(03-05-2015, 02:05 PM)Kage Wrote: There's good and bad bleed.I swore I wouldn't post in, or even look at this thread again. I'm glad I broke that.
As a newcomer to RP that is... easier? to anthropomorphically? relate I found myself in a very bad patch earlier this year while RPing. It's easy as hell to not become so bad when you're RPing wolves mang. You can definitely say I hit a point where I had some bad OOC/IC bleeding going on that negatively impacted how I felt about the RP I was engaged in. I had patches where I was upset about how I wasn't being involved with certain characters. When I was RPing, it felt like I was being called out on for not RPing the where and when and the how others wanted me to RP. So in that process I started to negatively bleed. The thing is, no one really told me. It took my own analyzing of how it was affecting me to realize how I must have been affecting others.
One thing I've seen is that there are people who will try to help those inexperienced to get past this. Some people are patient enough to try and help people realize "your character RP should not demand all of my character RP and my time" and that "my ooc time with others should not make you become jealous" and that it certainly should not have an IC reaction when my OOC time is spent with my own friends.. Some times this does lead to drama or backlash because it becomes the toxicity that people want to avoid in their RP. But I'd like to think and hope that some peoples' patience will have helped others recognize the more negative bleeding.
Dumping everyone who even shows the slightest hint of negative bleed is harsh from my own personal bias because I've been there. Recently. Perhaps I was being told that I was doing it but it never felt like it. I do wish that when it started to happen there was someone to tell me "Do you fucking realize some of the shit you're pulling? You might need someone to talk it out because it feels like there's some shit you want in your RP because you aren't getting it in life." Sometimes, for us who may start to negatively bleed, we don't know what we're doing. Call it selfishness. A lot of times, some people are just toxic players but not all of us are malicious manipulative emotional abusers.
How can we cope with bleed, if we're not able to recognize it? If we're not experienced enough to do so?
I've not engaged in RP for months because I'm seriously terrified that I'll find myself doing that same stuff again. I didn't realize it before. What if I don't again? I don't want to be -that- person.
Kage, people aren't perfect, and anyone who freaks out over such a small thing as wanting some attention isn't worth hanging around. People have high times and low times in their life, and one cannot expect everyone to get rid of everything in order to RP. That is, throwing away your own emotions to process your characters' emotions seems extremely wrong in my opinion, biased as it may be, and I've personally found that, as an extremely emotional person, it's best to tie these emotions in with offscreen, NPC driven events. This will allow you and your character to process simultaneously and should help you grow as a person as well.
For a hypothetical example, I just had an absolutely shitty day. Dog woke me up at 12 am, it was raining so I couldn't go outside when it became a reasonable hour, and friends failed to show the entire morning before I had to work. So, how do I work these negative emotions realistically into RP? Well, Hihimi just had a really shitty morning, that's how! She would have been at home for that entire time, so I can say a similar series of unfortunate events could have happened to her without involving anyone elses' characters! Perhaps she got woken up by her NPC neighbor's Coeurls at 3 am, a distant thundercrack having freaked them out, and then she was out of Popotoes for breakfast. I can easily make a scenario that encompasses the reason why my character feels as crappy as I do.
The only problem lies within the negative stigma for bleed. If more people thought about how and why their character feels what they (The Character) currently feel, and how to alter it to be more roleplayable to their (The Player) current mood without stepping on toes, I doubt it would be such a severe issue.
All that being said, I have yet to encounter a single person who failed to separate fiction from reality because of bleed. I'd wager that people who actually cannot separate fiction from reality are a lot scarcer than people on this thread think--and even then, OOC communication is always key in preventing misunderstandings. Always apologize OOCly if you think your action could hurt another person's mental image of you. If you're RPing in a bar with 20 other people, and you insult a pretty Miqo'te girl, she gets upset at you...you always, always have to clarify that it's not you actually saying that. I've hurt too many people's feelings in similar situations. In all the cases it wasn't bleed, it was a lack of communication with the other RPer, who was usually a random person.
Finally...there is such a thing as being unable to separate fiction from reality. Its a mental disorder, and honestly I've only seen one case of it from an article on Kotaku(I think?). In said article, the person said they simultaneously felt horrendously pleased and guilty that they were killing people in GTA5, and went on to say how the people they were killing had lives that they were ending, which was the cause of their guilt...but it was just so fun! Those are the type of people that need help. Not RPers.
[sub]...but whatever happened to the mouse?[/sub]
