Don't get me wrong Chenier, I personally find nothing wrong with this RP and I've probably written worse with either Aeneas or Goriad II, but it does not hurt to be empathetic to those who do take offense, not that you haven't been. I'm not saying we should change things because of it, but still.
And if they can be ignored and otherwise not read, I believe that that is sufficient to counter a RP you don't quite like.
Some people can have legitimate reasons to be more sensible to certain things, and this is understandable. But the growing trend towards excessive sanitization of anything that could ever be construed by anyone as perhaps offensive is nothing short of cancerous. There's a world between intentionally antagonizing people and not saying anything at all out of fear someone might disapprove. And in the end, people can be conditioned to have traumatic responses to just about anything, should we stop talking about dogs because one of our messages might be read by someone who've been at Abu Ghraib? That's just to give one example of how an object nearly-universally considered as benign could still trigger a wholly legitimate traumatic response in some. Furthermore, from what I've read, it is actually harmful to overly protect post-trauma victims from "triggering" material, the healthy thing for these people is not avoidance, but coping, moving on.
The most acceptable compromise I could think of is giving players an option to tick a box "this message may contain delicate subject matter", and then offering every player to tick a box on their player page "hide all messages flagged as containing potentially delicate matter". Perhaps players would also be able to flag other messages as such. But: no sanctions! The premise for such a system needs to be an understanding that everyone's limits are different and that this isn't meant as a tool of censorship and that there is no desire to reprimand those that use it.
Still, I loathe the implications of such a mechanic. If you start allowing semi-censorship by flagging others, you are certain to increase the reach of these messages, because they will inevitably end up on the forum for discussion and debate. You are also implying "go ahead and write all the nasties you want, you can just tick them off anyways", which would likely increase their prevalence IG. The likely result is simply overemphasizing that which was otherwise marginal.
I'm all for reasonable accommodation of special needs, but the emphasis is on reasonable, and that requires respect both ways. When considering the harm words can do, one must also consider the harm censorship can do.
