The Silksock

Spontaneous parental character suicide

2008-08-18T03:36:35Z

The post,

athem firewillow walked into winshal high and smelled the air of teens. he is 18 and is gay,but alot of people hate him for it. he has been hurt litterally by alot of people because he is gay. he is a emo kid and has pierciengs everywhere. he wears black clothes and never a shirt but this small gray vest where ui can see his whole cheat and stuff where his nipples are pierced to. he has a friend that he doesn't know is gay yet. he loves them so much. he has the most perfect hair ever. it is spikey and black and purple. as he walked he saw his best friend and yelled in his perfect godly voice"hey!"

... should have tipped me off. I am to blame myself. Still. It seemed to be more of a wacky time-waster than anything earnest, but wanting to try out a particular character I've had in mind ever since I watched A Beautiful Thing, I joined the thread. My character was a rather rough, chavvy guy living with his drug-addict single mum, did not know that he's gay, has a hard time opening up to people, was not very physically affectionate due to a history of physical abuse when he was small which also does not express itself in any other way.

The thread starter, someone I'd never played with before, characterised her character as an emo gay boy who had frequently been beaten up by his classmates for being gay, has several piercing, always comes to school dressed in scene kid clothes and who, well, has fallen for his best friend, who does not yet know that he is gay.

My problem and my reason for suspicion for what was to follow stemmed from the feeling I got that as soon as I entered the thread all she was doing was trying to out-do my character in whatever we were discussing, especially when it came to angsting.

Pretty much as soon as I included anything about my character's backstory in my character's thoughts, her character became a mindreader and reacted to everything that was on my chav's mind, even though it was not perceptible in his behaviour. When her character persistently kept questioning mine about things that had only occured in my character's thought, I went with it, arguing that they knew a lot about each other, after all. However, she soon added some things to her character herself.

It started fairly harmless. Her character was bubbly, my character arrived at school in a temper because of the state of things at home. Her character's mood plummeted without any reason. Shortly after, I misunderstood something in her initial post and writing that my character was taller than hers. Her next post reveals that her character is 7'4". I had my character correct himself in the next post, making him shorter. After a short exchange, I had my character start a friendly squabble. Her character had soon managed to pin mine to the ground, and since my character is uncomfortable with this kind of situation I had him freak out and struggle as hard as he can to get away.

After this friendly fight in which my character did not want to be pinned down due to a history of violent encounters she had her character be beaten black and blue and bleeding. He also had a kind of nervous break down, fainting at first, then:

he nodded then looked away and started tocry alitle."my parents.......are gone......"he whispered.

When I asked the player OOC if his parents had died only very recently, as otherwise my character, the best mate, would surely know about it, she posted:

"he hugged him and said"yeah it happened not o long ago i have been liveing on the street since then they died by suicide...." he cried and held him."

When I pointed out that that was a little sudden and asked why she had not included this in the initial post, she replied,

"he loved how soft he was and just kissed his chest.(i now but it happened to me......) he loved him. "

Now, as I said, it may make me look bad for being so sceptical, and in the game I tried to go with it, but I must say that it does feel as though she was merely using the double suicide as a device to get the main attention back to her character and I don't really know how to deal with this. It did not make sense in the story, as her character is utterly unaffected by the recent violent demise of his parents in all the previous posts, then suddenly had this complete breakdown. It's as though she was playing two characters in the same body, and her explanation (too much sugar from a soda) does not make much sense, either.

If this really happened to her IRL, I'd not really feel comfortable with confronting her and asking whether she's only using this as an attention-seeking device. I did tell her that I did not feel it fit into the thread, but she did not respond to that.

I don't think that I want to continue this thread much longer if the entire point she sees in playing is not having the character interact in interesting ways but have them out-angst my character who is not even angsting - which seems to have been the main point of the thread so far, apart from trying to get my character to kiss hers.

