#kinda negative? kinda ranty? kinda just commentary? kinda reminiscent?

[emeraldsorcerer]

Screw it, I went on a long rant under a read more but I’m just gonna put the TL;DR up here for those who don’t even wanna.

TL;DR summary:

I was somehow seemingly the single last holdout of the 2012 Tumblr Umineko fandom era, and I’ve lived long enough to see it boomerang back around again, something I never thought I’d see. It’s so exciting. I want to be a part of it, quite badly, just like I was before.

<insert long winded rant about the state of Tumblr RP, pre-plotting and how it isn’t necessarily bad, but how it doesn’t really jive with me in particular because I find it boring, plus I don’t communicate effectively in 2017 Tumblr RP land and Discord/Skype/other chat client RPs are just too isolated and lonely for my tastes>

I guess...I have no idea if anyone will accept this blog anymore, though, half a decade later, the way it was back in 2012. It’s a little scary, I’m not sure I can make Sakana relevant or interesting, or even develop him anymore. By god, I’ll try, because I don’t have it in me to quit this blog, but I’m left here wondering how futile it is.

...

You know, I started this blog back in October of 2012. Back then, the Umineko fandom had pretty much recently crested from what I gather, and was on the decline, and the Ib fandom was also on about the same boat. I’d made my askbernkastel account in the summer of that year even earlier, and between the two blogs, there’s been a lot of firsts. First Tumblr blog, and through askbernkastel, first exposure to the RP community. First askblog, first RP blog, which honestly, this all started out as a shameless OC self-insert thinly veiled under an Umineko disguise because I had no idea what I was doing and how cringy that was even for 5 years ago.

And yeah, now I’ve retrofitted this blog so that Sakana is his own character now, with his own personality and ways he goes about things, developed through half a decade of playing him from when he was painfully obviously just me in disguise, to now, where he’s his own thing, to the point where at one time I was being told by a couple of people who regularly RPed with me that they forgot Sakana wasn’t actually a part of the Umineko canon on occasion.

Honestly that was probably the best compliment I’ve ever received ever on Tumblr.

And now I’m witnessing the slight uptick of a fandom with whole new people all of a sudden. I’m not really sure why people decided to resurrect their blogs or make new ones at around the same time. Maybe it’s that in the past year or so Umineko came out on Steam, and Ougon Musoukyoku (the Umineko fighting game) had also been announced for a Steam release and localization, and because of its ease of access, now it’s gaining a bit more traction then when it was almost entirely dead and gone earlier last year.

It’s just kind of making me wonder if this blog’s concept is done and tired.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get away from this blog, but I have to wonder if it’s holding me back a little, if I’m still trying to push a concept that only barely worked in 2012 onto 2017 when it really doesn’t want it. I’m still constantly paranoid that people think all Sakana boils down to is a mun in an Umineko skin, and while I’ve taken pains to make him his own character and have him go on his own journeys and have him be long-term affected by them, I’ve also been at a loss for what to do next.

People nowadays largely want either predetermined plots or chat RP. Not everyone, but it’s a trend I’ve been noticing.

 I really love the fact that I can just pop into the Tumblr chat system nowadays and be assured my ask won’t just get eaten as it so often seemed to do, but it’s also made a much higher demand for communication and pre-plotting and agreeing upon the outcome before it’s even written, and that’s just straight up boring to me. At the risk of sounding like someone who needs his cane handed to him to yell at the kids to get off his lawn, I seem to recall being able to spin massive permanently-character-altering plots with other people that were extremely gratifying and didn’t require a roadmap of what exactly will happen beforehand, and that just doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Maybe it’s that people have gotten burned by too many godmodding jackoffs and aren’t willing to take that chance anymore, and that’s fine.

I do need to clarify, I don’t think this is really anyone’s fault, or anyone should feel guilty, I’m not blaming anyone for anything in specific. In fact, a lot of this is honestly my problem. Besides being boring for me because I know exactly how the story will end, I have massive direct communication issues honestly. How in the hell do I even plot with someone? What are the correct words or keyphrases to say? How do I communicate what I want to have happen? How much of it should be ‘what I want to have happen’ and ‘what they want to have happen’? Whose character arc should it be? What story do we want to tell? Should I tell them my story idea right off the bat or should I ease them into the concept? That direct tumblr chat has honestly been the bane of my creative existence for a long time now because I just don’t get how people do it.

