The mother of all RP horror stories, Part II
Welcome back, dear readers. It's time for the second installment of that epic RP horror story. We left off with growing tension as one character demand after another came forth. In spite of her survey response's claim that she just wanted a realistic and fleshed-out character, here's the current tally of character requirements. Not for who she played, but for who I played:
-no females
-no heterosexuals
-no fandom characters, not even AU
-no "nice guys"
Before continuing on to the actual story, I want to note that her deal against fandom characters has previously been proven to be based not in an unbiased preference, but in outright elitism. There's no other way to interpret a rant signed, "A player who likes creating my own characters to play." Had I known about this at the time, I probably would have jumped ship then and there because dude, that's outright offensive.
It's also, as sevendials pointed out to me over IM, a rather stupid and false generalization. Many anime, including the one I was most likely to play a character from, are plenty dark, mature and graphic. Weiss Kreuz's Omi was much more suited to the themes she wanted to play out than the OCs I had available. He's from a universe where murder, mutilation, rape, kidnapping, sex trafficking, and a host of other abhorrent fates are the norm. Because of her attitude, she forbade me from playing a character who murdered his own family, kissed his sister-who-was-actually-his-cousin, and constantly manipulated even the people he most cared for.
As a result, she instead got a kid who was empathetic, loyal and morally grounded, who grew up in an average traditional family and who had never seen any real angst. All thanks to some inexplicable delusion of hers that the latter was better-suited to her dark and angsty plots purely by virtue of being an OC.
Right.
So, yes, as stupid as that was, that's who I had left to offer her after eliminating the characters of mine who didn't meet the first three items on her checklist. These requirements were turning me off, but as it happened, the one character I had left was my favorite to play. Although his meeting the last requirement was uncertain, her clarifications about what she meant with that label made it seem like he would still be acceptable.
As a result, I remained hopeful, told her about the character, and presented her with a roughly 500-word profile of him (on her request). This profile included his age of 15-16.
And she made another condition for my character: no characters younger than 18. Once again the reason was based on discomfort with putting these characters into mature content, both of the dark and of the smutty nature.
I'm of mixed feelings about this one. Age-based discomfort with a character is, admittedly, the most valid and understandable of her restrictions. On the other hand, it's adding another level of ridiculous to her inflexibility because it's on top of all these other requirements.
She also said in the survey that she valued PLOT over sex. If that were really true, then surely there are darker games and angsty plots, even ones with m/m pairings, which can accommodate a mid-teens character. It's not like I'm asking to play a 6-year-old. And never mind she was completely ignoring how different people can have different maturity levels regardless of age. Again I point to 17-year-old Omi, mental age 35.
Well, so much for no specifics on character preferences, and only wanting to play off of one that was nice and developed. Now what? My one character that met all the other conditions was rejected anyway because she wanted me to play a character in his early to mid 20s, and she refused to budge on younger than 18-- just as she refused to budge on her other character requirements. She really liked Rasu otherwise, however, and since Rasu was developed enough that I could comfortably play with his age, I accommodated her again and agreed to play him as a 22-year-old instead.
With that mess finally sorted, we moved on to hashing out the plot.
You may be unsurprised to discover her long list of requirements didn't stop with character pickiness. First rule of plot? It had to be dark in nature. Not much of a problem for me; story without conflict is major dull and dark plots are an easy way to get heavy conflict. So I started throwing out suggestions for scenarios that were dark in nature and that sounded interesting and workable for my character. What about earning money in a gambling ring, with our characters having to fight one another under bets from others and being paid for their wins? Or perhaps a story about actors, with Rasu playing the role of a villain or criminal and her character playing his victim? It could do funny things to Rasu's head trying to wrestle the evil nature of the character against the good nature of his true self. Acting does after all take a degree of becoming the character, and there have been cases of this bleeding-over happening in RL. What if the psyche of the character slowly started manifesting itself outside the official script?
This made the third time in the chat that I'd drawn a line connecting character Rasu to goodhearted nature. She said those ideas sounded perfect!-- then in the very next line ruled out the actor plot because she preferred her crimes being "real." Clearly she’s not in RP for the psychological factor.
Then she took the other “perfect” idea and suggested a change to it, despite her own acknowledgment that it might be difficult for it to work since my character is so developed. What did she actually mean? Since my character is so well-established as having moral standards.
Her idea was that the gambling ring was actually an imprisonment camp in which not only were the prisoners forced to fight each other, but the losers were forced to sexually submit to the winners for a time. In short, winner raped loser.
Why? Why attempt to complicate the concept with something that 1) makes far less sense, 2) is contrived and overdone, which you claim to hate, and that 3) you KNOW will not work for my character? Why, when the idea was already to your supposed liking? I replied that if participation were voluntary, he could get pushy about it, but he was -not- going to rape anyone. ESPECIALLY not a fellow prisoner! Silently I stewed in annoyance at her effort to warp my OC’s entire nature and even make it sound like it was a problem that I didn't want to throw established personality out the window and play my character as an asshole.
It was even more obnoxious once you remember that the reason she was having to deal with this nice guy character and his firmly established morals was that every other character of mine had been ruled out by her long list of prerequisites.
To worsen the already-bad discussion, she rejected the possibility of voluntary sign-ups. Why? She said the fun for her was in the non-con. Not the character interaction or the development of moral issues, but the simple act of her character getting raped. Yikes.
You may be puzzling right now over how this could possibly be the same person that claimed in that survey response to be more interested in fleshed-out characters and a good plot than in clichés and bad sex. I wondered this, too. But she still wasn't finished yet.
