Why Asari Are The New Quarians

Alright. Asari players, we need to talk. Urgently.

Now I know this doesn’t apply to all of you, but I’m sure that at least some of you were around for Kenec’s old thread about why quarians were being so generally terrible that the mods were legitimately considering making them a gated-off PC race. We all hoped that the thread had finally opened people’s eyes to the mistakes that they were constantly making, but sadly that’s been proven to be untrue. No, instead the problems have migrated. Hence the title.

To look backwards, quarians were widely looked down upon for a great number of reasons. They were the most sharply defined faction in the series, a real fan favourite, and yet very few players genuinely took their flaws and shortcomings into account when writing quarian characters. We had quarians who owned companies, who owned luxurious apartments on the Citadel, who lived lives of drug abuse and rampant sex without catastrophically imploding into a singularity of ‘you have no immune system, kissing someone can kill you’. They were being used as bland wish fulfillment characters with no real criticism or oversight, and slowly became more and more insular as players who refused to change partnered up with like-minded players and eventually coalesced into this homogenous blob of writers who thought they didn’t need to change any more.

This is happening again. We can’t ignore it or shut it out, it is happening again with the asari. What we can do about it, though, is really take in what caused it last time and really learn from it.

Let’s get this out of the way. Asari have a handicap right out of the gate because they’re the most poorly-designed race in the Mass Effect universe. They are literally blue hot women that only get hotter as they age and can make babby with anything, including other hot women. They are described as literally having tribal-age military organization and the majority of asari characters in the games wore dresses, catsuits or other such repugnantly sexual outfits. By all accounts they are a poorly designed, poorly thought-out, poorly written wish fulfillment race.

Please. Please for the love of god don’t play them that way. You can make them work, I know you can. They’re not a race completely devoid of worthwhile ideas. When you write, when you plan, when you come up with a character, stop and think for a moment. Research. Familiarize. If your character’s military, talk to some military buffs on IRC! Most importantly, look up the downsides. Fiction, story, everything narratively engaging is based on conflict. No matter how well-written, a story without conflict is no story at all. The life and times of a person who has nothing in particular bad happen to them so they just patter along talking to their friends and living comfortable lives is… stagnant. Stagnation is anathema to engaging literature.

Stories cannot and simply should not be consequence-free. I don’t say this as some kind of be-all-end-all arbiter of prose, this is an incredibly common, widely-supported fact. So hey, if you want to write a character with PTSD, go for it! You really want to write a porn star, or a prostitute, or a mercenary, or a person in an open/polygamous marriage, do it. But think before you do. Sit down and think about it, not what’s right but what’s wrong. PTSD is a serious and crippling condition than often involves hospitalization and intense public shame from the sufferer - use that! Show us how someone deals with their own mind and body betraying them uncontrollably. Porn stars, prostitutes and other such sex workers have some of the most horrible working conditions and exhausting, draining, problem-riddled lives a person can get. Don’t just make it all smiles and happy, carefree boinking with attractive people. Really sit down and think about what it would be like for a person to treat sex like an obligation, a nine-to-five job that they slowly grow to despise, especially with a spouse or partner who feels said character drifting away physically. Delve deep! Use these issues as springboards! Very few things are outright bad ideas if you simply do the research and work the details.

I have been working my ass off since day one with this character to make the absolute most that I could with any character, not just an ‘asari’ character. I even went out of my comfort zone and started writing detailed fluff. Writing fluff and worldbuilding is a great way to practice for a character, even if you don’t know it yet. Realizing what works, realizing what doesn’t, worldbuilding around that and augmenting what already exists. Everything I was saying earlier - consider, plan, research, build, flesh out. It’s not some kind of special talent, anyone can do it if they apply themselves!

And yet despite all that… the scene is not pretty. Conflict is practically non-existent among the asari population. Everyone leads perfect lives, have perfect jobs, and have perfect relationships. They do the same slice-of-life stuff constantly as everyone agrees and everyone who doesn’t is shunned. I know we all want to do our best with our characters, but seriously stop and think about this. If players won’t even give each other the time of day, if they take their ball and go home at the slightest sign of conflict, if they even go so far as to literally say ‘you play in your corner and I’ll play in mine’ then something is seriously wrong.

