Seriously? You even have to ask?

Update: Because there's now more to the story, I'm unlocking this and making another public post with more bits of assholery.

This...thing was just posted in rp_discuss (LiveJournal community) and I responded, but it's so over the top and so goddamned offensive that I couldn't not share the fail.

I am wanting to make an Ilse Koch type character. You know, that freak from the 40s that had Holocaust victims killed because she liked their tattoos? (Or shrunk their heads, or make human skin lampshades, list goes on.) I want to enter her into a mental hospital as a mental patient. Possibly criminally insane.

But I don't want to sound insensitive to minorities that were affected by the holocaust. Can I still do this, but at the same time, not be an insensitive duchebag?

*twitch*

My response:

Can I still do this, but at the same time, not be an insensitive duchebag [sic]?

I'm gonna say no, and not just for the Holocaust, but people who have mental illnesses as well are likely to be offended (speaking as one such person, yes, it sounds very offensive).

Really, just...why?

I'm going to say this once: Violence and mental illness are not mutually exclusive. You can have a mental illness and never committ a single act of violence just as you can be violent and not have a mental illness. Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole, okay?

I'm not saying you can't ever portray someone who has a mental illness or who is traumatized by events that happen during role-play. I'm saying there's a line and shit like this? Yeah, it's waaaaaaaay over it.

Bottom line is, if you have to ask if it's offensive, chances are pretty high that it is indeed offensive.

Onoz, I'm being ~politically correct~ in an LJ community!

Note: This is a follow-up to last night's post about assholish shenanigans in the LJ community rp_discuss.

Hey guys, did you know that being offended by something that's offensive makes me a poor role-player? No, really. Also, role-players are ~intellectuals~ who should understand that most offenders don't intend to be offensive, so when one says or does something offensive we shouldn't chastise them or tell them they can't do whatever it is that's offensive. Don't believe me? Just read!

My immediate thought is yes you can do this and not be an insensitive jerk.

In the first place, you want to play her in a mental institution game. By nature, people who are playing in that game are already "controversial". You'll be in a community, the entries will be locked, and only you and your fellow players will be seeing it. In games, that's all that matters- you and your players.

Second (and I don't know how many times this has to be said) you are not your character. Anyone who doesn't understand that really should not be playing. In fact (I will not be popular for saying this) anyone who believes that you are your character is likely a very poor RPer. If they hold that belief then they most likely only believe it because they are their character. That is not assuming a different character. That is poor roleplaying.

What are your plans for your character, if any? I know that's a really awful question because good RPing is full of surprises, not a story with a pre-determined route complete with predetermined events and ending (that's just fanfiction), but are you thinking about her getting better? Or are you thinking more of playing her as a character study?

It's a miserable thing, this state of LJRP in which players are restricted from playing so many possibly interesting characters. It isn't fair either- as a member of several stigmatized groups*, I can play anyone I want and if anyone complains, all I'd have to do would be to make a youtube video proving my minority statuses. We can play the good and the bad, but we can only play the ugly if it's done as a joke or with a revenge agenda?

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a rigid "no". Why not compromise- Controversial character? Have a little disclaimer that it's "just a character" complete with link to a place where people could get in touch with you to discuss it. Knowing the player behind the character really helps in cases like this. One of those cases where fear and discomfort are eased with knowledge.

The clipped version is that you can play it and not be an insensitive jerk. There will be jerks who have an issue with it, yes, but if you stick to the community, you should get fewer jerks. The safest bet would be to play it in a game off of Livejournal (a 1x1 game, a LARP, a board), but you probably don't want to do that. Besides, Livejournal has a high concentration of fine RPers. Which ought to translate into intellectuals who would prefer to approach the player for a discussion with the intent not of chastising or telling off, but of reaching a common understanding. Nine out of ten times, the offender's intent was not to offend. Intent should count for something.

Edit for forgetting the asterisk, but since the post got long, I'll just invite anyone that feels like it to PM me and I'll briefly get it out.

Oh boy, we even get the "intent is magic" argument thrown in for good measure.

"How dare people who might want to be included in a game voice their offense! I bet they're not any good anyway, and they are most certainly not the intellectual I am! Clearly they don't know that it's ~just a character~, nor do they know how to have fun! Also, no one will see it, therfore it's not offensive!"

ETA: Oh, I totally forgot to address the whole "a person in a mental hospital is 'controversial' anyway." Um, yeah, glad to know my mother and I are both controversial people, as are some of my friends. It's so nice to know we can't just be, I don't know, plain old people.

Yes, I called bullshit:

I've often found that players who insist on playing offensive characters because it's ~just a character~ and not really them are usually assholes who are pretty poor rpers in their own way. I would think "reaching a common understanding" would involve the offender figuring out why the character/what they said is so offensive even if they had no intention of offending (in the end, the intent doesn't matter to the offended). I mean, that's how intellectuals operate in my world. (Note nowhere in there did I say the person with the offensive character was required to change. Unless the person in charge nixes the idea, the only thing that player will suffer from is one or a few people thinking they're an asshole. Hardly anything when compared to a person who belongs to a group that's constantly stigmatized, or worse, a person who is a member of an ethnic/religious group that has a long history of oppression.)

It's bad enough that there's a mental hospital rp, but there are loads of original ideas you could come up with of people who do all sorts of sick and twisted things without resorting to a real-life person who victimized real people. Also, unless it's a hospital specifically for patients who have committed violent crimes, you don't have to be a violent person to be in a mental hospital. In fact, more often than not, most people in your standard hospital haven't harmed anyone and won't ever do so. With so many options, why insist on the one that's guaranteed to be offensive to at least someone?

Most role-players I know want to be inclusive, and inclusiveness means finding compromise rather than telling anyone who might be offended to just get over it.

Again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be a mental hospital role-play. I do think I have every right to believe it's going to be chock-full of stereotypes and most likely run by someone who has never been institutionalized. I mean, I could hope that there'd be someone there sensitive to the stigmas surrounding mental illness, someone aware of just how the world perceives the mentally ill, and s/he could be trying to make a game centered around portraying the hospital in a way that attempts to erase the stereotypes. It could happen, right?

Yeah, and unicorns might fly out my butt.

I am done.

You can read what's happened here. Basically, I must think anyone who plays a bad guy is bad, and I must have forgotten there are those with mental illness who are violent. I shouldn't pretend otherwise even though I never said such a thing never happened, nor did I ever say anywhere in there that you can't play whatever the hell you want to be or that people were horrible for playing murderers. (Hello, someone ask me about Selene sometime. She's a fucking monster in that regard.)

Bottom line: Basing a character on a real person who committed real atrocities against real people has the potential to be way more offensive than making up a character out of whole cloth. Names carry baggage and color perceptions and just because you think it's fine to role-play a real-life Nazi for fun doesn't mean the rest of the role-play world is going to agree with you or not think you're being a douchecanoe.

And I'm done with people who want to think I'm being wholly unreasonable and unfair and BAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW!