rpanons | You're all idiots except for me

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the mistake you're making is thinking that the rp relationship is author/reader. it's not. when you read a book, the story belongs to the author, and you're just along for the ride. when you rp, you are a co-author. you can reasonably expect a level of respect for what you want to play, but in turn you also have to respect that you are playing with other people, and there are social rules you have to follow. one of those rules is "don't bring up controversial topics unless you're 100% sure that everyone involved is okay with it".

there are novelists who use these things for shock value and cheap sympathy, but you can always put the book down and walk away (and let's remember that being professionally published does not magically make authors immune to criticism; plenty of them get called out for poor treatment of sensitive issues). there are rpers who play characters who do or have done awful things, but social rules say that you can't just walk away whenever you want - that's thread-dropping - so it comes down to the other player to respect when someone asks them not to tag or to gloss over certain aspects of their character when playing with them.

tl;dr it's because rp is inherently a social hobby and reading a book is not.

While that explains the taboo in RP, it doesn't really explain it in fanfic, where the relationship is author/reader, and it's no harder to close a tab than it is to put down a book.

da, but ayrt did mention that authors who write poorly about such topics will get criticized.

that pretty much IS what happens in fanfiction. If it's written well, people are likely to praise it. If it's written shittily or obviously over the top for shock/horror, people are going to roll their eyes. I have never seen a good effort get panned. I have seen people write a lot of shitty stuff to get ignored or blasted.

You're lucky with your fandoms, then. It's out-and-out taboo to touch on in a lot of them, regardless of whether the fic handles it well.

No one's complaining about criticism of legitimately poorly-done efforts, the problem is the growing number of people that insist some subject matter is absolutely verboten.

I'm betting they'd take issue with the published authors as well, then.

well, op was asking why it's considered acceptable to talk about controversial things in books, but not so much in rp. the debate over fanfic is usually over content/trigger warnings and not whether or not it's okay to address those topics at all, so i don't think that's the same issue.

You're all idiots except for me

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ayrt