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[Tiberious Thessalonia]

"Hi there.  Please interupt your characters perception of events and clear out from your memory all interactions you have had with this character, including those that took place in front of other people.  Also, please tell those people that this interaction which they witnessed never took place"

[Anskek]

You need to be more blunt like that sometimes.

OK, that's logical. But like, say this is someone who said, one line, like...4 years ago. However many years ago. The line could be like I am loyal to blah, blah being whatever bad guy good guy etc etc. And there wasn't really much more than that. I don't feel it's hawkward then.

[Saede Riordan]

You need to be more blunt like that sometimes.

OK, that's logical. But like, say this is someone who said, one line, like...4 years ago. However many years ago. The line could be like I am loyal to blah, blah being whatever bad guy good guy etc etc. And there wasn't really much more than that. I don't feel it's hawkward then.

It doesn't have to be, and for the most part people might not even remember. But there will always be that one asshole who pulls up the 4 year old archived post to prove how terrible your character is. You can either accept it, shrug it off making an IC excuse for it and move on, (my personal recommendation) or you can try to actively edit prior events OOC. If you do, a lot of people will accept it, but there will still be that one asshole who will refuse to accept the retcon and continue using that past event to call out your character.

The Third Option is to reroll completely.

[Anskek]

No. Third option is remove asshole kebab (no really, shoot the bastard and ruin his picnic until he stops).

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Nah.  This is EVE.  You can get called on stuff and yeah you can say "Let's shoot the asshole until he stops being an asshole" but that just isn't how things work.  The best way to handle this is to completely own everything your character is doing, and has done.

Want to start fresh?  You have to start fresh.  New character, from the beginning.  Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up for future embarassment.

Sure, it is a little bit of assholely thing, but this is EVE.  All Sandcastles Can Be Kicked.

[Ria Nieyli]

.

[Morwen Lagann]

Tib still has a very valid point.

It's one thing to quietly retcon your character and/or events involving them if you had very little or very infrequent exposure with that character to others. It's another entirely if what you're trying to rewrite involved many other people over a long period of time, and would affect them, and large amounts of their own RP.

The whole "RP is consensual" thing is a two-way street: trying to rewrite events that have effects and consequences on other characters for (potentially) years to come in a universe where these kinds of things stick with people wherever they go is just as rude - if not incredibly more rude - than those people who might go "wait, uh, no, you did do X at Y place at Z time" when you try to claim otherwise.

tl;dr depending on the scope of the intended changes, the "asshole kebab" is actually more often than not the person trying to retcon their own shit. Not the people who go "uh no, fuck you" in response to it.

[Anskek]

If it's something that involved a lot of people, I agree. Like...if Silas suddenly went full on pro-Amarr, God save the Empress, death to Blooders (LOOOOL), you couldn't retcon the past of Silas.

[Morwen Lagann]

It's not about the number of characters involved. It's about the reach of the effects of that RP. The number of people affected usually will become large eventually regardless of how many people were initially involved: one private interaction between two characters can affect subsequent interactions with many, many other characters given a sufficient period of time for those interactions to occur.

Ripples in a pond.

Let me give an example: EVERY single one of Morwen's interactions with other people over the last year or so has been directly influenced by every other interaction (or lack thereof) with other people that came before it in that timeframe.

If, let's say for argument's sake, Esna or Ava wanted to say that, no, their character had actually been around more or had done more to try and interact with Morwen during that period, I'd tell them no, despite them being my friends and despite it appearing on the surface to be just a one-to-one thing. Because even a seemingly private change like that, of one person going out of their way to do something different, in private, could have - and would have, in this case - drastically changed every subsequent interaction afterward, private and public.

[Jennifer Starfall]

I have to agree with several here, I think you're better off not retconning. I'd suggest coming up with a way to make the changes you want ICly.

For example, I'm trying to make Jenn less of an emotional trainwreck (no, really... stop laughing) and to remove some of the IC limitations I placed on her. It's frustrating at time, and can be challenging.

But, for those that do remember your character from two years ago, it's less jarring. It also provides you and others, with some RP content to participate in and interact with (which reminds again that I owe Haria some fiction).

[Silas Vitalia]

But there will always be that one asshole who pulls up the 4 year old archived post to prove how terrible your character is.

That person is not an asshole.  You put something into a community RP pool and that thing happened, it's the community pool to dredge and bring things up as they please.

A lot of you look at this like it's a bad thing. 

Bad things happening to your character: your character losing, being made a fool, your character being pew pewed, is not those things happening to you. 

It makes it a more believable virtual world, where people make mistakes, bad things happen, and none of us are perfect.

This is probably my #1 gripe about most RPers is their desire for immunity from repercussions and desire to be perfect space heroes with no flaws who never lose.  Nothing ever risked, nothing ever lost, always perfect in every way.

[Anskek]

And what happens when this is used on a mistake a genuinely new player made long ago? And it is used to label them IC and OOC? We just let their one mistake ruin it all?

If so then oh well. Guess I'm a bad cause Id help the newb

[Silas Vitalia]

And what happens when this is used on a mistake a genuinely new player made long ago? And it is used to label them IC and OOC? We just let their one mistake ruin it all?

If so then oh well. Guess I'm a bad cause Id help the newb

I don't think this is the case in this situation? I think early noob things can probably be handwaved with little issue.  And honestly like I said earlier, no one tracks our every move with that precision, especially just starting out.  And even if they did you can explain it away in all sorts of ways.

[Anskek]

Fair enough. I dunno why but when it comes to new RPers this shit triggers me. They should be cultivated positively. Not lold away. NOT SAYING SOMEONE CONDONED IT HERE. Just a gear I got that grinds.

[Silas Vitalia]

Fair enough. I dunno why but when it comes to new RPers this shit triggers me. They should be cultivated positively. Not lold away. NOT SAYING SOMEONE CONDONED IT HERE. Just a gear I got that grinds.

STOP GRINDING MY GEARS ANSLO 

I think my overall point is that saying a bunch of dumb things that your character isn't happy about isn't the end of the world sort of thing requiring a re-roll and biomassing.