07-05-2014, 10:57 PM
This isn't so much an apology or a confession, but I do hope to get this off my chest.
If you haven't noticed, I've more or less disappeared the past couple weeks. Part of the reason is due to computer problems both CappnRob and I share--although I do have a working computer at the facility I live in, it's a shared computer that also happens to have recurring performance problems (doesn't help that it has 1 GB of RAM). Another is because I was falling into yet another burnout, mostly due to running as many as 8 events in the span of a month for Hyjal alone (which, by the way, I don't regret and am more than happy to do more repeat events for more Hyjal). I did return briefly for a private wedding RP, but I was on a character I have been struggling to enjoy RPing. As I am having computer problems and working on comics/art, I decided to brush up on that character and try to have fun with him again by exploring his concept away from Warcraft and into my original works.
This, on top of writing the comic, planning for Hyjal, and looking back onto what I have created and made both on and off CotH has made me plunge into a nearly week-long really dark hole.
I won't say who the character is. Not here in the forums, at least. And he certainly isn't the only character of mine who suffers from this. We all do this with our characters--a piece of us is also a piece of them. What I do with my characters in RP (different from writing by myself) is that I place a bit of myself and what I enjoy into those characters so I can have that enjoyment when I'm in their shoes. However, I am starting to see a pattern in a few of them--the ones I often RP the most also take my negative sides of me. The sides I really don't want to face or explore. Sure, we all have our inner demons, and sometimes, RPing out those inner demons will turn out to be therapeutic. However, it's starting to come to a point when I realize I'm merely projecting my daily frustrations and personal angsts in RP form.
How bad is this getting for me? Well, here's how bad exactly: All of my characters have predetermined "good fates" and "bad fates", regardless of the direction the RP is going. Often times what determines the swapping of the bad to the good depends on the demand on that character in the RP community I am in; otherwise, I at least try to ignore emotional demand ("I love him, don't kill him!"), or I even revel in the tears of a character death. So, how bad is my situation exactly? When I am depressed that a "bad fate" character has demand for "good fate", even if that character deserves it.
Undoubtedly this might seem confusing without context, so I'll give a nameless example:
This is especially bad because it makes the RP relationship meaningless; thus, I go along with the bad-end-good-end changes, as I do genuinely love player input on my characters' fates moreso than my insistence on striking my characters down with angstful tragedy. But now it has come to a point where I am starting to hate myself for it--a Bad Fate character would possessing traits of mine that I'm still struggling with in the real world, yet this character is being blessed with a happy ending... and I'm not. Or the problems this character is facing is solved in an unrealistic manner. Or just the fact that this is all RP and fantasy while I'm still in the dank, dark hole I put my character(s) in the first place.
I have tried to make the situations my characters face fantastically different so that normal people wouldn't be able to relate; after all, angsting due to immortality or being slaughtered and resurrected or chased by the Burning Legion is really beyond the stretch of anyone's personal experiences. However, pain is pain, and as I am RPing my characters' pains, their pains become mine. When it's switched--my pain becomes theirs--and all they get is good happy rainbows, it makes my dank, dark hole even darker.
The character in question in CotH, I will admit, was written as a tweaked self-insert with said fantastic experiences as to remove all associations with myself in him... but he ended up obtaining associations that had no place in-character. The character was written while I was dealing with internet stalking and harassment, constant bitter and angry conflicts with family, no safe haven for community comfort at church, suffering grades in high school, lagging behind on age-appropriate expectations, and no real-life friends except those on the other side of the computer monitor. The problems piled on so much that it spurned me to leave the country and cut off contact from my family... only for me to return home a year and a half later because the isolation was crushing me emotionally and even psychologically (I had to see a therapist for a while). I thought going home would ease the depression I was facing, only to come back to the source of that depression as the problems continue; they just evolved due to the passage of time. I thought that having CappnRob living with my family would ease this suffering, but it not only became worse, it is now piling on him too.
I linked Cappn's thread to this one for a reason.
