[indierpt]

a little blog for people who needs a listening ear in the rpc

disclaimer: NO WITCH-HUNT, NO NAMEDROPS, NO CALLOUTS. i don't really care what drama is going on in the rpc or with the other rpts, but really as this blog is named indierpt, i mostly just want us to share thoughts and challenges (or fun things!) of us being in the indie rpc to see how we could all be a better rper and make the experience better. of course, if you want to share your experiences in groups too, please be my guest. but again, always remember the first sentence of this disclaimer section.

she/her, east asian, 25+

[indierpt]

i see people saying they want to see more black faces, or more BIPOC faces; they never say anything about the character. i find it fun to explore other cultures, but i'm not confident enough in my knowledge of them to accurately write them or explore them in the written form. i've gotten flack from people before because my characters may have had the face, but they didn't have the full culture. i come from circles where if you write someone who isn't white, they can't be white on the inside (as it is referred to where i come from by the black people here).

technically we all have people around us who are basically just white inside, the way they are raised or the way they think etc, which is fine cause to each their own certainly. and i do agree that it's hard to know how to write smth accurately when you don't have the full knowledge, it's even terrible when people are being mean when they call you out about it. i do also have to say that i had several instances of reaching out to people who portray a character from my culture very wrongly and disrespectfully, and i was not given the same respect so i suppose that's why i get even more sensitive when it comes to things like this

[indierpt]

Tbh in this hobby my priority isn’t necessarily to explore different cultures through fictional characters. My main focus is to explore different stories and each of my characters personally through writing. How they behave, how they react to different scenarios, what makes them tick. But I also tend to play in darker settings with fantasy and sci fi elements.

Maybe setting matters in where cultural representation should be prioritized? Idk in a group plot with superheroes facing conflict against a government trying to make them all human weapons idt world cultures are important to explore 😅

i wonder what y'all think when i say culture is important sometimes when we write a character of color, i don't expect every thread or plot or every aspect of that character to be just around their culture? i'm talking about things like food, clothing, language etc, all those are cultural too, does your muse of color have a favorite food from their culture even if they're not raised within it, for example

[indierpt]

on the ethnicity front, i have a character with idris elba as the face, and his name is wyatt james, because he was born and raised in texas, and has no touch with his african roots because the town he was raised in was predominantly white. i myself am white, but i was raised by a hispanic stepmother my whole life, and her family considers me part of theirs. does that make me a race-faker? no, because i grew up in the culture and embraced it. there's a lot of variations to human culture and how they are raised, and i feel like people need to understand that the world is a giant melting pot, and when people go to other countries, they don't always maintain their roots for one reason or another.

the thing is no one is saying you can't write a character experiencing something else that differs from their heritage, it's mainly that that should not be the only type of character you write, in a way if that makes sense. like if you could write a character who's migrated or raised in a different country, you could also write one where they're more in touch with their heritage too. it's just that it's not as often people write this. i think it would be quite fun to explore too?

[indierpt]

i know everyone is going to have different opinions on this, but as a poc myself i really don't care if someone uses a fcoc that shares my ethnicity but forgoes writing anything about my culture so long as the character is written respectfully and not full of harmful stereotypes. i don't think it's "lazy" if people choose not to do research on other cultures. this is a hobby meant to be fun. at the end of the day it's not that serious.

research is great and all but i've yet to see an rper on the internet fully capture the emotions behind my ancestry's traditions and cultures and it doesn't always feel authentic in writing, which winds up irritating me.

obviously if someone else is writing a similar character and wants to do extensive research on another culture because they're genuinely curious and interested in it, then that's also neat. but i think this enforcement of "you must match ethnicity/culture representation" to the fcoc you're using actually winds up creating less diversity when people ultimately feel too judged or anxious in creating a character that's so different from their own culture, and thus an rp group becomes a predominantly white cast.

