This post will get rather long, please bear with me while I post all three parts of it.
People have blocked me in the past few days, and I'd rather it is for my own words than by association. I owe that to my mutuals here who have not heard from me in a while, especially those who like to form their own opinions. And I owe it to myself, because I won't keep being hypocritical thinking and talking about how people should handle things like adults but not do it myself and fade without a word.
Racism isn't petty drama, but the way it is handled can be, as it works with everything. I am not here to defend Bunny, or the other person, whose name was not stated "for the sake of their privacy" but King @ anyway — I will keep their name private as for their wishes, and call them X.
The callout was initially intended as a way of raising awareness to Bunny posing as a black person, meant to protect and validate POC. Although I have had ooc contact with him, I honestly cannot tell if he was posing as black, or how they were doing that (I am not American, and what I know of black culture in my country is most likely untrue for others, especially US), so I won't question the many people who spoke of their experience. It did catch my eye, as an external observer, that a few times it was mentioned that he "never claimed to be black", only thought to be. I don't know him or any of the people affected, but I was left with the impression that these claims were a thing brewing in a different circle, and were never brought up to him until it exploded. I don't doubt it is true and harmful for the people affected, but I have yet to see proof that it was intentional and malicious. If you have it, and will be so kind as to educate me, I would want to see it.
He addressed it in his own blog, all of the claims from the callout blog, so they weren't a secret even to his followers outside the bg3 rpc. He mentioned the past callouts, the sexualization of his character and pretending to be black. I think people are smart enough to make their own minds after seeing it there — if they thought he was black, now they knew for sure he wasn't, if they had sensed something odd with the sexualization they knew they weren't alone, and for the past callouts… I had been following Bunny for a while, and it isn't the first time I have heard about them from him. They were not public, but they weren't a secret either.
When I asked for the callout blog, I wanted to see proof of the things he had said, to cut ties with him after reading the testimonies of the affected people and forming my educated opinion. But I found nothing. All of it was telling me that what Bunny said was true: people saying they believed him to be black, people uncomfortable by the sexualization of his muse, and victims of his past. It gave me exactly nothing, except the word of strangers. Sure, I can trust POC's word about this or that being racist, because they know better. But I want to know what 'that' is. As a person who interacted with Bunny, and as a white person who writes some POC and highly sexual characters, I am not interested in "the drama", I want to know what they did wrong so I can learn from it: make sure I don't do it myself, educate my friends, stay away from others who replicate that behavior.
I thought at that point the deed of "keeping the rpc safe" was done. People had their thoughts validated, the person in question had addressed the issue, and most importantly he had added it to his rules. If it was indeed a malicious, intentional racist move, it had no room to ever happen again, and even followers from other rpcs knew of the claims and could form their opinion.
I positioned myself after Bunny's last post, when the issue of misgendering was mentioned, in his tags. I cannot possibly believe that none of the many people publicly or privately involved with the callout read this post. Be said he uses he/they pronouns (and those who follow him know that he's been using he more prominently as of late), and she is reserved for close friends. All over the callout blog he is referred to by the wrong pronouns, not just by people in screenshots, but for OP as well — recently for the excuse that "he has used them in the past, and it is what everyone else is using", but never once correcting it or addressing it. Perhaps people will call this a stretch, or a "desperate excuse to defend a racist", especially coming from a cis woman like myself, but this is a hard line for me, so I don't care. No matter the claims, no one deserves to be misgendered over and over again by dozens of people on a viral blog. It is cruel and dehumanizing. Even if there wasn't a conscious, malicious reasoning by OP, I can't possibly believe no one involved knew he was being misgendered — no one knew beforehand, or read his post, or got anons mentioning it? I don't know if they didn't speak up, or if someone did and wasn't listened to. I don't care. This alone makes me sick, and I don't wish to keep interacting with people who have seen this and did nothing about it.
The issue with X is a different thing, that I have witnessed from people close with them, as I haven't been close to them myself.
X was brought up in Bunny's callout, despite having nothing to do with him or with racism. They had a private issue with OP, and to my knowledge they hadn't talked to them in a month, and was shocked to be brought up all of a sudden and without a warning. The claims had to do with OP being "harassed" and "guilt-tripped" into writing with them. It is an issue other people have had, and I assume it has been talked out privately with other people who had the same issue, which is why OP decided to mention it. And I want to reflect a little about this.
