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Pet peeves when people play something without personal experience


omgwes
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I have to agree with @Sunchance but on a different degree.

 

While I think it's nice that people want to "explore" and learn more about mental illnesses, a lot of people take the wrong approach towards it on how you do/want to rp it and on the amount of research you do. I was on one site where one member constantly made characters that had mental illnesses, and the characters were evil. And guess what? They were evil based off of their mental illness.

 

For example, she had one character with Multiple Personality Disorder and I think she only had two personalities listed in her application: the one that would kill and then the one that would cower in fear over something. Naturally, because she wanted this character to be evil, the one that would kill would come out after any little trigger (you look at the character wrong, bam! you're gonna be in a fight for the death).

 

She also had a character that had PTSD and lots of things would trigger it (which can be realistic, depending on the trauma and how severe it is). But eventually, it got to the point where I and the staff team felt that she was disrespecting it and people who have it (because lo and behold: the character would try to hurt or kill someone). As a person whose grandfather was in Vietnam and seeing first hand what PTSD can do, I stepped in and said that she needed to do more research on the mental illness to portray it better and to not have people who suffer or have family suffer from it feel disrespected (I was staff at the time).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Putting the time and effort into researching heavily for a concept in a field that I may not be as intimately familiar with and being criticized for being "too detail oriented" in the development of that character...while another player does zero research, exclaims loudly and often what kind of career they are in and how they "know so much" about the topic for which is referred to in the character for which they are presenting and gets lauded and approved despite the massive, glaring inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and overall insulting ineptitude seen in their app.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oof, I've had a lot of bad experience with people trying to play abuse victims. Usually when I see it happen, it falls into one of two categories: either the character doesn't really seem to be affected by it save for some sadness and shyness, or they lash out all the time and do terrible things, then overshare about their personal history to make it all better. Especially if the character is far removed from their abusive scenario, I want to see subtler tinges: the anxiety that comes when someone gets too close, a word or phrase that makes their eyes glaze over with dread. And seriously, the "bad" or "evil" character whose actions are justified because of their abuse is absurd.

 

On a lighter note, I can always tell when someone without a lot of personal experience tries to write about alcohol. No, sorry, your skinny 5'2" character probably can't knock back eight shots and still feel fine. Try again.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest pyrite

I'm going to bunny off of @Sunchance , @Arceus and @Dragon .

 

My biggest pet peeve, if you will, is intentional over dramatization and vilification of those who have DID and or schizophrenia and or if those disorders are used as the stand-alone evil personality. My most negative reactions are based off of intent. If someone continuously, with better knowledge, uses DID or schizophrenia as a staple for their "crazy, psychotic sociopath", yes I'm a little more than miffed.

 

Here's why: On my former animal based sites, most of the "evil" characters were created with DID and or schizophrenia as the reason for the character's evil behaviors. By evil I mean consistent rape, murder, aggression, and overall psychotic tendencies. (These were the most popular characters, I noticed.) On top of that, the characters always passed on this trait, meaning their sons were all evil and unchangable. Their grandsons were evil. Their great....yeah you get the point.

 

When I started to role play, on these sites, this was the norm. To be "evil" your character had to have DID or schizophrenia or most mods would deny your application. The explanation couldn't be PTSD triggered singular moment, hypersensitivity, or plain old being twisted to throw some examples out (again animals and I know that's a controversy in itself but please bear with me), the character had to have some split personality that took over or multiples that took over, or a voice or voices and they all had to be comically evil.

 

Sad to say, at the time, that was how I thought rp'ing those disorders was accepted and it instilled a sort of fear and stigma. That is, until I saw someone go through treatment for schizophrenia, and the way it affected them. Without going into detail, it was like watching slow torture in the beginning. When the treatment began working...it was like a miracle to me. I realized there is a scale and both DID and schizophrenia has a spectrum and with treatment can be handled.

 

Again, this is from a whole different lens involving a small niche of role players and I know it doesn't speak for the community. It's just...this is where I come from and why my reaction is visceral hostility when I see "oh she's evil cause she has three super evil personalities" or "he's evil because the voices have taken over and his sons will be evil too!" With a "they own this whole land and you have to bow down to them because they are your king!"

 

Sorry for the long post. I am very passionate about this. It's due to seeing someone suffer with schizophrenia. I watched how the affliction tormented them for days. Seeing the transformation, seeing how that individual was able to slowly come out of their shell and take their life back was invaluable.

 

As for the general discussion, I'm all for playing different characters with disorders or issues, different cultures or first languages, even playing characters who specialize in something the player knows nothing or little about. I'm very pro lassez faire in regards to character creation and development. I believe, with all things, respect for the issues, growth and development upon further knowledge, and intent are important keys and tools to role playing. If there is malicious intent, or blatant intent to inaccurately portray something, I tend to stay away from that character or characters. Again, this is more for the aforementioned disorders and less for someone playing a super romanticized male or female.

