(no subject)

[camwyn]

To the RPers of the world who participate in multi-fandom, multi-setting RPGs:

Tolerance and cultural understanding are very nice. They are important in the real world. Do not act shocked, however, when not every character you meet espouses them.



See, not every character you encounter is going to feel the need to Understand Your Character's Cultural Quirks. Some of them will take those quirks very poorly indeed. What your character sees as a perfectly acceptable form of address, another may take as gross over-familiarity; what one character sees as properly respectful, another may see as abject groveling. Case in point, from the real world: when the British first started sending ambassadors to China, they ran afoul of cultural expectations in a big way. Coming to see the Emperor? Then you kowtow, dammit. The British ambassador saw this as disgusting groveling and put up a stink about having to do any more than bowing. His action came off as barbarian arrogance in the face of the Son of Heaven. Things did not go well after that.

Case in point from RP? An incident at milliways_bar this weekend. When my character red_mare, a unicorn from Meredith Ann Pierce's Firebringer Trilogy, first encountered Snowball from Animal Farm, they didn't get off on the right foot at all. Snowball asked her if her horn was a mating appendage, to start with, claiming never to have seen such a thing before. (Which is ridiculous in and of itself because Animal Farm refers to cattle, sheep, and goats. Rams have horns. Goats have horns. The cows are referred to as being used mostly for milk. Polled Herefords are the only English hornless breed I can think of off the top of my head, and they're primarily used for beef, not milking… anyway.) Jah-lila got kind of mad about that, at which point, Snowball waved his tail at her and asked if she knew what he used it for. There was some arguing back and forth, and the whole time, he called her 'comrade' repeatedly.

Jah-lila's people are a largely tribal race of unicorns with hereditary kingship of their herd. They have both truenames and use-names, the truename being given at birth and kept secret. The usename is the one spoken aloud and used in all conversation and reference. They place great importance on the use of names, and their magic often relies upon titles and epithets. 'Shoulder-friend' is the term used for one's closest friends and companions, the ones alongside whom you would gladly fight because you know they would uphold you just as much as you would uphold them. It took Jan, the unicorns' prince, the better part of a year and a great deal of trust-building for him to acclaim a newly met companion as a possible shoulder-friend in the middle book of the trilogy. As far as I'm concerned, 'comrade' translates as something very close to 'shoulder-friend' in the unicorns' lexicon, so she saw the repeated use of the term as excessive familiarity from a stranger and took issue with it. Especially since she'd given him her use-name twice. The result?

"Then we have it seems a culture clash. For me to not call you comrade is an active form of disrespect, putting you on the rank of an enemy. For you if I call you comrade it is too familiar. Do you understand?"

"I understand," says Jah-lila, "but if you call me 'comrade' again without having earned it, it shall go very hard with you indeed."

Cue hurt, upset pig. He left about two poses later.

Now, the pig has every reason in the world to be upset. He's a good pig and a good Communist. His entire farm was chock full of the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Laboring Animals and he left before "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" got instituted. Running into an animal who does not want to hear it must have come as a shock to him. His poses included a line about how Jah-lila "must be from a most backward civilisation if he is to be threatened with impalement simply for uttering a word that is very much force of habit, as much as an integral part of his culture."

Uh… yeah, in fact, she is. She has grandchildren who are older than her people's knowledge of fire. But that's not the point. Up until quite, quite recently in history, the concept of Making Allowances For Cultural Differences was just not particularly common. More often than not, any allowance-making probably took the form of condescension at best. It should not come as a surprise that not every culture in existence shares the ideals of brotherhood, openness, and easy-going acceptance of other societies' quirks. Jah-lila's people have only just gotten to the point of accepting the respectful funerary customs of other unicorns- and I mean, within the past four or five years, just gotten to that point.

I guess what I’m saying is, it's okay for the character to be shocked that not everyone is going to go "oh, okay" and be nice about cultural/social differences. However, the players should be aware of the fact that not every character they meet is going to be happy about that kind of thing.

(And Snowball should be glad he hasn't run into any Americans from the 1950's. "Comrade" would really not go over well at all with them…)

Comments

[lots42.livejournal.com]

A lot of flak in these kinds of situations arises from authors not realizing their muses are DIFFERENT.

One humor journal I write had the character oblivously miss and or misunderstand things like a flushed woman with her buttons miss-buttoned coming out a man's room. He'd assume it was a tailor emergency.

[redplasticglass.livejournal.com]

*points and screams* "Pinkie commiessss!!"

Ehn, I've run into that a lot with RP, and not just multifandom types. Every so often you come across a batch of players who seem to think that if everyone doesn't get along, then the player of said hormonic distrupting character(read: their harmony, not anyone else's) has to be the same way in person, and as such, deserves to be thoroughly trounced in public, oocly. :P As passive aggressively as possible.

