#rpc discourse

[ghost-hosts]

The other anon had misgendered screamw0rks' partner. She doesn't identify as a girl. They also seemed to have the story incorrect - screamw0rks and his partner were minding their business and the partner put out a post talking about the drama that was going around. It wasn't targetting people. There were also a blog that mew put out clarifying the misunderstandings, but she had to delete due to the drama. I'm sorry people are trying to bring you into this. - 🐞

I believe that my friend is the one youre speaking of. They blocked and made a statement telling people not to follow them if you dont like the majority of fcs they use. Then they started getting anons.

[shdwtouch]

While I absolutely agree with the sentiment and think oc positivity is sorely needed, comparing writing canon muses to fast fashion sounds a bit icky to me. I know you don't mean it in a bad way, but it does kinda sound like you're implying that people writing canon characters are putting less love, effort and creativity into their portrayals. Just because there are multiple people writing the same character doesn't cheapen their value, so I'd personally look for some other metaphor.

firstly, just want to say: I have so much anxiety about this message. like I know you're coming from a good place but its confrontation and alarm bells in my head so let me see if I can articulate. ; ; also, I'm posting this from mobile so I apologize for any weird formatting etc owo;

I'm going to stand by my statement (tho I deleted the tags [edit: I did take a screenshot for context sake]) honestly because I definitely was not implying that canon portrayals have less value, in fact I specifically stated that both canon and original characters have value, just like fast fashion and couture have their own values.

let me explain my thought process.

you walk into, say, Walmart and pick up a pair of Levi's. why ? because you've probably worn them before and like them, or heard of them from others and want to try them out. or because you're simply browsing and like the style and color and they're in the right size so why not ? canon muses have that ease of access, whether it be knowing the fandom or simply having a range of content and reviews to go off of as a "consumer".

original characters don't have that luxury; I don't know about other people, but for me sometimes engaging with original characters - and this is coming from someone who writes predominantly fandomless original characters and agonizes over how accessible their lore is - is, well, bottlenecked by my own energy and willingness to engage with the information and content the creator had provided. it's much easier for me, energy wise, to play a video game and then gravitate to muses from it because I'm already familiar with them, so I already have a foot in the door so to speak.

I fucking love reading original lore tho ! I also FUCKING LOVE canon divergence and headcanons ! but it isn't always easy to engage with or incorporate, and I think that's something that impacts a lot of people in how they view ocs compared to canons. original characters just often take more effort to engage with and understand, and that's not a bad thing ! but in a busy life it's understandable that folks want to go to what is comfortable and what they know, so they pick up a pair of Levi's instead of going to get a tailored pair of pants.

next, I should clarify that the characters are clothes, and we, as writers, are the ones who wear those clothes. which is to say, our own personal style and actions play into the overall appearance and feel of our portrayals. two people can take the same shirt and make completely different outfits with it ! maybe one of them decides to crop it, or bleach it, or cut it up and sew it into something new. and all of these things are valid ! and they all have value. you may be wearing the same shirt as someone else, but you still style it the way you want to. you still look different, still unique, still beautiful. there is nothing bad about liking fast fashion or canon characters. fast fashion is convenient, so are canon characters. some canon characters are poorly written and need to be dressed up or fixed to be worn, while others are quality and wonderfully made ! just like clothes ! and honestly, the same applies to original characters too !

the pants I'm wearing right now ? my favorite pair of pants. I've had them for like... four years. and they're still going strong. fast fashion isn't necessarily cheap, just like couture isn't necessarily haute. but again, it's about how you wear it. and everyone in the BG3 rpc wears their clothes, whether they be canon or original, in their own unique, beautiful way ! we all have our own style, and that style provides value to what we're trying to portray. neither canon nor original characters are better than the other, they BOTH have pros and cons. just like fast fashion and couture. they both have value, and their mode or means doesn't detract or add to the value of the final product.

