Roleplaying. The word normally conjures to the mind, images of middle-aged men playing Dungeons and Dragons with each other. Not anymore. Today, many kinds of people roleplay as fictional characters online, with brand-new terminology strictly for that fandom, and bizarre rules in societies that only online Internet addicts like myself will understand.

Most authors tolerate fan fiction, or works of fiction written about someone else's characters by someone who is not the original author of said work, as long as they do not claim to own the characters, do not use them for sex purposes, and do not make money off the entire thing. But what to do when entire websites, like Tumblr, dedicate their lives to acting like fictional characters, building music playlists around said character, using icons of said character...it's a whole new ballfield, in and of itself.

I first joined the website Tumblr in February of last year, inspired by the interesting things I'd seen on it. I made an account for a DragonBall Z character. It took me a while to get used to the roleplaying community and its terms of service. Just like in the real world, you do not 'reblog' in other words, interrupt someone else's writing with their character, you wait your turn for replies to blogs...it was a whole new way of writing I'd never seen before.

I was mostly a solo writer, writing my own things and publishing them. So to do it with someone else and practice, back and forth, was an interesting change of plans. How do you roleplay? It should be pretty easy, right? You just go up to a person's webpage, hit the askbox, and then ask them, right? Right?

...Nope. Tumblr was, to have, as I would later find out, a very huge and unnecessarily complicated form of roleplaying. Roleplaying! It's the grownup equivalent of children sitting in a backyard, playing with toys. Do you ever see one kid coming up to another and demanding that they read a huge list of rules and regulations before they even exchange words, let alone start playing? No. Granted, as a kid, I told people what to say, but I got over that.

You see, to roleplay with someone, you ordinarily write up a situation for one character to meet another (or crossover characters, characters from other series, like if Superman met Batman) etc, and send it through their inboxes. But not all blogs have that ability. Sometimes you have what's called a side blog, and you have to write up starters for people. Though it'll be a wait it out game, see if they respond back.

You 'follow' people, much in the same way you subscribe to people on Youtube or Like people on Facebook. You see everything they post, everything they rant about, everything they like. They always put their fandoms up on their dashboard.

Tumblr was fun for me....at first. For the first year, it was fun. But then it became ridiculous, as I quickly realized that online pals do not replace real life ones, as one after another person deactivated their accounts. Really talented writers, too. People I'd never gotten to know elsewhere.

But then I realized why people were leaving. Tumblr takes its roleplaying way too seriously, you see. Its little community is very strange. In order to even TALK to someone about roleplaying, you've got to visit their 'rules' page, where they dictate what you can and cannot do, which includes mostly, not killling off their character, not interrupting their posts, not writing porn, etc, etc. My rules contain the base elements, saying I roleplay with anyone, but don't roleplay porn, violent shit with people dying, etc, etc.

But sometimes, roleplayers take themselves way too seriously. There's even a roleplaying confessions page on tumblr, where people gripe about the things roleplayers do that tick them off. While some are legit, others are just stupid. The problem with Tumblr is people do have huge egos. I've had to unfollow a few because their arrogance was so annoying.

Some roleplayers have this thing called selectivity, where they don't bother to give everyone the chance to roleplay with them. Instead, they're picky. They have people they call 'mutuals', and heaven help us if anyone dares respond to their starters other than their clique of followers. I never thought I would ever see the same high school bullcrap I went online to escape from on Tumblr, but it's there.

If a person is 'Exclusive' or 'Selective', then there's a good chance they'll ignore you, and treat you like crap, because apparently, they need a 'clean' dash so they're not scared. What would it be like if you're working at a store, a customer comes up to you asking help with something, and you tell them, you're a stranger to me, I can't help you. I only help my friends. Bam, fired in less than a week.

Granted, we're all strangers online, I say, so why not be the bigger man and show some common decency and respect towards others? Apparently not, says the Tumblr blogger with a huge ego. Apparently my needs matter more than others. Case in point, one time a person posted a starter that was 'open' (which means anyone can reply.) I replied.

The person sent me a private message, claiming I'd violated the rules because they didn't do crossovers with other shows, and when they were following me before (you know, where they ought to have seen I was into that kind of thing) they unfollowed.

Others get even more nit-picky, claiming that if you're a blog that doesn't masquerade as a fictitious character, you don't even have the right to be near them, much less talk to them. People with personal blogs are not allowed to be part of the whole roleplaying thing. Too normal, apparently. And also, people who make up original characters. Oh, how badly they're treated. Any well-written OC is treated with scorn and contempt.

As if all this madness wasn't ridiculous enough, I sent a request once asking a person to draw a character. They had put out a request for it. They immediately said, publicly, that they should have put that ONLY THEIR FRIENDS CAN SEND THEM THINGS.

