The mother of all RP horror stories
There are essentially five RP encounters I’ve had in my life that have possessed so much wrongness and stupid that it would be a crime to never share them. This is the oldest, the most short-lived, and probably the worst: a tale from 2004 of epic WTF!asshattery.
I have alluded to this player before, back when I observed with great amusement that she had posted a rant about me on BRPS. I never bothered to return the favor-- nor do I feel a need. However, this story is so amazingly trainwrecky that it needs to be told somewhere, so it is going to take up residence in my personal journal instead. My experience with this person lasted only two days-- rather, I lasted only two days. She was that bad.
So bad, in fact, that in spite of the brevity of the encounter, I can't cover it all in one sitting. But if you'd like to brave the first chapter in this horror story, follow the cut.
Imagine this: you're feeling kind of bored one lazy Thursday morning and start browsing a community designed to let RPers find one another based on similar tastes. Most of what you see? Is crap. No doubt about it, you don't even need to look twice at these posts to know the author is not the RP buddy for you.
There happens to be a survey meme making the rounds and several people have posted their answers. As you're scrolling through and nearing the point of just giving up completely, you hesitate. And you look twice.
Lo and behold, this survey is different. The responses are thoughtful, concise, cautiously open-minded and largely to the tune of your own preferences. It shines like a gem amongst the garbage, and with only the smallest reservation about one detail, you add the mun's AIM name to your buddy list so that you can investigate this rare find.
Obviously, it didn't quite work out so happily. You may be wondering if I simply missed something about this survey response, or if it only looked good because it was surrounded by posts that were considerably worse.
You can see the original post here if you want to check it yourself, but the response boiled down to these main points:
· She finds stereotypes to be boring
· She plays predominantly yaoi-- and only yaoi for the first game-- but will broaden the spectrum if she's comfortable with the other player.
· She believes in developing personality first, then deciding seme or uke, if at all.
· As a result, most of her characters are switches, and when not, there’s a reason.
· “This is something of a given, but I definitely don't like a uke character who acts like a feminized, hormonal, castrated boy. I don't care if that's the Japanese yaoi stereotype, I hate it.”
· Her RP pet peeve is the "nice guy" character. No elaboration offered on what this means.
· She dislikes the characters with nothing to them save some concept that makes them a special exception to the norm.
· "I can't stand it when there's IC (or worse, OOC) pressure to get my character interested in theirs. I don't want forced attraction, dammit. If, and only if my characters develop an interest in theirs, will there be any relationship at all. I refuse to guarantee anything right off, and if I feel that there's pressure, I will get really annoyed."
· She doesn’t want a game of soap opera drama.
· Plot is most important to her, especially over sex, and she hates when sex is the driving reason behind the plot unless it’s a rape scenario
· When asked to describe her dream character, she just says she’d love one who comes off as real, with a personality and nice development. No further specifications are provided.
Sounds promising overall, doesn’t it? Personally, I prefer some het with my slash, but I can deal with that restriction and still have fun, especially if it's just for the first game. So I contacted her.
It took eight minutes for the first sign of offness to appear. My first move was to request an elaboration on this "nice guy" pet peeve of hers and just what that meant. Anyone good-natured? Someone so kind he has no backbone? Someone whose player is so determined that he be perfect that he's annoyingly faultless? The answer was that she hates those characters who are like the epitome of Gyffindor, all law-abiding and perfect.
I very nearly asked her what Harry Potter she had read. Harry and every other Gryffindor I could think of-- the Weasley twins especially-- were hardly law-abiding, let alone perfect. Even Hermione the teacher's pet broke the rules without compunction.
I settled for pointing out that I hardly saw Harry as a rule-follower and asked her to clarify what she meant because at the time, pretty much all of my characters were good-natured. One in particular was especially prone to a “nice guy” label and would easily have been sorted into Gryffindor. Like the actual Gryffindors, he wasn't perfect, but he was not compatible with villainous alignment. I told her of this, and after she assured me that nice with depth was fine (just not cavity-inducingly sweet), we moved on to some preliminary plotting.
