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Okay, these were three people in WINGS but their dramas were short lived enough I decided to put them all together.

We'll start with Whirli. Whirli had a tendency to create overpowered, melodramatic characters. When she first started RPing her character "Ghost" (a deformed, scarred up kid), he was just a normal kid. As the RP progressed, he developed a really bad cockney accent. (We had a lot of characters in this rp develop sudden accents because Cheeva's character Tari has a very strong one and people would decide they wanted to try the accent too). Then she made snide OOC remarks that implied Cheeva stole the idea to do an accent from her.

Which was really funny since Chee had been doing it first. <___> Derp.

The main issue I recall with her is that out of no where, she sprang this huge domestic and sexual abuse thing on the RP. We got a very, very heavily implied rape scene from this opposing older man, and ghost--this small, deformed kid.

The thing was that it was completely inappropriate and made everyone in the RP feel awkward. It's possible to RP those kinds of things and all but seriously--WARN people so they don't get the urge to vomit from reading your posts. >.< It was also difficult for the other characters to deal with because when you tell an angry assassin "That guy raped me" the assassin's first inclination is to go kill 'that guy' but obviously you can't auto-hit/godmod someone. So...yeah. Just consider these kinds of things before you do them.

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Birdie was another person from Wings. She was just a complete annoyance from day one. Her character started out very overpowered by the person doing the approvals at the time, didn't realize it until she started tacitly threatening to use her powers on people in every single post. Her character also had a really horrendous cockney accent that, at times, was bad enough her dialogue was indecipherable and she had to include a translation.

Accents are great but if your fellow RPers can't figure out what the heck your character is even saying, then you need to tone it down.

The main drama with Birdie happened in our OOC RPs. In WINGS we had a crack pairing thread where the scenario was something like "Everyone is trapped in a mansion and there's something in the air making them all fall in love!" It was totally stupid and silly and, I mean, we had the villain running around the place with a lampshade on his head, for crying outloud.

Then Birdie joins. Birdie's character started insisting there was Brothel Paint (no, she never explained what this is and yes, she always capitalized it) on the walls making everyone go crazy. She knew this because she grew up in a brothel. It was so bad, Birdie kept having massive nosebleeds as a reaction to it and having complete melodramatic melt downs over the horror. The RP would be chugging along in its own silly fashion, with a large,hyper sky pirate roaming around being a dork, and a host of other people just being stupid. And then Birdie would post with SUDDEN ANGST.

On top of that, she ignored the abilities of other people when used on her, constantly threatened, in character, to use her UBER powers on people, and tried to godmode her way out of several fights. It was very disruptive and heavily detracted from the fun of the thread.

She also did two of my major pet peeves.

1. Mentioning her character's blue eyes in every post. I do not know why people do this. But seriously, no one cares that your character has blue eyes. @___@ We can read it in the profile/see it in the picture. There's no reason to force feed us this information.

2. The random capitalization of Certain Words as if they are Very Important Proper Nouns. I seriously hate when people do this Evil Thing. emotion_donotwant

But the major things were the constant threats against other characters, and the overwhelming angst that just never stopped. Not even in non-serious threads.


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Dunce (and I'm not being mean, this was part of his username, and what we all called him) was mostly okay....

He did have a few annoying characteristics. He liked to RP with himself to show off how awesome his characters were. I remember a scene where his one armed pirate killed a couple of random bounty hunters in a bar. Just....randomly. And then everyone went on like nothing happened. He also had this farmer guy who never interacted with anyone and did nothing but wander around alone, occasionally telling off NPC nobles or killing thieves.

One of the more irritating qualities about him was that he would constantly forget things about characters and just jump to weird conclusions. So you were constantly having to correct him "No...that's not the character's name." "No, there's no way he'd know that about her." He also would have his character do extremely brash (and rude) things--like walk into the house of people he didn't know--and get annoyed when the other characters disliked him or if there were any consequences at all for his actions.

But the "big" drama I recall with him was when he put in this character named Connor. He was RPing a scene with me and I misspelled Connor as Conner because I'm used to the latter spelling. Now, mind you, I'd had to correct far more serious mistakes of his, nearly nonstop at this point. But he got very huffy at me for misspelling the name. And I joked that he had chosen and odd spelling and that's why I misspelled.

OMG. He completely flipped out because I had just DARED to insult HIS name. (The character was named after himself). Which is the worst, possible thing.....EVER. It took a few posts and captain intervention before he calmed down. Later, he confirmed that he was RPing a self insert.

I mean, it's fine to RP a self-insert if you want but you can't be that sensitive about things. >.<

Drama from these people spanned at least three RPs in this one generalized RP guild. It started back in an RP named Ancient Regalia, run by a friend.

