sufficient velocity and dehumanization

If there's anything six thousand and (almost) fifty pages of writing and commentary in this thread proves it's that this is a group that likes to communicate, so I would like to take this time to explain why we have an issue and what we're doing about it.Our concern arises from the Chapter 271 update and the discussion that resulted from it. This update, among other things, had a proposal involving, effectively, a eugenic breeding program and the sale of the resulting children for future considerations.Sufficient Velocity is not a neutral platform on issues like human trafficking, racism, sexism, and other evils. We have rules prohibiting their support and, in particular, we have a rule prohibiting something that usually rides alongside it: Dehumanization. That rule is Rule 2, "Don't be Hateful" . We expect andthat our users treat any person with the basic respect of recognizing them as a person. Some people have issues with that even with regard to persons who exist in reality; they usually wind up promptly banned.But Rule 2, and this often comes as a surprise to people, also covers fictional characters. The reasons for this run back to Sufficient Velocity's founding; originally, to prevent things like revenge fantasies from taking hold. Even directed against fictional persons, the language used in them was often the same hateful language that has been against many real people, including many of our users, and the central idea -- that the person you wish to suffer isn't really a person or worth anything -- is the same. The rules, in various versions, have been drafted to keep that language and that mindset off Sufficient Velocity.Rule 2s intersection with narrative fiction, such as User Fiction or Quests, becomes more complex. We do not wish to eliminate the ability to write about evil things and it is possible -- common, even -- for a story to include elements that an author does not approve of, either neutrally, as backdrop, or as something which is set up as an antagonist or that the story is used to. Thinkingis an endorsement of Naziism would be very peculiar, for example. Or the classic satirical piece,, also comes to mind.So when we have to look at a Rule 2 issue in a story we ask ourselves what the intent behind it was; if the material which Rule 2 would cover is being cast in an approving light. This is purely a decision of the author's. They are God, a fourth-dimensional entity who can alter any event and any rule at any time, including before they thought of it. No word appears on a page without an author's decision to put it there, no matter if it's narration or spoken by a character. No frame appears in a movie without a director's decision to include it. They are the ones responsible.In this case, we have spoken with @eaglejarl @OliWhail , and @Velorien , and reviewed the updates and thread discussion. Our conclusion is that the child-sale proposal was, in fact, specifically intended to horrify and offer a moral challenge to the players, and was given to the mouth of a mentally unstable character in order to reinforce that aspect.But a quest involves more than just its authors...