|
Lance Streetman posted:You know, I like anime. And I could mention plenty of shows that don't objectify little girls. But ya'll really need to stop talk about anime, and get back on topic of weirdos married to animes. I don't have a story about wierdos married to anime. I have the story of parents willfully ignoring their child's mental illness. All the way through high school, I had a kid in my year that clearly had problems. He didn't socialize at all although that's not really surprising in this thread. His main problem was that he was extremely gullible. His other problems included being shorter and lighter than anybody, having a bowl cut, a very short temper, tendancies to use violence against people and their belongings, his parents unwillingness to conside that he might need special ed. and a vision of relationships that would have made him a complete stalker if he had dared to spend any time at all out of school, home or the commuting between them. At first he was the mandatory laughing stock of your average 11-12 years old monsters but after a while most people left him alone and blamed his parents for not doing anything. They were rich and connected, all they lacked was recognising that their kid had problems. I wish I could write his name because it stood out and it was terribly funny. At the time there was a TV series with a pathetic and victimized character with that name and similar behavior. Imagine a kid in Poland named Ralph Wiggum or something. He once told me out of nowhere that his mother shaved his legs. He then rolled up the leg of his trousers and, yep, shaved leg. He was madly in love with a girl that he would have stalked and did stalk on a school trip, sneaking his way into observing who she was talking to while in a train. He was terrible at it but it was pretty freaky. Since he couldn't (and wouldn't, he didn't put any force behind his blows) harm people by force, he tried to start fights with them, get them to punch him and then go and get them punished. He was so ineffectual that people just ignored the tiny guy trying to punch them. He then switched to a nastier method: dumping people's notes from their bag when they weren't looking or had just left it in class and making sure they were mixed up which is a bit of a pain since you then had 300 free sheets of paper to sort. His greatest moment that I know of was stealing the crutches from some guy who had dared talk to the girl he fancied, then disassembling them and hiding them all over the school.
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 09:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 15:34 |
|
|
Ooops sorry for the derail. I also knew a rich guy who was very obviously autistic and his parents were in denial too. He was like 34 and he knew all the Disney movies by heart, he didn't bathe and didn't socialize and would quote Disney movies at you when you talked to him. His parents always said that he was "just a little eccentric" and apparently tried to sue a doctor who diagnosed him with autism when he was a kid.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 10:02
|
|
|
hallo spacedog posted:re:Ojamajo Doremi: I posted about this earlier but I think the phone app ate my post or something. I agree with you on this one. I watched about a year worth of it a long time ago when I was living in Japan and it was on tv, but it was probably the only magical girl anime tv show that I can think of that a: didn't in some way creepily sexualize little girls AT ALL and b: had rather rich, solid characterization far better than you'd think it would have being some random kid's show. It's genuinely heartwarming in places and one of the few anime shows I really wouldn't hesitate to show a little kid. I just thought I'd make mention, bridging "anime talk" with "creeper talk" 4Kids entertainment's press release for acquiring this show to be dubbed included the line "the designs are pretty, so they appeal to girls, but they're also very sexy, so the boys like them." Yep
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 10:09
|
|
|
Adelheid Stark posted:I just thought I'd make mention, bridging "anime talk" with "creeper talk"  And think "sexy"? I mean... what? How? 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 10:20
|
|
|
the kawaiiest posted:What the gently caress? Are you serious? How can someone look at this It made me really upset.  Let me point out that in the original series (which 4kids dubbed) they are in third grade, and in this particular picture they are probably in sixth grade.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 10:31
|
|
|
the kawaiiest posted:What the gently caress? Are you serious? How can someone look at this Some people's minds are not built correctly.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 10:40
|
|
|
I remember when watching TV didn't make me paranoid about who made the show and for whom. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 10:42
|
|
|
Lady of the Beech posted:There are disgusting people out there who do, sadly enough. Once I was searching for the official manga adaptation of Doremi to see if there was a translation, and I accidentally came across some Doremi hentai doujinshi.  I guess deep down I knew there was Doremi porn out there. I just... I wanted to believe that there wasn't any. You know? These people ruin everything that I love. Everything.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 11:48
