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A rant
Topic Started: May 23 2011, 01:23 AM (90 Views)
Dinah May Anderson
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I am getting tired of this site in oh so many ways, but the one thing that most makes EoM a burden to me these days is that it no longer offers an escape to me.

I often hear "I come here to escape because my real life sucks" from people.

I come here to escape too. My real life sucks too.

But what may make me different from some other people here is that I do not need to get into character to escape. What I need is a nice friendly place where I can just hang out. Dinah, Cassandra, Angela, Albert... they are all characters I use to write with. The writing is important to me, but it's only writing and posting. Those characters are not my escape. They are just characters I write.

But whatever I say or suggest or advocate is constantly opposed, constantly picked apart. This site is my escape - not the characters I play here.

I want to have an escape too, and my escape is this site, not getting into a different head, not being someone I am not. The thought of "I was only being in character" is completely alien to me, because I am who I am and that's who I am. My escape is the computer, not the character. My escape is not being someone I am not, it is having a place to spent time at that is not the place my real life is.

I am not sure if that explains anything, but even if not, I still had to get this off my chest.
Edited by Dinah May Anderson, May 23 2011, 01:29 AM.
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Ilzt'rak

Probably not the most welcome addition to the rant thread but I do understand what you are talking about. Never in any rp that I have been in (and I have been in one too many) have I ever personified my character, have I ever made someone who is "me" in order to compensate for difficulties in life. I have had characters I write fade in and out of my muse and I have even done improv exercises with Marie where we interact as characters we have written, but the latter was always centered on working through writer's block or just reliving old writing experiences we had together.

For what it is worth, I am sorry that you are going through that frustration. I do not think it is as alien as it may have seemed at the time you wrote this but I cannot really speak for anyone but myself. I hope things settle a bit for you so that you can get back to the writing you enjoy.
Mod is my LA Asari: she is ageless, vibrant and she makes my Mass erect.
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Deveraux Dixon
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Love is cursed by Monogamy
[The following is just my perspective on the subject. I am not in anyway saying that the replies above me are incorrect or malformed; we all have different experiences in RP, and they lead us to form different ideas about how things should work, and how things *do* work for us.]

tl;dr

So I'm in the middle, here.

I can see your frustration, Dinah--and by extension yours as well, Ilz--because melding with your character with your personal identity brings a lot of complications especially on a fantasy site. It limits people's capacity for playing with you because while they might be nice to you IRL, for example, perhaps someone's character hates yours and you take it personally? It's just not a level plane of thinking to compare yourself to a character who isn't you, and to whom things can happen that cannot happen to you, etc.

My escape is the computer, yes, but that escape is made up of multiple things--IM, facebook, reading news articles, sending emails, writing fanfiction, talking to people associated with the previous activities, and EoM--so EoM doesn't bear the burden of being the outlet for my personal stuff. The act of RPing--the brainstorming, the planning, executing the plots, writing threads and discussing possibilities and results with other people--that's my escape. Not literally being my character. People's players can become part of that escape--but for me, once I start talking to you about RL stuff, it's no longer related to the site--because I would never want to see personal information that I'm not prepared for the whole site to see up on EoM--so it needs to be taken somewhere else. (as I've been saying, IM or email)

Being IN character and being MY character are two different things. The former is possible. The latter, no.
Edited by Deveraux Dixon, May 27 2011, 10:47 AM.
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Dinah May Anderson
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Deveraux Dixon
May 27 2011, 10:20 AM
[The following is just my perspective on the subject. I am not in anyway saying that the replies above me are incorrect or malformed; we all have different experiences in RP, and they lead us to form different ideas about how things should work, and how things *do* work for us.]
...

So I'm in the middle, here.

I can see your frustration, Dinah ... because melding with your character with your personal identity brings a lot of complications especially on a fantasy site...

My escape is the computer, yes, but that escape is made up of multiple things--IM, facebook, reading news articles, sending emails, writing fanfiction, talking to people associated with the previous activities, and EoM--so EoM doesn't bear the burden of being the outlet for my personal stuff. The act of RPing--the brainstorming, the planning, executing the plots, writing threads and discussing possibilities and results with other people--that's my escape. Not literally being my character.
I know I am seriously abbreviating what you said, but I hope you will find it in your heart of hearts to forgive me for that, but you employ so many time-honored rhetorical devices in your post to such great effect that I would be at a complete loss if I tried to address everything you said in full.

But I do not "meld" with my characters. I thought I had made that clear when I said
Dinah
 
But what may make me different from some other people here is that I do not need to get into character to escape
My escape - when it comes to RP sites or the internet in general - isn't too different from what you describe. In fact, the brainstorming, planning, writing is something I can very much identify with as part of my escape from what I want to escape from. Or rather it would be, if people here gave me a chance to do just that - plot, plan, get involved. For a time that happened, but that was months ago. (I am sure you'll know what I am talking about.)

