Experiences What was your worst roleplay experience?

[Hagraeven]

My worst rp experience is one with my first rp partner. She was a friend that I knew from middle school and we had reconnected online years later. I had a gay male character named Nathan and her character who was a female had taken a liking to him. So she decided we should make an alternative rp where they were together in this au. I wasn't comfortable with that since my character is canonically only into men. She convinced me to make this alternate au though where he was hetersexual. This made me uncomfortable but I went along with it. She also convinced me our characters should have vivid descriptions of nfsw activities and just ew no. I went along with it after being pressured and we stopped role-playing shortly after. I never agree to things I'm uncomfortable with now and the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm also glad to say I'm not longer in contact with that person.

(Edited for spelling errors)

 

[StrawberryJaime]

Don't be afraid to tell that you don't want that, it's not normal to drag people like that..

Yeah I had to learn the hard way

 

[FlyingDemon]

When I think about it, it's super hard to find a community that is currently healthy, most of the sites i was on were mostly focused on smut... no matter if they were sites dedicated to PRs, or certain groups of social networks... it was really just that, and it's really unhealthy.

i don't know where this fashion comes from, but it's scary.

 

[Stray Cat]

I have had several awful experiences throughout my time within the roleplay community; if I had to choose one to speak of it would have to be a time I had a bad fallout with a partner. The partner who I’ll refer to as A, contacted me because she was interested in writing together. She claimed to have read my rules, everything seemed clean. In the beginning I was able to respond to her everyday, but then I became busy with school work because it was winding down to the end of the semester. So, I went from replying almost everyday, to only on Fridays-Sunday. I explained this to A, told her that I would be able to respond normally after exams were over. Normally, this would be fine, right? Not for her. It was like she wouldn’t skip over what I wrote and prod me for replies continuously; even though I would remind her of my situation.

Fast forward two weeks later, exams are over and I’m looking for to the holidays; Christmas was days away and I’m glad. School was on hold until mid-January and I could relax, plus return to writing. I reached out to A, telling her I would be able to respond more frequently, that she would have a reply soon. I didn’t hear back, but I brushed it off as her being busy, probably caught up with the holiday like myself. I simply got started on her reply, believing it would be a nice surprise. Before, I could send the reply I get an angry message from A. She calls me out of my name numerous times, cursing and carrying on badly, saying that she doesn’t understand how it could take me so long to reply. I remind her of what I told her, but she said that isn’t a valid excuse. She stated that she had two jobs and went to school, but could respond, therefore I had no excuse.

If this happened now, I would have put my foot down and walked away, but back then I wasn’t as bold. Plus, she made me feel guilty, so I tried apologising. However, she didn’t accept my apology, and said that I wasn’t sorry. I was only apologising because she was calling me out. She left me with some pretty harsh words. I remember days later she put out a request for partners and I guess made reference to the incident? Because she mentioned saying she needed someone who could reply often. She wasn’t going to accept stupid excuses as to why a partner couldn’t respond. ?​

 

[FlyingDemon]

I don't know if it counts as a bad experience, but it pisses me off when people say they're interested in a RP and never warn when they're away, myself who has a different time zone than the majority, i always try to warn when i go to sleep or there's been another kind of impediment,

either they don't respond at all, either they pretends that they are busy but talk non-stop to their friends (yes, soooo much busy),

happened a lot of times, i used to gives a week, but since many took advantage of it by doing no efforts, i give few days.

 

[melz]

god almighty i had the WORST experience a good while ago. ofc this was on tumblr because i can never get anything good out of that site without coming across a few complete jerks.

so i was doing this fluffy rp thing with this person i just met. they were kind of pushy but whatever, the rp was cute so i didn't care much and i was just polite ooc. they kind of shoehorned in stuff that weirded me out and it was generally unpleasant so i only replied when i was SUUPER bored. because it had no real plot either. just kind of a casual thing.
well apparently i was the only one who thought that because for some reason they thought i had 24/7 free time and guilt tripped me. then they started being super creepy later on blabla started threatening me and stuff and uh. yeah it ended REALLY badly i'm still kind of screwed up about that right now bcuase im generally a paranoid person.. but boy that was not a good experience at all. not even like i was SEARCHING for an rp at the time bcs i only frequent here and chickensmoothie for roleplays but i usually accept if i dont have much else to do.

