The Stupid Things We Do

[Pavel]

I can’t be the only one who vastly overestimates their energy levels when creating a character.

I’ve got one right now who is great, but just so exhausting to play. Always ‘on’, so very high energy. Fun, absolutely the most fun I’ve had in years, but exhausting.

[tieflinguist]

That was me making a Banu Haqim on Liberation.

I loved (and honestly still love) the idea of playing “Vampire Yojimbo,” but the problem with that is that characters (and players) are only going to involve Vampire Yojimbo to so much an extent. Why hire an Assamite to do something when you can politic another Cammie into doing it for a boon?

[Pavel]

@tieflinguist Oof, yeah don’t get me started on that… we’ll get trapped in the traditional “optimisation” conversation.

[Jumpscare]

Here’s my stupid thing I’ve done. When I completely misread the room with a pose or comment and everyone gives me a strange look OOC. No amount of apologizing stops me from wanting to die of embarrassment.

[Kestrel]

@Jumpscare said in The Stupid Things We Do:

Here’s my stupid thing I’ve done. When I completely misread the room with a pose or comment and everyone gives me a strange look OOC. No amount of apologizing stops me from wanting to die of embarrassment.

The stupid thing I’ve done is just never log into that game again because I feel I’ve pissed away my goodwill with the community over one bad day/scene.

[Pavel]

@Kestrel said in The Stupid Things We Do:

@Jumpscare said in The Stupid Things We Do:

Here’s my stupid thing I’ve done. When I completely misread the room with a pose or comment and everyone gives me a strange look OOC. No amount of apologizing stops me from wanting to die of embarrassment.

The stupid thing I’ve done is just never log into that game again because I feel I’ve pissed away my goodwill with the community over one bad day/scene.

Hey, pissing away goodwill is what we all do best.

[Meg]

The stupidest things I have done is take IC rejection (or even not rejection, but like, being overlooked???) very hard personally. It’s made me do a lot of silly things like slink away from games or drop characters, etc.

[Third Eye]

Apparently on the first MUSH I ever played I set my (very long, because I was 18) desc to emit to the room whenever someone looked at me. I did this entirely by accident and wouldn’t even know how to replicate the error. Oh, youth.

[bear_necessities]

Stupid things I’ve done: overlooking someone’s crazy and viciously defending them because I thought we were friends. Or allowing myself to get sucked into an OOC toxic circle jerk and spiral along with them, and letting that bleed IC.

[Pyrephox]

Jump into things with far more energy than I can sustain, leading to flaking out when the energy wanes, and then feeling even worse when I start dropping balls until I flee entirely. It’s one reason I’ve tried to stick to plots that can be wrapped up in, like, two to three weeks (running OR playing), because my brain just hasn’t been able to…go farther than that, for the past couple of years.

[Herja]

Thinking that being an IC friend/relative/romantic interest and RPing together and talking a lot meant that we are friends. Most of these interactions are incredibly transaction based and some people in this hobby will do whatever they can to keep you around while they ‘need’ you, even going so far as lying and pretending at closeness, and then ghost you when you are no longer necessary to them.

As a result, I am a lot less friendly and open and willing to be vulnerable than I used to be a few years ago. Many MU friends aren’t really friends but more like really active acquaintances. Being able to put those relationships into that perspective has been fucking wonderful for my mental health because I just don’t allow myself to get invested to any great extent anymore and when people bounce, I no longer feel it personally or even care much. It is what it is and that’s okay.

[glitch]

@Herja I think that’s probably a good method for keeping yourself healthy and happy, but I also think it’s a little sad in that it requires a start position that people only wish to engage in a transactional manner. I don’t mean this to be judgmental or that you need to change or anything, I just read this and it brought me down a bit. You clearly state that it some and not all, so I’m not trying to make this a defining thing for you, but I just wanted to respond in general.

I have definitely been, and really still am, one of those people that bounced, more than I’ve ever stuck, and it has never been because I did not enjoy particular people I RP’d with or that I was only hoping for something from them (once again knowing you don’t mean everyone).

I almost always bounced from a MU for reasons to do with my own inability to find a sticking point. With things like discord and the like now, it’s easier to stay connected to people even when you don’t stick, but despite us probably never having played together, I’m sure there were others like me who enjoyed their IC connections with you despite failing as RP partners.

I lost the point somewhere, probably didn’t have one, other than maybe generally feeling it’s too bad that setting that expectation is the safer bet.

