Okay, so, you're all gagging at the title. Geez Kat, can't you pick something with less ponies and hugging?
Nope! See, I've noticed a trend that likely has been here since EVE RolePlay first started, will be here long after this thread, and isn't even unique to EVE RP. Well, here's the thing that I have noticed:
EVE is a terrible dystopian place.
Oh my gosh! Kat discovered something amazing! We should all give her katnip. No, see... what I'm getting at is that a lot of us roleplay our characters with a mild form of method acting. When our characters feel sadness, or rage, or malice, or joy... many of us tend to feel the same. For myself, some of the most believable moments in roleplay are when I'm experiencing and fabricating the same emotions as Katrina.
Just last night, I held two very powerful RP sessions, where Katrina was expressing her grief at the loss of Simca. I was actually
moved to tears, sniffling and wiping my eyes in both of them. I actually almost broke out in sobbing during one of them until I realized how powerfully the emotions were hitting and laughed it off.
In other interactions, Katrina will get so angry about something that really doesn't bother me, that even I will need to walk away from the computer. Joyful moments with her are shared by myself, where I'm moved to butterflies in my stomach and bouncing in my seat.
Okay Kat, so you're a big softie. What's your point?
My point is that deep down, I think a lot of us forget and lose track of the unique power we have. Unlike in reality, where we often lack the self control to just put the brakes on our emotions. We lack the ability to simply pause real life and say, "I'm not going to get mad at this." Kudos to you if you have mastered this ability, but many of us have not.
In roleplaying, we
have this ability, and we all need to remember to use it more often when bleedover starts. I see a lot of people getting up in arms just from roleplay. Even myself. So, to the point of this post, I'm begging and reminding my fellow roleplayers to try and keep an eye on what they say to others OOC due to roleplay. Remember that what happens to our characters is not happening to us.
This is, in the end, just a game. We're all just trying to write a big fat book together, and while we may come to blows about OOC issues... we should at least try not to get upset and be mean to each other about things that happen to our characters.
Let's all try to get along out of game, and save the bile for our characters' IC moments.