How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response)

[Roz]

I’ve never encountered a specific MU* that has active education about this issue, but it’s definitely been a topic of conversation for years in the community at large. “Bleed” is vocabulary we seem to have in common with LARP based on what you’ve said, but “alibi” in this context is new to me. I think in the MU* community you’d generally hear it referred to as just the IC/OOC divide. My first instinct on seeing your mention of the word is that it would be referring to an actual problematic manipulation of this divide, where some players use IC action as a screen to behave badly to other players, but I see from a quick skim of the article that it’s really just a reference to the overall divide.

I actually don’t know if I’d say the IC/OOC divide is easier due to being separated by computers and not seeing people IRL; I think it actually tends to make it worse in some ways, because it becomes really easy to forget the fully-formed human on the other end, and that people are much more often just thoughtless or forgetful rather than malicious. Tone is a lot more difficult over text, too, so there’s a whole different layer of potential miscommunication, people misreading others, etc.

I dug up something I posted on this topic on another forum a few years ago, because I generally think that my opinion is pretty much the same here as it is now:

What I mentioned before [User] split this off into its own thread is that I think a real issues can be in the community sense of “bleed is bad, only bad players have it, so if you have it you are a bad player.” This doesn’t help anyone, and in fact will actually compound problems, because then people who are maybe just having a little bleed are now also going to feel shame spirals about having their feelings to begin with.

Feelings cannot be controlled. Our behavior in reaction to them is what we control. It’s much better to just let your feelings be your feelings, to validate them, even, but then also recognize when they’re yours to work through (as opposed to someone having actually wronged you in some fashion or something like that, where there’s a problem that others have some responsibility in that might require a conversation with them to work it out).

What I find immensely invaluable is having a small few trusted friends who are good at virtually squeezing my hand, validating my feelings and empathizing, while also being on the same page as far as understanding that these are INSIDE FEELINGS to work through, not ones to take to other people who may be involved in whatever situation I’m having feelings about. They’re the ones who will empathize with the experience of feeling unpleasant things while also helping me keep perspective.

I’m also a player who cries easily at media in general, like I cry plenty at movies and whatnot, so I do cry sometimes during RP. Like, just recently, I cried through scenes I was playing in on Arx about my PC losing one of his best friends that he’d been in love with for years. Not because I was upset that the choice had been made for the character to die or anything, but because it was a really sad story! And I think that’s generally okay to feel feelings like that.

[Rinel]

@Roz said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

Like, just recently, I cried through scenes I was playing in on Arx about my PC losing one of his best friends that he’d been in love with for years.

Did Aureth bite it?!

ETA: Also, yes, what Roz said, and when you are truly overwhelmed there’s no shame in telling folks you need a break to compose yourself.

[Roz]

@Rinel said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

@Roz said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

Like, just recently, I cried through scenes I was playing in on Arx about my PC losing one of his best friends that he’d been in love with for years.

Did Aureth bite it?!

Lol no, that post was written a bit after Orazio died.

[Rinel]

Oh that’s ok then

[mangosplitz]

@Roz Yes, so much this!

I think the idea of talking up front about bleed is to do exactly that - destigmatize it. Because I think people are (generally) pretty good at REALIZING that they are having bleed, but often think it’s a reflection on them and their mental state, and that it is something bad. It’s not.

If you are not experiencing at least SOME emotional reaction to RP you are doing, then in some respects what is the purpose of it? The same way we go to see certain movies and we expect to get “tugged in the feels”.

And yeah, you more or less nailed the purpose of alibi. It might not be the best term since it’s general use implies an intentional evasion of accountability - I prefer to think of it like “detachment” but even that is a charged word.

Like everything else in the world, moderation here is the thing. If you are having too much bleed, or too much alibi, then you are likely adversely impacting your own mental state or those of others.

In the LARP community there are generally safety precautions put into place - hand signals to indicate that a scene is becoming “too emotional” that can signal to other players to tone it down (example: Someone is screaming at me ICly because I did a bad job with something, and it reaches a point where I am feeling strong feelings about, so I could use a gesture to tell them to scream less to lower the temperature OR a different signal to say stop) as well as general guidance to check in as well. In that same example, the screamer could do a signal and I could respond with another one that says “Hell yeah scream at me more”.