|
|
|
Adelheid Stark posted:I just thought I'd make mention, bridging "anime talk" with "creeper talk" 4Shame, 4Kids. I think it's inevitable that creepy weirdo fans will sexualize anything (just look at MLP eughh) but it's unfortunate a large company chose to perpetuate this instead of talking up other, more positive points in their press release. Sadly not surprising though. Back to the topic at hand this reminds me that there was a creepy kid in my middle school who had the whole series of Sailor Moon on vhs back when the fansubs were the only choice that existed in english for series 3-5 and he would try to get girls to do him sexual favors in return for lending the tapes. Yeah.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 14:33
|
|
|
the kawaiiest posted:What the gently caress? Are you serious? How can someone look at this Yeah, seriously those are the most unsexy anime girls I've ever seen. I mean I see a lot of pictures of 'lolita' animes, little girls who are clearly eight but are flashing their panties or giving bedroom eyes or whatever. They are intended to be sexy, creepy as that is. But these are 100% unsexualised. There's pretty much no way draw anime girls in a less sexy way while still making them appealing to real girls. Can I just jump in and say I loving loathe people who are into lolicon? Aside from the obvious reasons, the thing I hate most is that they refer to all little girls as 'lolis'. They are no longer children, they are reduced to a fetish fantasy. Total objectification. It's on the same level as calling all women bitches or hos. I guess that when they see a drawing of little girls, they don't need to be sexualised, they're still 'lolis' and therefore wank fodder by default.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 17:29
|
|
|
the kawaiiest posted:What the gently caress? Are you serious? How can someone look at this The Internet has people sexualising cartoon ponies and spending their valentine cakes with them, so this is just fair game. I just imagine them looking at this picture, sit down in deep though, and with a sagely finger resting on their chin, quietly proclaim, "I shall be the fucker and these children shall be my fuckee." The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Feb 17, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 17:41
|
|
|
the kawaiiest posted:What the gently caress? Are you serious? How can someone look at this It's 4kids, so it probably will get halted shortly into the series as people get sick of them changing a lot of poo poo and then another company will pick it up and actually not maul the source.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 19:31
|
|
|
Weird commission guy (Joel) came to jam again last night. He talked to the guy next to me about his ideas for future commissions. It included Fred or Barney being violent towards their wives and George Jetson using a flamethrower on Spacely and yelling, "No, you're fired!" The guy honestly thought these were hilarious ideas. He also tried to convince one of the best artists in the group to charge less money for drawing on a 4x6 inch page. She stood her ground and said it would cast much as the 11x17s that she does. The guy was trying to pry more commissions out of people and mentioned needing to save money for comic con. I think I also overheard him saying that he's been regularly spending over $1300 a month on commissions. At some point during jam, a friend of mine mentioned that he thought sharks were adorable, so I took the opportunity to draw an adorable shark holding a heart that said "Love Me" as a Valentine. So later, Joel comes up to me and says he liked my shark drawing and asked how much it would cost for me to draw it again for him for next week. I had no idea, as I had never actually taken money for a drawing before (only food bank donations). Joel then talked at me for about 20 minutes about Justice League, Ninja Turtles and eventually got around to Sonic comics. They're the only comics he can read now! I redrew the shark at dinner in 10 minutes and am gonna get 10 bucks for it. And on the subject of comic jam, I should bring up Creepy Tim. Creepy Tim comes to comic jams and always draws large breasted women in vaguely sexual situations. Oh, and he makes sure to give them prominent nipples. He's not even a very good artist, so it comes off as even more creepy. See, our jam had been notorious for absurd, inappropriate humour. We'd draw snowmen being repeatedly raped, masturbating dinosaurs, disgustingly fat people, sticky Auny May and the gay secks. Whenever Tim participated, he'd try to turn the jokes around to be about sexy ladies. One of his first panels was about a woman sitting on a dog to collect her menstrual blood. He always claims to have a girlfriend, but I don't believe him. Not when he refers to women as "females" and draws the way he does. Creepy Tim is likely in his late 30's, early 40's. We actually got warned to tone down our comics, simply because the store owner was too creeped out by his panels. No one wanted to specifically call him out on it, so we all had to tone it down. I'll see if I can't find some of his panels. Edit: I had to do a little digging, but I found some. 
