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The hottest tea, the spiciest gossip, the fiercest commentary and no fucking censorship. We are the Los Santos VIXEN. Hope you've been doing your kegels, babe. Letter from the editor: Sis, stop reading the story and BE the story. Submit your gossip to our handy and under-fucking-utilized gossip submission form. Chop chop. Also Like, Subscribe, Share, is this your first time online? Click HERE ! LSVIXEN XOXO ❤️ Survey Says: Minors are Literally Dying in the Streets According to LEOs & Medical Responders. Is a Solution in Sight? (Photocred: Jenna Song) Duuuuuude, what the fuuuuuck? I know. Super-duper serious article time. Bear with me, I think it's worth talking about. Let's set the scene. Flash. You're at a Car Show at 2:00 AM having fun. A thirteen year old boy tries all the doors on your car to no avail as a girl from the group of children tries and fails at distracting you by challenging you to a footrace (Girl, I'm literally in heels. No.) A cop car drives by and scatters them. You leave and get a call from a friend who stayed behind. It turns out a massive brawl broke out a mere two minutes after you left. Flash. You're buying smokes at the 24/7 at midnight. The sixteen year old boy in line in front of you is yelling at the 19 year old cashier to give him cigarettes. She doesn't want to lose her job, but she doesn't want to lose her life. You decide to stay until the boy leaves and then escort the cashier to her car only to see the boy getting attacked by street thugs. You and the girl make it out safely, if a bit shaken and call the police to help the boy. Flash. You're covering a crime scene. An 11 year old boy in ratty clothes is roaming the roadway trying to throw himself into oncoming traffic. Is he suicidal? Is he trying to get a warm bed and meal at Pillbox Hill Medical Center? Who knows. The police intervene and he leaves your sight but not your mind. These stories are not uncommon. They are just a slice of the experiences I've had in this city and you've probably had your own. The final incident I mentioned stuck with me though and triggered something deep down in my icy cold heart. I needed to know how bad the problem is and if there are any real solutions our government can actually do to stop it if there is an issue. So I sent a six question survey to the Los Santos Police Department, the Los Santos Sheriff's Department, Pillbox Hill Medical Center, and the Los Santos Fire Department to see how deep the rabbit hole goes and what they're take is on a potential solution to the problem. Who did the LS Vixen ask and what is their level of experience? So I first asked a question to figure out who I was talking to. Mostly Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) responded from the Sheriff's and Police Department. We did get a solid 26 percent of the survey responding from the Medical Responders perspective which is really important when we talk about the gruesome results of interactions with minors by emergency responders. The second question could have killed the article before it was made. If the responders had rare interactions ("Yes, once or twice" or "No, never") when asked if they've ever witnessed or responded to incidents involving a minor being harmed, then we wouldn't have much of a problem to explore. Eighty one percent of those asked have responded to calls or witnessed incidents involving minors being harmed. These two questions established that I was surveying the people with the experience relevant to answering the deeper questions. Adult Guardians for Minors are Nearly Non-Existent. To get an idea of current trends, I asked responders whether an adult guardian was present the last time they responded to a call involving a minor. Eighty six percent of the first responders said no adult guardian accompanied the minor in the last incident, leaving only 5% of responders indicating some form of adult guardian was present. But that's just the last incident they recall. I wanted to know more. The next question asked them how often they encounter adult guardians with the minors that they interact with. A whopping ninety-four percent of responders indicated that almost never or rarely is an adult guardian present at the time. So what did we learn from these two questions? Well. The kids we see every day in the streets are usually unchaperoned. Lacking adult guidance and supervision, they're more likely to get involved in dangerous scenarios that lead them into interactions with emergency services and then have to navigate those interactions on their own. Without this guidance, LEOs and Medical Staff are forced to play babysitter for unchaperoned kids involving themselves in risky situations and it likely leads to some delays in responding to other emergency services. But it's not just a slow-down in emergency response times that's the risk here. There's a big fucking risk that I had to ask about. Are these kids safe? Kids are Fucking Dying. Guys, I'm going to be real with you. I don't have a funny haha joke for this shit. Fifty-seven percent of emergency responders indicate that Minor fatalities are "Often" or "Almost always" involved in these types of calls. Only fifteen percent of responders indicated Minor fatalities were rare or almost never happened in their experience. That is fucking insane. This reveals that half the time these folks are called onto scenes involving minors, it involves the death of the child. We established above that these kids are mostly unaccompanied by adults and the consequences are often enough death before they get a chance to actually live their lives. This is deeply fucked up. But is there anything that can be done? Survey says.... Most First Responders Support a Citywide Curfew. I've spoken extensively to sources within the Police Department, politicians, and civilians about this problem and one solution that kept getting brought up in casual conversation was some form of city-wide curfew for minors in order to make sure in the late hours of the night they aren't wandering into their own deaths or causing the deaths of others. Seventy-six percent of responders supported a curfew as a possible solution to this problem. And when we just look at medical first responders a little over half of them agree that a curfew might help curtail the amount of kids dying in the streets. All in All I know this is different from my usual content. I know it's super-duper serious and kind of sad. I'm not blind or deaf to the tone shift here. But I have a platform, I have the best readers in Los Santos, and I am a complex Vixen with complex tastes. When we've got politicians running for office on vague issues, I want to smash their face into a paper that shows a real fucking problem and have them create real fucking solutions. None of this charity mingling bullshit, none of this vague Red Versus Blue posturing. They can fuck off with all of that nonsense. Police Officers and EMTs are not childcare workers and they are not babysitters. We have real problems. They have real consequences. We demand real solutions. Vixen Out. XOXO, DISCLAIMER >Comments are enabled!

