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worm girl
Feb 12, 2022

Can you hear it too?

Soonmot posted:

ferrinus, you've been here long enough to know that worm girl thinks the only valid vampire playstyle is being totally miserable ad monstrous 24/7, why are you engaging when there's no debate that will change their mind?

worm girl posted:

If your group shies away from the idea that individual vampires are always going to wind up being black holes that ruin the world, you can still point to kindred society as the problem. One guy can tell the difference between right and wrong and try to do more good than bad, but a competitive zero-sum game where capital is literally the blood of the innocent cannot possibly work out well on the balance. That's kinda the Disco Elysium take and it's still pretty cool.

Oh yeah totally.

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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Soonmot posted:

ferrinus, you've been here long enough to know that worm girl thinks the only valid vampire playstyle is being totally miserable ad monstrous 24/7, why are you engaging when there's no debate that will change their mind?

Should lock them in a room with RPG.net Mogwai girl and let nature take it's course.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Leperflesh posted:

Please do not take your disagreements on the correct interpretation of the canonical lore and rules and guidelines of this roleplaying game and turn it into a gross fight about the social dynamics of human interdependency in the real world, especially if it leads you to comparing the relationship between a person with disabilities and the people who love them enough to help care for them to the relationship between a parasite and its host.

Vampire is about the social dynamics of human interdependency of the real world. This is like like asking an Ars Magica thread to please not talk about medieval superstitions.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Leperflesh posted:

Please do not take your disagreements on the correct interpretation of the canonical lore and rules and guidelines of this roleplaying game and turn it into a gross fight about the social dynamics of human interdependency in the real world, especially if it leads you to comparing the relationship between a person with disabilities and the people who love them enough to help care for them to the relationship between a parasite and its host.

I understand that you may not consider the canonical relationship of kindred to humans as parasitic. I do not know if that is a valid interpretation or not, and really I don't care. I want this gross slapfight to stop. Can you just both agree that you don't have compatible interpretations of the lore and leave it at that?

Quoting myself because my intervention wound up being the last post on the previous page.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Kurieg posted:

Should lock them in a room with RPG.net Mogwai girl and let nature take it's course.

I am in favor of any course of action that leads to Ferrinus never posting in this thread again.

Bogart
Apr 12, 2010

by VideoGames
It's almost like Ferrinus has a history of this kind of gross real life opinion!

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Ferrinus posted:

Vampire is about the social dynamics of human interdependency of the real world. This is like like asking an Ars Magica thread to please not talk about medieval superstitions.

When your discourse leads you to a place where you are comparing real-world people to vampires, can you not see how that's insulting to real-world people? Vampires are understood by the public via their popular depiction across all media for centuries now, as monsters. I know there are examples of vampire redemption to be found, but nevertheless, it's an insulting comparison.

Please stop.

TheCenturion
May 3, 2013
HI I LIKE TO GIVE ADVICE ON RELATIONSHIPS
I mean, to be fair, I *have* had a lot of people in my life act as if me asking 'sorry, could you repeat that?' is the same as me stalking them, invading their house, drinking their blood without consent, and leaving them anemic, if not dead, or even turned against their wills into a fellow obligate hemovore.

(Actually, I find that a surprising amount of people, when asked to speak up, repeat themselves more quietly, or just say 'never mind.')

TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Oct 20, 2022

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


TheCenturion posted:

(Actually, I find that a surprising amount of people, when asked to speak up, repeat themselves more quietly, or just say 'never mind.')

I do this a lot, it's a social anxiety thing I think.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Leperflesh posted:

When your discourse leads you to a place where you are comparing real-world people to vampires, can you not see how that's insulting to real-world people? Vampires are understood by the public via their popular depiction across all media for centuries now, as monsters. I know there are examples of vampire redemption to be found, but nevertheless, it's an insulting comparison.

