technocracygirl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
technocracygirl) wrote2018-10-21 07:38 pm
technocracygirl) wrote2018-10-21 07:38 pm
Entry tags:
Old characters and #YesAllWomen -- part 1
A long, long time ago, in a faraway land (ten plus years ago, in California), there was a LARP. It was a perfectly good LARP (Vampire: the Masquerade), and I enjoyed it. It was a good place to make friends, and at this point in time, I could walk there.
It was also a bad time for me emotionally. Work was getting worse, and (entirely from hindsight) I was starting to fall into depression (and possibly PTSD, but I've never had that diagnosis). The game was also getting less fun, in part because of my depression (which causes me to hermit), but also in part because my long-term character had been murdered and diablerized a few weeks previous. I don't know if you've ever had one of your characters get killed, not by plot, but by other players, but when you've been playing a character for years, and they get killed off not in any fun way, but because someone else is a jerk, but it's not very pleasant to go back the next week.
(Tangent: I will always be thrilled that the boy whose character diablerized mine got the lines and no benefits. He and I were the same d*mned Generation, so he got nothing. He was so astonished that this Assamite wasn't low Gen, and even in my anger at him, I relished the look on his face when I told him that. [Second tangent -- I wasn't a Warrior, I was a Scholar. I had gotten the Sheriff position very early on because the Prince didn't trust the Tremere, and the Assamites (all three of us) supported him and I had Auspex 3. As Sheriff, I relied on the other two Assamites (Warriors) to be the muscle. F*cker just came into the game, saw an Assamite Sheriff, and made some f*cking stupid assumptions.])
Suffice to say, I was not in a really pleasant headspace out-of-game, and had a brand-new character with exactly zero power in-game.
And that is when a couple of the other women in the game came to me and said, "Do you know what X is playing?" (X will not be named here both because he was a jerk and because I don't remember his name. X is not the same man from the tangent.)
X was playing a Ventrue. Which was fine. But X was playing a Ventrue from a specific group in the splatbook, one whose members basically have competitions on various sex acts. (Who can sleep with the most people, do the craziest stuff, whatever. It was a while ago, and I don't remember all the details, and I can't find anything like it on the internet now, but I'm not going to dig deep for that...) X was playing a very misogynistic character to begin with, and this was just sort of the cherry on the top. Most of the women in the game (not a huge percentage of players, sadly) went to the GMs and the players of the more powerful characters and said, This is not cool. This is not fun. We don't want to play this sort of thing. This is not what we signed up for. Please have him change his character, or we aren't going to play with him.
Anyone want to take a guess as to how that was received?
If you have a problem with his character, take it up in-game.
A) Almost none of us have the power to do anything to him in-game. B) Almost none of of has a reason to do anything in-game. C) The woman who will be most affected by this in-game (also a Ventrue), has no in-game ability to do anything about this thanks to Ventrue hierarchy. This is not a problem that can be resolved in-game.
If you have an issue with it, take it up in game. Otherwise, it's just a game. Can't you chill?
Look, VtM is a dark and gritty world. We know that. In-game, this is just another sucky thing happing in a sucky world. But we, your players, are not actually in this sucky world. We are playing a game. And X's way of playing the game is not fun for us, and it is threatening to this lady-playing-a-Ventrue. Please, this is not cool.
Rinse and repeat.
X got to keep playing his misogynistic SOB, until he got killed off for some heaven-only-knows-unrelated-reason. (I remember this only because I remember another older and male player telling me, "See, that's how you deal with an in-game problem.")
But by this time, I was showing up only sporadically, having failed to enjoy any of the multiple characters I had tried to play. Almost every single other woman in the game had gone Anarch, because none of them wanted to deal with X or any of the other bull going on (and had promptly gotten their out-of-game trust betrayed by a jerk of a reporter).
At the time, I assumed that this was our fault, that we should have come up with some way to deal with this in-game.
Looking back, and especially from where I am, and where society is right now, I wonder if any of those men who told us to go deal with it in-game even remember this incident. I remember it. I know that the gal who was playing a Ventrue remembers it. I'm pretty sure that the other women remember it as well.
I remember it as a frustration point. I remember trying to explain that "this is a game" and "we shouldn't be forced to do horrible things just to play" and "I thought this was supposed to be fun". I remember being told that this was the sort of thing that happened in the WoD, and if we had a problem with it, why weren't we bringing it up to X?
We were there to enjoy ourselves. We thought that, if something was wrong, we could bring it up with our GMs. We assumed we would be believed.