Nessa fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 17, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 19:34
|
|
|
Sloober posted:It's 4kids, so it probably will get halted shortly into the series as people get sick of them changing a lot of poo poo and then another company will pick it up and actually not maul the source. 4kids already dubbed the first series a while ago (and yes, the dubbing was pretty bad. Their method of translation was to mute the audio and guess at what they're saying, which is in contrast with their translation of the first Pokemon episode, which was spot on save for name changes and one or two lines) It doesn't look like Doremi was licensed since.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 19:40
|
|
|
Corridor posted:Can I just jump in and say I loving loathe people who are into lolicon? Aside from the obvious reasons, the thing I hate most is that they refer to all little girls as 'lolis'. They are no longer children, they are reduced to a fetish fantasy. Total objectification. It's on the same level as calling all women bitches or hos. I guess that when they see a drawing of little girls, they don't need to be sexualised, they're still 'lolis' and therefore wank fodder by default. The sad thing is I've seen otakus and weeaboos referring to little girls as "lolis" even when they themselves aren't into lolicon. I know Danny Choo does that, too, which doesn't help at all of course since he's the otaku equivalent of Jesus Christ. Lady of the Beech posted:4kids already dubbed the first series a while ago (and yes, the dubbing was pretty bad. Their method of translation was to mute the audio and guess at what they're saying, which is in contrast with their translation of the first Pokemon episode, which was spot on save for name changes and one or two lines)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2012 23:52
|
|
|
Nessa posted: Wow, that's just... wow. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 00:48
|
|
|
Nessa posted:He's not even a very good artist This is a bit of an understatement, isn't it
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 01:39
|
|
|
LyonsLions posted:
Yup. Apparently, he's been working on writing and drawing his own comic book. It looks just as bad. I should also note that all of those women were introduced into the page by him, usually for no reason at all. Me and other people would purposely ignore those panels when sitting next to him.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 03:10
|
|
|
Speaking of bad artists, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2111489276/extreme-lowrider-hd-remix/ I know I say this a lot but drat this is some serious dunning-kruger. e: there's also a comic http://extremelowrider.com/comic/default.html
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 03:54
|
|
|
the kawaiiest posted:Speaking of bad artists, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2111489276/extreme-lowrider-hd-remix/ That is well and truly awful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 04:17
|
|
|
I don't understand what's happening in that comic at all.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 04:21
|
|
|
LyonsLions posted:That is well and truly awful. True, but "he thinks he ownz dis towne" might be the best sentence I've read all week.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 04:22
|
|
|
Vagabundo posted:I don't understand what's happening in that comic at all. This is probably a good thing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 04:23
|
|
|
I refuse to believe this isn't a joke.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 05:12
|
|
|
For only $150 you can write the game ending! What a steal! I hope they don't get too many takers for that!
