I do. I think that “genuine understanding” is all kinds of imprecise and generalising. I’d argue that lived experience would probably a better term to use here, especially since nobody so much understands a phenomenon so much as they do experience it through their own point of view, one which cannot be imparted wholesale onto another person, but can, and should be used to allow a piece of work to do justice to its subjects.
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@Cataphrak
I would not disagree with what I think you mean here.
Yeah, I wasn’t quoting your argument necessarily as a criticism of it, more as comment on the fact that your two respective positions aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
My problem is by linking either phrase to [quote=“RedRoses, post:33, topic:23481”]
in the hands of the right writer,
[/quote]
essentialism rears its ugly head.
Neither living the experience or having “genuine understanding” based on experience should be essential to defining “the right author”
Not having “essential” background elements or qualities should not automatically disqualify your game design or story as being “trivial” or “trivializing”
Just as having those qualities or elements automatically prevents trivialization from happening.
As both a game community and a writing community It is important to increase real contributions outside of an establishment but we as a community should not be tearing others and their ability to contribute down just to further that goal.
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I’d say understood, but that would be claiming my brain is fully awake.
One thing that came to mind that’s really troubling about writing and reading (whether awake or not) that this brings to mind is that some things are much easier to put into words than others.
Like love. Love is not easy to describe in a way that makes reading the story even close to the same thing as feeling love, even when the writer is writing about their love.
But I’d hate for people to stop writing about love just because it’s complicated. Complicated things are important.
I just want to double down here on personal experience. Some of the authors I like the most as authors of military fiction and military experience have never been in a military. Choosing a certain profession is obviously a lot different than being a certain race, but both genres would be greatly diminished if it was only appropriate for current and former military members to write about the military.
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For the sake of clarification:
I don’t believe that there is a prescriptive definition for what is trivialising and what isn’t. I think that this is a decision that has to be made by the audience both in their feedback, and how they interpret that work.
I do however, believe that an author without the necessary lived experiences is going to create a work which is going to seem trivialising, especially to people who do have those lived experiences, hence the importance of research and consultation, and feedback.
It’s not so much a matter of complexity as it is experience. I never had the “traditional” love-at-first-sight experience, so I have no idea how that works. I have no idea how an overpowering physical infatuation works, because I haven’t gone through that either. Writing stuff that reflected those experiences was hard, and I got a lot of it wrong. Thankfully, people were willing to offer me feedback to correct that, which I took, and integrated.
It should be the same for any lived experience.
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So, a binary author, no matter how great her source research and conception->publishing process is will [quote=“Cataphrak, post:47, topic:23481”]
create a work which is going to seem trivialising, especially to people who do have those lived experiences,
[/quote]
no matter what?
Just because she is binary?
I can not accept this; I truly believe that a person with a good enough process can overcome their initial handicap that they begin writing with.
If a binary author writing a nonbinary character will always succumb to “seemingly trivalization” then the two of us are doomed before we even write.
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Well, the two are not exactly mutually exclusive (experience and complexity) - some experiences are more complicated than others.
But I agree with the rest of that.
That’s what I’ve been saying.
I just believe that reaching out to people with the lived experiences and incorporating their feedback is integral to having a “good enough process”.
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We are on the same page in all regards then. I just was not understanding your message earlier. My appologies.
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I can tell you it feels maddening like Aphrodite’s maddening. It’s like a hunger and thirst but isn’t necessarily need to be physical you just crave them and their presents them to be there. It can feel both embarrassing and wonderful to feel that way because you can feel so bare.
Please don’t make me step into a conversation like this. Like, it’s fine for now, but I know someone is going to take it over the line. Don’t be that person.
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A bit of personal experience. I was asked to work on a based-on-history screenplay involving an American slave who flees north after his wife and children are sold away from him. The first thing I told the Producer when asked to work on the project was 'You know, I’m white, right? I mean, Polish-Irish white."
But the Producer was not deterred and kept me on. The original writer for the project was African-American and I was able to find several books on the historical event, including one by the former-slave himself. However, like I said, I’m white. My connection was tenuous at best. I only found a way to begin to emotionally understand the material by putting it in the context of the Holocaust. That gave me a window of understanding into the subject matter.
However, I found that I could only write effectively about the main character’s anger and rage. The lighter moments, especially the somehow comedic ones, escaped me. In the end, we had to send it back to the original writer for that portion of things.
Research. Yes. Always. Specifically, there may come a moment when you have to reach out to others to make a deeper connection in order to write the scenes with accurate emotional impact. My moment for the comedy side came along a year after the project moved to filming (It is an Indy production and has been filmed in small pieces when funding allows).