This wasn't the reason I left this group. But looking back, I think that this was bigger than I consciously realized. In-game, I had lost all of my power and I had no story. Out-of-game, I was not going to be listened to if I said something that the older, more powerful players disagreed with. Looking back, I'm not at all surprised that I just drifted away.
I kind of want to give my younger self a hug now.
It was also a bad time for me emotionally. Work was getting worse, and (entirely from hindsight) I was starting to fall into depression (and possibly PTSD, but I've never had that diagnosis). The game was also getting less fun, in part because of my depression (which causes me to hermit), but also in part because my long-term character had been murdered and diablerized a few weeks previous. I don't know if you've ever had one of your characters get killed, not by plot, but by other players, but when you've been playing a character for years, and they get killed off not in any fun way, but because someone else is a jerk, but it's not very pleasant to go back the next week.
(Tangent: I will always be thrilled that the boy whose character diablerized mine got the lines and no benefits. He and I were the same d*mned Generation, so he got nothing. He was so astonished that this Assamite wasn't low Gen, and even in my anger at him, I relished the look on his face when I told him that. [Second tangent -- I wasn't a Warrior, I was a Scholar. I had gotten the Sheriff position very early on because the Prince didn't trust the Tremere, and the Assamites (all three of us) supported him and I had Auspex 3. As Sheriff, I relied on the other two Assamites (Warriors) to be the muscle. F*cker just came into the game, saw an Assamite Sheriff, and made some f*cking stupid assumptions.])
Suffice to say, I was not in a really pleasant headspace out-of-game, and had a brand-new character with exactly zero power in-game.
And that is when a couple of the other women in the game came to me and said, "Do you know what X is playing?" (X will not be named here both because he was a jerk and because I don't remember his name. X is not the same man from the tangent.)
X was playing a Ventrue. Which was fine. But X was playing a Ventrue from a specific group in the splatbook, one whose members basically have competitions on various sex acts. (Who can sleep with the most people, do the craziest stuff, whatever. It was a while ago, and I don't remember all the details, and I can't find anything like it on the internet now, but I'm not going to dig deep for that...) X was playing a very misogynistic character to begin with, and this was just sort of the cherry on the top. Most of the women in the game (not a huge percentage of players, sadly) went to the GMs and the players of the more powerful characters and said, This is not cool. This is not fun. We don't want to play this sort of thing. This is not what we signed up for. Please have him change his character, or we aren't going to play with him.
Anyone want to take a guess as to how that was received?
If you have a problem with his character, take it up in-game.
A) Almost none of us have the power to do anything to him in-game. B) Almost none of of has a reason to do anything in-game. C) The woman who will be most affected by this in-game (also a Ventrue), has no in-game ability to do anything about this thanks to Ventrue hierarchy. This is not a problem that can be resolved in-game.
If you have an issue with it, take it up in game. Otherwise, it's just a game. Can't you chill?
Look, VtM is a dark and gritty world. We know that. In-game, this is just another sucky thing happing in a sucky world. But we, your players, are not actually in this sucky world. We are playing a game. And X's way of playing the game is not fun for us, and it is threatening to this lady-playing-a-Ventrue. Please, this is not cool.
Rinse and repeat.
X got to keep playing his misogynistic SOB, until he got killed off for some heaven-only-knows-unrelated-reason. (I remember this only because I remember another older and male player telling me, "See, that's how you deal with an in-game problem.")
But by this time, I was showing up only sporadically, having failed to enjoy any of the multiple characters I had tried to play. Almost every single other woman in the game had gone Anarch, because none of them wanted to deal with X or any of the other bull going on (and had promptly gotten their out-of-game trust betrayed by a jerk of a reporter).
At the time, I assumed that this was our fault, that we should have come up with some way to deal with this in-game.
Looking back, and especially from where I am, and where society is right now, I wonder if any of those men who told us to go deal with it in-game even remember this incident. I remember it. I know that the gal who was playing a Ventrue remembers it. I'm pretty sure that the other women remember it as well.
I remember it as a frustration point. I remember trying to explain that "this is a game" and "we shouldn't be forced to do horrible things just to play" and "I thought this was supposed to be fun". I remember being told that this was the sort of thing that happened in the WoD, and if we had a problem with it, why weren't we bringing it up to X?
We were there to enjoy ourselves. We thought that, if something was wrong, we could bring it up with our GMs. We assumed we would be believed.
This wasn't the reason I left this group. But looking back, I think that this was bigger than I consciously realized. In-game, I had lost all of my power and I had no story. Out-of-game, I was not going to be listened to if I said something that the older, more powerful players disagreed with. Looking back, I'm not at all surprised that I just drifted away.
I kind of want to give my younger self a hug now.