Hello, my name is Cap and I have been roleplaying online for nineteen years. Recent events have made me come to a decision to step away from RP indefinitely.
The reasons for them are complex, so I have broken them down to three parts. Read at your own leisure and in order to understand the context of my departure.
To reiterate, I am using fake names so no one feels called out, and I don't want to come off like I'm controlling my mutuals not to interact with these people. I'm just telling my story and explaining why I am leaving Tumblr.
The first person I'm going to talk about is Dan. We followed each other but did not interact, and the more I read from his threads and ooc posts the more disinterested I became. It had nothing to with the quality of posts or that he wrote subjects I didn't care about, he just wrote in a way that made me realize I wasn't going to have fun. So I unfollowed and did not think anything of him until later.
Dan sent an ask with his character. Now, most likely he didn't know I unfollowed him, and as much I have a mutuals only rule that was on all of my blogs at the time. So I told him that I was mutuals only and that I won't respond to his message. I don't remember how I said it, but from his perspective, it seemed as though I said it in a way that was again, rude and blunt. However, I did not know this until much later, so responding to my message, Dan apologized and unfollowed.
No big deal.
Then when I was looking on Tumblr for aesthetic posts for one of my characters, as you do. I found a cosplay that looked pretty cool and decided to reblog it.
Two things of note to say before I continue:
1. I didn't know there was an unspoken rule about reblogging cosplays, in that you needed to ask the person before doing that, or just the fact that cosplayers frown on people who reblog their cosplays for RP.
2. This is the more important equation: this cosplay was from the same person I asked not to interact with my blog. I didn't look on the blog to see if it was the same person, so I had no idea he had an issue about it until later.
Suddenly, I got at least five anonymous messages of some line of "Hey, did you get permission from the person to reblog? It's really disrespectful to just do that without asking; there's fanart to reblog."
Now I had no idea where this was coming from and again, had no idea about this unwritten rule, to the point where I asked some blogs that are about rp to help with this. I never got a response, and I'm already hard on myself when I do make mistakes, so this really fucking blindsided me. However, even if I didn't and still to some degree don't get it, I still would have removed that post, and everything would have been fine. But then I received one message that not only accused me of being rude to Dan but passive-aggressively told me I had "bad vibes".
That was the point where I sat back in my chair and realized what the real problem was.
Now, Dan never blocked me, and I don't believe I blocked him until I realized that he didn't want to talk to me on my own terms. But I did look on his blog while this was going on, and I saw him making a vague post about me, complaining about how I was rude to him and then reblogging one of his posts when he didn't want that. Now, I'm not saying that he personally sent people in my inbox to complain to me, but what I am saying is that the people that followed him definitely were incited to do so. He obviously had a larger follow count than I did and was more popular than I was, which means that in the terms of rapport, he had people ready at his defense.
From this point on, I disabled anonymous asks and made a big post on the scenario, how I had no idea that reblogging cosplays was frowned upon, especially doing so without asking, and even said I would have just done it if not for that one passive-aggressive message. In addition, I don't remember exactly what I said to Dan before all of this; according to him and that anon, I was harshly telling him to not interact and that I would never interact regardless. I don't remember it because I don't keep messages from people I don't follow.
That being said, it does sound like something I would say. I have a history of people not respecting my boundaries and because of how my brain works, I can come off harsh and blunt to most people. For that, I genuinely apologize. I further stated that I would be happy to talk to Dan about this, while my anons were disabled and I had him unblocked for a month to talk about it.
Spoiler alert: no one came up to talk about it. Not Dan nor any of the anons. That moment it became absolutely clear what they wanted. They wanted me to make myself vulnerable for more harrassment and passive-aggressive verbal abuse.
If it wasn't Dan that felt hard done by, it was definitely his sycophants. And no, I wasn't going to delete his cosplay, because that is not how you get someone to do something. You don't meekly apologize, talk behind my back and give me passive-aggressive messages to guilt me into doing what you want. That's what my ex friend did, fuck that's my ex boyfriend did. I have never responded well to manipulation or passive-aggressive behavior. If you want something from me, you need to be clear, direct and not use any euphemistic language. I won't catch that, especially over text.