I apologize if it seemed I was implying canon writers aren't as valuable as original writers, or somehow cheaper due to volume, in my tags. I definitely see where you are coming from and that's a valid perspective. However, that was not my intention and I hope I've managed to clarify my stance and explain myself a bit better. thank you for your message, I hope you're well ! sending lots of good vibes ♡

also, in case anyone was curious, my pants:

they are incredibly soft and flowy, very nice. I sleep in them and wear them out. I know they're winter themed but I think they're subtle enough to be worn outside the season, plus they have polar bears on them and I love polar bears !

also, if it's of any value, I have written my fair share of canon characters. I wrote extensively for assassins creed and marvel, in fact that's where I got my start in the rpc ! if I had to carry the metaphor, my "fast fashion" would be my (canon divergent) cli.nt bar.ton. I may have gotten him from marvel but I have since sliced him up and incorporated the pieces of my portrayal into my original projects ♡

[greatloss]

yo i miss season one :(

[gerudospiriit]

[Probably going to come off as salty enough to get into the Salty Spitoon by default at this point but it makes me really sad that the Zelda RPC is deader than a graveyard unless you're part of certain cliques/bffs with this blog whose bffs with this other blog and none of them have any kind of beef with you. Because if one link in that clique-y chain decided you're bad news, the rest follows suit. You're basically going to find people that you've never even MET that have blocked you because of this and it's so...goofy to me. Group think isn't healthy and I'll die on that hill.

And like...yeah tailor your experience and all that but idk. I feel like Mean Girls behavior is a BIG reason this RPC suffers so bad if I'm perfectly honest. All RPCs have this kind of issue, sure, but this isn't NEARLY as much of a problem in other RPCs I'm in (shoutout to the DB RPC for the most part tbh). I dunno. If I'm honest? When I'm over here, I feel like I'm back in like 2012 with the high school-esque behavior, and I'm too old for it.

So here's my last bit: most things people say are not a personal attack, even if it's something that doesn't agree with your ideas about something, and it's better to use critical thinking and use your own judgement rather than taking even a friend's word at face value.]

[nikkiitalks]

Race Baiting - A thoughtument by Nikkiitalks.

Okay.. Here we go.

Firstly, for the sake of absolute transparency, when I was first contacted by @olivaraofrph in a tirade of a novel of a response, my skimming through it had me starting to be swayed in her favour, mostly because of the depths of which her privacy was invaded for the sake of the allegations against her. And in that moment, I prematurely forgave her. Told her I understood. But it turns out, after much more has come to light, that I in fact do not understand. And in turn my forgiveness is recanted.

I did not have all the information. Hell, I had a fraction of it. Natalie and I, we were friendly, but not close. We don't talk every day and we never did. We had, though, stood arm in arm against that moment's hot button issue that I had felt strongly about, and so had she. It seemed. We'd held each other in places of mutual respect, shouting each other out and praising each other's advocacy.

Now, it all feels so... silly. This performative display that I so willingly let be pulled over my eyes. But that's beside the point. That was all I knew of her, really. There are others in this tiny niche of our already tiny community, that were far closer. Those that ran servers, indigenous servers, with her. They weren't even afforded the respect of being given an explanation to, but I did?

I was the one, who when I it was brought to my attention, when I was urged to send a DM which I already had, that was deemed the one to get that? A novel, let me be clear, the contents of which I won't make public upon request. A lot of it had nothing to do, truly, with the issue at hand but served to distract from it in a wall of text. It was overwhelming, and it felt just a teeny, tiny bit, manipulative.

There's so much evidence now, even evidence regretfully obtained, that the only place her advocacy extends to is Tumblr. None of your public, irl facing socials having anything there about it. Your own admission of percentage, (how that had been confirmed as she claims I can't speculate), and other things that don't line up. Those of us in the community affected haven gotten together to compare and talk through our feelings toward it all and there is a consensus.

It fucking sucks.

Just the fact that this needs to be brought up absolutely sucks. It detracts from the credibility of other indigenous creators in the space. Not all press is good press, and Natalie right now, is bad press. Beyond myself and the others being lied to. Beyond the personal offense I take to that. This is what bothers me the most. For all the posturing and all the 'talking in wrong and confusing ways' it makes us all look bad. And for what?

The other personal and religious or spiritual beliefs she believes doesn't mean anything to me. The other racism claims about her I can't confirm, whatever. Talking shit about a beloved creator, real or not. Doesn't matter.