good points too! i do agree that when people try to write a culture but they just end up doing it wrong especially if they weren't even aware about it, it's definitely irritating cause as i mentioned in my previous post, it's worse if they have been corrected and they still don't care. i come from a very rich culture where people get confused or they just fit stereotypes into it, some harmful ones too, i know better than anyone how annoying it is, which is why i always encourage people that if you're going to write, please research properly and thoughtfully. in which i also agree that people would feel burdened to write cause it would be a lot of research that has to be done.

honestly i also think some people who push for more accurate representation of culture, like myself, have experienced or seen the effects of colonialization and capitalism where cultures are erased, and how hard it is to preserve a culture which is why people take this more seriously even if it's for a hobby like this. that's not to say every character or every plot must touches on a topic like this, but the thoughts definitely still count, i would say.

[indierpt]

also adding to the most recent anon about strict ethnicity-matching fcs to characters because they made a lot of great points that really resonated with me (half-filipino raised in the u.s. with a loss of filipino culture). not only do i find this ask from admins to be performative, there's a part of me that finds the ask kind of... offensive? because it almost reads to me in some cases that people see a poc and think "they can't possibly be american/north american/european, they MUST be this."

there can absolutely be koreans with english names like "matt smith" or whatever because they've anglicized and/or gained new family names from marriage. and this matt smith can totally be a dude bro who is the most american "white guy" (probably poor phrasing but i think the point is clear) not in touch with his korean culture because he was born and raised in a different country. i guess this logic could be true if any poc was born and raised or moved to any other predominantly english-speaking country too.

at what point does creating a character like this become "white washing?" and who has a say in this? is it really so impossible to believe that poc live in other places than where there heritage comes from?

good points too! i will say two things can be true at the same time, i think at one point we are able to tell just how performative it is, or if people are intentionally using this very valid excuse of "raised in a country where there is a lack of said culture" to bypass the entire thing completely, and i suppose the latter happens too much which is why people are trying to be more strict when it comes to cultural representation, because a lot of people are whitewashing, whether they realize it or not. at least the effort to do so seems to come from a good place. not to say there can't be muses who are more anglicized, as that representation does matter and is important and definitely more common than we'd think, but in some cases, it's just plain whitewashing as it's the easy way out.

[indierpt]

i wish ai wasn’t terrible ethically and awful for the environment because i think it’d be amazing for the visual part of rp. being able to generate photos of specific locations or settings, fantasy creatures, and let’s not pretend it wouldn’t kill the problematic fc issue. there’d also be less of an ethical concern as none of us would be using the faces of real people to write content they might not be okay with. it’d be free and accessible, so anyone that can’t afford commissioned work could still get something to represent their ocs.

unfortunately it’s the creation of the devil that poisons our world and steals from artists and takes jobs only to do them horribly. ugh

agreed. as someone working in tech, i would say that there are companies out there that are trying to implement and build their data centers to be more enviromental friendly and sustainable, the problem is just that the bigger and major ones barely even consider these solutions. like, the solutions are out there! we have to start somewhere, but the ones with the money are not doing it. with the kind of money thrown into ai, imagine if we put into building more sustainable servers, sooner or later we could get better and better solutions? too bad people aren't willing except for a few countries out there that are actually trying to make ai better.

i once thought that when ai entered the picture, we would get better generators. like we do have tools and sites whatnot out there that generates icons and pictures from an existing preset image database etc, i thought with ai we would have more tools that do similar things? not stealing from artists obviously, but make generators work better like, ai that runs and searches through database and archive easier to fit user's query and present the result etc? but apparently not, people use it to steal instead and generate a whole new thing