I was sitting next to a gentleman from Cleveland on a plane. We traded cards. He was a contractor, construction and the like, and he was African American. We got to talking and he asked about my projects. I mentioned the story in question and when he raised an eyebrow I explained how I’d tapped into the Holocaust to get the right tone. He looked at me, thought about that connection a moment, then said simply, “That’s about right.”
“That’s about right.” Not exactly a perfect fit but not far afield either. Close enough. That was the comedic tone that I had needed to adopt for a very disturbing story.
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My thoughts.
When I began to write on my story, I’ve constantly wondered whether my interpretation of the character was correct, and whether I had inadvertently misconstrued or even insulted certain people by writing their viewpoints the way I did. I agree that one might be detached from the situation when one has no experiences like it, and that talking to one who has had that experience helps.
Here’s the thing, when I write, I’m writing the viewpoint of that character, not what another person thinks of them. I think it’s undeniable that one who has done similar, if not the same things that character has done, is more likely to be able to write said story in a manner that more fits into the mold of said character.
Of course, my experience of those situations are… limited. That’s why I like to ask people I trust to read through my work, so if they have any thoughts I can incorporate them, and attempt to understand their experiences, and their thoughts.
But personally my thoughts on the Andrew Jackson story, as an example, is that I don’t think one would be able to truly immerse their player in it. I won’t play Spec Ops: The Line for the same reason, because considering all that I know, I cannot see a situation where I would allow myself to take that action, especially in hindsight.
Hindsight is 20/20. Even if you could justify a hypothetical situation, once someone can see the relation between his actions and the results, their understanding will irrevocably be fixed. The WIP I’m working on intends to always give the player a choice, and to hold them accountable for that choice. Players however, may find it unreasonable for me to force a choice upon them, and hold them accountable for it. The horror, the pain of watching your choices bear rotten fruit, only truly work if the player accepts the choice they made, and that can only happen if they made that choice, not if it was thrust upon them.
I guess I’m going off topic. I don’t think games are inherently trivializing, it’s a medium to tell a story, to help people relate to a situation and also to allow a person to explore themes they never really gave thought to. It acts as a way for the writer to connect people. Certainly not all stories act that way, and if you’ve read enough light novels power fantasies will really begin to sicken you, but all in all it is a tool, and the duty of the writer is to use that tool respectfully.
Edit: Then again I play dwarf fortress, so I’m not exactly a good person to judge on trivializing destruction, death and crazy things.
The original topic was turning into a bit of a straw man; so let’s look at something where I think people will be more consistently willing to disagree. Are there choices that a game shouldn’t give a player?
I’ve agreed in the past that rape is such a choice:
And on this thread we’ve had Dan stating that genocide counts:
Now, maybe genocide should be out of bounds, but I’m not convinced by the reason Dan offers. Like @Eiwynn, I don’t think that a game choice inherently represents its options as comparable. By that argument, not only do we have a lot of COG games that trivialize murder (which, let’s face it, we do) but it’s impossible to write it any other way – right? If game choices are inevitably received as comparable, interactive fiction can offer nothing deeper than, “To kill, or not to kill, or to have a nap and a sandwich.”
But I think @Fiogan is right that we already have some examples of games that frame the choice of murder (and indeed genocide) in a non-trivializing way – that treat the characters who are killed as more than objects in a game. @Cataphrak and I are both trying to write series that are to a large extent about atrocity and mass murder, and which will offer players the option to become monsters. I don’t think that either series is doomed to be trivializing, though we could yet get it wrong.
If it’s OK to give the choice of mass murder, why not rape? I tried to answer that on that other, five-year-old thread – a very capably written gangster game, where the MC was in a situation that in real life could very plausibly lead to a choice of rape. I suggested that the difference has to do with the way I think the different stories are likely to be received:
So if that’s what I think about some immoral choices, what about genocide? There are obviously strands in our culture that would justify genocide, too; we’re seeing them more starkly than ever, with the President’s demonizing language toward various categories of immigrants. But that’s in vivid tension with the way our culture still holds up genocide as the ultimate evil, the Nazi Sin that forever justified using them as conscience-free FPS fodder alongside aliens, devils, and robots.
That contradiction is big and important enough that I’d welcome art that explores it properly – because I think at the end of it, most readers would have a reaction like @Fiogan’s. A game that walked a player through the path that leads to genocide, that shows how a path seemingly consistent with American ideals arrives at something universally recognized as a horror, could be ham-handed and trivializing. It could even be destructive, if the author ended up writing something that many readers took as justification for genocide. But it could also be devastatingly good, and an important art work for our cultural moment.