Now, you would think this would be done and over with right? I blocked Dan, I turned off anons and I put in a rule that if you were close with this person, I would not be safe to have you in my space.
Unfortunately, this followed me after the fact, because I followed Evan, who at the time was a mutual, but I didn't know they were close with Dan. I saw a post that wasn't tagged with Dan's username, so I was basically jumpscared by it. I also was upset that day since I had a bad day of driving lessons, so I was already raw from the stress and pressure I had on myself. So I asked them to tag that post, which angel said they would. But added that Dan was a very close friend, and I ultimately felt unsafe having them as a mutual, so I unfollowed and said we couldn't be mutuals. I didn't want to explain to Evan what happened between me and Dan since they said they weren't interested, but still didn't understand why this was something to not be mutuals over.
In hindsight, I could have just not reacted in the moment and then, when I was in a calmer place, told Evan in a way that doesn't risk my own safety and mental health. But aside from that, I had a "please don't interact with me if you are close to Dan" rule in my DNI at the time. So not only was Evan breaking my rules, but they also didn't seem to care to know why I had Dan in my DNI.
Cut to a few days or so later, a mutual I'm going to call Tess messaged me about this as well as another issue where I reblogged something from a YouTuber that has been deemed controversial by the likes of the internet. I didn't talk about the YTer very much since I didn't think it was that important as much as the accuasions made against me.
Among other things, I was accused of giving Evan an ultimatum, reacting badly when I received criticism about what happened with the cosplay thing, being rude to Dan, and also falsely accusing anons of harassing me when I wasn't being harassed.
I'll give Tess credit; she came to me personally and didn't want to blindside me since that's exactly what happened before. She also gave me a chance to explain myself and say, basically, everything I am writing in this post to all of you.
Unfortunately, she didn't seem interested in my explanation and focused on me following a youtuber she personally didn't like and took an opportunity to wag her finger at me for not being "mature" and not talking to Dan about any of this. Just like the other anons, being quick to assume the worst and blaming me for something I couldn't account for.
So I blocked her, as she had already unfollowed me at this point. I mean this in the most rhetorical way possible. Tess, explain why I should open this conversation with someone who couldn't bother to talk to me? Why should I leave myself bare to people who already assume the worst about me, no matter what I say? Why should I even want your opinion on the matter either, when you seemingly did not read a single word I wrote to you?
And that's what all of this is about. Dan got mad because I wasn't polite to him in the way he wanted; I did something he didn't want me to do, and then I was expected to kowtow for the sin of being human and making mistakes. All made even worse when people were assuming shit about me that wasn't even true to the point of either wagging their finger at me for not "behaving" or even unfollowing and blocking me.
In my years of rping on Tumblr, I have read enough on my dash and on roleplay confessions about how people don't communicate anymore and how everyone seems so hesitant to talk about anything in this community. There's no reason to be upfront or communicate anything anymore. Why would anyone lay themselves bare like that, when you get fucksticks like this all ready to dogpile on you if you dare say anything other than an ass pat, forbid misspeak, or not act "accordingly" to how someone thinks you should?
Make no mistake, historically, I got very defensive when it came to criticism, especially if I don't think I did anything wrong and if it's coming from people I don't know. I'll cop up to the fact I got petty with the cosplay thing since people were being that way towards me. I have this long-standing mindset that comes from internalized ableism where I would be corrected even on a minor mistake and I would take it as a personal attack. In essence, this was my thought process:
1. I am an inferior person because I am neurodivergent
2. Anyone that tried or is trying to help me is doing it because they're trying to "one-up me," so to speak. As though saying, "Oh, you're autistic? You must not know what you're doing then. You obviously need my help since I am neurotypical and actually human and you're not and not."
Even though most people don't actually think like that, you see the subconscious messages we're given from media and especially now, where rights of disabled people are being stripped away as we speak. I've since been working on this very self-destructive belief, but there are moments where the old mindset comes back in full force. Such as the examples I have just demonstrated in this very post.
