Learning that taking a break from roleplay does not mean not writing at all. I took a few years’ break between sites and continued to write on my own. This has made me feel much more artistically secure when coming back into the hobby. I’m generally grateful for long breaks between sites now.

And also just—living a life, connecting with loved ones more, keeping a little diary, eating better, light exercise. All those things old people tell us to do and we shrug off until we realize they’re kinda right. Add therapy to that too, since older people tend to not include that in their bullet points of unwarranted advice.

I know what kind of artist I am now because my non-art life is tended to more attentively than when I was in university, and that artistic security is something I’m grateful for.

Tender, by Ariana Harwicz.


I really didn’t like this book when I read it two years ago, but I still think about it a lot? So I’ll give it some credit. I don’t think this writer has ever written anything about motherhood that wasn’t deeply twisted. Reading her work is like watching an arthouse horror movie in both the best and the worst ways possible.

Reply box is the best way to get it down and out without thinking about quality, but I’ve historically had some kind of Markdown editor to save my posts (and my partner’s posts). They’re faster than rich text editors, in my opinion, and the files are smaller.

Obsidian’s a good one I picked up from work and I tend to use that. You can pick a bunch of themes for it and it’s very flexible and easy to use. Joplin is a great one too. Both are free.

I’ve also tried writing posts in my phone’s email app and sending it to myself. Old person habits. Writing on my phone is also one way I can get a post done fast too.

Something shifted.

- Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino
- Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Y. Davis
- Too Bright To See, Linda Gregg

Been into essays and poetry lately, as well as just rereading some old favorites.

"Some degree" is where I completely disagree.

No: admins should not lash out and antagonize their members. But how do admins fix a community if members don't also reciprocate their efforts? And how can we promote self-reflection, but only inasmuch as we can ultimately blame a toxic or otherwise unsuccessful site onto admins?

Perhaps this is a reason why this conversation comes back so often-online communities are more interested in blaming others before we reflect our own behaviors, and this cycle is again perpetuated. I once more cite capsella's earlier post, indicating how easy it is to form a toxic clique from just a friend group, but also how easy it is to avoid such an outcome.

I didn't think that collective responsibility--exercised by admins unto members, as well as members towards one another and admins by extension--came with exceptions and ultimatums. I had a friend describe to me that staffing work is ultimately thankless. With that in mind, how can we look at one another's vast experiences with toxic, exclusive, and emotionally taxing communities by the RPC and otherwise, and say--"Well if the admins were simply better at their job (the one that they aren't being paid for), then none of this would have happened"?

That kind of conclusion closes off so many possibilities for self-reflection, self-improvement, and community-wide change.

Like...there are, at time of writing, over 100 pages in the staffing confessions thread. Zero's post in particular cites how difficult it is to balance administration demands and member expectations with enjoying the world they even created: pixel-perfect.boards.net/post/87715/thread.

But slowly, over time, you find that instead of role-playing, you’ve become a 24/7 help desk, putting on a customer service face, trying to settle disputes and questions, dealing with assholes who don’t care about your well-being or boundaries, who get mad at you if you’re not progressing the site plot like you’re being paid to handhold their experience, and it’s like ‘fuck, why am I even running this world when I don’t get to write in it?’

This post, as well as the existence of such a long-running thread only goes to show that curating and fixing a community while maintaining individual boundaries is difficult. We can agree that a number of situations in this thread would be improved if only we worked, as a community, to improve ourselves. This is beyond opening plots and letting people join in. It's observing the things that go unsaid--the example I had earlier of everyone welcoming a member in gen chat and ultimately turning against her by gossiping and making fun of her behind closed doors--and bringing them to light.

I can't help but feel that we are doing our fellow community members a disservice when we say that a community's health depends ultimately on site creators and not equally on our own efforts to foster healthy relationships and environments with each other. Particularly when it comes to monitoring our own behaviors and making sure we are promoting an inclusive community.

Yeah for sure. Like I said, it’s a collective responsibility for all involved, admins and members, to improve. I think, by deflecting so much onto admins, it ironically takes away from self-reflection, no? Even very good admins of carefully curated sites can be taken advantage of and ultimately ruined by groups of entitled, self-serving members. And if they operate as an exclusive pack, then that’s a clique. Converse situation certainly also happens as well, though certainly not any more or less. In some cases, it is the admins’ fault, but for any community—roleplay, online, even IRL—it’s not fair to say that the admins or organizers alone are always at fault. People can be unpredictable, deceitful, and ultimately very cruel.

