Membership The Creepiness of PBs

[VirusZero 176]

I've kind of made my thoughts on this topic known in other places, but I'll repeat them here.

 

I don't like playbys for a few reasons.

People who only roleplay as certain playbys... it kinda reaches a point where you're not writing a character, you're writing the playby as an actor/actress playing that particular role. Which might sound like an odd distinction but I think it's an important one. It's like writing out the real life person's life if they were an actor/actress rather than that particular character in the scene. I find that unsettling, it's crossed over to very sketchy territory. (Almost stalking like territory where you're writing fanfiction about their lives.) It's people getting too attached to something they don't own. 

 

There is so much drama around playbys it's disgusting. People won't write with others if the playby isn't good looking enough. Or they'll try forcing a ship because they were in a show or something once. Even though, in actuality according to the profiles, neither character would like each other. (Or any relationship would be one sided at best.) They'll actively ignore the profile, the "how this character is" part, and focus solely on the image they can see. 

In other cases they won't even join a site if that playby is taken. Or they might join and try to force the other person to give up their character.

Which, to me, indicates that this playby use has gone well and far above simple representation. Which if you refuse to join a site because "your" playby is already taken, you might as well admit that it's not so much about the character but the celebrity behind them. (Otherwise it wouldn't matter what the face was. The playby is only supposed to be a rough approximation. Not the actual character. Using the line "well, I've been using this face for <duration>" does kinda prove it's fanfic of that celeb. If it actually was the character that mattered then the face wouldn't. But because the face takes priority it's really not about the character as much as claimed.)

 

I mean for only supposed to be used for a rough approximation of what a character looks like it's certainly gone a lot further than that. I mean you can say it hasn't and that it's just a representation all you want, but the stated use and actual use usually differ. 

[Gothic 307]

When I started human rping celebrities were used, and I don't remember a face claim or anything of the sort.  Instead people would use the same face, looking through all the apps, and joke in the rp if they encountered someone who looked like them. Later on it was where you could only use stock images for your characters. I can't remember the reason why at the time. Although I think it had to do with copyright. 

 

It was when I branched into Proboards/IF rping that I found out about Face claims and the restrictions that can come with them. As others have said about multiple people for the same face. For example; Orlando Bloom as Legolas looks different from Will Turner from PotC. So I have no trouble having doubles, or triples if they looked different. 

[nyx 164]

When I was first introduced to playbys I was fine with it. It happened when I first discovered rping in general so I didn't have anything else to compare it to. I remember thinking it was cool to cast a face to the character and it really got me into doing graphics. Though when I do cast a face, it's one of the last things I do.

[Verridith 66]

I can't abide places that force a play-by on me; I very much have an image in my head that I either draw myself or get drawn for me. xD And if your site doesn't allow custom art? Not my kind of site!

 

I found play-bys not creepy, but kinda exasperating and needless. Though I gotta admit, some of those GIFs people use, gaahh! Give me the creeps then, LOL!

[Spangles 35]

I like having play-bys, but I hate the process of finding them (if that makes sense?). I like having a face to put to my character and I have zero artistic talent, so drawings are out of the question - it'd be a crooked stick figure. But I hate actually sourcing the images and I feel a bit stalkerish when I do it. I fear dropping down dead and someone finding my image hosting account and seeing all these pics of random actors I have squirelled away for my RP characters - it looks so creepy. I don't care about actors, I don't follow their careers and I certainly don't follow their personal lives. If it wasn't for role play, I wouldn't be storing pictures of them at all. I guess that's why I dislike it so much. For me, it's a necessary evil.

[Let-make-nice 39]

On 6/18/2017 at 5:09 PM, Uaithne said:

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 agree with everything in the original post but this bit particularly really, really hit home.  I'm honestly very bothered that people would care more about the face than about the writing. 

 

Some years ago (many, I'm old), I had a fabulous RP partner who never used anything but stock photos of a symbol related to their character. (Say, they were writing a swashbuckler, their icon would be a sword, of instance) - and frankly I thought it was brilliant.  What truly mattered to them (and to me, as we had many a ship and plot together) was the quality of the writing over the actual face used.

 

Nowadays I use face claims, but it's still something in which I put very little stock. If the writing is good, the writing is good. The rest matters very little to me. While I do like having a point of reference for mental image purposes, it's hardly a be-all-end-all to me.   In fact, no amount of pretty pictures will make me enjoy replying to poor writing. 😞

 

One of the things I've done to alleviate my discomfort with writing people using their face when they're not controlling the character is that I tend to use actors or actresses who have had roles similar to what I'm writing.  Dream casting etc.  