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 05:16
|
|
|
the kawaiiest posted:e: there's also a comic http://extremelowrider.com/comic/default.html It's like Sweet Joe And Hella Jeff, but I get the odd feeling that this is not a joke, and the artist is talking it 100% seriously.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 05:19
|
|
|
The Ghoul posted:I refuse to believe this isn't a joke. e: quote:This special blend of creators is unlike any other game studio. We may be small, but that doesn’t mean our love for the project is any less. We prefer Quality over quantity. I must be wrong. This has to be a troll. the kawaiiest fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Feb 18, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 05:26
|
|
|
Nessa posted:For only $150 you can write the game ending! What a steal! Apparently only one person in Kickstarter can get it anyway, sadly enough. That said, if I had the cash to throw at this (and had any expectation of the project reaching $500 on Kickstarter anyway), I would totally organize a coalition to fund the "write the ending" reward and collaborate to write the most heartbreaking paean to the world of lowriding that we could manage. Or, y'know, "and then Lowrider was the zombies." One of the two.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2012 09:18
|
|
|
Nessa posted:I...don't understand. And I don't think I want to.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2012 12:33
|
|
|
That comic needs to be cross-posted with the political cartoons thread. Not because it is a political cartoon, per se, but because it can give Muir a run for his money on being the most nonsensical piece of writing ever.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2012 19:09
|
|
|
Shbobdb posted:That comic needs to be cross-posted with the political cartoons thread. Not because it is a political cartoon, per se, but because it can give Muir a run for his money on being the most nonsensical piece of writing ever. that's cheating, though: i'm pretty sure this isn't an actual comic but a collection of individual creepy panels the guy has done. besides, despite his commendable efforts, he's still not quite as misogynistic as muir.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2012 20:02
|
|
|
Ask Me About Dating A Girl With Jrockers In Her Head "I can't do this anymore. If anyone knew about what was going on in our lives, if anyone outside our circle heard about it, they'd think it was crazy. They'd think we're crazy. I can't live like this, I need to get better, and I can't do it like this. Muses are not real." These were the words I spoke to Janelle, my girlfriend of four years, just before she kicked me out of our apartment and threatened to call the cops on me. They are the words that finally ended our relationship after my dozens of attempts to 'let her go'. They are the words that I had been thinking from the very beginning, but never had the courage to speak aloud. I met Janelle on livejournal, unsurprisingly. Janelle and I liked jrock. You know, that music from Japan that's like regular lovely, generic (and occasionally not lovely nor generic) music from Japan but is different because slender young Japanese men make up the bulk of it and also wear eyeliner. Janelle advertised on a fan-community for Dir en grey that she was starting a roleplaying game (RP) where all of us would pretend to be this or that celebrity, make posts and have drama. I joined, and we became fast friends on AIM, chatting almost every day. Shortly after I broke up with my girlfriend, she and I began a long-distance relationship - me from the Seattle area, her in rural New York. We'd eat through hours of pre-paid long distance phone cards chatting about our favorite Jrockers and her terrible life with her absent, substance-abusing mother who left her at home all day to look after her three other children. We were teenagers - she was sixteen and I was eighteen - but to be completely honest, looking back on it I still feel as if I have no excuse. Janelle believed in muses. She did not come up with her concept on her own, rather, it was something her apparently-schizophrenic-for-real adult friend, May, thought up. May was dating Star, who also believed. I met May only once, she was quiet, and it seemed her muse was only ever her having a meltdown at just the moment it would ruin anyone's fun. All of these people and a few others were centered around a game on livejournal, and all of them had 'muses' in their head of their characters. Even though these were obviously really people who were actually performing in concerts, posting pictures of their cats in blogs and so on, they believed their fictionalized people were real personalities who lived similar lives, but existed as entirely separate personalities. I'm embarrassed to say I went along with the concept. It was pretty much just LARPing, and like other people in the thread, I often felt I had living characters, so it wasn't really such a strange idea. If you're writing a character every single day, it's not difficult to believe that some part of it lives in you. Couple that with severe self-esteem and appeasement issues that I had after being sexually abused by a relative, a situation that had only really changed a few years prior, I was ready to go along with anything that made me feel like I was part of something and loved and looked after. Some kids run away, get involved with drugs, get involved with partrying, anything to escape reality. I was drawn into a web of lies that, in the end, amounted to little more than a lot of excuses for people to do whatever the hell they wanted, sleep around while maintaining multiple romantic relationships, and never, ever be accountable for what they did, because it wasn't them. For people like Janelle, they would just have random moments where the other character took over. This would happen without warning and definitely without any sort of permission. I feigned the same, and honestly it did feel nice to just pretend to be someone else without all the real-world problems I had. Off the top of my head, Janelle had around ten jrockers in her head, and many of them were in dramatic, tumultuous relationships with other people's jrockers in their heads. Which is weird enough, though somewhat common in RPing, but because these muses would 'come out', that amounted to making out with lots of people. And loving some of them. Janelle went on a trip