Don’t be afraid of criticism and changing the way you do things! Don’t run away from what you don’t want to think about because it’s uncomfortable! Facing these things, adapting and improving aren’t just how this forum should work, it’s how life works! If you just let the ‘meanies’ penetrate the hugbox and point out what doesn’t work, if you honestly think about it and find ways to improve, then you’re bettering the entire board! In improv if you just say “No, I wanted it this way”, if you only think about yourself and ignore other players, you actively kill the momentum of whatever you’re doing and you don’t just hurt yourself, you hurt everyone else around you. Be mindful. Be considerate. Have some basic etiquette and courtesy!

Face facts. You don’t get to say ‘you play in your corner, I play in mine’. You know what that is? A death sentence for an RP board like this. If we keep actively stifling debate and argument like this, if we let this blatantly substandard writing keep going, if we let the hugbox get thicker and thicker, then there is a real chance of the board disappearing. Remember back around when the transition first began, and it had been so rocky that we lost a lot of players, the boards were practically dead, and we needed an emergency injection of new players? That’s what could happen all over again if we allow a whole subsection to just turtle up and say ‘they just don’t get me’. Again, it’s not about you, it’s about everyone. And hey, another blast from the past - remember how I said the mods were considering making quarians a gated-off PC race? I legitimately see that looming in the possible future for the asari.

Think about it.

Alex, I am glad you made this thread because it saves me from having to make one about a subject that has been bothering me lately. Not about asari writers, mind you. But a problem with the entire community.

Fair warning. I am grouchy this morning. And also really incoherent because I haven't slept in forever

Quite simply. A good chunk of the community has decided to stop communicating with each other outside of their own social circles (though this thread is a nice start since for once in what feels like forever people aren’t stuck in their own insular groups and will hopefully do what I will talk about later in this post). And It isn’t just asari writers-and it is incredibly unfair to blame it all on them-- it is a site wide problem that has been an issue for a long time. And it is leading to people not wanting to interact with other writers because they all think the other writer hates them. Generally because the other writer (or both in some cases) is acting like an anti-social wiener OOC. This creates a stupid domino effect of multiple groups of people starting to isolate themselves in their own insular circlejerks/hugboxes/whatever where they all create their own echochambers that further exacerbate the problem and cause even more stupid drama to constantly blow out of proportion because people are refusing to communicate like adults because they go into a tribalism mentality and start believing the other faction is the worst thing to ever happen to CDN.

This passive aggressive (and sometimes not even passive) and really weird hostility people keep showing in IRC and even in-character such as dogpiling on members making minor mistakes instead of sending a (civil) PM, OOC note, or you know contacting the mods since they can mediate this junk. Because when you don't do this, and you try to 'make fun of it IC' instead of ignoring it and doing what I just said. It leads to dumb drama that can be avoided.

And honestly, it just needs to stop because it is more toxic than anything else on this site right now and has driven people away (new and old) already.

This behavior, this refusal to communicate with your fellow members like adults until things have reached the breaking point is childish. It is petty. And all of you are better than this.

Be more inclusive, be more forgiving, and put effort into your posts and arguments. And for the love of god learn to communicate with your fellow members in a civil manner so things don't explode.

This applies to everyone

Normally I prefer to stay out of OOC threads and IRC (mainly because I simply don't have time; no long IC posts for me tonight) and just play my character, but since you're aiming at me specifically among others in there (unless there are other porn stars/prostitutes I've missed) I will this time.

The impression here is that you just don't like the asari race, as it's presented in Mass Effect canon. Well, it is canon. This isn't quarians cavorting about living the high life despite in-game quarians being routinely discriminated against and persecuted. You're objecting to in-game historical fact, that the Republics function the way they're described and this functioning has made them (barring galactic-level threats) safe, prosperous, and influential. Are the asari wish fulfillment? Sure, they're the hot blue space babes. I think Bioware did that on purpose, made Mass Effect contain a whole spectrum of sci-fi ideas, from bright and hopeful space opera fun to dark and cynical genre deconstruction. The asari are the bright/hopeful end of the scale, and that's a major factor in what attracted me to Mass Effect. I'm sorry you don't like it and consider it poorly written, but I do like it. I consider it a gem among dreary presentations of the future/sci-fi as nothing but a magnification of everything miserable about the present, and I'm not going to start disagreeing with Bioware canon just because you don't like it.

