► PERMISSION POSTS ◄

[vitaelamorte]

Hello everyone!

This is your nefarious neighbourhood mod with a reminder about PERMISSION POSTS. Our Taken Characters List features the ability to link your permission posts, which are handy for things such as

► listing you and/or your character's comfort zones with things such as violence/death, romantic/sexual themes, or 4th wall knowledge, to name just a few common examples

► explaining a character's special powers and help players hash out how those would (or wouldn't) influence their characters, or provide opt-outs for those powers as necessary

► warn for darker themes likely to be encountered when threading with your character, and offer opt-outs accordingly

We'd like to encourage everyone to take a moment and think about whether you might like or need to add a permission post of your own, or modify your current one if needed. We especially encourage everyone to go over your fellow players' permission posts and submit your personal opt-out comments as needed, or fill in necessary information pertaining to any special powers your characters might encounter.

We also want to take this opportunity to remind everyone that entranceway is a game for all ages, and that mature themes are not inherent to the setting. As such it is important to label such themes accordingly in both transmissions and logs, so that any player can decide for themselves whether this is content they wish to engage with. If dark or mature themes are inherent to your character, then please provide opt-outs accordingly, so that players have the opportunity to moderate that sort of content for their characters and/or themselves.

AND THAT IS ALL, thank you for reading, have a magnificent evening!

~Mouette

Comments

[hypoxic]

I have a followup question! It might just be a situation where the answer is either "go to a mod" or "deal with it on your own, infant", but maybe it's not as obvious as I think it is.

[CW: mention of suicide in this paragraph as a practical example of a CW in action]
Sometimes things come up that don't really belong on a general permissions post, or otherwise come up that won't be universal enough to ask EVERYONE not to do them. Like maybe I'm okay with all kinds of gross business in threads, but in the middle of a general "it's so sad my friend went home" post, someone throws in a tag that's like "[CW:suicide] Yeah I mean she's pretty suicidal so she's probably going to go home and kill herself and be dead by tomorrow." There's technically a warning, and I'm technically fine with it, but also I'm left with this feeling of "what are you doing and what made you think this belonged in the thread". In this practical example, taken from something that happened to a friend, the player that received the tag went straight to the person who gave the tag and went some variation of "how did this happen??". The player who gave the tag was flustered and proposed dropping the thread.

My question about the above is: was that the right call? It was a thing that happened, didn't violate any broad prefs, and players attempted communication, but it still ended with someone seeming like they went away from the thread with hurt feelings. I feel like lately I've either been involved in or adjacent to a lot of little moments where communication is attempted and then everyone immediately regrets initiating contact.

I'm really conscious about walking too hard on a bed of eggshells and worry that every little "hey I'm not 100% ok with what you wrote do you mind editing?" might be perceived as an attack on some level. Is there a way to get through without hurting feelings, do you think?

(in this post, I go to mods for things I should probably ask a therapist)

[vitaelamorte]

The player definitely made the right call by approaching the other player about it. It's entirely reasonable to tell someone when you aren't comfortable with where a thread is going, and that is exactly what you should do. Unfortunately, even though I'm sure no one meant to hurt anyone, we (us as mods or you as players) cannot control how other people react or how they feel. It's equally reasonable that someone might be flustered by having that pointed out to them, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the right call. They may have misread the situation or thought the person they tagged would be more comfortable with it, and it's reasonable to think they would be a little embarrassed and that the discomfort might be enough for them to propose dropping the thread. This does not mean you should not have told them.

The best thing you can do is be as polite about it as you can when addressing it, because it's likely that they weren't trying to hurt anyone with their tag. It sounds like you're keeping in mind that there's a person on the other side of the screen with feelings, and that's great. But unfortunately you can't prevent hurt feelings 100% of the time. Another thing to do is make sure you use permission posts if they have them - it can come as a surprise to a player that a person didn't want to thread something with them if the person in question didn't use the opt-outs they provided. Of course this isn't an option if they have not provided one, but sometimes these posts just don't get used when they should be - which is one of the reasons we've put out this reminder.