My favourite RPGing site surpasses itself

2008-07-12T21:46:26Z

When I joined the HP forum RPGing site I'm on most often, I thought that most of the RPGers might be really bad, but that there were still a few truly stellar ones, far and few between. Most of them left, trickling away one by one, and then I had to go on a hiatus of my own, only to come back to find out that the site seems to have gotten worse than it used to be.

Here are two examples of what I found during my trawls, and from what I have read during the past week, they seem to be rather representative examples, too.
The first example merely had me stare with amazement, but the second one still fills me with gut-wrenching terror.

Title:king arthur...(open romance..whatever)

Post: (btw whats the evil guy's name)

katherine Marschby was queen guineveres lady in waiting. her long black hair was down to her waist. she was close to the quenn, almost like her sister. she held her little girl on her lap. that was her only secret. the childs father was _____________(whatevr the evil guys name is)

Title: That's a woman(open/hp/romance/open to first Draco)

Post: TW: Rose rolled her eyes as she walked into the compartment.
"Hello Draco." She hissed.
No one had recognized her, she'd changed, last year she was quite large, achne all over, and ugly.

Now, now Rose was beautiful, no one knew it was her, no achne, skinny, 116 lb's, a perfect figure, so she didn't expect Draco to recognize her if no one else had.

"The rest of the compartments are full." She told him, crossing her long legs.

Rose-
(watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJoHGm7adxw&feature=related she's the woman)

Fine, I was not thrilled, but I did join, trying not to be too OOC and ignoring that she's taking liberties with tone and wording that I can't see anyone take with him - at least not without him trying to end the situation, either by leaving, or hexing her.

Still, since the RPGer in question is very young, I was not too bothered. Until...

Isabella_Cullen: (join?)

TW: ((as who?))

Rose rolled her eyes as she looked at her book and smiled a little as she pulled out her bookmark, a picture of her and her best friend.

She glanced up at them a little and smiled and then looked at the picture and shifted so it was under her leg.

"It's nice to know I won't have to deal you you idiots talking to me." She mumbled as she continued to read.

Isabella_Cullen: ((a friend of the malfoys, and one of dracos ex-girlfriends)

Britatny Turner stepped intot eh compartment, "kay, love you too, bye!" She laughed kissing her boyfriend vince as he walked away.
She turned and saw draco, "Hey!" She said sitting. They were really good friends, but not as close since the break-up last year.

Everyone, i mean
everyone at hogwarts knew that Britatny was a vampire. And one fo the most beautiful too. She looked at teh other girl in the compartment, "And you are?" She asked flatly.

TW: "None of your buisness, Britatny." Rose hissed at her as she glanced up at her.
Rose knew Britatny was beautiful, but she'd been getting looks form guys that wouldn't look twice for her which made her feel wonderful.
Rose straightened herself up a little as she switched her legs.

IC: Brittany hated that girl.
Between her and that girl, they evenly got guys asking them out, and whisteling when they walked by, But more for her now that she wasn't so, ugly. They were afraid of Brittany. She was in slytherin, and a vampire.
Brittany looked at draco and looked back out teh compartment.
Vince was in ravenclaw, he was a jerk, but she dated him anyway.
When she kissed ihm, she just pecked, she never made-out with people.
Plus, she had to be careful, humans still smelt very appitizing to her.

(The girls have a talk about how they hate each other, but not really, a lot of quasi mind-reading occurs when characters react to the unspoken thoughts of other characters, we learn that Isabella_Cullen might not only be a vampire, but also a werewolf. Crookshanks makes a cameo and is brought back to Hermione by her friend TW, who doesn't have to leave the compartment for that.

I decide that, since there are no and have never been any vampires at Hogwarts, the most logical reaction for a Hogwarts student to someone saying they are a vampire would be to believe that they have some kind of disorder or just want the attention. Also, I decide that I don't really fancy being made the ex-girlfriend by a raving vampire Sue, so I ask, not too politely, I realise that now (ignore my Draco. I just can't pull him off):

Me:
((Er, ex-girlfriend? Can we lose that bit? Also, what year are we in?))