Now, the figurative you might be asking after reading all of this, "If you've had these issues for so long, why are you even in roleplay, and more importantly, why did you keep coming back?" Well, my reasons were twofold.
1. I love writing, consider myself a writer, and have been writing/creating stories since I was nine years old. Roleplay was an offshoot of that, where I focused on one or a few characters at a time while my writing partner(s) focused on theirs.
2. As a lonely kid, teenager and now adult, this was the safest and best way for me to socialize. Being around people who have common interests and enjoying the character interactions and stories created together. I might complain about the inconsistent communication and feeling ignored on the dash. But the mutuals who I am friends with and love so much, they're the ones that made the difference. You guys made it worth it.
However, as I have previously said many paragraphs ago, the environment has become so stressful, so laden with bad memories, and so toxic that I can't be in this community anymore.
I've seen for myself people getting harassed so badly, so relentlessly, that they eventually leave because it's not worth the headache or stress on their mental health. The sad fact is, this is only going to get worse. We complain about these things, but people in a position to make it stop don't want to do anything about it. Teens who are new to tumblr rp are going to think this is acceptable behavior, or people with the emotional maturity of a teenager will instill these things because it serves them to feel powerful and popular while everyone else has to deal with the brunt of it if they don't play by the unwritten rules of Tumblr. This exact behavior is going to get someone killed.
Cyber bullying is a scourge and has over and over again worsened the mental health of the victims to the point of mental breakdowns. I might have had these jack asses get on my case, but the way I have been treated is kind in comparison to people that are relentlessly hounded by these freaks.
For those of you still here, thank you for reading and sticking with me throughout my time here. I still want to stay connected, which I will send my internet handles and non-rp blogs to my mutuals that want to follow me. I hope you are all doing well and thank you again for staying with me in this roleplay journey.
The first time I ever roleplayed online was on forums. Specifically, Land Before Time forums. I either wrote OCs who were stand-ins for self-inserts, since back then you were harassed for writing any character that had the tertiary qualities of a mary sue. This was especially the case in large, popular fandoms like Avatar. Or I wrote OCs as they were that were not self-inserts.
It wasn't until I was a senior in high school that I started to roleplay on tumblr. After I binge-watched Danny Phantom, a show I watched back when I was in middle school, I wrote Vlad Plasmius, the main antagonist of the show. Post-show, actually, so he was still in space and reaping the consequences of his actions.
During this time, I met someone I'm going to call Martha, who wrote Danny, the titular and main protagonist of the same show. We clicked pretty well writing-wise, and then she asked if I wanted to join her and her group on LiveJournal, another relic of the early aughts, since at the time rp games were on LiveJournal while Tumblr was the newest rp platform at the time.
I said no initially because, I just got into Tumblr RP, and I didn't want to go onto a completely new platform to adjust to and be around people I didn't know when I hardly knew Martha either.
However, LiveJournal was going through a transitional phase, or rather an invasion phase. It was bought by a company in Russia, which, at the time, had more restrictions on censorship than the US did.
Everyone on that platform moved to a place called DreamWidth that was very similar to LiveJournal but new and red and white and not blue and white or whatever the colors were on LiveJournal. It was only then that I wanted to not only get to know my friend better but also maybe broaden my rp circle elsewhere since rp on Tumblr, while nowhere as restrictive as it is now, definitely had quality issues. Mainly because most of the people on Tumblr were minors, and no offense to aspiring teenage writers, the quality of writing was to be damned.
Not only was I adjusting to another platform, but I was also adjusting to a different style of rp. While I did have good experiences on that site, it also became clear that the "friendly" environment I was in was a mask. Unless you were "in" the clique group, you weren't going to get a lot of interactions, and even worse, if you came off too "cringey," they would talk behind your back. Currently, I am not in communication with any of them.
