Nilore Vagan

I’ve never been much of a social person. Partially because I never really wanted to be, partially because of a social disorder.

So I tend to stay home a lot. Even people I know locally don’t talk to me much. Every few months, they’ll say ‘hey, we haven’t gotten together in a long time’ and we’ll meet and chat for a couple hours, but then I don’t hear from them again for another few months.

I like to have just… one or two people around that I can talk to. That I can rely on.

Even online, I’m not really with the ‘in’ crowd…

I tend to be kind of a prude. I guess that puts a lot of people off. I’ll try to get people’s attention, but I’m generally just shrugged off. I wouldn’t feel so bad if people just said “No thank you” when I ask them to Roleplay, but 90% of the time, they don’t even bother with that. I’m not even new in this chat room, either; I’ve been around for years. I try to be nice to the newer people, but they just waltz in like they own the place… Everyone wants to be the top notch guy. Everyone wants to be the hero. Consequentially, there are now no fewer than three (fictional) companies exclusively providing electricity to the (also fictional) city of Heights. There are no fewer than three or four “most powerful corporations in the world.”

But because I have little interest in RPs with lots of relationship drama, people tend to have no interest in playing with me. Relationships are fine, but “I got you the most expensive thing I could find, it was only five million dollars, I’m so rich, la la la,” irks me a bit.

Also irks me when people can’t seem to conjure the imagination to use characters not directly ripped out of a popular video game or anime. Want science-fiction? Let’s rip off Shadow-Run. Want fantasy? Let’s rip off World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings. Want ninjas? Let’s all rip off bloody Naruto. It’s even worse when they use Canon characters. I can’t help but imagine school yard kids during recess screaming at each other over who gets to play Naruto and who gets to play Genericanimevillainnumber23458576. I wouldn’t mind characters from a given setting if they were actually played in the setting they were meant for (Blood Elves in an Azeroth setting, Deckers in a Shadow-Run setting) but when they’re introduced in a world nothing like their own, and that Decker from another dimension is suddenly able to interact with the modern Earth-era Internet like it were VR, it’s like “HOOOOOLD ON, buddy!”

Actually, maybe it’s that reason that these people don’t like to play with me. I’m not gonna say something stupid like “They don’t have imagination” as the reason; no, I’m pretty sure it’s because I tend to be unable to keep these thoughts to myself. When the Decker decides that just because she seems able to do everything in VR, that my AI characters are the same way, and I inform her that my characters don’t use VR, since it’s a shameless waste of resources and just straight code-based commands get things done faster. And when I introduce magic-baring characters that are able to withstand a full cybernetic onslaught. I think it’s these foreign things that cause these people to not like to play with me… Because it messes up the scenario they’ve set up for themselves.

Personally, this kind of thing should be a given in a roleplay chat labeled as “generic fantasy/sci-fi/whatever-the-hell-you-want.” I’m willing to put up with a Decker-style character, but the player using said Decker seems to get annoyed when more specialized cybernetics and AIs are introduced (she’s constantly proclaiming that the tech on her characters is far more advanced than anything else on this world. It’s not). And also seems to completely ignore the help a magical character is offering; usually by just solving whatever conflict came up in the story with one of her own characters for whatever insane reason, but at one time she OOC’ly attacked me for it (saying something like “You can’t always have the upper hand, you know” when she seems to get upset when she doesn’t get said upper hand).

So.. why do I put up with these people?

Because there’s a few in this room that aren’t there to give themselves an ego stroke. Actually, the number of ‘decent’ people outweighs the number of ‘people I can’t seriously see myself playing with.’ My annoyance level just seems more noticeable, I suppose. And so, I keep a window open with this room in the background while I do other things. Some days, I have a good day and I can play the settings and characters I feel like. Some days are equally good, even though it didn’t go quite according to plan, but was still fun. Sometimes, it’s a good day, but the night is horrid (like today). And some days, I’m practically left alone all day. I might not like being with loads of people, but I definitely don’t like being alone.

Why is it that the only person I’d ever met who could be online with me all day, turned out to not really seem to like me all that much? I have a feeling it’s something I did wrong, but I could never seem to get a straight answer about that. I have a bunch of theories, some less pleasant than others, but I wish I knew what exactly it was…