Before I even joined, Dragon had this tendency to try to have her character solve every single problem there was, with her powers. A character has a major, incurable illness that is plot oriented. Dragon kept trying to insist, for example, that her character (who manipulated water) could heal him. How water can cure a disease that rots away or skin or whatever, is completely beyond me.

Then I join with a character who receives an ability that allows him to destroy everything he touches. Problem being--it's passive. He literally erodes away everything he touches (including his clothes...lulz) even without wanting to. (For the record, I think he was angrier about eroding his pie than he was about his clothes). We had already planned out a partial solution to his issue, to get the ability under control.

Then Dragon steps in and wants her water character to fix his problem by encasing him in a thin layer of water. Forever. So he'd just walk around like normal, with this water cushion that would isolate him from the rest of the world or something. I said no. She insisted and tried to explain how it was the best solution ever. I said no because frankly it made no sense and I couldn't see how it was any better than not being able to touch things. It just doesn't work in my head. There are so many awkward problems it would cause. But the main thing is that I didn't WANT an insta-solution. That wasn't even the point.

We had a scene planned out where Peter accidentally lost control of his powers and destroyed an abandoned section of town. It was a fairly small event but her character starts pulling dead bodies out of the rubble. I was upset because she didn't ask me if it was okay to turn Peter into a murderer, and we had made it clear there was no one around. She had to edit that out of her post.

Now, the one thing that could weaken and/or resist Peter's ability was pure silver. Hence why he was going to use silver jewelry to help repress it. So this random doctor decides he wants a skin sample from Peter and pulls out a pure silver scalpel he just happens to have on him. And I very nicely ask that she stop doing this kind of thing. Her characters couldn't always have the perfect solution or just the right tool on them. And there was no reason a doctor is carrying around pure silver medical tools. She launched into this huge thing about how medical tools are really made of silver. And I proved that no...they're made of steel.

She flipped out and her best friend flipped out and accused me of godmodding (I assure you that while I did have a very powerful character, no godmodding, at all, occurred. I was very careful how I RPed him). Then Dragon quit the RP. Then she claimed I "killed her creativity" and she shut down her other RPs in the guild -- which I wasn't even in -- with no warning at all to the RPers.

emotion_awesome

All because I asked that she stop circumventing my characters' problems and powers by always having the right solution.

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Skip to around six months later. I had an idea for a small, casual RP. I had no where else to put it so I thought "Well...maybe that guild." I seriously should have ignored that niggling little voice saying it was a bad idea. <.<

By this time, Dragon was the tyrannical leader Captain of this guild. That, in itself, should have been a clue-in. Alas.

I set up my RP thinking the DragonRose duo would not join. They, in fact....did. Now I'm going to ignore the fact that their characters were utterly ridiculous.

This RP was set in the future. It's very important to remember that the year is 2060. Also, the cast of characters was very international. We had characters from India, England, Romania, America, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Scotland...I mean really. Everywhere. Presumably, they all had accents of some kind.

Wait....actually, I'm not. emotion_awesome They gave us such treasures as a bartender who died her hair purple every weekend and blonde again on Monday. And the Irish guy who had never seen an elevator because he grew up on a farm. She also mentioned--in nearly every post--how out of place he felt because he had an Irish accent. It was terrible! That awful Irish accent of his....(let's not forget there was a Scottish character, and another from Ireland...and multiples from England) it just made him stand out terribly. In fact, when he put on the bracelet with the door key for their resort, it looked so much like a charm bracelet, that everyone was probably just about to start breaking out the lucky charms jokes at his expense!!

Then there was Dragon's Native American. <.< Okay, so the scenario is all these people (many of them white, but not all) are staying at this island resort. A very, very nice island resort. She creates a ground keeper that is Native American, knows "old indian remedies" to heal people, is a war veteran and calls people things like "little one" and "white man." And she wanted him to live in a shack away from all the other characters. I felt a little uncomfortable putting him in a shack (I mean...putting the Old wise Indian man in a shack while all the whitefolk got a pretty mansion just seemed, well, slightly racist) so I said he could stay in a really nice guest house away from everyone else if she wanted. But not a shack.

Several people came to me and said they felt the character was honestly bordering on offensive because he was so 'Hollywood Stereotype.' It got bad enough that I actually did eventually have to tell her to tone down the racial stereotypes because they were offending people. It was so awkward and uncomfortable for me. ;_____________;

There was a final big blow up that caused Dragon to (once again) pull down her RPs and this time leave the guild.

Basically, Rose posted about once a month. We had a tendency to wait as long as possible, or pause the people in whatever scenes she was in, but in general the RP would continue with a few posts a day. Rose kept heavily implying we were leaving her out and giving her nothing to do. The problem is that there were people waiting on replies from her. And she would post "Well, I guess i'll have my character just stand there."