No, she wasn't even getting started.
Continue to Part III
-no females
-no heterosexuals
-no fandom characters, not even AU
-no "nice guys"
Before continuing on to the actual story, I want to note that her deal against fandom characters has previously been proven to be based not in an unbiased preference, but in outright elitism. There's no other way to interpret a rant signed, "A player who likes creating my own characters to play." Had I known about this at the time, I probably would have jumped ship then and there because dude, that's outright offensive.
It's also, as sevendials pointed out to me over IM, a rather stupid and false generalization. Many anime, including the one I was most likely to play a character from, are plenty dark, mature and graphic. Weiss Kreuz's Omi was much more suited to the themes she wanted to play out than the OCs I had available. He's from a universe where murder, mutilation, rape, kidnapping, sex trafficking, and a host of other abhorrent fates are the norm. Because of her attitude, she forbade me from playing a character who murdered his own family, kissed his sister-who-was-actually-his-cousin, and constantly manipulated even the people he most cared for.
As a result, she instead got a kid who was empathetic, loyal and morally grounded, who grew up in an average traditional family and who had never seen any real angst. All thanks to some inexplicable delusion of hers that the latter was better-suited to her dark and angsty plots purely by virtue of being an OC.
Right.
So, yes, as stupid as that was, that's who I had left to offer her after eliminating the characters of mine who didn't meet the first three items on her checklist. These requirements were turning me off, but as it happened, the one character I had left was my favorite to play. Although his meeting the last requirement was uncertain, her clarifications about what she meant with that label made it seem like he would still be acceptable.
As a result, I remained hopeful, told her about the character, and presented her with a roughly 500-word profile of him (on her request). This profile included his age of 15-16.
And she made another condition for my character: no characters younger than 18. Once again the reason was based on discomfort with putting these characters into mature content, both of the dark and of the smutty nature.
I'm of mixed feelings about this one. Age-based discomfort with a character is, admittedly, the most valid and understandable of her restrictions. On the other hand, it's adding another level of ridiculous to her inflexibility because it's on top of all these other requirements.
She also said in the survey that she valued PLOT over sex. If that were really true, then surely there are darker games and angsty plots, even ones with m/m pairings, which can accommodate a mid-teens character. It's not like I'm asking to play a 6-year-old. And never mind she was completely ignoring how different people can have different maturity levels regardless of age. Again I point to 17-year-old Omi, mental age 35.
Well, so much for no specifics on character preferences, and only wanting to play off of one that was nice and developed. Now what? My one character that met all the other conditions was rejected anyway because she wanted me to play a character in his early to mid 20s, and she refused to budge on younger than 18-- just as she refused to budge on her other character requirements. She really liked Rasu otherwise, however, and since Rasu was developed enough that I could comfortably play with his age, I accommodated her again and agreed to play him as a 22-year-old instead.
With that mess finally sorted, we moved on to hashing out the plot.
You may be unsurprised to discover her long list of requirements didn't stop with character pickiness. First rule of plot? It had to be dark in nature. Not much of a problem for me; story without conflict is major dull and dark plots are an easy way to get heavy conflict. So I started throwing out suggestions for scenarios that were dark in nature and that sounded interesting and workable for my character. What about earning money in a gambling ring, with our characters having to fight one another under bets from others and being paid for their wins? Or perhaps a story about actors, with Rasu playing the role of a villain or criminal and her character playing his victim? It could do funny things to Rasu's head trying to wrestle the evil nature of the character against the good nature of his true self. Acting does after all take a degree of becoming the character, and there have been cases of this bleeding-over happening in RL. What if the psyche of the character slowly started manifesting itself outside the official script?
This made the third time in the chat that I'd drawn a line connecting character Rasu to goodhearted nature. She said those ideas sounded perfect!-- then in the very next line ruled out the actor plot because she preferred her crimes being "real." Clearly she’s not in RP for the psychological factor.
Then she took the other “perfect” idea and suggested a change to it, despite her own acknowledgment that it might be difficult for it to work since my character is so developed. What did she actually mean? Since my character is so well-established as having moral standards.
Her idea was that the gambling ring was actually an imprisonment camp in which not only were the prisoners forced to fight each other, but the losers were forced to sexually submit to the winners for a time. In short, winner raped loser.
Why? Why attempt to complicate the concept with something that 1) makes far less sense, 2) is contrived and overdone, which you claim to hate, and that 3) you KNOW will not work for my character? Why, when the idea was already to your supposed liking? I replied that if participation were voluntary, he could get pushy about it, but he was -not- going to rape anyone. ESPECIALLY not a fellow prisoner! Silently I stewed in annoyance at her effort to warp my OC’s entire nature and even make it sound like it was a problem that I didn't want to throw established personality out the window and play my character as an asshole.
It was even more obnoxious once you remember that the reason she was having to deal with this nice guy character and his firmly established morals was that every other character of mine had been ruled out by her long list of prerequisites.
To worsen the already-bad discussion, she rejected the possibility of voluntary sign-ups. Why? She said the fun for her was in the non-con. Not the character interaction or the development of moral issues, but the simple act of her character getting raped. Yikes.
You may be puzzling right now over how this could possibly be the same person that claimed in that survey response to be more interested in fleshed-out characters and a good plot than in clichés and bad sex. I wondered this, too. But she still wasn't finished yet.
No, she wasn't even getting started.
Continue to Part III