But that’s also because there is not an easy escape route for an intense scene when you are face to face in person. On a MUSH, I can just get up and walk away from the keyboard to end the interaction and deal with it my own way.

There also tends to be a lot more OOC communication I think in LARPing than I’ve seen even on consent based MUSHes. I don’t necessarily think that’s a problem, but it’s an interesting dichotomy.

[Arkandel]

I’d consider dividing ‘bleed’ into two separate categories.

One is simply having an emotional response to the character you’re portraying. It’s a natural, human reaction, further complicated with the gray area of being identified by that character’s name; you are playing Bob, people refer to you as Bob. If Bob dies and you rename, you lose connections.

In my opinion there is nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact in most cases it can’t be avoided. There are scenarios which allow it, mind you; some folks enjoy playing throwaway PCs, love to try on new alts or want to run specific arcs and intend to switch away from the get-go. For others it’s just what it is.

The other kind of bleed though is more malevolent. It’s perpetuated by a specific kind of mindset and type of player who step over the line while leveraging - weaponizing, in a way - their real-life emotions.

There is a world of difference between being triggered by certain things (“I want to avoid torture RP”) and expecting that to be respected by our fellow players, and utilizing one’s desire to win (“I want my character to never die/lose the election for Prince”), then taking OOC steps to ensure it.

That can range from conversations outside the realm of IC interactions (“page Jane Hey, can you please vote Bob for Prince?”), engaging in OOC smear campaigns against any IC rivals, etc. I suspect we’ve all seen this kind of thing pop up in forum threads in the past.

[Roz]

@Arkandel Hm, I generally think of the term “bleed” as being more the emotional experience that happens. Someone behaving badly because of bleed – like the thing you’re describing, with people being OOCly manipulative because they want to win – seems to me more a different thing. A resulting behavior, rather than bleed itself.

[icanbeyourmuse]

I don’t think emotional responses to stuff characters have happen is a always bad thing. It is when they let it cause them to lash out at/get overly attached to the player(s) involved that it is bad. I’ve noticed people want to play more with people who are emotionally invested in their character than with those who keep a solid divide between characters and players. This is just from my side of things and I’m sure many have had their own thoughts formed.

I’ve heard about people crying over the loss of their characters and I know I can get annoyed when it is not a ‘by choice’ death of a character. I get annoyed because my brain is saying ‘I’m not done their story!’. There has been other responses I’ve heard about but can’t think of them off hand. None of these I think are a bad thing.

I have also had someone get VERY upset that my characters who like no one like very few people or aren’t very emotional, visually or other similar situations be upset I am ‘being mean to them’ because my character wasn’t being friendly and warm to theirs. It was clearly not their character they were speaking about. When ‘being less than kind’ to a character makes a player decide it is directed at them, the player is when the emotional investment needs checking.

[mangosplitz]

@Roz Yeah, you have it right (at least in this context).

Trying to OOCly manipulate things for your IC benefit is being a crappy player.

Sitting at home RL crying in your room because you lost an IC election is Bleed.

ICly exposing an embarrassing secret about the person you are campaigning against that is going to ruin their IC life but win you the election and not feeling bad about it is Alibi.

[mangosplitz]

@icanbeyourmuse said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

. It is when they let it cause them to lash out at/get overly attached to the player(s) involved that it is bad.

This is one of the biggest issue with bleed. You see it a lot if there is a romance plot where one player reads a bit too much into the RP from the other or starts to cultivate RL feelings that aren’t necessarily reciprocated. One player has a lot of Alibi, one player has a lot of Bleed, and it causes MAJOR issues.

It’s ok to feel sad if a character dies. It’s ok to cry RL and mourn them. There’s a certain catharsis that happens (another phrase we use is Golden Moment when something you RP lets you outpour emotions that you have built up from RL stuff and in a safe way). That’s part of what makes RP in any medium a good and enjoyable exercise.

Like with anything else, it’s only bad in the extremes. But if there is a stigma attached and people don’t know how to process things, it can get messy.

