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Roleplayers are really, really...
2 years ago
Weird! And as someone who should've been in a drama class in high school, I've been a roleplayer most of my life. Effed around in SS13, roleplayed on Gaiaonline forums, joined roleplaying guilds in MMOs, played D&D and then became a forever DM until I lost my mind. And naturally, I roleplayed a helluva bunch of kinky toon stuff with fans and friends up until shortly after meeting my beloved Stoatly Knight, App.
So, as a roleplayer who almost never roleplays anymore, I've always chuckled in amusement to myself at artists who put things like "No, I don't friggin' ROLEPLAY, DAMMIT, stop trying to kinkitize me" on their profile(An exaggeration). But I get it, because I've gotten those creepy invitations. It feels like running around the wrong corner in the city and getting propositioned, y'know? But, I've always valued roleplay, even when I used it as a terribly clumsy, awful, dirty tool for navigating both shallow and deep relationships. The most cherished friends of mine are folks I've roleplayed with, either in SS13, MMOs, D&D, or in toony scenarios, and some of my silly kink art across the years were certainly inspired or directly drawn from roleplay logs I'll freely admit.
So, I'm just curious what people think. I've BEEN that guy in the past who would care about roleplaying silly toon stuff a little more than other more important things. I've had my fun and sadness with it, and overall have come out of the dozen+ years of roleplaying feeling enriched for it. Though, when it comes to kinky stuff, roleplay was the primary engine that escalated ALL of my kinks and my interests in them. It pushed everything higher and harder towards the extreme ends of kink and sexual expression, and I squarely lay the blame for my own sense of perceived "numbing/numbness" I've developed towards the more light-hearted side of kinks at the doorstep of kinky roleplays. That escalation made it significantly harder for me to enjoy the light-hearted side of kinks, they just didn't hit as hard. And what drove that escalation was a crazed amalgam of my desparate obsession to chase greater pleasures(unknowingly at the cost of reducing the impact of all lesser pleasures) and my roleplay partner(s) mutual willingness/desparation to explore those extreme ends of kink scenarios. There are things I do regret with my time roleplaying, but as I said, I'm ultimately enriched from it, and acknowledge that the greatest of my friends were folks I connected to with it. (And the worst of all my relationships operated primarily on a roleplay and kink art level).
So I see its places, its uses, its joys and delights and awful, sometimes invisible risks. And I don't like being invited to roleplay with a stranger unless they're DMing a god damn D&D game for me and my pals. Because I don't like hookers and hoes tryin' to ride my D when I've got a Stoatly Knight. So, these are my feelings about roleplay. A cherished art and practice, but like all things, can be corrupted into a caustic thing by obsession and desparation.
How do you feel about roleplaying and its place and uses in art/kink fandoms? Where has roleplay been good or awful in your life?
I personally still use it for gaming sometimes, and in conversational banter, since I do talk with alot of toon folks, and it's nice to be playful with japes and jabs.
So, as a roleplayer who almost never roleplays anymore, I've always chuckled in amusement to myself at artists who put things like "No, I don't friggin' ROLEPLAY, DAMMIT, stop trying to kinkitize me" on their profile(An exaggeration). But I get it, because I've gotten those creepy invitations. It feels like running around the wrong corner in the city and getting propositioned, y'know? But, I've always valued roleplay, even when I used it as a terribly clumsy, awful, dirty tool for navigating both shallow and deep relationships. The most cherished friends of mine are folks I've roleplayed with, either in SS13, MMOs, D&D, or in toony scenarios, and some of my silly kink art across the years were certainly inspired or directly drawn from roleplay logs I'll freely admit.