The compartment had been crowded with what, by and large, shared a lot of characteristics with a flock of geese, but which also could be described as "two girls".
Draco did not look up, his eyes fixed on the page, only his hands were cramping ever so slightly around the book. Next to him, he could feel Gregory getting tense and heard a low rumbling sound, which he knew meant that the other boy was trying hard not to laugh.
From the corner of his eye, he shot him a warning glance. He was not having this. Gregory shot him and apologetic look and then looked out of the window, carefully avoiding Vincent's eyes.
The whole school knew that this girl, Britany, had some kind of disorder which lead her to believe that she was a vampire, and it was grinding on Draco's nerves.

IC: (Brittany isa REAL vampire.)
Brittany looked around remembering seh was thirsty.
She started to shake a bit and mumbled soemthing.
She was fine...for now.

Me: ((Er. But vampires aren't allowed at Hogwarts.
Also, we still need to fix a year, and I'd like to know if we have to have Brittany be Draco's ex - it's not canon, so I'd like to leave that out. It might add more potential to the possible romance stories.))

Draco pretended not to be aware of his guests, but the book he was reading was not particularly entertaining, and seeing as there was nothing to prepare for yet, he turned to Gregory.
"Where is Pansy?" he asked in a low voice, even though he was well aware that the compartment's other occupants would be able to hear him, too. His opposite's face took on a sombre look.
"I am not sure," Gregory replied.
Silence fell between the two, and Draco wondered whether he should just return to the Prefect's compartment, but a strange sense of camaraderie prevented that. He could not well leave the other two alone with the girls. He frowned. What was he thinking.
"I will be back presently," he announced to his dorm mates, who started to look increasingly aggravated as realisation dawned. "Ladies." He nodded at them, a small smirk on his face, went out of the compartment, and left.
Gregory turned to the girls.
"Sorry about that," he told them, feeling that courtesy was necessary when their housemates were concerned. The beauty of the two girls made him feel rather uncomfortable, and the fact that Draco was not here did not make it easier. Gregory was not good at talking. He hoped that Draco would indeed return presently. He did not notice that his eyes had travelled to Brittany's face all by themselves and now seemed to be stuck, glued to her pale skin.

Sadly, the thread died when the third player left:

Isabella_Cullen: (well, if i am not allowed to play a vampire, ill leave, and everyone adds twists tot eh story, and i will NOTY be controled by you, jerk.)

And exhibit B is not a lone execption from the rule, it's becoming average.

If I can't spend a day on a Harry Potter role-playing forum without being called a "controlling jerk" for not wanting people called various variations on "isabella_cullen" auto my or other canon characters into being a spouse to their vampire Sue, I am truly scared.

silksock @ 2008-03-02T17:47:00

2008-03-02T16:53:09Z

One of the many good reasons for hating the Twilight series by Meyer is the constant influx of really, really bad HP RPGers we've been getting in the past months.

I really hope they will all sod off to Equinox.com and don't troll our threads anymore, but seeing as the HEX staff is a bunch of idiots that is not likely at all, since "There is nothing to talk about anymore so we have to move on from the HP thing".

Yeah, right, and the best site to go to to get over Harry Potter is without a doubt the site called "Hogwarts Extreme". Within the chatty areas, this makes some sort of sense, even though the constant "Oh, will you shut up about Harry Potter already!" replies to HP discussions threads really suck, because lots of people have friends on the board they don't want to lose by leaving the board, but in the days of Myspace and Facebook, there are really other options than spamming forums on a HP RPG board.

It's getting even worse in the RP sections. Still, with darling Laura as busy with the Equinox crew and HEX going down the drains I don't know where I'll get my HP RPGing fix from now on. HEX always had a very small number of surprisingly few really, really good players, but they've all left because the board at large sucks or stopped playing.

Now, there seem to be only old hands who actually RP HP topics, the rest have moved on to other things.

The worst them being shitty romance RPGs based in the Twilight verse.