Also, if anyone ever reacts very badly and you feel you need mod intervention, don't be afraid to come to us for help. It sounds like the concern is more about not hurting the feelings of players who otherwise accepted criticism well, but I think it's important to note that we're here to help if someone ever refuses to accept that criticism (like, continues to tag you with that content when you've expressed discomfort, doesn't warn for it, etc).

Unfortunately, that feeling of walking on eggshells is not something we can help with. Humans by nature occasionally get embarrassed or feel hurt when things like this are brought up, but often the truth is that in the long run they would rather be told about it than continue making you uncomfortable. As long as you have been polite and respectful about your concern, how they react is not your responsibility. That may seem harsh, but there is only so much you can do to prevent someone's feelings from being hurt while still protecting your own needs. You have to find that balance for yourself. The best we can do is give advice like this and offer to help if things go sour, but telling the player is always the best course of action.

[vitaelamorte]

Koji already said everything that's important to say perfectly, I just want to add something that can help with the communication process in situations like this one, and maybe go a small way towards mitigating the hurt feelings.

Your friend is generally okay with mentions of suicide. That is why they did not opt out of them in general. However, they did not expect them in this particular thread, and were uncomfortable with the shift in tone. The person they tagged with was not told to refrain from mentions of suicide. So when they felt that their character's mindset would take them there, they posted a matching comment with the appropriate warning.

In this situation it's really important to keep in mind that neither party did anything wrong, and that neither party's reaction is invalid or incorrect in any way. But obviously it still needs to be talked about, because your friend should not have to thread something that makes them feel not okay, be it 100% or 10%.

So how do you best talk about it?

Obviously I don't know the details of how the conversation actually went, but I'm going to take your account at face value and assume that the actual question/concern brought to your friend's tagger was in fact (some variation of) "How did this happen?"

And the other player's answer to that is very likely they don't know! Because now on some level, from their point of view, the situation now probably looks something like this:
Step 1: Receive no information not to mention suicide to this player.
Step 2: Post mention of suicide with appropriate warnings.
Step 3: ????
Step 4: PROBLEM!!!
It's understandable that this could leave them with some measure of flustered or unsure or even hurt. Not knowing what exactly the problem is they offer to remove the source as thoroughly as possible by dropping the thread, and are probably left with a vague feeling of "something went wrong", while your friend might perceive their complete withdrawal as an overreaction, leading to the abundance of egg shells you mentioned on all sides.

So. How can this be approached instead? In situations like that it helps to first ask yourself two questions:

1. Why am I uncomfortable?
2. What can be done to make me comfortable again?

Once you've answered those questions to the best of your ability, go to the other player with the results. Tell them something to the tune of "Hello! I usually don't mind mentions of suicide, but I didn't expect them in replies to my post, so the subject took me by surprise. Turns out I feel uncomfortable taking this particular thread in that direction, is there a way for your character to continue this thread from a different angle / could you omit the subject from the narration this time /..../?"

Maybe there is! Maybe there is not, and the thread will need to be dropped just the same. But it's an opportunity for one player to make themselves better understood, and for another player to better understand where the actual issue comes from. It's a matter of nobody is at fault, but the situation still needs to be talked about, it's a matter of meeting each other's needs and boundaries, often on a case by case basis.

A similar thing goes for permission posts. It is okay to express your needs more clearly and specifically, so for example - to just stick with the same topic - it is okay to go to a permission post and say "I'd like to opt out of being tagged with mentions of suicide. Just to let you know though, they are okay when I tag into one of your posts which already mention them from the start. I just need to make sure that I can control how often I engage with them."

Comfort zones are rarely perfectly shaped and immutably walled, with no grey areas for doubt. Comfort zones can vary by situation, day, or any number of circumstances. You can't always predict another person's comfort zone, sometimes you can't even predict your own. And that is okay. It is okay to not know intuitively and flawlessly the exact point in any situation at any moment in time past which a person's comfort turns to discomfort.

That does not mean one person is wrong for feeling discomfort unexpectedly, but it also does not inherently mean that another person else did something wrong to make them feel discomfort unexpectedly. What's important is for one person to convey their comfort zone to the best of their ability once they discover it, and for the other person to do their utmost to respect the parts of a comfort zone that have been conveyed to them.

In conclusion and in short, telling the player is and was definitely the best course of action, and maybe this will make it a little easier next time.