I’ve been putting this off for quite some time, despite P’s player’s encouragement. I’ve done that partly because I know it’ll hurt to bring this back up, and partly because I don’t really want to sling mud at people. Scratch that. I DO want to sling mud. I want to sling motherfucking bucketfuls of it. I don’t think it’s wrong for me to feel like doing it; I think I more than deserve the satisfaction of doing it. I just don’t want to feel guilty about doing it later.
Ah, the hell with it. It’s past time I told my side of the story. And this is just that: MY side. I’ll change the names a bit though. Not that the people involved deserve that kind of consideration, but I’ll give it because I’m hardwired to treat people better than they treat me.
I’ll start with ‘Catgirl’, who will henceforth be referred to as ‘CG’. I met her on Jack’s first day in VoPC. Melody had called Jack in to help interrogate CG in connection to John’s murder. Over time, Jack and CG struck up a friendship as Jack unraveled the truth behind the VoPC. They forged a psychic link because they needed a way to communicate securely. Stupid, yes. I know that now. You don’t need to say it. However, CG’s player pushed for them to develop a relationship.
Bear in mind, this was the first heavy RP I’d ever done in any game. I wasn’t as mature emotionally as I am now. Hah Hah. I didn’t know what I wanted, or where my boundaries were, really. There’s a bevy of OOC reasons for that, but since no one reading this blog is going to make $150 an hour to listen to them, they’re not your problem. I’m just saying.
Anyway, I consented. I don’t know if I can honestly wish I hadn’t. I learned a lot, about people, about myself, and about the game. And it really was fun at first. Then along came ‘Douchebag Technomancer’ or ‘DT’. That’s where things started to go wrong. He was a motherfucking hodgepodge of tropes. He had a LOT of Gambit going on, the whole ‘dangerous bad boy with a hidden heart of gold’ motif. In the entire time I RP’d with the guy, there wasn’t a single toon he made, or concept he developed that I couldn’t tell you exactly where he’d stolen it from. He made an art form out of plagiarism and derivative characters.
You don’t have to be super creative to RP, IMO. But if you’re not, have the decency to own it. Don’t try and pass off someone else’s work as your own. Hell, at least disguise it enough so I can’t pinpoint its source in under a minute. If you’re going to BS me, at least make me WORK to spot it. This guy would quote directly from Dune as if it was original. His precious fucking technomancers were ripped near verbatim from the Babylon 5 RPG. He didn’t even have the goddamn wherewithal to change the names in some cases.
The inherent problem in building a toon by whipping out a lot of bullshit tropes and traits you like is that the character is a hot mess. Very inconsistent, and when you’d call him on it, he’d just airily brush it aside like your opinion didn’t matter. At least he did with me. Goddamn punk bitch.
Also, he was famous for just doing shit to your characters without your consent. “Hmm, I need a short plot here. ‘Hey Jack, Gabriel’s infected you with probes.’ ‘Hey Lue, I moved your character here and did this to him.’” To this day, that is my single biggest pet peeve in RP. Now if he’d done it once, and apologized and stopped when he was called on it, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But by the end of SH, he’d pulled it on me near half a dozen times. Granted, I didn’t say anything to him the first few times, so that’s on me. But the rest, after I asked him to stop? He didn’t respect me. But he was soooo happy to use my toons to make his look cool. And Gabriel? FUCK. You can’t get someone to fear your toon by constantly telling them to fear your toon. Shit, even I know that!
He started right out of the gate openly pining for any attractive female in Havens, and CG ate it up. With a motherfucking spoon. They’d sit close in dark corners, touch often, and share confidences. They had an emotional affair right in front of Jack, but any time he protested, he got told that she was faithful and he was being jealous and insecure. If CG treated her RL boyfriend like that, no fucking WONDER he closed off from her. Me being pathetic, though, I had Jack forgive all that, every time. I apologize to Jack every day for the way I treated him during all this. It was BLATANTLY OOC for him.
If someone pulled that shit with Jenna now, he’d put an end to it. Immediately. With a fucking VENGEANCE. CG would confide in DT, hurting and invalidating Jack, and negating any authority he had. Jack wound up just being an accessory of CG’s, like her handbag or something. The worst example is something I had Jack forgive, and to this day, I don’t understand why Jack didn’t just call it quits then. If this happened to any man IRL, they’d end up cuffed on the hood of a police cruiser, covered in blood, being read their rights.
