Playing a disabled: a fun ground for everyone

[artus]

I'm by all means not here to gather support. I didn't even intentionally come here to say oh, someone reported me and I'm going to seek support or attention for it until Rias revealed himself that I was reported. It's the problem I'm never aware about and I seriously, genuinely seek guidance, the kind that eases the community while giving me at least a ground to stay. I'm sorry if it comes across that way.

[Firerose]

There is nothing wrong with coming to people to ask them what they think about something. There is nothing wrong with expressing a desire to want to be aware of what others think, in case you can help them in some way.
Really, I don't think you need to be quite so harsh. It's not about seeking approval, or circumventing anything. If it's the latter, he likely wasn't aware. What happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? Part of being human is trying to understand where we're each coming from. Some people don't care about the emotional side of things, and that's their choice. But those who do care and who do want to understand, coming down on them like that isn't being supportive at all--it comes across quite the opposite.

[Lexx416]

I'm not one of the people that reported you, and I've been waffling on posting on this thread because it's a very sensitive subject, and it's very easy (especially over text mediums) for things to come across as personal attacks, so I want to preface this with: nothing in this post is an attack, just my thoughts on the situation.


I'm not triggered by anything that's happened with Baki. I'm fortunate enough that I don't have any PTSD related issues. But as someone with neurodivergent family (and there's a very good chance I probably have undiagnosed mental health issues too - no health insurance and being an adult makes it hard to get a diagnosis), I do find Baki's portrayal insensitive and a bit offensive, and I'm not really comfortable RPing around him. I don't know what specific condition Baki is meant to have, but from my point of view it feels like a caricature from initial interactions, which did put me off of interacting with the character.

I don't think anything you've done on Baki has been done with malicious intent, but the portrayal was (for me) off-putting enough that I decided very early on to limit my interactions with the character.

I think when it comes to very sensitive issues like this, it's important to be mindful and think about how our portrayals of our characters reflect not only ourselves, but our community. And creating situations where it looks like someone is being infantilized because of their cognitive capabilities or for being neurodivergent doesn't feel like a great look. It doesn't feel inclusive, and even if the intention is good, it doesn't really change anything about my thoughts on the matter.

I also don't think it's a good idea to start asking for the people who reported you to come forward. They reached out to Staff because they didn't feel comfortable approaching you personally, for whatever reason, and I think it would be better to respect that (and if people come forward naturally, that's great) than to ask for people to do something they avoided in the first place. Again, I understand the intention, but I think it's something that's better left unasked.


It's entirely possible to play a character who lives in "the kind of simple world where everyone gets to play around, have fun and give happiness to others, the world full of smiles and wonder, and the world where we sometimes miss those who were once present in our lives and cherish that memory when they can no longer play with us, the childlike world, the fundamental personality of my own that I can't keep sometimes." without leaning into playing them as having some kind of cognitive impairment (especially one that effectively stunts their emotional or mental development to the point where they're "childlike"). I've played characters, on other games, that do approach the world in a more innocent, naive way, but I've never done so in a way that conflated that character with an impairment, or in a way to suggest that their mind was somehow damaged or broken (and somehow put them in a state of being "childlike").

Again, I don't want this to come across as accusatory, or an attack, because it's not. These are my thoughts and frankly I'm probably not going to stick around in this thread to debate anything because I don't personally believe this kind of thing is even up for debate. But I hope you can take what I've written to heart.

I don't really know what the answer is, for you, in terms of what you should do with the character. But I do think people speak up about these things because it's meaningful to them, even if they don't speak up to you directly.

[Guillaumo]

Just a little feedback from my few interactions with Baki, and for the record, I did not report the character.

The first time Baki and Gmo met, he invaded Gmo's personal space and that put him at odds with Baki, which I think I made plainly visible. From that then on, Gmo explicitly attempted to avoid interactions with him. That is also because Gmo is largely non-confrontational. I also think that characters not getting along for reasons is a perfectly okay thing.

[artus]

Here's something I have to admit. You guys have a legitimate reason to roast me if you find this selfish from my part.
Baki is not someone I came up on the fly as I rp. He was, in fact, my own novel character (probably mistake number 1) that I thought I could bring to life here, to see him grow to be a capable and warm protector as he was supposed to be in my own story, to see that the world loves him as much as he loves the world, and to feel like I could physically take care of him as well as see his growth, and a slightly selfish reason of wanting to gather creative ideas for him in the book. Again, this is a personal reason that doesn't have anything to do with anyone. What has to do with anyone is that it ends up being undesirable and nothing so far I can come up with sounds like a good idea to fix it without breaking him. He was infantalized not because he was here, but because he was in my book, mistake number 2. Sometimes I'd like to put it frankly, and it may as well be me underestimating the world on its own. It's hard to be simple when the world demands complication. It's hard for a coherent mind to stay passive when the world is aggressive. It may as well be my upbringing that makes me too blunt. I've been trying to keep peace on Arty anyway. It still ends up a whoopsy oopsy sometimes. I'm sorry for creating such complication. I didn't know it'd come to this.

I don't expect anyone ic and ooc to be friendly and alright with him. If you want to, have to, need to, must, whatever, avoid him, feel free to do so. He may act like he needs a carecatcher or just gets to everyone. He's just that way, being overly friendly without realizing, or realizing but not thinking at the time. Again, if that ever came off as offputting, sorry.

