Never Apologize For Putting Yourself First
So, today I was reminded of an experience I had a number of years back where I was triggered while roleplaying. It wasn’t a trigger I knew I had and I got sucked a little too far into this plot, to the point I couldn’t safely extract myself and my character from the situation without leaving the rp, so I stepped down. Unfortunately, a bit of a scene had been made, I was less experienced with certain emotional things back then, and I wasn’t the only person who had an issue with the plot and the player was asked to step down. The player decided to just change their character and after a couple weeks, I returned to the rp. I was blamed by both the player and the third member of the plot for causing them to lose that ship. I was sorry, it wasn’t anything I was expecting, but the damage had been done.
Fast forward a bit and I applied at a new rp, one where I knew the admin and also was aware these players were. I applied knowing this. I was rejected from the rp. On the grounds that they didn’t want me to “make a scene.” I was rejected because I’d discovered a trigger and they didn’t like that, essentially, is what it boiled down to.Â
I forgot about that, until today, when someone came to me asking if I’d change a character bio, because they discovered a trigger they didn’t know they had. It was something I’d asked about before writing the bio, but understand completely that it was a big trigger and that the difference between agreeing to an idea and agreeing to a bio and seeing that same idea written out, can be very different. I was more than happy to rewrite the bio and remove the trigger. Which actually gave me a better version of the character to work with.
However, they apologized to me, for asking me to not trigger them. And that struck a chord with me, because no one should have to apologize for asking someone else not to trigger them in a shared space that is supposed to be fun. Roleplay is fiction. It is fiction that is shared between more than one person for the sake of writing a story. It’s collaborative and all parties have a hand in not ruining it for anyone else. I would rather have someone ask me to change something triggering about my character than have them suffer in silence or decide not to write with, because of a trigger. My characters aren’t real, but the people I write them with are, and I will always put real people before my characters.
My philosophy with rp is to always put yourself first. Real life comes first, rp comes second, or fifth, or wherever else it has to. It’s supposed to be fun, and yeah angst is fuckin fun for some of us, but not everyone can handle certain things and that’s fucking okay. I never want someone to apologize for asking me to put their health and their stability before my character, but especially not before an idea of a character.
Never apologize for putting yourself first, but especially not when it comes to something that is supposed to be fun.Â