And on a personal note, I object to your assumptions regarding prostitution, especially in the context of asari. There's strong evidence it's legal among asari, probably under Citadel law in general (Consort). I don't believe the asari sex industry would be stigmatised the way it is among humans, and I do believe that criminalisation is the root of a great deal of the misery associated with prostitution (along with stigmatisation of sex in general, which I'd also argue the asari have a different perspective on). Human society will probably never overcome that (which is a sad state of affairs, because we're never going to stop ensuring prostitution will exist either), but I don't believe it applies to asari, and I find it interesting to explore the sex industry from that alien perspective. I have absolutely zero interest in having Daia victimised or miserable simply because most human sex workers are, or because it satisfies anyone's view on what sex work should be like. She exists in a very different professional culture than even the best of ours, and I've spent a lot of time over the years developing that and arguing IC the necessity for it in her world. I'm not trying to derail this thread into a sex work argument, but since you had to bring it up, I'm tired enough to not let it pass.

I'll step in right now, before this thread gets too hot, because it inevitably will. It won't be locked down, because I want discussion to happen.

This is for everyone reading this.

Mandatory is correct: all the salient points that are made by Celeste have nothing to do with asari specifically (we could debate whether or not they're poorly-designed wish fulfillment elsewhere, but I have no desire to see that in this thread), and everything to do with playing characters in general. It is important to think about the full consequences of a character's life, and that includes the difficulties.

There's a lot more complexity to this than simply "think about the consequences", but I'm not going to spark that discussion right now.

The second, more important point: dealing with OOC interactions. Here's a simple rule when it comes to OOC: treat everyone with respect and patience, and negotiate in good faith. No, this does not mean that the other party has necessarily earned your respect and patience. It's entirely possible that they feel the same way about you. The fact that I'm seeing two lengthy posts about the matter, however, tell me that people are not . Everyone needs to step up.

I don't care about how you interact IC, as long as it's within the rules, and everyone is strictly IC.

This is, and will always be, a community-driven board. That means having to deal with people who will not see things your way. You are going to have to compromise. I won't say "they will have to compromise", because I'm assuming you all understand that this message applies to everyone, and since we are all individuals with our own thoughts and opinions "they" is just "you" from another angle. If you think "well, Overlord is specifically thinking of so-and-so"? No.

I am talking to you.

This post is exclusively for you.

I don't expect everyone to get along, or to be friends, IC or OOC. I expect people to work towards a common goal: keep CDN entertaining. "What's entertaining" is messy and complex, so we have to sort that out together. We have IRC, PMs, and the forums. There is no excuse for not communicating and putting in the effort to further this common goal, calmly and civilly. If you have a problem, state it clearly and directly. There is no reason to organize posses behind closed doors to "deal with" something you think is an issue. That is what the mod team is for. This board, in the greater scheme of things, is small beans. Speaking as someone who has been here since the beginning, sat through a lot of bullshit, and put up my own time and money to keep this site running: we are insignificant. There is no reason for petty politicking. Sometimes you might not think so, but everyone really does want the board to continue being fun. Remember that when you read any comment or suggestion.

And remember this very important proverb whenever you make a comment or suggestion: "physician, heal thyself."


This is all that needs to be said, and it applies to all of you.

A not-so-small addendum, since AProm posted while I was editing and re-editing my post:

1. Again: if you have a problem, state it clearly and directly. Sometimes that does include naming names. If you want to address a direct point, you cannot dance around it, because you will likely end up poisoning the message. And if you can't address another player directly, thoughtfully, and tactfully (you can't say "Dwick, you're an awful roleplayer and I hate you" and expect to get anywhere), then maybe you should be looking at how you're approaching the problem.

2. I had written that "what's entertaining" is messy and complex, and we have to work together. Not everyone finds the same things entertaining, and not everyone intends to have the same problems befall their characters. You cannot force someone into thinking something is fun or interesting. And that applies to whatever you are posting, as well as what you're seeing everyone else write.

3. CDN has to world-build on top of Bioware's canon, and our own. People will not agree what breaks credulity. Our common-sense approach to what's canon or not is: is it in line with actual, established canon? Does it make sense within the worlds we've created? Is it a reasonable, believable assumption on its own? Does it enable roleplay? If the answer is "yes" to all four, then most times it's greenlit. If you have a serious problem with it, see everything I've written above.

I try to keep this short as I don't like stuff like this.

Celeste, I won’t jump through your hoops to satisfy some standard you define as “good play”. I think I found all the points directed at me personally in your post.

Please get over the fact that there is RP going on that is not as you would do it, get over it that you can’t control other players access to the ME/CDN ME universe. And accept that there are people who like what’s happening. (look at the RP forums)

Please stop backhandedly telling me (and others) I am a bad player or how my motivation has lesser value than yours. I am tired of wiping spit from my virtual face and spit back just to fulfill your ideal of conflict gameplay. This is not what I want and there are so many players I am playing with that do not mind me or even like what I am doing.