Please stop.
For clarification, is it okay to talk about how all humans in general require others to survive, and require the consumption of energy to continue living, and how that can relate to discussions of vampires being _Specifically different because_ ? Because I think that's interesting as an analysis in and of itself. And when you start talking about how, as multiple non-Ferrinus posters articulated, vampiric blood bonds are frowned upon in part because the idea of non-spite-driven vampiric relations fucks up their whole political system, it has some interesting parallels to how the manager class and its lackeys seek to keep the workers pitted against each other, because the strength of a union can triumph if it's allowed to flourish?

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Bogart posted:

It's almost like Ferrinus has a history of this kind of gross real life opinion!

IS it like that? Let's see some quotes.


Leperflesh posted:

When your discourse leads you to a place where you are comparing real-world people to vampires, can you not see how that's insulting to real-world people? Vampires are understood by the public via their popular depiction across all media for centuries now, as monsters. I know there are examples of vampire redemption to be found, but nevertheless, it's an insulting comparison.

Please stop.

I compared MYSELF to a vampire in my immediate followup to my initial response. I understand that some people have incentives to work themselves into frenzies(!) via bad faith misreadings but "can you not compare people to vampires" is simply not a tenable request regarding any kind of vampire media.

The question is who we compare and how. I think the stance that's like, no, it's only BAD people, only PARASITES, not us good nice people who we can discuss in this way is actually really politically noxious but I understand it's prevailing ideology so I'm being patient with it.

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Oct 20, 2022

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

For clarification, is it okay to talk about how all humans in general require others to survive, and require the consumption of energy to continue living, and how that can relate to discussions of vampires being _Specifically different because_ ? Because I think that's interesting as an analysis in and of itself. And when you start talking about how, as multiple non-Ferrinus posters articulated, vampiric blood bonds are frowned upon in part because the idea of non-spite-driven vampiric relations fucks up their whole political system, it has some interesting parallels to how the manager class and its lackeys seek to keep the workers pitted against each other, because the strength of a union can triumph if it's allowed to flourish?

This seems reasonable, although I think I'd emphasize the difference between the more or less voluntary nature of social interobligation and the more or less involuntary (lack of informed, free consent?) obligation of the victims of vampirism. It's also probably a great idea to not describe a real-world person's needs as "consumption of life-force" because, jesus christ, my mother with Parkinsons is not consuming the life force of her family with her increasing needs for support.

Ferrinus,

Ferrinus posted:

I compared MYSELF to a vampire in my immediate followup to my initial response. I understand that some people have incentives to work themselves into frenzies(!) via bad faith misreadings but "can you not compare people to vampires" is simply not a tenable request regarding any kind of vampire media.

"If you think about it, we're all vampires really, I am too" does not in any way mitigate "if you think about it, we're all sucking the life force of each other, like especially disabled people who need more..."

quote:

The question is who we compare and how. I think the stance well, no, it's only BAD people, only PARASITES, not us good nice people who we can discuss in this way is actually really politically noxious but I understand it's prevailing ideology so I'm being patient with it.

Can you see how a comment like this is an attempt to paint your interlocutors as bad actors with noxious politics and couples it with a really patronizing throwaway at the end? If you want to have polite conversations with people, not only do you not need to describe their disabilities as vampiric, you also need to not position yourself as the ever-patient more sophisticated adult who is just humoring the childish tantrums of the people who can't handle your facts.

I'm gonna lay this down one more time and then start resorting to buttons. Do not describe the needs of disabled people as sucking the life force from those who support them, you know, like how vampires do. It's an insulting and gross comparison. Find a way to explain your points without doing this.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.
Sorry, I'm a person with disabilities and special education teacher who is deep into a disability studies program right now and Ferrinus hasn't said anything that's out of line. Literally last night I was thinking about a vampire npc in my campaign whose whole deal is that they hate feeling like a monster and wants to use magic to escape to other dimensions, to a place/context where they can live without feeling like a monster. It's not a 1:1 comparison, just like in-game vampires aren't supposed to be 1:1 allegorical stand-ins to actual drug addicts, but the themes are obviously in the same neighborhood and deal with the same ideas. "Monsters are constructed" and "disability is constructed" have been siblings for decades, stop clutching your pearls. Who is defined as "parasitic" is a function of the society and ideology the "parasite" lives in. If you want to insist that nwod vampires are xXxJustTooFuckedUpxXx to ever make good faith efforts to change their situation, or you're just not interested in running a campaign about that, or you think that it goes against the spirit of the lore or whatever, fine! Don't run it in your game! But stop bad faith reading posters just because they point out something you don't want to think about, it's gross

