Treatment of Alien Races

[Icuris]

If I make any mistakes or oversights I apologize and will correct myself as needed. Moving on.

First and foremost I will not deny any ignorance that I have regarding the playable aliens and their lore. I have only briefly read through the lore and have never been whitelisted for any of the species.

However, in the past I have noticed a very large amount of variance regarding the treatment of Aliens aboard the station. The differences in treatment seem to go further then a person to person opinion and seem to be based on the round and how people are feeling about players at the time. Although I will not bring up specific incidents; as I have no intention of sparking a disagreement between individuals.

Most recently many arguments have arisen on the forum regarding the behaviour of the Tajeran characters and their actions. While largely un-involved in the discussions it seems that the larger issue at hand is the lacking of a concrete treatment of the Alien races. While many ideas and propositions have occurred I believe a fundamental idea needs to be given. The idea I wish to bring forward stems from the concept that I have no desire to ever see a alien player barred from being able to fully experience the game. However, I also have no desire to mitigate the lore of the game to that of nothing. With this in mind I purpose a simple but (at least I think) effective matter of altering the behaviour to coincide with the lore but without restricting the players from being able to role-play in an entertaining way.

Without wanting to run on further I simply put it forward: Discrimination instead of Racism

From what I've read of the lore and how I have seen players go about the game in the past I see two common treatments.

A) The human player has little to no reaction to an alien player and simply goes about their business

B) The human player goes out of their way to create conflict with the alien player; more often so in an inorganic way that generally makes the the person playing the alien feel limited in their role.

Notice that in situation B that it is not the character who is feeling limited but the player. While I do not desire to say how people feel this seems to be the most truthful if we look at complaints and arguments in the forums. And in the case of situation B what commonly occurs is the person raising an issue to a high level is reprimanded and they themselves are now limited in their ability to role play.

In either situation little in-depth roleplay occurs. The idea I want to push forward is that we try to avoid having such extremes on both sides and try to find a middle ground and have people play on either side of it. In a simple explanation: I see the treatment of Aliens aboard the station more associated with the treatment of African American's post the civil rights movement. Where the idea of equality has been pushed towards the common populace but it is evident that it has not been fully accepted. Where situations of racial profiling are evident and extra steps are taken to show that the cultural norm of the game is of a certain standard of inequality which allows people to RP both sides of it. I believe this was the original intention behind the lore as written but we have deviated from it over time. While natural deviation is always welcome the present issues and arguments regarding the treatment of Alien players pushes that some solid base needs to be reinstated. The main idea would ideally be that the behaviour and treatment of the crew would not cause Alien players to simply be locked from enjoying their RP and the game but to disable normal avenues of success and create new ones.

[Frances]

Discrimination as it should be:

• a general distrust of Unathis/Tajarans, and reluctance to associate with them

 

Discrimination as it is:

• people either not giving a shit/openly making buddies with Unathis/Tajarans for the sake of being progressive or because some Unathis and Tajarans are actually cool characters (maybe nothing wrong with that, but it seems to be the default stance by an overwhelming majority)
• people calling Tajarans "furballs" and "catbeasts"
  
• Unathis = ???

[Icuris]

Exactly and with that in mind it opens up avenues for people to RP both sides of the issue versus either inaction or overreaction. Again this idea of true discrimination is under ideal circumstances of behaviour from all parties.

[Frances]

I'd suggest that the reason this is happening is because it's the kind of behaviors people are the most willing to engage in.

It's fun to be friendly and accepting of alien races, especially if in the lore they're races that are discriminated against (mostly without reason as lore paints humans as the bad invaders).

It's fun (for some) to call Tajarans ridiculous names and have them freak out.

Other people simply don't really give a damn, or want to avoid the hassle of dealing with the ire of indignant Tajaran players.

However, few people seem to actively want to be "slightly racist/discriminatory".

Can we force them to act in a certain way? Probably not. Should we? Probably not either, considering that the fantasy racism against our fantasy races pretty much stems from an arbitrary lore decision that's been upheld ever since the races were created.

I think there's two solutions here. Either acknowledge that displays of reasonable and believable racism simply won't take on the server, and write the Tajaran/Unathi racism out of the lore so Aurora stops being an amazingly liberal and progressive college of intellectuals in comparison with the rest of the universe, or rework the races altogether to give players a reason to be racist against them.

[Icuris]

With the two solutions in mind I suppose we just trust the judgement of those in charge of such things. Personally, I see that the community has shown its full extent of the lore based racism and as it seems to create such ire conflict both in game and out I'd personally see a benefit from it being removed.

That being said, I believe there is a strong writing in the lore which does create potential conflict in a fun manner for all parties, but as of late it seems that the lore is being used to create arbitrary limitations on players versus allowing them to take new direction in their role play.

[canon35]

Unathi normally get insulted by that one guy every few shifts, or told they're raging assholes when they tell someone to fuck off.

[Xelnagahunter]

The thing here is that not being racist is actually more common in a workplace setting. Most people don't want to lose their jobs. I've argued against The_Furry that the extent of our racism really can be possible and realistic. Now let's argue the other way, how a lot of people react in public places. Largely singular people minorities will become friends with a racist person simply due to repetitive interaction. A firend of mine is VERY racist, but gets along with and joke about with a work "friend" on a regular basis, dispite him being part of the disliked minority. Do they hang out outside of the work setting, fuck no. They'd hate one another. MY friend is a dick who makes racist jokes and comments regularly. So there is a real world precedent of racists who put that hate away while they work.

LEts not forget the staggering number of people who simply work against racist encounters. I'm one of such people. I do my very best to judge people by how they are, not what the look like. When I play most of my characters I let that leak into their personality. My heads of staff in particular are nice to all races, even synthetics that can be considered property. There are large variations in racism.

