Writing the taboo

[Chuuya]

Taboo is officially defined as "prohibited or restricted by social custom" or "place under prohibition". Topics related to taboo typically progress as quickly as human society does with the focus changing to reflect political, social, and even religious norms at the time. Writing has always been one of the mediums that tackled "taboos" even in the past where it was used to question authority or dabble into previously untreaded waters including LBGTQA+ relationships, sexism, racism, and so on. Exploring the taboo has become norm nowadays, however, and many more authors have become willing to dip their toes into the water. This, of course, includes Roleplayers.

With that said, what are topics that you still consider to be taboo and where do you personally draw your line with that content? What would you consider as "tasteless" versus actually exploring a tricky topic (ex: racism, abuse, terrorism, certain historical events, etc)? Do you think that Roleplaying is an acceptable medium to explore these topics or do you think that the vast majority of Roleplayers are too "immature" to appropriately approach these things at all? Do you think that people who are unaffected by these issues should be allowed to comment on them either? Do you prefer to write with taboo or avoid it all together when it comes to writing?

I'm very curious to hear what others think. Please feel free to use as much or as little detail as you like, but remain civil and on-topic at all times. As always, please do not violate any of the Guild's guidelines. Thank you and happy discussing.

[BrokenPromise]

I consider a topic taboo if it meets the definition in the first paragraph of the first post in here. Most of these tend to pertain to sex, violence, politics, or behavior that defies social norms. Though some things are more taboo than others. I doubt many people would care if I played an amazon tribesman who walked around in the nude. But if I made a rapist? Yikes. Just saying rape is enough to trigger some people.

The trick to dealing with taboo topics is to know your audience, and also to have a bit of tact and creativity. It might surprise you to hear that as taboo as sexual assault is, there's actually a lot of cartoons that depict it. I know everyone's seen one of the hundreds of instances where a cave man clubs a woman and then drags her away to be his bride. We all know what's going to happen, but it hasn't stopped most of us from laughing. You can get "dirtier" and more serious than that if your RP group/forum is more accepting of that sort of thing and you know what you're doing.

As with all things, it really depends on how it's handled and what your RP group is composed of.

[POOHEAD189]

There is no taboo subject when it comes to being an author. There are taboo subjects for readers, however, which is entirely different. An author has the freedom to write about sex, racism, murder, genocide, slavery, rape, jaywalking, etc. They have that freedom and it is actually a service to the public that such things are discussed. I find it absolutely reprehensible that things like Tom Sawyer have been yanked out of schools, though of course that is a "reader's" choice and not the author so it's somewhat different. It is all up to the writer on what they can or cannot put in their book. If a modern black African wants to write a book from a 13th century Mongolian's perspective, he can and should if that is what he wants to do. There is no 'story you cannot write' or 'story that isn't yours to tell.'

When it comes to an RP however, it's simply up to what you and your partner are mutually, consensually comfortable with. That and you also need to follow the Guild guidelines if you write it publicly. I think being 'tasteless' is how you write something rather than what you write. For instance, smut can easily be tasteless if done incorrectly. But if done correctly it's a nice experience if you do it with someone you trust (or don't, whatever floats your boat).

I think the only subject matter I condemn as 'taboo' is misinformation and lying in order to spread an ideology, even if it is a harmless one. You can, of course, spread the truth or embellish if you're writing a novel. But using said novel to intentionally spread information that is false, particularly if it is harmful, is a cardinal sin in my book.

[Chuuya]

I think the only subject matter I condemn as 'taboo' is misinformation and lying in order to spread an ideology, even if it is a harmless one. You can, of course, spread the truth or embellish if you're writing a novel. But using said novel to intentionally spread information that is false, particularly if it is harmful, is a cardinal sin in my book.

@POOHEAD189

What really stood out to me about your response was this part here and this is definitely not something that I considered when posting this topic. Usually when it comes to discussing taboo, I immediately think of how it affects the characters or reader, but not necessarily the reader's perspective. A very good point indeed.

