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Author Topic: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues  (Read 6991 times)

Kaleigh Doyle

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #15 on: 20 Apr 2010, 21:28 »

Roleplay, at its very core is an attempt to assume the attitudes, actions, and discourse of (another),  in an effort to understand a differing point of view or social interaction. Sprinkle in some internet spaceships, other actors, and some motivation/goals and we have ourselves a story. The question you may want to ask yourself is, does your character's behavior satisfy your curiosity/interest, or do you believe it's everyone else that's not developing the potential your character has?

Assuming the intentions of other player's OOC motivations is folly, and utterly demotivational. Trust me on that one, it's why I've been away for years. The question I would ask myself is: Are these individuals engaging me or am I approaching what I want in an awkward manner no one understands?

Also, consider that your character, the archetype you may have developed in your head has to evolve too. If he's branded an outcast for being an asshole, but ultimately you WANT interaction, you need to evolve as your character would- try something different? Meet different groups?

And yes I happen to totally agree with you about the likeable pirate thing. It's funny how roleplayers make a double-standard for the swash-buckling clean shaven pirate who only kills with a conscience (lol) and the blood thirsty gatecamping goons you run into at all the low-sec chokepoints. At one point Kaleigh was pretty fed up with them and got labelled as a drug-abused crazy person for giving them a serious hard time.

Capsuleers are messed up. :D


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lallara zhuul

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #16 on: 21 Apr 2010, 00:05 »

You basic assumption is a fallacy.

We all play Mary Sues in EVE.

Some are just more blatant than others.
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Ashar Kor-Azor

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #17 on: 21 Apr 2010, 01:00 »

I'm just...

I'm not going to read any of the other responses in this thread, so I'll risk being repetitive rather than risk getting into shit-fits.

Now. Disclaimer: very little of the following may speak to your original point, until you get to the end. But do me a favor and read it anyway. By Ashar standards, it's woefully short.

In terms of the anti-Sue equation, insofar as one exists, your logic is valid.

However, having taken that to the extreme for a bit when I was moar nutzier, all I can really say is that the more people not finding your char's quirks to be lacking in entertainment, the worse that little conclusion and trait assignment is serving you.

Intentionally marking yourself with animal scent may keep people from finding your aroma attractive, but you're still marked with animal scent.

The solution is to up the entertainment factor. One portion of tightening your science this way may include making the brunt of your targeted egomaniacal asshattery land on the heads of them as can take it. Finding these people and getting into a relationship with them that is conducive to this is in itself both a learned skill and a perishable one.

The rest of the deal is, well. Look. Here's what I go for.

Be hilarious.

If you can't do that (and fuck if I ever can, sheesh), fulfill an important community role.

If you CBA for that, provide SOME useful OOC function to SOME people. Mod a channel, clean up some community website, ingratiate yourself. Be good to your friends.

If you can't do that either, well, stop caring about whether or not people SHOULD appreciate something abrasive.

It's difficult to like stuff you don't like - it's kind of like getting into the sort of modern art that fucks with you, okay? Jarring aesthetics do not always trump a novel arrangement of elements. Or like being a toymaker. It takes a genuine freak to devotedly cater to the tastes of the very young, or whatever other demographic you get into.

Monkeys are dangerous animals, Seri. We're built not to like it when we get rubbed the wrong way. Don't pet the monkey contrary to the direction of hair growth; it may rip your face off.

Also, this reminds me of http://unhappyhipsters.com/ for some reason.
« Last Edit: 21 Apr 2010, 01:03 by Ashar Kor-Azor »
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Seriphyn

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #18 on: 21 Apr 2010, 07:55 »

Ha, did this become Seriphyn's confessional wall huh? :P

@ Ashar
Yes, in fact, the Quafe merchandise thread was intended to be funny. If Seri's going to be a controversial egomaniac, then why not be an amusing one that plays to Federal stereotypes? Ironically, Reppy's reply to that thread is the exact kind of thing I was expecting, to which that RP alt Kiam Arreiz mirrored. There is no reason why Seriphyn isn't a big Federal hero loved by everyone, but the RP capsuleers will refuse to believe this IC because the concept offends them! :P And in terms of fulfilling an important community role, I believe I do, being the face of Gallentean RP in all its controversies and whatnot.

@ Kaleigh <3
Ditto again at likeable pirate. Anyway, yeah, the overall notion of Seriphyn is that while disliked by a wide plefora of capsuleers, I do feel he is grudingly respected. People might think him to be a joke, an annoying pest, but this will not stop him/me from killing you in space solo (just look at the KB :P). This creates an interesting character I think, and many other characters will make the mistake of thinking Seriphyn a moron before he murders them in space.

He often plays to this deliberately, as well. It's just sometimes I enjoy him coming across as an aggressive type. He is from a working class area, for example, but it's just a shame when people have to godmod (like getting knee'd in the balls) when it offends them IC. Anyway, Seriphyn is by no means 1D. He has a public persona, but his handful of close intimate friends know his private one, and who he really is etc.
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Lillith Blackheart

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #19 on: 21 Apr 2010, 09:36 »

You basic assumption is a fallacy.

We all play Mary Sues in EVE.

Some are just more blatant than others.

Your use of hyperbole (i.e. "all") makes your assumption a fallacy.
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Natalcya Katla

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #20 on: 21 Apr 2010, 09:42 »

Re: Mary Sue-ism...