Anyway. The associations I have with the character I created has not left him; he suffers the pains I suffer in an entirely different way, mostly due to his gender, his family background, and the setting of his story. In the original story I wrote for him (not CotH), he is the only main character who does not get a definitive happy ending; after all, he's a "bad fate" character, a character whom I hoped to die and take all my misery with him. But through RPs I've had with him while I was living Philippines, the situation I told you about happened with him--he's a miserable character who invoked enough sympathy and pathos from the other RPers to want a happy ending for him. Rather than give him a thorough happy ending, I simply extended his story 100-ish years later (he's an immortal) where he goes through seven layers of figurative Hell just to get a happy ending--at the cost of lives and happiness of others. While it sounds unfair, the story is written as simple collateral damage to plot--no one can get out of political/criminal/interpersonal conflicts unscathed. It's all, however, just to soften the blow. From there one, I am happy. He got his happy ending, but he worked super, super, super hard to obtain it. 300 years of misery for a happy ending.
The character is rolled here on CotH, mostly as an offering to a niche RP where I have another player pick out of who in my character roster to adapt for CotH. I wrote up his profile to fit the character's story and misery accordingly. I intended for him to go through the same hell and back so I can get enjoyment out of the character... only for him to get a happy ending after about 4-5 months of activity. However, retconning/killing/retooling the character will be unfair for the players who worked hard on his relationships, so once more, I am facing a dank, dark hole. I thought I can remedy this by revisiting the character's story origins and writing up his profile. I ended up going to my bedroom and crying on my pillow.
So there. That is just about the reason why I've pretty much disappeared from CotH a bit. I've made promises I'll return, and quite frankly, this is not the first time I've thrown myself into the dark, dank hole--it happened last winter, and another character this summer is responsible for kicking me into the hole. It's a very strange hole, and I'm not sure if anyone can relate. But I can't help it but share it. I'm still stuck in here, and I'm trying to remedy this by focusing on other creative efforts. As for the personal problems, I am rather stuck, but it can be fixed as long as I save money and spend wisely.
Thank you for reading, and I apologize for the TL;DR.
If you haven't noticed, I've more or less disappeared the past couple weeks. Part of the reason is due to computer problems both CappnRob and I share--although I do have a working computer at the facility I live in, it's a shared computer that also happens to have recurring performance problems (doesn't help that it has 1 GB of RAM). Another is because I was falling into yet another burnout, mostly due to running as many as 8 events in the span of a month for Hyjal alone (which, by the way, I don't regret and am more than happy to do more repeat events for more Hyjal). I did return briefly for a private wedding RP, but I was on a character I have been struggling to enjoy RPing. As I am having computer problems and working on comics/art, I decided to brush up on that character and try to have fun with him again by exploring his concept away from Warcraft and into my original works.
This, on top of writing the comic, planning for Hyjal, and looking back onto what I have created and made both on and off CotH has made me plunge into a nearly week-long really dark hole.
I won't say who the character is. Not here in the forums, at least. And he certainly isn't the only character of mine who suffers from this. We all do this with our characters--a piece of us is also a piece of them. What I do with my characters in RP (different from writing by myself) is that I place a bit of myself and what I enjoy into those characters so I can have that enjoyment when I'm in their shoes. However, I am starting to see a pattern in a few of them--the ones I often RP the most also take my negative sides of me. The sides I really don't want to face or explore. Sure, we all have our inner demons, and sometimes, RPing out those inner demons will turn out to be therapeutic. However, it's starting to come to a point when I realize I'm merely projecting my daily frustrations and personal angsts in RP form.
How bad is this getting for me? Well, here's how bad exactly: All of my characters have predetermined "good fates" and "bad fates", regardless of the direction the RP is going. Often times what determines the swapping of the bad to the good depends on the demand on that character in the RP community I am in; otherwise, I at least try to ignore emotional demand ("I love him, don't kill him!"), or I even revel in the tears of a character death. So, how bad is my situation exactly? When I am depressed that a "bad fate" character has demand for "good fate", even if that character deserves it.
Undoubtedly this might seem confusing without context, so I'll give a nameless example:
Spoiler:
The character is rather jolly and outgoing, but deep inside, they're facing recurring tragedy , mostly due to their own actions and flaws rather than because the world is cruel. Therefore, this is a "bad fate" character, because their bad end is due to their own actions, good and bad. However, this character has created enough of pathos and sympathy for players' compassion to come into play, and they would work hard on redeeming that character or at least providing the character friendship and purpose to do away the reasons for the recurring tragedy.
