(05-07-2015, 12:31 PM)Verad Wrote:(05-07-2015, 11:44 AM)Warren Castille Wrote:
I'm not sure how this is a revelation. They're the ones that get the most crap for it. They're the ones who get targeted by shaming blogs, who tend to get "constructive" tells from strangers on a regular basis, who have to worry about "If I reveal this thing that I've put some thought into, are they just going to write my character off as crazy? Am I going to lose somebody I've been RPing with for a while?"
This is neither baseless, nor provocative. It's all quite true. Why do you make it sound like a mark against them?
I realize how that can sound negative, but let me try to backpedal clarify the idea.
Of those three hypothetical situations you point out, two of them reflect poorly on the community itself: Are they douchebags who have tumblrs dedicated to bitching about their "enemies" as if talking someone else down would somehow make them better as a result? Yeah, probably. I've also been witness to random assholes drop tells on people I know that basically stated "lel u can't be a drg" without so much of a hint of an explanation why.
Realizing post-fact that you've got background that might cause people to not want to RP with you can be a terrifying thing. It's not something I'd wish on mostly anybody. We work hard to write interesting characters, work hard to introduce them to new friends, and we work hard to keep those friends so we can keep writing. Sure, you didn't intend on upsetting anybody with your off-canon-maybe backstory, but how do you make sure that you don't suddenly end up alone?
Well, I don't have an answer to that. RP with people you trust? I don't do deep roleplay with anyone I don't know pretty well, and when potential immersion-bombs get dropped I make sure they happen with people who have bunkers I know can survive them. If you've got a highly-questionable background that you designed before knowing any better? That's a rough place to be. If you intentionally said "no, the lore is wrong, I can too be a space princess from Garlemald who is also the proto-White Mage" then you should be prepared to find equally-minded people to play with.
What I'm pretty sure isn't the answer, though, is going into a thread discussing how to handle these things and stating it's somehow the community's fault. Nobody made anyone play something radical, and radical is a variable term here. I mentioned it in another thread about things being okay when I do them and where those actions fall is going to vary so greatly from person to person that it's impossible to know who's going to get irritated with your concept before you do anything. Putting down a blanket statement like "All IC grief is fueled from OOC trolling" or "You can't criticize someone ICly because words hurt OOCly" is passing the buck. Uninvited criticism being uninvited, not everyone wants a breakdown of how they're "wrong" from someone else.
...but that's not what happened in this thread. A lot of people from different stripes came together and basically agreed to live and let live, and then some other people decided anything short of universal acceptance wasn't enough, and then we got off track.
![[Image: yEROfKO.png]](http://i.imgur.com/yEROfKO.png)