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Leperflesh posted:

When your discourse leads you to a place where you are comparing real-world people to vampires, can you not see how that's insulting to real-world people? Vampires are understood by the public via their popular depiction across all media for centuries now, as monsters. I know there are examples of vampire redemption to be found, but nevertheless, it's an insulting comparison.

Please stop.

I don't think there's any possible way to discuss the canon without violating this standard. Like even beyond *OD writing, the vast majority of vampire lore comes to us from Dracula, where vampirism is used very thoroughly as a metaphor for immigration, queerness, and aristocracy. There's certainly room for discussing how much we may like or dislike parts of that metaphor, and there's room for questioning how applicable parts of the metaphor are, including the fairly common turnabout of "if vampires are x and i like x, then why not vampires good," but I don't even know how you could discuss vampirism in general let alone the specific *OD context without thinking of them as (fictional) people.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.

Leperflesh posted:

This seems reasonable, although I think I'd emphasize the difference between the more or less voluntary nature of social interobligation and the more or less involuntary (lack of informed, free consent?) obligation of the victims of vampirism. It's also probably a great idea to not describe a real-world person's needs as "consumption of life-force" because, jesus christ, my mother with Parkinsons is not consuming the life force of her family with her increasing needs for support.

Ferrinus,

"If you think about it, we're all vampires really, I am too" does not in any way mitigate "if you think about it, we're all sucking the life force of each other, like especially disabled people who need more..."

Can you see how a comment like this is an attempt to paint your interlocutors as bad actors with noxious politics and couples it with a really patronizing throwaway at the end? If you want to have polite conversations with people, not only do you not need to describe their disabilities as vampiric, you also need to not position yourself as the ever-patient more sophisticated adult who is just humoring the childish tantrums of the people who can't handle your facts.

I'm gonna lay this down one more time and then start resorting to buttons. Do not describe the needs of disabled people as sucking the life force from those who support them, you know, like how vampires do. It's an insulting and gross comparison. Find a way to explain your points without doing this.

Hi, disabled person here, you are wrong! Please stop using me as a categorical shield for your indignation on this subject! Thanks!

worm girl
Feb 12, 2022

Can you hear it too?
Real life isn't a zero sum game. Working to provide for yourself and others does not "suck the life force" out of anybody. Capital takes an enormous toll on humanity via exploitation, misallocation, hoarding, war, and oppression, but this is because of systems of power creating false scarcity. There are more than enough resources for everyone to live comfortably, they just aren't given equal access to them, so people starve to death in one region while millions of pounds of surplus food are burned in another. As I pointed out, there are parallels to be drawn (and the game certainly does that via the anarchs and the carthians), but living forever by sucking the blood out of unsuspecting victims (and sometimes killing them no matter how careful you are) is not the same thing as buying an apple from the store.

Attorney at Funk
Jun 3, 2008

...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.
Yeah I'm sorry but this is clearly the wrong decision. If you look at someone trying to argue for empathizing with vampires, and you respond that comparison to vampires is some insidiously ugly unpermittable attack, you made a terrible mistake.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Weird that I got several reports disagreeing with the notion that it's cool to describe disabled people as sucking the life force of humans around them, but I'm happy to accept that not every disabled person finds that comparison insulting!

What do you want me to do here?

Attorney at Funk
Jun 3, 2008

...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.

Leperflesh posted:

Weird that I got several reports disagreeing with the notion that it's cool to describe disabled people as sucking the life force of humans around them, but I'm happy to accept that not every disabled person finds that comparison insulting!