[indierpt]

going back to that anon that was talking about ethnicity matching and stuff; since you mentioned it i actually think i want to push back against the idea about culture and representing that and what they "could and would have". not what you said exactly but the whole virtue signaling a lot of groups do about "properly representing the ethnicity of your muse." while i agree with that notion on a general; ie dont stereotype them. i think it becomes a lot more performative the deeper you go (not into research but into the idea of "proper representation" and "not white washing your muse"). most especially if you're writing a POC muse born or raised in the US. since latinos were brought up specifically and since im latina myself i'll use myself as an example. my mom immigrated here when she was young and doesn't have a lot of connection to her culture bc of this + other factors like why she left (country was going through some violent times and uprisings). and therefore i have what admins would consider "white washed" culture when in reality its loss of culture due to many things from lack of community as theres not a lot of folks here from my moms country here, lack of language, to obvious US interference causing the problems in her country to begin with etc. i lost where i was going but essentially just want to push back against this idea of "proper cultural representation" to some degree and "white washed muses" bc there isn't one correct way to write a muse of any ethnicity beyond not stereotyping them. and often times it erases the very real experiences people go through with a lack of cultural identity through no fault of their own and kinda paints them as "flawed" and "to blame". not that i think you were trying to say any of that lmao had to be clear. obviously my rambling mostly pertains to US born/raised muses.

thank you for sharing your opinions! and yes i agree that a lot of the 'proper representation' gets very performative bc as i said, they slap a ethnically/culturally correct name onto a foc and think that's enough representation, but i also think if someone is trying to write proper culture stuff with their character, the effort is, in general, considerally well accepted. cause idk, if i see someone writing my cultural correctly like celebrating one of our festive traditions and whatnot, it's quite refreshing to see. although i get annoyed when i see someone not from my culture try to write it and get all weird about it bc i think we can tell if someone is really appreciating it or not.

but yeah i think your experience is also very valid and common experienced among immigrants too? though i would say a lot of people write "white washed muses" bc they're lazy to do research, not that they're trying to at least write the kind of experience you go through. i think people don't even write either nowadays tbh, they're just using whatever acceptable fcs now for cookie points and just get some quick dopamine rush.

[indierpt]

i'm SO tired of the lack of accessibility in the RPC. i swear every time i join a group that preaches about how "diverse" and "inclusive" they are, their entire page or discord server is full of the most overly formatted, unreadable garbage. please stop calling yourself inclusive if you care more about aesthetics than people! it's ableism plain and simple.

my hot take is idk why aesthetic is focused so much on a writing hobby like this. like why do people have to put random capitalized letters in cursive and strikethrough sentences, quadruple spaces with quotation marks that can barely be seen altogether within the same sentence?? it makes twice as long to convey the information and for someone to process those efficiently.

[indierpt]

quick vent: i really can’t stand admins who only apply the rules to some members and not all of them.

i think admins get to have some special privilege sometimes as a compensation for all their hard work and stuff cause running a rp group isn't easy but the problem is a lot of people misuse it and just use the special admin privilege to bubble rp and whatnot

[indierpt]

the dry begging/grifting has gotten insane lately.

oh you mean in the rpc? care to elaborate?

[indierpt]

rpme is another/alternate platform.

oooh yes! i remember seeing that cause i have seen these templates that people post that are supposed to be used on rpme, but i never figured out how to start rping over there

[indierpt]

i just need to get this off my chest, but am i the only one who finds it a little weird when someone is seemingly interacting with themselves?

i used to be mutuals with this person years ago, so i’m pretty familiar with how they write, format their posts, and make their graphics. we drifted apart naturally because life happened. i got busy, they got busy, and we stopped talking. nothing dramatic, just one of those things that happens in rp spaces. but i happened to come across their blog again recently and saw them interacting with another account. the thing is, everything felt really familiar. the graphics, the formatting, the writing style… all of it. i can understand if they’re friends and one helped the other with graphics, but when the formatting and writing voice are nearly identical too, it starts to stand out.

maybe i’m completely off base, and that’s fine. i just can’t help finding it a little strange if it really is the same person putting in all that effort to create the illusion of interacting with someone else. maybe it’s just me, but it genuinely made me do a double take.

ig i'd understand why they would make a second blog just to interact with themself cause it's just writing, there's no real harm to it and if they feel like going through all the trouble of switching blogs and doing graphics just to write with themself, then good for them! unless they're making ooc posts on both blogs and interacting with those too, then yeah it is a bit weird but you never know! maybe they're just two separate person who are close so things are near identical.

