okay. so i just gotta write a psa about INTERACTION, WHAT CONSTITUTES GODMODDING, WHAT DOESN’T, & WHY WE SHOULD ADDRESS THIS AS A COMMUNITY.
first off, years ago the rpc quit being a community. it became a structure, with widely accepted rules and widely discourages practices. most of them completely logical (predators in the rpc, scammers, consistent abusers, etc.) and some of them completely illogical (like the time everyone went out of their mind about lesbians using male pronouns). it’s become a place where the danger of it is: some people think they have authority, some people live in fear of having themselves targeted for any which reason, even if it’s a perceived sleight.
by and large we’re a lot of neurodivergent people. we’re a lot of mentally ill people. we’re all living in a society where anxiety is widespread to the point of normalcy. which means i cannot count the number of times people have said ‘i want to do this, but i’m afraid i’ll be thrown out for it’. and this sometimes happens to the smallest things.
i was once criticized for how my genderfluid character identified when they were genderfluid leaning toward transmasc and i am enby transmasc, myself, both of us being afab. this happened because instead of considering something, they made a blanket generalization and said what you’re doing isn’t clear enough in your writing.
the entirety of this place has a general fear of everything. it’s become less of a comfort and more of an area where people hesitate to interact. and honestly, i think some of this has to do with the fact that we think of rp as an isolated experience instead of what it should be, which is sort of collaborative fanfiction. we forget there are two people involved and we assume the other person will be upset about the choices we make. any actions at all you write another person’s character doing either get called ‘godmodding’, or never get written because the person writing is too anxious to make a presumption. this phenomena was a lot more present in force-shipping, which is the practice of pushing your own ship agenda on another person, even if they’re either not into it/aren’t into shipping. which is shitty. but there has to be a discussion of where the line between showing interest in a shipping possibility and manipulating someone into a ship. it, frankly, only makes people with exacerbated anxiety or panic feel like every interest they take strongly will be misconstred as force-shipping. when maybe you’re just excited about the idea and wanna see if the other person digs it.
what it comes down to is: collaboration and communication. which we do not do enough anymore. the stigma around excitement in an idea or a thread often stops in one’s brain at ‘i don’t want to come off as annoying’. and herein is where it needs to become more lax and more collaborative at once. let me explain.
rp is a collaborative fanfic experience. fight me. we’re writing direct responses to one another, basically putting down another page or another chapter. it’s naturally collaborative as a practice. or should be.
ages ago in the dinosaur years of fanfiction.net, i wrote a fanfic with an oc for a batman fic that got relatively big. someone approached me and asked if they could write an off-shot of my fic with me, an au, basically, and we would alternatively write chapters. which means. gasp. we had to write each other’s characters.
and you know what? it was some of my best work. because nobody really considers the fact that the more you write with someone, the more you acclimate to their character. the more you get to know them. the more you get to know someone else’s character, the easier it is to hear them in your head, too.
what i’m saying is that if your characters have discussed coffee, it’s not a stretch for yours to write mine walking into the kitchen. if it was going in that direction, it’s not godmodding if you’re just following a straight path that’s a totally logical assumption. and now, the collab comes in.
if you don’t know, ask! if you feel like you should run it by the person you’re writing with because you feel like you might be taking ooc liberties, ask! if you’re not sure if you’re capturing the essence of the other person’s character correctly, ask!
rp isn’t a single road. it’s a two-way street, and a lot of people get discouraged feeling like ‘others don’t care about their characters’. but the problem is: nobody reaches outside their realm of comfort to make, say, the assumption that the other person’s character was doing something simple, like looking at something presented to them that’s their favorite color, etc. sometimes you let someone know you pay attention to their character and you better the storytelling by allowing the flow to become more natural.
there needs to be less structure and more collaboration, communication, and freedom to creativity.
godmodding is something i’ve been victim to in a few extreme cases. once, in a thread, my partner’s character lost a whole fucking leg without telling me and this obviously became a lasting plot point that affected the rest of the verse. another time i went on a cruise to barcelona for three weeks with my parents (i was also rping on a forum at the time) and had no internet. upon my return my character had a time travel plot, a baby, and a relationship with my friend’s character who she had almost no contact with. i wasn’t available at the time and was a canon player in the plot (and they knew i’d be gone), but still went on with a big assuming plot that i had zero say in using my character as a vessel. THIS IS GODMODDING. WHEN YOU DO SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE OF WRITING THAT HAS HUGE BEARING ON YOUR INTERACTIONS/STORY AND IT INVOLVES SOMEONE ELSE’S CHARACTER WITHOUT YOU CONTACTING THE OTHER PERSON FIRST, IT’S GODMODDING.
it is not godmodding to write out a conversation you know your character and someone else’s have had. it’s not godmodding to write someone else’s character following a normal route of routine. just make sure for big choices, you’re actually in communication. or if you think the other person plans for the other character to act differently, approach the other writer and ask if that’s fine. hell, run dialogue by one another. these things enrich writing, foster communication, and make other people feel like you’re actually paying attention to them. so many of us make it an enclosed experience where it’s quantity over quality, and getting as much out as is possible, when it should be about why you enjoy writing, and what work makes you feel best (obviously within reason do not be disgusting).
characters have pasts. histories. maybe the both of yours went to dinner. maybe they blew up a fucking car. maybe they stole a baby. i don’t know. but if it happened, don’t be afraid to write those allusions just because ‘they involve the other person’s character’. again, communicate!
it’s become too self-reflective in here and it’s made all of us afraid to reach out to one another and truly be creatives. and that really needs to change, because it’s bad for everyone’s mental health and it makes people give up long before they even start.
anyway, that’s my two cents as someone who’s been here through the rise and fall of the hannibal fandom.
