in the future. Its not as if I shy away from swearing myself(though I try not to do it), but I'd worry that I may offend others, particularly if my character decided to be particularly vulgar in attempts to offend or provoke someone else. In addition to that, I'd be even more reluctant to do so around my friend whom I regularly RP with... for reasons that may sound silly, so lets just say that I would want to avoid being excessive or graphic in said person's presence even more so.

Its not that I find swearing to be necessary to a character, but I do find it shows a lot about their personality and I don't like hiding personality traits or making characters less realistic ;;

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Nimarhie - 09-30-2013

K'nali, I don't think were talking about using excessive vulgarity (though that might be the case), but rather lore-appropriate terms and topics, shite, bugger (a slang term for having sex last I checked), and so on.

I think I have heard NPCs use "fuck" before, but I cant recall. The game lightly peppers dialogue with vulgarity where appropriate to set the tone for certain areas or stories; LimLom being the most notable.

I could see people being whiny and offended if the game was sanitized like some other MMOs that have their heads in the sand and act like the world is Hello Kitty lol, but it's not. It's gritty. Even the 1.0 Uldah intro had a brief scene on your way into the parade where a guy was hitting up a prostitute... sadly they got rid of that, I thought Uldah's intro was the best of the three.

Also, my sunkitty, K'anika is a bitch... snarky and abrasive, but I tend to go light on the profanity, and just use the in-game terms where appropriate.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - K'nahli - 09-30-2013

What I am talking about hardly extends far beyond the in-game foul language though. When I say excessive I don't mean anything grossly graphic. In fact, that'd probably be OOC for him. He'd be borderline lecherous to women in fact which is a good example of how lore-friendly terms can feel even a bit too much coming from my character even if he is horrible like that.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Vinter - 09-30-2013

I think everyone has a right to be offended. What they don't have, however, is the right to never be offended.
If someone is offended by so called "vulgar" language, I can sympathize. But that doesn't give them the right to force their values on anyone else. They just have to find some way to deal with that on their own.

My stance on it is that the very notion of "curse" words is such a superstitious medieval concept, it shouldn't even be a consideration in the 21st century. They're not curses, they're expletives you use to enhance the impact of a sentence.

Compare:
"There's a train coming towards us!"
to
"Holy shit, there's a goddamn train coming towards us!"

As you can tell, the second example has a slightly more urgent tone to it.
I know some people consider swearing a sign of a limited vocabulary. And to that I can only say that that is a fucking farcical and erroneous assertion. Personally, I actually think it's the exact opposite. Swearing allows you the ability to convey a far broader range of emotion than what could be achieved without it.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Nimarhie - 09-30-2013

My aunt has a magnet that says something like "swearing a sign of a limited mental ability"... or maybe limited vocabulary. Cant remember which... basically you're too stupid to talk properly so you have to swear to fill in the blanks. To which I giggle and remember how the Russians have like four stages of swearing, and you're a god among potty-mouths if you can string enough expletives together (and still make sense) to get to stage four. lol

i also agree with Vinter, you can only change words around so much without repeating yourself or just not having enough impact.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - K'nahli - 09-30-2013

(Obligatory Apology.... see? I feel bad even using an example.... here!)



That is where lies the problem though. You don't want to ruin someone's time by offending them with the tone of your language but you don't want to be less true to your character or to be unrealistic.

Lets create an example(for the record, nothing like my character I mentioned):

"Get out of my face, woman. As if I would associate with the likes of you.."

versus

"Get the fuck out of my face, you tramp. As if I would have affiliation with a diseased-ridden, whore like yourself."


The second example demonstrates a more harsh and brute-ish personality but could easily be seen as very distasteful to many people. This is where it starts affecting RP. Where do you draw the lines and where should you make exceptions? Allow characters to have more extreme personalities and enhance realism or be more soft for the sake of being as harmless as possible?

Softening personalities isn't just about being less realistic either, it also affects interpretations of a character. In the first example there is still room for doubt. Maybe the guy is having a really bad day or has good reason to dislike the person. The second example however leaves me with no sympathy for him and results in me looking down on him as disgusting, same way my characters would.

RE: [Discussion] 'That's offensive!' - Kailia - 09-30-2013

Yeah this game most definitely is full of mature language. Like when my female Miqo'te joined the Blacksmithing guild, the guildmaster literally said a line about cuckholding her husband, which she does not have.

The profanity filter is on by default, and when actual cusses happen, they get turned into ????. So yeah I don't know why people playing this game would be offended. If they don't like mature language, in a game where npc's use it constantly, especially in Gridania where npc's refer to the matrons Teats and Bosoms. I think they most definitely need to find another game to play.