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First, Some Explanations
Once upon a time I wrote a series of articles about IRC-based yaoi RP that used Livejournal as a hub and involved quite a lot of fat nonsense. WELL, I flamed out of clatrops, went yaoi-native, and stayed submerged for a year or so in the copious rolls of womanhood that I had been exposed to. I learned a lot and I do not regret my time in the desert, but I did, eventually, have to crawl back.
(From time to time I check in with my old nemeses/virtual lovers, and all of them except the One That Didn't Suck are in exactly the same place mentally, socially, financially, culturally, except some of them do beading now.)
 Hooray for stasis!
Anyway, I keep my oar in with the whole RP thing still. The current dominant (heh) format among that ilk (female, character-driven, no-dice-or-stats) of RPer is per-post forum-based roleplay using livejournal communities as hubs. There are a number of different formats this happens in:
games: groups of players form closed (i.e. you must apply to be included) games that have overarching plots and regular interaction between the characters. The MVPs of game-based RP concentrate on strong characterization, reliable tagging (replying to posts addressed to one's character), and contribution to plot movement.
dressing rooms: like one-offs to the series format of regular games, dressing rooms involve just showing up with whatever relevant character you are interested in playing, and building relationships and history basically out of whatever you can make up. There is often an overarching setting, but no plot. The MVPs of dressing room RP concentrate on being social, improvisational, and low-drama - characterization and reliability are secondary concerns.
museboxes: you and your friends make a little hole in the internet and rub your virtual penises together. Private, invite-only, and usually where all the real fucked up shit happens. Everyone is an MVP and anything they do is fine.
There are very few single-fandom games, the preference is for what's called "panfandom" - app in as any character from any fandom in any medium. Fandom-specific dressing rooms and museboxes are reasonably common but who actually cares (not me.)
Our story concerns a panfandom dressing room. Specifically it concerns the most trafficked and well-known sex-focused dressing room on livejournal: The Love Hotel.
Because of the very loose, open, show-up-and-start-writing format, it is possible to see some childhood-raping things: people are writing smut with Wall-E characters, or there is a strong and persistent Pokemon crew, etc. I particularly enjoy following the hapless antics of this one sweet, hapless, very subby dark elf who just cannot get his dick wet in 200+ posts. Anyway the point is that nearly anything goes at TLH.
Here is a rough guide to TLH etiquette:
1. Don't be a dick.
Characterization, quality writing, keeping up with replies = not important. Being respectful of people's insane kinks and character choices = critical.
Overwhelmingly the dominant gender of players is female. Characters is something like 65% male, 35% female. I'd guess that the smut conversion rate - that is, the number of threads started that actually end up with characters having sexual contact - is something like 9% or 10%, skewing maybe 60% het, 35% m/m homolust, 5% sweet little girls kissing and tying each other up.
 I know, Wata. I feel the same way.
Despite the loose and nearly unmoderated state of The Love Hotel, there is very seldom anything deal-breakingly trolly going down. People who post there are for the most part well-behaved by nature (they're young women!) and the exceptions are quickly identified and made examples of in public outlets like RP!Secrets (like Post Secret but for bitchy RP-related wank) and RP_anoncomm (anonymous unmoderated posting for bitchy RP-related wank.)
It's a very efficient system, which is why Big Flameouts only happen once every six or seven months. But when they do happen, they are magical.
Okay so now that we have all that out of the way
Here is a TLH post that had a big flameout.
The original poster put up an Ulquiorra Cifer for het smut only. This is actually a little unusual; Bleach guys who post are almost always functionally bisexual and will bang anything with a pulse. The poster has good manners: clearly indicating preferences and challenges in the [ooc text in brackets.] And, you know, the characterization isn't too bad either, and the writing is solid. All in all a very solid post. Not a lot of replies though - I would usually expect to see a ton more, especially since this player is very good about keeping up with replies.
The problem is the big flameout. It poured cold water all over everyone's boner - very shy boners in this comm. Very context sensitive. Here's the thread that got screened so us mortals can't see it.
Did everyone get that okay? Wata, did you get that?
 maybe you're busy right now.
Basically it works like this:
Ulquiorra: Who wants to jump on my lineface unemotional dick? Girls only plz.
Person not even posting as a character, just traipsing through to fuck everything up for the rest of the class: I'll be waiting for when you want gay dickings.
Ulquiorra: B-but I don't want gay dickings.
Person not even posting as a character, just traipsing through to fuck everything up for the rest of the class: You are the lowest form of degenerate.
Welp needless to say this caused a big ol shitstorm, but since the villain was so fucking uncontestably clear, it was a shitstorm in an echo chamber. Here's how RPanoncomm took it and, you know, it all blew over pretty quickly for everyone else.
Except me! I realized I was watching something very, very special. Visiting this person's journal only confirmed it:

And then bits about the manga she's reading.
So I mean.
The Female Icycalm.
 zoom zoom! on the tracks!
I haven't fucked around with her at all yet, I'm still deciding on a line of attack. Unlike Mischief Makers and Bananadines I like to approach my targets with suavity and not just get banned right away from their anti-human lives.
icycalm femme wrote:
More ads to aggravate me.
I was recently diseased by banners on my fastmail account talking about how a mother discovered a method for keeping your teeth white.
What kind of inbred dickhead would listen to a mom on the matter? What does a soccer mom know of dentistry? The banner makes frequent appearances - people click this shit!
Something else: humans are lazy fucks who are frightened of change. I remain bumping into people who embrace archaic animes out of no more than nostalgia. You know, the dick with the crappy icons who's going on like Gundam Wing is a masterpiece and will do so for 20 more years. Fuck that guy, I'm sick of him, I encounter reteriations of that same guy on weekly basis. These shows aren't good, they possess no memorable characters or outstanding sequences. People are way too fucking lazy to go and search for something on their own initative.
C'mon guys. C'mon. Help me think of something. |
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