first, i'm really grateful for the opportunity to play in this setting and the amount of work that's been put into it! i wanted to give games a go after coming back to rp, but with the popularity of this character, there really hasn't been any way to until i saw trj come along, so thank you for having me! people have been really friendly and helpful, and i appreciate that deeply.
i've already spoken with some people about this, but recently i've felt really uncomfortable playing bucky in the game because of the extremely heavy lean into discussing the prison's political aspects. because of the way some characters have reacted icly and how people have commented on certain circumstances oocly, i feel like freely playing my character from his more harsher aspects will just alienate everyone both icly and oocly, and so i've held back on letting him do anything.
comics universes are pretty wild as a basis, but bucky barnes has one of the darkest stories in the marvel comics and has arguable the darkest past in the marvel cinematic universe right now.
his whole backstory is based on the war atrocities that occurred during ww2. he grew up in the depression. his family was never very well off. his best friend was a dumbass that kept trying to kill himself. he hates bullies. he was drafted into a war that he knew he likely wouldn't survive. he was captured as a prisoner of war. he was experimented on by a mad scientist trying to make a super soldier serum, saved, but still managed to fuck up being a war hero and fell to his death. except he didn't die. he survived a death fall, lost his arm, was recaptured as a prisoner of war, tortured more, experimented on more, given an arm he didn't want, brainwashed, and then made him into a weapon for a group of bullies that think they know better than anyone else on earth who should live or die. while from this side of the 4th wall, his rescue was planned in the story, in his world, the fact he even broke free from hydra and managed to regain his sense of self is a complete fluke. and while fandom has done a good job of painting him as some sad uwu baby that needs to be protected, he isn't. he's paid his dues. he's competent and deployable to deal with very serious problems, most recently international terrorists, and for all his shortcomings, he still keeps going because he believes in the good in people and protecting that at all costs.
the level of complaint from inmates that has been going on is something he would very well shut down by putting them all in an enclosed space with a loaf of bread and a bottle of water to split between them for a few days to let them know what a real prison is like. oocly, i want to let people play out storylines and do things with their character that they'd like, but in accommodating that, i've had to play my character more passively than he would otherwise because i also don't want to strong arm anyone's character into what can be seen as torture but is comparable to how some prisons still function in the real world, and tbh, even saying this now, it's nerve-wracking to admit because i wholly expect people to come at me saying "wow that's so fucked up what's wrong with you why are you playing this character how dare you think about things like that" because it can hit a lot of real triggers for people, and we're just supposed to be writing things for fun here.
but that's what things have felt like for me for the past month. most of you know i wasn't super active for a chunk of the month, but frankly part of me was glad that i had health problems and loads of work stress to keep from needing to engage rp too actively because then i would have had to wrestle with bucky's inaction more. talk and blame are easy, but needing to oocly take responsibility for a character that would not only take action but also enforce his choices against the inmates as being necessary, however cruel they are, is not something i joined this game to do. feeling like i even have to do that also feels miserable for me because neither bucky or i am here to be cruel to people.
a lot of the discussion on believability and realism, were it more balanced toward the wardens, would get really dark really fast, and this isn't a horror game. i understand where a lot of the inmates are coming from, but i feel like i need to share what that has been like from a warden's perspective because realistically playing my character would alienate him very quickly icly, and that's not what i want to happen since that would immediately make him leave the ship since he joined the peregrine to avoid that on earth. anyway. at this current rate, i might have to drop him because icly he can't stand how imbalanced things are without doing something i don't want him to do and would otherwise leave the peregrine as a lost cause. i don't want to do that obviously, but i feel like i basically have no choice.
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i've already spoken with some people about this, but recently i've felt really uncomfortable playing bucky in the game because of the extremely heavy lean into discussing the prison's political aspects. because of the way some characters have reacted icly and how people have commented on certain circumstances oocly, i feel like freely playing my character from his more harsher aspects will just alienate everyone both icly and oocly, and so i've held back on letting him do anything.
comics universes are pretty wild as a basis, but bucky barnes has one of the darkest stories in the marvel comics and has arguable the darkest past in the marvel cinematic universe right now.
his whole backstory is based on the war atrocities that occurred during ww2. he grew up in the depression. his family was never very well off. his best friend was a dumbass that kept trying to kill himself. he hates bullies. he was drafted into a war that he knew he likely wouldn't survive. he was captured as a prisoner of war. he was experimented on by a mad scientist trying to make a super soldier serum, saved, but still managed to fuck up being a war hero and fell to his death. except he didn't die. he survived a death fall, lost his arm, was recaptured as a prisoner of war, tortured more, experimented on more, given an arm he didn't want, brainwashed, and then made him into a weapon for a group of bullies that think they know better than anyone else on earth who should live or die. while from this side of the 4th wall, his rescue was planned in the story, in his world, the fact he even broke free from hydra and managed to regain his sense of self is a complete fluke. and while fandom has done a good job of painting him as some sad uwu baby that needs to be protected, he isn't. he's paid his dues. he's competent and deployable to deal with very serious problems, most recently international terrorists, and for all his shortcomings, he still keeps going because he believes in the good in people and protecting that at all costs.
the level of complaint from inmates that has been going on is something he would very well shut down by putting them all in an enclosed space with a loaf of bread and a bottle of water to split between them for a few days to let them know what a real prison is like. oocly, i want to let people play out storylines and do things with their character that they'd like, but in accommodating that, i've had to play my character more passively than he would otherwise because i also don't want to strong arm anyone's character into what can be seen as torture but is comparable to how some prisons still function in the real world, and tbh, even saying this now, it's nerve-wracking to admit because i wholly expect people to come at me saying "wow that's so fucked up what's wrong with you why are you playing this character how dare you think about things like that" because it can hit a lot of real triggers for people, and we're just supposed to be writing things for fun here.
but that's what things have felt like for me for the past month. most of you know i wasn't super active for a chunk of the month, but frankly part of me was glad that i had health problems and loads of work stress to keep from needing to engage rp too actively because then i would have had to wrestle with bucky's inaction more. talk and blame are easy, but needing to oocly take responsibility for a character that would not only take action but also enforce his choices against the inmates as being necessary, however cruel they are, is not something i joined this game to do. feeling like i even have to do that also feels miserable for me because neither bucky or i am here to be cruel to people.
a lot of the discussion on believability and realism, were it more balanced toward the wardens, would get really dark really fast, and this isn't a horror game. i understand where a lot of the inmates are coming from, but i feel like i need to share what that has been like from a warden's perspective because realistically playing my character would alienate him very quickly icly, and that's not what i want to happen since that would immediately make him leave the ship since he joined the peregrine to avoid that on earth. anyway. at this current rate, i might have to drop him because icly he can't stand how imbalanced things are without doing something i don't want him to do and would otherwise leave the peregrine as a lost cause. i don't want to do that obviously, but i feel like i basically have no choice.