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When I first joined an RP on this part of the internet, I was flabbergasted when I was asked to choose a “real face” for my character. Until then, we used either drawings or nothing at all (a few sentences of description was enough to get us by), and now nobody would RP with me if I didn’t go this route. Not only did I not know any celebrities (I wasn’t much into pop culture), I was extremely uncomfortable with the thought of attaching a stranger to a character they had no control over. It really limited my character creation opportunities because I wasn’t comfortable using actors at random (what if I chose a horrible person and people thought I supported whatever horrible things this person had done???) and sometimes I couldn’t find anyone who really fit. Further, I found myself trying to find people I wanted to look at rather than thinking about the character itself. Over the years, I’ve become more comfortable with the idea of PBs, but it still weirds me out. People attach too much meaning to them and the obsession is odd. From “claiming” people’s faces to only “shipping” characters played by certain celebrities, it’s just bizarre. On a surface level, I get it. You see a face, say, “Hey that looks like my character!” and then stick it in your avatar. That very basic concept of PBs doesn’t bother me so much anymore, and it can be likened to casting someone in a play, or making a “dream cast” for a novel, or whatever. But we take it so much farther than that with our obsessions. The pictures have to be perfect—high quality only. With the increase of post templates and mini profiles and doHTML, we have to find multiple pictures of our characters, so now we have to spend time searching for a person who not only fits but who also has many good pictures to use. And there are a huge chunk of people who judge other writers by their PBs, who limit plots by PBs, who require certain PBs be used, etc. It’s bizarre. It’s obsessive. It’s . . . a little much. I’d love to use stock images because I’ve seen some rocking stock photos, but now that we all needs avatars, gifs, hovers, templates, applications, etc. . . . it’s just not feasible to do it without using the same picture over and over. I don’t think there is a “solution” and I’m not really looking for one. I was just reflecting over my RP experiences, and I recalled how strange it had been to plunge into a world of “real faces” and the culture shock that was associated with it. I mean, guys, we’re creeps.