The other problem, which is also what I'm struggling to understand here, is the portrayal of him that puts people off big time to the point of being offensive. Is it the childlikeness? Is it the infantilism? Is it the fact that he just gets to everyone without thinking or is it just because he has his condition in general? As per background, his condition was acquired and temporary and he lived with someone before he was on his own (answering @Gorth). Again, I'd rather disclose the depth of details here as I plan to release it ic at some point, provided I at least can find a ground to stand and play him without breaking anything.

The only solution I can come up with now, which I'm not even sure will be acceptable by anyone, is to accelerate his growth as fast as I can without killing him even once. As I said, I don't intend to play him this way forever. Even my book version of Baki grows out of this eventually.

I'd like to give all of you a hug for being kind, warm and considerate without personal attack, and I'm sorry again for giving you and the community in general a hard time. I didn't expect it to come to this.

[Ephemeralis]

I think these kinds of threads can be made with the best intentions in the world (and often are) but rarely end up productive. There is (in my view) a rarely spoken-about aspect of roleplaying discourse that involves a kind of unconscious identification of the motivators that spur people towards exhibiting particular traits in the characters they chose to roleplay (often as a product of 'bleed'), and I think almost universally, traits or conditions that emulate things close to infantilizing or child-like behavior are responded to extremely poorly across the board.

With this in mind, the Flowers for Algernon-esque swift maturation via death comes across as an especially brutal implication of 'innocence lost' at best, and is more likely to be perceived as poor-quality roleplaying in diverging quickly from established character traits at worst. Neither are particularly great considerations, to be honest.

You might be more comfortable pursuing something like this in a tabletop environment with a group of understanding friends instead of something like a MUD.

[artus]

The death growth thing was a mistake from my part, mainly due to me forgetting to think clearly of how it was perceived, as being, as human or otherwise, and it may as well create guilt for anyone who have to get involved too, as mentioned by a bunch of player when I mentioned the death plan. Now it's definitely not a good idea and I regret coming up with it from the beginning. At least my book version didn't have to go through that. Why shouldn't he here?

I just find viewing the world from a childish angle has some kind of charm in it, something those who call themselves adults seem to disregard. It's hard to keep that view when experience and whatever circumstances tend to nudge us toward somewhere we don't want, making us whatever our end product is over and over, with innocense being the last thing most of us choose to keep. When there was such aspect in a character I cherish, coupled with me as a player being a heavy regresser, it resulted in that. I was probably naive. Again, and may as well be a mistake on my part for being inconsiderate. I'm sorry about that.

[Gorth]

I think these kinds of threads can be made with the best intentions in the world (and often are) but rarely end up productive. There is (in my view) a rarely spoken-about aspect of roleplaying discourse that involves a kind of unconscious identification of the motivators that spur people towards exhibiting particular traits in the characters they chose to roleplay (often as a product of 'bleed'), and I think almost universally, traits or conditions that emulate things close to infantilizing or child-like behavior are responded to extremely poorly across the board.

With this in mind, the Flowers for Algernon-esque swift maturation via death comes across as an especially brutal implication of 'innocence lost' at best, and is more likely to be perceived as poor-quality roleplaying in diverging quickly from established character traits at worst. Neither are particularly great considerations, to be honest.

You might be more comfortable pursuing something like this in a tabletop environment with a group of understanding friends instead of something like a MUD.

Heavily planned arcs or heavily context-informed roleplay, that is, roleplay that, from an external view, requires a lot of information to be clearly understood from the same perspective as those involved, rarely works on scale. This is only exacerbated by the above mentioned mislike of these things.

What I'm trying to say is, if your RP could easily be dismissed as annoying, ignorant, etcetera negativities, it will more than half of the time. In general, people play these games because they want to do, be, act something they are not. That usually includes not dealing with non-idealized parts of things, at least in most cases. There is probably an insanely fascinating study that could be done about content enjoyment of people who roleplay.

I think I'm in the minority who don't really care that much, because I believe that people all think differently and enjoy different things, and thus, as long as they aren't being actively disruptive to a point of ruining someone's experience, should be allowed to do their thing. But it is a colaborative effert. You're not writing a story, you're partisipating in one. Noone is the main character of the whole story, but maybe they might be of an arc.

I'm not sure I have much of a point, but all of this is just one big conceptualization, anyway. I enjoy taking an idea and putting chalk to board, or..text to webpage, as it may be. I'm not going to tell you what to do with your character, but the best advice I can give all around is, if something upsets you, tell them or don't, and regardless, just don't interact with them where you can. And, if you're the one not being interacted with because of your thing, then just roll with it. If people are clearly unwilling, don't push it.

[Gorth]

You might be more comfortable pursuing something like this in a tabletop environment with a group of understanding friends instead of something like a MUD.

Heavily planned arcs or heavily context-informed roleplay, that is, roleplay that, from an external view, requires a lot of information to be clearly understood from the same perspective as those involved, rarely works on scale. This is only exacerbated by the above mentioned mislike of these things.

This was originally my big point, but i diverged. Shoort and sweet of this is, the k ind of non-standard, potentially mislikable roleplay is better left to tight-knit groups that can okay the content beforehand. It results in people having more understanding overall, and not seeing someone acting as this character does without warning and perhaps become offended, because without any context at all, it looks very, very much as if you are making fun of people with mental illnesses.

[artus]

Guys, I'm sorry. If the concept was alive, it wouldn't have been much of a mess, tbh. But it's not the concept. The character is alive and the concept is already in motion. Let's not talk about where this kind of rp should be sought, but rather how to fix it where it's not supposed to be sought. I'm still trying to come up with a plan that doesn't result in complete retirement of the character and doesn't retcon the rp.