What do you want me to do here?

I think the responsible thing to do when emotions are running high on a contentious topic is *not* to come in with edicts and threats of buttons based on who seems instantly more sympathetic.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Leperflesh posted:

This seems reasonable, although I think I'd emphasize the difference between the more or less voluntary nature of social interobligation and the more or less involuntary (lack of informed, free consent?) obligation of the victims of vampirism. It's also probably a great idea to not describe a real-world person's needs as "consumption of life-force" because, jesus christ, my mother with Parkinsons is not consuming the life force of her family with her increasing needs for support.
That's fair, but, two things:
1. I do need to eat food which was all alive at some point in order to continue living (animal or plant, it was all alive), as does every living person. And I didn't go get that food myself, which means somebody else had to go get that ready for me, and I am eventually going to hoover up the fruits of their labor, their spent energy as my own. Which was also stated previously if less directly via

Ferrinus posted:

Even as an """able-bodied""" adult I can only survive thanks to the expended labor-power of countless agricultural workers, technicians, truck drivers, and so on.

So where are the unimpeachable paragons who don't survive off the vitality of others and therefore get to live?
I'm not saying anyone's a parasite because of any qualities they possess beyond "is alive and wishes to continue being so while living under capitalism," a category I represent and thus, posses the authority to give myself permission to say is vampiric in its nature.

2. I'd probably lean far onto the "less voluntary" nature of social interobligation. Unless you're born rich, you gotta work to afford all that cubed-up life force you're gonna eat. If you gotta work, you gotta deal with people who will exchange money for your work. I didn't choose to have to pay rent, and I can't feasibly go out into an orchard and pick apples, hunt wild game, built a yurt on land no one is currently occupying, but here I am, too. I can choose to try to live off the grid on public land as a combination hermit-squatter as defined in the system I operate under, but at the end of the day...at the very least, this Nosferatu's still gotta eat the rat.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.

Leperflesh posted:

Weird that I got several reports disagreeing with the notion that it's cool to describe disabled people as sucking the life force of humans around them, but I'm happy to accept that not every disabled person finds that comparison insulting!

What do you want me to do here?

It's just a difference of opinion. Some people have a really strong attachment to ideas of vampires as doomed in the gothic genre sense and other people are interested in vampires who aren't. Disabled people aren't a monolith, we have different ways of relating to disability and the games we play. Also don't passively-aggressively insult me by suggesting that because I have a difference of opinion over genre in a tabletop roleplaying game that I literally think "disabled people suck the life force of humans around them" and that I cannot employ analogies and symbolic language, thanks!

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Leperflesh posted:

Ferrinus,

"If you think about it, we're all vampires really, I am too" does not in any way mitigate "if you think about it, we're all sucking the life force of each other, like especially disabled people who need more..."

Can you see how a comment like this is an attempt to paint your interlocutors as bad actors with noxious politics and couples it with a really patronizing throwaway at the end? If you want to have polite conversations with people, not only do you not need to describe their disabilities as vampiric, you also need to not position yourself as the ever-patient more sophisticated adult who is just humoring the childish tantrums of the people who can't handle your facts.

I'm gonna lay this down one more time and then start resorting to buttons. Do not describe the needs of disabled people as sucking the life force from those who support them, you know, like how vampires do. It's an insulting and gross comparison. Find a way to explain your points without doing this.

Firstly I absolutely do believe some but not all of the people complaining are bad faith actors with noxious politics. I think attempts to restrict the "vampire" metaphor to specific parasitic minorities is just antisemitism and I never, ever want to see the eliminationist rhetoric that implies or flatly states that certain groups of people simply cannot justify remaining alive and so should, ideally, kill themselves.

Secondly, there is a trait fictional vampires share with real humans: a dependence on the labor-power of others. It is specifically this dependence that worm girl painted as a reason that fictional vampires are universally wretched parasites that have no right to exist. At this point, I trust that you can see the contradiction.

