This is my week to write about Gor, the big picture.  I am the only person ever banned from AlterRealm, an accomplishment of which I am fairly proud.  You see, I have read all the books several times, starting when I was a teenager.  I was in the Silk & Steel and other early Gor sites.  Hell, I even lived it RT for almost a year.  So I really do not belong on ARealm?

 

Why am I banned?  Well, there is a specific reason, right out of Captive.  Speaking of the Panther Leader Verna, it is said “There would be glory in the capture of such a woman, and, surely, ignominy in her escaping.”  That was my crime.  I was captured and brought glory to an ARealm Home, and I escaped and brought ignominy.  Except the God, I mean Room Controller, wasn't man enough to accept ignominy, so he ruled me dead.  Since I clearly escaped into the Vosk, from Lara which is on the Vosk, he ruled that I was eaten by NPC giant river turtles and/or sharks.  I tried to get this overruled by an actual Gorean.  My bad?

 

I am also banned from the ARealm Discussion Board.  My discussion topics and opinions generated too much antipathy, too many hot discussions that had people pounding their keyboards in angry replies.  This kind of real passion obviously does not belong on Gor.  We are all here for what ARealm Admin calls "stress-free roleplay."  Right?

 

I think this is also about a few other things.

1.  ARAdmin being tired of people complaining about Panthers in the XRoads, unless said Panthers are only there to get collared, in which case they are ok.

2.  ARMods not even knowing their own rules, and blaming me for pointing it out to them.

3.  Certain people becoming obsessed with either beating me or shutting me up.  Particularly with stifling my voice on the boards, first by shouting me down, then by insults and slander, and finally blocking/removing my posts.

4.  Who is a paying member and who is not.

5.  Panthers not wanting a competing vision of Panthers to contend with the old (and inaccurate) one.

6.  Cari and others not wanting to allow me to compete in the spar League.

 

So I was unable to reply to ARAdmin's seemingly heartfelt post on the Board, partially quoted below:

Now its (the ARBoard) nothing more than landfill. Its full of nothing more than trash, hate posts, people slamming others, talking about how to get rid of rooms. What has happened to the spirit of role play? Are we all that much of a hateful society today?....I'm telling you folks here and now, you are forcing me to re-evaluate my position on the message boards and the entire site. The online role playing community has deteriorated in to a bunch of whining, complaining, and discontent. That is not what this site was created for....Its up to you folks. Not me. YOU are the ones that make a site great ... and on the other side of the coin, YOU are also the ones that contribute to the failure of a site.....But all things considered it would truly be a shame to see Alter Realms suffer because of a few individuals kicking sand in each others faces."

What a bunch of malarkey!  I can point to the exact minute that the ARBoard turned into Landfill.  I wrote a post which argued the rules and how they impacted on a situation in which I was only marginally involved.  It was a calm and well reasoned post, which I worked on all night.  It was brief, to the point, and logically unassailable.  For which I was thoroughly trashed.  Not my arguments, but me personally.  From that point onwards, what reasonable person could have the stupidity to argue an unpopular position, or defend an unpopular person, knowing that they were begging for the same kind of mistreatment?

ARAdmin would have us believe that this is our fault not his.  Except that in his alter-ego as Rogha, he is one of the worst offenders.  By selective enforcement of the rules, he created a Witch Hunt Culture.  It was ok for certain people to slander certain other people.  I was fair game in his view, outside of the rules, the nigger of Gor.  And I deserved this?

Since then, other people have found themselves in this role.  I am glad it happened to Thor, Tara and Cari too, because they were Witch Hunters themselves, and deserved to get hoist on their own petards.  But none of it would have happened if ARAdmin had upheld the rules he himself wrote.  Could any of it have happened if Admin himself had not been one of the "few individuals kicking sand in each others faces" one of the most "hateful" of anybody?

Moreover, he created a bunch of Elite friends, with special powers to ignore the rules, and then call Mods to boot anybody else who broke a rule.  An Elite with the power and confidence to take over roleplay with comments like, "I will have you banned from ARealm."  Maybe nobody else actually got banned, but these Elite were very visible and vocal.

He also created a class culture of pay-to-play.  He has been losing money on ARealm for 4 years, so who can blame him?  If you are running a business, you gotta give the people what they want.  Anybody can be cannon fodder on AR for free.  But if you want a fair shake, you have to be a paying member.  Why struggle to figure out the complexities of a dispute between a member and a non-member and possibly make a fair ruling that alienates a paying member?  Doesn't it make more sense to just let the paying members have their way? 

If the majority of the potential customers are "hateful, whining, complaining discontents," then a smart businessman creates an environment friendly to hateful, whining, complaining discontents.  And that is what ARealm is, a capitalist, market driven business.  Just like the Gor of the books, right?

More than anything else, ARealm has become a Culture of Negation. Your roleplay is invalid, your posts are ignorant, your character is not Gorean, you can't kill in this room, you can't travel here or there, you can't use these weapons, you can't argue with these people, ad nauseum.  As Cari said in a recent post, "If it is not in a book, it is not Gor."  However, she fails to acknowledge the coin flipside of this.  "If it is in the books, it is Gor.  The statement that "Panthers can go in disguise as FW in Robes of Concealment anywhere a FW can go" can be negated because there is no example of that happening in a book.  But the statement that "Panthers are slaves in their bellies" which is supported by the books can also be negated for other reasons.

It is so much easier to negate than to build.  I used to be in an Improv Theatre Group.  Gor is essentially improvisational fantasy roleplay.  The first rule of Improv is "The answer is always yes."  As soon as you say no, the skit dies.  Why are so many people running around ARealm, and the rest of Gor saying "No, NO, NO!" to everybody else.

In closing, I would like to comment on another statement from the AR Board.  crystal said something to the effect of "Vynne and the others at Stones of Turmus are the most advanced roleplayers and what they do in that room is awesome."  No they are not and no it is not.  They are solipsists (people who think the universe revolves around them).  Nobody's roleplay is valid to these people but their own.  They sit down OOC and figure out what to roleplay, and then invalidate or intimidate anybody who crosses them, not ashamed to go way OOC and use old friends who are different characters to help them.  If they are the best of ARealm, then I REALLY don't belong on ARealm.  And I am damn proud of it.