I am around for a while now and this rage is just a tip of an iceberg.

Just a quick heads up: Other people have also invested enormous amounts of time thinking about the asari species and have tons of motifs to play one. Since the very beginning of this board.

And if you don’t like it now all of a sudden how we approach this, or have approached for a long time, you can’t just “plow it all over”. I am sorry, but raising a thread like this seems pretty big to me. How do you think existing players will like this?

This is basically the OOC proof that the impression I had about backhanded IC play was right. Is this supposed to be good or encourage me to play asari with you? look at what happened the last time I tried to reply to Celeste IC. Mods had to step in. I seriously don’t need that all the time, it’s too annoying.

It’s not just you who has the key to interpret things. Consider that your assumption of total parallelism to human societies is absolutely not what others like to see for the asari. I take a lot out of them for being a society without genders and sexism. That fuels my approach to them and I won’t let you call this inferior to wherever you are coming from, can we have an agreement on that? Since I don’t and have never questioned your motivation.


Please, stop elitism and let the people play.

I rather doubt that the point of the thread was not for existing players to 'like' it insofar as acknowledge it.

Okay, I'm here to... say stuff, I guess. Since I'm supposed to? And the first thing I do have to say is that Mandatory is entirely correct. There is no sense getting around this or trying to pigeon hole one aspect of the community as one thing or another, everyone here is guilty of insulating themselves from the community at large in some way. Before anyone comes at me, yes, I am including the moderation staff. We have not been doing our due diligence in making sure that Cerberus Daily News is a cohesive community, we need to understand that CDN is not a bunch of self-contained compartments where five people are playing in six different universes. I keep my finger on Presslink's pulse as much as I can, and if nothing else, it made it abundantly clear to me that there were agendas being pushed over and through the submitted news articles that were not being pushed in actual conversation threads on the board.

Celeste is absolutely correct in asserting that there are groups of players who are reluctant at best to participate outside of their little group, and have made a habit of treating anyone outside that group, or rather, anyone they perceive as endangering it, quite hostilely. Whether one party starts it or not, whether anyone from either side is willing to start a dialogue, nobody wants to have the same conversation. As this thread can already demonstrate, nobody is challenging the thread, they are challenging what they think and understand are slights against them. This is not the way to go. At all.

As Celeste said, this is anathema to the continued livelihood and activity of the board. CDN has been through a lot of years, a lot of drama, a lot of players coming and going, but I don't think it's ever had to deal with the kind of stark, stubborn fragmentation of the community because nobody wants to talk to anybody. And if anybody does want to talk to anybody, people just get into this self-feeding cycle where olive branches get scrutinized to hell and back, and subsequently ethered by a portion of the community who is, again, reluctant to step outside established boundaries. It's not good. And it goes both ways.

I don't try to say a lot when it comes to addressing public stuff, mostly because there are mods and members who do a much better job at addressing the salient points (as this thread already demonstrates), but I also don't think I ever try to ask much from the people I engage or the level of discourse I expect from these conversations. In that mostly I just expect a conversation. It does not have to be the kindest conversation, but I do expect people to take an honest look at what the other side is saying and at least try to reach a compromise. At least acknowledge what other people are saying, at least try and look at the other party as, maybe someone who doesn't have it out for you personally and hates everything you stand for, because they don't. Maybe try to look at them as someone who genuinely feels they are acting in the best interests of the board at large, or feel they have genuine things to say about the state of the board more developed than a simple distaste for a certain aspect of the universe (and by proxy, you).

Moreover, please disavow yourself of the little walls you have built within the community. You are guilty of it. Trust me. And much like Overlord, I mean 'you' in the grandest sense possible. Everyone. If you don't think so, I urge you to take some solid, self-reflection and consider the people you regularly play with and surround yourself with. This board has to be built on a few fundamental agreements between the players, and this board cannot continue while this kind of toxicity constantly lingers between fairly substantial portions of the player-base. It cannot continue if one side or the other absolutely refuses to engage the other in an honest and fair manner, and simply disappear to their insular community-in-a-community. It's not going to work.

It's pretty early in the morning for me, and it's definitely too early for drama that goes nowhere and makes everyone involved feel shittier. Constructive conversation should not have to be the most pleasant thing in the universe, but it should be constructive.

We clear?

Yes?

No?

Good.

This clearing of air has been most welcome in my opinion, and I fully echo Mandatory's/Overlord's thoughts about needing to communicate.