I then proceed to compare three increasingly narrow groups of people to vampirea:
* literally all humans
* freeloading friends and/or relatives
* people whose specific physical frailties, colloquially referred to as disabilities, cause them to require an above-average amount of care

Would it have been better if I stopped at the first bullet point? At the second? Is the third one wrong? I've had to rely on the extended charity of others and have taken care of disabled people in my own life. I'm sure my friend and his wife would be shocked to learn that, even after my apartment was destroyed in a fire, I actually required no more effort or resources to keep alive than when I had a roof over my head and personal possessions that hadn't been incinerated or dissolved.

There is another version of this conversation in which worm girl says "okay, yes, regular people also depend on the energy of others to survive, but at least they don't STEAL or COERCE donations of that life force" and then we could start talking about issues of societal organization and systemic incentives that have solutions besides "you're inherently evil, die!" But for some reason we're here instead.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Attorney at Funk posted:

I think the responsible thing to do when emotions are running high on a contentious topic is *not* to come in with edicts and threats of buttons based on who seems instantly more sympathetic.

the normal thing mods do is come in and hit people with sixers for having slapfights. I prefer to talk to people.

tatankatonk posted:

It's just a difference of opinion. Some people have a really strong attachment to ideas of vampires as doomed in the gothic genre sense and other people are interested in vampires who aren't. Disabled people aren't a monolith, we have different ways of relating to disability and the games we play. Also don't passively-aggressively insult me by suggesting that because I have a difference of opinion over genre in a tabletop roleplaying game that I literally think "disabled people suck the life force of humans around them" and that I cannot employ analogies and symbolic language, thanks!

I'm sorry, my intention was not to be passive-aggressive. I do not understand how the phrasing of sucking life force can be impassively understood as referring to consuming photosynthesized carbohydrates with no additional connotative meaning.

I am surprised to see multiple people who don't have any problem with this comparison, including you, and I hope I'm expressing that surprise without implying your perspective is wrong.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.
Personally, I'm just gonna take a day to cool off. Sorry if I made anyone mad/madder with anything I said, let's remember to be charitable to others in their opinions.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I have several relationships in my life that are inherently imbalanced and require more work going one direction than the other but I maintain them because I care about the people enough that I don't mind. And I know that those people in my life oftentimes try to minimize their impact on others in order to lessen the load.

Vampire strips that veneer away and equates the exchange of physical or emotional labor for straight up injury in order to survive. Is it possible to be more moral than the most monstrous of vampires? Of course, but there's still the bare minimum level of 'you live by sapping the strength of others' that your existence drags into the stark daylight and can't be excused by the polite niceties of modern society.

Wittgen
Oct 13, 2012

We have decided to decline your offer of a butt kicking.
The conversational judo move of taking your pretty insightful critique of their thinking and making it somehow into you saying disabled people are parasites? That was wild.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Kurieg posted:

Vampire strips that veneer away and equates the exchange of physical or emotional labor for straight up injury in order to survive. Is it possible to be more moral than the most monstrous of vampires? Of course, but there's still the bare minimum level of 'you live by sapping the strength of others' that your existence drags into the stark daylight and can't be excused by the polite niceties of modern society.
Yeah that's the other thing, at the end of the day something like "vampire mutual aid organization" is "organized kidnapping and assault ring" from the outside in order to support anyone above the thinnest-blooded vampires. So even if that's better than "weird feudal hierarchies and tithes and poo poo" it's still...very not great for everyone else.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

worm girl posted:

Real life isn't a zero sum game. Working to provide for yourself and others does not "suck the life force" out of anybody. Capital takes an enormous toll on humanity via exploitation, misallocation, hoarding, war, and oppression, but this is because of systems of power creating false scarcity. There are more than enough resources for everyone to live comfortably, they just aren't given equal access to them, so people starve to death in one region while millions of pounds of surplus food are burned in another. As I pointed out, there are parallels to be drawn (and the game certainly does that via the anarchs and the carthians), but living forever by sucking the blood out of unsuspecting victims (and sometimes killing them no matter how careful you are) is not the same thing as buying an apple from the store.

