Context: I responded to a prompt this morning, did my best to write a character I thought my partner would find fun and interesting, tried to stand out, etc.

The reply I got back came so sideways at me that I was honestly in shock.

Not only was it a ‘NO’, but they questioned my gender, characterized my writing as shallow suitable only for the male-gaze and compared me to an empty doll for the patriarchy. Talk about insult to injury.

I know I’m not the best writer out there, but GEEZ. I usually have gotten compliments on my writing skills!

This isn’t the first time I’ve run into someone with not-so-nice things to say, but it’s definitely one of the most memorable for not great reasons.

I think as a community we should try to lift each other up, and I’m doing my best to see this in a positive light - but wow, you know? Nothing like someone from the community just bashing you. Makes me want to consider taking a break.

What do we think, am I crazy?

For the record, yes I did focus on physical details in my reply, but I tried to do it in a certain stylized way, but in no way was it shallow. I was honestly turned on by her prompt. Perhaps not sapphic enough in your first attempt writing with a new person is now considered ‘for the patriarchy’, but no one told me. Oh and she feels really bad for me, which honestly feels insulting.

And yes, I wrote back saying (in probably too many words that it was hurtful).

No I’m not crashing out, I promise.

Fighting or battle roleplay, I'm not sure what the exact genre is. But damn is it annoying to find the wrong roleplay partner for it.

I'm not sure what term to use exactly since they aren't really controlling my character but it's almost like everything I throw at their character, it's all somehow dealt with. Which isn't bad by itself since of course their character should have the opportunity. But every action seems to be taken two steps ahead and what should be a fair fight, just turns into a one sided beatdown.

Even though our characters are supposed to be mostly equivalent in strength at least taking their lore into account or reading through both our character sheets. They seem to write in a way that makes their character have an advantage.

As a made up example. If my character were to shoot them with a jet of water, their character would already have a barrier present. The barrier might fit loosely with their character sheet. But now since they have this barrier, I can't really damage their character. Now of course having a barrier doesn't inherently make it impossible to attack their character but this barrier has shown no sign of damage despite multiple attacks.

That at least loosely relates to their powers. On the other hand they might also just pull out a magical book that absorbs water, even though it doesn't fit their lore to have such an item. And the book is strong enough that even though there's almost a flood of water coming through, its able to grow in size and adapt to the larger amount of water.

Basically instead of countering my characters moves with stuff that makes sense or allows for counterplay. They've just basically made it into a one sided battle right from the beginning.

Luckily it's almost about to end. So I'll just finish it and get done with. But damn the way they play is super annoying. And that's coming from someone who can even roleplay with people putting out one liners. It just feels like I'm being forced to write a certain way. Which just sucks.

Slur warning. It was in the title and then I revised it and forgot to put it back in.

The first post is in response to a prompt of mine involving a cornball hero in an original, practical 'Dark Fantasy' world talking themselves into spending a night with a fellow adventurer and close friend with explicit themes of nonpsychopathic dominance and mutual respect which somehow got translated into mild-to-severely homophobic feminization and cringey verbage.

Second person took a prompt that's meant to circle around small and insignificant people throughout Planetos, faraway from the typical sociopathic politicking that happens at court, and used it to insert their D&D OC who wants to become a God and in the process has sex with Rhaenyra whilst presumably teleporting several thousands of miles across the sea to avoid a several months long trip that would have lost them the war.

To be clear I'm an enthusiast for both MxM and ASOIAF roleplaying, otherwise I wouldn't be a participant, but I think I've had the most negative interactions spring from them by a wide margin save for WH40K.

So today I ran a discussion by with one of my rp partners who respectfully said they feel too much pressure when rping, they said they wanted to remain friends. I told them the hobby is still here if they want to return to it. So we are still ooc chatting.

Which gets me to my thesis, I do a lot of homebrew plots with story writing. While I do love a bit of character drama, I don't try to throw my rp partner to death with it, it makes them numb and lessen the shock value. So we started talking about endings, and when I told one of my endings for one of the ocs, they called me cruel. Ironically I am cruel in a sense that I never can give my ocs a full happy ending.

My biggest question comes now, is this a me problem or are there people still out there that are like "Yeah, I don't want the world to be erased from the consequences of the story, no full happy ending."

So yay or nay for a full happy ending? What are the pros for a full happy ending? What are the cons for a full happy ending?

Share your thoughts and by all means, keep the discussion civil

Thanks

So quite a while ago I began designing a tabletop role-playing game completely from scratch with a completely original system and setting, and I had been running three different playtests on Discord with three different groups.

The only one important here is the DARK group, aptly named because of the first letter of everybody's username.

The thing is these particular group members became acquainted with me over a couple of years worth of online D&D, and they largely filtered out of different groups for all having in common the inability to resist the urge to ERP with each other.

So in general, explicit sex hasn't been a boundary for any member of this one particular group, and when I invited them to help me test this game, before character creation, R described her character concept a little on the whorish side, and K took off with it, and the two of them very briefly wrote out some erotic exchange. I quickly concluded the conversation for the night, and said I would go over character creation the next day.

I get a text message from D, rather dismissively asking if he should even bother writing up a character sheet, because he knows how the game is going to turn out. I tell him to hang in there, that I was every bit intent on actually showing off what I've written, and that I would talk to R about reeling it in.