 

So I just want to say thank you to @Uaithne for starting this thread because it makes me feel much less alone than I used to be.  ❤️

Edited July 6, 2019 by Let-make-nice

[Keaton 133]

I have seen people be extreme on both sides of this issue, and personally I've adopted a "live and let live" strategy for most of it.

 

I'm actually coming from a culture that is massively problematic about this but often in the opposite way from what's mostly being discussed here -- People being shamed for doing things like daring to use a live PB for a character whose canon is animated (even when they're carefully-chosen and the same ethnicity), people being low-key dragged for daring to use the same PB for different characters in different games because they're perceived as being "obsessed" with the celebrity, regardless of the quality of their writing or whether they show any other indications of being actually obsessed. Basically the things being discussed here, but the dynamic flipped.

 

So, you know, it goes to show you that people can find anything to be dicks about.

 

I personally like PBs, although again, I don't get fussed if people don't use them because as has been said, the writing is the thing. But I do think they have value as a sort of quick reference for how the person looks so you don't have to interrupt your groove to go looking at bios/profiles. I personally find it easier to engage with the concept of a character if I have a tangible physical representation, but I get the other side of it, too -- I love using PBs in RP but I struggle to settle on any for characters in my novel. I'm pretty over the LJ/DW focus on everyone having a zillion icons (mini-avatars that you can choose from per post/reply, for the uninformed), but I also see the value in them being used as a sort of shorthand for mood and tone, and they can add an additional level of context that's helpful. Because PBP RP is not pure narrative fiction like you're reading a book -- It's its own thing with its own style of communication, and all of these things contribute and are legitimate.

Edited July 16, 2019 by Keaton

[Nevermind 64]

I didn't actually start using playby's or face claims until a few years ago. I would simply imagine what a character looked like in my head and describe it in the RP and that seemed to be enough. Of course, this was 10+ years ago and in the crowds I ran in, playbys were not extremely popular in the early to mid 2000s. 

 

By the time I came back to RPing, they were everywhere. While I personally prefer to use playby's using real people (usually models I don't know anything about), I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wondered what a person would think if they somehow stumbled upon one of my stories and learned I was using their face. What if they objected to the material in my roleplay? Even offended by it? The chances of that happening are extremely low, but in a world where people will purposely dig up tweets from a decade ago just to make you look like a terrible person, who knows what could get where. 

 

At the end of the day though, I like playbys and I encourage their use, though I don't consider it necessary for my partners to have them. I also find playbys significantly less creepy than say, roleplaying with actual real life people. I don't mind using someone's face, but the thought of writing a story about Beyonce falling in love with Tom Cruise and going on an Amazonian adventure is just. Weird. For multiple reasons, clearly.

[Willowtree 7]

Haha yes, this is such a good point! When I first joined a human RPG I found it odd as well, but got used to it pretty fast because I equated it with acting; not, like, catfishing.

 

But I am a bit funny with play-bys because so few of my chosen PB’s photos actually look like my character. My chosen imagery/avatar represents the character physically, not the PB themselves.
I actually recently found an RPG that doesn’t require PBs, and I jumped on the opportunity to use stock photos.

[Lunaala 18]

Yeah there are times when I'm skeeved out by PBs. And Face Claim Culture is why I refuse to join sites with mandatory FCs. It's gross, it's petty, and I don't want anything to do with any of that shit. But more importantly I feel like PBs have mostly just limited the scope of character design. People say they're supposed to be just a quick reference, but how many people just look at the picture and not read your bio? I feel like the fact that the majority of characters being conventionally attractive white people is because they're so available in Hollywood, and make popular FCs.

 

I do use them. But only if I feel they match the character I'm making. And really, I do fine without them.

 

On 11/19/2017 at 9:56 PM, VirusZero said:

There is so much drama around playbys it's disgusting. People won't write with others if the playby isn't good looking enough. Or they'll try forcing a ship because they were in a show or something once. Even though, in actuality according to the profiles, neither character would like each other. (Or any relationship would be one sided at best.) They'll actively ignore the profile, the "how this character is" part, and focus solely on the image they can see. 

Basically this entire post.

 

And yes, animanga communities do it too.