[indierpt]

why don’t you allow comments on your posts if people are asking for advice?

i turned that setting off when i started this blog as i wanted to keep things clean and i completely forgot about that honestly. but i will turn it back on for the time being!

[indierpt]

Hey! Im the og anon that posed the question for east asian muns. sorry if that came off poorly, but i’m really at a loss here. To my understanding, krp includes all east asian fcs from east asian entertainment, not exclusively korean. I looked up a couple in the tags and that’s the rule they all have in terms of fc guidelines. The reason I’m asking for guidance is that I’ve had run ins with multiple krpers I thought weren’t krp because they didn’t check off the usual boxes. They didn’t use the krp tag, had an all east asian roster, and named their ocs accurately with respect to their cultures. Only for me to later found out that they were literally lying about being asian to not get called out for it or had secret krp accounts elsewhere. There’s also a thing where some indie rpers who only use ea fcs don’t write with any other fcs except other eas and that comes off as thinly veiled racism to me. I’m getting conflicting feedback from my asian friends on how to handle this and that’s why I’m asking for help. I don’t really trust myself to discern accurately because like I said those other rpers turned out to be in krps despite not fitting the usual criteria?

oh wait i didn't know that krp includes all east asian fcs, or maybe i forgot entirely, it's so long since i read up again on that concept again so my bad there! but as an east asian myself, it's natural for me to navigate toward other east asians too cause similar lifestyles, similar language spoken at times and whatnot. so again, like i said, if someone consume east asian media a lot more, it's natural for their ea muses to find their ways to other ea muses. the same way is if i write a cdrama inspired starter or plot, it's easier for people for consume cdrama to know the direction i'm going with it, like how people do with hollywood media. you would barely find any western muses interacting with these starters too cause they're not familiar with it

i think the most important thing is to not treat blogs who write majority ea muses as krp immediately. context matters, and like you said, if they're respectful of the culture, it is fine to me.

BUT that thing with people pretending to be asian is definitely weird af though, and it's most definitely giving fetishization vibes. it's bc of people like that that the rest of those who write ea muses are viewed badly in the rpc. which comes back to why we stick to what / who we know or are comfortable with bc we are viewed badly in the rpc. it's a whole cycle unfortunately.

i want people to know that it's okay to write ea muses and cultures even if you're not ea, just don't pretend like you are ea, and definitely do your research so you're not misinterpreting things and causing harm, and when ea muns voice their concerns, listen.

[indierpt]

would you (or anyone that happens to see this ask once posted) have any tips for someone who struggles to figure out how to start a reply? like for instance say you post a starter or even reply to a starter and then the reply to you after that you then have to reply back to could have the person maybe reiterating or replying to a specific thing your character said and then going off to continue the conversation, my struggle is like I always feel like I have to reply to every part of the reply though I know I don't have to but I can never figure out how to really know what parts can be left out in my replies, if that makes sense. if not I can reach out off-anon with an actual example and would be willing to have that posted but without my name attached because I'm self conscious lol

one thing that i always go by is the "yes, and" and "no, but" rule whenever it comes to responding to a reply!

knowing what you want to do or achieve with your muse in that specific plot also helps a lot in writing too? sometimes the other mun may not bring the thread forward in the vision you have in mind, so it's also best to talk to them about it to see if they have any visions of theirs, cause sometimes certain replies end up leaving questions or ideas vaguely that you have to catch up on for your next reply so the entire thing flows more smoothly or seamlessly. this could be hard to catch at times, so it's best to try and discuss with them!

i don't think you necessarily have to reply to every part of the reply, especially if the characters have moved on from that action / conversation, but you could do so if you want, but i heard that some rpers out there don't like this as in they feel things are just being dragged on. knowing when to continue or stop is the tricky part here i would say, or else the sudden change of action / convo would seem a bit out of place? but it does get easier and better with practice

[indierpt]

i can get where anon is coming from but i don't think hollywood is a good standard like they whitewash all the time does that mean we should as well? i understand the argument but i do think we need a better reason than "the famously racist industry does it sooooo"

also agreed