to London all on her own (we lived in Seattle, she put it all on her credit card, I was not invited) to visit some friends and their muses - some of whom were the X-Men, apparently. She frequently received guests from other parts of the country, once even her Gackt-muse dressed up very nicely, met the friend in a limo and took her - or um, 'him', the other muse - to one of the nicest steakhouses in town. She frequently courted women all the time in the guise of being in character, even having them in the apartment we shared. I should mention here she was an art school drop out who worked retail who could hardly afford it, and she never raised a high bar for our own relation, tending to be stingy as well as neglectful, and fond of saying very mean things to me in public. As the guy I was very much expected to always take her on the date, and we never, ever did anything that nice, and she in fact usually bagged out on doing things like going to my birthday dinner with my family, or coming to my choir concerts, or my beloved grandfather's memorial service. Actually, when I talk about Janelle, I usually just talk about those behaviors and leave out the muses, because frankly, she was basically a textbook case of dating an emotional abuser - shortly after I dated her I read '10 signs your wife/girlfriend is emotionally abusive/bullying' and practically used it as a checklist. But to be honest, even being direct about that awful treatment is playing down the crazy. Toward the end I could not do something so simple as go to the zoo or IHOP with 'just' Janelle. Not only was I likely to meet one of her muses, there would be a tagalong, some other friend pretending to be some other jrocker instead. Shortly after our break up, I tallied all of the people I knew she had been with, or rather, that her muses were involved with. She definitely had sex with eight or nine different women while were dating (excluding a girl she dated openly, because that's a different story), and I believe I tallied the women she made out with to be around 27. In the end, I got out. Janelle drove away all of our friends that weren't interested in becoming involved in muses and making out with her, or claimed they 'hated' her (even when they tried to include her, as my best buddy always did in spite of her doing things like sitting on his lap and making him very uncomfortable), thus making me feel terrible for hanging out with them. In our last days, I was a complete wreck. I was attempting therapy for PTSD with an ineffective therapist whose approach was, in my opinion, making things a lot worse (I have one I work well with now). My abusive relative had moved back to the state, making it very difficult to navigate my family without having to see him. I was working at a fast food chain and genuinely felt like it was pretty much the only time I had peace in my life. Meanwhile, in a time where I was desperate for any sort of love, stability, and support, she would wake me up at three in the morning because the Akira-from-Plastic-Tree in her head had a fight with the Ryutaro-from-Plastic-Tree in Anorexic-Rachel-From-MN's head and now Akira needed a hug. Even though it would all be kissed better in the morning, she would send Ryutaro-Rachel flowers (no, I never got flowers, but uh, that's fine, guys don't want flowers - except Ryutaro and Akira are guys, so--) and oh by the way next month Rachel is here and she's underage and we're going to bang in your apartment and drink your booze. It's safe to say I was a bit of a doormat. If it's confusing to you why I would stay in there - why anyone stays in a toxic relationship - rest assured, sometimes I look back on it and I am just as confused. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I loved her, and when you love someone and they need you you stick it out. Yeah, doormat. Honestly, I've had a lot of trouble committing this to words because it's all so convoluted, there were a lot of people involved, and my ability to recall it is pretty limited. I'm rather emotionally blocked about the whole thing since it was such a difficult time in my life. I think I might've posted about this before, but I thought this would be an appropriate story to share in this thread. You know, people thinking they're inhabited by fictional beings in their heads and living out their lives - sometimes even for days at a time, and enough to sustain relationships. If there's interest, I'll write more on the topic, what I can scrape together and remember, and what I think might be of personal interest. This is really personal, so I'm sure on a forum with thousands of people is just the right place to air it out. Honestly, this thread has encouraged me to finally really start writing and talking about it. Many years later it's difficult to admit my level of involvement, and that telling the truth about it would make the people involve seem like insane monsters. I actually deeply sympathize with Janelle, though it doesn't excuse how she treated me or anyone else. She came from a very rough background, and poverty, and who wouldn't want to pretend to be a willowy, sophisticated, rich Jrock guy who was the opposite of who she was? Janelle was ordinary - I thought she was gorgeous and way better than my 'range', at the time, but looking on old pictures I'd say she was cute, pretty, even, but ordinary. She bucks the trend of this thread by being very obsessed with clothes (of which she shoplifted thousands of dollars worth of) and appearances. However, I think anyone could agree all was hardly right with her. Rachel-from-MN's therapist once said she had borderline behavior, and I'm inclined to agree. So here are some other posts I had in mind, and if anyone has questions, I'll answer: Muses Are People Too The Real Girl Who Dated A Fictional Guy Don't You Think You're Getting A Muse For Him? It's Not Like A Cult (fallout from the breakout/attempts to sever from the 'muse community')
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 02:58
|
|
|
slow dive posted:It's Not Like A Cult (fallout from the breakout/attempts to sever from the 'muse community') Do this one, I'm very interested in stories about people breaking away from this kind of thing after spending so much time immersed in it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 03:19
|
|
|
slow dive posted:Don't You Think You're Getting A Muse For Him?[/b] Everything sounds hella interesting but I wanna hear about this especially!
