Roleplaying, Self Insertion and Bleed

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AliceShiki

『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』, Female
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Before anything, I think I should say that I'm not referring to bleed as the spill of blood, but actually the spill of emotions between character and player... I could try explaining it further, but I think it's better if I just link an article about it. Suffice to say that bleed is when the boundary between reality and fiction becomes blur and the player starts being affected by what happens to the character, and vice-versa.
While bleeding is more known to happen on LARPs (probably? I didn't research that much about it tbh, even this link was one that was linked to me, not one I found myself), it can definitely happen on any form of RP... And at least for me, it's a ridiculously common phenomenom.

With that said... Let's get started.

Roleplaying for me is a form of writing. Not the tabletop RPs like D&D of course, but mainly... Forum RP, what I do here on NUF on AG and on the Magic Association... It's a very unique way of RPing that I honestly loved a lot more than when I played D&D with my RL friends, but that is this and this is that... It didn't help that we have a group that is terrible at immersion, so the game becomes a lot more about mechanics than about RPing, but... Well, enough of that.

As I consider my main RPing activity as a form of writing, I do things that I do when I write on it (well... Duh?), and while I do have my own fair share of writing quirks, I think my main one is easily... Self Insertion.

Basically, all characters in a story are "me", a part of me at least... In particular, no character will ever do something that I consider as nonsense. Like... I don't need to agree with what the character is doing, but I need to understand it and consider it reasonable (save for mad characters, but mad characters are really hard to depict! :notlikeblob::notlikeblob::notlikeblob: ), because otherwise... Well, why would the character do an action that even I don't understand? Doesn't make much sense, does it?

Well, this is about writing... On Roleplaying, things get a bit different.

I think the main difference between common writing and RPing is how much stuff you need to do on each. When you're writing a story, you need to write all characters, the world-building, worry about Point of Views, interludes and all those things... On the other hand, when you're RPing, you only need to worry about one single thing, your character.

Worldbuilding is a collective effort, and other characters are controlled by other people, there is a lot of space to fully explore your character and your character only when you roleplay... And most importantly, you do that while interacting with other people.

I said that I usually self insert when I write, but there are different degrees of self insertion... And I really think there is no higher degree than what you can achieve in a RP.

So... What happens when you fully self-insert yourself into a character, and you start interacting with other people... Bleed.

Since I'm self-inserting, bleeding in is a given (for those too lazy to read the article, this means that my own thoughts influence the character, bleeding out is the opposite, the character influencing me), but when I start interacting with others as me things start getting a bit more complicated... Because I lot of it bleeds out.

I had my fair share of tears while RPing, and many more after some time passed, because I was too affected by the RP, and that affected my relationship with other people... Which is by no means a bad things, I made very very very deep and wonderful relationships with people I truly love through RPing... But it doesn't stop being a really scary thing, to lose control of yourself because of what your character did is something absolutely terrifying.

This made me start developing a few mechanisms of my own to reduce bleeding out... I don't particularly try, or want, to stop bleeding out altogether, but a few things hurt more than others when they bleed out, and those are the ones I try avoiding... I won't delve into this though, it's a bit too personal for a public blog post. Suffice to say that I try making my character avoiding getting into situations that already caused me strong backlashes due to bleeding out.


With this said... I kinda wanted to enter a bit into the characters I used to RP here on NUF... There are 3 characters essentially... Hikari, Hikari and Aria, and no, there was no typo.

Hikari was my first character in AG, and the one thing (person?) that got me into NUF, it's no exaggeration in saying I would have never become active on NUF if it wasn't for Hikari, she was the one that kept me online 24/7, and made me start getting to know other people through RPing, and other people in other games in the times the Tavern wasn't being active. Even if Hikari didn't really exist on the other games, she was the one that made me stay online on NUF at that times, and that's what made me know other people.

Hikari was... A very special type of self-insertion, she is essentially... Everything I have ever wanted to be.
Hikari was a Magical Girl of Love and Justice, a cute girl that was a bit clumsy and did her best to help others and be a good girl to help everyone around her on the best way she could.
In less than a week, Hikari also got 2 mothers, an older sister and a boyfriend, that later became her husband.

This was... A very complicated experience that threw my life completely off-balance.
I think many people on NUF read novels to escape reality, right? Well, I never did that, but... Hikari wasn't simply an escape from reality... She was literally everything that I could have ever hoped for in my life. The only thing she didn't get (and I did try to give it to her mind you, but well... No details), was a child.