 

[cosowarrior]

god almighty i had the WORST experience a good while ago. ofc this was on tumblr because i can never get anything good out of that site without coming across a few complete jerks.

so i was doing this fluffy rp thing with this person i just met. they were kind of pushy but whatever, the rp was cute so i didn't care much and i was just polite ooc. they kind of shoehorned in stuff that weirded me out and it was generally unpleasant so i only replied when i was SUUPER bored. because it had no real plot either. just kind of a casual thing.
well apparently i was the only one who thought that because for some reason they thought i had 24/7 free time and guilt tripped me. then they started being super creepy later on blabla started threatening me and stuff and uh. yeah it ended REALLY badly i'm still kind of screwed up about that right now bcuase im generally a paranoid person.. but boy that was not a good experience at all. not even like i was SEARCHING for an rp at the time bcs i only frequent here and chickensmoothie for roleplays but i usually accept if i dont have much else to do.

Goodness gracious. Sorry that happened to you! Being pushy and annoying is one thing, but for a parnter to make threats is way out of line. Does that site have some way to report people?

 

[Faulty-Writes]

I don't know if this counts as the worst, but to me, it was more awkward if anything. When I first got introduced to Tumblr role play. Someone wanted to try their hand at doing an Avengers crossover roleplay with me. I think the crossover was with Sherlock, not the BBC version either. They wanted to play the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock and they wanted me to play Tony Stark/Iron Man. Which was confusing, but I thought I'd be nice and try to accommodate my roleplaying partner. Turns out it was a bad idea, considering I got so confused as to what I was doing that they actually just abandoned the attempted thread altogether. It was pretty awkward and I felt kind of dumb. But luckily ever since then, I've learned the ropes of Tumblr role-playing. But still, that was one experience to remember.

 

[Laifan]

No specific role-playing plot or character comes to mind - I started ages ago when LiveJournal was all the rage for role-playing and while not everything was fantastic I still had fun.

However! (yes, there is a however), despite IC interactions not having much drama, there were certain anonymous communities where people could say whatever they wanted about how the players played their characters.

Err... Yeah you can imagine how well that went. Admittedly I know I was far from good (either because my English at the time was still kinda rusty and, OK, I might not be completely faithful to one of my characters but I was having fun, regardless.) So... Don't expect people to criticize you openly when they can flame you anonymously...

 

[Strawberry Ink]

The only one that comes to mind right now was this rp I did on some forum years ago. It was one of those rp forums where your account = your character and stuff. Anyway, I joined as a character that had extreme germaphobia issues just as a challenge for myself. Somehow this kid caught the attention of someone else's character whom was much older than him. I went along with things to see what would happen and their relationship was pretty cool at first! A really nice friendship developed between them and nothing out of the ordinary happened until one day the guy took my character into, wait for it, a sex dungeon where he attempted to seduce my character. Needless to say, it didn't work out.

 

[Wonderblue]

Oh ho ho ho, have I got a tale for you.

This was a RPG a friend asked me to join, for they wanted a "experienced RPer" to give others a model to follow. I had no issues with this, used to their requests.

Ohhhhhh, I didn't see it coming. I ignored the warning signs.

The basis of the RPG was an academy for powered humans. Not like "I have telekinesis" powers, but "I have a sword" powers.

I entered the RPG with a humanoid-Avian mix called Kyran. He essentially countered offensive magic and was...a big birb dude. I stuck him in, and when I was finally noticed...it began.

1. My character ended up fighting another person's character and they beat Kyran using...magic. Offensive magic. Which he specifically countered. I called them out, but let this slide like a fool.

2. Another person's character showed up... a girl with a sword given to her by her "big brother". And OP as f***.

3. I say in the OOC that I'm going offline.

4. When I come back- they insulted, attacked, and nearly killed my character while I was offline.

Infuriated, I called them both out on it, and a couple friends backed me up before we all left that RPG.

That has been my Worst experience. Nothing has ever even come close.

