@Pyrephox said in Emotional bleed:
@L-B-Heuschkel To some extent, there are several different issues:
People who use "have some ooc/ic separation" to be dicks in a way that would STILL BE A DICK even if we were sitting around playing cards or a board game. Like, rubbing someone's face in a loss, targeting another player to ruin their experience, mocking how someone plays - being upset about these things says nothing about one's ic/ooc separation, and trying to hide behind "oh, you just don't have good boundaries" is dumb. Bad sportsmanship is the center of it.
People who use "everyone gets attached to characters" to be dicks in a way that is manipulative and creepy, and yeah, would still be a dick if you were playing, idk, Warhammer tabletop or something, and decided that your faction was objectively the best and threw temper tantrums whenever you lost. They use their "attachment" to demand, overtly or covertly, that the game and other players conform to that attachment - I think my character is awesome, so I demand that you treat him/her like they're awesome, or my heart will break and it's all your fault.
I'm someone that tried to maintain a pure separation between IC/OOC, so I'll chime in here.
As someone who has been threatened, threatened with self-harm, yelled at by players for their emotional/marital health, had to wriggle out of uncomfortable RL attachment issues, been told "I love you" out of nowhere, been the target of trying to breach RL separation with promise of sexual favors, repeatedly dumped into situations that were I need you to do this for my RL needs, etc etc etc....
I came to the belief that at all times the best policy was to make it clear the following:
- This is a character, like a character in a book, that I am writing
- I am not the character. I will make decisions based on what I suspect the character's focal point is.
- YES there may be some thoughts and/or language ICly that derives from my own style of speaking and/or thinking, but that's not because the character is an extension of myself, but because from a writing perspective it just kind of happened that way. I am not my character. If anything this happens as a failure to find the PC's "voice".
- Do not contact me to try to coerce or guilt me into the character making specific actions
- I can, and will, exercise my right to play, drop, or delete the character for whatever reason I think is appropriate
I came to that point because, frankly, I was sick and tired of people accusing me of off the wall shit or make me feel like their emotional health depended on my attendance and/or action through a PC. Which, I'm sympathetic to people who are at that place emotionally, but the only way to keep myself sane and healthy was to accept that if anyone is like that towards PCs in the hobby, it's probably not because of one player's existence; if it wasn't me getting that attachment it'd be someone else next week (or maybe I wasn't the only one getting that level of heat at the same time).
I think that list above is healthy, sets fair boundaries, and is a good mantra to follow. IC/OOC separation avoids bleed, and I think it needs to be a practice (like meditation or yoga). After all, plenty of actors have mental/emotional issues because they committed too much to a character. Why should amateur "roleplayers" on the internet be any different?