I respect the “artists’ only responsibility is to themselves” perspective – even if I don’t agree that it’s the last word.
I believe in creativity, in taking risks and stretching out of our comfort zones. I believe in stories that echo the moral ambiguity of the world (i.e. that don’t have big simple morals-of-the-story, where villains aren’t necessarily punished or revealed to be sympathetic after all). I definitely believe it’s important for people to try to write characters and experiences other than their own.
And then once we’ve created, I think part of being a creator is accepting a measure of responsibility for how it’s received. Because stories do shape the way we think; if we write certain characters as mere objects in a power fantasy, we’re contributing to a broader culture that treats some people as objects.
One of my pet peeves in the project proposals I review is the use of “ensure” in all kinds of cases where we can do nothing of the kind. 
I don’t think we can ensure very much as writers, including our readers’ sleeping habits. Like @RedRoses said, " there is no writer skilled enough to make every single person who makes that choice feel the horror and guilt that should be felt behind that decision."
I know in advance that some people are going to draw morals from my work that I didn’t put there. I share some responsibility for whatever they find there, and I’m ready to accept that responsibility; but it’s not going to keep me from writing, including about topics where there’s a significant chance of my writing something inadvertently awful. I’ll listen to criticism as I write, and make use of it where it rings true, and my work will be stronger for it.
tl;dr - yeah, pretty much.
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I used to tabletop roleplay. The groups I played in were almost primarily male. You could count the women involved on one hand, usually one finger. Time after time I saw these men think it was appropriate for them to include rape in a tabletop game. Surely if we’re okay with killing then what’s the difficulty with roleplaying rape?
I knew one guy who brought his girlfriend (who wasn’t a roleplayer) along to a game session at the local rp club. The games-master, (a guy who was 10+ years older than her and much larger) took her outside the room, away from the other players, and described to her how her character was raped. And none of the other rpers seemed to wrap their minds around why this was wrong. Same GM would spew the most horribly sexist things at women. Yet he’s still a member of the gaming group and I’m pretty certain that girl never roleplayed again.
And I know of another group of guys who thought it would be funny to describe to the sole woman at the LARP game how her character was going to get raped, and then gang up on her when she got upset by this about how it was just a game.
It’s just a game. Right?
And I want to scream DON’T YOU KNOW HOW WRONG THAT IS?
So, I remember those stories, and the other stories similar to them and I just go nonononono! And this discussion reminds me a little of that.
And I think you’re more likely to encounter a rapist than a murderer. More likely to encounter a rape victim than someone who’s been murdered. And normalising rape is appalling.
And no, I don’t think games should allow for certain choices.
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It might sound trivializing, and I don’t mean it that way, but one of the big differences between rape and murder is that that (at least for women), rape hits a lot closer to home because it is more likely.
It’s like a lot of people will wince when someone hits their hand with a hammer on the screen and breaks a finger, or gets their fingers caught in a door, but might laugh if someone gets blown up by a grenade. You can picture the first two, and feel how much it would hurt, but the last one is just so over the top.
I think this is also why cruelty to animals hits a lot closer, I am still wincing about that bloody fish at the start of Samurai of Hyuga, while I could kill people without caring later in that game.
Death is such a distant thing for most people in society today. Most of us have never seen a dead, let alone a dying person, and atrocities are just something that happens on television. But that fear when you walk down a dark alley at night or have someone grab you without consent… that is not distant. Not for many of us.
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I never thought I would quote Bismarck here but he said something I feel could be important in this context.
He said “Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.”
I know we’re not exactly speaking about war but what he mean is that you cant know how terrible something is until you experienced it.
When people speak of rape as if it was just another fact of life I cringe because those people cant know how it is. Same with war crimes and cruelty. It didnt happen to them so they act like its nothing and it end up hurting people who actualy had to deal with that.
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I am a role player so I had a guy trying to rape my character. not knowing I was raped in real life. I grab his testicules and twisted them …Explaining him What a real rapist would do to him while i grab his neck… He STARTED TO CRY… and I just let him go THIS IS WHAT A RAPED PERSON FEELS… DO YOU LIKE IT ? I suffered a rape attempt in real life and If you think you are too macho to. Say think it twice…
I never had any problem in any role playing session. And he even apologized. He never though the same way about hentay and all dehumanizing woman or gay media.
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