-My family life sucks. Insert several reasons here, but they all basically boil down to the fact that my mom is crazy. -I'm stressed because I have a lot to get done. -I need a job. -Health issues; and people's reaction to them, either out of concern or the belief that the issues "aren't real". -The inability for people to clarify intentions or statements and therefore inferring what I mean, inferring wrongly, and the situation escalating from there. Taking my statements out of context, or believing I say one thing and it's automatically a lie no matter what reasoning I give. That and when people assume that I feel a certain way without it even being brought up for conversation and almost always being wrong. Particularly when they decide it's a good idea to tell others I feel that way.
I could go into greater detail about each, and give examples, but that's all that it basically comes down to.
The mom was being just as much of a prude as my mom,
Why is it any of their business? Remember kiddies, when YOU hit 18, you never have to (legally) put up with any shit your parents bring forward!
Thing is, the girl complained to her mom about her bad day, which included this situation, and her mom complained to the people who are in charge of the residence halls.
I was talking about Axel's situation, late post sorry.
Ah. Yes, that would be different. Lots of people get money from their parents well after age 18, though, so the principle holds.
This. My parents (my dad, specifically, my mom doesn't work) pay for my schooling, so I still have to deal with whatever crap they throw at me. That aside, it's my family, and I'm simply not heartless enough to ignore them despite very well knowing how crazy my mom is. To put it another way, I love my dad, but visiting my dad also means visiting my mom, whether I want to see her/deal with her or not.
A group of people were doing a Naruto thriller cosplay skit for Otakon 2005, and some were from the RIT anime club. The leader of the skit, Annette, was dating Dom at some point before Otakon (I'm fuzzy on these specifics). While they were dating it was determined Dom would be the lead dancer (Orochimaru), and Annette would make all the awesome costumes. He paid for the materials and she got to work. They broke up before Otakon, leaving the jacket completed and in Annette's possession. He never told the cosplay group that he would not do the sketch with them but did bail on all their group practices prior to Otakon. Despite assuring the group that he was still going to do the skit, when he latched onto the FRC at Otakon that he made a big deal about not doing the skit anymore and that they would be screwed without him and the jacket.
He stalked Annette and one of her friends back to her hotel room where he badgered them with an excuse about needing to practice in his costume. They reluctantly handed it over and never saw it again. He stashed it in his hotel room and refused to hand it over to the cosplay group. Annette had her mother and brother at the convention as well, and no one (except Dom?) was pleased with how this was going down.
As Rym said the FRC was exiting a panel and Dom latched onto the group at the edge. This made him an easy target for Annette's brother who locked onto Dom from across the hall. One second we were all talking and then the next a guy larger than Dom was shoving him away from us. I don't know if punches were thrown, but the brother knocked him into a trash can and knocked it all over. There was yelling and Pete and James tried to step in until security came and threw the brother and Dom out of Otakon for the time being.
Editted because I got the jacket-snatching wrong and I found stuff saying he never made an effort to actually practice with the group before Otakon or contribute.
@Lisa: I didn't "try" to step in. I successfully pulled Annette's brother away from Dom and kept him from bashing the little shit's head in.
That man had pure hate in his eyes.
I'll type out the Steve Towell story tommorrow, when I'm in front of a proper keyboard. The long and short of it: I'm the problem solver in the crew. :P
On the theme of Otakon drama; here's one because of a friend I'll call Rod.
It was 2005 and all my friends went to Otakon. (I didn't since I was broke.) Rod was a whishy washy nice guy syndrome having guy who was douche-y. He also tried to get with every girl in our group and was targeting Fresh. Fresh was with Lars and have been for a long time. He tried to break them up at the con and get on Fresh's good side all con. Needless to say it failed, but gave everyone a horrible time at the con and post con.
He didn't hang with him for a long while after wards. But later he manned up well and actually learned some stuff.
I don't intervene in chick fights. That shit is brutal.
Ain't that the truth. There were some serious lady fights in high school, mostly featuring largish black girls. Shit is intense. There was one in particular where a high heeled shot got put through another girl's face!
I covered all of my drama within the legal thread last week. It sucks ass, but my family doesn't want to get involved with any more trouble or possible legal situations, and my lease will end in July. I guess if I have any drama still stuck with it, is trying to get over feelings of rage and blind anger towards these people. Seriously, if a meth lab blows up in that apartment complex, I won't feel the least bit sorry.