So Cheeva told her that rather than that, maybe she should reply to the person who'd been waiting on a response from her for 21 days already. Dragon flipped out at us ranting about how unlike US, Rose had a life outside of Gaia. And made snide remarks about us being rude and not waiting on people. And then essentially told us we were not allowed to reply to this vitriol, or she would use her "captain powers" to delete our posts. Which, obviously was unfair. You can't attack people viciously, then not allow them to defend themselves just because you're captain and they're not.

It was pretty much publicly agreed that she was being tyrannical and, frankly, mean. And that she needed to chill out and let Rose deal with her own problems rather than jumping it and trying walk all over people. No one demanded she step down. We asked her to change - because this was the second or third time she'd tried to use her rank to bully people into not speaking up against things she was doing. It was unfair, and not how you run a guild. So we wanted her to stop doing that and let people discuss and work out problems on their own.

Her response was to quit the guild. emotion_awesome

kay, this post is about someone named Alice. Well, that isn't really her name but I'm going to call her that. =3

When Alice joined the RP in question, she seemed decent enough. Her characters didn't really stand out but bland characters are part and parcel of RPing--you'll always come across them so it's not a big deal. In the RP in question, I was a crew member...so, you know, I tried to keep the peace and all that good stuff. I recall the very first time I had a "problem" with her was when her character interrupted a scene between two others--who belonged to people who were friends and okay with having their characters at odds with one another--to "save" one of the characters.

Save him by using a power not listed in the profile, then attempted to godmod a little to keep the other person from overcoming the ability to continue the scene. At the request of one of the people actually in the scene, I calmly posted and told her she couldn't use abilities not on her profile and she proceeded to beg and cajole for the chance to put this ability on the profile. I had to tell her 'no' about three times (mostly because the character was already very powerful and Alice had clearly demonstrated she couldn't be trusted not to godmod with this ability) before she finally, rather huffily said "fine." Things were okay after that for a while.

Then she posted her next character. The character was a centuries old vampire that looked like a little girl--over done, but more or less okay. The problem was the picture. The picture clearly showed a very young girl that looked around 9-10. The problem was that the picture was looking straight up her dress and clearly showed hints of either her rump or genitals (it was a little unclear which it was) without panties.

Most of the people in the guild were a little horrified because this picture looked like it was ripped off some kind of loli-hentai site and it was superbly creepy because....why would you think using it on Gaia was okay? Why would you think sexualizing children ANYwhere is okay. Even if the character was centuries old, she LOOKED like a 10 year old, which made it particularly revolting. Fortunately a nice member edited it and the RPer claimed that she was super grateful because that had "always bothered her." Which we all totally believed when a few weeks later, she changed the character picture to one of a little school girl who was blushing while lifting the edge of her skirt.

By this time, I have to admit that most of us were weirded out by her, but tried to RP with her as best as possible. Which was a little hard because she had this tendency to place her characters in remote locations where no one else would logically be, then beg people to come RP with her. Though we did try to accomodate her as best as we could, the guild had a pretty rigid system owing to the type of setting it was so often, the characters were just too busy to randomly go off and fawn over hers.

There were a couple of weird RPing things that happened before the drama started to build up.

First of all, she had an emo vampire that she wanted to have attack someone. Fair enough. She specifically requested a girl...okay. Fair enough. The character offered up was a woman in a wheel chair (in the chair by choice though I don't think Alice realized that). She made a really weird comment in the OOC about how much "fun" it would be to hurt a handicapped woman. No one said anything to her but it was another moment where we all kind of felt that she was a little......off. When the scene got underway, her vampire attacked the woman in a desperate attempt to get blood. Fair enough.

But what made the scene awkward was Alice's really obvious attempts to 'force' the other player to have her lady be terrorized by this vampire. There were several moments where her wording made it obvious she was wanting a very specific reaction from the other player. Wheelchair lady, however, was far from a delicate flower and basically wasn't all that intimidated by the vampire. In fact, she threatened him several times and when he finally let her go and went massively emo because "OHNOES HE HURT SOMEONE AND IT MADE HIM SAD!" she called him a selfish brat for expending more energy whining about what he'd done, than accepting responsibility and trying to help make up for it.

Alice, not surprisingly, quickly abandoned the scene.

Protip: Don't try to force others to react in specific ways. It's rude. Let people have their characters respond how they want. Part of the fun of RPing is the unpredictability of not knowing how others are going to respond.

Alice also had a "genius" character. That's fair enough. The problem was that Alice never bothered to post in a way that indicated he was really smart. Most of her posts for him had a lot of internal dialogue about how he was smart and everyone else was stupid. The few times she had the chance to have him discuss something that could make him look smart, she would post something vague like "He ranted about the math behind it, then left." Basically, the character didn't come across at all like a genius.