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 03:39
|
|
|
I would love to hear more crazy stories about muse-encounters. I used to think I had muses, as well. I was very, very heavily in to the livejournal RPing scene (I have 10+ years of RP under my belt) and frequented icsecrets (like postsecrets, only the secrets are made from the character's point of view and all comments are made in-character unless otherwise stated) as well as rpsecrets (holy poo poo, that place.) I RPed for years on LJ. Some of it was incredibly fun, some of it was really hosed up, and a lot of it stirred up some crazy out-of-character drama. It took me a while to realize that what I thought everyone meant by "Muse" was wrong. No, no. There is a difference between writing for a character (what I thought it meant) and honestly believing that character exists in your head as another legitimate personality (what it really meant.) I have had friends who had Jrockers, anime, and manga characters living in their heads. There have also been people who were thoroughly convinced they were the reincarnation of dead Jrockers or anime characters, as opposed to having a muse for them or "dating" them on the "astral plane." These are not people you want to know, let alone write with. Not only do the "Muses" have a tendency to make appearances without warning, they and their ... conduits tend to get extremely uppity with other muses of the same kind who live in the "headspace" of some other person. This has resulted in people and their muses lashing out not only online, but also in real life. Take, for example, an Edward muse from Fullmetal Alchemist getting pissed off because someone else's Edward muse was having sex with Envy instead of Al (what the gently caress.) I poo poo you not. Three people had an "in-character" fight at a convention over livejournal roleplay muses. It is not an isolated event. It was not LARP. These were people who honestly believed those personalities existed in their heads. It is striking how many of the people who RP do this poo poo and honestly believe they have these characters living inside their heads. It has created RP-related communities strictly to bash other players and other "muses." There have been people so driven by the angst their muses are put through that they resort to self-harm. Cutting was really popular. There were a few people who would take pictures of the mutilation and post it to their personal livejournals, explaining how so-and-so muse was so upset and they just couldn't take it any more.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 03:58
|
|
|
Isn't a muse a goddess from Greek myth who inspires artists?