 

[The Mad Queen]

Back in the Dead Frontier days when I started RPing there was a player called Ozone. Just think about every bad trait in an RPer aside from using too much sexual content and he was guilty of it. He killed RPs pretty often, including one of my own.
There was a user called DogQuantum, a teenage girl (Ozone was probably 13 or younger, worth pointing out) who he tore into after she criticised his awful RPing style. He called her "an ugly and fat gamer girl who just sits at home, never going outside."

Turned out DogQuantum had a pretty aggressive cancer. RPing was her release as she'd managed to bring a computer into the hospital. This was only a year or two after the IPad came out, so they weren't as available as they were now. She was a good RP buddy.
Anyway, Ozone actually apologised for something. The first time he admitted responsibility for being scum.

A few weeks later, she launched a new RP with a message saying "No Ozones allowed."
She'd mis-spelt his name by one letter or something other minor mistake. Ozone's response "You can't spell for shit, what's the matter? Did the cancer eat your brain yet?"

I tore into that kid as much as 15 year old me could. Combined with a few other people, including DogQuantum herself Ozone was driven from the RPing section.
A few weeks later DogQuantum stopped replying to posts and on Dead Frontier if you didn't post in the forums for a set amount of time, or played the forum game the forums were based on your account was essentially deleted. All your posts were there, but there was no trace of you outside of them.
Eventually, that happened to her account too. She was my age, if not one or two years younger...And people wonder why I don't believe in a higher power.

Ozone's behaviour, mixed with the dread of seeing my RP buddy not replying and eventually watching as her account was unregistered would be my worst Role-playing experience. I couldn't stay on Dead Frontier after that so just stopped replying myself.

That's my worst RPing experience outside of RPN. If I had to pin down my worst experience here, it would be during a reboot of my first big role-play. Due to rotten luck, this also involves somebody dying. The experience put me off Role-playing for quite some time. I had a co-mod who kinda went mad with power, got into fights with role-players and messaged me and other Role-players often asking for important meetings on Skype...Where he would just proceed to complain about some people we'd never heard of, talk about Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or about his OCs.

He was very attached to his OCs but everybody else's OCs were garbage and he would write MST 3000 skits making fun of them. If anyone came to him for writing advice all he would do is make up skits based on those scenes. After one rper said he didn't want to play as a gay character as it made him feel uncomfortable this Role-player sent him a ton of porn of gay old men over Skype.
I could go on about the other toxic things he did, but it would honestly take too long. I couldn't kick him from the RP as he was in too deep and the only reason he was a co-mod was due to him being promoted to co-mod in the last RP. None of this toxic behaviour had come about before.

Basically if I kicked him the RP died, so I didn't kick him due to how much work I'd put in. I became more stressed, the RP started to feel like a 2nd job and was constantly putting out fires in order to keep things rolling. The RP died anyway. I think his behaviour driving people away was a big contributor. The worst thing he did to me came about when a friend of mine was killed in an accident. I told a few people in the RP that I'd be taking some time away, but could still be reached by PMs.

I kinda fell apart, I was failing my college course, was dealing with some other problems in regards to my identity and I stopped sleeping. It felt like I was losing control. So when I was bombarded by multiple messages on RPN and Skype from him a few days later demanding that I return as something big had happened that could "kill the RP" I went into panic mode. It felt like the RP was the only thing left in my life I had control over.
What was this big emergency? A role-player wasn't taking a villain I had written seriously. Like, he wasn't even making fun of said villain. He just wasn't seeing him as a big threat.

And to make matters worse, this role-player went on to make fun of my dead friend. But, I held my tongue in order to keep the RP going. It wasn't until it died and this person asked me why I was being bitter that I told him what I thought.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Back in the Dead Frontier days when I started RPing there was a player called Ozone. Just think about every bad trait in an RPer aside from using too much sexual content and he was guilty of it. He killed RPs pretty often, including one of my own.
There was a user called DogQuantum, a teenage girl (Ozone was probably 13 or younger, worth pointing out) who he tore into after she criticised his awful RPing style. He called her "an ugly and fat gamer girl who just sits at home, never going outside."

