• He/Him

Hi its me Flux! I mostly talk here about Tabletop RPG's, Actual plays that I like, and other media I enjoy (Like video games!)


My favorite TTRPG's, at the moment include:
-Mothership
-Armor Astir Advent
-HEART: The City Beneath
-Songs for the Dusk
-Tendencies: Spirit and Glamour
-Beam Saber
-Songbirds 3e
-His Majesty The Worm


folly
@folly

i forgot how much i love roleplaying. like, so much of my experience roleplaying is not strictly speaking Best Practices, because we used to play with 100% bleed. absolute embodiment, feel the things your characters are feeling. back when I used to do summer camps in character it was being in-character for a full week, or three back-to-back weeks; the harder you committed, the more the magic was real.

back during plaguequest and spacequest and capequest i would play these wounded and vulnerable and canny characters (sue, nea, and keats respectively), willing to reshape themselves to be anything as long as it was something that could help people and hurt less. because that was me! and so when i needed to know what a character did, I would know what to do in my spirit.

these days, I like to think I know better: I'm better capable of inhabiting a performance while also constructing characterness alien to my self. but I still love inhabiting a character! I love doing interesting things in the creation of a character, and then following through on those with interesting choices. "your character has been mind controlled" yeah guess what. my character's whole trauma is about mind control! let's get with it! when we beat the person who did that it'll be significant and meaningful, and the things my character will give up to see that happen matter


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in reply to @folly's post:

Glad to see someone else who's interested in the phenomenon of Bleed! I remember there used to be twitter discourse about bleed but honestly it's not the bleed itself that's dangerous it's how people treat you while bleed-ing that matters!

Polite disagree on the latter point, as both a reformed bleeder and a LARP veteran; it's not just about how others treat you when bleeding, as bleed can be self-inflicted/inflicted on others ignorantly or even maliciously - bleeding is as much (IMO even moreso) the responsibility of the bleeder as it is the bystanders/other players/etc. As a LARP vet of some ~15 years (WoD/CofD LARPs too, so I've seen/felt some real bleed in my time), I've never once seen a case of bleed that wasn't dangerous to the player and those around them in some capacity, even just socially. It also never went well for the structure of games, constantly causing discomfort and chafing for many involved. To say that it's not dangerous and based on how others treat you is just not true. If someone bleeds uncontrollably, doesn't tell anyone, and then negatively affects the scene/game at large and hurts themselves/others, that cannot be put on the shoulders of the bystanders. Bleed is 100% the responsibility of the player experiencing it, because roleplaying is a choice, so choosing to RP with bleed that could endanger others, whether aware or not, is on the head of the player themselves.

Now, it's very much worth me clarifying, this is with a stricter definition of bleed than the Nordic LARP definition of bleed-in/bleed-out (due to the social-rules-heavy nature of the LARPs I was in). Bleeding, in our stricter terms, is specifically defined as the negative version of what OP is talking about, (the positive would be more like, I guess, 'blood-letting' - an intentional act done in safe and clean environs, etc). The reason the term 'bleeding' is used is because, in most contexts medically, bleeding an uncontrolled and undesirable occurence that should to be rectified, hence why it's both dangerous, and different, from something like method acting, or 'blood-letting'.

We didn't/don't define bleed as 'you feel what your character is feeling', as that's not having your character's feelings bleed over into your feelings, much like how blood flowing through your veins to/from your heart isn't 'bleeding into your heart'. Consciously taking on feelings is acting. It is wholly possible and common (for many people, but not everyone all the time) to do that without negative side-effects, with some practice/training and mindfulness. Bleed we define as the uncontrolled blending of IC feelings with OOC feelings specifically with the reduced/lack of capability to control those feelings, and that distinction is critical. Bleed is when your character-feelings continue and affect you/others negatively after leaving IC.

With acting, you can and should fully have the capability to 'turn it off' when you go OOC/scene ends, even with Method acting (as someone formally trained in actual method acting, not the 'IC-24/7' abusive garbage some hollywood actors use to justify being cunts to real people). You can intentionally feel the difference between the emotions you feel (as your character) towards another character, and the emotions you feel (as the character that is your real self/selves) towards another person(s), and you can willingly separate them and not allow them to affect you negatively. The moment that the former bleeds into the latter, the IC uncontrollably bleeds into the OOC, that's when you've got a Bleed. (Also vice versa for all this, when OOC bleeds into IC and negatively affects a scene/players, that's still bleed too; the distinction in/out is still present, but not as necessary/critical as the difference in positive/negative or controlled/uncontrolled.)

With that definition of bleed, I will reiterate that in 15 years, hundreds of events and thousands of players, I will truly swear to you that I have never seen a case of Bleed that isn't a negative and a risk factor - in part because we use the term to refer to the negative occurences.

On the OTHER hand, being able to (safely) embody your character and feel their feelings, to really get deep Theatre on that shit, then let the curtain fall, go OOC, and be good (even if emotionally distraught) with your fellow players, THAT isn't bleed; that's LIVIN' THE GOOD LIFE, babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Every other Saturday (sometimes every Saturday) for more than a decade, on and off, plus years of on-off volunteer admin work between; I've seen it all when it comes to LARPs, and it's truly the messiest of 'fandom'-style hobbies, b/c it also has hard OOC social rules (like organisation rules/protections/etcc) and they need to make these distinctions, or all hell breaks loose (b/c it's hard to be a good calm adult when you're bleeding...)

And I'm very glad and thankful you took the time to read. I hope it was worth the time and patience you took in reading it! :3

thanks for your contributions to this discussion! I think as I know/use the term, I'm meaning both mostly negative and some small positive parts of the experience—bleed as lending an authenticity to characters (blood-letting?), at the cost of needing significant aftercare and the process itself being unsustainable at length or scale. frequently I would make a choice and then feel "i had no choice but to make that choice—it was what I (the character) had to do", and then feel terrible about the situation later. being able to instead act as a director-writer-actor rather than be-the-character feels like I've grown up in a way, and feels a hundred times safer and more sustainable for my own practices. That subsuming into the character might also strictly-speaking be a different thing than bleed, but they're connected enough in my own experience for the purposes of recounting—as you say, the "lack of capability to control those feelings"

I am really fascinated by roleplay bleed. I honestly thought, as a person who's been RPing since I was like 8 years old and has been involved (peripherally, mostly) in some real shit shows IC and OOC, that I was kind of 'past' bleed - like I'd matured beyond it or something? but rudely learned otherwise earlier this year when I accidentally made a character too personal and ended up becoming pretty depressed over their seemingly hopeless situation. I remember talking to my gf about it like 'it feels like if they have no choice or if no one will help them, that means I have no choice and no one will help me'. even being old enough and experienced enough to recognise it as unhealthy bleed, it was rough and I kind of had to just... experience it and work through it. :(