The debates all this sparks tend to be headache inducing. ~_~

[camwyn]

Jah-lila's people spent something like four hundred years in exile from their native lands in a valley they thought had no residents. They spent that time under near-constant attack from gryphons. In all that time, no one thought to ask the gryphons why they insisted on attacking a race that didn't even live in their lands. It took the prophesied Firebringer to finally get close enough to a gryphon long enough to ask what the deal was with the enmity.

Not the most culturally interactive people here. Although Jah-lila, being born an outsider, had a head start on most of them.

[redplasticglass.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they never seem to care about where the other character is coming from. IC antagonism is one thing, but bringing it all out oocly is another.

That said, millieways looks interesting format-wise. I don't think I've seen that style before. :O But I guess it fits within the LJ formatting and would likely be similar if there were a bbs rp too. Hm. Though, I think I'm getting thrown with all the personal thoughts that the snowball player is throwing around. Is that typical of prose-style rp? I noticed I came across that a few times on MUSHes.

And your mention of Chinese emporers: Have you come across the goverment backed history of China series of historical dramas based off those uber famous (better than the original texts) historical novels? You know those ones that everyone in China reads instead of the histroies because they're more interesting, except they're so accurate that they might as well be the histories...er...

Anyway, I think they did The Watermargin, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and one about the first emporer--- (I think it was the first. The guy who buried all those scholars alive) And the writers/directors/set people supposedly raided goverment archives to make sure everything was as accurate as possible? They're all beautifully done and I think there's a few of the editions available in English....

Anyway, part of that series of dramas, there's a newer one called The Emperor in Han Dynasty (which is the same name for several other dramas, but the one I'm talking about has a red cover and only one guy with a mustache) which tracks the life of the 4th Emperor of that dynasty.

I think it's shot in digital, which punches up the color by a LOT. That and the very, very, nice architecture/sets, it's complete eyecandy. I'm also realizing that most kungfu shows are either very historically inaccurate, or they always take place several dynasties later (I guess so they can share sets instead of having to rebuild new ones) because this is as close to 'Japanese' as I find. I assume this is one of the periods Japan sent their dignitaries over to do a cultural copying-- it's really interesting.

And because the visuals are so, hm, pretty? It makes everything seem both more and less real than the previous ones which had been shot on film and have a very realistic layer of dirt on everything. That and the cinematography is a bit more modern/dramatic too.

Maybe I should make a post about it and screencap. D:

[camwyn]

The personal thought thing tends to vary, but you see a fair amount of personal thought in most prose-style post responses. There tends to be a very fine line between '$CHARACTER stares in horror at $CHARACTER_2; what has $CHARACTER_2 done?', which I tend to see as a legitimate expression of what's going on in $character's head, and '$CHARACTER stares in horror at $CHARACTER_2, because $CHARACTER thinks that $CHARACTER_2 should not be eating that kitten, since eating kittens is wrong'. The former is okay, the latter is sort of trying to guilt the other player or something and just doesn't feel right to me, but nailing down the difference is harder than trying to get Jell-O to stick to the wall without sliding off.

I haven't seen the government series of dramas, alas. I have read three of the novels- Watermargin, Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West. I tried reading The Dream of the Red Chamber and agreed with Barry Hughart: the hero is an effeminate ass who ought to be spakned or decapitated, both ends being equally objectionable. Frankly, the pornographic novel that gave the world Golden Lotus was both better written and more interesting.

Pretty visuals would be lovely to see, though.

[crispengray.livejournal.com]

Preach on, brother/sister/individual of unknown gender!

[quintus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not just a crossover scenario problem. Culture clash RP in general will do this.
"Why can't we all just get along...?"
'Because you are heretical scum...'

[camwyn]

*sigh* True. And you get looked at like you have three heads if your character seemed like a Good Person before they opened their mouth.

[taimatsu]

I've been having this problem in LARP. It's killed my enjoyment of the game. Being the one person standing there going 'You're taking part in what foreign ritual now? I pray the Mother will forgive you!' is *really* tiring and boring. But scrapping the background for 'we all play nicely together' would also suck. *sigh*

[sdelmonte]

1. Barry was somewhat put off by Snowball saying "comrade." But he was also confused by a talking pig.

2. I keep waiting for someone to say something to Lando about his skin color. I understand fully why it doesn't happen - it could easily become tuly if unintetionally racist - but I wouldn't mind having Lando learn about intra-human racism on Earth, as such things seem to be absent in-character in Star Wars. (Questions about Lucas, tokenism and Jar Jar are another matter.)

[batyatoon]

I want Susannah Dean to talk to Lando about his skin color.

I really, really do.

[sanity-cheque.livejournal.com]

Whoa, now that would be a REALLY interesting conversation. someone nudge me if that ever happens, I wanna see it :)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Well, sure -- the idea of human race in the Star Wars universe strikes me as somewhat akin to that in Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe: black and white live in perfect harmony and gang up on green.

-- Lorrie

[redplasticglass.livejournal.com]

That, I think would be truely some-- though, I find, that if soemone shoudl attempt it, ooc racism charges can be averted with an ooc disclaimer tag one the first post that "This is for RP purposes only because I was curious what would happen." A bit of an eyesore, and I wish wasn't necessary, but I think it's a good way to remind people that it's not an opinion a player holds.

