#rping with ourselves pfft

[cosmcther]

★*･ get to know the mun. REPOST, DON’T REBLOG.

▐ NAME/NICKNAME: No nicknames, but Aaron works fine! ▐ PRONOUNS:  He/him, but they/them is fine if you forget. ▐ SEXUALITY:  Bi-curious. Dudes are cool, shit idk.  ▐ TAKEN OR SINGLE:  Single and don’t fucking touch me. ▐ HOW LONG HAVE YOU ROLEPLAYED ( YEARS/MONTHS):  Oh christ I dunno, like, three to four years maybe? I haven’t been too long tbh. ▐ PLATFORMS USED:  Just Dumblr here. Wish this shitty site wasn’t so damn good for rping. ▐ BEST EXPERIENCE:  Yo, my friends, dude. Like, that’s the sappy answer but I’ve literally met one of my best friends on this site, and I’ve made so many other friends right here in the smash and mario rpc. This is the best place I’ve ever been in terms of good writers and people, and I’m so glad that I’ve actually gotten to live the dream of befriending the lot of you. I’m an antisocial fuck, so the fact that I’ve actually had the chance to break those boundaries and connect is so amazing.  ▐ MALE OR FEMALE:  Females most definitely. The majority of muses I write are female, with only, like, two characters I can think of that aren’t off the top of my head. And one of the two is still only like, 35% dude hbutjgircfvourfi. But mhm, males are fine, but I’ve got my preference when it comes to writing characters. ▐ FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT:  I’m underaged so smuts off the table, but even if I was of age, I wouldn’t wanna write that stuff. But I love both fluff and angst. Too much of either is bad, though. Fluff can get boring and angst can get bland when it’s not after some happiness to actually give the sad stuff weight. ▐ PLOTS OR MEMES:  I actually suck at plotting, so memes. ▐ LONG OR SHORT REPLIES:  Definitely both, because same with fluff and angst, short stuff is harder to do deep things with, and long can cause some serious burnout. Short stuff keeps things going with casual interactions in the middle of big fat replies. ▐ BEST TIME TO WRITE:  Y’know, I’ve been saying nighttime for the longest time now, but I think it’s just whenever I’m in the mood now.  ▐ ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S):  Man I wish I was, but nah guhbnoiefmdxs. At least, not Rosalina. Rosalina and I are POLAR opposites, but my other muse, Knuckles the Echidna, now we’re pretty similar, me and him. Quick to anger and uses the greying of care to protector ourselves, but genuinely loving of those we actually care about. But pfft his sense of duty is way larger than mine. He protects a big powerful hunk of rock because he thinks he has to. I won’t do the things I should do even when I know for a fact that they’re super mega important to me. 

tagged by:  @lylxt​ ! Thanks Feris! tagging:  steal it like the thief you are.

[thalsianiii]

War, PTSD, and Role Play

So this might come off as ranty, for which I apologize.

Now, is it just me or is everyone rather desensitized to the fact that the warcraft universe is at war? More importantly, at war with some really terrifying shit? I get it, every expansion is a war. It’s that kind of game of course. World of Warcraft. But does that mean everyone is simply indifferent to the effects of such?

Admittedly, I’ve never actually been to war. And I’d like to preface all of this with a heart felt thank you to those of you who have been and what you’ve done for your respective countries. I’m also not oblivious to the fact that many soldiers come back from their deployment different. Veteran PTSD is a thing after all. Many soldiers go off to war and come back changed men and women. That kind of life is something many of us can’t imagine. On the flip side, many others come back fine. I don’t know the statistics. But we all know it happens.

So then there’s the role players in the warcraft universe. many of us (myself included) have played, or currently play, a character who has participated in different campaigns throughout warcraft history. Second & Third war, Outland, Northrend, Cataclysm, etc. Argus now being the most recent installment. and one thing I’ve noticed is many people seem to treat these events rather...casually.

There’s a few points I want to address about the scope of the world, some of these events and what it means to really participate in them. These are things I feel people don’t take into consideration. In the end RP your way. But perhaps consider this food for thought?

