IMPORTANT POST INCOMING
Okay, since it came up, I'm guessing it's because the "swear on my love one's life" thing, right? Well, I knew we were going to have to address this eventually, so let's get into it:
Joke answer:
It's in-universe roleplay, we're wolves lying about having family lol who cares, this isn't the real world.
Real answer:
I think it was really shitty that Dean introduced this idea of "swearing on your loved one's life."
I did not advise Dean to use that line. Wolf
is just a game, but it's a game where the entire point is to be emotionally manipulative and shitty.
Even still, using your loved ones to justify a play or defend yourself is INCREDIBLY emotionally manipulative and shitty. A boundary was absolutely crossed and there should be rules forbidding that from future games.
Before I address the big question ("
Why did you do it too?"), I think there are some things that I need to say.
I know I have a "bad guy" rep because:
- I take these games seriously
- I'm not afraid of lying in-game
- I've been the evil in 3/4 Zell games.
But here's the thing:
they're just games. They're games of DECEPTION. We're
supposed to lie.
But bringing the real world into the game like Dean did? Not cool. That's mixing lies and fantasy with reality.
My parents raised me to never lie, to the point that I was maybe too forthcoming and blunt with my criticisms of other people/places/things when I was growing up. I couldn't even tell white lies. It was something I actually had to notice, acknowledge, and work to change about myself. But outside of games of deception, I just don't lie (excluding white lies to not hurt peoples' feelings).
All of that to say, I hope you'll give me the benefit of the doubt and trust what I have to say in the next part of my post, but I know many of you have probably already made up their minds about me.
So the big question:
Why did I do the same thing Dean did, and swear on my wife's life?
- First of all, I asked my wife if I could do this and she said I could. We were both laying in bed, first thing in the morning. She still had her eyes closed, and I leaned over and asked her permission. She grinned, and gave me an "mhmm." Later in the day, after she woke up, I asked her if she remembered what she'd agreed to and she said she had no idea. I was mortified. She's a little bit superstitious, so I thought maybe she had genuinely slept through the whole thing and granted me permission to do something she wasn't comfortable with by accident, but when I tried explaining it to her, she remembered and said she didn't care. So me and my wife? We're fine. I wouldn't EVER want to do something that makes her uncomfortable -- even if I personally didn't believe in the voodoo magic powers of swearing on a loved one's life -- but if she's cool with it, I don't think it should matter to anyone else.
- Swearing on a loved one's life is some playground bullshit. I'm not at all superstitious, so to me it ultimately means nothing, and my wife clarified to me that she's "not superstitious about things she didn't grow up with" (swearing on a loved one's life is not a "thing" in Arab culture, apparently). These words hold no power over her, over me, or over reality.
- I offered it as a way to balance the claim of "I swear on <loved one's> life". If this power were unchecked, the game would end day 1 when all of the non wolves go, "I really super swear on my most loved person in the world's life that I'm not a wolf." I never would've made the claim in a vaccuum, but the second someone did, I felt like I had to deprive it of all power. It really didn't matter who was on whose team, what the intent was, etc. I thought a claim like that was shitty, no matter what. If the taboo around some superstitious playground-tier bullshit disappeared, then it wouldn't have any power.
So there's my take on it. I hope people don't hold my decision against me. I didn't use that line expecting that it would save my hide by any means -- everyone had been calling me sus already, and Jawneh said he had his sights on me and intended to let his arrow fly. I knew I was dead that night, it didn't matter what I said. It wasn't some manipulative mastermind play on my part. Rather,
it was my attempt to point out how ridiculous this whole fucking notion is of grown-ass adults swearing on others' lives, and deprive it of its nonsensical power.
