Question on playing a truly vile villain

[Chuckers]

There was a person on Victory who made a Hitler clone. His character didn't last and no one wanted to team with him. The worst part was he was a "hero."  He asked me why I wouldn't team with him. I told him that while I didn't know him as a person, there is no way I would "hang out" with a character so vile and repugnant to my personal beliefs. Even tho I am not an RP-er, there are things I won't do.

[The_Cheeseman]

I have a bit of experience with this, as my main character is a literal demon. I don't sugarcoat the fact that she is a succubus that enjoys corrupting, disfiguring, torturing, and humiliating mortals for her own amusement. I love it when randos send her tells trying to start some sort of erotic roleplaying session, and I begin describing, in gory detail, the smell of their skin melting as they are being slowly roasted alive while she violates them. That usually ends such encounters fairly quickly, which is good, because ERP is not something I am into.

However, and this is a major caveat, demons don't actually exist. There is a level of detachment from reality that prevents people from getting legitimately offended by what I say or do. They know I don't actually want to engage in wanton slaughter of all humans, because that is so extreme and ridiculous that it can't be taken seriously.

Nazis were real. There are still living people today who were the victims of Nazi atrocities. Those wounds have not yet healed, and thus they represent a sore topic for many people. While it's true that it may be technically possible to roleplay a literal Nazi in such a way as to avoid offending people, it's still in very bad taste. People don't play MMOs to be reminded of real genocide, that's why the Fifth Column has so many freaky supernatural creatures in it, rather than just a bunch of Stormtroopers and SS officers--it's meant to evoke the tropes of Nazism while not actually being Nazis.

I have been an actor for over 15 years, and I have played everything from Lee Harvey Oswald to Jesus Christ, so I know a bit about portraying potentially polarizing characters. As somebody mentioned above, it can be exhausting. Maintaining character for long periods of time is mentally taxing enough, but attempting to inhabit the mind of a person you find truly foreign or detestable is especially difficult. All acting involves drawing on aspects of your own psyche, and there are some parts that you just shouldn't be comfortable with bringing to the surface.

In short, while there may be a way to play a literal Nazi character without upsetting people, it's likely not going to be fun. For anyone. Sadly, some ideas are just too taboo for polite society. I think it's sad that the swastika, once a symbol of power and virtue, has been forever corrupted by the Third Reich. But there's no going back--it's just too far gone. That symbol will always evoke hate and bigotry, and any attempt to use it, even with good intentions, will inevitably hurt somebody. Better to just leave it alone.

Edited November 1, 2019 by The_Cheeseman

[Leogunner]

To say the least, this thread had some interesting replies.  Basically, no matter how careful or lightly you tread, it just isn't possible to walk on those eggshells without pulverizing them into microscopic dust.

 

That isn't to say I'd agree with the OP playing a racist or a Nazi (there is a bit of a difference there lol funny how they tend to get lumped together so often) but I just feel this whole walking on eggshells thing is self destructive.  Personally, I'm just sick and tired of them.  Never in my 30 years of living have I heard, seen and talked about Nazis as much as I have in the past 5.  In the eastern countries, like South Korea, it used to be pretty popular to wear the garb, maybe because it wasn't just a fashion statement but also because it was sort of a forbidden faux pas so it's kind of uncommon and eye catching.  But it's taken quite the turn in the US to the point we're constantly portraying more and more stereotypical racists, white supremacists, nazis and police brutality in social media, popular television, activism, etc.

 

I mean, who do you really think is keeping Nazi depictions alive and relevant?  Actual Nazis? Racists people?  Or maybe those woke rich "influential" people putting up articles and TV shows? You keep suppressing people and it's only going to draw them to that thing more.

 

I'm not scared that a racist person will make a racist character and hide behind it as an excuse to be racist.  I'm scared that this whole thing will continue further and rape will be added to this frequent depiction and draw people's interest, maybe followed by pedophilia or worse.

 

I'm not sure why you'd want to make a Nazi character, OP.  I personally have neutral interest in them (I watched enough documentaries, read a manifesto or two and listen to various people talking about such subject enough) but I wouldn't try to suppress your desire to explore such a character.  Maybe you'd get bored of it after a while. But that's just my perspective.  When it comes to others, there's no telling how irrational they will react, be it that they are truly offended and harmed by your words or (more likely than not) suppressing everyone so they themselves aren't tempted to do the same (as a black person, I can't express my disdain accurately when I hear about some black celebrity advocating for violence when some dumb thug ends up dead because they were a thug and being violent...or siding with a proven criminal just because they are black...it's literally racist tribalism...but they want to censor and suppress other racists).

[Paragon Vanguard]

It's your character, play whatever you wish to play within the rules, and I have no idea what they are pertaining to this. As said above, you cannot worry about the eggshells, triggered people will get triggered by something else eventually. Just understand some people will not play or rp with you. 