So, I'm just curious what people think. I've BEEN that guy in the past who would care about roleplaying silly toon stuff a little more than other more important things. I've had my fun and sadness with it, and overall have come out of the dozen+ years of roleplaying feeling enriched for it. Though, when it comes to kinky stuff, roleplay was the primary engine that escalated ALL of my kinks and my interests in them. It pushed everything higher and harder towards the extreme ends of kink and sexual expression, and I squarely lay the blame for my own sense of perceived "numbing/numbness" I've developed towards the more light-hearted side of kinks at the doorstep of kinky roleplays. That escalation made it significantly harder for me to enjoy the light-hearted side of kinks, they just didn't hit as hard. And what drove that escalation was a crazed amalgam of my desparate obsession to chase greater pleasures(unknowingly at the cost of reducing the impact of all lesser pleasures) and my roleplay partner(s) mutual willingness/desparation to explore those extreme ends of kink scenarios. There are things I do regret with my time roleplaying, but as I said, I'm ultimately enriched from it, and acknowledge that the greatest of my friends were folks I connected to with it. (And the worst of all my relationships operated primarily on a roleplay and kink art level).
So I see its places, its uses, its joys and delights and awful, sometimes invisible risks. And I don't like being invited to roleplay with a stranger unless they're DMing a god damn D&D game for me and my pals. Because I don't like hookers and hoes tryin' to ride my D when I've got a Stoatly Knight. So, these are my feelings about roleplay. A cherished art and practice, but like all things, can be corrupted into a caustic thing by obsession and desparation.
How do you feel about roleplaying and its place and uses in art/kink fandoms? Where has roleplay been good or awful in your life?
I personally still use it for gaming sometimes, and in conversational banter, since I do talk with alot of toon folks, and it's nice to be playful with japes and jabs.
I started off bad at it. You know, by responding with short one line replies.
Then I got better, and started writing very long replies.
But then I got annoyed when other, probably new, RPers who would do the short replies.
Now, I feel like I'm at the extreme end of it, like you mentioned, and am not as into the lighter kinks anymore. If the RP doesn't have some heavy kink stuff in it, I'm barely interested.
I do still love D&D, because I'm not playing that to be kinky. Though, I do very lightly sprinkle kinks onto my characters sometimes, and it generally makes the character better.
Basically, almost everything you've said, I agree with.
All in all, I see sexual RP as a bit of a drug. You read the reply, or wait for the reply, and your hormones get pumping and you feel the ecstasy.
But soon, you need more, and dive deeper into the kinks until it's no longer satisfying.
You start buying art and stories, spending more and more.
Some people let it consume them.
Yeah, some people do let it consume them. I made a character explicitly as a projection of my very real future I was looking at back in 2018/2019, when I first made a patreon for kinky smut, and then shut it down months later. Calicorvus Concrupt Cochlirvine, my wizardly founder of the Cult of Kinks. Somebody who is devoted to bringing others into his downward spiral and celebrate the absurd decline into insanity as a spiritual rebirth. I saw myself becoming that, and nowadays, that vision of Calircorvus is the exact reason why I've veered away to doing alot more light-hearted content, which always spreads little bits of joy that continually give back with time, rather than decay and suck the clean air out of the room. A little spice here and there seems like the right balance to me now.
Light-hearted joy feels like a shiny, fluffy thing that will last forever, when looked back upon from the future, all the light-hearted joy of my past still resonates positively with me. But all the extreme stuff....Well, it certainly moves something very deep in me. I wouldn't exactly call it a pleasant thing when it wakes up and moves around though.
Luckily it was super niiiiiice!
Nowadays I don't have time for it or vibe with it much, but I do still D&D and other TTRPGs! It really helped my improv skills and stuff.
I'm sure you'll kill it in animations!
Though aye, roleplaying is definitely fun, at least when everyone involved's up for it—tad hard to get into it when it comes unsolicited and ends up a bit one-sided as a result, but heck, it can still work in some cases. Definitely met a fair share of friends and whatnot through RPing and stuff too, got into my on-and-off writing stints (and later on, art) through it, delving deeper into stranger things as a result too, so I can certainly say it's also been fairly enriching on my part. I do it a tad more sparingly nowadays, mostly due to not having as much constant energy for it plus putting my creative juices elsewhere, but it's still nice.