[Roz]

@Herja Boy howdy, that’s an important lesson to learn in this hobby. And I say that as someone who has definitely formed incredibly real and lasting friendships in the hobby, but overall I tend to be a bit protective of my off-game contact info and such. I actually don’t find this as depressing as @glitch is in his message, other than the fact that it’s super shitty for people to actively lie and manipulate others, of course. But I actually don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to realize that a lot of MU* connections are transitory by nature, that they tend to come and go even when it’s not people being actively shady. And I think it’s healthy to approach things from that perspective (and will also help somewhat in mitigating the more active shittiness you describe).

[glitch]

@Roz I’m usually the transitory one more often than not, so that wasn’t really an issue for me. More so an expectation of transactional.

[tieflinguist]

@Herja I’m certain that this wasn’t your intent, but this does make me feel more hesitant than I would have been, say, a week or a year or whatever ago to reach out. Not because I thought we were great friends or anything, but rather because the reason I already tend to sit in my corner and hope something comes my way because I don’t want to feel like I’m impositioning people by asking for their time/interest/etc. Like, I’m not telling you “you’ve hurt me, how dare you, this changes everything” but I do feel like “well, if I’m just a customer, I should probably just keep sitting down and being quiet.”

[Herja]

@glitch My post isn’t coming from a place of bitterness or even thinking poorly of people who treat MU ‘relationships’ as transactional. Even in what you describe, there is some sort of transactional basis to me because you prioritized your own fun and enjoyment over whatever fun or enjoyment the people playing with you were having, which I think is entirely okay and normal.

A lot of my realization was that I was the problem in some of these situations by expecting that everyone was like me and willing to put others fun before self and then feeling crushed when said person was obviously not as invested in me as I was in them. I was the problem there. Not them. In the case of people who manipulated and lied to me to keep me around, I lay the blame mostly on them but a little on me for being way too open to being taken advantage of in that way.

It took being in a situation where I was on the other side of that equation as the one who didn’t see the other as a friend but just someone I was GMing for and then having their expectations blow up and being embroiled in drama over it and feeling fucking terrible about it because hurting people, even when I didn’t mean to, sucks. That was my realization that investing too much didn’t just hurt me but was wildly unfair to people I placed this unspoken expectation of friendship reciprocation. I feel a lot better about this hobby now and get involved in waaaaaaay less emotional drama and turmoil because most of my MU friendships are fairly superficial and focused more on the game than on building a personal connection. And I find that I am really good with that. I am open to forming those connections but I no longer do all the work to create them and tend to be a bit standoffish which means someone kind of has to work for it now where before I was just wearing my heart on my sleeve for a long time and wondering why it kept getting fucked up.

[Herja]

@tieflinguist I’m sorry that you feel that way but it wasn’t my intention to discourage anyone from reaching out if they want to since I don’t think I have ever been discouraging of it? It is safe to say that if I am logged in to a game, I am fine with talking to others. If I don’t feel like interacting, I just don’t log on. Having boundaries is healthy and if mine mean that you feel more reluctant to speak to me about game-related things because I am open about them, I’m not really sure what I am supposed to do about that. Saying that I only view anyone as a ‘customer’ is kind of fucked up and guilt trippy though.

[Narson]

Beyond the regular stupid things. I suspect the biggest stupid thing I did was staying around in a really toxic staffing situation on a pretty toxic game (and I’ve done this twice, but like, in a big way the second time) due to a belief things will improve, or people might get better etc.

I’ve, in general, learnt that once people really show you who they are. When they insist that is who they are, through their repeated actions, you should just bloody well believe them.

[Roz]

Most MU* connections are, in fact, transactional, and I don’t think that’s at all a bad thing. We’re people in a shared hobby who are just engaging in shared fun. When we go out to seek RP, it is to find fun for ourselves. Real and lasting friendships can be formed, like from any social hobby, but the default is transactional, I think.

I think Herja is very right that placing oversized expectations on others beyond this is will end up in the sort of hurt she describes. So I’m glad she learned to adjust how she engages in a way that’s better for her mental health, because I know from experience that can be a hard adjustment.

[tieflinguist]

@Herja I apologize for my phrasing there, because my intent wasn’t to guilt trip you. Rather, just that as someone who has a character that’s currently reliant on you for the majority of her meta-whatever-hooks that can actually be acted upon, I already feel like I’m taking-taking-taking and that there’s not really a lot I can do to like, give back other than saying “thank you” – but then inevitably needing to ask for more. Like, I don’t really know what, if anything, can be done about that feeling because it really is just me feeling bad about not being able to bring much to the transactional side of things – I can take a lot from you and give back enthusiasm, which feels like I’m coming to you, taking stuff (and time, and energy) and paying for it by getting excited to take more stuff.

Maybe this isn’t how you see it – it doesn’t seem to be – but it’s a self-sabotaging feeling that I don’t really seem to have much choice with, as to when it comes and how long it sticks around.

Which, you know, The Stupid Things We Do on MU*s.