cowboy times in space

[rpanonmod]

Rundown: rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not post personal information. This includes but is not limited to full names, addresses, phone numbers and so on.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme. Your unfunny, forced memes also fall under this rule.
Do not treat this comm like your personal therapist. Threads about nonfictional suicide, self injury, rape, and abuse will be deleted. There are better resources out there for you.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.
Shut up about Tumblr. If it's not a discussion about Tumblr RP it will be deleted.
Do not solicit money, Dreamwidth points, or other currency unless you are offering a good or service in return.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES


Navigate:


Political topics are banned. Report threads and they will be deleted.

LATEST PAGE | LATEST FLATVIEW PAGE

GAME DISCUSSIONS | CANON DISCUSSIONS | HTML/GRAPHIC HELP | RP COMMISSIONS

ATP/ENABLE ME | GAME ADVERTISEMENTS | PB SUGGESTIONS | USERNAME SUGGESTIONS

GAME IDEAS | CHARACTER ADVICE | RP WITH ME | TEST DRIVES

KINKS YOU WANT TO PLAY | PAIRINGS YOU WANT TO PLAY | RECOMMEND A CANON/CHARACTER | GENERAL DWRP QUESTIONS

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

just find it highly unlikely every single malleable protag you've rped with has been a clingy, wanky shiphound when historically a significant portion of fandom wars are caused by canon ships. either you have the world's worst luck or there's something else at play here

but by all means i'm happy you've found something that works for you and that you shouldn't rp with people you don't want to rp with

[(Anonymous)]

You wouldn't consider "protag/fandom hottie" something fandom gets into serious ship wars over? Most malleable protags, if I'm not mistaken, are created with their core purpose of being able to ship with your (the player behind the controls) pick of the litter. Anybody playing the object of affection, or worse the "rival" (npc who is shipped with love target most outside of protag), can easily suffer from this.

Which makes sense why the cross canon interactions are easier because there are less expectations and assumptions made by either side.

[(Anonymous)]

no because unless you got a default shepard/hawke situation going on here most people don't care about other people's malleable protags. while there are fandoms, so to speak, for specific malleable protags made by specific bnfs, it's not as commonplace as canon ships for canon characters

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I'm just used to seeing a lot protag/character shipping in art? Like the protags from Hoyo properties, Doctor from Arknights, peoples Tavs or WoLs getting commissioned all the time, and more. As someone on the periphery of a lot of these and not actually playing from them or reading into discourse it does feel like there's quite a backing for people actually utilizing these protags as a way to not be as cringe as say "character/reader" fic while both fulfilling that urge and creating a fandom base around it. Like I remember that one blonde hoyo girl shipped with the cocky redhead had a huge following for sometime. One of the artists I follow made and retweeted a bunch of it.

[(Anonymous)]

da

we're the outliers, virtually every other fandom space loves protags.

[(Anonymous)]

Wonder why that is? Do you think it might be that protags of this nature just aren't conducive to a collaborative hobby? Most other fandom spaces (art, fic) are singular endeavors that are shared rather than improvised with another.

[(Anonymous)]

no i don't think that, i think people here hate ocs

[(Anonymous)]

not really

first of all, saying that dwrp hates them in general is judging the issue based only on some loud people in anon comms. there are hundreds of game protag accounts out there. persona, baldur's gate, dragon age, mass effect, ff14; i see them all the time. i can't think of a persona cast in games that didn't have their protag. i don't think dwrp hates protags as a whole, it's a minority. i think they became a complicated conversation because they are a weird spot for mods to make rules for

second, it depends on the fandom and what you call "hate". because while there aren't as many complaints like we do here, there definitely are parts of fandom that completely ignore the protags and concentrate on the other characters. and the anon above who mentioned the solo vs collaborative thing has a point. in fic, you just filter the protag tag, so you never grow frustrated by having to deal with them. so i'd say there IS some dislike for them out there for the same reasons why we dislike them here, we just don't see rants about it

two example of actual protag dislike i've seen:

r/fireemblem argues about it all the time. half the sub wants to get rid of malleable protags and have proper characters like Ike again.

the dating sim fandom has a huge divide in this. each group even has a name but i can't remember the terms now. one group only consumes protag/character while the other prefers character/character. i remember someone sharing some fandom wank here about a game that asked for fanart but wouldn't accept chara/chara and the protag/chara fans were mad when they saw a yaoi picture. there was also an idol game that had a crossover event and neckbeards were mad that the girls would have to interact with guys from the other game.

[(Anonymous)]

Tavs and WoLs are not the same as all those others because their looks and backstories are 100% player input

I'm one of those old biddies who thinks yumeshipping/selfshipping has largely ruined fandom (can they please tag their reader x character so search in places like Tumblr is usable again?) and I RP with malleable protags here anyways because unlike the yume/selfshippers most malleable protag RPers we get here are actually quite reasonable

[(Anonymous)]

i feel with yumejoshi there’s two categories of them: the self shippers and the ones who still check off everything but self-inserting. the latter are less interested in “i want this to happen to me” and more like “i want this to happen between two hot people and watch.”