Somehow being a serial killer is an acceptable rp reason to kill, rape, and destroy things......but you know, don't do it because of racism. That is laughable. These feelings "woke" people have about such issues are only manifested by societal proprieties, which are only pushed by politicians for gain. That is not to say people would not find racism disgusting otherwise, but we should not be looking for it under every rock, nor thinking someone killed due to race is a worse crime than someone killed for their wallet. The dead are dead, all the same, and reasoning is hardly a matter to them. 
My point is that people play vile disgusting characters all the time, but this picking and choosing and trying to shame someone for their reasoning is childish, and foolish. No one claims the person playing the serial killer has serial killer tendencies, no more than I suspect the vast majority that play heroes on here have heroic tendencies. My personal characters are story driven, and some are bad guys, and interesting bad guys make for good stories. It doesn't mean I wish to rule the world, destroy the world, or break reality. It simply means antagonists are as important as protagonists. 

As far as actually playing the character, I would find it boring and too cliche for my taste. I don't think it has a long life. However, to each their own. 😉

[Big Lunk]

One thing this thread has managed to do is create a game I play with a friend that I like to call "the list of characters Lunk isn't allowed to make", where I just send him character concepts that shouldn't be made.
Either because they are just bad puns, like Tinkerbull (Minotaur fairy extraordinaire).
Or straight up offensive, like the Onomatopaedo (has sonic powers and tries to boink kids). 

Edited November 15, 2019 by Big Lunk

[Mercurias]

13 hours ago, Luke said:

It's your character, play whatever you wish to play within the rules, and I have no idea what they are pertaining to this. As said above, you cannot worry about the eggshells, triggered people will get triggered by something else eventually. Just understand some people will not play or rp with you. 

Said in the most obnoxious way possible, but true.

 

13 hours ago, Luke said:

Somehow being a serial killer is an acceptable rp reason to kill, rape, and destroy things......but you know, don't do it because of racism. That is laughable.

There are many, many RP groups with different community rules concerning content. A great deal of them ban sexual assault as accepted content, and some ban particularly egregious forms of violence or murder.

13 hours ago, Luke said:

These feelings "woke" people have about such issues are only manifested by societal proprieties, which are only pushed by politicians for gain.

Now we found your issue. You're just too cool, smart, and edgy for PC culture.

 

Clearly people only want to be inclusive for the political gain. Not at all because it's abhorrent to demean a person because of their ethnic origin, gender, or sexual orientation.

 

 Every time we hold a Pride rally, our power grows.

 

13 hours ago, Luke said:

My point is that people play vile disgusting characters all the time, but this picking and choosing and trying to shame someone for their reasoning is childish, and foolish.

How dare we stifle the creativity of the genius avante garde artist and their nazi kitty person?

 

13 hours ago, Luke said:

 No one claims the person playing the serial killer has serial killer tendencies, no more than I suspect the vast majority that play heroes on here have heroic tendencies.

What does this mean? Who hurt you?

13 hours ago, Luke said:

My personal characters are story driven, and some are bad guys, and interesting bad guys make for good stories. It doesn't mean I wish to rule the world, destroy the world, or break reality. It simply means antagonists are as important as protagonists. 

Literally no one asked.

 

Not one single person.

13 hours ago, Luke said:

As far as actually playing the character, I would find it boring and too cliche for my taste. I don't think it has a long life. However, to each their own. 😉

You went from absolutely triggered to smiley emoji so fast that I'm a little worried for you.

 

Seriously, if you're playing a character for shock value, don't expect people to want to interact. If you're playing a character to spew racist nonsense, at least expect the people who belong to the races your character is condemning to feel uncomfortable. This isn't rocket science. It's basic empathy.

[Paine-chan]

As long as a character is a villain, they can act as dastardly as they want and I will probably not see anything wrong with it, but thats me, I'm pretty open minded about playing make believe, though some people obviously would prefer to bully and belittle those with dissimilar views.

 

As long as an evil character can be talked to out of character and behave as a civilized player. If you dont like how someone behaves or talks, simply put them on ignore, and if you feel they have somehow done something against the Homecoming terms of agreement then report them, cause we do have that now. Villains are evil, they say and do evil things.

 

And in closing I leave you with a SNL gem.

 

[Bastille Boy]

On 11/15/2019 at 4:06 AM, Luke said:

It's your character, play whatever you wish to play within the rules, and I have no idea what they are pertaining to this.

The official Code of Conduct for Homecoming prohibits "Anything involving sensitive events, both current and historical." It also prohibits "Anything involving controversial real-world individuals or organisations."

 

Nazi characters are not allowed. Period, end of story.