Turned out DogQuantum had a pretty aggressive cancer. RPing was her release as she'd managed to bring a computer into the hospital. This was only a year or two after the IPad came out, so they weren't as available as they were now. She was a good RP buddy.
Anyway, Ozone actually apologised for something. The first time he admitted responsibility for being scum.

A few weeks later, she launched a new RP with a message saying "No Ozones allowed."
She'd mis-spelt his name by one letter or something other minor mistake. Ozone's response "You can't spell for shit, what's the matter? Did the cancer eat your brain yet?"

I tore into that kid as much as 15 year old me could. Combined with a few other people, including DogQuantum herself Ozone was driven from the RPing section.
A few weeks later DogQuantum stopped replying to posts and on Dead Frontier if you didn't post in the forums for a set amount of time, or played the forum game the forums were based on your account was essentially deleted. All your posts were there, but there was no trace of you outside of them.
Eventually, that happened to her account too. She was my age, if not one or two years younger...And people wonder why I don't believe in a higher power.

Ozone's behaviour, mixed with the dread of seeing my RP buddy not replying and eventually watching as her account was unregistered would be my worst Role-playing experience. I couldn't stay on Dead Frontier after that so just stopped replying myself.

That's my worst RPing experience outside of RPN. If I had to pin down my worst experience here, it would be during a reboot of my first big role-play. Due to rotten luck, this also involves somebody dying. The experience put me off Role-playing for quite some time. I had a co-mod who kinda went mad with power, got into fights with role-players and messaged me and other Role-players often asking for important meetings on Skype...Where he would just proceed to complain about some people we'd never heard of, talk about Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or about his OCs.

He was very attached to his OCs but everybody else's OCs were garbage and he would write MST 3000 skits making fun of them. If anyone came to him for writing advice all he would do is make up skits based on those scenes. After one rper said he didn't want to play as a gay character as it made him feel uncomfortable this Role-player sent him a ton of porn of gay old men over Skype.
I could go on about the other toxic things he did, but it would honestly take too long. I couldn't kick him from the RP as he was in too deep and the only reason he was a co-mod was due to him being promoted to co-mod in the last RP. None of this toxic behaviour had come about before.

Basically if I kicked him the RP died, so I didn't kick him due to how much work I'd put in. I became more stressed, the RP started to feel like a 2nd job and was constantly putting out fires in order to keep things rolling. The RP died anyway. I think his behaviour driving people away was a big contributor. The worst thing he did to me came about when a friend of mine was killed in an accident. I told a few people in the RP that I'd be taking some time away, but could still be reached by PMs.

I kinda fell apart, I was failing my college course, was dealing with some other problems in regards to my identity and I stopped sleeping. It felt like I was losing control. So when I was bombarded by multiple messages on RPN and Skype from him a few days later demanding that I return as something big had happened that could "kill the RP" I went into panic mode. It felt like the RP was the only thing left in my life I had control over.
What was this big emergency? A role-player wasn't taking a villain I had written seriously. Like, he wasn't even making fun of said villain. He just wasn't seeing him as a big threat.

And to make matters worse, this role-player went on to make fun of my dead friend. But, I held my tongue in order to keep the RP going. It wasn't until it died and this person asked me why I was being bitter that I told him what I thought.

Ozone sounds like a real peach. As to second guy you can actually report people for harassment on this site fairly easily. I've had it happen to me twice and as you can see nothing too terrible happened to me. I just got a message saying that someone had reported me for bad behavior and that I had a warning on my account for XX days. I was never told who reported me or even why specifically. And as I am not actually much of a harassing person nothing happened to my account after those XX days passed.

So next time I would definitely block and report them for harassment. It's not a huge deal on their end but it might wake them up to the fact that their behavior has really crossed the line.

 

[The Mad Queen]

Ozone sounds like a real peach. As to second guy you can actually report people for harassment on this site fairly easily. I've had it happen to me twice and as you can see nothing too terrible happened to me. I just got a message saying that someone had reported me for bad behavior and that I had a warning on my account for XX days. I was never told who reported me or even why specifically. And as I am not actually much of a harassing person nothing happened to my account after those XX days passed.

So next time I would definitely block and report them for harassment. It's not a huge deal on their end but it might wake them up to the fact that their behavior has really crossed the line.

