Emotional bleed

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Derp said in Emotional bleed:

@L-B-Heuschkel

I agree. That's the approach I usually take.

The problem I see is when the character is being a dick and the player doesn't want to accept the character being called a dick because the player gets hurt OOC. It feels like a 'get out of jerkass free' card, and I'm really not on board with it, nor do I think it's healthy for any player involved in such a situation.

Yeah, then we're back at the 'lol it's just RP' excuse where people either try to pretend that they're not hurt (but they totally are) or tell you that you have no right to feel hurt just because they just walked all over you.

[krmbm]

"I was emotionally invested in this scene, and it definitely impacted my character's responses." Yay!

"I hate Sue's player so my PC hates Sue the character." Boo!

YMMV.

[insomniac7809]

@Ghost said in Emotional bleed:

Why is this behavior less associated with playing Among Us and when it happens when people play "Call of Duty" it's approached like an unhealthy attachment, but when it happens in MU the inmates push to treat it like a normalized behavior that shouldn't be approached as abnormal?

If I don't feel things when I play a video game, it isn't a video game I'm going to be interested in.

Same with books, movies, all sorts of narrative media. Feeling feelings about imaginary people's feelings is kind of what drama is for. If my response to a narrative work is "that certainly was a series of events happening in chronological order" this isn't high praise.

So I can agree that people should, y'know, manage their shit and deal with IC IC, but I don't feel like "the fictional emotions of fictional characters have effected my emotional state" is a problem that needs working on.

[GangOfDolls]

I think one of the ways bleed is avoided is to also do a radical self-inventory of things you do not want to RP about.

Here's my list:

Romantic infidelity
Body horror
Racism and racial violence
Pregnancy

And then you tell people your list at the outset.

There's this idea that you have RP everything thrown at you even if it's a total shit sandwich that doesn't do anything for you or your PC and politely be on board with having a bad time so someone else can have a great time. And if you don't like something, you have to play through it in-game even if it's objectively harmful to the player.

To which: hell no.

There's a huge difference between moves and countermoves in an IG conflict and your PC is bested or you just don't like the outcome versus being subjected to being a punching bag for IG events because it's great fun for someone else at your expense. People can intelligently tell the difference and those who try to use this an excuse to not 'lose' in game are in the wrong for attempting to manipulate an outcome.

If you're at all a human being and someone says: 'hey, I can't RP about this subject' or 'this is taking a turn to a place that's really hard on me and I can't do this', then you give them an out while preserving the IG outcome.

Edit: a word

[Sunny]

@GangOfDolls

Ohhh, that brings up a really good coping mechanism: deal with it OOC. Like, if something is particularly upsetting or causing bad bleed and you recognize it, you don't actually have to RP it out. Drop to out of character, discuss it with the other player, roll dice if necessary, and then move on. Remove the emotional charge, take the wind out of your own sails, whatever. There's this weird stigma against handling things OOCly when sometimes that's really, really, really the healthy thing to do.

If you cannot, in the course of playing your character, drop OOC and actually discuss / come to a conclusion about results without the RP happening -- like, you can't conceive of it -- that is a REALLY big sign that there's a problem you need to take a minute to self-eval on.

ETA: I reduced an IC breakup to dice rolls once, because the other player decided to have their character get on the emotional blackmail train and I wasn't having it. It was terrible and not fun very quickly, and so I just noped out. This is also my story of how I became a bad target for a fairly well known creeper. It's the same story.

[Jeshin]

Emotional Bleed is shamed and censured for a simple reason.

Integrity.

Everyone here knows they can conjure up an IC plausible justification to do anything they want. Arik wants to go join Waldo and kill his sister. Would he ever do that? No. Could I come up with something that someone would go... Sure -if that's true- that is plausible. You bet your ass.

Since all actions can be given a veneer of IC plausibility that means the infusion of OOC motivation not based on IC circumstances is poison to the game. It's loading the dice. It's not sharing in the same story as everyone else. It's the anti-thesis of roleplay.

If anything can be justified and emotional bleed isn't condemned than how do you tell the difference outside of honest admissions of emotional bleed?

This is of course for the negative sort of emotional bleed. The I want to kill XYZ, I want to punish XYZ, I want to get out of this situation because XYZ.

EDIT - That last question isn't rhetorical.

If anything can be justified and emotional bleed isn't condemned than how do you tell the difference outside of honest admissions of emotional bleed?

^ as people witnessing a story or action or character how do you know if it's emotional bleed or just something you didn't expect to happen?

[Sunny]

@Jeshin

I don't understand what you're trying to say. Acknowledging that humans have feelings about things does not make the situations you are describing any better or any worse.

eta: what impact does having emotions about things have upon whether or not you have integrity?

[Jeshin]

@Sunny

Integrity of the story, not individual integrity. The shared suspension of disbelief. Obviously people have feelings and one of the reasons there's such a culture of don't do it finger wagging (I think) is because of the final question.

How do you as an outsider looking in identify when it is even happening because pretty much any RPer can justify anything they like given 5 minutes.

[Sunny]

@Jeshin

I still don't get it. That is the case, yes. What do feelings have to do with that?

[Roz]

No one has said that bad behavior due to emotional bleed should be celebrated, allowed, or go unquestioned or uncensured.

The point is acknowledging that most or all players experience emotional bleed at one point or another, but that having the feelings themselves doesn't need to be shamed, as this can actually make things worse. When someone feels shitty about something that it's not appropriate for them to act on, if they also feel shame for experiencing those emotions, it actually compounds the issue. It will make negative, destructive, or toxic behavior more likely.

