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Recent Concerns Regarding Bamathis
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Despite how much we all love our moral greyness, the simple fact is that Aetolia doesn't exist in a vacuum. Instead, it is a game played by players who are exposed to cultural tropes all the time, whether that is through other media, or simply through our every day lives. After all, the whole reason we have this thread is because Tiur felt the need to clarify why the motifs that many people saw (and I am saying this not even being one of them!) in Bamathis were not intended to be interpreted that way. As a result, moral greyness is ultimately sidelined because the dominant traits that make up the two sides very much align with the dualities of "good" and "evil" that are so common elsewhere.
It is absolutely no coincidence that in Spirit we have many motifs that are usually assigned to "good" characters while we see Shadow possessing many motifs that would be used for "bad" characters. Light vs shadow, chivalry vs For example, light and darkness are dualities. Many of these things are likely holdovers from a bygone era when these lines were even more distinct. Some may be less pronounced than others, but they are still all around in the game.
Sure, tropes may be subverted and players are free to interpret what these things actually mean to them and how their characters should act, but that the reason they are tropes in the first place is because they are supposed to invoke a certain idea. They are metaphors, and it is very understandable for players to see them representing what they are most often used to represent.
I am not suggesting that players can't want to move away from this duality and play characters who are much more morally grey, but my point here is that there is a very good reason why many players will see it this way. So going back to the original statement, I don't think it's unusual at all for people to think there is a big difference between murdering undead and murdering living people.
"They are different so it's okay to commit genocide against them."
Pretty sure that's the argument used for every genocide.
But in all reality, I think you should start up a new thread to really discuss these two viewpoints.
As for Bamathis, I still don't know enough about him to interpret his symbolism in a negative light but if anything comes up I'll be sure to bring it up.
Spirit side by lore still engages in (sub)race based genocide. Literally want to remove undead and vampires from existence.
First off, Bamathis' very nature, and the policies surrounding him, mean he's always going to be a magnet for player attention. This is entirely fine by me - making deities that are interesting and will draw in players is the point of having such deities around. Bamathis is central to the Albedi/Sapience conflict that no other God has been, and your very own policies are to make sure he has a volunteer filling the role at any given time. Neat. Definitely a good thing for people who want a constant presence for their characters to be involved in, and a positive matter to be sure.
This is also attention you're not willing to hand to our side of the game. There is no spirit equivalent of Bamathis, there is no counterpart we can join for the same experience, we don't even have a lineup of Gods to follow regularly that equals what shadow gets; Czcibor already pointed out how we get one and a half God, both of them more aligned with Duiran to boot. Things are, to say the very least, lopsided.
And then you have Bamathis courting people on this side of the game. An order that already has a good size, proceeding onward to go ahead and snag people up elsewhere. Aetolia is a polarised game, and it has been for over a decade, but Bamathis doesn't care, and goes after Spirit-tethered leaders to get even more followers. Leaders who are around in large part to direct efforts to fight the other side if and where they can. Leaders who have been told, time and time again, even by this very administration, that the game has two sides, that Enorian and Duiran are meant to oppose shadow, that blurring the lines is a poor idea.
But not anymore! You have the God with the single most administrative oversight and attention showing up and trying to get his worship made legal. You have Gods who have been extremely stringent about keeping Dendara and the Grand Flame pure suddenly going 'ok whatever' when presented with the question of Bamathis' worship. This both goes against established IC characterisation as well as prior OOC direction, and now you have everything pointing squarely in the other direction, all without any given sign or post or header from the administration that things might be different this time.
And, you know what? That's just one org. Duiran isn't my city, they get to decide their own course of action, and I don't have so up close and personal of a perspective on them. The entire situation has caused an entire damn mess for Enorian, and it's one the administration very well ought to be aware of. There is no interpretation of the lore we've had for the past fifteen years, not in any way, that lets us join forces with the opposite tether in such a way and come out unscathed. We've had Gods die that way more than once, we've gotten screeched at far more than that, every single time it's come up the right answer has been not to.
Enorian, in the meantime, has been entirely sidelined. There is no interpretation where we can join forces with Bamathis beyond the superficial; it is, as noted above, how our gods tend to die and our city tends to get blown up. We were not notified by admins about anything new going on, we have not gotten a new direction, we have to work with what we've got. The sole reason Enorian isn't all on its own is because deciding that the tether's lifespan has ended is a terrible move from any meta perspective.