This quickly led to an announcement that all of her plots had to have angst because angst is like breathing for her-- her words. She also took this moment to mention her appreciation for kinks, BDSM and non-con specifically. Not a problem for me as far as kinks go, but it seemed a bit odd this was coming up in a discussion about plot.
Then she complained about the mundane and overdone, such as teacher/student yaoi. She found those clichés to be a bore. She also griped about believability, and characters who angsted all the time being annoying.
All the bits I've discussed so far are just pieces of information that didn't become irritating until later. This is where it really starts to get fun: we started talking about characters.
First, let’s remember her initial condition from the survey response: yaoi only. By definition, my main character cannot be female and cannot be heterosexual.
Next condition? She doesn't want to RP against a fandom character. This was somewhat offputting, as I am 99% a fandom RPer. Back then, I only had three decently developed OCs and two of them were female. I also didn't have much enthusiasm for making a new one; my real interest was in a smattering of anime characters. I didn't mind RPing them against OCs, nor did I mind playing an alternate universe (AU) version of them so that a knowledge of the canon was unnecessary. I was even open to changing not just the world, but the history and situation.
Was she receptive to this? No. She would not accept my playing a fandom character, not even in an AU setting. She claimed it’s weird for her to put a fandom character through the “darker, more mature and graphic stuff” that she loves to do-- right after a blatant admission that she isn’t familiar with the series in the first place.
Now, this discomfort would make sense if it were a character she knew and loved, but how is a character someone else created that she’s never seen any different from a character I created that she’s never seen? Even with her addendum that she’s a "canon nazi" and tends to disagree with others’ portrayals (insulting in its own right that she's unwilling to even give mine a chance)-- again, she’s never seen the original. How would she know?
This growing list of requirements for not just her character but mine was getting irksome, especially as it had, in the span of a few short minutes, reduced my possible RP characters down to one. And of course that one-- Rasu by name-- was the reason I'd had to ask about her dislike of nice guys!
Is this starting to look ominous to you? Yeah, I thought so, too. Unfortunately, my philosophy at the time was to remain optimistic and look for where common ground existed. There was still a perfectly decent chance that we could get a great game going with Rasu and her character. At that point, she would branch out more and be comfortable with a broader range of my characters. That was what she'd said in the survey, after all.
And so the disaster would continue to unfold.
Part II
I have alluded to this player before, back when I observed with great amusement that she had posted a rant about me on BRPS. I never bothered to return the favor-- nor do I feel a need. However, this story is so amazingly trainwrecky that it needs to be told somewhere, so it is going to take up residence in my personal journal instead. My experience with this person lasted only two days-- rather, I lasted only two days. She was that bad.
So bad, in fact, that in spite of the brevity of the encounter, I can't cover it all in one sitting. But if you'd like to brave the first chapter in this horror story, follow the cut.
Imagine this: you're feeling kind of bored one lazy Thursday morning and start browsing a community designed to let RPers find one another based on similar tastes. Most of what you see? Is crap. No doubt about it, you don't even need to look twice at these posts to know the author is not the RP buddy for you.
There happens to be a survey meme making the rounds and several people have posted their answers. As you're scrolling through and nearing the point of just giving up completely, you hesitate. And you look twice.
Lo and behold, this survey is different. The responses are thoughtful, concise, cautiously open-minded and largely to the tune of your own preferences. It shines like a gem amongst the garbage, and with only the smallest reservation about one detail, you add the mun's AIM name to your buddy list so that you can investigate this rare find.
Obviously, it didn't quite work out so happily. You may be wondering if I simply missed something about this survey response, or if it only looked good because it was surrounded by posts that were considerably worse.
You can see the original post here if you want to check it yourself, but the response boiled down to these main points:
· She finds stereotypes to be boring
· She plays predominantly yaoi-- and only yaoi for the first game-- but will broaden the spectrum if she's comfortable with the other player.
· She believes in developing personality first, then deciding seme or uke, if at all.
· As a result, most of her characters are switches, and when not, there’s a reason.
· “This is something of a given, but I definitely don't like a uke character who acts like a feminized, hormonal, castrated boy. I don't care if that's the Japanese yaoi stereotype, I hate it.”
· Her RP pet peeve is the "nice guy" character. No elaboration offered on what this means.