That's why the point of the thread was "what are the good and HEALTHY ways to deal with and process bleed." I said "don't shame people for having feelings" specifically because I think it's more helpful to just accept that people are going to have feelings, and instead focus on the resulting behaviors. How do we process those moments of bleed so that it doesn't become an issue in our actual gameplay or end up on someone else's lap? It's not about allowing bad behavior resulting from bleed.

It's moving the thought process from "If you have any feelings of bleed, you're bad" to "If you have feelings of bleed and let them impact others or the game, that's shitty." Assume that everyone is likely to experience some bleed at some point. Take that as a given. Focus on what they actually do in response to it.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@GangOfDolls It is generally a wise choice to ask if anyone's got a squick around whatever, before you throw it at them. Just as it's a good idea to tell people if you have an unusual squick. I know people who refuse to RP around the topic of pregnancy -- around infidelity -- and for myself, competition. I can't and won't deal with anything that might bleed into OOC competitive territory -- and others have other reservations of their own.

It's IC/OOC bleed, definitely. But it's also taking responsibility for it, and not inflicting your trauma on everyone else -- or putting yourself through something that only rips up old wounds.

[Ghost]

@insomniac7809 said in Emotional bleed:

If I don't feel things when I play a video game, it isn't a video game I'm going to be interested in.

I don't like this approach, and I'll expound as to why: We're not talking about just "feeling" things.

People like going to the circus because it makes them feel something. People like watching horror movies because being scared can be fun. People like Thanksgiving dinner because it makes them feel something. People like eating ice cream because there's fulfillment in it. People like putting dollars into the claw grabber machines knowing all the while it's a ripoff because it makes them feel something. There is not one thing that anyone does so in life because there is zero feeling/gratification in it. We're not robots performing tasks; every action taken is applied to FEELING something.

So I feel like this approach to the question of "emotional attachment and bleed" when it comes to online gaming and the emotional turmoils that come with that type of obsession shouldn't be written up as "If I don't feel anything it wouldn't be worth it to begin with".

FEELING something isn't the same as actuating trauma through a hobby. It's not people like you that I'm concerned about when it comes to these games. People like you and I do (did) this stuff because there was juice in the squeeze, but there are others who squeeze until it hurts, and maybe a little bit of upset when the squeeze stops hurting. There are plenty of players in the hobby that approach it with a balanced eye, but when the hobby causes emotional bleed that leaps off of the keyboard and into the RL/OOC realm in ways that aren't "darn, the claw grabber didn't get the Popeye doll; better luck next time" we then enter the realm of where things on the other side of the keyboard can go wrong.

So in that light I personally don't think this conversation should go in that direction. Example being stuff like the times someone's RL mental health resulted in conversations about suicide as the direct result of things that were (or weren't) happening IC. I've been there. Others have, too.

[Apos]

@Pyrephox said in Emotional bleed:

Part of my IC/OOC boundary routine is to try and make sure every character I play disagrees with me on at least one and often more than one fundamental value/motivation.

I really can't overstate this. I enjoy RP on a lot of characters I never have any significant attachment to, and I usually have aspects of them that I dislike, or think is profoundly wrong. I don't tend to play any character I'd fall in love with, if that makes sense. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't play characters they get excited about, or really like, but if something becomes an avatar for them in a profoundly intimate way, it can get really unhealthy really fast.

[Ganymede]

@tek said in Emotional bleed:

What are the ways you handle your bleed? What advice do you have for others who might not handle it as well?

I think much depends on how much bleed you can handle and continue to function. Some people are better at handling bleed than others. That tailors one's strategy a great deal.

Me, I feel I can handle a lot of emotional stress, so bleed isn't much of an issue for me. Also, being on stage regularly (either as an actor or singer) helps to manage bleed.

---

@Apos said in Emotional bleed:

I don't tend to play any character I'd fall in love with, if that makes sense.

I don't want to fall in love with my PCs, but I end up kind of wanting too because most of them engage in unmitigated violence regularly and who the heck doesn't find that attractive.

[Derp]

@Ganymede said in Emotional bleed:

I don't want to fall in love with my PCs, but I end up kind of wanting too because most of them engage in unmitigated violence regularly and who the heck doesn't find that attractive.

swoon

[tek]

I think the big problems with bleed come when the player doesn't like themselves, but they like their character. That's when shit gets really weird and personal and things get bad blurry.

[GangOfDolls]

@tek To add to that, I've tended to notice it be more of a thing when players are trying to work out/unpack/give themselves a short course in self-administered therapy about something they're struggling with via PC as a proxy. This is almost always a total recipe for intense and ugly disaster.

[tek]

@GangOfDolls Now to be fair, in the right setting with the right oversight, that could be helpful. However, a recreational game with people who didn't sign up to facilitate your therapy is NOT the place for that shit.

[Pyrephox]

@GangOfDolls said in Emotional bleed:

@tek To add to that, I've tended to notice it be more of a thing when players are trying to work out/unpack/give themselves a short course in self-administered therapy about something they're struggling with via PC as a proxy. This is almost always a total recipe for intense and ugly disaster.

Yes. PLEASE don't do that.

(And before anyone hops in to say that roleplay is a valid therepeutic technique? Yes, I know. But /not like this/. Roleplay in a supportive environment with a therapist guiding you through situations and helping you process your own and other reactions to them can be very helpful. But other players in an online game are not equipped or present for your emotional needs, and there is no one on the game who is tailoring the situations to allow you to encounter conflict and distress points in a controlled, supportive way.)

[L. B. Heuschkel]

Yeah, no. I didn't sign on to be somebody's free therapy, and I don't expect anyone to be mine. Take that stuff to private conversations with the friends you make, friends who may indeed be willing to go that extra mile. But don't subject random strangers on the internet to it.