[Bork Lazer]

I'll be the first one to say that the execution of a taboo always matters. Rape, mental illness, war crimes, genocide or slavery can be depicted or executed in a manner that can help contribute to the enjoyment and engagement of a roleplay. However, the way you approach it matters. The tone and how you ultimately convey this taboo matters. How do you frame the taboo within your RP? Does it play an important role in your narrative or story? Are you deliberately focusing on the merits of this taboo in any way? If so, why?

Luckily, we do have a good public case study example of how not to approach a taboo topic with nuance on RPGO. The GM hasn't been on this site for 3 years so I'm confident I won't be engaging in any harassment or character attacks in any manner whatsoever.

https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/92294-the-rape-of-nanking/ooc

The link above demonstrates all of the common problems when writers fail to understand taboo topics in a way.

1) Not treating a sensitive topic with maturity or respect.
2) Deliberately including game-play mechanics or encouraging players to engage with the taboo topic in a disrespectful manner.
3) Deliberately glorifying the taboo in an almost celebratory manner or conveying it in such a way that is disturbing to say the least.

All of these factors contribute to making the RP above absolutely ignorant and lacking in nuance of how it chooses to approach the taboo in manner. I think if you want to know how not to tackle taboos on this forum, the baseline has already been set by this roleplay concept.

It's already been repeated above but I'll say it again. The difference between writing taboos in a novel of your own making and a roleplay is that roleplay first and foremost is collaborative writing and therefore, requires an unspoken consent between involved parties on what taboos they are comfortable with including within the RP. There's also the fact that whilst RPGO is primarily dominated by people living in the US, each and every person will be raised in different backgrounds with different values. What may be considered taboo for others will be considered normal for other people to discuss. Different cultures, societies and religions will have different taboos and different perspectives on how they engage with these taboos.

That said, the big 'no no' for me is if a roleplayer or writer attempts to gleefully justify or advocate within the text for taboo topics such as racism, rape, genocide or violence, where it imparts upon other roleplayers or readers a positive message about these things in particular. Note that there is a world of difference between in-text justifications or writing characters that justify or advocate these beliefs.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on this subject matter.

[Penny]

Wow that is dark, I'm glad the Guild basically came out and said as much!

[SleepingSilence]

There is no taboo subject when it comes to being an author.

@POOHEAD189

This kind of sums up my feelings too, really.

As art is supposed to be compelling. Regardless of one's own personal taste or distaste of it.

Plus, those who say you strictly can't do something that has been done by countless others, usually can be dismissed for not having particularly good intentions to begin with.

[Chuuya]

Wow. That link that Bork posted is definitely something. . In all the wrong ways. I'm with Penny that I'm glad that the Guild didn't stand for it. I'd like to believe that was a troll, but who knows anymore. That's definitely a case study on how to NOT approach sensitive topics for sure.

[POOHEAD189]

I'd never seen the thread before. It was a year before I joined the mod group, I believe.

Also agreed

I'll be the first one to say that the execution of a taboo always matters. Rape, mental illness, war crimes, genocide or slavery can be depicted or executed in a manner that can help contribute to the enjoyment and engagement of a roleplay. However, the way you approach it matters. The tone and how you ultimately convey this taboo matters. How do you frame the taboo within your RP? Does it play an important role in your narrative or story? Are you deliberately focusing on the merits of this taboo in any way? If so, why?

@Bork Lazer

[role model]

What may be considered taboo for others will be considered normal for other people to discuss. Different cultures, societies and religions will have different taboos and different perspectives on how they engage with these taboos.

BorkLazer

That's where I'm coming from. One single post can be offensive to somebody, who makes a big deal out of it. The roleplayer on trial is kicked out. This is a case where two players have different morals. Ways to combat this is keeping an informative profile, making or following rp rules, and discussing politics. And, know what you're getting into. If your taboo is respectable and well defined jump in! I think there can be a consensus about taboo things and how to handle describing them. An example is keeping certain things implied and make the taboo interesting.

