I tried. She then rolled another toon and sought out one of my alts for RP, pretending to be someone else. She managed to be fun, interested in other people, low on melodrama, and I only suspected because of quirks of her writing style. When it finally came out it was her, I'd kind of hoped she'd changed her ways and had gone back to being the person I first really enjoyed role-playing with.
That lasted about a month. The alt still isn't so bad, but she seemed to take the fact that I didn't run for the hills when her identity was confirmed as an invitation to bring the crazy ex-wife back.
I fear after this I may have made the build-up too high - and I also fear it might lose something in the retelling. A lot of what made it so horrible at the time was peeling off the layers and layers of detail only to find more squick underneath, just when you thought it couldn't get more weird.
I am also hesitant because it involves another player I'm awfully more fond of who got swept along, and I don't want to be disrespectful to her, at the least.
Crazy ex-wife/RPer aside... and she definately sounds crazy...
Was it really necessary to roleplay out a divorce? I mean... obviously you don't want your character and hers married if you just went through a nasty RL divorce, but seriously. Why play it out? Are the people you play with just not understanding enough to go OOC "Yeah, ex wifey mcbitcherson is officially retconned. Moving on"?
I suppose it reveals something of my RP tendencies/prejudices as well. I'm not averse to RPing someone's spouse/significant other, but the only way I'd RP the same pairing for THAT long is if it was with my real life significant other. After a certain length of time it just gets weird. Or maybe it's just me.
"Your Honor, she was baby-cooking crazy..." - My Name is Earl
It's funny when people commit "unspeakable acts" and expect everyone to forget about it ICly. Whether or not they roll with the RP that follows is almost an indication of the RPer's skill.
It blows my mind too. Anyone who just nonchalantly throws around moral quandaries like that in an RP and then expects people to "simmer down" obviously doesn't have a clear grasp on moral issues, let alone mature subject matter.
Or, you know, the common sense idea of ICC=ICA. I've never played a game where the concept of baby-killing was so casual as to be shrugged off by everyone involved. I'm sure such an RP exists somewhere, but unless you're RPing exclusively with characters pretending to be a part of the Burning Legion, the WoW universe is definitely not the place.
There were some very serious jaw-drops when the person who got the whisper told us on guild chat what had happened. We all thought she was embracing the evil, perhaps realising the character couldn't go back to how she used to be, and was either pushing her into destruction or was just going to enjoy playing a bad guy. But the general consensus to the idea of it 'simmering down' was, indeed, 'DEAD BABY SAYS NO'.
I knew she was melodramatic, I knew she was self-obsessed, I knew she was incredibly capable of deceiving herself as to the reality of situations, I knew she was very good at rewriting history. But this is the first time I have become seriously concerned about her actual moral compass and/or mental stability.
Seriously, at its worse, I think she was inducing minor panic attacks in me. So many times I'd go to work or be somewhere else and a fellow player would message me of "She's in the infirmary. AGAIN" or tell me something else had gone wrong, and I hated it because there was nothing I could do about it. Since we stopped role-playing I actually had a small wig-out at a perfectly nice player who happened to mention to me via PM at work that their character had been stabbed.
It took me a good few moments to remember that this other player is not an attention seeking pain in the ass. But when your RP is giving you psychological scars, it's time to get the fuck out of dodge.
Seriously, some years back I had a similar experience with an rper who played a majorly depressed and angst-filled character. She always had horrible things happening to her. Dead father, abusive mother, sexually-abusive brother, eating disorders, love triangle, self-destructive patterns... Everything was just sad, sad, SAD!
It was interesting at first too. It had merit and relevance to the overall plot... but no matter what happened, what character development had occurred, what new trick the GM had pulled in order to save her form her horrific circumstances... it would all just COME BACK! She couldn't be happy! NEVER!
And boy do I remember the feeling of "omg, what has she done NOW!?"
The sad thing is these players don't usually pull this crap for character development. I bet in 99% of the cases it's just pure attention-whoring and pity-partying.
No, it was never character development. That was the problem - nothing DID change. It was always same old, same old, never happy - which was why my character left hers, he realised she would never, ever allow herself to be happy and that she'd destroy him with her. The paranoia about it and gut-wrenching sensation of 'what NOW?' got to the stage where I think once I got home to find my friends there with cake for me because something had happened.
Or they brought cake to me because something had happened. I don't recall. Either way there was cake and my friends are awesome.
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That lasted about a month. The alt still isn't so bad, but she seemed to take the fact that I didn't run for the hills when her identity was confirmed as an invitation to bring the crazy ex-wife back.
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I am also hesitant because it involves another player I'm awfully more fond of who got swept along, and I don't want to be disrespectful to her, at the least.
Still! I shall save it for a later post.
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Was it really necessary to roleplay out a divorce? I mean... obviously you don't want your character and hers married if you just went through a nasty RL divorce, but seriously. Why play it out? Are the people you play with just not understanding enough to go OOC "Yeah, ex wifey mcbitcherson is officially retconned. Moving on"?
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That would make this EPIC if we were actually married in reality. Epically bad, of course. Perhaps Legendary.
I shall edit to clarify.
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Yeah... that would have been epic though.
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It's funny when people commit "unspeakable acts" and expect everyone to forget about it ICly. Whether or not they roll with the RP that follows is almost an indication of the RPer's skill.
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I knew she was melodramatic, I knew she was self-obsessed, I knew she was incredibly capable of deceiving herself as to the reality of situations, I knew she was very good at rewriting history. But this is the first time I have become seriously concerned about her actual moral compass and/or mental stability.
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Seriously, at its worse, I think she was inducing minor panic attacks in me. So many times I'd go to work or be somewhere else and a fellow player would message me of "She's in the infirmary. AGAIN" or tell me something else had gone wrong, and I hated it because there was nothing I could do about it. Since we stopped role-playing I actually had a small wig-out at a perfectly nice player who happened to mention to me via PM at work that their character had been stabbed.
It took me a good few moments to remember that this other player is not an attention seeking pain in the ass. But when your RP is giving you psychological scars, it's time to get the fuck out of dodge.
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Seriously, some years back I had a similar experience with an rper who played a majorly depressed and angst-filled character. She always had horrible things happening to her. Dead father, abusive mother, sexually-abusive brother, eating disorders, love triangle, self-destructive patterns... Everything was just sad, sad, SAD!
It was interesting at first too. It had merit and relevance to the overall plot... but no matter what happened, what character development had occurred, what new trick the GM had pulled in order to save her form her horrific circumstances... it would all just COME BACK! She couldn't be happy! NEVER!
And boy do I remember the feeling of "omg, what has she done NOW!?"
The sad thing is these players don't usually pull this crap for character development. I bet in 99% of the cases it's just pure attention-whoring and pity-partying.
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Or they brought cake to me because something had happened. I don't recall. Either way there was cake and my friends are awesome.
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