Having grown weary of this childish attitude, I instead go back to publishing my reviews, figuring maybe the website will mature. Nope. Instead, there's even more bushwah going on, called 'shipping,' or pairing two fictional characters together. Don't agree with what one person thinks of as the original pairing, or the greatest, sweetest love ever? Criticize their OTP (one true pairing)? You're an evil, terrible, horrible person. I've gotten hate simply for criticizing fictitious works which do not exist in reality.

At times I wonder if these people are even sane. Then, I saw the even nastier side of Tumblr. It's the persecutory side. Everyone on Tumblr has a special sob story to make you feel bad for them. Every male on earth is an 'evil Cisgender man out to hurt women!' Every person without disabilities is an evil neurotypical who seeks to control people with disabilities and is an ableist piece of crap.

Tumblr loves drama. Tumblr loves to claim it's better than Facebook. But in reality, it's a thousand times worse. On Tumblr, you can go anonymous and send hatred to people, and get away with it. Racist blogs can exist and send pictures of Jews in concentration camps to Jewish bloggers and get away with it. Boy, things got violent when Ferguson started.

Every blogger in sight screamed death to all police officers, death to all white cops, death to all who dare see differently, and filled the dash with blood, gore, and protestors. Anyone who was sensitive to violence and tried to block it was accused of being a supporter of violence against African Americans. They even sent the wrong evidence and advise people to call on people Tumblr has chosen to attack to get them punished.

Even more bizarre, though, are the number of Special Snowflake syndromes everyone has. People aren't just autistic anymore, now they're autistic with sensory issues, identify as a Pokemon and go by Pokeself pronouns, and tag this and tag that. Yes, bisexuality, asexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality exist. But it seems to me that everyone on Tumblr I see has to have some form of special disorder/problem/gender/gender identity or else they're not legit.

I kid you not, I have seen demiromantics, genderqueer, transgender, bigender, trigender, agendered individuals who say, 'use he/she/they/them/it/zir pronouns' and when people don't understand what they mean, they're called evil transphobic cis people. Cis people, for those who don't know, are individuals who feel comfortable with their biological gender. Trans are the opposite. But apparently Cis individuals are terrible, terrible people.

Even odder are the people who claim they are something other than human. Some believe they are 'fictionkin', they were fictional characters in a past life, others believe they were ponies, or animals. It's all part of the bizarre Brony and furry fandoms. And if you don't believe that people suffering from these ailments are not crazy and don't deserve medical treatment, you're treated like the scourge of mankind.

You're an ableist, for insisting that not all people without disabilities treat disabled people like burdens, you're a cisgender man for saying that not all men hurt women, you're a transphobe if you don't understand someone's special pronouns or special name, you're an evil person if you dare bash a character, and characters are offered special protection.

And I? Where do I fall in all this madness that makes absolutely no sense to an ordinary human being who doesn't use this website...? I am an autistic, cis gender female, who uses she pronouns (what else would I use) and an asexual girl. I am not an otherkin/fictionkin, certainly do not go by alien pronouns, certainly don't use weird pronouns. 

But hey, whatever makes your life better, right?

I mean, all this stuff, I'd be 'okay' with...if people didn't turn Tumblr into a drama website, where they're trying to turn people against you for not liking a show, for not liking a pairing, for not liking something. There are going to be homophobic, racist people in this world. Persecuting them is not going to change their minds.

There are some benefits, of course. I've gotten lots of people reading my writing, lots of experience with different kinds of writing, found people with the same interests as me, made a lot of new and old friends, had good and bad times, and had a fun time. It just comes with a lot of down sides.

To be honest, you probably don't want to google up your favorite character, anyway. Fandoms really do screw up things. For an ordinary person who's reading this who does not worship works of fiction or pretend to be fictional characters, they might be wondering how someone deals with all this madness. How can you be sane?

I don't take it seriously. I take it tongue in cheek. I criticize works of fiction, but they're fiction. I have the right to dislike or like characters as I see fit, they're not going to sue me. I just relax and post all of my complaints elsewhere. I've been waiting for a long time to say this. I just had to let it out, because I'm sick of being on a website that is so intolerant, judgmental, melodramatic, and full of crap.

Don't get swallowed in the blue sea that is Tumblr and you'll be fine. Stay out of digging through the search bar, you'll get swallowed up in other people's miseries, and their machinations. I never thought people took fictional characters so seriously. I'm autistic, okay? I memorize fictitious shows and know everything about them and their characters.

But I certainly don't believe they're real. While it's normal for me to have a crush on the fictional characters and dream about them, they're not real. Tumblr is like venturing into another world. It's a bizarre one, but a world nonetheless.

Just enter with your 'I hate Cis people, normal people,' hat on and you'll fit in fine. Otherwise, you're cis scum, truscum that deserves to die.

Let this video educate you more than I possibly can:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m-e4PgiVfM