While I agree that some people take it too far, I don't think that either of the options Frances has put out are required. We don't have to enforce a distrust or remove it entirely. We should be allowing players to come in, read our lore, and make their own decisions regarding reactions. If they take it overboard ICly, it can be dealt with ICly. If they start hate wars OOC, it will be dealt with by server staff.

[Frances]

While I agree that some people take it too far, I don't think that either of the options Frances has put out are required. We don't have to enforce a distrust or remove it entirely. We should be allowing players to come in, read our lore, and make their own decisions regarding reactions. If they take it overboard ICly, it can be dealt with ICly. If they start hate wars OOC, it will be dealt with by server staff.

Well, see, I believe the problem is that Tajarans and Unathis are supposed to occupy an entirely different place in the lore. They're not really comparable to 21st century racism, which is what I assume you're comparing it to.

Previously, there was supposed to be an entire undercurrent of anti-Tajaran and Unathi discrimination. Like, I'm pretty sure it was originally intended to be worse than in the deep south. We're speaking 1950s anti-black racism, maybe. Perhaps less "colored bathrooms" but it might be flat out impossible to get a "good" job as a Tajaran or Unathi even if you're above and beyond qualifications (not to mention Tajarans and Unathis would have restricted access to human-level education.)

Then, what happened is lore became more progressive, animal aliens started to pop up in pretty much every job slot they originally weren't expected to pop up in (mostly research/medical, but also heads), and conjointly very few people decided they actually wanted their characters to discriminate against those races.

There's sort of a mismatch between the current lore and the current players' expectations. For Tajarans, for example, I feel like there's a clear implication that they're pretty much the equivalent of post-9/11 Muslims (with a small extremist group of the larger Tajaran species engaging in terrorist attacks on human assets to promote Tajaran nationalism) if humans were all highly prejudicial and biased. Hell, NanoTrasen is very clearly exploiting Tajarans and considering them as tools to further human interests - they staged a false Tajaran attack on their own assets just so they could have a pretext to do whatever they want with them. Yet you don't see any of this in-game. Tajarans are pretty much treated at large like regular humans, save for some occasional name-calling and very focused hate which tends to come out of the blue and not bring very much depth to the whole discrimination aspect.

To sum it up, it feels kinda weird that your corporation's official modus is to remorselessly exploit an alien species yet everyone working for said corporation vehemently disagrees with it.

[Xelnagahunter]

Even as a captain, I doubt my character gets much information about the company's underhanded tactics from the brass. Just because the COMPANY is built to treat them like shit doesn't mean all of the crew/command staff knows this. If my captain gets a DO order telling him to treat Taj like shit (IE: Mutiny/Rev rounds), he will. He's implanted and has to follow orders. Fortunately I actively try not to play the captain in these situations as I don't wanna fuck anything up (Just not ready for antag style action). Personally, after 9/11 I had a wave of rage, then I was quickly shocked back into reality because I don't worship Fox News. I feel bad for how we treat Muslims, even with extremeists STILL CAUSING PROBLEMS. There is no reason a number of other people can't feel the same.

I also read the news in game, and I try to tlak to people about it and get real world thoughts from everyone, and I let them help shape my characters. I'm not saying every character I have will be about fairness to all species, but I have 2 that I play regularly, and one of them is an IPC and has to deal with synthetic hate. I just think that the people who want to hate need to do it from and IC POV and intelligently and we can let the rest do what they want, it's their gaming experience, right?

Added note: Maybe some people simply aren't comfortable RPing racism.

[Icuris]

I suppose in the current situation the outlook of expectations and the reality of the server community differ greatly. Speaking for myself and what I've seen in-game; I see that the possibility of reiterating expectations to players in a more concrete fashion will allow us to avoid issues similar to those of recently. With this in mind I only suggest that our expectations of lore and its intention would be better shaped around the reality of the community's behaviour.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

Something to remember: This isn't actually racism. It's speciesism. Totally different, being as racism is pretty stupid and looking down on lesser species is the natural result of them being lesser. And you don't have rage out or be overtly rude... consider treating our lesser sapients like you would small children or retards; politely, but condescendingly. After all, you don't yell at a horse for being a horse... but you also don't treat it like a person.

[Vittorio Giurifiglio]

Honestly just treat the Xenos like Blacks in the 50's, instead of Nigger, Use Ligger or Furball, but don't just say like DIE LIGGER DIE, be like "Hello there Ligger, Hows the work coming along? I better see all those monkies intact in that pen, else you'll be sorry", Also do what most actual people with Racial prejudice do, for example I'm uncomfortable with all of the MP's in my area being minorities, so when you have a Xeno head of staff just act uncomfortable

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I'm going to just make a guide titled How To Be Anti-Xeno In The Workplace so we can have an official document to show what is and isn't acceptable.

[Icuris]

Well the lore master has spoken. I look forward to reading it. Think I will attempt to whitelist for one of the Aliens after reading the guide.

[Guest]

Discrimination as it should be:

• a general distrust of Unathis/Tajarans, and reluctance to associate with them

Elena in a nutshell. Views most Unathi, until proven otherwise, as violent barbarians. She's professional and intelligent enough to keep her mouth shut, though, which is why no one reported her.

As for NT and the station, as any 'professional' workplace, it does not allow open discrimination based on race. It will, however, allow profiling by security, because it makes sense in the long run. If certain groups have a history of being risky, such as Unathi with their loyalties and general stereotypes, they will be watched and screened more than usual. NT is like that, on the surface, they support equality, not caring what you are as long as you are loyal and useful. But underneath they are paranoid as hell which makes them act spaciest. Who wouldn't be?