fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1991 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1991 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

15. [SPOILERS for Legend of Korra]

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16. [SPOILERS for Cabin in the Woods]

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17.[SPOILERS for Mass Effect 3]

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18. [SPOILERS for Game of Thrones]

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19. [SPOILERS for ASOIAF]

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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

20. [TRIGGER WARNING for rape]

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21. [TRIGGER WARNING for stalking/harassment]

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22. [TRIGGER WARNING for mentions of suicide/self-harm]
[SPOILERS for Mad Men]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #284.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - unreadable ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If he creeps you out is there some reason that he's also the person you feel comfortable with? It can be a pretty random thing, though, who you wind up opening up to. I think mismatched and different-aged friendships are awesome; one of my close IRL friends is over twice my age, and if you're an adult in fandom you wind up chatting to a lot of college-age or teenage fans - it can be both normal and awesome, but in this case I can't help but wonder if this dude is getting off on the power imbalance of having a teenager (and it sounds like you're a girl?) pay attention to his power fantasies.

This guy sounds like a pure munchkin (definition 2, part 3). They are everywhere in P&P RP gaming. I'm stuck in a game group with one of them right now and after two sessions it became so excruciating that the rest of us told him en masse to reign his character in and stop hogging the table all the time if he wanted us to keep playing the game. Some people just have no maturity about their creative impulses and can't step outside what they're doing and say 'this is tasteless', 'this is unfun', or 'this has no depth or quality'; it's all about how big it makes them feel. They can still be good and loyal friends (the one in my game group is), but seriously the only way to deal with their characters or creative work is to do that thing you're unable to do; forcefully tell them that they're munchkining again and no one else is going to feel invested in their one-dimensional fapping. This really does work if they have any need for external approval at all (and almost everyone does); they can tone their suegasms down and may even try for sophisticated.

This friendship shit is hard, though. The easiest way to get out of it quietly is to just stop paying them attention until they go away. I just hope that you meet someone else you feel comfortable talking to, someone who doesn't also repulse you. ;_;

Well, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was younger, I was pretty much entirely innocent (also a little oblivious to when I was annoying people but that's a diff story) and A-OK with talking to random people on the internet if we had an implied thing in common by being on the same site for fans of a book series. He was fifteen then but pretty much the closest in interests and how we thought, and we clicked over being silly and writing stories. After a while I didn't really like the fansite anymore (just the actions of people on it after the most active mod died and no one else got recruited to take his place) and drifted, but he stuck with because between us meeting and me floating off from that site we spent a lot of time writing stories in a sort of RP format where we could use anyone's characters (but mostly stayed to our own). And I flounced from that, um, twice. Both times pretty raegy, both times full of hot air, both times probably on to something because it's four-five years later and what I'm pretty sure annoyed me was the massive amount of unrealistic characters (in terms of personality, behaviors, blah blah blah I'm ok with PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS so long as they're PEOPLE in their own right and not either a bleeping self-insert Gary Stu [not for public appearances, m'kay? your fantasies are BORING. at least this one. i can get behind the dragons though, everybody loves dragons] or said self-insert's harem of semi-identical-and-technically-the-same-person ladies or their unnervingly huge family with copious amounts of time travel so they can all be teenagers.) and how his writing ability was stagnating while mine was steadily improving and hey guess what THAT'S WHY I'M HERE.

As for the power fantasy bit, he doesn't really tell me about the RP characters very much he just mentions them off-handedly and every time I'm like 'oh god not again. please. stop it. stop flooding the market, stop using only one character type that's obvious fap-material, and stop telling ME if you won't' in my head but just pretend he didn't said it and babble at him about what I'm doing. Sometimes. Sometimes I don't. (And yes, I do happen to be female.)

no maturity about their creative impulses
Oh god, the nail, it has been hit on the head so thoroughly I think it has a severe concussion.

I think, if I do want to salvage this friendship, the first thing I'm definitely going to have to do is (at the next opportunity) tell him what I do think about his characters, tell him that I'm not interested in his - quote unquote - one-dimensional fapping and I doubt anyone else is either, and maybe link a few 'how to write a believable character that people might want to strangle but won't want to strangle for having the hand of the creator guiding their every move to something most beneficial' pages.

*sob* Don't I know it. It's hard. It's hard but I'm pretty sure at least one person might understand. (aka you who did you think :P) I dunno if I will drift from him too, I'm pretty sure I'm too damn invested in this six-year fiasco to drop even if it might be better in the long run... maybe I'll try what another poster said first and make more friends, so I'm not dumping all my various fandoms on one guy and then feeling mildly resentful when he only likes a few of them...

I would do what you mentioned in the penultimate paragraph and then see how reacts.

I predict he will get offended, but at least that might stop what little lingering guilt you might have.

And yes, definitely make more friends. You don't have to aim for a super-best-friend, just people to squee with and that share interests with you, and then if a best friendship type of deal starts developing, it will do so naturally, and you'll likely feel less pressure in that sense.

/much belated

aaagh I do not get why they do that. I understand when it's a computer game and you just want to have the most maxed-out character possible but for a game where you're RPing with other people, why would you want to play the same boring character over and over again. :(

I hate the technically-same-person ladies trope. It's (oops spoiler) the worst thing about one of my favourite books, ILLUMINATUS! and I worry that there are still people out there who do it because they think erasing women is like really meaningful and clever ://// Weird thing is, I feel like that kind of specificity about women is a common munchkin trait; just like they want to play their one true powerfullest character, they also want their character to have the one true beautifullest woman, and waist-hip ratio is just another stat to min-max over.

There is a Captain Awkward tag for this shit - http://captainawkward.com/tag/the-african-violet-of-broken-friendship/ There's also something I read years ago that's stuck with me ever since; there's no therapeutic counselling and repair process for friendship the way there is for a poorly functioning but salvageable marriage. Friendships are often important enough to be worth saving (especially when one has few friends) but we don't see that work as important enough to warrant formal, professional support.

I do hope you make friends in your new fandoms so this guy isn't a problem any more. Innocence lost can be replaced by confidence gained, I hope.

[ SECRET POST #1991 ]

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