I'm actually not talking about capitalist exploitation and inefficiency here, although obviously it is on my mind. Even under all but the most fantastical conceptions of communism, we are going to work for each others' benefit (and, one would hope, be happy to do so). I can't grow every vegetable I eat; you can't build every house you live in. No human is an island.

Whether our mutual cooperation and consumption is coerced, conned, freely offered, whatever, it still happens, and so we shouldn't fool ourselves with the idea that WE'RE self sufficient, WE deserve everything we get, unlike those wretched parasites.

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Oct 20, 2022

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Wittgen posted:

The conversational judo move of taking your pretty insightful critique of their thinking and making it somehow into you saying disabled people are parasites? That was wild.

On the previous page, at least worm girl, TheCenturion, and Bogart (and maybe Kavak, although they just made a direct attack on Ferrinus without further explanation) all appear to me to have reached a similar conclusion. I'm not just inventing an interpretation myself.


Kurieg posted:

I have several relationships in my life that are inherently imbalanced and require more work going one direction than the other but I maintain them because I care about the people enough that I don't mind. And I know that those people in my life oftentimes try to minimize their impact on others in order to lessen the load.

Vampire strips that veneer away and equates the exchange of physical or emotional labor for straight up injury in order to survive. Is it possible to be more moral than the most monstrous of vampires? Of course, but there's still the bare minimum level of 'you live by sapping the strength of others' that your existence drags into the stark daylight and can't be excused by the polite niceties of modern society.

This seems like a very reasonable way to understand the point Ferrinus was making? Can the thread agree that it could discuss this topic like this without having slapfights?

I'm happy to not have some new thread rule to impose or hit mod buttons. I'd much rather everyone here have discussions without it turning into a fight.

TheCenturion
May 3, 2013
HI I LIKE TO GIVE ADVICE ON RELATIONSHIPS
I honestly don't understand how people can read, say, the Introduction to Vampire: The Requiem 2e:

quote:

Vampire is about sex and murder, about power and wild defiance. It's about urban squalor and the romance of the city. It's about what's wrong with you - yes, you - and how that shapes the monster you'll become.

and think 'huh, the game isn't explicitly and inherently about how you're a monster who will do monstrous things.'



quote:

What are you going to do to make it through tonight? What
about tomorrow night? And after the deeds are done and your
belly’s full, how are you going to live with yourself? What are
you going to do with your damnation that makes it worth all
the sins along the way?

That’s the Requiem.

That’s only half the question, though. Mortals are dinner,
but they’re also what you’ve got for dates. No matter how
callous you become, you’ll need to move among them. How
will you keep your connection to Humanity, even as a sham?

That’s the Masquerade.

The song and the dance don’t always play well. Devote yourself
to redeeming human sinners and you may discover they’re the
only creatures you understand.

Spend your nights in a vault perfecting your monstrosity
and you may find yourself trapped, unable to flee through the
masses when the hunters bash down the gates.

quote:


Established 1856. That’s what the firm’s sign says. The owner
was established 1856, too, even though his sharp-cut suit was made
tomorrow. He’s one of your guys. One of the sharks you swim with.

The Kindred are the real predators of the modern age. They’re
hip to our tricks, but they’ve got a hundred years of history
behind them. You’re one of them. So, congratulations: You are
the child-stealer, the plague-bearer, and the faceless corporate
titan sucking the life out of your own hometown.
I mean, it's fine if you don't want to play the game as written, but to argue that predation, parasitism and generally being, to go back to the beginning of this all, a piece of poo poo, isn't built into the game is to not understand the game as presented.



Ferrinus posted:

I'm actually not talking about capitalist exploitation and inefficiency here, although obviously it is on my mind. Even under all but the most fantastical conceptions of communism, we are going to work for each others' benefit (and, one would hope, be happy to do so). I can't grow every vegetable I eat; you can't build every house you live in. No human is an island.