I have known harassment in RP spaces, and outside of them, and friends close to me have as well. It can be draining. We all have lives outside the internet, and come back home tired and expecting to have a good time with our hobby, and we don't want to deal with a clingy rp partner who we know will be there the moment we show our heads. That pushes us into not wanting to write at all, because that person merely existing around us is draining, and we start to dread the moment they message us, because we really, really, don't want to reply. It snowballs. I have been there not so long ago, with a person who did not respect my boundaries regarding shipping, and I did the unthinkable: I talked to them, told them I didn't want to keep interacting, and blocked them. Just like that, they were gone, my anxiety was gone, and my muse came back.
Sure, the situation kept me away from my hobby for a while and made me physically ill, but never once was I in danger. It was merely my own inability to deal with a problem with an easy solution which enlarged the situation in my head to huge, unmanageable proportions. At the end of the day, it is a stranger on the internet, who for whatever reason is very attached to a thing I don't want to give them. It is the silliest thing. It is easily fixed.
There are other cases in which the situation is more dire. I have been, and seen friends being guilt-tripped, not into writing, but into being someone's personal therapist, or into pseudoromantic relationships. They have been blamed for their harasser's mental health issues, they've had to deal with them threatening to harm themselves if they weren't paid attention, or had malicious lies spread about them if they didn't respond the way the abuser wanted.
I get the situation above is exactly what we're all afraid of when dealing with someone who rubs us the wrong way for being clingy, which pushes us into anxiety and inaction, but none of that has been described about X. In fact, OP mentions many people have them blocked.
If the issue is so easily resolved by just blocking a person and moving on, does it really deserve a callout like that? Does a person who isn't dangerous to anyone in any way deserve to be lynched, just because many people don't like them? Their name had been removed from the callout, and Rebel had mentioned they didn't want to be named, and King @ them anyway. Where does "protecting" end, and "harassing" start?
Is harassing the alleged harasser justified? Is the backlash they have received proportional to their actions?
There are genuinely nasty and dangerous people out there, doing far worse things than being uneducated, interacting with someone with a callout to their name or being unlikeable. Sure, it is no one's job to educate strangers on the internet, but it requires the same amount of effort as removing them forcefully from the rpc. It just requires more guts, and more kindness. And blocking and moving on? That takes none, of none of those.
That is my opinion, and has always been my position regarding callouts, so I am making this post and leaving for the time being, simply because I don't want to interact with a RPC that believes that shaming and publicly humiliating people is a mature way of dealing with things. I don't want anything to do with self-appointed saviors and protectors who enjoy being morally superior more than they are willing to make the RPC a safer space. Yes, even for the unlikable, or the clingy, or the mistaken, or the uneducated people who make harmful claims but can be corrected.
Since words will be put in my mouth after this, I would like to end addressing causality. The people most involved in this situation from the beginning have been people of color — that makes sense, since the initial claims about Bunny that started this were about racism. And they have been the most vocal about it, as they deserve to be, because a white person posing as black doesn't hurt white people remotely as much as it hurts them. Until recently, I can't think of a single white person who spoke about it with more than a vague mention like "racism is bad please don't be a racist". If you can, I don't follow them.
So, disagreeing with the way the callout was handled is, necessarily, disagreeing with the POC who made it and endorsed it. That is a fact. It isn't blaming them for raising awareness about issues that affect them, it isn't charging against them specifically for being POC or being regularly vocal about race and racism, or pointing fingers at them instead of at the white people involved (because if they exist, I don't know them).
(an aside before moving on, just to cover my back because I have seen accusations like "you blocked my muse of color but not my white muse because you are racist" and I don't want those. I used to follow raphaeni, I even wrote a bit with the muse. I unfollowed — I believe softblocked — because I ran an interest checker and they didn't fill it. I didn't like their blog that much because they reblog too many pictures for my personal liking, so I did what people do and used the chance to cut ties, as I did for many others. The character being a man of color had nothing to do with it)
I think you can defend a right cause, even one that has personally harmed you, and still be an asshole and a bully about how you do it. And I think that is precisely what has happened here. It doesn't have anything to do with "mean ethnics" as it is the expression used in the callout to create the narrative that finding grays in it instantly makes you a racist. It has to do with mean people doing things that I consider toxic, to the point where I would rather not exist in the same space as them.
