URPG Stories Chat and Feedback

I think that's something else; I don't recall that ever being the explanation. Even if it was, the fact remains that they inhabit an island.

 

I don't know if it was ever confirmed or not, but it was a theory that Hoopa transported things to Mirage Islands and other mirageyish places through its rings or some shit like that. Some Bill and Ted Time/Space travel shit, ya know?

 

Winter, Felly, I, and some others were discussing the true nature of SWC/WWC in the AIM chat and we have discovered one thing: practically every winning story has a character death as somewhat of a focal point to the story. In fact, practically every SWC/WWC story has something dying as a focal point of the story. The natural conclusion to this is that we should write happy stories for once guys plz the key to winning is writing about your terminal deadly of choice, but also:

Here's a quick drinking game keepin' it child-friendly consumption of juice game for our SWC reading this summer! ^^:
1. Take a shot every time someone dies
2. Take another one if it's the main character
3. Take a third if the main character dies to save the world/protect a friend/some sort of selfless sacrifice
4. Seriously that's all I can probably handle think of the children

I'm vaguely under the impression that doing this with WWC 2015 will actually result in liver failure.

 

this, THIS <3 WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MAH LIFE.

also I don't drink juice/"water" so naturally I need somebody to take double the amount I prolly would have drank!... I nominate @Felly;!

 

Update, I'm counting through WWC 2015 right now and we're at 8 deaths already. It's the third story.

also all 8 deaths are from winter you go girl lol

 

I value my liver, so I'll pass.

I could take shots of non-alcoholic drinks though. I just want to keep my liver, I'm sorry. Just because fictional characters die doesn't mean my liver has to!!!

 

Have fun reading my SWC story then, . Hopefully I'll finish it by midnight tomorrow (#toobusytodofunstuff #makingbank ). Also hi guys.

 

the reminder thread is closed so I will post here. I don't even write but dat censorship is just pretty dumb imo. why censor everyone so a minority doesn't feel offended...

 

While I may not have gone so far as an official ban (free expression, yada yada), I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment of Smiles' decision.

My problem with curse words isn't their meaning (i.e. I'm not offended by them), but rather the fact that they don't mean anything.

I see swears in literature as more of a crutch than anything; people try to use them to create powerful emotions, but they're meaningless intensifiers most of the time. They have the same literary value as words like "really" and "very." Anything that can be done with a swear can be done ten times better with other, more fitting word choices. I'll reiterate that if I were in Smiles' position I probably wouldn't have banned them outright, but I would encourage writers to find other solutions to the problems they're trying to solve with profanity.

 

Swearing is only banned for competitions, right? Even then, it shouldn't be that big of a problem. There are very few occasions where a story actually benefits from profanity.

 

Disclaimer: I'm probably one of the larger offenders of people who use swear words/massively mature themes in their stories, and I'm okay with the current set-up of the ban on cursing in competition stories. Here's why:

For competitions, we encourage user voting, a fair portion of our users are barely old enough to use PG-13 stuff and a larger portion can't use R stuff, and the rest seems self-explanatory. Voting is optional, but we shouldn't make it so that children have to read graphic stuff in order to participate in Stories's only competitions of the year.

Yeah, free speech in writing and I'm all for that, but yeah, this is a children's forum. There's a balance to uphold, and keep in mind that this is only for stories that everyone in the section has to read. For non-competition works, you can do whatever you want, so long as you put sufficient labels (tagging questionable content is used in practically every non-URPG writing forum I've been on, so I see no problem with enforcing that here).

tl;dr: it's only for the stories we were making everyone read. You can do whatever you want in anything else.

 

Hi! Just want to chime in and add that this is not the first time concerns over vulgarity have appeared here. A graphic content warning was actually being built a little while ago. It was brought to my attention that a few of the stories later on in this SWC have some coarse language, so it was time to now finally implement this. The authors have been contacted, and it took one person approximately 5 seconds to edit out the swear words. No one is in trouble or anything silly like that. I understand why people are upset. But I also have to admit that this was going to happen eventually, and it makes sense to get all the concerns out over these updates now.

This is only as big of a deal as you make it. For competition stories (SWC, WWC, newbie, collab, anything we'd vote on as a community), don't swear and don't make the story the living embodiment of the Gallery of Suicide. That's really all.

Put yourself in my shoes and try to find the balance of what words you'd censor. I giggled a lot. A lot! But at the end of the day, it was either no swear words or all of them, so it had to be the latter.

And if you think that you can't write your WWC story without putting cusswords in it, that it absolutely has to have them... then I don't know, just think about that. Always remember that the URPG is a welcoming community open to all ages and perspectives, and that no one should feel discouraged from voting because they don't like the language in a story.

I can go on for ages about this. But in short, if one person is offended, there's bound to be 3 other people behind him who are offended too but just don't say anything. And then we've lost 4 players, and that minority is a lot bigger than we thought. Also I'm all for caring about the considerations of everyone.