So I ended up texting R and explaining that I wanted her to take the game seriously. She said that she would, and that she was sorry that she immediately went to the ERP mindset.

Worth noting, in the amount of time that I have got to know these people, A and R were childhood friends that moved in together, and within the last eight months, got married irl.

So while I am still fleshing out some details of the game and posting them to Discord, a few days later I get a text message from R, basically saying that she screwed up.

I asked her what was going on, And she asked to call me so that she could explain it.

What was basically happening was that A was kept awake through the course of the night because R was texting someone, and kept getting up and going to the bathroom at several different intervals. Finally at about 2:30 in the morning, A asks R to see her phone, and they have a little bit of an argument about it. When A finally does get to see it, she discovers that R has been ERPing over text with K, both of them using the characters they were creating for my game.

R tells me that it is the first real marital fight that they've ever had, and that A is basically giving her the silent treatment, and it has set off an anxiety episode for her.

I explained to her in the most firmly gentle way I possibly could (because I don't have a dog in that fight) that she needs to talk to her wife candidly. I knew that we all used to do that kind of thing together as a communal sort of thing, but that ever since they got married it might have possibly changed that dynamic as far as A was concerned.

The worst part about this is that R is an incredible writer. She is a smut writing ninja who prefers longform prose, and she is unimaginably good at it. She writes the sort of shit that would have made Caligula blush. She is an excellent roleplayer that really gets into whatever setting she is playing and has a tendency to chew the scenery a little bit. I would hate to lose her as a player over this.

I do desperately want to playtest my game, so the other two playtest groups will be focused mostly on the mechanics, and I would seriously love this particular group to explore the setting and give me feedback on it.

(Note: I put NSFW because the original poster discussed dark themes and I’m gonna touch on dark themes too, not trying to break any rules)

Now I don’t usually rant on here I just lurk and read posts. However I’m particularly irked so I’m making a post. Now, I’ve been rping since I was like 13/14 and now I’m 25, I’ve been on kik, different aminos, virtual space specifically (when it had its own app outside of amino), and finally I’ve migrated to Reddit. The culture and terminology is definitely different from when I first started, which is to be expected with newer roleplayers joining year after year, however it was never this difficult before 😒

I get being on guard due to time wasters, people who don’t read your post, people trying to change what you initially posted looking for etc etc etc. I get it! But literally there’s no reason to be stand offish, non-communicative, or a dick when someone has contacted you. Why post at all then?

As I mentioned before, I’m a lurker, I lurk around looking for what I like. If I contact you it’s because whatever you posted was good and I found us to be a match. So best believe I read whatever the hell was in that damned post.

So anyway, to what irked me enough to post, as per the screenshots, I was sending an, ‘about me’ to the poster because they added me back on discord. I try to fit everything in one message but sometimes I’ll send follow ups.

His first red flag that pinged in my head was:
I dont do fandoms that often
You read everything in my info right?

I was like?? It doesn’t say you don’t do fandoms and this was apart of my about me message.. I go back to the post, because it’s SAVED so it’s easy for me to find to refresh my memory, every person I’ve contacted on Reddit I always save their post. Especially when they’re not the only person I contacted in one go— anyway, I reread the post and I’m like, yeah, this is the right person (lol like this discord matches this Reddit post sort of thing xD I’m human I’ve mixed people up before).

Immediately to myself, okay this guy strict strict— runs a tight ship. Probably doesn’t like unnecessary ooc, fine by me I don’t do ooc with all my partners frequently. Everyone’s different.

I continue the conversation still trying to get a feel for what he’s looking for since there’s no specific plot in the post just a few genres so surely it’s free rein when it comes to discussing plots and ideas. Right?

WRONG 😑 next thing he’s talking about is he’s “not a fan of romance he only tolerates it because he likes characters having kids” — mind you, which is very different from “Im okay with romance if our characters have children”

Two completely different statements. Obviously I mentioned romance in the plot because I wanted romance and was open to the caveat of romance being in the plot if characters have the next generation for the story.

But I’m nothing if not flexible so obviously a pivot. Every child isn’t born from a fairy tale love story. So I try to PLOT and throw ideas out, to which he says, “I don't do roles like that. As my info should of made apparent”

No where if that fucking post does it say shit him not doing roles like that. It quite literally says he is limitless. Needless to say from there I was turned off completely and stopped responding and unadded him. Then was like, nah don’t be like that text a bye to which I realized I couldn’t because unadded them 😅 didn’t know the message wouldn’t go through I was just irritated so I’m back in Reddit lurking again and this mfer added me AGAIN. Which irritated me because when I heard the notification I assumed it was one of my actual partners with a reply 😒

Anyway I didn’t understand why he contacted me when clearly it wasn’t gonna work and I didn’t read that fuck ass post? Right?
The last message was dismissive enough I didn’t understand what else there was to say but I added them back to tell them I wasn’t interested anymore. And unadded them.

It’s weird because it’s like do you want people to grovel and walk on eggshells to roleplay with you? Not throwing any ideas out but can turn down ideas and say they go against your post when your post doesn’t even address the subject 🙄

Again it was never this difficult before 😒hard to find someone with actual communication skills these days.