(06-28-2015, 11:27 AM)Allister Dedrick Wrote:(06-27-2015, 05:56 AM)Suviyo Viyo Wrote: Not everyone feels like an antagonist is welcome or necessary or desired in their RP sessions.... and tension might be alleviated if you, the player of the villain, gague that receptiveness through PMs first.... no?
Unless it is specifically requested in their search comments, I have to respectfully disagree with sending a PM to someone before engaging in open-world RP (within reason, of course). The whole idea of open-world RP is that it is spontaneous; anything could happen. If someone is to put themselves in a hotspot like Ul'dah to seek out walk-up RP, I would be shocked if they honestly expected every encounter to be a good one. If someone does not want their RP session to have random characters join in, it would make sense to avoid a melting pot for exactly that.
I roleplay a character who is naturally confrontational. He is no stranger to punches in the face for acting like an ass. He's a big goof, really, and makes a daily habit of embarrassing himself by acting like an ass. He thinks of himself as the guy who says what everyone else is thinking, although he's rarely correct. It adds a fun dynamic to RP, but it inevitably causes hurt feelings. While he isn't 'evil' or 'villainous' by any stretch of the imagination, people aren't expected to like Allister at all. What troubles me is how people's dislike of the character consistently bleeds into an OOC dislike of me as a person. I'm troubled because, for so many people, the line between IC and OOC is nearly indistinguishable.
I agree that the line between IC and OOC should be as free and clear as possible, and that characters with the potential for hostility and conflict bring a much needed dynamic to RP in general. But... the thing is, there's also a world of difference between a well-played adversarial character, and a schmuck who just spews garbage that sounds like shitty, re-purposed real world rhetoric.
Some people are capable of dealing with that mundane sort of hate and having fun with it, but some aren't - and I don't think it's necessarily a poor reflection of them. Certain forms of bigotry cut too close to home for some people to want to deal with in their pretend fantasy writing time, and if you're particularly insistent or mean-spirited in how you bring those themes to their character, is it really that surprising that you'd leave a bad OOC impression? Just because they're not comfortable tackling certain topics with a random writer they don't know and it leaves a bad taste in their mouth doesn't mean they're incapable of separating themselves from their character.
I'm having fun playing up the refugee angle on my Au Ra, for example. I would genuinely enjoy bumping into a racist asshole IC; it'd be a fun chance for me to wring some development or angst for my character out of it, whatever. Someone else might not be in a place where they're alright with tackling that subject, though, and that's okay.
I don't know you, or your character, and I'm genuinely not trying to get on your case here - but I do think it's disingenuous to put the blame entirely on the people who take offense to that sort of RP. I'm not saying that you have to ask someone's permission on an OOC level before you say or do anything contentious, but like - if you're gonna drag in painful real world bigotry that doesn't even seem to really have a basis to exist in-game (homophobia, for instance) without feeling out whether the other writer might be comfortable with sort of thing first, don't be surprised if you get a bad reaction from them.
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