It sucks, but gets necessary sometimes. When it comes to those sorts of sensitive topics, I notice people are really really fast to jump on the player because *gasp* *omg* playing a racist character means they're racist as well! No matter that when things are calm and passive, lots of people complain that there's no.. what's the word, antagonism/complication/oh damn. (my vocabulary is disappearing by the day.) And that's when discussion of how it'd be GREAT if people played characters that have Real Flaws! And to be brave enough to play those characters! When it actually happens, people get pissy.

[innerbrat]

...quite. {doesn't poke Indy towards Snowball because Gar would kill me}

Of course, this mun is one of those muns who play to be popular. She doesn't want conflict between PCs, and takes it personally when her character isn't liked. There are a number of these muns, and they tend to force their characters OOC in order to make them liked. The level to which they're OOC is variable, and usually doesn't metter, but it's noticeable when a character for some reason seems to consider everyone in the bar a friend.

Back to the case in hand, Snowball's using "comrade" is one of Snowball's 'gimmicks', used by the mun to build characterisation on. Everyone uses gimmicks at some level, but some rely more on them than others. Snowball says "comrade" and comments with little tact on what he finds remarkable about other cultures. This is all I've seen from limited observation and one thread.

So when Jah-lila turned around and said: "don't call me that," the mun felt that she was being denied her chance at what she considered 'IC'.

...pls to be seeing icon.

[camwyn]

Jah-lila is one of the more culturally aware unicorns other than Jan, since she raised a pair of orphan pans to at least adolescence and taught them her people's ways as well as learning their language and a little of their culture. I just don't think that she would take very well to having a total stranger repeatedly call her 'comrade' despite being given her name; it's about up there with having someone you're sitting next to on the train repeatedly call you 'friend' or use your first name after you've already said "call me Ms. Blah" or whatever.

The little tact thing is understandable. I mean, he's a pig from a farm- not really somewhere that you would learn social graces. It's just that every single speaking creature Jah-lila's people have ever met has recognized what a horn is on sight, so being asked if it was for mating- not even for mating displays or sparring, like a deer's antlers, but mating- was something of a shock ICly to her. Hence the reaction.

[innerbrat]

Well yes, the reaction is perfectly understandable. I mean, if you see something that might be a penis, you don't mention it...

"Hi, darling, is that a horn on your head or are you just pleased to see me?" - really, not a good opening line in any species.

[camwyn]

I suppose it would help if I actually liked RPing with the person.

Some people, alas, make it easier to understand the 'fallacy' part of the geek social fallacies than others. I was raised to try to be friendly to newcomers, to be understanding to newbies, to be empathetic and all that... but after a while, it starts to grate. Some newbies are interesting, or get interesting once they've got the hang of RP. And some... not so much. I can bend IC feelings for the ones I've come to like, but the ones who just don't win me over...

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything really useful to contribute, but it's a good discussion topic.

Playing a dog with human-plus intelligence but normal canine vocal cords (for the sake of my sanity, I presume he can communicate sans charades with other four-foots) can be incredibly frustrating with others don't appear to try to notice that the Dog Is Smart.

[camwyn]

I've tended to run up against the other end of things more often, myself. "Oh look! A raven, looking at me! It appears far too smart to be anything but a Corax."

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

OTOH, who other than Ed ever noticed that Ein was much more than a failed chance at a big payoff?

[ymfaery]

This kind of thing is not limited to multi-fandom, multi-setting RPGs though.

In one of the many HP RPGs that have been played on LJ, I recall one incident where the Draco-character honestly told the Lupin-character that he had a problem with Lupin's lycanthrophy, but he was willing to try to change it for the sake of the Snape-character (who in this RPG was Draco's godfather, IIRC, and they were on good terms at the time). Lupin-character becoming insulted and upset was understandable. However, I got the impression (which was confirmed after the game had ended) that Lupin's *player* took it personally also, and since the Lupin player was one of the mods of the game, Draco's player ended up on the fringes of the game and had very little involvement in the main plot. That seems very unprofessional to me.

[derien.livejournal.com]

the players should be aware of the fact that not every character they meet is going to be happy about that kind of thing.


Honestly. You need some conflict every now and then or you'll have a very boring game.

[silveraspen]

Short version: ICA = ICC, but not all players seem to understand or accept that, for whatever reason.

... okay, so there are several reasons that I've noticed through interaction and observation. One of the most frustrating is the situation when a player takes the (understandable and IC, even if not necessarily shiny or happy) reactions of another player's character to his or her character personally, as a reaction to the player.

It's not right, of course, but that doesn't always seem to matter. The IC/OOC divide is not all that clear for some people. Frankly, I have to admit that it's those people I tend to be more wary about threading with these days, given past experience.

Conversely, if it's someone my character would know/talk to, then threads will occur anyway. :)

Oh, oh, see.

[sthenyaer.livejournal.com]

... Ow. *only offers a punching bag*