I'm the most important person in real life. Why shouldn't I be the most important person in the game? >_>
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Casiella

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #21 on: 21 Apr 2010, 10:45 »

We all play Mary Sues in EVE.

Do you fully understand what a Mary Sue is? Why do you feel everyone plays one?
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Ashar Kor-Azor

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #22 on: 21 Apr 2010, 12:12 »

Lall often suggests that Capsuleers are fuckweird compared to the rest of EVE; they are the Mary Sue social class.

There's various other points, but this one is the closest to useful.

Seriphyn

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #23 on: 21 Apr 2010, 13:55 »

I give you an example of what I'm ranting about, occured about an hour ago. Seriphyn was behaving in an intimidating fashion to someone he thought was overly conceited, and it irritated him. In an OOC channel, I was like "Ah, need to eat, once Seri's done intimidating this person".

The response I got was "Seri... do you really you're intimidating them?"

This is the issue. Who's you? Me? Seri, yes. Seri was behaving in an intimidating fashion. Whether the person gets intimidated is a different story. But why am *I*, not Seri, getting that kind of OOC comment?  :ugh:

I sometimes wonder if people find the concept that a historically offensive and controversial character that is Seriphyn is now worth a damn in terms of RP weight :P
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Casiella

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #24 on: 21 Apr 2010, 14:01 »

You probably got an OOC response because you made an OOC statement. :)

And the person saying that may have tried to say that your RP didn't strike them as "intimidating" in any sense, which would beg the question of how others did perceive the behavior.
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Ciarente

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #25 on: 21 Apr 2010, 21:15 »

There is no reason why Seriphyn isn't a big Federal hero loved by everyone, but the RP capsuleers will refuse to believe this IC because the concept offends them! ... while disliked by a wide plefora of capsuleers, I do feel he is grudingly respected.

To move from the specific to the general, I feel that there's a certain amount of collaboration and co-operation required by all RP that isn't strictly supported by game mechanics. For example, while if you blow up my ship, you blew up my ship, my assertion that Cia is about 5'5" tall is exactly that: an assertion.

When it comes to how we present our characters in RP situations that presume face-to-face contact - like bars -we all seem to largely agree to accept how another player indicates their character appears.  There's no reason why I have to have Cia respond to Verone as if he's exceptionally tall, but the player tells me he is, and going against that would be, in my opinion, just plain rude.

There's another aspect to non-game-mechanic RP, though, where things get more complicated and harder to negotiate, and that's our character's non-game backgrounds and the way they're perceived by others. In my own case, I have RPed that Cia comes from an important family in the smallish city on the insignificant world where she grew up. As far as I know, no-one else RPs that their character comes from Debreth on Annelle XI, so the world I've created there doesn't impact on anyone else.  Nonetheless, I can't force anyone to accept that this is Cia's background.

The wider you spread your character's background influence, the more you're impacting and to a degree imposing on other players to adapt their RP to accommodate yours.  If I create a character who, pre-pod career, was a 'famous holo-actress of Cluster-wide renown' then I am, in effect, making an OOC request or even demand to every other RPer in the game: if their character has even the slightest exposure to the entertainment industry anywhere in the Cluster, I am telling them that they have heard of my character. 

That's quite different to, say, (to use Verone as an example again, sorry Verone!) Verone IC acting like a big pirate lord who people ought to know about: Verone is, IG, through game mechanics, a big pirate lord who people ought to know about. It's also different from the one-day-old Velator pilot carrying on like the Dread Pirate Roberts - those claims can be proved or disproved in the game, through game actions.

It's when we get to things that can't be proved or disproved by other players that we have to be especially careful that our own RP doesn't impinge on others' freedoms to RP their own characters. No one could prove or disprove that Cia's mother was the mistress of Jaques Roden and on the cover of every holo-magazine like the Brangelina of Eve, but if I make such an assertion I am offering other players a very stark choice: validate my RP by adapting yours, or contradict my RP.

The problem with that is, it brings my RP into both IC and OOC conflict with people who just don't want to play that particular story. If I'm standing there in my alt-skin saying "I am cluster-wide famous actress" and they're saying "I never heard of you" I have in effect godmodded their character to be ignorant.

Much better, in my opinion, to give people an easy in and an easy out: make your backstory local, and contained. Then if they want to be part of your character building, their character can say 'Oh, right, I heard of you, that holomovie you starred in never got the wide release it deserved, in my opinion' (to go back to the holostar example) or else 'Hmm, can't say the name rings a bell, of course, I never really got into Jin-Mei martial arts opera flicks'.


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Silver Night > I feel like we should keep Cia in reserve. A little bit for Cia's sanity, but mostly because her putting on her mod hat is like calling in Rommel to deal with a paintball game.

Natalcya Katla

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #26 on: 22 Apr 2010, 07:08 »

'Hmm, can't say the name rings a bell, of course, I never really got into Jin-Mei martial arts opera flicks'.

*Must resist making a Jin Mei martial arts opera holostar alt now* >_<
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Ciarente

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #27 on: 22 Apr 2010, 07:09 »

Do it!

Doooo eeeet!
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Silver Night > I feel like we should keep Cia in reserve. A little bit for Cia's sanity, but mostly because her putting on her mod hat is like calling in Rommel to deal with a paintball game.

Kaleigh Doyle

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Re: Egomaniacs, A-holes and Mary Sues
« Reply #28 on: 22 Apr 2010, 08:06 »

You need to get out of these ooc channels. Clearly, if people find it necessary to inflect a characters actions/behavior on the player they don't grasp the divide.
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