Another day, another check-in at Diaryland to see that nobody has updated since last I checked. Are they on vacation? Mowing grass? Stalking me from that dark van parked across the street? I do not know, for they have not updated to tell me. So sad.
I, however, shall buck this trend. Buck it like bronco, baby!
At this point I feel I should warn you all that I am sucking down Diet Vault, which is basically like my beloved Mountain Dew except it probably has enough caffeine to kill me if I double my dose. I am highly caffinated. Consider this your warning. Oh, and it's Diet Vault, so it tastes even worse than Diet Mountain Dew and that, my friends, it just pretty damn bad. However, Diet Vault is only 5 calories a can, so three twelve-packs of Diet Vault have the same caloric content as one piddly little can of regular Vault.
Now that I've updated you all on my dietary habits...
I am in a roleplaying conundrum. Several actually. They are not the focus of my day -- that would be trying to cram two chapters of psychology reading into two hours, so I still have enough time to check my email and watch Doctor Who -- but they niggle. And I can't talk about them in my blog because I will inevitably offend someone. When I get annoyed I tend to annoy people right back, whether I'm trying to or trying not to.
The freeform roleplaying world has changed around me when I was looking somewhere else. Now apparently it is the big thing to try to get one's roleplay published. Personally, I think roleplay is rather painful reading, almost entirely lacking in transitions, scene shifts, or generally any kind of subtlety. However, it seems I am overruled in this regard. (Bad Ree, quit using the school words outside of school. Dammit. It's something I do, try to hide me annoyance or unease behind my ample vocabulary. Sorry.)
Not only am I not interested in getting my roleplaying published, I am actively interested in avoiding it. I enjoy playing characters based on marketed game systems. Mostly I just enjoy roleplaying with few limits. Besides that, I would prefer that anything I get published be a better reflection of my writing than my roleplaying, some of which is almost unspeakably terrible.
My first encounter with people trying to get their roleplaying published was a subset of my online friends trying to use their roleplaying to write a novel together. I was invited to join their board and asked to read what had been written so far, checking for errors. When I caught up with it all and asked how I could join, I was told that I would not be writing -- I would be proofreading. Period. It continues to colour my perception of roleplaying-for-publication to this day, and I am not sorry that it does.
Unfortunately, this little stance of mine is leaving me quite closed off. There are boards that specialise in specific marketed universes or rulesets, but they're generally not my thing. I like having the freedom to create and play a pet jackalope if I can do it well, and specific universes -- such as those of various roleplaying systems or fandoms -- are more concrete than my imaginings. This is probably a good thing for their fans.
The boards I have loved that used to never shoot for publishing are now published, or instituting rules that mean I can't play one of my favourite characters there anymore. I can't name a place where I can play her, and that sucks hard. Actually, I still need to write her out, or maybe it's better just to pick up ignoring that she was ever there.
Fuck. (Hey, this isn't Xanga! I can say whatever I want!) This motherfucking sucks, man. It's a shitty situation and I don't know how to work around it. I understand the idea that publishing stuff is somehow cool -- whatever, man, it's not my thing but I don't want to harsh anyone else's mellow. I understand that attempting to publish something containing characters based on someone else's intellectual property, be that roleplaying clans or alien races or whatever, is not going to fly.
The part that I do not understand is why this has to affect me. Why can't I just play my characters like I always have, and avoid like hell those stories that will be submitted for publication, which is what I would have done anyway? Why does the activity of Subgroup A have to affect Subgroup B and the rest of the main group? And more precisely, if participants of a certain story know they want to try publishing that story, why can't they take charge of weeding out characters unsuitable for publication, strictly within the confines of that story -- why does it have to become the business of the entire group?
Bah. Bah, bah, BAH. Of course this has to happen shortly after one of my tabletop GMs aborts a campaign I'd been loving, too. That's another character I'm unable to play anymore, because I don't know anybody else who runs that system or one enough like it to justify placing that character into it.
I shall subvert everything yet. I have a secret space where I am playing whichever characters I damn well feel like. Unfortunately, it's just me and my characters, but at least I get to write whatever characters I like without outside rules denying me. I may have to throw my two homeless characters into the mix there, just to tide me over until I figure something else out. Yes, it's pitiful, but then many people think that of roleplaying of any stripe, and screw their biases anyway.