Now, as far as writing taboo I take my own advice and keep things to a minimum detail. However, if my partner wants to go all the way then I use language at will. And, also, I use a loose attitude when rping with people who want to make it a little "sick" if you will (the word sick can be used a lot of ways). And finally, respect goes around and around so I treat other writers like they treat me.

[Idea]

Fiction is fiction. This to me is a guiding principle, and something I believe should never be forgotten when it comes to writing or roleplaying. Reality and fiction are two separate things, though fiction can comment on reality, asserting reality as being analogous to it. The fiction never ceases to be fiction or claims itself to be real (bar a few particular genres whose characteristic is none other than making such a claim) but in taking itself as a serious approximation, it can make claims about how reality is.

Conversely, this also implies the opposite- when fiction does not make such an assertion of realism, I find it to be nothing short of absurd to thrust expectations of accuracy or of being representative of reality onto it. Of course, the question of tastefulness is important in any case, but that is far more subjective than a standard one can govern themselves by. But whether making a comedy, or a serious exploration of something, or even just employing something for a darker setting, I don't believe any particular taboo should be considered strictly off limits for every story. I believe the important question is whether it fits that narrative, and that the more seriously a story takes itself, the more it incurs the responsibility to take the matters it deals with more seriously and faithfully as well.

This to me, is what makes the difference between that cliché romance plot about a kidnapped princess, or a fairy tale like Beauty and the Beast and a plot focused on a psychological deep dive of Stockholm Syndrome. It goes beyond even this though- RP can allow one to explore fantasies, and things one couldn't- and shouldn't- do in real life. A thread in another site I am on even brought up the topic about people enjoying plots about kidnappings and abuse, and a common response boiled down to saying to that they knew it was wrong or dangerous or unhealthy in real life, and that in itself was why they wanted to engage it through RP.

In the end of the day however, like everyone and their grandma have said, you gotta respect what your partner's comfortable with and that really is where the line in the sand is ultimately drawn, what people are willing to do with you. But this is the practical level of the compromise and I don't necessarily believe it satisfies the question of "should" by itself.

[Jannah]

For me, nearly anything goes. I quite enjoy exploring topics I would be unable to otherwise. I'd say about the only thing I won't touch are graphic depictions of pedophilia or bestiality. Characters can have these as part of their history and perhaps be something that influences them heavily in the present, but I'm not writing out the actual acts.

[pugbutter]

Expanding on what @Bork Lazer said, I could summarize my view simply by saying: you're allowed to make readers uncomfortable. You have the opportunity, you have the right; in fact, if you're trying to say something important about a real, difficult topic, then, to be honest, you have the duty.

Come and See isn't the best anti-war film ever made because it's polite, it's fair/balanced, and it holds wittle baby's hand through a gentle acclimation into the topic. It's the best anti-war film ever made because it does none of that. It forces you to watch women and children be locked in a church before molotov cocktails and grenades are thrown through the windows. The camera lingers on the church until well after the screams have stopped. You see a man still squirming and writhing when his blackened body has been pulled from the char. You watch a woman be dragged behind a Jeep, then stumble out ten minutes later with blood and semen dripping down her legs. You watch rape, infanticide, desertion, treason, and the expected, comparatively tame act of putting bullets and shrapnel in people. Experiencing human cruelty at its peak is crucial to the film's message.

... or you look away from the screen, which in itself proves its point. Because if you're the type to look away from a movie when it gets uncomfortable then you're also the type to look away when your politicians order the deaths of thousands in combat, and war-criminals have torched an Iraqi village, and hundreds have been reduced to widows, orphans, and refugees. You might even be the type to glorify war when it's clean, convenient, thousands of miles away; when it chases noble abstracts like "honor" and "justice"; less so when you have to face the reality of what devastation war wreaks upon flesh-and-blood people.

