[Circle of Hands] More squick consideration: the Doll

[Jonas Ferry]

One person is very, very upset about the Doll demon. I am reviewing its description to see if it means what I wanted it to mean, but as yet the text isn't changed.

Ron, have you seen this interview: Married to a Doll: Why One Man Advocates Synthetic Love?

If the person is upset because the doll in Circle of Hands says something about the author's or the players' attitudes towards real sex partners, it should apply to that man's lifestyle as well. A lot of people think that Davecat's behavior says he thinks all women should behave like his dolls, which he doesn't say at all.

Also, instead of Summon Demon you could use Animate Dead or, even worse, Puppet, to find a sex partner. The latter would be creepy as hell, but since neither of these ideas are stated in the text I see no problem with the spells.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jonas, I hadn't read the documentary and didn't know anything about it - either this particular guy or the phenomenon. I find myself more perturbed about the Doll in terms of dissing real people with his proclivities (say what one will, he seems to be hurting no one), than I originally was about the creature in terms of rape issues. That said, the latter issue did seem to me to need reviewing, and  I was in fact planning on revising the Doll tomorrow and discussing it with the person who was most upset by it, but given this information, I may go right ahead and delete it.

[Ron Edwards]

The above posts were split from [Circle of Hands] Rape: context and consequences.

I've been talking about this with a couple of different people.

One perhaps irrelevant point is that I'd conceived of the Doll as a psychological booby-trap: that a person who (um) engaged with it but wanted to coerce would eventually become impatient and violent with it, thereby getting bitten and poisoned. Whereas someone who ... whatever it's called ... without harshness basically had an animate doll, and there it is. Considering the mind-set of the former person squicked me out enough that I decided to soft-pedal that aspect in the text, and on review, to the point of invisibility.

But that's not as important as the issue of agency. My concept of the Doll was not as a volitional being at all - lacking agency in the manner of a doll, not as a slave deprived of speech or as an animal. If I keep this demon in the text at all, that concept badly needs to be put front-and-center. I'm thinking maybe it gets summoned as a Splotch and gets shaped into a Doll, so it's really not more than an animate splat of demon-grease, simply given a shape.

And then it becomes a matter of the fellow Jonas has kindly brought to my attention, again, a bit of a revelation along the lines of Rule 36. Because at first glance, I look at the Doll and say, "Yeesh, am I picking on this guy?" which I don't particularly want to do. At present, I'm thinking that the boundary I mentioned first, that violence against the Doll gets sudden and frightening payback, may help me avoid that problem.

Anyway. All thoughts welcome.

[Callan S.]

If it's not volitional/has no agency, how does it know when to bite someone, let alone do so?

If it's not a being, how can anyone do violence to it? If I kick a wardrobe, am I doing violence to it? In the sense of 'violence' you meant before?

Is it pupeteered by some etherial ghost who determines if violence is done? But if it's just a puppet, is that violence? But if the doll is the ghosts only body, is it fine to be violent to it?

It almost seems a creature thing designed to raise questions about volition and status as an entity/being Vs being merely material and 'disposable'? Pertinent questions I would think in this age of invading cognitive science and the mind being increasingly treated as mechanism.

Okay, there's my dumb questions as a random internet guy.

[Ron Edwards]

My thinking about all those things goes straight to the concept of "demon," a matter of some interest to me. My short answer is that the Doll bites because that's what it does - it's a demon, and these are its properties. It could have the cognitive function of a Venus flytrap in doing so, for all I know.

[Rafu]

Uhm...

We have this human-shaped... thing, and then we have a text informing us that such a thing possesses no humanity, in a matter-of-fact way? This simple statement sounds quite disturbing to me.

My point being: claiming it a non-issue by saying "it's a demon" can't successfully end the conversation about it, because that's not a potentially satisfactory conversation outcome, it's just an attempt to stop it. If to at least some readers this... thing sounds like it opens up an issue, the issue's there, period. Now, you can either

• embrace the issue as an author, which in the role-playing case probably means leaving it open to exploration;

or

• write it out of the book completely, as it points to issues you don't want to be explored.

(Incidentally, I'm not implying that one choice is inherently "better" than the other, here.)

Any other "fixes" I can't think of simply won't stop it from being an unaknowledged issue.

[Ron Edwards]

I disagree. I think there are some possible avenues that don't simply shut down the issue, but don't make the thing into an automatic coerced helpless victim either. The question is to try to find them, and the past couple of posts are at least showing me the barriers I need to overcome.

[Rafu]

make the thing into an automatic coerced helpless victim

Not what I'm saying.

I think there are some possible avenues that don't simply shut down the issue, but don't make the thing into an automatic coerced helpless victim either. The question is to try to find them,

I fully agree. :)

[Callan S.]

My thinking about all those things goes straight to the concept of "demon," a matter of some interest to me. My short answer is that the Doll bites because that's what it does - it's a demon, and these are its properties. It could have the cognitive function of a Venus flytrap in doing so, for all I know.

Just me, but it seems a big question mark which the game text aught to point out as a big question mark and one which is a feature of the game. Also (I'd think, anyway) advising readers it is to be worked out in play (if at all) how they work, which we don't know how it works once play begins but it's there all the same. The demon elephant in the room. Maybe you're already doing something like that - then cool! Possibly use the venus flytrap example in the text as an example of how far it could go (to me it helped illustrate the possible dimensions of resolving the question) in group resolution (if any) but not how it necessarily is.

I think it'd be really interesting for different groups, after playing awhile, to compare their takes on dolls and how each group took them to work.

Ah, actually - it's the GM's call on when it bites, if at all? Does that make him/does the text assign him as a definitive voice on why it bit? And thus too much the sole author of how dolls work (in that game)? Or does this game assign such authorship just to the GM?

[Joshua Bearden]

I feel like you might be doing a tough cost-benefit analysis a la James Raggi.  You know in your heart, and your loyalists (I consider myself one) trust, that you're inserting this interesting but difficult content for high-minded and artistically legitimate reasons.  Some people would never play your game and if it matters little if they'd be offended.  There are other people out there who, but for this one particular element, would be interested in your game. These are people whom if they met you face to face might find they have a lot of common ground.  However, is it realistic that you will be able to select the perfect 11 or 12 words in the short paragraph about dolls in the bestiary to win them over? Maybe if you have infinite time. Are you self-censoring and pandering to take it out?  Or are you insensitively and chauvinistic for leaving it in?  Neither - but what ever choice you make, there will be some out on the fringe of the discussion who choose to believe one or the other. Not really helpful.

I for one, have changed my position throughout this discussion.  In the context of the earlier draft, in the light of concern about the portrayal of rape, I found the doll extremely problematic.  As much as it appealed to me on a fetishistic level, I felt uncomfortable at the prospect of promoting this game to certain people I otherwise looked forward to playing with.  (This is the same group of people who I don't quite (yet) dare to invite to play some of Raggi's content with). However, since the gender and rape text has  changed, the doll feels more isolated, more whimsical.  It now feels more like something out of an Oglaf cartoon.  (Not sure if that will be a positive or negative from your POV).  But in any event, I'm quite comfortable with them in the text just as they are.