If I have any other that worries me, I guess it would be with college. I think I'm getting stuck within courses because Summer classes don't offer as much, and I won't be able to declare a major until I get everything completed within Fall of 2011. And this really sucks, because I'll only have to take...1 class.
Edit - Going back over the dating thread to save bother -
Not so much a dating story, but an end of dating story - I'd been dating a girl for about 11 months or so, when out of the blue, she dumps me - By inviting me to her wedding. To someone else.
A friend of mine is pretty wrecked - his girlfriend didn't break up with him, didn't say owt to him, she just started dating another dude and completely stopped speaking to him. He didn't do anything wrong, she just fucked him off without having the sand to actually tell him. oh, bonus - Turns out the reason she gave for not talking to him, was lying about family trouble - Which makes it even worse, because he cares a lot about her family.
Also, what she told him the family trouble was, is that her mother had supposedly admitted to being an alcoholic, and was going into rehab. Which troubled him greatly, as he cared deeply for her family, so he sent her(the mother) a letter of support. Turns out she never did any such thing, and the lass caught hell for it.
(Also, somewhere in the dating thread, Omnutia noted that Luke should host the next incarnation of Crystal Maze, which I disagree with, as I don't think he'd come off NEARLY as creepy as Richard O'Brien when hitting on every female contestant under 30, and JLawson continues to be one of the sweetest dudes ever. Omnutia quoted roughly half of my favorite activities from when I was 16, A porrige recipe appears, Whisper of the heart will get you laid(except when it doesn't), we started to suspect that Scott is Asexual, and then figured out that he's actually an expy of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, I noted that it's bonus points if I manage to pull while giving the "This is how churba got these scars" talk, Axel was told to stop being a pussy(and he did), We learned that comfort food and a listening ear, much like colt .45, works every time, Open, poly and similar relationships are not for the faint of heart or thoughtless of action, and my brother gave the advice "Don't be a Enunch, Just fucking do it. Can't expect to get laid if you don't have balls.")
Call me old fashioned, but 18 year olds should not have 14 year old girlfriends. Nor should 14 year old girls be going out with 18 year old boys. What on earth were the parents thinking!
Me and this guy, 100% on the same train of thought.
Anyways, for a few years I ran a roleplaying guild on World of Warcraft. While I met some amazing storytellers there and became party to a number of wonderful plots, this position also heavily acquainted me with Drama: MMO Edition. Some situations among my guild and server mates:
1. Guy A is a lonely nerd in love with every girl. One girl in particular will not clearly convey her disinterest because she loves the attention, despite being repulsed by Guy A himself. One day, the benefit of the attention is outweighed by the annoyingness of his clingy behavior, and she freaks out at him and /ignores him in the game and on instant messengers. Guy A, who had known her for years, is heartbroken and bewildered as to the cause of this.
2. Guy B causes drama by attempting to assert himself as an authority in every conversation, getting into dominance fights/arguments with other males in the guild, not realizing that he has a berserk button and then jumping into situations where it is likely to be inadvertently pushed, and stopping in the middle of roleplays to whine that people aren't taking his character seriously enough. Other people, annoyed by this over time, become all too willing to engage in argument, fight for dominance themselves, and deliberately push said berserk button. Explosions ensue.
3. Too many instances to count of people being unhappy with some aspect of their stories or their interactions with others, but instead of being up-front but kind with their roleplaying partners/team about these qualms in hopes of talking them out, choose to viciously bitch about it behind the scenes. Or even worse, carry their complaints to a public forum, hoping to garner sympathy and support for themselves and condemnation for the other parties involved. But because people flock to drama and excitement, sides are taken, cliques are formed, and deep-rooted hatreds are born. This is truly a community-destroyer.
4. Too many instances to count of extreme jealousy when one person's habitual RP partner decides to spend time roleplaying with other people, too. Bitter arguments and accusations of betrayal ensue. Bullying of the "straying" person's other RP friends sometimes ensues. One female player, despite being dismissed from the guild and chat channel for bullying a male player's other female friends, kept attempting to make alternate characters and sneak back in! Eventually this escalated into interruption of roleplaying events. After numerous reports to the GMs, her account was temporarily suspended.
5. Too many instances to count of the community forming implicit rules of conduct, and then freaking out crazily when someone, typically a really young person or someone new to RP, violates them. If Explosive Verbal Freakout does not ensue, queue #3. These rules of conduct can be anything from sensible ("don't force your actions on other players, you can't just type that you chop someone's head off") to quite arbitrary ("we don't allow x,y, or z types of characters.")
