Bad Stuff Happening IC
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@Pavel said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:
Bleed, to my mind, is usually accidental
I guess it depends on your definition. If ink bleeds through paper, it could be because you tried to put something under it but it wasn’t enough, but it could also be that you didn’t even try at all (through innocent ignorance or recklessness). Either way the effect is the same.
That said, I agree with your basic premise that a concerning number of RPers don’t seem to believe that preventing bleed is even important/valuable in the first place.
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I think bleed — by which I just mean having an emotional response to RP or IC events that is bad enough to feel harmful or maladaptive in some fashion, stuff that goes beyond the standard sort of emotional reaction you’d have to fiction – is incredibly common. Like, the vast majority of RPers will experience it in some fashion at one point or another.
The bleed is the cause of the real problem, which is when players have a bad reaction to the bleed and make it other people’s problems in a harmful way, but it’s not the same thing as being the problem itself. I think it’d be more helpful to recognize bleed as being a common issue that people are likely to encounter at some point or another, and instead talk about how to react to bleed in a healthy and productive way. I think it can be unhelpful when the community tends to frame bleed as “this is a bad thing that tends to happen because you’re not doing a good enough job of managing yourself” because it wraps the whole thing up in shame that may make it harder for people to recognize and handle well.
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@Roz BIG AGREE
If you as a player are thinking, ‘pfft I never have IC/OOC bleed’, you are most likely lying to yourself. And if you are lying to yourself about it, you are probably having the very bad, no good reactions when it actually happens, because you believe you are different and your emotions are all the result of valid injustice.
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@Roz said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:
I think bleed — by which I just mean having an emotional response to RP or IC events that is bad enough to feel harmful or maladaptive in some fashion, stuff that goes beyond the standard sort of emotional reaction you’d have to fiction – is incredibly common. Like, the vast majority of RPers will experience it in some fashion at one point or another.
That’s an interesting perspective. I’m not sure that I define “bleed” the same way, because I think the line between “standard sort of emotional reaction to fiction” and “maladaptive” is not well-defined.
People have emotional responses to fiction. People have emotional responses to gaming. It’s natural that someone is going to have emotional responses to fiction-gaming. I don’t personally call that “bleed”.
Bleed to me is when you fail to keep a healthy boundary between you and the character. Like when I cry at Titanic, it’s not because I think I’m Rose. It’s not because I’m over-empathizing with the character, or her emotions are bleeding into mine. It’s just a tragic story. Whereas I see bleed as transferring the character’s emotions onto your own to an unhealthy degree.
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@MisterBoring
“Don’t want none, won’t be none.” -
@Faraday said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:
@Roz said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:
I think bleed — by which I just mean having an emotional response to RP or IC events that is bad enough to feel harmful or maladaptive in some fashion, stuff that goes beyond the standard sort of emotional reaction you’d have to fiction – is incredibly common. Like, the vast majority of RPers will experience it in some fashion at one point or another.
That’s an interesting perspective. I’m not sure that I define “bleed” the same way, because I think the line between “standard sort of emotional reaction to fiction” and “maladaptive” is not well-defined.
People have emotional responses to fiction. People have emotional responses to gaming. It’s natural that someone is going to have emotional responses to fiction-gaming. I don’t personally call that “bleed”.
Bleed to me is when you fail to keep a healthy boundary between you and the character. Like when I cry at Titanic, it’s not because I think I’m Rose. It’s not because I’m over-empathizing with the character, or her emotions are bleeding into mine. It’s just a tragic story. Whereas I see bleed as transferring the character’s emotions onto your own to an unhealthy degree.
Yeah, I think you’re saying everything I was saying. People having emotional reactions to fiction is exactly what I meant when I said that “the standard sort of emotional reaction you have to fiction.” Like it’s fine and normal and healthy to feel sad at sad RP stories, the way that we feel sad at a sad movie. That’s why I said bleed is a reaction that goes beyond this sort of emotional response.
Bleed, as you said, is when we start getting emotional to a degree that really harms our enjoyment of the hobby. It’s when we start getting sad or frustrated or upset because of the story not going the way we want, because our character isn’t getting the story we want them to get, etc.
When I say “maladaptive,” I mean that we’re having an emotional response to stress that’s become harmful in some fashion. It causes us stress, anxiety, etc. in a way that we get stressed, anxious, upset in response to real life stressors outside of the game. Our mood might get ruined for the day, or even beyond that. We’re upset or frustrated in the situation.
she/her | playlist
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@Roz I agree we’re mostly on the same page. I think I was just viewing bleed as a specific type of maladaptive behavior where one over-identifies with the character. Self-insert gone awry. The classic example being: two characters are in love and one player starts letting that bleed over to their behavior toward the other player.
That feels very different from, say, ragequitting and throwing your controller across the room after losing a Fortnite match. That’s also unhealthy, obviously, but I personally wouldn’t call it bleed.
The kind of bleed I’m describing feels closer to the parasocial relationships you see towards influencers.
I dunno, maybe they’re all just different sides of the same coin and I’m trying to make an unnecessary distinction.
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@Faraday Oh yeah, of course, it’s not ANY sort of maladaptive behavior in any sort of game. Crashing out over losing Fortnite isn’t the same thing, you’re right. Bleed is something specific to these sorts of situations where we’re identifying with characters we’re actively writing the stories of. It’s a phenomenon in RP spaces specifically because of the nature of the hobby and playing characters the way we do.
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Like everything else, it depends.
I want bad stuff to happen to my PC, because I want stuff to happen.
But.
Is it fair? It sucks the fun right out of it when it’s shit like, “The House Rule I just invented means that the action you took before I invented this rule and told you about it was not the ordinary way of things, but a crime for which you are now in deep trouble.”
Is it interactive? It could be that as a story element the Bad Stuff is in fact A Gloriously Epic Trauma Conga Line, but if it’s all off-camera it’s insufferably frustrating, not fun.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that most players who respond badly to bad stuff happening to their PCs have had experiences of unfair non-interactive bad stuff being used to shut them out of the game.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that most players who respond badly to bad stuff happening to their PCs have had experiences of unfair non-interactive bad stuff being used to shut them out of the game.
And much like unhealed people entering the dating pool before they are ready, it is their responsibility to work that out so it isn’t causing them to lash out at others.
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@hellfrog Yep. But also note that making unfair and non-interactive bad shit happen to PCs is legit unfun. It’s their responsibility to work it out, and they don’t get free rein to lash out at people because of it. BUT regardless, the shitty thing about unfair non-interactive shit is that it’s unfair non-interactive shit. It wouldn’t be just fine if the mark would only shut up and pretend it’s fine.