I'd say it's good as long as it's fun (and in moderation)! But that goes for anything really, haha.
Ahhh, I miss the energy I used to have for spontaneous roleplay... ;c It was such an easily overlooked joy, and there really is little to no time left for it in my life, not when the creative boons I've received from roleplay have come to fruition with far better projects to invest into.
In moderation, I also believe it's a cherished, harmless joy when folks find that flow with each other.
Roleplay was all I wanted to do when I joined this community, and that hasn't changed much. I was a cripplingly shy kid who wanted to live in silly cartoon worlds, and my first forays into performing arts didn't scratch the itch. So it's no wonder I flung myself headfirst into the furry community, where you only to acknowledge the person outside the persona as much as you wanted.
I've become a lot more transparent about who I am behind the duck over the years out of necessity- attending cons and meeting friends IRL are among the chief reasons why. But the desire to be a silly, wacky toon has never faded. I'm a lot more selective about who I RP with nowadays, but nothing makes me happier than getting into a wacky situation with another person. Especially with a growing roster of characters and a more established personal setting, I'm very happy to indulge in some antics with a person who I vibe with creatively.
And "indulging" is really the key word. My favorite scenarios are genuine back-and-forth cartoon antics, but I very much feel you in the escalation to involvement of kinks. A lot of people don't match up with me on a love of all toony slapstick, but plenty like incorporating cartoon elements into specific topics we do bond over- messy slapstick, flattening/inflation, etc. So the vast majority of my RP these days leans a bit more kinky and indulgent, focusing on a particular kink. It stays PG and cartoony for the most part, but it's still clear we're having TOO much fun, haha. And I'm fine with that! I often have moods that lend themselves to one topic above others, so it all works out. But as someone who is still pretty new at outright admitting I have a kinky side, let alone expressly indulging in it, it can be a hard needle to thread, especially when I prefer such a particular tone.
I often worry that I don't know how to talk to people outside of character, and by that extension, how to talk to them WITHOUT roleplaying. I don't think I've dulled my social skills or anything- in fact, in the long run, it's been beneficial for my communication skills and writing both. But I do think I've gotten a little too obsessed with it all and it can be hard to have a normal conversation when I'd rather be jamming dynamite in your pants.
As I got older, the need to bring friends to a higher, more intimate level of connection and knowing rose in me as well, and that also encouraged me to become very guarded about who I roleplayed with. I miss the craft. I might just have to try running a toony D&D campaign at some point, to try and scratch that itch in a fashion that better fits my spirit nowadays, because I don't exercise it much, except when App and I do character banter together. I imagine you and Aura do similar cute character play together in person, too. ^^
I'm extraordinarily fascinated by the last two paragraphs you typed up. All I can think is: "Oh god, his creative engine is also spiraling out of control. And I bet he's ALSO stupidly happy and TERRIFIED at the same time, like a mad man." I don't understand how and why you got to that point, but it strikes me as a similar experience to the way I've structured my mental scape since picking up practicing Mindfulness Meditation back in 2017. Because the seeds I planted in myself then, and the structures I built to hold the growing spirits have grown in me, and they're so large and magical that I'm convinced they've absolutely pushed me significantly closer to being highly at risk of becoming insane in a couple dozen years.
I have no idea what to make of it, but you've always fascinated me, and gosh. I have no idea what to say. x3
...though nothing's ever gonna beat the high of a good back-and-forth.
So, I still roleplay to this day, and I honestly enjoy it far more than just...talking. You can do that in real life, or on the phone, or literally anywhere else. So, if you're online and want to have fun...just relax and roleplay, you know? At least that's what I feel.
I feel like I shared a similar mentality up until a few years ago, honestly, but for me it ended up not being enough to satisfy me and produce relationships I desired. I hated that feeling.