What matters is there is damage done to the indigenous community here on the rpc, and before we came together to discuss it, it was distressing to all of us. There is no such thing as clout on tumblr and I don't know why people can't seem to get that through their heads? What need is there to claim to be something you're not, even through insinuations, half truths and vague details? I don't understand.

Yes, the indigenous community is so willing to accept anyone with any indigenous blood, and it's the fact that this is what was taken advantage of by someone... that really gets me. That's what really makes it sting. It's a blow to every white passing Native out there, in my opinion. That's where my hurt is. It's the fact that there is question of the validity of the claims toward a shared familial and generational trauma to myself. That still impacts my father's side of the family to this day.

I don't even know where I'm going with all this, and I feel like I'm typing myself in circles, but it's all to say that I don't care about all the other stuff that serves to muddy the waters of the real issue. Race baiting does nothing but end up hurting those who's real life experiences you're roleplaying.

[kinglywarden]

Not for nothing but how about Alistair and either the goodest boy Aedan Cousland or the literal war criminal Daylen Amell?

Listen you KNOW Couslands who don't force a crown upon Alistair's head are fair game!

[ignisnatione]

The RPC is fucked up and it's our fault for letting toxic people join our communities and allowing them to misbehave, brushing it to the side thinking it will fix itself in the end. It hasn't. Then they cry wolf whenever their bad behaviors are pointed out. We should stop sympathizing with these toxic roleplayers, and start calling them what they are. Bad roleplayers. Start kicking these people out and stop forgiving them. They don't deserve it. They will destroy you, and whatever circles you are in. Whether that be in Discord RP Groups or Tumblr RP Groups. It starts with bubbling, it starts with these dick measuring contest, and these incessant needs to be the center of attention. Give them nothing. They deserve nothing until they can behave better. If they want to act like middle schoolers. Treat them like it.

[jcinkbabble]

to the "consequences of your own actions" person: i have a question for you when someone does something wrong, they mistreat someone, they hurt someone, etc. why is it then the response to go and air out that drama publicly for everyone to see? all the things that were posted on tattler, including the sasha situation, were truly not things that needed to be public rpc knowledge. people's interpersonal conflicts, who people like/don't like, etc are not everyone's business. shaming people publicly is still bullying even if they hurt you first, and if you truly want to be a bigger person, then don't facilitate the same hurt onto someone that they put onto you. the old take "an eye for an eye make the whole world blind" is true here for this situation, if someone hurt you, i am so sorry that you were hurt, but you are not owed public restitution for the hurt done upon you. the accountability falls on the person that hurt you to make it up to you in private, not in public. most people that rp in the jcink sphere are 21+, i'd say that the majority are 25+ to be honest, and we should be able to handle conflicts maturely. without gossip blogs, people will still get hurt and people will still gossip, but the hurt will not be widespread. no one owes anyone a public apology, my friends. you are not entitled to that, no matter how much mudslinging you have done. ignore the people that you don't like, don't have them in your spaces, don't join their sites. your experiences are not universal and even the world's biggest assholes have friends. you don't get to change that because you're salty.

I would be inclined to agree. There's a difference between resolution/closure, and punishment. Seeking to wound back because you were wounded isn't commendable. It's just revenge.

[skinsort]

Hello, I've been thinking about code and selling code and sharing code in the rpc because someone posed the question to me of what I'd want to happen if someone was heavily editing a skin I sold, and to be honest, my first instinct was 'take my name off it'. That was met with some surprise, but let me explain why.