[Pavel]

Mitigating bleed is impossible, in my view and experience. It’s like mitigating an emotional response to music or a good book. The whole point of the exercise is to transmit and receive emotion to the player, not the character. Sure, writing and plotting and planning is fun, but the point when you boil it right down is to express emotion.

A critical difference between LARP and MUing in this respect is that although you will be called your character’s name and even referred to by your character’s pronouns, you’re not physically acting as your character.

The point at which bleed becomes a problem is something that can be mitigated. The reaction to the emotion, rather than the emotion itself. You can be annoyed at Player P for messing with your character’s plans, because they’re also your plans - you put the effort in, so it’s perfectly reasonable to be annoyed at the disturbance. It’s not reasonable to then go about lying about Player P, or otherwise acting out against the Player.

While I can appreciate the intention behind wanting to teach emotional processing strategies and the like, I can’t see that happening on MUs. Game runners have enough to do, along with their own lives to lead, without managing their players’ emotional processing.

That’s a thing that can probably be done at a LARP, because LARPs are occasional and fairly dedicated - that is to say, people do the LARP and aren’t necessarily going to work later that day or having anything else to do (YMMV of course). When a MU is up 24/7, operating around the rest of life, with potentially hundreds of players? That task becomes so arduous as to be impractical.

The only effective strategy, that I can think of, in the event of negative bleed is exclusion.

[Faraday]

@Roz said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

A resulting behavior, rather than bleed itself.

I think it gets murky when the resulting behavior is a direct result of the bleed. It becomes kind of a chicken and egg thing to some degree.

If I get overly invested in a 'ship on TV to the point where it’s adversely impacting my emotions and behavior, I would say that it’s the investment–the bleed, if you will–that’s the root of the problem.

Can you have emotional connection without any adverse impacts? Sure. Not saying it’s inherently evil. But blurring the lines too much is unhealthy IMHO, regardless of whether you outwardly behave badly or not.

[sao]

@Rinel Aureth just turned fifty, the poor bastard

I have nothing useful to add to this discussion, carry on all.

[Pyrephox]

One of the things I do to help keep my characters and real me separate is to always choose something in my character’s personality or moral values that I’m opposed to. It’s surprising how much it helps me.

Having a character who acts/believes in ways that you, yourself, are opposed to also helps mitigate the sting of failure (inevitable in any game) when it happens.

Other things: one thing I notice a distressing amount in the MU* community (including in myself) is the temptation to turn to RP to have a “better” life than your stressful real life - somewhere you can feel more in control and successful. The problem tends to come in that setbacks, reversals, and failures (the things that drive progress in a game) will cut deeper than they really should. This can be in romantic areas, as mentioned above, but it doesn’t have to be. And it not only hurts individual players, but it can kill games - it breeds risk avoidance and stagnation, as well as a tendency for any attempts by GMs to build meaningful conflict to be read as “attacking” or “ruining” the accomplishments of players.

I honestly tend to fall into the camp of keeping as much of yourself as possible out of your characters. They’re pieces in a game, and having good barriers is essential to getting the most play out of them before they’re discarded.

[mangosplitz]

@Pyrephox That’s a VERY effective tactic, actually, and kind of goes along with what I mentioned about Alibi.

A lot of times players might use a LARP character to get some kind of catharsis about things they went through but on the other side, and it lets them work out some feelings. Particularly if they fail.

That’s, I think, one of the main things that separates the Nordic style of LARPing from conventional RP (like combat LARPing or more common RP) - there seems to be a lot more willingness or even emphasis on losing. I have a philosophy that I teach when I am doing a workshop that losing can lead to better RP, and one bit of guidance that I give players is “If your character is presented with a choice and you as a player know one is the wiser one, pick the other choice and have some fun with it”.

I haven’t had enough experience with MUing to draw any kind of real conclusion, so take it with a grain of salt, but it SEEMS to me like there is a greater emphasis on winning and characters coming out on top (as you mentioned) here. Which isn’t surprising because your character winning is a core element of almost all RPGs. It’s not a BAD thing, per se. We all want to be the heroes of our own stories.

But what I think about is that if we want to win, we have to succeed at various things and other players may be opposed. If we want to LOSE, we can make sure we lose on our own, and failure is more often guaranteed.