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 04:21
|
|
|
Lady of the Beech posted:Isn't a muse a goddess from Greek myth who inspires artists? More please. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 04:36
|
|
|
Yes, but the term became very heavily twisted by RPers. The muses became more than inspiration, they became "real." Like a spirit trapped in their body. I don't think the majority of these people have mental illnesses causing them to believe this poo poo. I honestly think that these crazy beliefs were fueled by peer pressure from other RPers. Back in the early 90s when RP was starting out on AOL, online roleplay was nothing like that. It was strictly for fun and a way to get together with other people to write. I didn't notice a huge shift to the crazy side until RPers began to flock to Livejournal (there was elitism on AOL, but it was easy enough to ignore.) Livejournal gave RPers much easier ways to "connect" with their characters. For example, many RPers created journals for each of their characters. These journals would have icons of the characters and journal posts would be in-character unless stated otherwise. Many RPers also had a "musebox," where all of their muses would have their journals added as friends and they would interact with each other. Yes, you read that right, players would log in and out of their muses' journals so the muses could have conversations with each other online. RPers would allow other RPers to join the musebox to interact, as well. The Livejournal RP communities gave players everything they needed to breed Crazy. There were locations laid out (some fantasy, some real life,) plots to work on together, and everything was documented and easy to find and follow. It gave RPers the chance to fully immerse themselves in the made-up world. As it picked up steam, the pressure to be "IC"/in-character grew. People who had muses who were not "ic" enough to other people started to get called out, ridiculed, etc.. That gave way to several communities, like the secrets communities, the anon memes, etc.. When that started happening, I noticed a greater increase in people who believed they had honest-to-god personalities of these characters and/or people living in their heads. Don't get me wrong, the pressure to be ic and the bashing started before LJ, but when RP became popular there, it got really, really nuts. A lot of these muses would also have personal, ic AIM accounts, especially when the option to link accounts became available. I did this. However, I was not of the Batshit insane variety who honestly thought that my Usagi muse was coming forth to talk to Seiya through AIM. It was just an easy way for me to keep track of character-related things. There were RPers who gained RP-e-fame for having the most ic muse. These people were also usually batshit insane, incredibly elitist, and wrote purple prose out the rear end. The RP-elitism started before LJ. I first noticed it in AOL chats, mostly because I RPed several Sailor Moon characters and Ayeka from Tenchi Muyo! and I was involved in the "hierarchy." There was a point in time where I was considered the best Ayeka RPer in AOL chats and people would poo poo all over themselves to RP with me. I was also once harassed over AOL because I had a screen name that another RPer's muse felt they deserved. The player ("mun") of the muse then took it upon themselves to IM me repeatedly to tell me that my Usagi did not deserve the screen name because her Usagi was older than mine. I told her to stop or I would block her, and she told me she couldn't because Usagi was just so upset over it. I blocked her. She created another screen name and continued to harass me because Usagi was so upset that her relationship with Mamoru was jeopardized. I said "gently caress it" and deleted the screen name. That is the only instance of muse-related bullshit I encountered before LJ RP got big. A lot of RPers would exchange home addresses and send ic snail-mail back and forth, including gifts. Sometimes, when a friendship turned bad and poo poo went down, there were gifts of hate-mail and threats. I was once asked by an RPer to share my address with them because their Miroku muse had found the perfect pair of panties for my Princess Kakyuu and they simply had to buy them and send them to me. I declined. For what it's worth, I was also involved quite heavily in Yahoo!chat, MSN, and e-mail RP, and I almost never encountered muse-crazy people. It seemed to strictly be linked to Livejournal RPers. The RP-related elitism on Yahoo seemed more focused on how much flowery purple prose you could poo poo out while RPing, because it was cool to write about "twin glistening orbs that shone like emeralds in the bright sunlight, twinkling like the heavenly stars that hung haphazardly in the silken blue of the night sky" etc., etc., vomit everywhere. Because I need to spend ten minutes reading about how Sephiroth opens a door and takes a single step in to the room, then spend 45 minutes writing a 1k+ word reply about Kadaj narrowing his eyes in disgust. deadly claris fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Feb 20, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 05:14
|
|
|
I was part of an RP during a really lovely part of my life too. And just like you said the more insane of them always ran off to LJ because they thought our rules of "stay in character" and "So-and-so isn't a loving pedophile" was too restrictive for them. It's always loving Livejournal.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 05:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 15:34 |
|
|
Holy christ, I know people like that as well. They had their Livejournals and their in-character posts. I think they started to ease up on it since people that knew them who didn't give a gently caress about larping and other such stupidity were actively mocking them, while the less crazy people who do that poo poo pretty much talked them down from the ledge before they dove into full-fledged insanity. Nowadays, I see some indignant posts on Facebook on my newsfeed about how they get made fun of for cosplaying and larping but apparently it's socially acceptable to wear a sports team shirt in public and how wearing a rugby jersey or a cricket shirt is tantamount to cosplaying.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2012 05:36
|
|