Something that has bothered me for quite some time.
Okay there’s this dream that I rp in that I happen to be an admin of. It’s a cool place, a little small and filled with generally cool people. There was one player whom I started to get along with pretty well. One thing I noticed with him though was that at times he could be very two faced and trollish. He would pick on people and say he was just joking but in a whisper window, he would say and act completely different. Usually it happened to people who were pretty noobish such as a girl whose character wielded a thirty foot scythe on a twenty foot pole. However his attitude has really changed.
Now for background information this is a KH dream that is hundreds of years into the future. I play what is essentially the personification of Thanatos, only really, really bastardized mythology. Hey! In Disney canon, the mythology was already bastardized so I just decided to roll with it! He is my stuttering, cowardly, neutral demigod who decided that he would rather be mostly mortal rather than have any huge responsibilities that he would just mess up on anyways. To rp him, I toned him down a lot and somehow I ended up making him one of the weakest characters in the entire game next to a baby moogle. He is extremely weak to water where it is acidic to him. Has no super strengths but is fairly speedy (which I use comically to run away and operate at what I like to call “Coward’s Speed.” And to suddenly be at the other end of the room when something dangerous rears it’s ugly head.), and is pretty much taking direction from the fates on who should live or die. I use this as a way to not kill off characters directly on him. I am not a Pker. Ever.
Now you see, I have strong rules for myself against consent. Meaning, it’s perfectly okay to maim or attack my character without my consent. I can dig that. But permanent damage? I would like some discussion so that I can work something out for you. Death? I would really appreciate some consent and on the same token, I would never ever, ever kill off another character unless A) it’s part of plot or B) you specifically asked me to and were absolutely positive that you wanted to kill off the character.
The dream I’m in? Mostly non-consent. If your character decided to attack someone, they forfeited the right to consent if they get killed off. Okay that works out the whole ICC=ICA but.. You get a lot of people being overly powerful and doing crazy stupid things to weasel out of getting their characters killed off or surviving things that they really shouldn’t. But I guess this is typical in the FF/KH fandom, even though I do my damnest to rp fights realisticly and fairly.
Now onto the problem at hand. Horatio has a character who LOOOVES to pick on my little Mercutio. And try to kill him when ever he can even knowing A) what and who Mercutio is, B) who Mercutio is related to and C) that Mercutio has some friends much more powerful than him that would happily protect Mercutio. So his character is too dumb to live, I can dig that. However, because of the constant attacks out of nowhere and for no reason whatsoever, mercutio has learned A) to avoid Horatio at any and all costs or B) attack him on site and not let Horatio have a chance to cast any spells at all. It all makes sense Icly.
Horatio’s player on the other hand has this habit.. Of avoiding attacks or minimalizing attacks and turning every scene into a fighting scene, not mention munchkining. He has done so in other dreams where he would avoid all attacks thrown at him by what should be BOSS characters or just stepping back and auto dodging a lot of attacks that should be too close for him to dodge. He minimalizes attacks that should nearly kill him such as being stabbed in the chest multiple times with FOOT LONG BLADES to minor scratches or having a gravity spell that should have crushed and broken a lot of his bones to being “okay or just hurt enough” where he can still cast a spell to cure himself while the other two people, including my character- You know what? Let me just tell the damn story.
Okay it begins with Mercutio, his morality chain whom I call Morality, Nobody and Horatio are in a room. Mercutio knows better than to mess with Nobody. Nobody can cast gravity spells like nobody’s business. Horatio however decides to cast spells, in which his tattoos glow. They always glow. Mercutio who is only feet away from him notices this and tries to avoid getting into a fight with him. Despite his efforts, Horatio casts a water spell at Mercutio’s head to try and get a headshot kill at him or melt his face off. I at this point have grown tired of Horatio’s constant attacks on my character and really wanted to avoid getting into an IC fright or getting my character killed off, so I use the speed that I have hinted at constantly in previous rps to quickly casts fire ball big enough to intercept the water and vaporize it. Horatio’s player makes a smartass comment that Mercutio shouldn’t have dodged that attack when he was point blank and shouldn’t be that fast. I explained oocly that yeah he should have because I have hinted at the speediness numerous times before but always in a comical sense, but I left out pointing out all the times that Horatio dodged things that he really shouldn’t. At that point in time Morality started to complain and stop Mercutio from fighting but Horatio was not going to back down. Mercutio worried that Horatio’s next target would be Morality since Horatio has attacked her before. This set off a berserk button. Never, ever attack or hurt his morality chain. Ever. Even Nobody complains about the fighting. Mercutio spots Horatio preparing another spell and decides to leap in with his weapons out to attack him.