I also heartily second this: One sub-group should not dictate what is the good or bad quality of posting/writing and then use it as a rallying point for mob shunning other players. Only group that should do this is the CDN in whole.

You know quite well who am I referring to, but it should go for any other future group should they form up.

People many levels come here, casual, hardcore, and as long as they follow the rules and canon, it should not be a problem. Each have their own measure they are willing to contribute into playing pretend space aliens and have fun at it. Pouring one's heart into world-building amazing nations, tech and politics is welcome. Commenting and chatting up things for fun is welcome. Turning CDN into a hard-end of sci-fi forum where backseat modders reign and shun those not sharing their dedication will be the death of the forums.

quick ironing of a misunderstanding




I was referring to attempted plow over, not the thread.

Apologies this isn't likely to be particularly coherent, more of a smattering of responses and half finished thoughts because, you know, apparently saying something is better than saying nothing:

You are not an oppressed minority, this is not your self-validating witchhunt, this is a player addressing a number of extremely prevalent issues (as evidenced by the fact that not a single asari player who has posted thus far has even done the barest minimum to acknowledge the stated points) in a decidedly non-venomous and ultimately constructive manner.

So at the risk of sounding harsh: kindly get over yourself.

Oh come off it. If you're going to hold up canon as God then you could at least do the most basic courtesy of just acknowledging that instances of cracks and dirt on the asari Space Elf shrine are pretty damn prevalent in the game. You see instances of casual racism on Illium (the asari who's basically called naturally hardhearted because she had a batarian for a father), there's the pureblood issue, and the fact that two of the most influential Matriarchs in the series, Benezia and Aethyta, have a decidedly bitter and discontented view of the Republics overall. The asari aren't perfect. They have problems. Racism. Classism. Ageism. All of which are heavily implied or outright shown in the lore you yourself are holding up as the foundation for what work you've done on them.

Because God forbid there should be some actual conflict or consequences.

Oh and something I really did just notice.

This is the problem. Right here, this is the problem. This is you literally saying that you don't need criticism because you have other players who think you're just perfect the way you are. Frankly, it's disappointing. And I mean that sincerely, I am disappointed by this statement because this right here is an actual opportunity to air grievances and discuss and your reaction is "Well it's not my fault".

Frankly if I sound like I'm frustrated it's because I am. If I sound tired or impatient or just done it's because I am. Nobody's saying that it's wrong to have a circle of writers you like writing with, or people who you like playing with or whatever, only that it is wrong to not acknowledge and actively shy away from interacting with others when the offer is presented on the sole basis of "but it's not meeeeeee". I'm guilty of this. Everybody is guilty of this. But I'm here now, I'm talking, and I'm moderately incensed that you aren't even willing to come to the freaking table.

Edit: And what the hell! Since we're all being so very chatty and sharey

Fine then. Fine. Let's talk. I've shoved down the vast majority of obscenities that were my first, second, third, and fourth reaction so fine.

I don't like some people on this board.

I probably won't ever like them.

I think some of their stuff is balls to the wall stupid and emblematic of even stupider stuff and I want to address it IC from an IC perspective since that's where they shoved it without literally being demonized/shunned/talked down to/treated like a fucking cancer of the boards.

Because that fucking sucks all around.

Alright.

I'm honestly not bothered by the tone that this thread is taking, because I said I full-well expected it, and I've come from angrier places than this, and because it's not simply senseless name-calling. Both Taleeze and Sandman have outright said that they are feeling unfairly targeted by other users, let's have an exercise.

You, in the sense of you that Echolon and I have used, are going to not post in this thread. You are going to sit wherever you're at and- before even thinking of a reply- you are going to think about why they feel that way. As if you were them. As an attempt at empathy.

So stop and think for a little bit.

We're all pissed off here. We're all frustrated and annoyed and disappointed (and I'm certainly more disappointed than anyone else, because ultimately this bullshit is my fault).

We can yell at each other, or we can stop and think about why we're angry, why other people are angry, what we're looking for out of the site, what other people are looking for in the site, and what needs to be done, and what we can do to contribute to it.

So stop and think, and make sure you're not just making bullet points on your side. Use a little empathy and imagination.

If you can't, then you can safely assume that you are not going to be constructively adding to solving the problem.

Thank you. And thank you for keeping it relatively civil, given how pissed off everyone is.