Code, to me, is a largely democratic landscape. If you want to learn, hundreds of thousands of people and websites have come together to teach you. Masses of people share open source work on codepen, stack overflow etc. Code as a skill is like assembling an especially abstract puzzle where you can only think about the pieces, not really see them. But most puzzles have similar strategies to solve- start with the corner pieces, then the edges, then the most recognizable patterns etc etc etc working your way down to the more and more difficult details. Most of code- most of my job writing code- involves minimizing the amount of time working on those shared strategies so we can have more time to work on the the interesting bits, the hard bits. the bits that make the site we're working on unique and useful. Frankly, jcink is the easy part of code, by and large. Your data is already structured and provided to you in a very particular way. It is inefficiently, but largely documented. Many other people have solved all the problems you are likely to have trying to build a skin. Skinning is html and css for the vast majority of items. It is the easy stuff. If I sell code, that code is now the property of the person I sold it to. It is not shareable or redistributable. You can't take my code and resell it as your own, but as far as I'm concerned you can do whatever you want with it. If I solved problems that might otherwise feel difficult (accessibility and responsiveness come to mind) cool. You can solve the easy ones, like styling and colors and fonts you like. You can add or subtract things that vibe with what you want that code to do. Once it is sold, it is yours to do with what you like when it comes to personal use. This is true of almost all coding contracts that exist in the entire world. If it weren't, no one would ever hire external contractors to do any work for their company, and I can tell you now, even companies which could fully afford to do all their tech in house absolutely do not in 99% of cases if their business isn't selling their own tech. The rule is generally- you may do anything you like with this, except resell it to someone else. So why take my name off it? I don't endorse how other people code. Even in my professional life, I've taken projects off my portfolio because the client took a project I worked on and broke it (imo), often with other professional developers doing the breaking. If a prospective employer were to go look at it, I'd be embarrassed by what it looks like today. Tell me why I (and my team) created a website that was fully responsive, and they went back to make it adaptive in the year of our lord 2022 because they preferred to have pixel perfect views at 3 specific breakpoints rather than a responsive site. I don't know, it's infuriating. I can't cite that project as an example of my work anymore, because it isn't. I would never leave a site in that state.

So, my first instinct with the idea of people using a skin i sell them as a base is 'take my name off it.' I don't want to be associated if responsive/accessible features are lost due to others working on a skin I wrote. But at the same time, where is the line between using something as a base, and editing a few small features? I certainly don't want to be an arbiter of that, or have to field questions or navigate feelings about it. In fact, personally I would not feel upset at all if someone used a paid for skin as a base, and inviting that kind of discussion is the only way I possibly could get upset since people have weird attitudes about a lot of this stuff. So I think the more practical standard is just to put credit, but make it explicit that the work has been heavily altered. Don't resell or redistribute, and you're golden, imo. Anyway, those are my feelings as someone who writes code for a living. I'm interested to hear counterpoints - constructively of course.

[ghost-hosts]

Hi the anon saying that screamw0rks stalked and harassed someone is absolute bullshite. I'm sorry but if people do not know how to read (they said the musicians were problematic not that they hate them) and that person that went berserk thought the attack was personal. This whole thing is blown out of proportion and you're all blindly just following a well known lunatics enabler on this site

Clarify that last part please. But i will also say ive been friends with andy and i saw all the blogs following them telling them to delete. I can acknowledge people are problematic, but that also means that i can keep using them if i so wish. If you think i need to change im gonna unfollow so that we dont interact and you can feel better about your tumblr experience. Simple.

[unboundwanderers]

Genshin Mutuals, do you think trains exist in Teyvat. Like, with how advanced Genshin Science is - if we acknowledge the fact that waypoints are only accessible to the traveler, then how else would other people get around? On the mainland, at least - I know Inazuma is an island, and it's totally sectioned off but on the big main land.

I saw this reddit post about a transit map if trains existed in teyvat, and it's been on my mind FOREVER. Yes, I know we don't SEE trains or locamotives in the MAIN GAME but really think like- could there be trains? The ruin guards are made from cogs and seem to have some type of automated function to them (What, was the forbidden knowledge an affordable transportation system? No wonder the Abyss Twin is so pissed off.)

These have been Binary's brainrot hour. Thanks for coming.