Edited November 16, 2019 by ejworthing

[Leogunner]

1 hour ago, ejworthing said:

The official Code of Conduct for Homecoming prohibits "Anything involving sensitive events, both current and historical." It also prohibits "Anything involving controversial real-world individuals or organisations."

 

Nazi characters are not allowed. Period, end of story.

If you can't see the many loopholes in that, you're not thinking very creatively.

[The_Cheeseman]

I mean, I feel like people who complain about "triggering people" are kind of missing the point, here. Yes, there will always be people who will get upset about just about anything, that's life. But one of the most important aspects of living a happy, productive life is to not be an @$$hole. We're not saying you should follow the rules set forth by progressives, we're saying that you should be empathetic to fellow humans and at least try not to do things that unnecessarily cause unhappiness in others. There is an infinite variety of characters you could make, so why choose one that you know will hurt some people?

You can't avoid all triggers, but if you consider yourself a mature, responsible member of society, you should at least make an attempt.

[Leogunner]

22 minutes ago, The_Cheeseman said:

I mean, I feel like people who complain about "triggering people" are kind of missing the point, here. Yes, there will always be people who will get upset about just about anything, that's life. But one of the most important aspects of living a happy, productive life is to not be an @$$hole. We're not saying you should follow the rules set forth by progressives, we're saying that you should be empathetic to fellow humans and at least try not to do things that unnecessarily cause unhappiness in others. There is an infinite variety of characters you could make, so why choose one that you know will hurt some people?

You can't avoid all triggers, but if you consider yourself a mature, responsible member of society, you should at least make an attempt.

I tend to agree, but at the same time, the problem here isn't that you might hurt or cause unhappiness to someone who is genuinely vulnerable.  The problem is the social police who are not genuinely vulnerable that are so "empathetic", they take on the unhappiness of someone else without actually understanding or even asking for consent of those that would be affected and enforcing standards for the sole purpose of feeling useful, virtuous and righteous.

 

It removes the relevance of an actual affected individual to use their experiences to level with those that might be ignorant of the circumstances as well as halting the less knowledgeable from creating a genuine environment that a vulnerable person would use to adapt and recover from their unfortunate circumstances.  While I can understand the importance of a mediator (as I tend to hold a similar role a lot of times), bias inevitably shirks that importance when said mediator doesn't reflect enough upon that bias.

[The_Cheeseman]

Just now, Leogunner said:

I tend to agree, but at the same time, the problem here isn't that you might hurt or cause unhappiness to someone who is genuinely vulnerable.  The problem is the social police who are not genuinely vulnerable that are so "empathetic", they take on the unhappiness of someone else without actually understanding or even asking for consent of those that would be affected and enforcing standards for the sole purpose of feeling useful, virtuous and righteous.

 

It removes the relevance of an actual affected individual to use their experiences to level with those that might be ignorant of the circumstances as well as halting the less knowledgeable from creating a genuine environment that a vulnerable person would use to adapt and recover from their unfortunate circumstances.  While I can understand the importance of a mediator (as I tend to hold a similar role a lot of times), bias inevitably shirks that importance when said mediator doesn't reflect enough upon that bias.

I mean, it's true that those thought-police, call-out folks are annoying and counter-productive, but that shouldn't really affect your decision-making in these kinds of situations. Just because they are being @$$holes, it doesn't mean you should, too. The real problem IS the possibility of causing harm to a vulnerable person. The angry, reactionary Left may be making their point badly, but they're still right, in this case.

[Leogunner]

1 minute ago, The_Cheeseman said:

I mean, it's true that those thought-police, call-out folks are annoying and counter-productive, but that shouldn't really affect your decision-making in these kinds of situations. Just because they are being @$$holes, it doesn't mean you should, too. The real problem IS the possibility of causing harm to a vulnerable person. The angry, reactionary Left may be making their point badly, but they're still right, in this case.

But then you're mixing intent in there and then things get really muddy.

 

Because at the end of the day, there's not anything inherently wrong with holding discriminatory or even racist views.  We all have our biases but what matters is how we act on them.  And if someone said a certain thing, whether they are racist or not, intent ultimately is how their actions are to be judged.  But it's far too often a person's words are directly linked to intent which is inherently discriminatory (he said a homophobic thing once so he must be doing this or that because he's homophobic).

[The_Cheeseman]

3 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

But then you're mixing intent in there and then things get really muddy.

 

Because at the end of the day, there's not anything inherently wrong with holding discriminatory or even racist views.  We all have our biases but what matters is how we act on them.  And if someone said a certain thing, whether they are racist or not, intent ultimately is how their actions are to be judged.  But it's far too often a person's words are directly linked to intent which is inherently discriminatory (he said a homophobic thing once so he must be doing this or that because he's homophobic).

