Originally written by @AMuteCrypt
Roleplay, Consent And You
There’s been a decent amount of discussions around this on the Discord, and I figure having this written up here is very valuable tool. Please note that this does not supercede any of the rules or requests of Madrias, Elizipeazie and the forum staff more broadly. Instead, this should be seen as a guide, a broad idea on how to get things running smoothly and to make sure everyone has fun.
Let’s take the tea and consent video. How do you go about making a cup of tea for someone? You ask if they want tea. Then, if they say they want tea, you make it for them and give them the cup, but you leave the actual drinking to them. Roleplay is a lot like that too. How do you roleplay making a cup of tea for someone’s character? You offer it in-character, they accept the offer, you describe making the tea, they describe their character drinking the tea. Who knows, maybe their character hates tea, or is allergic to caffeine, or… Makes sense, right? Similarly, how would you get someone to come take a look at something cool in your car? Would you grab their hand and force them over to the car? I hope not, you ask them to come over. RP is the same. Don’t describe the other person’s actions, don’t write it for them and force them to come over. Make an offer in the RP, let the other person accept. Don’t force them to. Make sure that the other person is involved in what their character is doing, make sure that they have agency.
This strategy of in-character offers works fine 95% of the time. Cups of tea, showing something cool, games of catch etc. The other 5% of the time is when you have things where there is a reasonable chance that the human on the other side of the screen (or a reader going through the thread) might be made uncomfortable by the content. Remember, there’s a human on the other side of this, a human who is just looking to have fun. Flirting and hitting on someone’s character, in-character abuse touching on sensitive topics, stuff like that can easily ruin the fun. In those cases, in-character consent is not enough - and it can be hard to get while making things feel natural. In these cases, make sure to escalate it to the actual human controlling the characters. Give an explanation of your ideas, talk it out, and be willing to accept no as an answer.
So, let’s say you’ve made a post with some touchy topics. Let’s say I want to make a post where a character is abusing alcohol. Good news everyone, the forum has a nice, simple way to give people warnings about sensitive content and choose to skip it - the [details] collapse. Put sensitive content in one of those, so that potential readers can choose what they want to read. If I don’t want to see that sort of thing with my cereal and coffee in the morning, I shouldn’t have to. A simple [details=“CW: Discussion of Alcohol Abuse”] makes everything much, much more fun for everyone involved.