Broke: pushing myself to the absolute limit until my system is so overwhelmed that we go into survival mode and other alters get thrown to the front in fight or flight mode to try to put out the metaphorical fire I’ve started.
Woke: making time for other alters to contribute to caring for our system before we get so overwhelmed that it leads to abrupt switching and blackout amnesia.
Anonymous asked: soo i love shipping and my rp partner and i ship a lot with our muses. but theres one thing that bothers me. i feel like once two muses end up in a ship they sort of lose their personality (or their drive) and begin to revolve around their romance only. how can i keep the spark that my muses had before and still let them have a healthy romance with another muse?
So, the shortest answer is: Work on roleplaying the character as an active, living, intelligent person with a life and interests, and not just a tool to get romantic with. When you limit your character to their slowly growing adoration for another person, or incomplete without them, or needing them for everything, and don’t go outside that box ending up just thinking of ways to be romantic? Not only do you drive your RP into a rut, but you stop playing a “character” and start playing a “goal”. This can undermine not only plot, but believablity and characterization.
Let’s rant under the cut like I usually do shall we?
So this peeves me sometimes because I’ve seen it before. A perfectly good player will see a character they want to ship with, and all characterization goes out the window. They’ll hang on to brief remnants, personality is personality after all, but what they want to happen goes before everything else. They’ll disregard their character’s typical lack of interest to make them ‘suddenly really notice them as if for the first time’. Even over long term, where it’s a casual build, you’ll see characterization go to the wayside. Some of it is forgivable, we’re all idiots when in love, and so the characters too will change and may not see everything that is happening to them. Some of it, such as going fully against the grain for that oh so hoped for romance, is bad. That’s not the character having a crush, that’s you.
Remind yourself occasionally what the character’s goals are, their real goals, not the ones that come from romance or while seeking romance. Is your character even the type to focus on romance at all? Many characters are more interested in saving the world, dealing with their issues, and generally being way more out there. Even shoujo ai cutesy romances give the character something they genuinely want outside of The One. Look at, lord help me for returning to my past, Ouran Host Club. Haru might be the definitive harem owner with boys boys boys galore, but their goals are to get money to pay off debts, and have some fun while doing schoolwork. Mostly schoolwork. Also to keep the boys out of trouble. Sure there’s romance, and lots of of it, but it’s not the primary focus. It happens as an aside to whatever plot is going on. Because plot is important even in a romantic harem comedy. Same for Love Hina, gotta get into college and save the onsen! Same for Tenshi Muyo, gotta do something about those aliens and their problems!
You appear to be aware of this issue though, you’re not slipping away willingly. That’s good, that means you want more than hand holding and blushing for 20 paragraphs a night. You’re able to see them losing their selves in this romance, and you want to stop it. So, encourage your characters to be themselves. Make them set goals, and follow through. Push crisis into your lives. It doesn’t have to be oh god I’m pregnant and have 3 jobs and a monster is eating me from the inside of my brain. Just minor-crisis. Wanting to do something the partner doesn’t, like move or go to school again. Working out schedules. Facing the monster they’ve been avoiding. Whatever you need. Don’t start arguments for the sake of arguments, that’s kind of more of a drama queen thing, but do see if this is what your character would have wanted. What are they ignoring to live this pleasant little domesticity?
Characters with strong opinions, or goals, don’t need fake drama to start shit. They just come with them as they go. A 3D character has all sorts of things you can use for plot. Families, history, dealing with personal growth, garden variety emotional/mental issues like fears and upset, the more advanced stuff– but honestly characters generally need the basics of living too. Food, water, shelter, relationships both romantic and platonic, hobbies, a job to pay for all this, something intellectually stimulating to relieve boredom. These things help build your character. Did their friend’s cat have kittens, and they had to stay up all night helping? Does that make them irritated, or maybe they need food now? It can still be romantic for their SO to like, get them a homecooked meal, or take them out to eat, but there’s more than that. You can be social and talk about your lives, your pasts, and everything as you grow and develop.
