//I have been writing a villain for nearly four years now.
My muse is a child abuser. She's a serial murderer. She rips hearts out of peoples' chests and uses them as weapons of torture. She removes all agency from her victims and forces them to do her bidding. She has manipulated countless individuals. She left a child in a basket in the woods to die.
By all reasonable accounts, she is a monster. She's a representation of abusive parents, textbook gaslighting and psychological torture. She's one of the most evil villains in the entire canon of OUAT.
I have met real people who remind me of her, just vaguely, that I absolutely cannot stand. Real abusers who treat their children like garbage.
And yet this character is my favorite on the show. And yet I see good in her anyways, and have written her a redemption arc through the course of thousands of threads. I have spent countless hours getting inside her head, explaining her actions, understanding her reasoning, and even at times converting other people into liking her.
Never once have I been called an abuse apologist. Not once has anyone given me shit for playing her, or told me I'm justifying abuse or inspiring other potential child abusers. I have never, not a single time, been told that my writing a redemption for this character is evil, problematic, or bad. I've never been told I'm an awful person for empathizing with her.
Why? Well, probably because I like to think I'm a responsible writer. I've never excused her actions, much as I try to understand them. I've never pretended she's anything but what she is.
Yet, I see more and more this issue cropping up in the rpc. People who play villains are being harassed and told all these things I have not. I don't think it's as prevalent in the OUAT fandom as in others, but I am seeing it. And frankly I think it's disgusting.
Who the hell do you think you are? To tell young writers what muses they can and cannot play, and to police how they write them? If a writer wants to redeem their character, that is their right. If they want to write them as unapologetically evil, that is their right. If they find something human and familiar in their muses and empathize with that, that is their goddamn right.
Villains are fictional. They're not real. Fiction may have its effects on reality but not like this. Rpers playing villains is not the same as real people committing real crimes. How dare anyone compare the two.
I suppose I'm lucky I've never been harrassed. Who knows what stories might have been untold had I been. Critique, fine. Call attention to potential issues, fine. But the harassment and abuse and call out posts for people playing a muse you don't like? Just for playing that muse?????
Jesus Christ but I can't stand this garbage website. And people wonder why I don't want to roleplay much anymore >.>
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