· She dislikes the characters with nothing to them save some concept that makes them a special exception to the norm.
· "I can't stand it when there's IC (or worse, OOC) pressure to get my character interested in theirs. I don't want forced attraction, dammit. If, and only if my characters develop an interest in theirs, will there be any relationship at all. I refuse to guarantee anything right off, and if I feel that there's pressure, I will get really annoyed."
· She doesn’t want a game of soap opera drama.
· Plot is most important to her, especially over sex, and she hates when sex is the driving reason behind the plot unless it’s a rape scenario
· When asked to describe her dream character, she just says she’d love one who comes off as real, with a personality and nice development. No further specifications are provided.
Sounds promising overall, doesn’t it? Personally, I prefer some het with my slash, but I can deal with that restriction and still have fun, especially if it's just for the first game. So I contacted her.
It took eight minutes for the first sign of offness to appear. My first move was to request an elaboration on this "nice guy" pet peeve of hers and just what that meant. Anyone good-natured? Someone so kind he has no backbone? Someone whose player is so determined that he be perfect that he's annoyingly faultless? The answer was that she hates those characters who are like the epitome of Gyffindor, all law-abiding and perfect.
I very nearly asked her what Harry Potter she had read. Harry and every other Gryffindor I could think of-- the Weasley twins especially-- were hardly law-abiding, let alone perfect. Even Hermione the teacher's pet broke the rules without compunction.
I settled for pointing out that I hardly saw Harry as a rule-follower and asked her to clarify what she meant because at the time, pretty much all of my characters were good-natured. One in particular was especially prone to a “nice guy” label and would easily have been sorted into Gryffindor. Like the actual Gryffindors, he wasn't perfect, but he was not compatible with villainous alignment. I told her of this, and after she assured me that nice with depth was fine (just not cavity-inducingly sweet), we moved on to some preliminary plotting.
This quickly led to an announcement that all of her plots had to have angst because angst is like breathing for her-- her words. She also took this moment to mention her appreciation for kinks, BDSM and non-con specifically. Not a problem for me as far as kinks go, but it seemed a bit odd this was coming up in a discussion about plot.
Then she complained about the mundane and overdone, such as teacher/student yaoi. She found those clichés to be a bore. She also griped about believability, and characters who angsted all the time being annoying.
All the bits I've discussed so far are just pieces of information that didn't become irritating until later. This is where it really starts to get fun: we started talking about characters.
First, let’s remember her initial condition from the survey response: yaoi only. By definition, my main character cannot be female and cannot be heterosexual.
Next condition? She doesn't want to RP against a fandom character. This was somewhat offputting, as I am 99% a fandom RPer. Back then, I only had three decently developed OCs and two of them were female. I also didn't have much enthusiasm for making a new one; my real interest was in a smattering of anime characters. I didn't mind RPing them against OCs, nor did I mind playing an alternate universe (AU) version of them so that a knowledge of the canon was unnecessary. I was even open to changing not just the world, but the history and situation.
Was she receptive to this? No. She would not accept my playing a fandom character, not even in an AU setting. She claimed it’s weird for her to put a fandom character through the “darker, more mature and graphic stuff” that she loves to do-- right after a blatant admission that she isn’t familiar with the series in the first place.
Now, this discomfort would make sense if it were a character she knew and loved, but how is a character someone else created that she’s never seen any different from a character I created that she’s never seen? Even with her addendum that she’s a "canon nazi" and tends to disagree with others’ portrayals (insulting in its own right that she's unwilling to even give mine a chance)-- again, she’s never seen the original. How would she know?
This growing list of requirements for not just her character but mine was getting irksome, especially as it had, in the span of a few short minutes, reduced my possible RP characters down to one. And of course that one-- Rasu by name-- was the reason I'd had to ask about her dislike of nice guys!
Is this starting to look ominous to you? Yeah, I thought so, too. Unfortunately, my philosophy at the time was to remain optimistic and look for where common ground existed. There was still a perfectly decent chance that we could get a great game going with Rasu and her character. At that point, she would branch out more and be comfortable with a broader range of my characters. That was what she'd said in the survey, after all.
And so the disaster would continue to unfold.
Part II