You aren’t RPing with the one person constantly either. Sometimes your character and their character aren’t interacting during your real life sojourns. Use the time away effectively. When you start a new ‘episode’ to your roleplay, give them time spent apart. Then fill that time with stuff they’re excited about. Let the character get excited and share their adventures. When you’re RPing with another person, as a friendship or an enemy, talk about that too. Let them grow outside of RP as much as inside it. Spread your RP social networking so you’re not relying on exactly one person. Hell, bring in NPCs if you have to. Write soliloquies. That means, write whole stories about that character behind the scenes so to speak. Solo adventures that you can post without them being part of any given thread. (In a chatroom, you can just wander around doing shit you wanna do and make new friends when they get interested.) It’s big in both roleplaying AND fanfics to have some alone/other people time or you’ll burn out on them. Same thing with real relationships. You cannot put your life and attention on a single person for extended periods of time, not even a couple people. You need to have a big, complex, varied network to help support you mentally or you’ll become codependant and every little relationship shift will scare the shit out of you. It’s extremely unhealthy not to have casual acquaintances and friendships that you can chat with outside of a relationship. Or just in general. Shit man, fixating is bad jumbles all around, it all goes to shit really really fast and your brain starts saying that even people you would never normally date are THE ONE and every sigh is THE END. So don’t do this to an RP character/partner either, it ain’t bueno.
Think about real relationships. When I think of dating someone, I do not think of snuggly cuddly kiss kissies 24/7. I think about them leaving the bathroom door open and screamsinging that they’re taking a poop to annoy me because they know I have a term paper due and I’m stressing out about it and laughing will help. I think about staying up way past my bedtime writing, with their head in my lap snoozing badly and complaining about the light and the typing noises. I think about someone eating my last slice of pizza, but making up for it with a whole new pie. I think about sitting in the same room, 10 feet apart, half watching the same TV show while online and sending each other memes and waiting for them to open it so you can see them light up and shriek. I think of cold feet in the middle of the night. I think about them leaving to go to work, or hang out with friends while I kick back at home working on a project, only for them to come home and tell me what a great time they had and being happy for them while they relate new stories to me. Or them going to live with their mom for a week and stretching out on the couch like, hells yeah, I own the TV!
Romance is cute, but a relationship should be built on a strong friendship. A strong friendship has healthy boundaries, and allows both people in the relationship to remain their selves without major (and likely dysfunctional) changes to their behavior and personality. It’s a comfortable equilibrium where two people share their own lives to make a giant life together, rather than just make one life that they’ve got to start over from scratch together. There’s gonna be pet peeves, and minor disagreements, and discussions over upcoming changes. There’s going to be bad days, where nothing seems to go right and you want to scream. There’s going to be sick days, and thunder storms to scare someone, and decisions about what pets to get. There’s time apart, and time doing the things YOU love, whether or not THEY love it.
And, right, of course, we’re also all playing anime characters, superheroes, androids/robots, sentient monsters, supernatural things, and humanized fucking playing cards or something so probably all the weird shit inclusive to their respective regions too. Like supervillain duties, and werewolves shedding on the couch, and undoing the spell that caused the crystal heart that wards off the darkness to turn to coal before the giant angry dog-spiders invade and carry off someone’s best friend to hell to raise her as their queen. You know. Normal stuff.
ooo maybe the black widow family (melina, Alexei, Yelena, and natasha+bucky) making valentine’s day cards? I’m just picturing excessive glitter everywhere. Or Bucky/Steve/Peggy (whichever you prefer) going on a date out, maybe 40’s themed
as mentioned, I’m slowly moving petvengers to separate blog but I’ll keep reblogging things here for some time
if you want daily dose of petvengers cuteness (I’m reblogging all of the content there, and there is a lot of it) please follow me there ;)
ooo maybe the black widow family (melina, Alexei, Yelena, and natasha+bucky) making valentine’s day cards? I’m just picturing excessive glitter everywhere. Or Bucky/Steve/Peggy (whichever you prefer) going on a date out, maybe 40’s themed