Sadly most of his harassment was off-site so there isn't a lot I can do aside from blocking him. I've banned him from all future RPs I'm going to run already.

 

[JadeGreen17]

I cant decide so I'll make a list. All of these irk me for different reasons.

Note that in instances of talking about bad things, I will refer to the RP partners as "Voldemort" as shorthand for "(s)he who shall not be named" as to not offend anybody.

1. There is of course the horrible instance of ghosting I always talk about. I ran a fantasy RP with voldemort on Skype. She and I hit it off really well (i mean in an RP sense). She was GMing a round of characters I made through a fantasy/RPG style quest-line and she was a gloriously talented GM and storyteller and she always applauded my funny writing style and creativity in combat scenes. I RPed with her for about 6 or 7 months I think, with us tending toward rapid fire sessions of posts that ranged from one word to a few sentences for various raids. When we were getting close to the end, (By that I mean my characters were standing outside THE DOOR TO THE CHAMBER OF THE FINAL BOSS) She said she had to go eat dinner. And that would be the last message I ever got from her on Skype to this day five years later. The most infuriating part is that I've seen her start to come online again recently and tried to get her attention to no avail. To this day I try hard to avoid ghosting and get worked up about it because of this RP. Though like another item on this list, the RP itself wasn't bad, it was really good. It is just the untimely end that frustrates me.

2. Once was about 6 months ago during a large scale Scifi nation states RP. Voldemort played an overpowered uninteresting 40k inspired faction. His characters were as interesting as wet cardboard, his ships and weapons ludicrously overcompensating for something. The antagonists were boring and one dimensional. But I drew the line the second time he joked that a 40+ yo character was going to 'do things' with a 19 yo girl I was RPing.

3. Another was during a versus RP tournament. In where the GM and fellow competitors ignored damage stats when I did 100 more points of damage than the guy had armor and he got through the attack completely unscathed. So I figured we were playing it loose with character sheets, but in the next fight they appealed to the pedantics character sheets and negated my defenses because something was an aura effect even when it functioned like a directed effect, and in the very same turn decided that my plasma cannon classified as a projectile weapon and therefore triggered an enemy's defense mechanism. That was three instances of pretty obvious bias against me, so I ghosted. The GM and the guy I was fighting tried to talk me into rejoining but I wasn't giving them the satisfaction if internet rage and just blocked them. Maybe a bit of an overreaction but I couldn't shake the feeling I was just being used as a punching bag to inflate their egos.

4. I had yet another Voldemort drop a couple of really good ATLA/OU RP on Skype about a year ago now. I won't say too much since I think said Voldemort is a member of this site (don't know if they're still active) and they didn't ghost. They legitimately just lost interest. But I was having the time of my life and having them lose interest just as the story was getting good was still very frustrating. I don't think that really counts since the RP itself was great, but its abrupt and pointless cancellation was frustrating.

5. (Edit) Almost forgot. A really toxic star wars discord server. Voldemort (the server owner) liked talking about me and some other RPers behind our backs and the server owners and admins turned out to be huge a-holes.

 

[Tortitude]

Worst experience was probably when my RP with one of my favorite and oldest ships sank. It sank because the SO of my character, Kat, decided their friend had to be incorporated in our rps and even gave them permission to play one of our character's children for a different ship, even though they didn't even have any kids yet. She wasn't allowed to rp the main ship when she was near her friend because that friend got jealous. Any group rps we had with said friend took over a month to move because she would only post once a month. Then she got to claim one of their kids... I'm very attached to my characters as most people are and was definitely not okay with it. When I explained my feelings, I was given the ultimatum to either be okay with their friend being in all of our ships or to never rp with her characters again. We had been rping without her friend for over a year and a half and rping our ships for almost 3 years. Definitely a heartbreaking time for me as Kat was one of my favorite characters.

Currently, it would be an rp I'm doing right now. Despite me asking for no overpowered characters on FB's Roleplay group, I got a demon guy that somehow teleported into my character's carriage and acted like he knew both my characters. He's expecting my character to drop head over heels for him as we speak as he just pretty much destroyed a village to find her. He is forcing her to be his bride in Hell despite that never being up for discussion .-.