Whether our mutual cooperation and consumption is coerced, conned, freely offered, whatever, it still happens, and so we shouldn't fool ourselves with the idea that WE'RE self sufficient, WE deserve everything we get, unlike those wretched parasites.

We're capable of making trades. We can give freely.

How do you 'give freely' to a vampire who's very bite overwhelms your ability to consent?

quote:

When feeding non-violently, the vampire’s fangs cause an
enticing, invigorating sensation that distracts the victim, to draw
attention away from the reality of the feeding. Many Kindred
use this method as part of a seduction. A mortal bitten subtly
gains the Swooning Condition (see p. 306). The bonuses and
penalties for Swooning apply to the vampire’s Discipline rolls.
With a subtle bite, the vampire can take one Vitae per turn, and
may lick the wound afterwards, leaving no trace of her feeding.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Leperflesh posted:

On the previous page, at least worm girl, TheCenturion, and Bogart (and maybe Kavak, although they just made a direct attack on Ferrinus without further explanation) all appear to me to have reached a similar conclusion. I'm not just inventing an interpretation myself.

This seems like a very reasonable way to understand the point Ferrinus was making? Can the thread agree that it could discuss this topic like this without having slapfights?

I'm happy to not have some new thread rule to impose or hit mod buttons. I'd much rather everyone here have discussions without it turning into a fight.

Well, I very much regret not making one longer and clearer post that contained all the elaboration that I ended up having to pack into the following three or four. I stand by what I said but I hope people understand that it's specifically the difference between needing and reaving that I wanted to draw to attention, and therefore the difference between being inherently bad and existing in a currently-bad society that lacks an adequate social safety net.


TheCenturion posted:

I honestly don't understand how people can read, say, the Introduction to Vampire: The Requiem 2e:

and think 'huh, the game isn't explicitly and inherently about how you're a monster who will do monstrous things.'



I mean, it's fine if you don't want to play the game as written, but to argue that predation, parasitism and generally being, to go back to the beginning of this all, a piece of poo poo, isn't built into the game is to not understand the game as presented.

We're capable of making trades. We can give freely.

How do you 'give freely' to a vampire who's very bite overwhelms your ability to consent?

You can consent to morphine after surgery, can't you?

TheCenturion
May 3, 2013
HI I LIKE TO GIVE ADVICE ON RELATIONSHIPS

Ferrinus posted:

You can consent to morphine after surgery, can't you?

I sure can. What I can't consent, to, however, is being administered morphine, or any other drug, as part of an assault, to help ensure that I a) don't resist, and b) don't remember the assault having happened.

Why would you compare 'post-surgical pain management' to 'being roofied during an assault?'

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Ferrinus posted:

Well, I very much regret not making one longer and clearer post that contained all the elaboration that I ended up having to pack into the following three or four. I stand by what I said but I hope people understand that it's specifically the difference between needing and reaving that I wanted to draw to attention, and therefore the difference between being inherently bad and existing in a currently-bad society that lacks an adequate social safety net.

Thank you, I think that's reasonable and my guess is that most of the folks who took issue with your posts would be OK with this?

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

TheCenturion posted:

I sure can. What I can't consent, to, however, is being administered morphine, or any other drug, as part of an assault, to help ensure that I a) don't resist, and b) don't remember the assault having happened.

Why would you compare 'post-surgical pain management' to 'being roofied during an assault?'

No... which is what the last several posts I made were about.

There's the condition of being a vampire, and there's the social context in which vampires currently (fictionally) exist. Needing human blood to survive doesn't make you an inherently bad person. However, assaulting people night after night is going to make you a worse person each night. The question is not why those pieces of poo poo don't just greet the sunrise, but how we could arrange society to prevent vampires from having to do repeated, escalating violence just to live.

Bogart
Apr 12, 2010

by VideoGames
"And why don't these pieces of poo poo [disabled people] greet the sunrise [kill themselves]?" You understand why this isn't okay.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Bogart posted:

"And why don't these pieces of poo poo [disabled people] greet the sunrise [kill themselves]?" You understand why this isn't okay.