We were considering having CG and Jack have children, but CG and DT wanted a dramatic way of revealing it. And by ‘dramatic’, I mean ‘horribly convoluted and emasculating to Jack’. So…DT talked to CG alone and convinced her that she’d be an awesome mother (yeah, if your ambition for your kid is to see them on an episode of Maury) and that she should have kids, even if they were Jack’s. I didn’t write that, I’m repeating it. That’s literally what he said. Rather than take offense to the backhanded slap to her fucking HUSBAND, CG agreed. And went off her birth control. And didn’t even BOTHER to tell Jack. Her explanation was that the decision seemed so natural that it didn’t occur to her to tell Jack, especially since he’d said he wanted a family SOMEDAY. WTF??????
Oh, and the moment of truth, when they found out?? Of course those two needed an audience. Then DT does the most convoluted version of a pregnancy test, and essentially goes 'Yep, thought so. You're pregnant.' Jack of course, ICly had no idea. Then, naturally DT follows that up with 'Yeah, there's a chance they may be my kids.' This is the kind of shit I meant. They'd take any opportunity to emasculate Jack, and I just went along with it. I think I was under the assumption they'd help me undo the damage at some point. Riiiiight.
Oh, and the moment of truth, when they found out?? Of course those two needed an audience. Then DT does the most convoluted version of a pregnancy test, and essentially goes 'Yep, thought so. You're pregnant.' Jack of course, ICly had no idea. Then, naturally DT follows that up with 'Yeah, there's a chance they may be my kids.' This is the kind of shit I meant. They'd take any opportunity to emasculate Jack, and I just went along with it. I think I was under the assumption they'd help me undo the damage at some point. Riiiiight.
Also, I near forgot to mention….CG’s player and I made alternate future versions of Jack and CG’s kids. Another decision I got pressured into. Anyway, she decided that Caden, Jack’s future son was in love with Aysun, DT’s daughter. SHE decided. I was angry, but I went along with it, because a) I took so much crap from them, that it was habit at this point, and b) It wasn’t horribly implausible until later after Jack and CG ended, when I realized that if CG and DT got married, it’d make Aysun and Caden stepbrother and stepsister. Oh, FUCK no.
After a while, they were fighting IC frequently, since Jack never felt she respected his opinion enough to even consider it on its own merits. I told CG’s player again and again that this wasn’t fun anymore. I’ve been in shitty relationships IRL, why the HELL would I pay $15 a month to RP one in a game? It was like talking to a wall. She was getting her drama, getting to satisfy all her Mary Sue-isms. What did she care if someone got hurt? It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that CG and DT had slept together in game while she was married to Jack, but they decided not to tell me OOC. It got to where I didn’t even want to log Jack on, and I turned to Lue. That brings me to ‘Psycho Reaper’ or ‘PR’. But not just yet. She gets her own special post, the psycho bitch.
It got to the point where I contemplated killing Jack off. P’s player was a rock through this whole ordeal, and gave me a way out. I’ll never forget it, and I hope I’m even half the friend to her that she’s been to me. At the point that Jack was on the way out of that marriage, and I was finally committed to that course….that CG FINALLY acknowledged that they had a problem. She gave her token blanket apologies, and expected that to make everything all better. Despite the fact that she STILL DIDN’T SEE THE GODDAMN PROBLEM. When she realized that I was serious about splitting them, she went into full-on martyr ‘woe is me I are so sad but I’ll bravely endure it so everyone else can be happy’ mode.
And of COURSE it was everyone’s fault but hers. Apparently, it’s a lot easier to believe P’s player was some kind of mind-controlling whore who wanted to surround herself with a virtual harem. Of course, CG can’t admit that CG’s actions actually had consequences that she didn’t like. She had this fun little game called ‘I’m going to put some passive-aggressive BS status on my AIM about being sad, but you have to beat the why out of me, since I don’t want to upset you.” And I fell for it again and again, because in spite of everything, I still cared about this person and wanted things to be cool between us.
More the fool I. Finally, I quit in disgust when DT wrote a letter to a friend of mine trying to get on her good side by attacking CG, calling her the ‘c word’. Motherfucking backstabbing arrogant douchebag hypocrite. But get this….CG forgave him. REALLY?? I just try to play the damn game without pissing all over people, and I’m a horrible selfish bastard she can’t forgive. But DT? He gets to stab her in the back and call her a word I’d NEVER use to refer to a woman, but she can forgive him. She must really love the prick, or thinks she does. Fine. I wash my hands of her. I withdraw my olive branch. She can kiss my fucking ass. I’m done. D-O-N-E. I don’t want to try anymore. I don’t need her. I’m a better RPer on a bad day than she is on her best.
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