 

[PhoenixMire]

I was friends with this one girl IRL who introduced me to RPing. And because she was my friend (and we also saw each other a lot), I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t want to RP with her. Basically, every single character she ever made was a Mary Sue.

We started multiple different RPs; sometimes multiple at once or sometimes we’d just start a new one when the older one died. She was always god-modding my characters in roundabout ways, her characters would solve massive conflicts in a single post (and then be reduced to a useless damsel in distress mere moments later only to return to being really OP whenever she felt like it I guess???), and she always brought in NPCs to glorify her character and ramble about how beautiful and perfect she was.

Since I felt obligated to keep RPing with her despite how irritated I got with her characters, I kept trying to hint at her that her characters were Mary Sues. She never got the hints. At one point I flat out sent her a “is your character a Mary Sue?” test that I’d found, and asked her to take it. She supposedly took it and reported back to me, “Yeah, my characters don’t fit it! They’re not Mary Sues” in spite of the fact that her characters checked off every single freaking thing on that test.

She also gave all her characters cliche tragic backstories that were always too over the top edgy. And she seemed to have an uncomfortable obsession with having her characters be victims of rape in their backstories. It got to the point where, no matter how much of a doormat I was, I asked her to please not do that since it made me really uncomfortable, but she kept doing it anyway.

I remember at one point some guy I kinda knew (but not too well) messaged me asking why in the world I was RPing with this girl. He’d seen some of our RPs together and said they looked unbearable and he didn’t understand how I could put up with her horrible Mary Sue characters. I just told him she was my friend and I was essentially too much of a doormat to tell her no.

After a while I decided enough was enough. I told her I wasn’t interested in our RPs anymore. She kept bugging me to reply or start new RPs, but I kinda just... ghosted her, tbh, since I’d already told her I wasn’t interested and she kept bugging me. I haven’t seen her in years and I’m pretty glad that my RPs with her are far behind me.

(I rambled more than I intended to but it’s nice to have this off my chest lol)

 

[AnimeGenork]

Witchyy So I can't say I've had worse than that (sorry you had to deal with that, by the way, that's just fucking awful)

I guess my worst experience was in this one group RP that I was running, and someone submitted a character I didn't quite agree with because there was a mental illness somewhere in there. I asked if they could change it, because I wasn't comfortable with having a character in my RP like that (I get itchy when in a roleplay with characters with mental illness--I'm afraid of misrepresentation/somebody offending someone else, and I'm very touchy about it due to my own personal problems and those of my family BUT ANYWAY). They PMed me and basically said I was an idiot who didn't understand that their character wasn't going to hurt anybody and proceeded to leave the RP.

I was like, "I'm the GM?" When I told others about it, they told me I hadn't done anything wrong, but it still irked me. Like, I'm sorry I'm not comfortable with certain things?

In another RP I tried to run, this person had this really rich character and was basically trying to get her all the advantages (basically a penthouse suite in a castle that had no such thing), and I was like, "Um, excuse me, that's not fair to everyone else?" and they were like, "But she's earned this" when it was literally page 2 and we hadn't gotten anywhere. I tried to reign it in, but it didn't work.

I was real glad when they left.

(Okay I swear last one) Someone PMed me when I joined this one RP saying "Welcome to our RP" but they weren't the GM, so I pointed this out. The guy called me a bitch and left the conversation, then proceeded to have his character hang all over mine weirdly. Right as I was going to respond, though, he deleted the post. It was... baffling.

I ignored his ass.

Okay I swear I'm done wow did not realize I had so much to say on this

 

[JadeGreen17]

I was friends with this one girl IRL who introduced me to RPing. And because she was my friend (and we also saw each other a lot), I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t want to RP with her. Basically, every single character she ever made was a Mary Sue.

We started multiple different RPs; sometimes multiple at once or sometimes we’d just start a new one when the older one died. She was always god-modding my characters in roundabout ways, her characters would solve massive conflicts in a single post (and then be reduced to a useless damsel in distress mere moments later only to return to being really OP whenever she felt like it I guess???), and she always brought in NPCs to glorify her character and ramble about how beautiful and perfect she was.