I mean, it also makes sense why people would bring this kind of topic up repeatedly. It happens everywhere! Members start wondering if they’re one of the “bad guys” (or insist they’re the good ones), while others were hurt by exclusive behaviors and have strong opinions on what they wish could be different. The best we can do is admit that, as part of an online community, all of us are capable of making a toxic environment (as described by capsella in an earlier post), so we should check ourselves and our behaviors, and own up to our shortcomings, so that we can improve. That’s not something only admins are responsible for.

If it’s a conversation that, at minimum, has to happen over and over for anything to change, then it’s a good way to remind us to do self-reflection, regardless of who we are, and I think there’s nothing harmful about it.

I really like both, funny enough. It depends entirely on the aesthetic of the site and the overarching plot.

Sites where I joined RL faceclaims were very minimal in design. They also didn't expect us to use lots of gifs. I actually hate being on RL sites that implicitly emphasize the use of gifs, haha--I tend to select actors and models that are little known and don't have gifs at the ready. For a while, I primarily did RL faceclaims because most of the media I prefer is RL--Asian dramas + films (all over Asia, not just limited to the East Asian sphere either), and Asian models (there's so many!).

Only recently have I returned to animanga, and that is primarily because of the huge influx of high quality faceclaims now available as a result of so many gacha games. There are so many to pick from, and even if you can't find all the fanart you want, sometimes their default art is sufficient. I actually didn't do animanga for a while because I'm just not into animanga anymore, not the trendier ones anyway.

For me personally it's just a matter of what's convenient at the moment, what kinds of stories are currently, popular, and if a site premise interests me. Lately there are more rpgs in the animanga scene and I have enjoyed that more, but I have also joined RL rpgs in the past.

being that i've been in both communities for the longest and while both are totes awesome and candid for the most part, i'd say with animanga i feel like i can relate more with members within the community.

I also agree too! I love the RL communities I've been in but I also connect with animanga communities more easily, even if my interests wind up being very different from other animanga community members.

Exactly this. We are all very capable of creating negative environments, and it doesn't hurt to check ourselves and our friends to make sure we're not just spiraling and staying negative. Misery loves company, and a personal gripe really can just turn into something mean. I've been in a similar place myself--not just in the rpc, but really in the online world in general.

Agreed as well. This can be why some people decide to flake and ghost, or cite that they feel unwelcome. Sometimes, gen chat might seem really welcoming, but the real feelings people harbor about each other can be very distinctly felt by other members in question, even if they can't put a name to it or specify a reason. Site and server isn't always the bubble we think it is--our personal lives and social circles often overlap with our seemingly separate online communities, whether we want them to or not.

But the problem is that a lot of people in the community have fun at their fellow players' expense. Unfortunately, it isn't unique to only the roleplay community, but to most online communities as a whole.

I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that admins set examples for a site, and that it is their responsibility. But it's not accurate to suggest that members who disrespect one another, or otherwise foster exclusivity amongst themselves is necessarily the fault of the admins. Like, as an example, it's easy for people to talk behind people's backs, or act really nice in DMs/discord server and then say another thing entirely in their private group chat. I was on a defunct multifandom rp some time ago--other members ostracized a single member because she wrote differently from them, but they never did it in the general channel. Neither she nor I were aware of the sentiment until those members successfully convinced the admins to throw her out, laughing at and ridiculing her as they did. I learned about the last part because I was the only one who reached out to her personally, after the fact.

We've all got stories like this, I'm sure of it. Some of us might have been victims of such behavior ourselves. And that's probably why this topic resonates with so many people.

In any case, that's what constitutes a clique. Like I said before, writing with a friend group =/= forming a clique--the latter of which is a group formed at the expense of other people. If people want to form a healthy community, then it is a collective responsibility, in which every single one of us takes part, admins and members included.

Emphasis on "if", of course. No one is inclined to do anything they don't want to do...but the community that forms as a result might not be completely inclusive.

Writing with friends =/= forming a clique. Let's talk about that

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