The marriage button can be extremely offensive to female players, and a source of sexual harassment, which is felt OOC. This has not happened as much since there are way fewer players, but I have been offended and angered when, just in one day, at three different times, my character was asked to marry other characters, when there was not even an IG conversation. I was freaked out and offended by this behavior and it seemed completely unnecessary and could feel extremely awkward and unsafe to a new female player. It is just silly and unnecessary.
Before Volki's thread was locked, immediately after Talad posted, I felt no one was able to respond to the comments about "settings." Medieval, is more of a flavor in the realm, not an end all be all, it would be more challenging but the rules would be very clear, this world so loosely resembles the period by any historians standards would be shotty at best to compare it. In this world women have equal rights (we have not even passed the ERA in the USA yet) , and my favorite aspect...scantily clothed upon entry (Nolthrir, Dermorians) There was a zealous religious movement, feudalism, and anyone straying from the flock, tortured and burned for not obeying.
Although guidelines and rules and lore are in place IG, it is the community telling the stories that sets the pace, the community has been and always will be gay supportive, because it is a safe place to explore such themes, and face it the youth are going to do that in PS,sometimes it is easier then IRL. And PS is always going to reflect RL, no matter how hard you think outside of the box, we bring our own experiences to the game, or we explore experiences we cannot IRL, and we cannot truly stop our sub conscious minds from knowing certain truths, even when we think we are playing so outside the box. I find in my experiences of creating a positive vibe in the communities I have a leadership responsibility, is give the people what they want or at least give them the opportunity to explore the concepts they ask for. Awarding the community for their commitment and requests will only result in positive results. Otherwise you will have to get the guards out there and start burning gay folks at the stake and for Laanx's sake give those girls some clothes. Medieval garb would include many layers of restrictive garments.
I would also like to shine a light on Kran, they are not male or female, so they can marry either sex? Have a choice of sexual preference? Marry each other? A built in trans reality to the game and an opportunity at same sex relations, and any sex preference. If we all quite playing our normal characters, and only played kran, the issue would be resolved as it is already built into game mechanics (this I am not sure of because I have never played a kran, nor asked one to marry any of my chars) Anyhow, we should look to Kran to show us the way. And also look to the fact that we can marry cross species in game, which would result in death for a Dermorian elf, birthing a Ynnwn half breed...and I am pretty sure cross breeding for most species has an element of absolute birthing disasters. Are there laws in place to prevent that? We can actually marry cross breed so I imagine not. Encouraging breeding is not the best strong point argument in why same sex marriage is not an acceptable option.
Just my thoughts. I will always vote to remove the button. Marriage is a IRL concept wrought full with all sorts of patriarchal attitudes, even if it is not meant to be IG, ownership is implied by the forced name change on the female chars behalf.
my thoughts