Hmmmm... How to explain it... Well, first, magic, love and justice and all that are some things I really love.
Then, Hikari looks very close to what I'd want as an ideal self... I kinda hate my own body for a wide variety of reasons... But if I were to resume it in a gross oversimplification... I'm not cute. And Hikari was cute, Hikari was super cute, and I absolutely want ot be cute. I don't want to be pretty, I want to be cute, this is my ideal, and this is what Hikari had, that I don't.
Then, Hikari got a family... Sure, I have a RL family, but my relationship with them was always... Uhn... Bad? We were never particularly close, we were just... There. And after Hikari, it just went downhill to a probably unrecoverable state.
While all family members were super important for Hikari (especially one of her mothers), there are 2 that were... Especially desirable.
The first, an older sister. I don't think I ever said this on NUF, but I was supposed to have an younger sister... She died. I have no memories of her, I was still a baby, but she died... And dear God, how I wanted to have a sister, having 2 brothers is horrible, I really wanted to have a girl to talk to (did I say that I am in bad terms with my mom? (Oh hey, no wonder one of her moms was so important!) Yeah, hopefully it wouldn't be the case with a sister) about... Well, anything? Myself mainly. And Hikari had that sister I longer so much for.
The other one was... Her husband. Back when I was playing with Hikari, I had not had my first (and only so far) relationship, which was a Long Distance Relationship... And well, never having been confessed to in the entirety of my school life or anything of the sort can be quite disheartening, one of my High School crushes also turned me down (which had been the only time I had gotten courage to confess back then), so... My love life wasn't very fulfilled. And while I had a troublesome love life with not a single kiss in 20 years, Hikari got a boyfriend in 2 or so days, and a husband in one or two weeks...

Looking in retrospect, I felt a huge amount of jealousy towards Hikari. Because she had everything I wanted, but was pretty sure I would never have...
And at the same time, it turned my life around, because I didn't want to live my life anymore, I wanted to live Hikari's, because Hikari was me, and she had everything, while I had... Nothing. Nothing if compared to what she had.

Lots of things happened, including some breakdowns, a LDR, family fights, people leaving NUF and stuff like that, uintil it reached a point in which Hikari... Stopped having everything.
It was really strange, because it was the time I most seriously considered quitting NUF. Hikari's life revolved entirely on her family, and her family simply... Wasn't there anymore, they were gone. Not because they died or anything, but simply because they weren't on NUF anymore.

What was once the most beautiful dream I had ever had, suddenly became a hassle. Hassle is the word, checking AG was a hassle.
Usually speaking, I entered NUF, checked PMs, checked AG, checked Alerts and then checked other threads... At that time though, I started checking PMs, Alerts, Other threads and then AG... I wanted to stop looking at AG, it was an unconscious decision that took me months to realize, but it was really a huge hassle, and the only thing that stopped me from leaving were those dreamy memories that I didn't want to abandon.

And that is when the 2nd Hikari came in. Putting it simply (not really), the 1st and 2nd Hikari are the same, and yet they aren't. The 1st Hikari is the Hikari I entered AG and NUF with... The 2nd one was... My way of finding joy in a bleak world in a way, and also my way of breaking the troublesome parts of the bleeding out.

An interesting curiosity about the time I joined AG, is that there was barely any distinction between IC (in character) and OOC (out of character), not because we were too lazy to separate when the player on when the character were speaking, but... Because there were often times in which we didn't know who was who... This was especially true to me, but I wasn't the only one.
This was the first thing I cut when I made the 2nd Hikari, at that point I already had OOC and IC split tbh, but I was just afraid of letting go of the memories of them being mixed, so I kept on not separating them, even if you could know the speaker with a glance. I made sure to properly separate them, it was a way of starting to let go of it... Of stopping to cling to the past, and starting moving on to the future, making my wonderful memories being... Memories, very special memories that I will remember for life... But memories, not something I had to desperately try to cling to as if my life depended on it.

Well, but how was the 2nd Hikari born? Essentially, I wiped her memories out, the explanation of it wasn't that good (it wasn't that terrible either though), but the important part was that those memories were wiped clean, she was suddenly a completely new person (her basic personality traits were kept though, especially the part of wanting to be a good girl), she no longer had that incredible dependence on her family to exist, she was her on being and had her own worries, even if she wanted to be close to her family... She didn't particularly known them, they were strangers, she wanted someone to cling to, and a family was the best bet she had.