[(Anonymous)]

i prefer lumine with xiao over childe, myself

[(Anonymous)]

people still go to war for cloud and aeris vs cloud and tifa

can't say the same even for baldur's gate 3 which is what it sounds like you rped from

and that explains a lot

[(Anonymous)]

Huh? I think you got lost...

[(Anonymous)]

*aerith

[(Anonymous)]

rping through the ff14 boom that got WoLs pre-excluded in most spaces did numbers on me for sure, but even if some malleable protags were less intense than that wave of disaster there were definitely still wildly entitled byleths, territorial tavs, and akiras who could only think-speak-breathe of akechis.

and yeah, I guess I came off a bit harsh bc of my prev experience but I'm so tired of hearing abt how people are elitist just bc they've had broccoli 10 diff ways and in the end broccoli still doesn't agree with them. ive been there. ive tried broccoli in different forms over the years hoping each new recipe would be different. unfortunately everyone ive met who was making broccoli just didn't serve well

[(Anonymous)]

again this anon was on the money: i had a bad experience with someone in 2017 and i've come up with an ingenious method of making sure it never happens again: fixate on one specific aspect of that experience that was very obviously not the actual problem

like the problem here isn't malleable protags as a whole it's FF14 WoLs specifically because of how the WoL is written canonically

and it's fine if you never want to rp with malleable protags ever again. that's your choice

what irks me about your comment and other people's comments is acting like malleable protags are exemplary in their ability to cause drama, ship push, etc

all of these things existed before malleable protags existed

and they will exist after

there's no silver bullet that'll help you avoid these issues because any rper regardless of what kind of character they rp is capable of acting this way

canon rpers are just as capable of it

so instead of creating this noxious narrative that does a disservice to you and other rpers to justify why you don't want to rp with these kind of characters just don't rp with these kind of characters

[(Anonymous)]

I think what they're trying to get here is that in their experience these types of characters have a higher percentage of rolling a bad egg than canon characters simply because of the intrinsic nature of this type of character.

I don't play from these canons but looking from the outside in makes a lot of sense! There's a sense of ownership and self that goes into picking dialogue options and routes and handling specific character interactions that can lead to a type of investment that's easier to trigger than a canon character would. So it would make sense that a certain type of RPer is more likely to be drawn to this sort of character.

At least that's how I read it. They weren't very kind about their approach but considering grievances I've let my friends vent out in the recent past the exasperation isn't surprising.

[(Anonymous)]

The exasperation isn't surprising but it is exhausting. It creates an environment where, like the anon below said, it shames people out of playing something they want to play, something they could be perfectly normal about, good too, based on the past experiences of (almost always) unrelated people. AFAIK, the WoL thing was during Shadowbringers, which released in 2019.

And it's a running theme in this hobby where one bad experience by a handful of people gets an entire group of rpers tarred with the same brush. People here are constantly complaining about how roleplay has slowed down, how we get no new blood, but then people hold opinions like these, spew them in public spaces

Like no wonder no one wants to rock the boat, do anything interesting with their characters, etcetera. No one here wants to give other people a chance. Rampant elitism and a lack of whimsy

Again the issue isn't that this anon doesn't want to RP with malleable protags, it's the fact this anon and other anons are always running around acting like malleable protags are unique in their ability to be unhinged

And that's patently untrue

[(Anonymous)]

+10000000!

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to express.

At least someone on here gets it!

[(Anonymous)]

i have had far, far more bad experiences with people projecting hard onto canon characters than i ever have with malleable protags. the ones i've played off of have all been chill (and in a couple of cases, i even shipped with one of their canonmates that the protag is commonly shipped with and they were 100% fine with that)

[(Anonymous)]

i get disliking them. i especially get disliking them now because most of the decent ones got shamed into vanishing and now the ones that are left are trash tier because they're played by people who are too unaware to realize everyone in the room is making fun of them. but i think it sucks anyone got shamed out of playing a character they were excited about because a bunch of old fat ladies on the internet are up in arms about shipping.

da

[(Anonymous)]

believe me i realized very quickly that everyone in the room is making fun of me, which is why i just don't tag canonmates.

Re: da

[(Anonymous)]

most malleable protag players i know don't even want to tag canonmates they're all about crosscanon

they just like the specific protag or the worldbuilding behind them

ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

i'd actually love to tag canonmates, but i'd rather not worry about whether they think i'm angling for a ship, which i am genuinely not looking for. fortunately crosscanon cr is some of my favorite (not great with assumed cr). it's just a little disheartening sometimes.

Re: da

[(Anonymous)]

i wish it didn't have to be that way! :/