Very interesting article, solid read. I was guilty of a lot of bleed with my first FFXIV character. I was still pretty new to rp, and felt both her joys and her heartaches way too hard. While it made for intensely satisfying, rewarding rp, and a sense of boundless, pure creativity, it also had the Icarus effect: when the story she was in crashed and burned, so too did I. Unfortunately after that, I found myself unable to connect with my characters in any meaningful way.
It was a full year before I picked up rp and mmos again, and when I feel bleed at the fringes now, I make sure to strengthen my alibi, as the article coins it. However, I have also managed to find the line where I can connect with my characters again, can fully emphathize with them, even cry and laugh with them, but am able to much better put them down when I am done playing with them and mitigate any sort of negative bleed effect.
I see a lot of people make the same mistakes I made, and through my own edperiences know not to judge them by it, but to try and help soften the emotional impact bleed can cause. Only through experience do we learn to identify and properly control this aspect of rp.
It was a full year before I picked up rp and mmos again, and when I feel bleed at the fringes now, I make sure to strengthen my alibi, as the article coins it. However, I have also managed to find the line where I can connect with my characters again, can fully emphathize with them, even cry and laugh with them, but am able to much better put them down when I am done playing with them and mitigate any sort of negative bleed effect.
I see a lot of people make the same mistakes I made, and through my own edperiences know not to judge them by it, but to try and help soften the emotional impact bleed can cause. Only through experience do we learn to identify and properly control this aspect of rp.