At this point Morality casts float (a spell here the mage can control the buoyancy of the target) and flings him up to the ceiling. Nobody prepares a big Graviga spell that crushes EVERYONE in the room. Mercutio is dragged down and put in a world of hurt. He is unconscious. Morality who was furthest away from the spell still got crushed and knocked out. Horatio on the other hand… he decided that his character was in a world of hurtbut was awake enough and well enough to cast a huge cure spell on himself. Nobody’s player walks out and afks for a while and makes Nobody leave the room. Meanwhile Little miss Seamstress’s character walks in onto the scene and she plays a white mage. Her character goes around the room to heal people starting with Morality. As soon as Horatio is cured, he starts to prep another spell. I got a bad feeling about this and started to whisper Seamstess and Morality’s players if they can hurry and cure Mercutio since I had a bad feeling that Horatio was trying to kill off my character. They were not quick enough. Horatio beat them to it and casted a HUGE water spell on Mercutio. I played out Mercutuio on the verge of death and decided to speak out and ask that Horatio to stop trying to kill off my character.
At this point Horatio’s player laughs and starts bitching at me saying that there’s no consent. (Even though he was the one to attack first and thus forfeit his consent.) Then I state that out of all the times that Mercutio could have and should have killed off his character or any other one of my characters kill another, I simply did not even if it’s non-consent simply because I want the same respect to mine.
Normally when my characters should or could have killed someone I would play it out as someone coming in to stop them or their attacks mission, or they thing their attacks went all the way through. Basically, I give people loopholes to work around and even hint at them in my posts. Why? Because I rather work with people and keep a story moving than to keep a tally of of how many kills I have made.
He laughs at me for bringing OOC into IC and makes some smart comments. At that point, I get really frustrated and I mention that He needs to start taking hits realistically and not avoiding everything that is thrown at him. Then suddenly, I’m the god awful evil bitch. Morailty and Seamstress heal Mercutio and at that point I log off for the night. However it does not seem like things are over.
Horatio’s player has been constantly making little passive aggressive or I worry that they are passive aggressive gestures to undermine me or try to make me look like a dumbass or make a bunch of snide little comments. One good example is that I was trying to make a character that was the craziest crazy to ever crazy and heavily based on Scandinavian mythology even though not truly a mythological character at all and I wanted to give her a weapon. He advised a hook bill, which I actually liked. He however liked the idea of a scythe like hook bill or one with a blade that really hooked into a near scythe. At that point I was like, “No way man. Scythe like blades are very hard to handle and use, not to mention that they are pulling weapons. They are mostly ineffective unless you want to pull your enemy closer to attack them more. I don’t want to do that on my character. At this point he tries to make it out like I’m a dumbass and do not know what I’m talking about. I explain that I have used Kamas before and explained the concept to him.
He argues back that all bladed weapons are pretty much the same and have the same idea when using them. I WAT-ed. Seriously. At this point I decide to go discuss this with my room mate who actually taught me how to use these weapons and studies the different kinds of weapons and how they use. He is the smartest man that I know when it comes to weapons because he actually studies them and goes to experts who uses them and learns how to use them, as well. My room mate basically agreed with me. I explain this to Horatio, who gets upset and tries to imply that I’m an idiot, and he’s right because of “physics”. I wonder if the physics he goes by is anime or videogame physics. He stops arguing however.
He has avoided rping with me all together as well but his character continues to attack Morality and now both Morality and Mercutio are out to do some serious damage to Horatio. He knows this and has stopped going IC on Horatio ever since. Morality has even complained to me that he has gotten to be a lot more of a jackass and it’s been getting on her nerves.
Okay, how do I deal with him? I am an admin but I am not top admin. I, unfortunately have earned myself the reputation of being the bad-cop admin just because I would get onto some of our oldest players for breaking rules or being downright rude when they shouldn’t be and not playing favorites. (My philosophy is, I don’t care who you are, how long you have rped or even if you are a fellow admin. I will hold you and myself included up to the rules that were laid out.) The top admin, likes to let me deal with problem players but at the same time, I am not allowed to deal out any punishments or ban anyone. So all I can do is pretty much bark. She does not like confrontation at all and neither do I but I worry that this will only get into a larger problem. I also worry that if I react or punish him, that this would reflect badly or he would try and say that I am punishing him because his character defeated mine (Lol who hasn’t!?) or that I am punishing him for trying to kill my character.