[blindmagdalena]

sorry if I sound like I'm taking things too seriously, but I disagree that Homelander's a mary sue. mary sue characters are OP as fuck for no reason, win everything, have no flaws and everybody falls in love with them. Homelander has lots of flaws - his arrogance, laziness, need to be loved at all costs, his temper, etc. He's special because he was genetically engineered to be special and nobody loves him.

don’t worry anon, it was definitely a joke! i agree that homelander is a very nuanced character. that’s why I love him! that said, the mary sue trope is largely rooted in straight up misogyny that has only gotten worse with time. it’s gotten so warped and abused that literally any female character who displays powers beyond the norm for whatever universe she occupies gets instantly labelled and dismissed as a mary sue.

my comment was much less about homelander himself and more about how unfair it is that we can’t seem to have incredibly powerful women (flaws and all) who don’t get labelled mary sues. i’m tired of the assumption that if a woman is powerful or special in a universe, she’s a mary sue. the ONLY detail about the theoretical character in that ask was that she was insanely powerful, which was enough to create mary sue anxiety.

the tropes you’re describing can all be very fun if handled correctly. and honestly, even if they’re not handled great, women should be allowed to have ridiculous power fantasies, too. they get written for a reason! it’s not hurting anyone. men get them in pretty much everything.

long story short, i just want more OP women.

[unladielike]

( i honestly can’t help but laugh whenever i discover an anti has me hardblocked... and these antis spread misinformation about pr/o-shippers too, that it’s just like trash taking itself out.

but honestly, you don’t necessarily have to have problematic ships in order to be a pr/o-shipper - you just have to not condone harassment over ships. and yeah, while i won’t deny most pr/o-shippers in the rpc tend to ship inc/est or minor/adult ships, the fact antis have to resort to spreading misinformation to make them self seem morally superior is so damn hilarious to me.

honestly, i wouldn’t be surprised if people would assume i’m a pr/o-shipper too despite the fact i actually agree with them in/cest and minor/adult ships are gross - i just do not appreciate seeing people witch hunt others or hurl death threats at people consensually writing things they don’t like, regardless of how i might feel about the topics they are writing about, because at the end of the day, real people matter more than fictional lines on paper.

seriously, it costs $0 to just block/unfollow/blacklist and mind your own business. plus, all this moral outrage people have towards supposed ‘p/edophilia’ is performative af. like, if you care about csa victims so much, then why are you exerting so much of your energy on being mad at fictional characters being abused when you could help out actual victims of csa/grooming in real life??

i dunno, man... i just feel like these people need to touch grass or something, because they do more slacktivism than actual writing. i mean, maybe it’s just me, but i personally do not get how you could not be tired, calling out people for shipping crimes or being angry all the time, when all i wanna do when i come back home from work is scream about characters and maybe write self-indulgent shit.

...TO THAT END, I DO NOT HAVE THE SPOONS TO CARE ABOUT WHAT GROSS SHIT OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING, because it doesn’t concern me. honestly, i wouldn’t say i ‘support’ it, but it’s more like i acknowledge that people are always gonna write weird shit regardless, so i’ll simply ignore it and move on, because for me, it’s not healthy or productive to my mental health, focusing on things i hate. )

[antonblastdeluxe]

nah because why are people so insidious.

[nikkiitalks]

Just for context, the DM novel she sent me was 23 mobile screenshots long.

[strnza]

just  saw  some  more  bullshit  discourse  (hate)  on  original  characters  that  essentially  boils  down  to  ‘all  original  characters  are  the  same  and  /  or  just  self-inserts  &  thus,  invalid  in  any  rpc’.  now,  i  don’t  even  know  where  to  begin  with  the  stupidity  of  this  statement,  but  i  guess  what  it  boils  down  to  (for  me  at  least)  is:  a  character  being  canon  doesn’t  make  them  any  more  important  or  justified  to  exist  than  an  original  character.  all  canon  characters  started  out  as  original  characters.  just  because  you  have  pre-existing  source  material  /  media  doesn’t  make  your  character  any  more  important  than  one  that  someone  created  just  for  the  sake  of  writing  on  tumblr  /  any  other  collaborative  platform.  original  characters  are  not,  by  default,  self-inserts.  that’s  one  of  the  dumbest  things  i’ve  ever  heard.  even  still,  if  someone  really  wants  to  write  a  self-insert  character,  it’s  not  your  business  to  police  it.  curate  your  space,  make  yourself  comfortable,  but  don’t  make  everyone  else  uncomfortable  while  doing  it.  <3