Could such a story be told through euphemism, innuendo, trigger warnings, and censorship? Maybe, but it would be a diluted, de-fanged version of the story we ultimately got.

The brutality and the horror need to serve a purpose, though. Violence for the sake of shock value, edge, or worse, popcorn entertainment, is a waste at best, and a travesty at worst, a hollow, meaningless effigy which infantilizes the audience and dehumanizes the people who actually suffer such things all around the world.

TL;DR Dark imagery and themes are good when making the audience uncomfortable serves a greater artistic purpose; bad when they're superfluous or superficial.

[j8cob]

While I think it can be a good idea to push the envelope and challenge people's sensibilities, when specifically talking about writing out taboo things on this site I think it has to take a backseat to the forum rules. Introducing traumatic events or using things like rape as a tool to demonstrate evil can very easily be considered a violation of the forum rules depending on the context. And while you can pretty creatively dance around the exact subject to be tactful, obviously the more detail you go into the more visceral and offensive it becomes. So trying to go for something as shocking as possible might be something you can do in your own personal writing, its perhaps a good idea to leave certain taboo things alone here unless you're willing to be so tactful about it that you lose out on the shock value anyways.

Like its been said already, just touching upon taboo concepts purely for shock value is different from using them to affect the narrative. What makes the distinction is whether or not there are any real consequences or results. For example lets say you wanted to demonstrate how evil a particular character is so you write in a rape scene (to some degree of detail). If this never gets touched upon again all you did was create shock value. There's no actual consequences, nobody brings it up again, it becomes a scene that could just as easily be removed and the narrative wouldn't change at all. The character was already established evil, adding more to it means nothing if what you add literally changes nothing other than shocking your readers. Nobody's gonna think "oh well he's demonstrated capability/willingness to rape so he's even more evil than I thought", there's gonna think something more like "why was that in there? that's just gross/offensive/wrong/etc" because it makes no sense within its own context. This holds true for other taboo concepts beyond rape or other sexual violence, though obviously to varying degrees of backlash. Adding a scene to demonstrate how racist somebody is but never following up with that does the same thing: provides no consequences and no resolution, it could be removed without changing the narrative at all.

One "taboo" thing I see get tackled incredibly often is mental illnesses as a broad concept. How frequent it comes up in roleplays leads me to think it isn't really taboo at all, at least not for writing, but I still want to touch on that subject because I think that its very regularly done quite poorly. The thing is, "mental illness" isn't itself a mental illness. Having a character be "mentally ill" in a nondescript way makes no sense and is often written out similarly poorly. The idea of adding it into a narrative to make characters more interesting and less predictable is a fine one but often poorly executed because of the vague nature its usually touched upon with. Character A being "mentally ill" but demonstrating cartoonish levels of insanity is not an interesting nor tactful way to add the concept to the narrative. It basically turns Character A into a joke, and I'm sure all of us have seen this type of character in our roleplays before. I'm tackling specifically mental illness here but my upcoming concept applies to many taboo subjects and its that not knowing what you're writing about absolutely shows. And I think if you're gonna try to touch upon taboo subject matter just for the sake of adding one more element to your story without trying to put in any real effort to even knowing what you're talking about then that is no different from doing it purely for shock value.

[GeekFactor]

Taboo is officially defined as "prohibited or restricted by social custom" or "place under prohibition". Topics related to taboo typically progress as quickly as human society does with the focus changing to reflect political, social, and even religious norms at the time. Writing has always been one of the mediums that tackled "taboos" even in the past where it was used to question authority or dabble into previously untreaded waters including LBGTQA+ relationships, sexism, racism, and so on. Exploring the taboo has become norm nowadays, however, and many more authors have become willing to dip their toes into the water. This, of course, includes Roleplayers.

