Can very quickly devolve to simple bad-tempered OOC angst when "pushing out of the comfort zone" involves attempting to undermine the foundation of roleplaying in the first place.
Over our time in Eve I've had enemies occasionally attack SF on the grounds there is "no specific PF support" for the notion of anarchist freespacers in the background. Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't, but its ultimately irrelevant to the enjoyment of our players - we say there is a place for us in the background and anybody who disagrees is likely to end up in our gunsights.
I think the issue here (and in this thread/igs) is people trying to claim dominant reigns over what is and isn't "valid rp" - and if the argument is expressed pseudo IC it can become quite toxic.
I'm reminded of the interaction between Seraphim and Soter over the execution thread where one presented a narrative tableu they wanted to be held accountable for and one appeared to say "that didn't happen."
Its a dangerous game because lots of things "don't really happen" that are required for roleplay suspension of disbelief in this gameworld. On the whole I prefer to let people play "lets pretend" a bit and get on with it.
It is very easy to pick apart any kind of assumed in-gameworld "authority" expressed through a capsuleer voice from agent standings to FW ranks to whatever roleplay association somebody wants to claim. But I think thats pretty negative play on the whole because rather than rolling with the claim and reacting in-game you're doing the equivilent of calling "time out" and calling a ref/gm to rule. Only problem is Eve is a LARP not a tabletop and nobody is going to provide that ruling. So you either find a way to co-exist without attacking the foundation of each other's roleplay or simply choose to ignore things that offend you on an ooc level.
By the by, I didn't mind these political tendency alts to be honest. I felt they were doing something new and not your run of the mill insult alts so definitely a step up.
I'm gonna agree with Jade here because its really nicely word IMO.
Lallara, the problem with the "ur doing it rong" attacks are that, IC, you have no way to respond to them. And as Jade said, saying something didn't happen? well, a lot of things didn't happen.
My character doesn't really run a bar, there's no game mechanic or dev approval stamp for it.
My character doesn't really work for the angel cartel, there's no game mechanic or dev approval stamp for that.
My character doesn't really look the way I claim, because when I designed the character the first time around, it looked different.
My character doesn't really own slaves, because I have no reason to buy thousands of slaves off the market and there's no dev run process by which to declare yourself a slaver or a non-slaver.
RP is about playing pretend, and yes, occasionally, saying "this didn't happen" is a good way to acomplish this. But in the vast majority of cases, it all comes down to suspension of disbelief. People want to play in the sandbox, and when you say, "no this didn't happen, that isn't right" it kills RP, it kills it dead. Lets say back when I started my angel cartel corp, I had Myrhial, or Aria, (and not saying either of you would do this, but its for the sake of argument) kept adamantly saying "no, you're not cartel, no you're not cartel, your corp is a bunch of imposters, and you can't actually serve the cartel. How do I respond? ICly, my only response is "yeah, well you're wrong," but if a bit voice in the community says something, chances are, people will believe it.
If I don't agree with someone's RP, I'll talk to them privately, OOCly, or I won't interact with them. But attacking them in public, in character is a stupid thing to do, and it sets a dangerous precendent for denying anything, and it kills RP.
Basically, just because you don't agree with something, doesn't mean you have the right to kill the RP over it. And sure, people do, but its a really fucking stupid attitude, and coming from one of the largest most visible figures in the RP community,
its damaging.