Please don't imply that the current problem is a one-way street. It isn't. Every "group" of people in these forums is guilty of creating this schism on the boards. It's not elitism either, because I'm sure nobody here is slipping dollars into the mod's shirt pockets to get them to look the other way. I would know. I've come from rp communities that have caused me to believe this is the best community I've been a part of so far in terms of bias.

Have I been less then accommodating to other players?
Probably.

Have I been talking behind people's backs?
Certainly.

Do I want to remove the reasoning through which I have done so?

Hell yeah I do.

Sandman, I'll pick you as example because your post provides a good one. But I'll make a general point of it.
Let's get that out of the way, it's ok for you not to like everyone here. I don't either. It's also ok to think stuff doesn't make sense and express it.
What isn't ok, and I can't emphasize that enough, is to express it like you just did, with open contempt, disdain and aggressiveness. Even in real life it will not do you any favor, because, Captain Obvious to the rescue, people don't like it. First of all you must keep in mind that you can be wrong. Even if your opinion really, really seems like a painfully obvious truth. There is a lot of stuff that you said was absolutely idiotic on CDN. I disagreed on quite a few, so did other people. Maybe you were smarter/better informed than us, maybe you weren't. Keep in mind that going all out on people on people for daring disagreeing with you can bite you in the ass hard if it turns out you were wrong.
Second, and more importantly, even if you're right in the matter respect is still way more important. If you don't respect people they'll get sick of it and will leave you alone (ie treated like cancer and stuff). So even if you disagree strongly with someone, please stay polite and respectful. Note that it doesn't exclude you from being passionate! And if you can't get the message across, just roll your eyes and let it go. It's probably not that big a deal anyway.
Now again I'm not an innocent dove in this, I've lost my temper a few times, and it was stupid of me. Sorry about that, I'll try not to do it again.

I think that shows we can't exactly ALL play together, some difference are not reconcilable. But the next best thing is polite avoidance with people you really can't work with, so that we don't spoil the fun for others, and make ourselves miserable with internet vendettas.

Ho, and let's leave ooc grievance out of IC please. It really sucks when someone's character attacks your character for things they really want to say to you. It's no fun at all.
Again, not something I never did. Definitely something I'm not proud of.

Now for any of us I think the number of people we really can't stand isn't that high. And it would indeed be better for us to RP more with people that are neither from our close group nor those we can't get along with.

For the rest of them, maybe we can try an exercise. We all pick two people who posted here that we never played with before and try to cook up a RP with them. What do you guys think?

I'm just going to highlight this. Just this. Out of everything you wrote. Because I feel like these pair of sentences sums up your attitude towards me and what I think pretty damn succinctly.

Also protip: if you want to actually talk to people it helps to not be incredibly patronizing while paying lip service to what's been established. Which you do.

A lot.

It has surpassed annoying.

I stand by it! I don't like very much when someone say that "we're just playing space aliens", because I think this is an brilliant activity to do. But it is certainly not important enough to get all mad and start insulting people! Hell I don't even get that worked up in my professional life!


Sorry? Well please try see past my patronizing to the point I'm trying to make.

This post is going to be bad, and I kind of believe it is a mistake for me to post this, but sometimes things have to be said and done even if it is a bad mistake because not doing so would make things even worse.


Nobody except for the owner of the site and the people he appointed as mods have any right to dictate anyone else how to play their character and/or member of a race. I stand behind and will continue to stand behind this right no matter what my opinions IC or OOC about that character or player. I do not care how superficial or deep, how simplistic or complex, how well or poor written the characters are. I do not give a single flying fuck if you think they play their character 'too well' or not good enough. Everyone has the right to post as long as they follow the rules of this site. To misquote an often quoted expression; "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Everyone, has OOC opinions, preferences and so on, I fully support everyone's right to have those and to express those, with the following understanding; You shouldn't hound people with them. Share them if you must but do it ONCE, unless you are explicitly solicited to do it again, do not continue to repeat it. Especially when the person it concerns is present, it is one thing to say "I didn't really care for that post/thread/character", once, and when asked, it is a whole other thing when you repeat over and over again every time they show up.

Nobody, likes to be insulted or criticized out of the blue. I believe that if those that have grievances only express their grievances once and do not pester the subject of their grievances that those subjects could take such a hit without much drama. And could, with time, either change their ways in a positive way or keep doing what they do, while understanding that some people have issues with what they do and how to defend them, without becoming defensive to a point where no dialogue is possible.