6. Girl takes part in Guy's plot. Girl finds out some privileged story information out-of-character. Girl proceeds to tell everyone about this information, as if her character knew it. When Guy asks Girl to stop, Girl refuses. Girl is politely asked by guildmaster to respect her RP partner's wishes. Girl RAEGQUITS guild in response, causing consternation. Later everyone learns that she has done this very thing while playing the other faction.
And there are many more! But in sum, most roleplaying drama is caused by: -> People using their characters/avatars as vehicles for the fulfillment of some unsatisfied need. Almost universally, this is the desire for attention and importance. The need for power and dominance is also typical. -> Lack of self-awareness. People just don't realize when they are doing the former, or that they have triggers/berserk buttons where things innocuous to others can send them over the edge. -> Inability or unwillingness to communicate clearly and resolve issues directly. -> Community drama is like a gladitorial match or a good ole beheading - everyone wants to watch, and so it is allowed or even encouraged.
Ok, I have a story of Drama involving the Early Anime club (and not girls :-p).
Back in the 1999-2001 era of the RIT anime club. The club was run by a good friend of mine. Because of my friendship with the president I got to hang out with the e-board while they were in session eventually becoming a assistant on up until i ran the club 2002-2003. The club at that time focused around a few people who were connected in some way to either Japan or a fansubing group. This was before the time of digital fansubs and the VHS tape, while on the way out, still dominated fandom. A six member board (with the President holding two votes in the case of a tie) was dominated by two factions. The Elitist faction who believed that anime should be coveted and only given out in the most perfect forms controlled by a small group and the main-streamers who believed the club should spread anime to everyone and try hard to appeal to other groups. Topics ranged from what generation fansubs to use to what anime shows to showcase to whether we should show the professional copy or the fansub dominated the discussion and split the two group (as well as crazy topics like what kind of shelves to build for the tapes :-p). The Mainstream faction had two votes and the elitist faction had three. From the looks of it the president held a large amount of power in the club during those years and should have used it to make quick decisions. However the President decided to stay out of the decisions and not pick a side or even call a vote when it came down to this.
This lead to 3 hour plus Eboard meetings. The discussions would go round and round with each side asking the president to make a decision. Usually the meeting would end and nothing of note would be decided leaving the real discussions to occur behind the scenes. The president would not budge from his neutral position since he did not want to hurts his friends on either side. The arguments drew on and started to get personal for the elitist faction in the argument this was not just a difference in philosophy's this was an attack on what made them feel special and have power. The times were a changing and this group wanted to hold onto their small power base to the very end. The president ended up filibustering for most of his two years.
During that time very little was resolved until board elections the following year cased the other faction to gain control in 2001. 2001 and before the club struggled to get 30-40 people a meeting and had about 60 total members. 2001 and beyond meetings would grow to have 90-120 people with over 300 total members spanning the greater Rochester area pulling in members from other clubs and such. (Past 2006 I don't know since most of my younger colleagues had graduated by then)
Obviously this is just a quick look at the frustration and drama caused by not having a decisive leader. The two factions would have had less emotional weigh in the argument, if they didn't drag on so long and I'm pretty sure the club would have grown had it actually made some decisions during those times.
You guys... I read your stories to feel better. Your drama has got nothing on the everyday drama of my family and gives me hope that, someday, my life will be at similar levels of drama as yours.
Comments
-My family life sucks. Insert several reasons here, but they all basically boil down to the fact that my mom is crazy.
-I'm stressed because I have a lot to get done.
-I need a job.
-Health issues; and people's reaction to them, either out of concern or the belief that the issues "aren't real".
-The inability for people to clarify intentions or statements and therefore inferring what I mean, inferring wrongly, and the situation escalating from there. Taking my statements out of context, or believing I say one thing and it's automatically a lie no matter what reasoning I give. That and when people assume that I feel a certain way without it even being brought up for conversation and almost always being wrong. Particularly when they decide it's a good idea to tell others I feel that way.
I could go into greater detail about each, and give examples, but that's all that it basically comes down to.