I know there's another thread on this topic here, but I have an alternative suggestion for this rule, and I feel like my post in that thread is being buried over a similar but separate topic. So, to preface the points as concisely as I can, with full explanations for each point below, here is what I suggest: Make 14 the minimum age (remove 12 and 13 year olds) Remove the Illegal Faction requirement for under 16s Require all (M) characters have a legal guardian played by another player (No more NPC parents) Introduce a foster program, that has both IC and OOC utility for finding legal guardians for minors Introduce the same real world curfew laws that LA has, including truancy and bar restrictions Maybe also adjust the timezone to be between US and UK Increase minimum age The two main reasons I think this should be increased is because its difficult to really make someone look younger than 14 with the character editor, and there aren't any middle schools on the map. I know gangs like to recruit at a young age, but in my experience high school is when that really peaks. Plus, if truancy laws were added, having an actual school to go to is important. Playing under 14 (under high school age) can get weird, from a consistency/believability standpoint. Since I know this is an EU server, I should mention that the US public school system is divided across Elementary (K-6th grade), Middle School (7th and 8th grades), and High School (9th-12th grades, aka Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior). Remove IF Requirements Honestly this rule has always confused me. Its a very weird requirement to enforce, and makes metagaming unavoidable since everyone would know that under 16s are involved in a gang. It'd probably be more immersive for police factions if they didn't know every kid they ran into was a criminal, but it also forces you to play a specific route if you go the (M) route. It just doesn't make sense any way I try to break it down. I think kids have an important part to play in both stories, and a sandbox world that seeks to replicate how a real city runs, but requiring they're in gangs isn't necessary IMO. Require Guardians for (M)s. This is mostly to challenge complaints a lot of people have against people who play Ms, one I agree with too. All too often people will run into poor quality RPers as (M)s, who basically just cause hell with zero consequences. Having an actual player fill the role would help keep the RP more realistic. You could have your uncle be your guardian, and the same guy that inducts you into a gang (based on a real story), or just an actual parent that would try to keep you out of trouble. It would help filter out trolls, r9 breakers, or just general bad RPers. I actually started RPing here with a minor character, specifically because I thought it would be a more immersive way to learn how to play the game, with my friend who played my character's canonical uncle. I had other characters to play when the uncle wasn't online, and the shenanigans I got into gave me a good backstory to work with when I decide to reintroduce the aged up version of this character. Foster Program If requiring a player guardian is enforced, having a foster program would also be a good idea. It could help players find a guardian for their characters in various situations where they don't have one (new character, previous guardian became inactive or killed, or was found unfit to be a guardian, etc), but also help build realistic backstories with kids who are bounced between a dozen (often abusive) foster parents. Its a system I've dealt with a lot IRL, and tbh I would love to see this played out in roleplay. There would also be incentives to take on foster kids too, like bonus cash from the government. I can totally see players taking on a bunch of kids for the money, which to be honest is something that people do IRL too. Thing is, the guardians are responsible for their kids, and often times kids bounce foster parents every few months for various reasons ranging from neglect, abuse, or simply because the parent decides it. Curfew and Truancy So, IRL L.A. has a law that forbids minors to be out after 10pm till sunrise unless said minor is with an adult, traveling to work/school, or is on their way to a family member's. Just like IRL, its very easy to get around this law simply by having an older sibling (or family friend) with you, and its also only enforced in the city. Country cops historically give few shits outside of major crimes. Truancy is also a thing, when school is in session kids should be there. Finally, minors (21) aren't allowed in certain bars in LA (although in other states, there either is no law, a law requiring parents, or a law only disallowing after a certain time). Having more realistic laws in place could also help with keeping (M) characters in line with reality, in terms of behavior. PS: I did also want to point out, it is legal for people as young as 14 to work a job in the US, and LA/CA. From 14-15, you're required to be under full time hours, and from 14-17 you're not allowed to handle dangerous objects such as weapons, alcohol, or kitchens, but you are allowed to work. Timezone? However, I do see an issue with the time difference. For some US players, logging on at 5pm could mean midnight server time. That basically locks Pacific players out of playing minors unless they want to deal with constant curfew laws. Again, these laws could be easy bypassed with exceptions (such as having a legal guardian with you), or a more radical solution would be to shift server time to UTC-3 (AMST), the midway between UK and US's furthest timezone. Conclusion What I suggest is more restrictive than what we have now with a few restrictions lightened up. This is all to better simulate a living breathing city and how it handles its population of teenagers, and to help ensure that those choosing to play as minors upkeep a standard of roleplay that's been lacking with some edge cases. Being a kid comes with a different set of freedoms than adults, as well as restrictions, and I feel like a lot of people misunderstand these. Teens have every right to explore the city as everyone else, they aren't just supposed to be sheltered and can often get out of legal trouble a lot easier, but there are laws and systems in place to ensure they don't have free reign to do whatever they want (even though a lot of kids act like they do IRL). I know a lot of people simply want a ban for (M)inor characters all together, for reasons ranging from the adult setting of GTAW to the weird creeps who break r19, but kids are a part of the population IRL, so they should be here too. This server has an entirely player ran ecosystem that does an amazing job of replicating a (slightly exaggerated) Los Angeles from its crime and justice systems to political and economical. Kids have been used as political tokens, drug mules, ransom targets, and indoctrination victims, and the roleplay potential for all of that is great. Don't let the few bad RPers you've ran into ruin your opinion of the rest, cuz they aren't exclusive to minor characters/players either.