Irresistable Me
“…Her deep southern accent made her even more irresistible to anyone she spoke to…”
I literally copy/pasted that from someone’s RP post. Relax, it was open chat.
If you can tell me what is wrong with that line, hats off to you. Contact me in world, we might do something. If you don’t know what’s wrong with it, then please, please, please read on.
The thing about that line is that it is a perfect example of godmodding (or godmoding, I can never figure out which one. RP’rs invented that word) by Mary Sue. Yes, we go back to her! It’s always Mary Sue’s fault. Its okay, no matter how much she whines she loves the drama, so we are just going to blame her for everything.
I also want to point out that I see a lot more women, or female avatars, do this than men or male avatars. So I’m going to go ahead and say it’s a chick thing.
How is it godmodding you ask? Well, in that single line the writer has decided that YOU, or anyone that can read it, finds her irresistible simply because you heard her speak. That’s right. YOU find her irresistible now, there is no help for you. You will now go on, for the rest of your miserable Second Life thinking about this woman with the irresistible southern accent. I have witnessed quite a few of these posts, and I could put L$ on that anyone that RP’s has too. Another memorable scene like this was a woman who wrote a three-paragraph post about entering a room. She wrote that the NPC crowd parted like the Red Sea for her, and every man’s jaw dropped open– and some of them even drooled. Drooled. Like she walked by this poor, NPC Slob, now mesmerized by her beauty to the point of lacking any brain functions, and used her fingertip to wipe it up the drool that dripped down his chin. Of course, she had to do all this to NPC’s because not a single real playing man in the room did more than give her a quick glance as she entered. And yes it was realistic to have NPC’s there, and it made sense that there would be more people in the room, but none of us already there had rp’d the presence of any NPC’s. What if we had RP’d that we were taking advantage of the lack of people there to plan our nefarious deeds? We were left with the choice of either completely voiding her post about the drooling parting crowd or simply accept the fact that she godmodded our scene and decided without asking that the room was now FULL of people–drooling people at that.
I know you haven’t noticed all these things about me, so I’m going to tell you!
This same type of RP’r tends to spend a lot of time describing the spellbinding hue of his or her eyes –I’ve even seen some refer to their eyes as “hues” as if “hues” were a synonym for “eyes”. They talk about the seductive fullness of their lips, the tantalizing sway of their hips, the hypnotizing bounce of their breasts, and whatever other florid, self-serving, pompous, ostentatious, godmodding adjective they can think of to describe themselves or their body parts. These words aren’t just descriptive to let us see the body language that isn’t shown in the graphics, each one of those adjectives is a word that has the power to affect another person. What the writers of these words don’t realize is that most of the rest of the people in the room (I’M SO NOT GODMODDING! I SAID MOST) find their post pedantic and unimaginative, and a lot of them think this person just wants to make a long post to boast about their writing prowess and seem like a para-rp’r when in truth all they did was write three paragraphs of meaningless, fluffy drivel. Three fucking paragraphs just to say they entered a room and scratched their delicate, upturned, freckled, elfin nose. They have said nothing of worth, nothing that contributes to the development of the scene or story line, and on top of that we’ve waited 30 minutes for what? To be godmodded into drooling. I’ll be honest, I often find myself skipping through this elaborate prose to find the action and dialogue, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
Honey, we are not impressed.
Think of it for a moment. Maybe you think that strawberries are delicious and sweet. So you describe your lips and plump delicious juicy strawberries… what you don’t realize is that the person you are describing this to HATES strawberries. He breaks out in hives just by smelling strawberries, and, if they should eat one, not only would they projectile vomit all over your Lola’s, but might even die. Delicious you say? I think not. I think this guy would develop an immediate violent aversion to your tantalizing juicy lips. Yet now he’s faced with the dilemma of ignoring all your poetic prose (which means you wasted time) or changing his character to develop a life-long addiction to strawberries just so they don’t embarrass you. Everyone has their own set of likes and dislikes. Strawberries ain’t it for this guy, no matter what you say or how long you took to say it, or how many words are on your essay-post. Some guys like skinny chicks, some guys like them chunky. Some like bling, some don’t. Just don’t write that I’m hypnotized or dazzled by it, because I’m not.
I like ’em big, I like ’em chunky
I can tell you one thing though, when reading that post above I had a hard time NOT responding with a passive-aggressive post of my own that would go along the lines of this:
/me cringes at the sound of a southern drawl, something that sounds like nails on a chalk board to a yank like her
By the way, I love you my southern, sexy-voiced, twangy friends. I was just trying to make a point. I LOVE YOU! And while it takes every tantalizing, irresistible fiber of my being to not type out that line, I am comforted in the idea that I’m not the only one that feels this way. I think I’m just the one being snarky enough to say it publicly. Anyone I talk to while witnessing such a post is cringing as much as I am, or IM’ing me with a HAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA or LMFAO, and they too are expressing the need to make their own passive-aggressive post claiming the opposite of what the poster wrote. So there, I said it for you.
But don’t get me wrong (Ugh, I really really have to stop saying that!). This doesn’t mean your writing has to be bland. Just pick adjectives that are not modifying or controlling how someone else feels about you, or give the reader an option to have those feelings or not. Have I ever done this? Mmmmaybe. There are no perfect RP’rs out there, we all commit faux pas. But, as fascinated as you are by every irresistible word I type, I don’t think I’ve ever done it to the eye-rolling point or intentionally. Of course, there is always someone who is going to roll their eyes. I do it alot, the eye-rolling thing, if you haven’t figured that out by now. Face it, I’m fabulous and I can’t help that. ( Made you do it, huh? You just rolled your eyes! Don’t lie! I godmodded you! 😛 ) But in my defense I want to say that I do make the effort to stick to physical descriptions of things like “bright blue eyes” , or “pink glossy lips” and let the other player decide if they find them alluring or hypnotizing, or disgusting, or what-the-fuck-ever. Maybe they hate pink, or blue eyes. What the fuck do I know? Another thing is to use those terms but give the reader the option to be affected or not. I tend to say things like “she walked in a way that some might find tantalizing“. Maybe your character finds it tantalizing, maybe not. It’s okay, I don’t need it to be. I’m perfectly fine with you not instantly falling in love with me. I am confident that I can wear you down!
If you still don’t think its godmodding, there is a chance that you think this way because you are guilty of this heinous crime. So I’d like to graciously invite you to think again, or I will godmod you into seeing it my way! The person posting this way is roleplaying that they are affecting the other person as much as if they had shot them in the head. They are writing that this person is attracted to them, stating it as fact, without giving them a chance to confirm or deny. They are writing that YOU find them hot, irresistible, mesmerizing, alluring. You can’t help it. You got shot in the head by their mesmerizing beauty as much as if they’d pulled a gun and shot you in the head on the same post without giving you an option to dodge the bullet.
On another note, I want to say that the same applies for negative or disgusting things, but for some reason we don’t get as annoyed at those as much as the ones described above. I think its because a lot of people balk at creating a truly disgusting character. People are more concerned with being approved of, liked and wanted–no, desired! So when someone creates a character that is physically offensive we all tend to agree with them that they are. It’s okay, hot-looking characters that do disgusting things are not considered disgusting. So what if he plays with his own shit, he’s got tattoos and scars and six-pack pixel abs, I want to RP with him! It’s only the ones that LOOK disgusting that we balk at.
We also shun them OOC’ly, but that is the subject for a different rant.
Kaliope Karas - Just a little jaded! 