What gives? Why is this a thing? A God with all of Severn's order in it has had people play the role since day one. Since then they have ACTIVELY worked at weakening spirit tether's coherence by working at making his worship legalised. There have been no statemetns, none, zero, made about the future of polarisation or what the plans for the future are. There have been no alternatives, none, zero, added for us to flock to instead. We don't even have regular gods to worship! If I had to describe what's happened to Enorian in a single term, I'd say it is sidelined: a new deity is released, and people predictably flock to it. It is a deity that is emphatically not one of ours, and we do not get an alternative instead. It could've been made clear that this is shadow's new toy, there could've been an update to our lore that lets us worship the actual God, there could've been a deity with actual effort put into such neutrality, there could've been a nice announce or forum post going 'yeah we're tired of polarisation', there could've been an outlet for people who wanted interaction without cozying up to the people we've been meant to fight since forever. None of these have come to pass, and anyone who wants to stick to the direction we've been given can gather dust while people who ignore it completely get to have their cake and eat it too.
I'm curious to hear from our administration here; genuinely, genuinely curious. What place do you think Enorian has in 2020 Aetolia? What should we be doing? What ought to set us apart from the other cities? What should our purpose look like? I'm not sure about any of this anymore, because the firm line on tethers we were told to take just two years ago are getting all blurred up and the administration has been entirely silent on the matter for a while now.
So for many Spirit-side organizations indifference and or cohabitation with 'not quite alive or dead things' is largely not an option. If anything, the crusade against Undeath is a mass-destruction of reanimated radioactive, dangerous things whereas Bamathis's slaughtering is a genocide of actual living people.
I'm chiming in here about the above question only to offer some enlightenment on how the process of Gods work.
After a volunteer has gone through the interview process, and then been approved as a Celani, we go into training, if you will. From there, we have tasks and duties to perform before we are even allowed to touch a God Role.
When it comes to getting a role, however, we are granted the choice of only those on the opposing tether to our mortal. This is one of the measures we take partially to try and ensure there is no favouritism during your first steps in learning a shell. It helps us stretch outside our comfort zones and interact with the audience at large.
Please note that I wrote, "We are granted the choice." As volunteers, we are not forced, or asked, to play any role. We actually ask to play a specific, and available, role and either get accepted, or denied with a reason. With that in mind, Bamathis is no exception. If there is no volunteer interested in playing that role, then he will only be logged in if his presence is required for a major plot arc.
I hope this clarifies some of the misconception about the God process! It's as much as I can share.
Mandatory: Opposite tether to your mortal.
Choice: The god you play on that opposite tether if they are available and not currently filled.
I think @Karhast does have some good points. Enorian and Duiran have, historically, been shouted up and down by the administration both in and out of character over what their roles are supposed to be and about what behaviors and lines of roleplay will and will not be tolerated, with only the very largest existential threats being good enough reason to set aside those warnings and work with what are considered massive threats by the Spirit pantheon, with major Consequences(tm) coming for stepping out of line. And not just 'here's a long disfavor'. We're talking up to and including disabling skillsets entirely in terms of mechanical consequences, with various roleplay or organizational consequences thrown in. The closest thing that has ever happened to a Shadow side org is what happened to the Indorani, and that was because they went directly against a directive given to them by Severn and aligned themselves against Sapience's pantheon.
I also think that the argument that "this is the same as what Enorian does" is disingenuous. In-lore vampires and the undead pose a direct existential threat to Dendara, the Cycle, and innocent people. Neither can exist without subsisting on the flesh of others, and both have been shown to keep sentients as slaves and cattle, as I'm sure most are well aware. There's a difference between crusading against groups shown to be actively oppressive, dangerous, and malicious verses crusading against groups that have not been shown to be particularly malicious at all.
Lastly, I hope that there isn't any real anger against the people in the pools. I think we all know how hard it is to do what you do and that it is often a thankless job. We all appreciate the work that goes into this game from the paid staff and volunteers. I do think, though, that maybe there needs to be more oversight at times, or that maybe some policies, like the mandatory 'only take a role for the opposite side' rule may need to change, especially when it is no secret that there is a history of a single volunteer playing multiple roles.
“We don’t advocate genocide against vampires and the undead because they aren’t alive, we just advocate their eradication”
I guess I can accept this argument but it’s worth pointing out that this is just saying the complete eradication of the vampires/undead is necessary to save the world.
