"See, the term “practicing” is deceptive. It should instead be thought of as “learning”.This may seem like a tautology, but it really isn’t. The term “practicing” suggests repetition, while “learning” suggests the acquisition of knowledge, which is what I believe the colloquial “practicing” should be"
This distinction made me wish someone had told me this before. This made everything about how to practice - deliberate practice, don't practice your mistakes, be mindful - all suddenly click and let me come up with a few ideas of my own as well. I'm not the best learner, but I still have a ton more practice learning things in various settings that I do practicing.
This shift in perspective also makes practice more relaxed and joyful. When practice is viewed as repetition, it's easy to fall into a shame-spiral. Why didn't I get this right? Why aren't my fingers doing the right thing? But with learning, it's easier to forgive yourself and to focus on finding solutions, because we expect to mess up while learning.
Besides, learning is so much more interesting than practicing. ;)
In the process, all too many [students] receive a sorry message, indeed: “The goal of high school is to get into the college that rejects the most people; the goal of college is to gain access to employers or graduate programs that turn away the greatest number of qualified candidates; the goal of life is to have more of the stuff that other people are unable to acquire.” No one puts it quite this way, but that’s what our young people are hearing. It is a message that kills the soul: Value things only to the extent that other people are deprived of them.
Yet another thing that I wish someone else had told me years ago. This was the message that I was taught - to be self-satisfied with myself for climbing the academic/corporate ladder, for no other reason than because the ladder was there to be climbed. (Of course, then I failed to get into the college my parents wanted...and had a marvelous time.)
“But for roleplaying, the key problem is a majority of the rules sets aren’t actually games. They give you rules to put scores to characters, resolve some fictional events but no larger picture. It’s like having numbers, faces and suits on cards- useful tools, but doesn’t actually organize what makes the game. What are the roles of the players? What is the goal of play? What is the intended play experience?”
We recently lost a player from our gaming group, and I've been doing some GM soul-searching. Overall, all of these articles are a good read for focusing on the importance of communication in a relatively undefined social game and on shifting the emphasis away from "problem players".
I've definitely been guilty of blaming players in the past, because
obviously this just isn't how we play the game! Except it's not so obvious, after all, and many
Georges are probably acting with intention and trying to have fun.
I actually used to play with one of those players who would do ridiculous things that would break immersion and party cohesion. He seemed like a nice person outside of the game! He just thought that party conflict and "chaotic neutral" randomness kept things interesting. I didn't confront him about it, though it may have been better to - or it may not have, since that gaming group didn't really have a culture of active communication.
(Of course, that is not to say that there aren't problematic players who aren't playing with good intent, but that should just be resolved by asking them to leave.)
This is something that I'm wrestling with: how to deal with a problematic setting in a format that's for fun and not actually art. Roleplaying can be cathartic and create interesting and brilliant stories...but it's not the medium for heavy criticism. So, how to wrestle with questions of erasure vs. representation? I'm not sure the article actually cleared anything up for me, but at least it gives me a list of things to consider.
A very good and short watch about how the Internet has co-opted black bodies, in the format of performative or stereotyped depictions, to perform emotional labor and allow non-black people to "inhabit" blackness on the Internet.