With that said, what are topics that you still consider to be taboo and where do you personally draw your line with that content? What would you consider as "tasteless" versus actually exploring a tricky topic (ex: racism, abuse, terrorism, certain historical events, etc)? Do you think that Roleplaying is an acceptable medium to explore these topics or do you think that the vast majority of Roleplayers are too "immature" to appropriately approach these things at all? Do you think that people who are unaffected by these issues should be allowed to comment on them either? Do you prefer to write with taboo or avoid it all together when it comes to writing?

I'm very curious to hear what others think. Please feel free to use as much or as little detail as you like, but remain civil and on-topic at all times. As always, please do not violate any of the Guild's guidelines. Thank you and happy discussing.

@Chuuya

What each person considers "taboo" is generally a personal and individual matter. What one person is squeamish about, another may not be. Therefore, my opinion is mine only. I don't presume to speak for what anyone else should do or not do.

Topics I will not roleplay out:
1. Child abuse. The exception might be a scene of violence or neglect, in order to establish a background or support for a plotline. Absolutely no child sexual abuse, or anything excessively violent or dark.
2. Bestiality. Just hell no.
3. Anything that feels like it's just excessive, gratuitous, "grimdark", fetishist type stuff. People who get a sick thrill out of repeatedly RPing depraved content, like rape or gore. There's a crucial difference between acknowledging that awful things happen, and sometimes those things are part of a character's story, and getting your jollies by seeing a character assaulted over and over again. To the latter, no thanks; seek therapy.

I also think it's important to bear in mind that what we consider "acceptable artistic content" in general, does not have to translate into what we enjoy in our roleplaying and writing. I can watch Schindler's List and not look away, and allow my heart to grieve for story it tells. But that doesn't mean I want to hop online with my friends and grind my thoughts with stories of butchering children and torturing people to death. I'm not less of a writer or roleplayer or creative mind because I know how to compartmentalize history, art, and hobby.

[Jannah]

As writers we have creative freedom to write what WE feel comfortable with. For me personally I'll write pretty much anything. About the only things I won't write out are pedophilia and certain edgy fetishy type things(usually those involving bodily fluids). Pedophilia and these fetishes can be referenced in character backstories and such, but I will not write them out as an actual scenario actively happening to the characters during the course of the story.

[BangoSkank]

Well said Jacob.

Any time you are putting an event like that into a story, particularly a collaborative story, you should consider if this is something you're going to come back to or something you are just doing to try to drum up interest. Drumming up interest is all well and good, but it can be pretty clear when you are having Dirk Daring doing something horrible just for shock. Cruelty, violence, rape or implied rape, anything like that really can add to a story but it can also take away quite a bit from a story. I may not want to participate in a collaborative story if halfway through it I find out that the character I'm partnering up with has a backstory with elements like that in it. It is also easy to attempt to go for an anti-hero or dark/gritty/edgy etc etc character and end up just making someone unlikable.

I tried to do a Deadlands RP years ago now and had some issues with the taboo. It's a setting that proposes the Civil War Never Ended and changes some pretty major details of history. In this setting the South ended slavery before the North, though largely just to get military assistance from the French. Also the dead walk the earth and there are poker playing demons.

It could be a fun setting, a supernatural western, but it touches on a lot of contentious things. The Civil War, Slavery, Colonialism and Cowboys & Indians among others. There is a lot of interesting history there, but also real people and some real pretty ugly incidents. I've contacted a few people here to see if they would be cool with me running stuff by them if I ever actually do the RP, mostly people with Native American ancestors or people with more knowledge of colonialism. Then there's another way to do something like this...

Actually I'm not going to link to it as the author is still around, signed in a month ago, but there was a Western RP someone else started up where they just replaced the different races of the real world with Warhammer races, which presented obvious problems and so never really got started. I think a few of you were around for it, it pretty quickly fell apart with the question of who would the orks stand in for. Yeah.