Odious Personal Habits

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Not

Ever read Stranger in a Strange Land?

Originally Posted by Bruno

I did a six page paper on that in high school, actually. Comparing and contrasting with Neuromancer.

Is he thinking of Farnham's Freehold? (A quite shockingly racist work, actually.) It's been a while- was there cannibalism in Stranger in a Strange Land? I mean, other than by the Martians, and Valentine Michael Smith's metaphoric implementation?

[Not]

Yes. In the final (or near final) scene, [spoilers follow]
















The main character is eaten at his own wake.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Is he thinking of Farnham's Freehold? (A quite shockingly racist work, actually.) It's been a while- was there cannibalism in Stranger in a Strange Land? I mean, other than by the Martians, and Valentine Michael Smith's metaphoric implementation?

I don't think we've read the same Farnham's Freehold. The one I've read looks to me to be a strongly antiracist statement.

There very definitely is cannibalism in SiaSL. After Mike dies, Jubal is served a taste of a broth that contains meat. He asks if it's Mike and has it confirmed, and he and the cook agree that it could use a little salt. I don't see any reason to take that to be metaphor or humor; the point of SiaSL is that Mike is trying to introduce Martian culture and habits of mind to humanity, and is succeeding with a small group. We don't take the sexual conduct within the Nest as metaphorical, after all, and that's nearly equally shocking in terms of 1960s sensibilities.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Eating food with one's toilet hand isn't a -15 OPH. Maybe -10 if you use your toilet hand to give food to others with the expectation that they eat it. But if you just do it on your own then I can't see it being more than -5.

In a Muslim culture you're probably wrong. OPH is culturally relative.

[Barghaest]

Actually what makes an OPH worth -15 is how badly people react to it... which is a measure of how much you do it as well as how annoying it is.

For example, they list body odor as just a -5 (-1 Reaction) because more intense body odor would basically be Bad Smell (-2 Reaction).

Constant puns is a -10 (-2 Reaction) but if these puns are truly awful or offensive, I could see it as a -15.

Same for aggressive flatulence (it's not the same as Bad Smell because the odor wouldn't be constant, but doing it to people who can't get away - in an elevator, on the inner seat of a booth with you, etc. - would warrant a -15 in my book).

Someone who talks way too much could definitely hit -15 in my book (I've met people who just couldn't stand silence in social gathering and got downright annoying with the constant inane chatter).

Spitting on people while talking to them could be a -15 depending on the moisture level (especially combined with a habit of standing too close to someone when talking).

Lacking a "social filter" could warrant a -15 (especially if the person in question had a loud conversation voice: Hey, Bob! You get that STD cleared up yet?!).

Basically a -3 Reaction doesn't mean people will immediately try to hurt you when they find out about your issue, it just means they won't like you (high odds of a Poor or worse reaction)... about equivalent to a Sadist (and technically passive-aggressives are sadists because they enjoy inflicting mental anguish).

A good measuring stick for what warrants a -15 OPH is make a list of things you REALLY dislike people for doing and then try to filter out the truly subjective stuff (for example, "being a career politician" is usually the top of my list, but that's rather subjective for me and probably wouldn't qualify... more likely it'd be an Intolerance on my part).

[Anders]

Insisting that the plural of 'forum' is 'fora', as in It's actually called Internet fora, guys

[Not]

Originally Posted by Anders

Insisting that the plural of 'forum' is 'fora', as in It's actually called Internet fora, guys

It would be surprising if there were no official ruling on Pedantry. It's surely a leveled thing. But how severe a case would warrant a -3 reaction?

There's another consideration: for -15 points, your character should be heavily constrained. It should be an inconvenience for the player to have to RP such an annoying character (although some players will take to this more naturally than others).

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Not

It would be surprising if there were no official ruling on Pedantry. It's surely a leveled thing. But how severe a case would warrant a -3 reaction?

I'd count pedantry as a -1 reaction, and when two pedants argue enough to derail a topic as -2. Pedantry in the face of danger, at funerals, or at other inappropriate times might garner -3, but it's hard to imagine that as being as bad as cannibalism, purposefully spreading disease, or the like. Plus unless you're seeking out funerals at which to be a pedant, it won't reach -15CP due to accessibility limitations.

Also, fora is a plural in Latin, but English uses different pluralization rules, reserving the Latin plurals for non-adopted Latin words. In an unusual case, datum/data in American English: data has become the singular and plural, with many people not even knowing the word "datum"
Yep, -2. What did I spend my extra 10CP on?

[Otaku]

Thank you for the information Bruno.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Basically, OPH/ORH seems to canonically top out at -15 for a -3 reaction penalty regardless of HOW heinous your habit is.

Yeah, that was what I was suggesting earlier, only I lacked the resources to assert this (outside of "Basic Set plus arbitrary supplements I own").

[Bruno]

"Insists on using [Foreign language] grammar rules and lecturing others about same, because [Langauge] is just a debased version of [Foreign language]."

Happens most often to English speakers for Latin. This particular arrangement baffles me because English is as much a Germanic language as it is a Latin one, but I've never seen Someone rag on about how proper Capitalization should be for every Noun, not just the proper Ones.