 

I can understand not having to many, like a limit of 1 per 10k characters or something, but all seems excessive. Using a real world example. We all know Gone With the Wind, at least the movie, right? What is the main quote from the movie? "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Now that is the excellent use of profanity. So stuff like that I don't see why we are limiting it. In some circumstances, adding a swear word really adds to the story. It's just when it gets to "Wolf of Wall Street" levels that it gets way too out of bounds. PG-13 allows one non sexually explicit f-bomb per movie, so you saying keep everything PG-13 fails(mkay this part was Ely but point still stands). So really, as long as it isn't overboard I see no issue with one or two swear words if used well. Also you get into the shady waters about what is and what isn't a swear word. I know people who would consider saying "holy ____" to count. Yet I highly doubt we would. Not to mention "oh my god" that's always a fun one to argue. This rule could use some work one way or the other.

Also I'd be interested to know what stories we had edit out stuff and have them post the non edited as well, if not during then after the competition.

holy crap how far I've come defending swearing in stories

 

Pretty sure the original thread was locked because this wasn't up for discussion of how to "balance" swear words. Just a guess.

Swear words are gone from stories that involve voting. Like, twice a year most the times you can't write a story that doesn't swear. Is that really so much of a problem?

 

@Soulmaster:

I have the feeling that the Gone With the Wind quote would not be a violation of the new rule, though that's certainly up to Smiles' discretion. On one hand, I think you bring up a good point: the rule will seem nebulous without going to extremes like creating an "ALL THE WORDS WE DON'T LIKE" thread and listing them. On the other hand, I think that's okay; I like to think that most URPGers have the common sense to differentiate between what does and does not violate the rule. We always have the open option to evaluate stories on a case-by-case basis and having the rule in place serves as a reasonable warning to writers that if they push the envelope, someone might have to scrutinize their work more closely.

 

Will there be a bit of leniency with borderline-swearwords like 'damn' or 'shit'? I have already received a warning for using the word 'retarded', I can see why that word can be insulting to people but at the time I wasn't aware of it being an actual swear word in English (as it isn't really considered as such in Dutch). I think a list of forbidden words would be helpful, most of the time there won't be many problems but as what happened with me, there is always a possibility for words slipping through without the user knowing it may not be used.

Maybe by editing them into the graphic warining thread.

 

This. It's only a couple of stories you write that go into voting competitions that must be able to be read by everyone. Everything else is fine as long as you put warnings in your story at the beginning. They're really not asking much.

 

@Soulmaster;

Soooo you want the rules to be:

• Gone with the Wind cursing is ok, but not Wolf of Wall Street, and anything in-between might be ok, but might not be ok, depends on how many times they use the F-word... oh and sorry people who have seen neither movie, you kinda just gotta know
• 1 word every 10k is ok - get those counters out, graders! You got more work to do!
• post + repost the story, double copies in the Story section won't look bad at all, we just gotta craving to read those extra, mhhm, words

I apologize if I'm being crude. But my overall point is that the above are too many rules to remember, and the rule is being put into place for a reason. That reason is for making everyone comfortable and making sure our community looks good because we do care about the considerations of the people reading.

@herb;

I understand that there are language discrepancies and it's understandable if you used a word that was offensive accidentally. Damn and shit will be censored for competition stories, yes. I will not be making a forbidden word list of slurs, pejoratives, and other words because I'm afraid that will be inadvertently offensive. If you write your WWC story and you're not sure if a word is an English swear, a quick ask here or in Google search will suffice. And if you accidentally use a word that is offensive but didn't know it, don't worry; you won't be in trouble or anything, just reminded when someone sees it. We all sometimes use words that are bad that we didn't know were bad, and then we learn, and that's ok. ^^

We have to remember that the bigger picture of this rule is that we're trying to make everyone as comfortable as they can be. Ask yourself: "Will this word make someone uncomfortable?" and go forth from there when in doubt.

ALSO I like that we're talking about this and getting the concerns out. But the worst part for me is that the majority of people who have expressed concerns here haven't even voted in this round of SWC D< And the two stories in this round are both examples of beautiful stories that have no swearing. And they're just beautiful stories. READ THEM AND VOTE MMMMKAY. /shameless plug

Spoiler

bye felicias

 

*goes to check deadline*

Oh good, I've got time.

 

I actually do have a question about this.

PXR already censors profane words. My SWC story is living proof of that. I used the word "fuck," but PXR already censors that. Had I posted that story on BMGf or PWN, the word wouldn't have been censored. PXR does censor most things already as it is.

This does apply to my SWC as I have the words "hell" and "fuck" in it, but "fuck" is already censored because of PXR. Hell didn't get censored, but fuck did. How does that work out if the forum's already censoring it as it is? Also kinda wondering if I need to edit my story as a result of this. We talked last night about something else and I know you mentioned the rule to me, but I don't think you told me I had to edit my story. Not sure if you just haven't read it yet or if it's because you didn't realize I had used a profane word in my story because PXR already censored it, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. xD

I have no issues with the rule and I can understand why it's being put into place. I don't particularly like it, but like others have said, it's only in voting based competitions, not all competitions, so it's not a huge issue. I can still drop all the f-bombs and swears I want or write about suicide or whatever in a non-competition story.