I don’t get why Bamathis suddenly is offensive. Really it’s just different targets.
EDIT: Why are players so concerned with justifying that their character’s targets for violence are the “right” targets?
On our plane of existence, Dendara/the Cycle is viewed as a parasite on the Earth. Living, organic beings exists because of their spark and the Cycle. For Teradrim, they are false beings (not alive) -because- of their spark and the Cycle. It is the same reasoning that people who have their spark and are a part of the cycle apply to undead. They -don't- have it, so therefore are not alive.
For me the question is not are they breathing/do they have spark. It is do they have consciousness. I would argue that we as players are our character's consciousness, so yes, both undead and living have consciousness and should be considered 'alive'.
Another way to look at it would be carbon-based beings vs silicon-based beings (if you like sci fi I guess).
Badgering one another back and forth about why your side is right is just shoddy OOC/IC separation.
I should clarify that I don't particular care about this OOC Bamathis uproar. I respect the feelings of the people that got upset by the imagery, whether it hit too close to home or not and while I personally don't agree with them, I do like that they got to exercise their right to complain to the admin and actually get a public admin response and clarification.
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Separate topic: I think the in-game ambiguity and contradictory viewpoints on either side is an intentional design to perpetuate the conflict. Which is a good thing! If the themes still bother people OOCly, you should try to remember that you have the option of not participating. Even if you're in leadership, you can always delegate the content to aides or "special task force Ministers" to deal with content not to your liking.
I doubt that the game designers/plot masters aim to offend or draw such blatant parallels from real life to a game world, while at the same time strictly banning such things as turtlenecks for breaking immersion.
Just a thought, but perhaps take a small step back from that?
I don't feel as strongly about Bamathis's imagery as some (beyond finding it tacky), but for these people, the themes they've objected to reflect real-life issues. They may have relatives alive today who had to deal with them. Arguments like this one are dangerously reductive and completely miss the point.
full disclosure: while i started and am once again on the Spirit tether, i've played on the Shadow tether the bulk of my time in Aetolia. i try not to buy my own bullshit regardless, but there you have it.
This is a game full of violence, sadism, law-breaking and more. While being vivisected in real life has a slim chance of actually happening, the other things exist all around us, but we accept them in the game because they are part of the game. It's a game. Sure, we get invested in our characters, but making these connections when there are other explanations available feels... strange to me. Why not take the explanation and attribute it all to this being a game?
So, yeah, just want to point out that rl is unicorns scary, but we can't keep reading things into a game if that thing isn't there or if it has been explained. We are encouraged from the first few minutes in the game intro to kill a guard to escape slavery. Slavery exists. Murder exists. We don't seem to worried about those first few actions our characters make or the careers they choose, whether it is an illuminai or a terradrim.
There are corrupted characters all over, whether you want to admit it or not. People do nasty things that CAN and DO happen irl. Vivisection was just an example, but I can point out entire rp archs that some of you find perfectly alright that are just as messed up.
From all the knowledge that I currently have available to me, in-game, the responses to Bamathis's quest/mission/what-have-you have been more or less forcefully implied that if you aren't for it, you're against it, kinda thing. Not one org, or one group... the entire continent of Sapience, which is fairly sweeping.
If I don't like exterminating undead, I don't have to. If I'm undead and don't want to eat the living, I'm sure there's a way around that too. I don't have to be a Templar. I could literally spend all day in Esterport roleplaying a rowdy sailor as an orgless layabout if I wanted to.
This could just be the misfortune of what/who I encountered on my character, but the whole "get in or get snuffed out" mentality of supporting Bamathis left a bad taste in my mouth. You combine the questionable aesthetics with a "For Sapience!" vibe, morally objectionable tactics, and what in all reality is a form of forced participation (or at the very least, forced acceptance), and it's not going to be received well by everyone. It's one thing to lean into the nuance and greyness of the situation, or to debate and discuss complex and difficult dilemmas, but that wasn't my experience or perception.
Key words: my experience or perception. Whatever the intent was, please be mindful that it's not going to land the same for everyone. That doesn't mean you're a bad person, it just means everyone has different experiences and no one will interpret something the exact same way. No matter whether or not YOU interpreted it that way, it's a very valid interpretation for people who are NOT YOU.
more (litterally any element) = hella bad for anything and everything regardless of whether you're involved or not.
ftfy