I don't necessarily agree with you, there. From a practical standpoint, it's true we cannot control our feelings or implicit biases, but we certainly can control how we behave and whether or not we act on those biases. Everyone has prejudices, but racism is specifically when you consciously believe one race to be innately superior to another. That is a belief, not a mere bias, and can be consciously changed. Part of being a mature, empathetic person is acknowledging your own biases and making the effort to account for them in your behavior.

Also, I would argue that racism is inherently bad for society, as it wastes the potential human capital of oppressed minorities, fractures social cohesion, and contributes to economic inequality and poverty, all of which are a drag on the economy.

It's all well and good to argue about intent, but that is--often deliberately--rather difficult to ascertain. Everybody is entitled to make mistakes, obviously, but the true test of character is whether or not you learn from those mistakes and change your behavior. If you continue to do something that you know causes harm to others without some redeeming value to offset that harm, you're being an @$$hole, even if it wasn't your original intent.

[Bastille Boy]

2 hours ago, Leogunner said:

If you can't see the many loopholes in that, you're not thinking very creatively.

I'm afraid I don't see any loopholes here. Remember that the interpretation of the rules is up to the people who run the servers. A player who gets too close to the boundaries is risking an account ban. The server administrators have no obligation to listen to appeals. (See rule 2 of the User Agreement.)

 

I can't speak for the administrators, but my advice would be to to stay far, far away from violating these rules if you want to keep your account. It's pretty clear that World War II is one of the sensitive historical events that the administrators were thinking of when they wrote these rules.

[Leogunner]

1 hour ago, The_Cheeseman said:

I don't necessarily agree with you, there. From a practical standpoint, it's true we cannot control our feelings or implicit biases, but we certainly can control how we behave and whether or not we act on those biases. Everyone has prejudices, but racism is specifically when you consciously believe one race to be innately superior to another. That is a belief, not a mere bias, and can be consciously changed. Part of being a mature, empathetic person is acknowledging your own biases and making the effort to account for them in your behavior.

Same can be extended to religion (specifically talking about racism being a belief and not a bias).  At what point do you enforce and ostracize people for their beliefs because you don't agree with them?  I'd personally answer that the point would be up until harm or damage is the result because people are free to believe whatever they want, even that their race is better than another.  You don't change people's beliefs by using force and punishment (well, technically you can, but it's pretty hypocritical).

 

1 hour ago, The_Cheeseman said:

Also, I would argue that racism is inherently bad for society, as it wastes the potential human capital of oppressed minorities, fractures social cohesion, and contributes to economic inequality and poverty, all of which are a drag on the economy.

 And I'm of the opinion that suppression of facts and logic is equally as bad and wasteful.  You don't have to enforce genetic imperialism or something but the fact race realism is practically ostracized opens the gate for even more suppression of knowledge for the sake of emotion or this weird topsy turvy environment where minorities are looked down upon and coddled which will ultimately keep said minorities in the same inequitable circumstances.

 

But we're not really talking about the differences in race here, just differences of opinions of censorship.  It's not rocket science to figure out when you censor and suppress people, it tends to make them more belligerent and as they say, the squeaky wheel draws the most attention. 

 

As for trying to make someone change their behavior, I'd rather lead by example.  As far as empathy goes, I feel it's an inherently loaded term as it's trying to appeal to feelings of good and virtue but at the expense of opposing views.  If someone is truely empathetic, why not feel empathy for both the victim and the racist?  Or is the racist inhuman?  Do they hold their beliefs purely because they are evil?  Or do they believe what they do because of the environment they were brought about in?  And do we just ignore the racial realist points of that environment?  

 

And to circle the point back to villains, that's kind of an important aspect, to me, when making a villain: most of them aren't just evil.  They have motives, beliefs, background, and don't view themselves as evil or corrupt.  If it's simple to dissect a fictional villain to ascertain common ground in empathizing with their motives, why can we not do this with real life humans?

 

38 minutes ago, ejworthing said:

I'm afraid I don't see any loopholes here. Remember that the interpretation of the rules is up to the people who run the servers. A player who gets too close to the boundaries is risking an account ban. The server administrators have no obligation to listen to appeals. (See rule 2 of the User Agreement.)

 

I can't speak for the administrators, but my advice would be to to stay far, far away from violating these rules if you want to keep your account. It's pretty clear that World War II is one of the sensitive historical events that the administrators were thinking of when they wrote these rules.

Well, there is already a fascist Nazi equivalent in the game already.  I see plenty of loopholes from that alone.

[Widower]

Okay, if we're going to have thread necromancy, let us not have it on such sensitive subjects.

 

As for the thread topic: yes, you can be a 5th Columnist, no, you cannot use slurs or call for genocide or do things that are very obviously against the CoC in the name of roleplaying.