A group of people were doing a Naruto thriller cosplay skit for Otakon 2005, and some were from the RIT anime club. The leader of the skit, Annette, was dating Dom at some point before Otakon (I'm fuzzy on these specifics). While they were dating it was determined Dom would be the lead dancer (Orochimaru), and Annette would make all the awesome costumes. He paid for the materials and she got to work. They broke up before Otakon, leaving the jacket completed and in Annette's possession. He never told the cosplay group that he would not do the sketch with them but did bail on all their group practices prior to Otakon. Despite assuring the group that he was still going to do the skit, when he latched onto the FRC at Otakon that he made a big deal about not doing the skit anymore and that they would be screwed without him and the jacket.
He stalked Annette and one of her friends back to her hotel room where he badgered them with an excuse about needing to practice in his costume. They reluctantly handed it over and never saw it again. He stashed it in his hotel room and refused to hand it over to the cosplay group. Annette had her mother and brother at the convention as well, and no one (except Dom?) was pleased with how this was going down.
As Rym said the FRC was exiting a panel and Dom latched onto the group at the edge. This made him an easy target for Annette's brother who locked onto Dom from across the hall. One second we were all talking and then the next a guy larger than Dom was shoving him away from us. I don't know if punches were thrown, but the brother knocked him into a trash can and knocked it all over. There was yelling and Pete and James tried to step in until security came and threw the brother and Dom out of Otakon for the time being.
Editted because I got the jacket-snatching wrong and I found stuff saying he never made an effort to actually practice with the group before Otakon or contribute.
That man had pure hate in his eyes.
I'll type out the Steve Towell story tommorrow, when I'm in front of a proper keyboard. The long and short of it: I'm the problem solver in the crew. :P
It was 2005 and all my friends went to Otakon. (I didn't since I was broke.) Rod was a whishy washy nice guy syndrome having guy who was douche-y. He also tried to get with every girl in our group and was targeting Fresh. Fresh was with Lars and have been for a long time. He tried to break them up at the con and get on Fresh's good side all con. Needless to say it failed, but gave everyone a horrible time at the con and post con.
He didn't hang with him for a long while after wards. But later he manned up well and actually learned some stuff.
If I have any other that worries me, I guess it would be with college. I think I'm getting stuck within courses because Summer classes don't offer as much, and I won't be able to declare a major until I get everything completed within Fall of 2011. And this really sucks, because I'll only have to take...1 class.
Edit - Going back over the dating thread to save bother - Also, what she told him the family trouble was, is that her mother had supposedly admitted to being an alcoholic, and was going into rehab. Which troubled him greatly, as he cared deeply for her family, so he sent her(the mother) a letter of support. Turns out she never did any such thing, and the lass caught hell for it.
(Also, somewhere in the dating thread, Omnutia noted that Luke should host the next incarnation of Crystal Maze, which I disagree with, as I don't think he'd come off NEARLY as creepy as Richard O'Brien when hitting on every female contestant under 30, and JLawson continues to be one of the sweetest dudes ever. Omnutia quoted roughly half of my favorite activities from when I was 16, A porrige recipe appears, Whisper of the heart will get you laid(except when it doesn't), we started to suspect that Scott is Asexual, and then figured out that he's actually an expy of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, I noted that it's bonus points if I manage to pull while giving the "This is how churba got these scars" talk, Axel was told to stop being a pussy(and he did), We learned that comfort food and a listening ear, much like colt .45, works every time, Open, poly and similar relationships are not for the faint of heart or thoughtless of action, and my brother gave the advice "Don't be a Enunch, Just fucking do it. Can't expect to get laid if you don't have balls.")
Anyways, for a few years I ran a roleplaying guild on World of Warcraft. While I met some amazing storytellers there and became party to a number of wonderful plots, this position also heavily acquainted me with Drama: MMO Edition. Some situations among my guild and server mates:
1. Guy A is a lonely nerd in love with every girl. One girl in particular will not clearly convey her disinterest because she loves the attention, despite being repulsed by Guy A himself. One day, the benefit of the attention is outweighed by the annoyingness of his clingy behavior, and she freaks out at him and /ignores him in the game and on instant messengers. Guy A, who had known her for years, is heartbroken and bewildered as to the cause of this.
2. Guy B causes drama by attempting to assert himself as an authority in every conversation, getting into dominance fights/arguments with other males in the guild, not realizing that he has a berserk button and then jumping into situations where it is likely to be inadvertently pushed, and stopping in the middle of roleplays to whine that people aren't taking his character seriously enough. Other people, annoyed by this over time, become all too willing to engage in argument, fight for dominance themselves, and deliberately push said berserk button. Explosions ensue.