“Oh, it’s not that bad Fish-mun.” I hear you say, “You just go into their chat and be friendly and introduce yourself and pop them an idea! And if they aren’t into it, that’s fine, just try someone else or come back when you have a different idea that might fit better!”

Yeah, no. Any time I see those rebloggable posts with something like “Reblog this if you’re totally down to just have plots sent to you” or “Reblog if you’re okay with your muse being Xed or Yed or Zed” or “Reblog if you’re okay with having your muse pestered about the relationships that you've seen them have with other muses.” or basically any of those general “Hey I’m a cool and totally open RPer you should come and do the RP thing with me guys because I’m so open!”

And it’s just like.......no. Stop being so disingenuous by overgeneralizing. There’s always going to be multiple exceptions, and too often I’ve been that exception for whatever reason, fooled into thinking otherwise, going in on that beck and call, and being ignored. I don’t mind if you’re not that open, by all means be private and selective and mutuals only, but don’t lie to me about being open when you’re not. I have a really serious problem with that, honestly.

And it’s never as easy as just going in, being friendly, introducing myself, and the RP possibilities will just open themselves up. I’ve had that sentiment told to me so many times, but I’ve also heard people talking about other people behind their backs so many times, I know there’s nuance to language use, and someone’s interpretation of being completely friendly and innocent can very, very easily come off as even downright creepy in the wrong combination of sender and receiver.

I mean, to some people, even just introducing yourself is too much for them and they don’t know how to react. Tone matters. Dialect matters. User friendliness matters. When I’m communicating with someone in specific, I feel like a totally different person depending on what person or group I’m communicating with, because I have to adapt myself to what’s acceptable with that person or in that group. One minute some person in a chat’ll just throw something like ‘i want to eat your ass out’ as a joke and that tells me where that person stands, they can give and take absolute gross absurdist out-of-left-field bullshit and that’s great. 

The next I’ll be talking to another person in a chat and discussing sociopolitical implications and norms, and how they affect those that surround us currently and how they might in the long term as well, speculating on how it all relates to the world we live in and how it’s affected as a result, and what, if any, solutions there could be theoretically to current issues, whether they’re a matter of human nature and can’t really be changed without theoretically changing the fundamental human psyche, or if a crisis large enough threatens everyone things could really be changed for the better, or if there’s no hope at all and we should all grab some popcorn as we drown in our own existentialism hell while the world surrounding us slowly wilts.

And remember, I was getting my ass eaten out one chat over at the same time.

Speaking of chats, the thing I personally have an issue with in RPing through a chat system is that it’s so immediately demanding. The thing I love about roleplaying on Tumblr is that I get to sit down, think about it for a few minutes, not have to worry about replying right away, and eventually knock one out. I don’t feel nearly as much time constraint pressure in a Tumblr RP environment. Not only that, Tumblr RP is the only way I get to make new friends and followers via RP, mostly because they see my RPs being reblogged on someone else’s account and think ‘hey maybe I should follow this guy’ - a tactic I’ve done to follow new people a number of times. Discord is nice and all, but it’s just too isolated. I kinda want some other people to see my RPs too, y’know.

I guess what it comes down to is that I still have a 2012 Tumblr RPer attitude in the 2017 Tumblr world. I’m still stubbornly used to not having text chats readily available, I’m used to being able to improvise major plots with other people where the only time for plotting is if I ask if it’s okay to do something to another person’s muse on the spot. Honestly, I’m used to a more chaotic, less reserved Tumblr. And I’ve been on my other blogs too, mainly my Tomoko blog, and have managed to find myself getting used to a more modern take on Tumblr, but whenever I come back here, it all starts to not make sense to me anymore. I have to wonder if there’s anything more of relevance here on this blog. Even the Umineko fandom has moved on to a 2017 approach.

I should wrap this up. 

TL;DR summary:

I was somehow the single last holdout of the 2012 Tumblr Umineko fandom era, and I’ve lived long enough to see it boomerang back around again, something I never thought I’d see. It’s so exciting. I want to be a part of it, quite badly, just like I was before.

<insert long winded rant about the state of Tumblr RP, pre-plotting and how it isn’t necessarily bad, but how it doesn’t really jive with me in particular>

I guess...have no idea if anyone will accept this blog anymore, though, half a decade later. I’m not sure I can make Sakana relevant or interesting anymore. By god, I’ll try, because I don’t have it in me to quit this blog, but I’m left here wondering how futile it is.