1) The Distance. This is something that is incredibly skewed due to the need to make the game at all playable. But I think a lot of people don’t realize how massive Azeroth (and the universe) is supposed to be. Dalaran has apparently 3000 citizens living in it. But it certainly doesn’t look like it could hold 3000 individuals in it. Elwynn is something like half a day to a days ride from Stormwind (Need source). Northrend, Kalimdor, Pandaria, entirely different continents. Consider how long it takes to fly to Europe from North America. Consider how long it takes to go by ship (which is warcrafts primary methods of mass travel). that’s potential weeks, if not months. but of course we have to cut corners here and there. Because this isn’t real life, it’s role play. But distance still needs to be considered. and it appears as though people don’t factor that in. It’s very much “oh I’m going to Plaguelands be back in half an hour” mentality as opposed too “I ride for Westfall in the morning. I’ll be back by weeks end” which, personally, cheapens the experience.

2) The enemy. With the exception of Vanilla and possibly Pandaria. We rarely fought a war against ‘normal’ threats (or each other in the PvP sense). We’ve fought insects, demons, old gods, undead, rampaging elementals, dragon aspects, literal feeling monsters, more demons, etc. If a soldier can go off to war on another continent and come back incredibly changed because of fighting other people. How terribly might someone be ruined by fighting the undead? Or demons? Or a literal god? I personally can’t fathom what that would do to a person because it’s fantasy. But I consider it in my RP as a Veteran character. Do I think fighting against demons, knowing what they do to people will fuck someone up? Hell yes I do. Imagine fighting in another country and watching your comrades get torn apart by attack dogs, or eaten by the enemy soldiers. That’s what we’re fighting on Argus. Just with cartoony graphics.

3) What it means to be a soldier. Here’s one I think a lot of people either don’t consider, or possibly choose to ignore because of how it does potentially hinder RP. But if you’re on duty, you don’t get to come home every night. You’re camped out at a Base of some sort. Whether that base camp is a fort in the middle east, or a spaceship on another planet. If you’re a soldier or mercenary of some organization you’re expected to be present for that period of time. You’re expected to sleep there, eat there, be ready for a counter attack at a moments notice. If you’re going home every night that base is left weakened. Each time you leave, you weaken that foothold and increase the chances that when you come back it will be overrun. My very very first RP campaign ever we were told that IC we’d be gone for a couple weeks. So we couldn’t really be seen in the city. Yes I appreciate that you want to go to the taverns and do walk up RP. But personally, if you want to play a character who’s going to participate in a war. commit to it. You’re not going to your job at the bank for 8 hours and coming home. You’re a soldier.

4) Portals. Mother trucking portals. Now remember this is me here, lore asshole who loooooves magic. Portals are my bread and butter. hearthstones, city portals, demonic gateways. They make getting around point 1) very easy without just using the compression of the game for granted. But it’s all to easy to abuse them in a war setting. “Well there’s a portal to Dalaran right there so like... I can just come and go as I please!” Yes. You have that ability for mechanical purposes of course. I.e. Blizz can’t lock us on Argus for the rest of the expansion. But refer to points 1-3. It will take time to travel from say, the Antoran Wastes to a transporter pad. A few hours at least maybe? Then When you come out in Dalaran. Maybe another 30 minutes to travel through the city to the stormwind portal? this list could get long but you see my point. And you can’t have a portal from your front door to the battlefield. That’s just inviting enemy forces right into your home. Portals, to me, always seem like the part of gameplay where realism and critical thinking is never used and people only think of the superficial uses and never the consequences or meaning behind their actions.

There are other lesser things to consider but these are the ones that I either focus on when I write, or I feel people abuse/don’t consider. When you say you’re fighting on Argus but come home every night and just wash the Fel away It cheapens the gravity of what were involving ourselves in, in my opinion. I get it, you don’t want to miss out on attending this weeks server social because you’re RPing being at war. No one is going to ask you too. It’s your game after all.

I can admit I’m personally annoyed by this, specifically because I find in trying to write someone with some Post Argus PTSD I’m met with a LOT of “oh pfft yeah I was on Argus too so what?” mentality and it bugs the shit out of me. I like to believe our soldiers here in reality don’t treat their brothers-in-arms like that. I’m not saying you should agree with them or give them a free pass when they do fucked up shit. Jump on them when it’s deserved. But please don’t discredit their actions in a war setting just because you take it less seriously than someone else. To me, that’s like a soldier looking at someone with PTSD and going “pfft it wasn’t that bad.” which, when you think of it in real world context, sounds pretty awful.

Now don’t take this as me telling you what to do or how to RP. Your money, your choice. Just in the same way it’s my money for my game. You can consider these points, Ignore them, If you have interesting counter points please share them! Like I said, it’s ranty and I apologize for that. If you want to be a casual player that’s your right of course, just like PvP and PvE, you don’t have to be a die hard. Play how you want.

Here’s a gif of a duck