Bogart, I think you understand why what you're doing isn't okay, but are going to pretend not to in order to milk this as long as you can.

Gothic Rite
Dec 22, 2020

The visions of the elders were oracular, though in their terror they kenned not what they saw. When I triumph in this new combat, this unseen and still place beyond reason and closed eyes, what wonders of knowledge will be my plunder?
I agree the game is about monsters.

TheCenturion posted:

How do you 'give freely' to a vampire who's very bite overwhelms your ability to consent?

I do think this is an interesting question - and I once had a player actually pursue it, trying to find a way to feed without using the kiss for exactly this reason (plus I tend to run the kiss as specifically addictive as well, to eliminate some of that 'ease' of willing blood-dolls.) But animals do exist. A few blood oaths also do it. At least one Theban Sorcery miracle. Hungarian marriages, to loop back a bit.

But general consent is a thing. I like to drink and fool around. I understand that alcohol can reduce my inherent ability to consent - but I can also tell my partner - I trust you to know when too much is too much, and as long as I'm into it in the moment - it's all good. I'm not going to wake up in the morning and think I was assaulted if my partner didn't realize I had hit a brown-out point unless there were specific boundaries crossed that I believe I wouldn't have consented to but for the alcohol (And other safety exceptions.)

A past-the-masq touchstone can be aware of the 'seduction of the kiss' and still consent to feeding someone they care about - assuming a scene with no narrative complications whatsoever (frenzy, danger, various conditions.) But it's also the ST's job to find those interesting complications and work them into the story to see what happens.

That's all different from using alcohol/the kiss to specifically assault someone, though.

Gothic Rite fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Oct 20, 2022

worm girl
Feb 12, 2022

Can you hear it too?

Ferrinus posted:

The question is not why those pieces of poo poo don't just greet the sunrise, but how we could arrange society to prevent vampires from having to do repeated, escalating violence just to live.

Probably by removing them from the context of the settings and systems which are designed to trap them in a cycle of violence in order to generate stories centered around personal horror and dark gothic roleplaying. But it's Vampire the Masquerade/Requiem, not Vampire the Everybody Had a Pretty Good Time.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

worm girl posted:

Probably by removing them from the context of the settings and systems which are designed to trap them in a cycle of violence in order to generate stories centered around personal horror and dark gothic roleplaying. But it's Vampire the Masquerade/Requiem, not Vampire the Everybody Had a Pretty Good Time.

Well, yeah, of course. This discussion is mostly relevant to actual play in terms of how it might affect the beliefs and struggles of characters who are, regrettably, stuck in the modern context in which secretive Covenants are an inescapable necessity (if only because, if you don't have one, you'll just get defeated by the vampires who do). But it is important to ask ourselves: is a better world possible? Lots of characters are going to think "no, it isn't" or "yes, but only after we've killed all the vampires", but not all of them, and there's no reason we should assume those views are the correct ones.

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Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Gothic Rite posted:

But general consent is a thing. I like to drink and fool around. I understand that alcohol can reduce my inherent ability to consent - but I can also tell my partner - I trust you to know when too much is too much, and as long as I'm into it in the moment - it's all good. I'm not going to wake up in the morning and think I was assaulted if my partner didn't realize I had hit a brown-out point unless there were specific boundaries crossed that I believe I wouldn't have consented to but for the alcohol (And other safety exceptions.)

An interesting thing about vampires is the way they tend to climb the ladder from "wretch in need of charity" to "predatory landlord". Like, imagine being the first Touchstone of a newly-created vampire. You come home one night to find your old college roommate there, looking pale and shaky, and he's like please don't call the cops I REALLY need your help.

Fifty years later, when your bones are moldering in a riverbed somewhere, he might be the Prince of a domain causing untold suffering to countless humans and vampires both. How did he get there? Should you have just turned him in as soon as you saw him? These are fun questions to grapple with.

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Oct 20, 2022

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