Goonhub
11-06-2014, 07:24 PM
Since everyone's favorite honking, banana peel laying, pie throwing job has been reintroduced to the general public, I've noticed something fairly harrowing, which I'd like to pontificate on: There is, from my observation, a toxic mindset around SS13 in regards to the Clown, and it's one that stifles the Clown's very purpose: To spread merry and remind the crew that it's not all hull breaches and gibbis in space.
During my very first stint as a Clown, I signed on as Nickeldaft the Singing Clown. I belted out a jaunty, light-hearted tune, and almost immediately, someone called for a vote to have me killed. I heard at least three "aye"s and not a single vote of dissent. Now, whether or not this was in jest was debatable, but before I so much as threw a pie, I had a crewman talking about how I had a "brain tumor" and had to be "operated on". (Read: Beat to death with surgical tools.) After fleeing my attacker into medbay and coming back out, I was almost immediately mugged by a passing monkey, had my mask taken, and was eventually beaten to death. And I'm pretty sure that neither of my two attackers were antagonists.
I spent more of my shift as a Clown running from people who inexplicably wanted me dead than actually doing my job.
This is worrying. This speaks to a mindset that this community seems to be in, and it's that Clowns are free to beat up to near (and sometimes actual) death and have no consequences whatsoever. No one appreciates the job of the Clown in any capacity whatsoever. Not even the Janitor, a job seemingly legendary for getting no credit, gets this much shit on a regular basis.
Now, I'd like to qualify my observations by saying that I am a fairly new player to SS13, and so the overall dynamics of the community might be slipping me by. However, I have noticed a consistent trend of Clowns getting shit for doing absolutely nothing but being Clowns. It's...saddening, almost. The one job on the station explicitly designed to produce humorous shenanigans is almost always the first candidate for an unwarranted toolboxing. But why?
Perhaps it's not just the fault of the vengeful crew members, but of Clowns in times past. When crew members aren't being shit to the Clown, I've observed that the Clown can be just as much shit to the crew, highlighted by a particularly infuriating incident in which the Clown unceremoniously chainsawed all of the plants in Botany, ran off, and started gloating over the radio. These disgraceful Clowns take the motive of having fun and apply it purely to themselves, getting sadistic glee in ruining the work of the crew members. The job of the Clown is to brighten the day of station as a whole, but too many people see it as a sort of antagonist-lite position, and that's wrong.
I could just be taking isolated incidents and blowing them out of proportion. Really, this isn't meant to objectively state anything, but it's merely an observation as a relatively new member of the community, and I'm just afraid that this will lead to the Clown getting shafted again. The position of the Clown can be a truly great one when given to responsible hands, but that doesn't seem to happen much in any round I've been in. Am I alone in this observation, or are there others who have born witness to these sorts of incidents, as well?
During my very first stint as a Clown, I signed on as Nickeldaft the Singing Clown. I belted out a jaunty, light-hearted tune, and almost immediately, someone called for a vote to have me killed. I heard at least three "aye"s and not a single vote of dissent. Now, whether or not this was in jest was debatable, but before I so much as threw a pie, I had a crewman talking about how I had a "brain tumor" and had to be "operated on". (Read: Beat to death with surgical tools.) After fleeing my attacker into medbay and coming back out, I was almost immediately mugged by a passing monkey, had my mask taken, and was eventually beaten to death. And I'm pretty sure that neither of my two attackers were antagonists.
I spent more of my shift as a Clown running from people who inexplicably wanted me dead than actually doing my job.
This is worrying. This speaks to a mindset that this community seems to be in, and it's that Clowns are free to beat up to near (and sometimes actual) death and have no consequences whatsoever. No one appreciates the job of the Clown in any capacity whatsoever. Not even the Janitor, a job seemingly legendary for getting no credit, gets this much shit on a regular basis.
Now, I'd like to qualify my observations by saying that I am a fairly new player to SS13, and so the overall dynamics of the community might be slipping me by. However, I have noticed a consistent trend of Clowns getting shit for doing absolutely nothing but being Clowns. It's...saddening, almost. The one job on the station explicitly designed to produce humorous shenanigans is almost always the first candidate for an unwarranted toolboxing. But why?
Perhaps it's not just the fault of the vengeful crew members, but of Clowns in times past. When crew members aren't being shit to the Clown, I've observed that the Clown can be just as much shit to the crew, highlighted by a particularly infuriating incident in which the Clown unceremoniously chainsawed all of the plants in Botany, ran off, and started gloating over the radio. These disgraceful Clowns take the motive of having fun and apply it purely to themselves, getting sadistic glee in ruining the work of the crew members. The job of the Clown is to brighten the day of station as a whole, but too many people see it as a sort of antagonist-lite position, and that's wrong.
I could just be taking isolated incidents and blowing them out of proportion. Really, this isn't meant to objectively state anything, but it's merely an observation as a relatively new member of the community, and I'm just afraid that this will lead to the Clown getting shafted again. The position of the Clown can be a truly great one when given to responsible hands, but that doesn't seem to happen much in any round I've been in. Am I alone in this observation, or are there others who have born witness to these sorts of incidents, as well?