Since I felt obligated to keep RPing with her despite how irritated I got with her characters, I kept trying to hint at her that her characters were Mary Sues. She never got the hints. At one point I flat out sent her a “is your character a Mary Sue?” test that I’d found, and asked her to take it. She supposedly took it and reported back to me, “Yeah, my characters don’t fit it! They’re not Mary Sues” in spite of the fact that her characters checked off every single freaking thing on that test.

She also gave all her characters cliche tragic backstories that were always too over the top edgy. And she seemed to have an uncomfortable obsession with having her characters be victims of rape in their backstories. It got to the point where, no matter how much of a doormat I was, I asked her to please not do that since it made me really uncomfortable, but she kept doing it anyway. {snip}

I used to roleplay these sorts of characters. Edgy backstories and they were op af one minute and needing help/rescue the next minute. I don't think I was as bad as the person you're describing, mostly because I had a good friend who was a more mature writer helping me make suggestions that helped me slowly realize the problems with the way I was writing and roleplaying and turned my edgelords into actual well developed characters. Khy is one of my favorite characters ever, and he used to be the epitome of an edgelord. He's still consistently competent when fighting (very skilled but very underpowered) and a bit socially awkward, blunt, and very emotional for a male character, but in reality he's a chilled out dude.

Witchyy So I can't say I've had worse than that (sorry you had to deal with that, by the way, that's just fucking awful)

I guess my worst experience was in this one group RP that I was running, and someone submitted a character I didn't quite agree with because there was a mental illness somewhere in there. I asked if they could change it, because I wasn't comfortable with having a character in my RP like that (I get itchy when in a roleplay with characters with mental illness--I'm afraid of misrepresentation/somebody offending someone else, and I'm very touchy about it due to my own personal problems and those of my family BUT ANYWAY). They PMed me and basically said I was an idiot who didn't understand that their character wasn't going to hurt anybody and proceeded to leave the RP.

I was like, "I'm the GM?" When I told others about it, they told me I hadn't done anything wrong, but it still irked me. Like, I'm sorry I'm not comfortable with certain things?

{snip}

Mental disability is a minefield I don't dare tread on with RP and writing, since people get so ridiculously touchy about misrepresentation in it. Every time one of my friends or RP partners tries to write a character like this the amount of research and care they take in doing so never seems to be enough to satisfy to some people. I've had friends do interviews with people that have the disability they want to portray (often aquantences from school or college) and read actual medical journals and still get told that they're not informed enough and are misrepresenting the demographic. It seems as though whether your do your homework or not, at the moment they get their foot in the door into writing these types of characters, you get yelled at no matter what, and then the advocates for mentally disabled characters sit there scratching their heads as to why nobody wants to represent them. (And I could go on a whole multi-paragraph rant about this, but I won't)

So honestly, I don't blame you one bit for not being comfortable having that in your RP.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Mental disability is a minefield I don't dare tread on with RP and writing, since people get so ridiculously touchy about misrepresentation in it. Every time one of my friends or RP partners tries to write a character like this the amount of research and care they take in doing so never seems to be enough to satisfy to some people. I've had friends do interviews with people that have the disability they want to portray (often aquantences from school or college) and read actual medical journals and still get told that they're not informed enough and are misrepresenting the demographic. It seems as though whether your do your homework or not, at the moment they get their foot in the door into writing these types of characters, you get yelled at no matter what, and then the advocates for mentally disabled characters sit there scratching their heads as to why nobody wants to represent them. (And I could go on a whole multi-paragraph rant about this, but I won't)

So honestly, I don't blame you one bit for not being comfortable having that in your RP.

As someone with mental disability in my family I think it's one of those no win situations. If you don't do research and just use it as a "quirky" character trait it's rude and disrespectful. If you make it too real though it's triggering for people who either suffer from the illness or have family with that illness. Like my mom has bipolar and I cannot handle portrayals of it in roleplays. The well written ones just make me upset because I'm reminded of my mom off her meds and it takes me out of the fantasy aspect of the story. The poorly written ones are a slap in the face.