I wanted to be crystal clear about where I stand, so if people choose to cut ties with me, at least I know it was due to my own words and opinions, rather than someone else's. I will be stepping back for the aforementioned reasons, in hopes that people will learn how to solve issues like adults meanwhile.
If anyone wants my discord to chat or roleplay, my DMs are open. If anyone wants to offer further context or correct me, my DMs are open. If you come to me anonymously in my inbox, please don't do that — we're all adults here.
One trope Im a big fan of in media is when the loyalty outweighs a conflict of interest. I don’t agree with what you’re doing, but I will follow where you go no matter what. I will do anything for you even if it opposes my own morals
𝕿𝐡𝐲𝐤𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐞. an original character of Baldur's Gate 3
𝖎. 𝑨'𝒃𝒚𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒍. He'd found the name fitting. The ages had long gutted him from the inside, a Matron's expectations needn't the burden of those tender parts to achieve her grand designs. A knife. A dagger that needs neither heart nor soul, only an edge on which to cut the skin of her enemies.
He could think of no better word to describe the vacancy left behind, the internal void that had always kept its loyal husk company, the Abyss.
"Behead the wizard. His awkward presence and unwitty remarks are embarrassing, and he clearly lacks the endurance I seek in a mate. I'm sure he would start whining the moment I dig my nails into his scrawny back."
"Bed the druid. Unlike the other, he is quite the fine specimen. A curiosity, to say the least." A laugh, honest and appreciative. "I could ride him and make him bleed for hours. To exhaust such a man until he can no longer stand... now that would be a most satisfying conquest."
"And wed Maeve, of course. She would make a fine consort, and I would appreciate having a warrior like her by my side. The things we could do together, with her prowess and mine combined— A pity that she is just too soft for that. Although I congratulate her choice of a partner."
// i think i'll add to the doble spacing rule no color highlighting, especially not in combination with caps/bold text... Colored text now shows underlined on mobile and I'm like this exactly: 😵. Dialogues are fine but random words are like... idk but they scream in my head and the rest of the text just stops making sense.
"Behead the half-elf. That would shut his mouth for good." There is no hesitation. Whatever animosity she has towards the drow is far outweighed by the insufferable headache that is the mage.
"Wed the high elf. He needs only to decorate the room for a while, I would expect him to die from poison quite early."
"Bed the insolent boy. I highly doubt he has it in him to please me — or any woman for that matter —, but at the very least I would enjoy greatly tying him up, and test how much pain he is capable of enduring."
"It is always advisable to get used to it." Minthara nods as she drags a finger over the rim of her glass. The glass is too thick, and the wine not fragrant nor strong enough, but she prefers it to the garbage she had access to when leading the Absolute's forces. Bigger is always better for goblins, everything fragile is a toy and everything pointy is a weapon, meaning all they usually brought back was ale, regardless of taste. She sometimes could get her hands on something nicer, but that wasn't always the case.
To think that she put up with it for so long. All due to damn Ketheric Thorm... and Orin. The thought of her makes her stomach sink.
"It isn't much different on the surface, no matter how much your kin wants to claim otherwise. You pride yourselves in being more virtuous, more civilized— Oh, but there are just as many daggers waiting around every corner," she chuckles. "They merely tend to be more... metaphorical, rather than literal."
holds up a frog to show minthara. it's albino, but otherwise just a normal frog. tara, however, looks very proud of herself.
"What is this?"
A frog, yes, she knows as much. Similar varieties exist in the Underdark, although this one, like many other surface creatures, looks bland and positively harmless. Clawless, teethless as far as she can see. Overall, nothing of particular remark. Only the pigmentation pikes the drow's interest, and prompts her eyes to pay attention for longer than one second.
She still doesn't know why the creature is proudly shown to her. An offering? In Menzoberranzan, some small amphibians are considered delicacies, due to the dangerous and impractically time-consuming task that is hunting them.
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