Fragmentation, stagnation and isolationism of the community is a real concern, but we can solve that. I say solve deliberately because a quick fix will not do it, a quick fix would be to put everyone's name in a hat, pair them off randomly and say go do an RP together. A proper solution takes time, the problems are interwoven and are partly based on the lack of both trust and willingness to let other people do what they want. A way to counter this fragmentation is to be open to others; not by telling them how to do something, but showing them, offering them to join and try what you are offering, keep that offer open and finally accepting that you cannot 'convert' everyone to your way of thinking, and that is fine.

So, I don't play asari and I don't really post all that much on the site anymore and I definitely don't interact a whole lot over IRC these days, but there is one thing here I wanted to bring to the fore.

Canon is being used as a defense.

That's all well and good, under normal circumstances, and until the end of Mass Effect 3 was absolutely the right way to go about things. Since that ending, however, and largely because Bioware has failed to provide us with any new kind of status quo, the canon defense is looking weaker and weaker. We've established our own, since then, one which I think does a fantastic job of providing us with a playground suitable to characters (and egos?) of all shapes and sizes. As such, falling back on canon, while a useful guideline, needs to not be the first resort. Get out there and create. If a species is going in a direction you don't like, write some news articles highlighting what you believe would be problems they'd face in the post-apocalyptic future. If you're not comfortable with that approach, bring those potential challenges to people who normally write the species, let them know you think it might be an interesting angle to explore, and I'm sure they'd be willing to help out. Not only will this give everybody something more to play with, it'll inspire discussion at the very least, and maybe even get people talking to people they wouldn't normally deal with. The mods are pretty careful with the Presslink about not letting people monopolize entire species', and since it all goes through them by default, Presslink is the ideal way to be the change you'd like to see.

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I made my thread about batarians earlier mostly as a joke, but also to highlight that the least-developed species in the Bioware canon is currently one of the most-developed on the boards. There are batarians from all walks of life, there are batarians with a wide variety of personalities, there are competent ones, incompetent ones, smart ones and dumb ones, all because we (collectively - that is, batarian players as a whole) took what canon there was and ran like hell with it. None of that happens unless we take chances, and there are a lot of ideas that fell by the wayside along the way, but the point is that we (all of us, every single player on the site regardless of species' played) are in the unique situation of being able to build on canon with virtually no limitations. Falling back on canon as a defense is well and good, and grounding things in canon is good too, but it's not the hard-and-fast restriction that it used to be and I think a big part of the problem right here and now is that there's some uncertainty regarding what can actually be done, so people are playing it safe, which in turn frustrates the ones who want to see something new.

Stop.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled bitter recriminations.

So I know I just posted saying that I'm disappearing (again) for the foreseeable future, but hey, one last post never hurt anyone, right?

I absolutely hate internet forum drama, but lately, CDN just hasn't been fun for me. It's not your fault, it's just that I have absolutely no interest in debating minutiae instead of actually playing a role. Most of what I want to say has already been said (courtesy of Mandatory, Hammers, Dippy and Abad), but I'd like to weigh in with my two cents anyway.

I think a lot of the problem stems from people wanting other people's characters to do something different. In part, this is a result of everyone having a different take on canon, but when you get right down to it, I think that's where the problem starts. It's not a bad thing, in and of itself - I know I've read posts and gone "why" - but what Dippy said goes for me, too. The only person who can tell a player to play their character differently are the mods, and that's only if the character in question is breaking the rules.

So if you can't make someone change their PC, what do you do? There's two ways to go about it (and yes, I've tried both).

The first option is to call them on it IC. I've done it a lot, and in my experience it's not a very good way to make friends and influence people. In fact, if you're as bad at it as I am, you wind up driving people away from the site. Trust me, driving people away is not a good thing (diversity = entertainment) and it is really not a good feeling when someone blames you as the sole cause for their leaving.

So if option one takes more finesse, empathy and subtlety than this writer can muster up, what's option two?

Option two is to post more.

Remember when quarians were the new quarians? Remember the last few days of the old forum, when quarian players were complaining that there weren't any badass, geth-hating quarian PCs to lead the fight for Rannoch?

There were two ways it could have gone - players could have argued and complained and Rannoch would've quietly happened in the background. Or, y'know, a player could write and play a bad-ass, geth-hating quarian PC to lead the fight for Rannoch.

The first option's always easier. The second option is always more fun, and I'm really grateful to Volclan for stepping up to the plate.

(Here's the link, for people who weren't around then)

Sadly, there will always be people who don't write what you want them to, and don't take their characters down the paths you'd like. So make your own characters and do it yourself. Yes, it's hard, yes, it takes effort, but it is so much more entertaining than complaining at each other.