I know I sometimes piss people off, sometimes royally so. Sometimes that's just me being cranky, sometimes it's just people taking things the wrong way. But my impression is that - more often than not - people jump to the conclusion I am out to get them. The solution could be as simple as asking "what's wrong with you?" and me answering "RL sucks. Sorry for taking it out on you and the site". It wouldn't require any major exchange of RL information whatsoever.

I am no god, I am not super-powerfully perfect, I am not Mother Theresa or Ghandi. I have my problems and I carry them around with me, even when I should leave them behind.

So I am torn here too. I am torn between raving and ranting about my real life in a place where no one may give a shit, or just soldering on the best I can and seeing that attempt falling short of my goal.

What would you say I should do? If I take it off-site not many people will know what motivates me, but if I take it on-site I will burden everyone's escape with my RL BS. Whatever I do, I think nothing I do will be right.
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Deveraux Dixon
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Love is cursed by Monogamy
How I would deal with it:

Just talk to people in IM or PM about it, or post a thread letting people know what's going on but don't expect too much? I mean, to a certain extent that's what I do online--except my life doesn't really suck to the point where I have something serious to post. It's kind of like facebook, in a way--you can post stuff but don't expect to get likes or have a million comments. It's supposed to be the act of writing or typing it all out, the venting, that's releasing--not having other people comment. I understand having others identify with you will help, but we don't really have the number of members here that guarantee that at least one person will identify with you. There's no easy answer for this, in short. You just have to use your discretion to discern when people are likely to be in the mood and when people aren't, I guess. Sometimes even in IM you can tell when another person doesn't want to hear about your issues or problems.
Edited by Deveraux Dixon, May 27 2011, 04:21 PM.
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Ilzt'rak

Ahh Dev, you misread me with this. I was not trying to add to the rant at all. I have nothing to be mad about or upset about here at all. I was simply trying to extend a bit of positive energy to Dinah. Much like yourself, when I encounter a frustrating situation, I tend to deal with it in ways that do not impact my writing (and I try to let people know when I cannot write because of a situation making a certain mindset or post type too difficult).
Edited by Ilzt'rak, May 27 2011, 04:46 PM.
Mod is my LA Asari: she is ageless, vibrant and she makes my Mass erect.
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Dinah May Anderson
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I will respond to this ometime soonest, bu not when I am in serious need of sleep. I am sure my reply will piss of some people, so I have to figure out whom I want to piss off, or if I really shoud open up or not, but I if I piss of Dev, what will be left?
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Dinah May Anderson
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After sleeping on this I figure no measured response will work. I could talk a a lot about my real life, how it informs my attitude online, but I doubt it will put matters to rest. Not after what I said earlier is so obviously and blatantly ignored.
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But whatever I say or suggest or advocate is constantly opposed, constantly picked apart.
I thought that was obvious enough, but apparently it wasn't - or is ignored on purpose. What I said there was mostly aimed at you, Dev. You have to insert your opinion into everything. And I am getting rather tired of it. Your need to inject your opinion into everything is getting on my nerves, and saying that you only posted here because Izzy did reply is just a pretty lame excuse, especially so at a time when I thought the whole matter had settled down and tried to be as nice as I could in the cbox. But BAM! you have to hit me with a big fat rant just when I thought things had calmed down a bit. And don't you tell me the rant was just an "optional" read. Posting it at all makes it pretty clear that it is part of what you wanted to say.

I should have told you this directly a long time ago, but the reason I did not do so was that I was afraid that if I pissed you off you would take half the site with you if you left. But no more. With your constant antagonism, being on EoM has become a burden to me. So feel free to post here IC to your heart's content, feel free to goof around in the cbox as much as you like, but if all you have to say about how this site is run - or my person - stop constantly telling me how you think things should be done or how I should act. It's either that or you run the site, and you already told me that you do not want to do the latter.

I have enough of that in real life with a job that pays well and that I have held on to for ten years - and which I have thought about quitting for two years or so now. In parts because the work sucks, but in a much larger part because the woman I work with is an asshole and a control freak. Working with her is becoming more and more impossible. She always has to take control of everything, but is happy to heap on me the work she doesn't like or want to do, then expects me to do it by the time she choses without any regard of whatever else I may have to do, because I should have done that yesterday. She acts as if the whole damn show belongs to her, when we are supposed to be equals, while she also does a terribly good job of playing nice when it suits her, so I can never be certain who is with her and who isn't. That is, except from the people who tell my "I admire you for holding out so long with her". There is a lot more to this than I can sum up in a moderately-long paragraph, but the gist of it is that I am rather tired and burned out by people who tell me what I should do, or how I should act, or what is important.

(I know the above is a bit of a messy post and jumbled, but I am rolling like ten different drafts into one here and my mind is still spinning, but I think the above still sums up well enough what is in my heart, even if it doesn't sum up what should, maybe, be on my mind.)
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