 

I  also don't mind characters that are created as "vent" characters. Such as Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender) level angry characters that never grow up because the character's sole existence is for the role player to play out frustration. So long as parties agree to the plots, and no harm is done, I'm all for it. Although, I probably would not use those characters for testing something I'm inexperienced with. For instance, I wouldn't have a fly-off-the-handle-drunkard-cop. I feel that would be a disservice to myself and to my role play partner/s, as I have no experience with police training etc.

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Mine is a bit more light-hearted and not as annoying as something as serious as mental illness being portrayed horribly and incorrectly.

 

As an Irish person, I find it irritating (in a kind of baffled way) when people write Irish characters saying things like 'me' instead of 'my' or the cursed 'top o' the morning to ya!' Granted, some elderly people from out in rural parts in the middle of nowhere say 'me arse' instead of 'my arse' but no Irish person has ever said 'top o' the morning', lol. 

 

We're also not all ginger and freckled. Scandinavia has more red-heads than Ireland. 

 

All Irish men are not handsome devils. Most of them are butt ugly. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Rivfader said:

All Irish men are not handsome devils. Most of them are butt ugly. 

 

 

WHY WOULD YOU RUIN THE DELUSION

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God this is the PETTIEST thing but

 

There have been several times, I've seen stuff involving places I've lived/regularly visited, and I often grit my teeth over inaccuracies.  I live in possibly one of the most stereotyped states in the US, when it comes to climate, (good ol Arizona) and sometimes its extremely easy to tell people didn't even look up the area they are writing about, and are just basing it off stereotypes.  (for example I've seen references to parts of my state being desert, when I know they're in fact forests or other climates)

 

But at the same time, I know there's probably been times I've been blatantly wrong about places I have no experience, so I just laugh it off normally. I really wish people would at least look at pictures of places they're writing about, before describing them, y'know? But its just a minor annoyance.

 

Also I fully agree with everything has been said about mental illness, took the words right out of my mouth.

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On 9/1/2018 at 3:59 AM, Rivfader said:

 

As an Irish person, I find it irritating (in a kind of baffled way) when people write Irish characters saying things like 'me' instead of 'my' or the cursed 'top o' the morning to ya!' Granted, some elderly people from out in rural parts in the middle of nowhere say 'me arse' instead of 'my arse' but no Irish person has ever said 'top o' the morning', lol. 

 

 

 

NOT EVER?

 

68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e617773

 

/this post is also meant lightly 😄

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Reality is an illusion. 


 
 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The cop thing burns my toast since I just had a rant about that the other day with a friend. It's such a small thing to Google a cop's career and how shit proceeds from local to state to national service. Do your research on it, especially if you're using it in your background and want to be a certain age. Look up the age requirements, learn the ropes, do cool shit like pull up a profile of an UNSUB, put it together like you might at a real job, read up on it from official sources, read some true crime books (Mindhunter by John Douglas, if you're looking at a behavioural posting - just in case anyone needs a recommendation), make sure you know your shit. It makes you sound confident, it gives you some rich background to pull your character from, and it also makes you a better writer.

 

I get it, this is our funtimes or whatever, but if I have a character who's an engineer or mechanic or took a course in Forensic Psychology, I am gonna have all those things in mind when I write them doing those things. I do research because I have a passion for making my characters feel, think, and sound like they are real people. To do that, I need to be consistent in certain portrayals mentioned in my application.

 

I have actually be told that since I'm a white woman, I can't be trusted to portray anyone who isn't white accurately no matter what. I research, I read, I go to the sources of other people's real stories - about struggle, about racism, about slavery, about all of the little details, if I'm going to portray someone who isn't white. It's not good enough. I guess it's a pet peeve of mine to assume that because I don't have first-hand experience with something (mental illness, colour of skin, working in health care, mental illness, etc., etc., pick something, anything) that I didn't first research the crap out of it to make sure I had as much of a handle on it as I could with sensitivity and respect.

 

In the age of Tumblr and the rise of SJWs, I feel that the best I can do is a writer is research, research, research, and then do what I've been wanting to do with a character. The research itself and how I write someone should be enough. If I didn't do my research, that'll show in an application, especially in the sample section. I guess that's flipping the whole thing around, though. 

 

You don't have to have personal experience to turn out a fully fleshed character, you just need to be able to research well and then with that research in mind, put together a character who is relatable and feels as real as those people on your television do. Make time. Research. DO IT.

 

And now I need food and probably more coffee. 

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This is probably gonna sound like a pretty dumb peeve, but... being Brazilian. Which I am. I was browsing through sites a while ago and saw something about a part of the site being set in Brazil, and, of course, I was so excited... until I saw that everyone had Spanish based names. And then I considered talking to the people running the site and letting them know that we have Portuguese based names here as a standard (I say as a standard because we're a very broad and diverse population), and that we speak Portuguese, not Spanish.

 

So yeah, I think that could go for any country, but please, people running sites, if you're gonna set your action in a real place... do your homework.

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Shady McShaderson

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