So how bad is it? I want this character to die a horrible death anyway, regardless of how much IC and OOC love this character is getting.
So how bad is it? I want this character to die a horrible death anyway, regardless of how much IC and OOC love this character is getting.
This is especially bad because it makes the RP relationship meaningless; thus, I go along with the bad-end-good-end changes, as I do genuinely love player input on my characters' fates moreso than my insistence on striking my characters down with angstful tragedy. But now it has come to a point where I am starting to hate myself for it--a Bad Fate character would possessing traits of mine that I'm still struggling with in the real world, yet this character is being blessed with a happy ending... and I'm not. Or the problems this character is facing is solved in an unrealistic manner. Or just the fact that this is all RP and fantasy while I'm still in the dank, dark hole I put my character(s) in the first place.
I have tried to make the situations my characters face fantastically different so that normal people wouldn't be able to relate; after all, angsting due to immortality or being slaughtered and resurrected or chased by the Burning Legion is really beyond the stretch of anyone's personal experiences. However, pain is pain, and as I am RPing my characters' pains, their pains become mine. When it's switched--my pain becomes theirs--and all they get is good happy rainbows, it makes my dank, dark hole even darker.
The character in question in CotH, I will admit, was written as a tweaked self-insert with said fantastic experiences as to remove all associations with myself in him... but he ended up obtaining associations that had no place in-character. The character was written while I was dealing with internet stalking and harassment, constant bitter and angry conflicts with family, no safe haven for community comfort at church, suffering grades in high school, lagging behind on age-appropriate expectations, and no real-life friends except those on the other side of the computer monitor. The problems piled on so much that it spurned me to leave the country and cut off contact from my family... only for me to return home a year and a half later because the isolation was crushing me emotionally and even psychologically (I had to see a therapist for a while). I thought going home would ease the depression I was facing, only to come back to the source of that depression as the problems continue; they just evolved due to the passage of time. I thought that having CappnRob living with my family would ease this suffering, but it not only became worse, it is now piling on him too.
I linked Cappn's thread to this one for a reason.
Anyway. The associations I have with the character I created has not left him; he suffers the pains I suffer in an entirely different way, mostly due to his gender, his family background, and the setting of his story. In the original story I wrote for him (not CotH), he is the only main character who does not get a definitive happy ending; after all, he's a "bad fate" character, a character whom I hoped to die and take all my misery with him. But through RPs I've had with him while I was living Philippines, the situation I told you about happened with him--he's a miserable character who invoked enough sympathy and pathos from the other RPers to want a happy ending for him. Rather than give him a thorough happy ending, I simply extended his story 100-ish years later (he's an immortal) where he goes through seven layers of figurative Hell just to get a happy ending--at the cost of lives and happiness of others. While it sounds unfair, the story is written as simple collateral damage to plot--no one can get out of political/criminal/interpersonal conflicts unscathed. It's all, however, just to soften the blow. From there one, I am happy. He got his happy ending, but he worked super, super, super hard to obtain it. 300 years of misery for a happy ending.
The character is rolled here on CotH, mostly as an offering to a niche RP where I have another player pick out of who in my character roster to adapt for CotH. I wrote up his profile to fit the character's story and misery accordingly. I intended for him to go through the same hell and back so I can get enjoyment out of the character... only for him to get a happy ending after about 4-5 months of activity. However, retconning/killing/retooling the character will be unfair for the players who worked hard on his relationships, so once more, I am facing a dank, dark hole. I thought I can remedy this by revisiting the character's story origins and writing up his profile. I ended up going to my bedroom and crying on my pillow.
So there. That is just about the reason why I've pretty much disappeared from CotH a bit. I've made promises I'll return, and quite frankly, this is not the first time I've thrown myself into the dark, dank hole--it happened last winter, and another character this summer is responsible for kicking me into the hole. It's a very strange hole, and I'm not sure if anyone can relate. But I can't help it but share it. I'm still stuck in here, and I'm trying to remedy this by focusing on other creative efforts. As for the personal problems, I am rather stuck, but it can be fixed as long as I save money and spend wisely.
Thank you for reading, and I apologize for the TL;DR.