"Bleed" - Article & Thoughts

[Hihimi]

There's good and bad bleed.

 

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.

I swore I wouldn't post in, or even look at this thread again. I'm glad I broke that.

 

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.

[Imo]

From my experience, "not being able to separate IC from OOC" is usually a shorthand for either "thinking that relations between the characters also apply to the relations between the players" or "causing OOC drama after roleplaying didn't go the way you wanted". And both of those are not that uncommon, at least among more immature players.

[Aduu Avagnar]

From my experience, "not being able to separate IC from OOC" is usually a shorthand for either "thinking that relations between the characters also apply to the relations between the players" or "causing OOC drama after roleplaying didn't go the way you wanted". And both of those are not that uncommon, at least among more immature players.

That is the most common and recent version of it that I've had the displeasure of dealing witg.

[Flashhelix]

Escapism is often considered synonymous with "power fantasy" and is thus considered negative for that reason.

[Aduu Avagnar]

I guess I'm from different circles, cause I never see escapism with a negative connotation. Then again, I tend to use it primarily to relate to my LARP. Where else can I relieve my stress by hitting my mates with foam/latex weapons?

 

I, and most of the people in my LARP Society, use LARP to escape the humdrum of every day life. Not because we can't achieve anything, or because its scary, but because it's a stressful world, and sometimes what you need is to put on a silly costume and run around the woods.

 

but please, no lightning bolts.....

[Kellach Woods]

but please, no lightning bolts.....

 

Or at least do a proper incantation you chucklefucks.

 

Yes, we all remember THAT video.

 

I didn't chime in on this topic because honestly felt it was gonna be worthy of a nope.avi and mostly because if you make a conscious decision to be that far removed from your character in order to avoid the appearance of self-insertion chances are your character won't be interesting.

 

Hell, Kell is as far removed as I really am IRL but the character creation process was where my own biases and everything entered the fray. Once the character's solid then you can stick to that but still.

 

Didn't read the article - didn't feel a need to.

[Darien Cadell]

I love "bleed". I get a serious thrill from the way my character's emotions affect me, negative and positive. I like when my characters are tortured or pissed off or giddy with joy. And I like being able to vicariously do things that I can't do in real life, my personality bleeding through into the characters I create. I'm not like my characters. I tend to play characters that are 90-95% jerk when I'd consider myself only at most 50% jerk in reality. But I love them and I love being them nonetheless.

 

But there are very solid dangers to bleed addressed in the article. It can mess with real people's real emotions in real ways, especially if handled badly.

 

What I hate about the permeability of that line between writer and character is that when things go really bad (or really good for that matter) in real life, I cannot keep my RL issues entirely outside of my characters. It's not possible. And it ruins things. Brutally. It's not so much that my characters experience my emotions (though that happens sometimes, it's usually coincidental) but that my state of mind is no longer conducive to creating or participating in story. At all. And I see everything I enjoyed about roleplay drifting away, because I'm just not in a place where I can enjoy it, let alone apply skill to it as a craft. I've had so many amazing characters that I've loved so dearly destroyed by thoroughly unrelated RL circumstances and issues that bleed into what I'm capable of and how I manage my fictions, usually by causing me to become hesitant, straight up abandoning various situations, or making choices that in retrospect were not awesome.

 

The writer might suddenly fall into a depression because of something in real life' date=' but the fiction is completely in control of the writer[/quote']

 

In my experience, escapism may be a coping mechanism for depression, but I can only enjoy RP (or writing at all) on any level when I'm feeling confident and well. I "lose control" of my fiction in the sense that I can't maintain it at a basic structural level. At that point, my fictions degrade until eventual abandonment. It's still my choices that get me where I am, so I'm still in control in that sense. It just doesn't feel much like control because there's such a sense of loss attached to recalling what once was.

 

I'm not sure what I'm getting at other than bleed can be both amazing and horrible, and in my opinion should be both cherished (by those who find value in it) and, obviously, handled with care.

[Alothia]

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.

 

 

So much this. 

 

 

I've been in that place where I've felt like time was demanded of me. I've felt like things that I've done "wrong" were going to negatively impact my character, and that it was all "my fault."  This is the place where 'bleed' becomes dangerous. When it's making you second guess your every move, where instead of you playing and enjoying your space and your friends and your creations, you're now only worried about the other people and how you're affecting them.

 

 

It's a horrible place to be, one that is so easy for new or even less confident RPers to get sucked into. I am one of those people. I'm always questioning whether I'm good enough, and it's been that way since I started. There are going to be people who see that in you and try to use that against you.

 

 

The way to avoid it is to learn what you can and cannot deal with and stick your foot down from the beginning. Tell your potential RP partners your limits and issues ahead of time. Listen to them when they discuss theirs. And don't let anyone put you into a situation that you are uncomfortable with on an OOC level. If it starts to affect your day to day life, back the fuck out. Because it shouldn't do that.

 

 

If you're going to RP as an escape, let it be that. Don't let it drag you down into an even bigger hole.

 

 

Climbing out of something like that may be tough, but you've got to look out for you at the end of the day, and not anyone else. People who don't see that, aren't worth your time.