On Playing a Monster
TRIGGER WARNING: This post mentions rape, murder, torture, and incest.
This isn't the first time I've been left severely questioning myself in the wake of a friend's reaction to the things I play out online. This isn't the first time I've felt like a terrible person because I enjoy writing a serial killing, child raping, obsessional man who could be seen as a psychopath. Over nearly three and a half years of playing him, I've questioned myself a lot and every time, I come to the conclusion that he is my coping mechanism until the time where I can safely finally act as the monster I once was and put that sexually precocious child to rest. But that requires the right combination of participant and time and I'll never force someone to act as my sibling for the sake of my own mental health, even if it could mean an end to a lot of my guilt and fear of myself.
But this is the first time that I've been told it's unhealthy to cope like this since I justified it by saying that it's just fiction and the place this is being written has trigger warnings at the very top. I believe that everything is acceptable to produce and view in fiction. No actual people are hurt in the writing or playing out of a scene where a teenager gets raped, an assassin is blackmailed into sex believing it'll protect his friend, people get killed in ways ranging from a bullet to the head to slowly being stabbed or gutted. I'm far from the only person who uses writing and RP to both cope with past trauma and indulge in fantasies that could never be safely acted on in reality. I know I'm probably not the only person to have his friends question him for it either, but it still hurts.
I question myself enough as it is. I wonder why I like acting out things I could never be capable of in reality. Hell, I wonder if I might be capable of them if pushed enough and sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did act on the things I've researched. In theory, I think I could get away with murder if I took the time to prepare for it because I know too damn much about forensics and how people slip up to get caught. And despite all that I've done in the past, I enjoy writing rape scenes with victims of varying ages. It's both to cope with my past and to deal with that curiosity inside me that I've always had about the horrible things people do to each other. My friends tell me that if I wonder so hard about whether or not I'm horrible, that I'm not, but I still live and question every thing I do because of people that have called me abusive, manipulative, and any number of terrible things.
I want to believe that I can be a good person despite all of the hideous things I do in RP and enjoy reading and writing about, but every time I get to the point where I can almost accept that, someone or something makes me doubt myself all over again. If my friends don't believe that my reasons are good enough, I can't believe it. It's silly to be so dependent on other people's opinions about what sort of person I am and yet I can't completely stop it.
No matter what I play out online, read, or write, and no matter how much I end up questioning myself, I want to feel that I would never truly cross the line into reality. Every time someone questions me, though, I feel like they're questioning how secure I am on my position enjoying fiction and like they think I'll actually act on it one day. I think that's what hurts the most.
This probably made no sense because it's rambling. But oh well. It's the best I can do right now.
This isn't the first time I've been left severely questioning myself in the wake of a friend's reaction to the things I play out online. This isn't the first time I've felt like a terrible person because I enjoy writing a serial killing, child raping, obsessional man who could be seen as a psychopath. Over nearly three and a half years of playing him, I've questioned myself a lot and every time, I come to the conclusion that he is my coping mechanism until the time where I can safely finally act as the monster I once was and put that sexually precocious child to rest. But that requires the right combination of participant and time and I'll never force someone to act as my sibling for the sake of my own mental health, even if it could mean an end to a lot of my guilt and fear of myself.
But this is the first time that I've been told it's unhealthy to cope like this since I justified it by saying that it's just fiction and the place this is being written has trigger warnings at the very top. I believe that everything is acceptable to produce and view in fiction. No actual people are hurt in the writing or playing out of a scene where a teenager gets raped, an assassin is blackmailed into sex believing it'll protect his friend, people get killed in ways ranging from a bullet to the head to slowly being stabbed or gutted. I'm far from the only person who uses writing and RP to both cope with past trauma and indulge in fantasies that could never be safely acted on in reality. I know I'm probably not the only person to have his friends question him for it either, but it still hurts.
I question myself enough as it is. I wonder why I like acting out things I could never be capable of in reality. Hell, I wonder if I might be capable of them if pushed enough and sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did act on the things I've researched. In theory, I think I could get away with murder if I took the time to prepare for it because I know too damn much about forensics and how people slip up to get caught. And despite all that I've done in the past, I enjoy writing rape scenes with victims of varying ages. It's both to cope with my past and to deal with that curiosity inside me that I've always had about the horrible things people do to each other. My friends tell me that if I wonder so hard about whether or not I'm horrible, that I'm not, but I still live and question every thing I do because of people that have called me abusive, manipulative, and any number of terrible things.
I want to believe that I can be a good person despite all of the hideous things I do in RP and enjoy reading and writing about, but every time I get to the point where I can almost accept that, someone or something makes me doubt myself all over again. If my friends don't believe that my reasons are good enough, I can't believe it. It's silly to be so dependent on other people's opinions about what sort of person I am and yet I can't completely stop it.
No matter what I play out online, read, or write, and no matter how much I end up questioning myself, I want to feel that I would never truly cross the line into reality. Every time someone questions me, though, I feel like they're questioning how secure I am on my position enjoying fiction and like they think I'll actually act on it one day. I think that's what hurts the most.
This probably made no sense because it's rambling. But oh well. It's the best I can do right now.