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Real Life and Ongoing Stories

Posted by Kalakh on 06/01/20
Hey.

The year's been, to absurdly understate matters, really rough, and we're not even to the midpoint. Staff has been talking over this off and on (and before any of this /recent/ particular terrible started), as regarding the best way to balance people's fun with things that might cause other people upset. The trouble we have is that we're dealing with a very large playerbase who all handle stress in different ways, and absolutely everyone playing right now needs some kind of relief from it. A lot of players use the game to deal with awful things going on by engaging in RP where they can change and affect things that they can't hope to do in real life, a lot of players find dealing with similar things to be terrible and unfun, there are players who find release in dark stories and those who find it only in lighter things. Obviously, this was true before 2020 went "hold my beer", but, well.

So as regards the most recent plot thread, where we've got players who really, really don't want to see things so painfully reflected from real life (whether the plot started first or not, fucking /oof/), and we've also got players feeling catharsis from being able to do something, /anything/ in ways they can't in real life, then we've got to try and balance it for everyone. Now, there are a lot of people who have actions in, and a lot of people who have been dumping resources and RP into this story, and if you've been doing that, then you probably don't have to read further; we're not going to invalidate anything you've been doing. Everyone, as mentioned, handles stress in different ways, and when there's more stress there's more need to deal with it. But this? It's too close to home, it feels awful, and we really don't want to cause pain where there's already enough of it.

The riot thread was never intended to be a crisis situation, unfortunately this ended up being a case of life imitating art. So, given the state of things we'd like to wrap up those elements sooner rather than later. As such, we ask that if you are in the process of submitting an action related to the events in the Market or Lowers, please submit it before 12am EST on Wednesday, June 9th. That way we can resolve everything together in a timely manner.

The whirlpool itself? People are working on dealing with that, there is, thankfully (seriously, 2020, don't test us) no inexplicable whirlpool causing pain in real life. So, no specific date for that to be taken care of.

As mentioned, players run the entire spectrum when it comes to what helps them deal, and what they find fun (and staffers, for that matter). Plots going forward are going to be the same as they have been, some light, some dark, some very light, some very dark, a lot of them a mixture of the two. The crisis resolution should be coming out soon. We'll deal with things as they come. You should deal with things as they come. If you need to step out of a plotline due to what's going on, please do. If someone else needs to step out of a plotline due to what's going on, please let them. This has always been the policy, but now, more than ever, we want to emphasize that this is the policy. It's part of the reason we lean heavily on people having Voices, and why we don't want characters going on about what a terrible leader another character is just because that leader hasn't been around, or acting as though Voices aren't empowered to make decisions for their leader.

Thanks, guys. We're here if you need to reach out over something, we just want to make sure you know that, yeah, we're talking about these things, and making decisions about these things.