The 1st Hikari was a very cheerful girl, she was a self-insertion in the way of being everything I wanted to be... The 2nd Hikari is a lot more depressive, she is a girl that is generally cheerful, that enjoys everyday life... But has inferiority issues, that thinks of herself as useless many times, that needs people looking out for her, that has traumas, that can't keep up with the past, that can't accept her current condition... In essence, she is a represention of me. Not of who I want to be, but who I am.

It was a very strange realization to me, because this was completely unintended. The 1st Hikari was purposefully my dream self, and everything that happened to her made her more and more dreamy to me... The 2nd Hikari was supposed to be a cut, she was supposed to be a different character and be a separation between me and my character... And yet, she became a very deep form of self-insertion too, but not of my dreamy cheerful self, but of my current depressive self that acts cheerfully for most of the time.

The 2nd Hikari is a very interesting experience that I really enjoy RPing as... But well, I think I spoke enough about Hikari already... So, to wrap this up, let me talk a bit about Aria.

Aria is the character I RP on the Magic Association, she is a very different character from both Hikaris, because in the first place... She is not just me. She has influences.

Her design was based on Elaina, from Majo no Tabitabi. A witch that travels around and simply... Enjoys traveling, that wants to spend her days traveling and seeing new things. That was the main influence for her.
The 2nd influence was Aria, from Witch Hunter. A bit of a yandere witch that is somewhat of a psychopath and that makes magic with arrays.
Her 3rd infuence was Kuti, from Nigotta Hitomi no Lilianne. A fairy that is absolutely obssessed (in a good way though) with Lily, she goes like "As expected of Lily" "Lily is the cutest" "Lily is amazing" or other things like that all the time.
And lastly... Me! I mean, she is a self-insertion after all. She took a different aspect of myself than Hikari did.
Aria is a cheerful girl that shouts all the time and does stuff without thinking much and simply dives headfirst into it, and usually messes up somehow and ends up getting in trouble because of it... Well, to put it in a simple way... If you removed the word "Aria" from this description and asked someone close to me IRL, they would say "You're talking about Alice." probably... Her behaviour really matches mine in a lot of aspects.
She is also a bit lewder than Hikari, which is an aspect of me I'm starting to explore somwhat recently... I mean, I guess everyone is a pervert deep down, but I have always rejected that part of myself for a long long time (like, I have never watched porn, and the first time I read an R-18 work was after I had split up with my boyfriend, mainly because I wanted something to give me a similar feeling to what I felt while having sex with him). I think it's a nice part of her, that while it's definitely not very visible (just like mine isn't), it is there, and can appear from time to time. It's an unique aspect of her that I didn't really try to explore before, and I enjoy thinking a bit on how to showcase it. (obviously I won't write any R-18 scene on a RP, so it's a pretty subtle thing)

And it is amazing, because the only thing that I planned Aria to have from me was the fact that she doesn't have much control over the volume of her voice and ends up shouting all the time without even realizing it.

I mean, Hikari was my self insertion, and I was sure that was the whole of me... Then suddenly, I made the 2nd Hikari, which was a totally different me, and now I made Aria, which is... Also a completely different aspect of me! :aww::aww::aww:

It's pretty amazing when you realize how complex we are, we can really act and represent ourselves in a lot of different manners... I mean, I already found 3 for myself, and I can definitely say all of them are me. Though now... I started thinking that even the 3 of them aren't the whole of me, I don;t know how else would I represent myself, but I have a feeling that if I make another RP character, it will also end up being some form of self-insertion, a different aspec of myself, but also me anyway.

Hmmmm... How to conclude... I think RPing is really fun, and bleeding is probably one of the best part of RPing IMO, I think everyone should try experiencing it at least once. Letting yourself run loose on the character and simply being there as yourself is an absolutely amazing and dreamy feeling, even at the most terrifying and tearful moments. (Yes, I cried tons as Hikari... Did I already say that? I forgot, I have been writing this blog post for over an hour (maybe 1 and a half), so I forgot a few deails)

At the same time... I think it's important to separate a few things and notice what is harming you and putting a stop to it... Bleeding is great, but when it harms your own life (and oh God, did mine get harmed by Hikari), it's necessary to put a stop on it... Not on the RP, but on that part of the bleeding that is hurting you... Which may or may not need some drastic measures, it depends on each case I guess.

Uhn... Kudos for anyone that wrote this whole thing? It definitely became a lot bigger than I planned... Which funnily enough, is something that happens a lot while I am roleplaying, a story that I expected to be pretty short ends up with 4, 6, 10, 12 thousand words... Teehee?