3. Too many instances to count of people being unhappy with some aspect of their stories or their interactions with others, but instead of being up-front but kind with their roleplaying partners/team about these qualms in hopes of talking them out, choose to viciously bitch about it behind the scenes. Or even worse, carry their complaints to a public forum, hoping to garner sympathy and support for themselves and condemnation for the other parties involved. But because people flock to drama and excitement, sides are taken, cliques are formed, and deep-rooted hatreds are born. This is truly a community-destroyer.
4. Too many instances to count of extreme jealousy when one person's habitual RP partner decides to spend time roleplaying with other people, too. Bitter arguments and accusations of betrayal ensue. Bullying of the "straying" person's other RP friends sometimes ensues. One female player, despite being dismissed from the guild and chat channel for bullying a male player's other female friends, kept attempting to make alternate characters and sneak back in! Eventually this escalated into interruption of roleplaying events. After numerous reports to the GMs, her account was temporarily suspended.
5. Too many instances to count of the community forming implicit rules of conduct, and then freaking out crazily when someone, typically a really young person or someone new to RP, violates them. If Explosive Verbal Freakout does not ensue, queue #3. These rules of conduct can be anything from sensible ("don't force your actions on other players, you can't just type that you chop someone's head off") to quite arbitrary ("we don't allow x,y, or z types of characters.")
6. Girl takes part in Guy's plot. Girl finds out some privileged story information out-of-character. Girl proceeds to tell everyone about this information, as if her character knew it. When Guy asks Girl to stop, Girl refuses. Girl is politely asked by guildmaster to respect her RP partner's wishes. Girl RAEGQUITS guild in response, causing consternation. Later everyone learns that she has done this very thing while playing the other faction.
And there are many more! But in sum, most roleplaying drama is caused by:
-> People using their characters/avatars as vehicles for the fulfillment of some unsatisfied need. Almost universally, this is the desire for attention and importance. The need for power and dominance is also typical.
-> Lack of self-awareness. People just don't realize when they are doing the former, or that they have triggers/berserk buttons where things innocuous to others can send them over the edge.
-> Inability or unwillingness to communicate clearly and resolve issues directly.
-> Community drama is like a gladitorial match or a good ole beheading - everyone wants to watch, and so it is allowed or even encouraged.
Yeah, I don't roleplay online anymore.
Back in the 1999-2001 era of the RIT anime club. The club was run by a good friend of mine. Because of my friendship with the president I got to hang out with the e-board while they were in session eventually becoming a assistant on up until i ran the club 2002-2003. The club at that time focused around a few people who were connected in some way to either Japan or a fansubing group. This was before the time of digital fansubs and the VHS tape, while on the way out, still dominated fandom. A six member board (with the President holding two votes in the case of a tie) was dominated by two factions. The Elitist faction who believed that anime should be coveted and only given out in the most perfect forms controlled by a small group and the main-streamers who believed the club should spread anime to everyone and try hard to appeal to other groups. Topics ranged from what generation fansubs to use to what anime shows to showcase to whether we should show the professional copy or the fansub dominated the discussion and split the two group (as well as crazy topics like what kind of shelves to build for the tapes :-p). The Mainstream faction had two votes and the elitist faction had three. From the looks of it the president held a large amount of power in the club during those years and should have used it to make quick decisions. However the President decided to stay out of the decisions and not pick a side or even call a vote when it came down to this.
This lead to 3 hour plus Eboard meetings. The discussions would go round and round with each side asking the president to make a decision. Usually the meeting would end and nothing of note would be decided leaving the real discussions to occur behind the scenes. The president would not budge from his neutral position since he did not want to hurts his friends on either side. The arguments drew on and started to get personal for the elitist faction in the argument this was not just a difference in philosophy's this was an attack on what made them feel special and have power. The times were a changing and this group wanted to hold onto their small power base to the very end. The president ended up filibustering for most of his two years.
During that time very little was resolved until board elections the following year cased the other faction to gain control in 2001. 2001 and before the club struggled to get 30-40 people a meeting and had about 60 total members. 2001 and beyond meetings would grow to have 90-120 people with over 300 total members spanning the greater Rochester area pulling in members from other clubs and such. (Past 2006 I don't know since most of my younger colleagues had graduated by then)
Obviously this is just a quick look at the frustration and drama caused by not having a decisive leader. The two factions would have had less emotional weigh in the argument, if they didn't drag on so long and I'm pretty sure the club would have grown had it actually made some decisions during those times.