I compromise by saying - make up your own illness and give it whatever symptoms you want. That way you can still have a well rounded (or even poorly written) character and my back doesn't go up whenever I read a post.

 

[AnimeGenork]

Mental disability is a minefield I don't dare tread on with RP and writing, since people get so ridiculously touchy about misrepresentation in it. Every time one of my friends or RP partners tries to write a character like this the amount of research and care they take in doing so never seems to be enough to satisfy to some people. I've had friends do interviews with people that have the disability they want to portray (often aquantences from school or college) and read actual medical journals and still get told that they're not informed enough and are misrepresenting the demographic. It seems as though whether your do your homework or not, at the moment they get their foot in the door into writing these types of characters, you get yelled at no matter what, and then the advocates for mentally disabled characters sit there scratching their heads as to why nobody wants to represent them. (And I could go on a whole multi-paragraph rant about this, but I won't)

So honestly, I don't blame you one bit for not being comfortable having that in your RP.

Exactly! I'm not a fan of messy business like that.

I just want to write.

I compromise by saying - make up your own illness and give it whatever symptoms you want. That way you can still have a well rounded (or even poorly written) character and my back doesn't go up whenever I read a post.

That
is genius
Why didn't I ever think of that

 

[PhoenixMire]

Mental disability is a minefield I don't dare tread on with RP and writing, since people get so ridiculously touchy about misrepresentation in it. Every time one of my friends or RP partners tries to write a character like this the amount of research and care they take in doing so never seems to be enough to satisfy to some people. I've had friends do interviews with people that have the disability they want to portray (often aquantences from school or college) and read actual medical journals and still get told that they're not informed enough and are misrepresenting the demographic. It seems as though whether your do your homework or not, at the moment they get their foot in the door into writing these types of characters, you get yelled at no matter what, and then the advocates for mentally disabled characters sit there scratching their heads as to why nobody wants to represent them. (And I could go on a whole multi-paragraph rant about this, but I won't)

So honestly, I don't blame you one bit for not being comfortable having that in your RP.

Misrepresentation can sometimes be flat-out harmful, since there are times that myths are perpetuated so much that people begin to accept them as reality. It makes me really afraid to admit to people that I suffer from a specific mental illness. So yeah, I can see why people get upset over it, and I'd rather people not even involve mental illness unless they can research it. Maybe if they actually did research it I'd be okay with it? Idk for sure since I haven't really had people trying to RP characters with that specific mental problem; I've just seen it portrayed wrong in all kinds of other media and discussions.

 

[JadeGreen17]

Misrepresentation can sometimes be flat-out harmful, since there are times that myths are perpetuated so much that people begin to accept them as reality. It makes me really afraid to admit to people that I suffer from a specific mental illness. So yeah, I can see why people get upset over it, and I'd rather people not even involve mental illness unless they can research it. Maybe if they actually did research it I'd be okay with it? Idk for sure since I haven't really had people trying to RP characters with that specific mental problem; I've just seen it portrayed wrong in all kinds of other media and discussions.

I am by no means intending to deny that misrepresentation doesn't happen or isn't harmful, although honestly I have never been close to anybody who attempted such a character without doing research first, I don't deny that theres writers and RPers out there that do little or no research. What we're talking about is that the justice warriors who seem to always make a stink even when one does make a concerted effort to represent such a character accurately, something I've seen happen secondhand to friends.

 

[PhoenixMire]

I am by no means intending to deny that misrepresentation doesn't happen or isn't harmful, although honestly I have never been close to anybody who attempted such a character without doing research first, I don't deny that theres writers and RPers out there that do little or no research. What we're talking about is that the justice warriors who seem to always make a stink even when one does make a concerted effort to represent such a character accurately, something I've seen happen secondhand to friends.

Yeah, those types of people can be annoying. I can understand it if maybe someone feels too sensitive about a mental illness to see it RPed (it might just be too spot on and uncomfortable for them), but yes, I’ve seen the type of people that make a stink no matter what and it’s annoying lol

 

[Rusty of Shackleford]

I've had a few, but the worse is one where the user could barely write, and every post was barely readable. Another one made several IC replies in a row when I didn't reply in the arbitrary time they expected me too. The latter really pissed me off.