Why complaining when a "character like that" eventually arrives when it is what is supposedly expected and lacking ? Because it's not done "right" ? Ah, I got it, it's that he is doing it wrong then ?
Nope. The negative reaction Seri's gotten here has less to do with his RP and how he's doing it and much, much more to do with how he cries for attention OOC by whining about the negative response his character gets from other characters.
I will use myself for comparison:
I am an alright dude.Seri-mun is probably an alright dude.I play a terrible prick of a character who has had some pretty damn good non-prick RP with a very few interesting characters (like Aria Jenneth, Merdeneth, Louella Dougans, Cer'ana, etc. - notice two of those, arguably a third, are quite naturally enemies of my character).Seri-mun plays a character that many regard as a prick for one reason or another (egotism, womanizing, etc.) who has had some pretty damn good non-prick RP with an indeterminate but apparently small number of characters as shown by those characters' players' testimonials in Seri's numerous "attention" threads.I know going into all of my RP interactions, ingame or on the IGS that Havohej is not going to be well received IC and that quite probably there will be many players who don't do the IC/OOC Divide thing very well and who will thus dislike me OOCly as much as they dislike Havohej.Seri-mun says he knows that his character isn't the sort everyone will get along with, he has been RPing in this game AND active in its OOC community long enough to also know that many Eve RPers are terrible at keeping OOC and IC separated and, since he's never been accused of stupidity, it stands to reason that he must also know that this means some people are going to dislike him OOC because of his character's actions and behaviours. (I will reiterate for the sake of thoroughness that my dislike of Seri-mun has nothing to do with his character or how he plays it; I've only ever interacted with him on the IGS and once, ingame, when Havo entered a room in which he was talking to one of Havo's employees in Du'uma Fiisi and Seriphyn immediately left rather than face a confrontation with his recent IGS antagonist. Nothing against the character on an OOC level, but yeah... Havohej the character really does hate just about everybody - including Cer'ana and Merdaneth... his jury's out on Louella and he actually liked Aria Jenneth and wonders what became of her from time to time - but I digress).
I accept all of the above.Seri-mun whinges about it incessantly, often casting aspersions of his own at other players whilst doing so.Truth be told, I could nuke the entire thread just on the strength of the OP and its wholesale YDIW to the Community at Large: "I put so much effort into playing Seriphyn, but all of you mean people/bad roleplayers choose to RP with stupid alts, which can't have the same depth as a main, instead of me!" This insults not only hundreds of players on this very forum,
some of whom have posted right here in this thread in support of Seri-mun (irony), but is a "YDIW" applied indiscriminately to thousands of characters.
When people say this about this particular player, they are not exaggerating, they are not unfairly picking on him, they are not forming up in cliques to dogpile a member of an enemy clique (shit, I've never RPed with any of the other posters in this thread and Morwen and I talk in the ingame Backstage Staff channel
maybe once in a fortnight). They are stating fact which can be stated in no more diplomatic way and thus has largely gone unstated on this forum. Well, I've watched this nonsensical behaviour for way too long. I go away for 3 years, come back, and nothing's changed. Same old Seri-mun, not getting his way in Eve RP and in turn doing the most dramatic thing he can and hoping it gains him more acceptance/fixes his reputation, but instead of waiting to see the organic results he just can't resist attention whoring.
I've watched other players behave this way... I've also watched them eventually "get the picture" and figure out the best way for them to interact with a community bigger than themselves (Note: I do not say that they figured out how to get more people to like them, I say they figured out how to interact with the community/culture of the game in a way that does not upset them/impede their enjoyment OOCly).
Just as much as you have to accept that some people take RP very seriously, get deeply emotionally invested in it, and won't be able to make distinctions between a fictional persona and the player/actor behind it. There's nothing wrong to me if such people get upset beyond the Fourth Wall by your own character because they took make-believe RP seriously.
Lots of irony in this thread. The irony in your post is that Seri-mun is actually just the type of player you are warning him of. Deeply emotionally invested, has trouble making distinctions between people not liking him IC or OOC vs. liking him OOC or IC and gets upset beyond the fourth wall because of taking make-believe RP seriously. Go through his posting history... or if you don't feel like putting forth the effort, just look at this thread and the one he started a little while back when he first did the whole "Seri's dead" RP 'event' on the IGS.
Now yeah, Backstage has some pretty strict rules. As it should. But you know what? When I see someone come in front of an internet forum and ask people what they think of him and/or why they view him and/or his character in a negative light IC and OOC sooooo many times, fishing for people to say nice things about him OR his character (which, given his habit of taking negative things about his character personally OOC, it's probably just as well for him whether a compliment is in regards to his character or himself).
Character development is meant for constructive criticism, isn't it? Most of this shit here? Not constructive
I apply the above to your own post. You see, after literally years of watching this same player pull these same OOC self-pity stunts over shit that happened to his character IC, all that stuff you said about "Oh, just find people who like you (is this how the echo chamber thing that everyone complains about/criticizes happens?) and stick with them" and "Oh, if they don't like you they're not worth your time", none of that rubbish is constructive for him. He's been told the same every single time he makes one of these threads, and by many of the same people. Obviously he's not constructing anything with this advice. Because nobody is making the criticism. Because the criticism is of the person himself: that he is too emotional about the whole damned thing and cannot separate IC from OOC, therefor he takes every little negative IC thing and internalizes it OOC until he just can't take it anymore when none of it should ever be taken seriously anyway. Pointing out this negative trait/tendency and advising that he work on it seems quite the constructive criticism to me given that the alternatives have been seen to go in one ear and out the other... in fact, the alternatives are only enabling and encouraging the behaviour that I've criticized.
As far as advice goes, the best advice he's been given here (other than to stop taking shit so personal/emotional) was where Aelisha said to "Stop doing this to yourself, Seri".
EDIT: And yes, the whole thread is terrible in terms of Backstage's rules, including the OP itself which I pointed out, and it
will be Catacombed. However, having posted in it, I've a conflict of interest, so I'm not moderating shit. Here's hoping that maybe actually having the criticism part of "constructive criticism" applied unflinchingly will help Seri-mun to see that it's not him or his character that needs to change, nor is it everyone else and everyone else's characters, but merely his OOC reaction to everyone else and their characters. vOv