I hope you enjoyed reading it! ^^)/

HNCKrstl, Osamaru, Fluffums and 3 others like this.

Comments

    1. AliceShiki Feb 25, 2018
      @Arcturus Oh, I see!

      Hmmmmm... I think it's nice to keep a certain distance from your character and thinking that they are not you. At the very least, it can minimize bleeding, which can be quite good at times... Though I like letting bleed flow freely for the most part, it can be quite bothersome when I need to force my character to act differently from how they should in order to avoid feeling something I don't want.

      On the other hand, I personally think it is impossible to make a character completely dettached from ourselves... I mean, if you don't believe that what the character is doing makes sense... Why are they doing it? It needs to make sense for the character at the very least, so... I think that some of our thought process is always put on characters we play, which may influence their growth and how much they take from us.

      As for why you think they're not you... Well, that's hard for me to take a guess, you probably know this better than me! xD
      Still an interesting line of thought though, it can either be something that you yourself impose so as to create a distance between you and your character, or something you subconsciously think for some other reason... I think it's an interesting thing to think about! It doesn't hurt to dive a bit deeply on it! \(^^)/
      HNCKrstl likes this.
    2. Arcturus Feb 25, 2018
      Ah, yes. I do think that I'm a bit different in that even though these characters draw from me and my experiences, I still don't feel like they are me. I don't feel like they represent me. When I RP, I think, "this is not me", which is why it came as a surprise that I did put more of myself and my experiences than I had thought. My wondering is this, what is the reason I don't think they are me, is it because they are better than me and I feel some shame/regret or because they are partially flawed like I am and I hate seeing my weakness in them? I'm not sure. I could be reading into this way too deeply. But it was worth a thought.
      AliceShiki likes this.
    3. AliceShiki Feb 25, 2018
      @Arcturus Hmmmmmmmmm... I think that's kinda similar to me tbh.

      I mean, I play as "me", but at the same time I don't.

      Like... Hikari is very depressive and unsure of herself, just like I am, but while I have my own reasons to be somewhat depressive, Hikari has a whole different set of reasons, and different things trigger her depression than the ones that trigger mine.

      As in... Love is something I have a lot of trouble talking about and is a very sensitive topic to me... Hikari? Hikari is a child, she doesn't understand what love is in the first place.

      My characters have a lot of me, and I influence them while they influence me... But at the same time they are their own beings and act for their own reasons according to the circumstances around them.
    4. Arcturus Feb 25, 2018
      Huh. Never really thought about it, but my characters do have parts of me, each and every one of them. Not always in huge ways, though I just realized that the back story for one has way more similarities than I had thought to myself.

      Interestingly, I don't play those characters as myself. They are different from me, frequently better than me, and that does show. I guess I'm kinda precise about my RPs, I write characters as if they were part of a story and that story doesn't include me. I'm a bystander who watches it, but never is involved.

      I wonder what that says about me and how I live my life.
      iampsyx and AliceShiki like this.
    5. Osamaru Feb 25, 2018
      _:)3」∠)_ I tried, hohohoh. I think Blanc's the only one who really showed any interest, but you know how that turned out....
      *pats @AliceShiki* Guess I'm just not any good at this.
    6. AliceShiki Feb 25, 2018
      @Osamaru

      Baka! You just need to shove youself in!

      You'd be surprised by how many characters don't have a group per se, the majority of characters just interact with whoever is nearby~

      They do have their own connections of course, but they can always make new ones, people go to RPs in general to interact with others already, so they're a lot more open to do it than they are IRL~
      Osamaru likes this.
    7. Osamaru Feb 25, 2018
      I can kind of understand where you are coming from here. One of the Reasons I hit a roadblock with my own RP, was I could not make those connections work for the character. He just could not seem to blend into the story, and it just ended up being more of a Solo story more than anything.
      Part of this is because I myself don't really know how to interact or approch people, so it makes it difficult for my character to do the same.
      and even when he DID, the other characters already have their established groups and stories. There's no "room" for him anywhere.
      Its lonely to play by yourself.......
    8. AliceShiki Feb 25, 2018
      @Fluffums

      OMG that character!!!!! :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

      I think I'd receive a terrible reaction if I were to use a character like that... The gods of dies absolutely hate me, I never get good numbers... orz

      But wow, a tsundere priest that dislike the living... Such a wonderful concept~

      I'm usually pretty tame in my concepts I think, I never go to such extreme, but amazing ideas! >.<