Rather, Alice came across more like she was trying to prove the merits of his intelligence by forcing everyone else to be dumber than him.

The problem was that the character he tended to rant to was one of mine. And she was supposed to be quite advanced in that topic--reason being, because I personally know a lot about that subject and know I can write my character like she's advanced in it. In other words, the one who tended to look stupid was the genius because my character always was able to come out of the conversations looking more knowledgeable.

Protip: If your character is an expert or genius in something--take the time to research it so your posts come across well. If all you ever do is try to prove their worth by railroading other characters, it's going to make you look like a crappy RPer because that's just a slip shod, careless way to RP.

Another weird thing that happened occurred during a guild event. Her very emotionless, bland Mary Sue met a gregarious flirt who...flirted. Mary Sue shut him down over and over until he got bored and left. Alice seemed to realize that she was losing her chance to RP something sexy and randomly had her emotionless Mary Sue suddenly get angry when previously she had demonstrated a distinct lack of ability to feel anything. The flirt was amused and started flirting again and nuzzling her neck.

Mary Sue fainted.

That's right. She was so completely overwhelmed by the sensation of having her neck nuzzled by a guy she supposedly hated, that she lost consciousness.

...

Ahem.

Right.

After that, she was determined to have Mary Sue 'get revenge.' She basically stalked the other RPer, quoting her numerous times to beg for RP time despite that the other RPer's character was busy doing what he was supposed to do in the RP, rather than wandering around randomly. When her character finally moved to a more accessible location and was RPing with someone else, Mary Sue suddenly showed up and started stalking him. Which...wasn't at all creepy or anything. When The Flirt moved back into an inaccessible location, Mary Sue found herself RPing with three other characters. Alice whined in the OOC about how sad she was about not being able to RP her character formulating relationships.

That's right. Instead of getting to RP with one character Mary Sue hated, she had the chance to RP with THREE characters Mary Sue could be friends with.........and she whined. Granted, none of them were nuzzling her neck and giving her ego stroking gratification or anything. But seriously. Whining because she had people to RP with. Wow.

The very next time Flirt was in an accessible location talking to one of my characters, Mary Sue showed up out of nowhere with a super-flimsy premise to let her get injected into the scene and possibly move my character out of the scene so she could have Flirt to herself. Well, it didn't work out so well for her but by this point, the stalking was really creeping people out.

Protip: Don't harass people to RP with you or awkwardly stalk their characters. People notice it. It makes them think you're weird and they may, kinda, start trying to avoid you. Also, it tends to make your characters look like socially awkward stalker types too....

Another example of her creepiness involved the ***** vampire child-woman. During one guild event, she tried to have this woman (remember--this character looks like a prepubescent child) hit on an adult male. The male was obviously not interested because really, the only grown man interested in romance with something that looks like a child, are the ones who like little girls. And none of the men in this guild were ***** seemed to realize, after this, that ***** wouldn't be getting any romance or sex while looking like a kid. Which, honestly....the fact that she thought the character WOULD...is just a little creepy. She asked the crew if she could give ***** an adult form to open her up for some romance. The crew declined--mostly because there was a similar character whose RPer had calmly reconciled with the fact her character would remain single for the course of the RP and it seemed unfair to give Alice a way out from this limitation when someone else was accepting it without qualms.

And also, we felt that when you give your character a limitation, you just don't immediately try to find a way around it when you realize how, well, limiting it is. (And to be honest, I don't think any of us wanted our males having this fail vampire lady start stalking them.) Amusingly, a short time later, we noticed Alice had changed the obviously little girl picture to one that looked a little more mature--as if someone might be 'tricked' into romance because of the picture.

LoL...no. No one was.

I also want to add that Alice had a really hilarious way of trying to show boat her characters. She would often spend a lot of time in the posts to describe how awesome they were. Like devoting two paragraphs to how one of the guys was super handsome so that all the girls would totally have the hots for him.

Or describing another character tripping, but saving himself from falling with his "awesome cat-like reflexes."

So here's the deal. There's a way to describe things where it sounds like you're just describing what happened, or how a person looks. And there's a way to do it where basically it reads like "HAY LOOK AT HOW AMAZING MY CHARACTER IS AND BE AWED!!!111!" Regardless of whether you're writing in a roleplay or story, or whatever--know how to describe things. Describing your own character by stating how other characters should feel about them (like "all the girls would swoon at the sight of him") or calling your own characters "awesome" is just.....well.....really cheesy.

Rather than telling people your character is awesome--demonstrate it through the post and let them form their own opinion. And don't try to force people to view your character a specific way. It's not going to work. It really, really is not going to work.