Annoyed that every merc on the site is a freelancer with a heart of gold? Write something different. Want a character for the Reaper War who isn't a bad-ass gun-toting soldier? Write your own. Want to showcase that war really really sucks? Do it yourself. Sad that nobody else seems to show killing someone as hard to do? Write it yourself. Want to see a villain shake up the boards and threaten galactic safety? Write one yourself.

My favourite characters on this forum have always been the ones who saw a gap and filled it. The batarian slaver. The independent drell. The exile. The SATAE Sepper. The civilised krogan. There are so many more I could throw in here, but you see my point.

To quote Spiza, be the change you want to see on the boards. Don't sit there and yell that somebody else is a bad writer. If you don't think somebody's addressing Point X with their character, address it yourself. You'll get a better reaction by demonstrating than you will by demanding.

tl;dr? Don't badger people to write the way you want. Write the way you want yourself. Think somebody's writing a bad elcor/mercenary/love interest/fishmonger? Write a better one and show them up.

Show, don't tell. And see you all when I see you.

Wish fulfillment is not a good thing. It's not a solid foundation to base writing on. If you are perfectly happy saying "yes it's wish fulfillment and I like it for that" then something is seriously wrong. There is a difference between being bright/hopeful and being perfect. And perfection is impossible to write interestingly.


And I object to your portrayal of prostitution. You'll notice I didn't just mention things like the absolutely horrible ways sex workers can be treated and the disgusting fates that can befall them. Sex workers have problems, the problems that would naturally arise from having to take the act of lovemaking and slowly grind all the joy and pleasure from it with obligation. Life as a sex worker, even in the 'bright and hopeful' future of an alien culture, would not be the rosy-cheeked fantasy that you portray it as. And you portray it as such to such a degree that I am offended by how sickeningly perfect the life of Daia the prostitute is.


They aren't my hoops, and by treating them as such you're simply revealing how much you want to disregard the truth of what I'm saying. You are telling be to 'get over' the fact that the community I love is dying a slow, protracted, and painful suffocating death due to the absolute travesty that is the post-transition playerbase. I will not 'get over' it. I will not stop telling you that you are a bad player until you realize that criticism should be taken and learned from. I will not 'stop the elitism' because it's not elitism, it's begging for the most basic of standards. And if you must know, this thread was the product of several days of exhaustive rewrites and consultations with mods. So no, this is not just me deciding to 'plow it all over' as much as you would so love to disregard everything I stand for by saying that it is.


You know, it's funny how you say that 'in real life', because the reaction I'm seeing here is wildly divorced from real life. Functioning adults can't simply ignore all criticism levelled at them because they don't like hearing it, can't hide away from the world and simply ignore it because everyone's just being too harsh and too mean. If you are doing something this wrong you have to change it or face some consequences. All I see is absolutely consequence-free writing, boring drivel with no point to it.

"A lot of the stuff you said was absolutely idiotic on CDN", hm? This is why nobody likes you, Four. The absolute passive-aggressive patronizing arrogance that you exude with every solitary word you write is so infuriating beyond words that even if it wasn't for your utter travesty of a character I would still despise you as a person. Especially since you are so strongly part of the problem, demonizing and alienating everyone who doesn't perfectly conform to your 'hug hug hug hug' worldview.


Actually yes, they do. It's called criticism. It's how the world works. It's how you move on and learn and grow in absolutely every facet of your being. If what you write is simplistic, shallow, bland, awful wish fulfillment or endless porridge-like drivel, then you are a perfectly viable target of criticism. If nobody criticizes anyone nobody learns. Everyone stays the same, and stagnation is absolutely ruinous to... to anything.

And the really fun part is that I'm not just some mean old bully trying to make everyone conform. I exhaustively detailed ways to make things work in my opening post. I have been working my fucking ass off doing things I never would have done before. I made a thread and supported it, researched it, worked it over, worldbuilding for the asari because I thought they were salvageable. Casting me as some ivory-tower elitist is not only completely misrepresenting me, it's downright obscene.


It's a lovely sentiment to 'be the change', and I'm not saying it's without merit. The entire point of Celeste to do just that, and I poured all of this time and energy and effort into her exactly to be the change I wanted to see. But simply being an isolated case, striving in the sea of hostile bullshit that you see arrayed before me, it just doesn't work. More has to be done. These people needed a god damn wake up call and I gave them that. I refuse to regret it.