So (for example) if you are in a LARP set in high school and you want the catharsis of overcoming a bully, don’t play an analogue of yourself and hope to overcome the bully. Play the bully and make sure that someone else’s analogue of yourself overcomes YOU. You’d be amazed how well THAT leads to a Golden Moment or something like that where it helps you release your pent-up inner emotions.

(Yes, I realize this is a direct counter/parallel point to what you said about MUshers trying to have their characters have a “better” life than their players. I’ve found that having your characters have a WORSE life than their players can help exorcise negative feelings through proxy.)

[Faraday]

@mangosplitz said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

“If your character is presented with a choice and you as a player know one is the wiser one, pick the other choice and have some fun with it”.

I love that, and that’s something I try to do as well. I deliberately make my character screw up, make bad decisions, etc. just to make things more interesting. I think it’s good for game runners in particular to model that you don’t have to succeed at everything to have fun.

But what I’ve experienced is that because so many people view the characters as an extension of themselves, they start to judge you, as a player, for the things your character does. Like “OMG I can’t believe Faraday did that” versus “OMG I can’t believe Jane (the character) did that”. It’s like bleed-by-proxy, I guess, and it’s extremely frustrating.

[Pyrephox]

@Faraday said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

@mangosplitz said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

“If your character is presented with a choice and you as a player know one is the wiser one, pick the other choice and have some fun with it”.

I love that, and that’s something I try to do as well. I deliberately make my character screw up, make bad decisions, etc. just to make things more interesting. I think it’s good for game runners in particular to model that you don’t have to succeed at everything to have fun.

But what I’ve experienced is that because so many people view the characters as an extension of themselves, they start to judge you, as a player, for the things your character does. Like “OMG I can’t believe Faraday did that” versus “OMG I can’t believe Jane (the character) did that”. It’s like bleed-by-proxy, I guess, and it’s extremely frustrating.

This. So much this. And it even applies to things that the player actually has no control over - like dice rolls. If you have a bad luck streak, some players will frame it as your character being incompetent (and, sometimes explicitly, the player also somehow being a bad player). And that, in turn, contributes to a feeling of having to min-max to counter dice luck, or a feeling that you never want to put your character in to a risky situation, because what if they fail, and then people judge YOU.

[Evilgrayson]

There’s a small group I know with the maxim ‘If you come up with something IC and it makes you giggle RL for five seconds, you have to do it’. This has led to some of the most amazing and spontaneous moments of which legends are made; having seen the effect when people applied it, having seen the effect when I threw caution to the wind and went for it, I now apply it universally.

If one of my characters does something completely off the wall, both appropriate and hilarious, well, I was giggling for five seconds RL. It might horrify other people around my character, it might set back their plans for years, it might do all sorts of things that no-one sane wants to be near, but it is always appropriate at some level and it always leads to great story.

[Rinel]

@Pyrephox said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):

One of the things I do to help keep my characters and real me separate is to always choose something in my character’s personality or moral values that I’m opposed to. It’s surprising how much it helps me.

I did this with Rinel–the woman was a raving fucking lunatic, a xenophobe, and a genocidal fanatic–and I was unhappily surprised by how little it helped. I think that mitigating bleed probably has less to do with alignment of morals and more to do with some other skill that I lack utterly.

[sao]

@Rinel Your ability to have empathy for positions that you find emphatically morally wrong is a different skill and one you should prize, but it does make avoiding bleed pretty difficult.

Emotions have always been the kicker for me, not morals. The areas where I am most likely to experience bleed that is a problem is where the character’s feelings and mine are too aligned. There are times when a failure is delicious and times when it hurts like I failed myself – the latter times are the ones where my behavior could become a problem and when it is often best to take a break. Self-awareness is really the most important skill to develop when it comes to any game of let’s pretend.

What’s really emotionally weird is crying over a character in the midst of a breakup while simultaneously enjoying the failure and mentally planning the really emotionally vicious vignette I wanted to write to process it all, but uh. I can’t tell you how I dealt with that one besides AVOID THE OTHER PLAYER KNOWING YOU’RE CRYING AT ALL COSTS at least until years later.