As for Martha, it became clear that she was a fair-weather friend. All there if I was role-playing with her and her interests but would be disinterested if it was anything I wanted to do. On top of that, she was a flake. Would say things to my face, such as being supposedly interested in rping with me, but in public would say she didn't have the time for RP. When I confronted her about it, she could not be upfront with her boundaries. Using wishy-washy, hand-wavey language in order to not be confrontational. So I unfollowed her and cut her off from contact altogether.
Basically, but I am admittedly paraphrasing, "Until you figure out what you want our relationship to be, I'm not going to continue to hang on for you."
From that point forward, I ended relationships if I felt like the other person isn't interested in our friendship and expected me to do all of the work for them. So yeah, be a flake, get raked, or...whatever the saying would go.
Eventually, after bumming around DreamWidth, leaving the rp group and just sticking with 1 on 1 rps, I went back to Tumblr around the late 2010s and have stayed until now. Notwithstanding the period when I used Discord for private RP. Now between all of this, I didn't have a lot of friends growing up, particularly in middle and high school, which all started with this one ex-friend I'm going to call Noelle.
We were friends, did carpooling together, and spent time in the same schools, minus high school. A common theme as you will see from this point forward is that I will say things that would be registered as rude or mean, but I would see it as factual data. This was especially the case back as a child and a middle schooler. I was growing apart from my friend; I didn't really want to carpool with her anymore, especially since in her family there was constant fighting and chaos. Which was something I was familiar with in my own family, just not as frequently or as chaotically.
So I said it. I said I didn't want to be friends, I didn't want to carpool anymore, and I said it in a way that would be registered as mean and rude. It was only after the fact that I realized how much damage was done, that I apologized.
After that, things had changed. I wasn't carpooling anymore, but I also was being actively, purposefully isolated by this friend. Not just by Noelle, but by her own mother, whom I'm calling Johanne. Johanne, to put it simply, was a cunt. She was a gossip and would encourage her daughter's behavior by not inviting me to things and making the situation more devastating for my self-esteem. Because of these two, I never felt safe enough to say what I mean because it would get me in trouble. In the same breath, I've also lost friends because I couldn't be honest if I was feeling jealous or angry until the last minute when I would explode in anger or get catty.
It became this "damned if I do and damned if I don't" cycle, so I couldn't express myself on top of having a disorder that makes it where I process information in a way that's slower than a neurotypical person.
As I stated in the masterpost, my name is Cap. I go by they/them and one/oneself pronouns and have roleplayed online off and on since the mid to late aughts, giving me nineteen years of roleplay experience.
Recently, I have stopped roleplaying altogether and deleted one blog, archived this and my two rp ones, and repurposed my self-insert into a self-ship. Also, I set out a poll just to see which blogs my mutuals are most interested in.
Most of you voted for Adam, while one person voted for my biblical/hh multimuse and two voted for my self-insert. What that tells me is most of my mutuals prefer me to roleplay Adam on his single muse and are the most interested.
As is a theme with these polls I send out, it's less about being dictated what I should write, but to give myself an idea of what my mutuals want the most regardless of my rp activity.
As for the future, I will continue my main writing projects. Ias, my self insert, and yes, that is how you pronounce it, will take the form of AO3 and FF.net.
As for my original works, namely, ThunderBeats, will be written with the intent of going to an actual publisher. Bea, the main character, is complete and ready to have her story told.
These projects have been on the back burner for a while, so it's very necessary that I set times for myself to work on them until their completion.
Real life has also become hectic outside of the internet. In the past, I've neglected real life for roleplay, the main reason I used to be active. I already have executive functioning issues, the "fun" part of being mentally ill and neurodivergent. Unfortunately, I cannot have that output anymore for roleplay especially if I'm neglecting everything else.
On top of all of this, it's become clear that I have always struggled with Tumblr interactions despite my efforts. It gets to the point where, unless I explicitly ask for interactions, most of my mutuals just ignore me.
The thing is, I did not join roleplay only to write, I am also here to socialize. And while the Tumblr community is really bad at having consistent communication, Tumblr is not the only place I struggle. This happens everywhere, with almost every interaction I have. Unless I initiate something, I get left on read or am expected to carry the conversation.
