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rpedia · 7 years

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[Ask RPedia] Moving On From Very Meaningful Partners

@kjsage-aion asked RPedia: What do you do when you have an RP partner for years, 2 of your characters are best friends/lovers and things go south OOCly? Our characters are fairly entwined ICly and have a very stable relationship, but the only time we talk now ends in the other person ignoring me, after I've tried to work things through with them. How does one deal with such an abrupt change that is quite character-affecting ICly without overstepping? I've an entire bio of mine that makes frequent note of their character.

Ah, not a pretty sight, but one that does happen to folks. Entwining your character with another in this way really limits your choices. It’s a good feel, it is, but people are prone to fandom/character drift as much as you end up drifting away or butting heads with your actual friend. OOC and IC cannot really be kept apart in this kind of a scenario. It happens. I’m sorry for anyone who has had to deal with it. I’ve handled this myself quite a few times, and I’ve found ways of dealing with it. It’s hard as fuck to do it in a tactful way, but at a certain point you have to help yourself move on, and find something new, before you can help the people who have left you behind, even if they’ve done so for good reason. If they’re leaving, the person you have to live with isn’t them, it’s yourself. So pick something that works with your moral compass. Something that feels right for any given situation.

Let’s check out the variations on the same theme, removing the hard connections you’ve got with your partner and character. Some of these will be ‘cleaner’ than others, and easier to revert, some will be an open declaration that they are absolutely gone for good. Some are a pause button, until the initial pain wears off. Pick whatever suits your situation and heart.

The Hard Reboot

The sharpest tool in the arsenal is of course, the hard reboot. Do you remember where you started roleplaying the character, way back in the day? Before all this happened, before they were happy and in love. Back when they were fresh and new and empty with no life yet. Being excited for the next day, to see what you can do with them. It’s time to go back. The Hard Reboot calls for simply cutting your character’s life into two pieces, before them, and after them, and discarding the bits you can no longer use. Starting over from scratch and creating an entirely new world, an an entirely new set of events lightly following the last but in a new and wonderful way can be really cathartic.

For some people, the idea of wiping everything away like a witch making a deal is a very attractive one, for others, the old memories are in deeper etchings than a simple wipe can remove. If you trend towards multiple universe threads anyways and they’re already just one of many, this can be a very attractive because it’s just another AU, starting over. I have trouble remembering which events belong to which RPs, and remembering just how my character was before all the experience and age muted their personality fresh out of the gate is really hard for me. Sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes it’s not, that’s up to you. The emotional toll this make take on the other person is “oh, I wasn’t important to them,” and a feeling like you’ve decided your stories together are not worth your time. That it was a waste of time for both of you. Be careful with this, it is the nuclear option.

The Enshrined Life

Another option that is simple and fairly precise at taking away everything that hurts is enshrining that character. Your character’s life is done now, they’ve reached their ‘happily ever after’ and there’s nothing more to be told. The ending is now officially, they grew old together, in happiness. You leave those characters as happy memories in your mind, and smile at them occasionally. They survived the break-up between you and your partner in crime, and there’s no need to change them now. They are that happy beautiful painting at the end of every fairy tale book. Time to move on and create a new character, maybe their kid or descendant in a sequel, or someone who knew them from stories and genuinely liked them and aspired to be like them. Maybe someone entirely new from that universe. You can cement them for all of time in this happy place, while you go on an expand the rest of the world that follows them, at no cost to you or your partner. You just need new characters. Maybe even jump to a new world or universe to see what you can do there instead.

This is the kindest way to approach this, but it does come in as a bit of a saccharine sweet level of kindness. You show your love and keep the story whole and safe and beloved. Something you can both look back on, especially if they’re abandoning their character because the memories are too much. This can backfire though, if someone decides that you showing these memories are precious are your weak spot and they feel they need to target you for them in some way. Another issue is they may not agree, and continue playing their character, that’s okay. You have your version frozen in time, and they’ll always be okay in your universe. A third issue is, it may come off as too much. An obsessive attachment to something. This isn’t often, but if your partner is particularly jaded, they may be unable to see the care put into it as anything but an attack on them for leaving it.

The Heavy Past

A timeskip passes, years later ‘something’ you never quite explain happened and now your character and their beloved have parted ways. You skip the whole issue of coming up with a good reason, just say things happened, and allow your character to continue on their way. They’re older, wiser, but still the past loss hurts them. Maybe they’ll say ‘I had a spouse once’ with a distant look while drinking with new friends, and people won’t push. They’ll just pat their back, and your character can shake it off. This is so that loss and history is retained, as a backstory that is no longer part of your character’s life.

It’s a healthy, reasonable break that doesn’t imply fault in either direction, simply the loss that happened, and the growth that developed from that loss. It doesn’t come up other than backstory references and memories important to the plot. You might want to reminisce to spice things up for your new partners, but don’t turn it into a shitshow of personal grief that everyone has to deal with at every event. We get it Greg, you were married once, you’re sad about it, you do this every Thanksgiving, can we eat the fucking turkey in peace now?

An Entirely New Person

You loved that character, but that version of that character is out of your reach now. So, the Entirely New Person method involves stepping out of your usual zone. We all remember the AU-Stucks. Some people use the term even if we haven’t been involved with the series because __stuck is just such a catchy term. Well, time to invest those years of coming up with crazy AUs, from the coffee shop, to the mermaids, to what if they were fighting an intergalactic war in the future, to hey what about medieval version? A dark one! A light one! In this universe everyone’s gender flipped! In that one, they’re all robots. What about furry versions, or ferals?

The trick is to take your character, beloved that they are, and shove them into another world entirely. This is similar to a hard reboot in that they start over, but this time you can build a world where meeting that other person never happened because in this universe, they were on Mars while the other was on Venus, both fighting a war, and so it just didn’t make sense. You can alter your character, redefine them, give them a new history and a new look. You can alter the entire universe to fit a kind of AU, and then start over roleplaying them.

This can help with people who have trouble ‘wiping’ a past away, because this is more... making a new past entirely, a step to the side, it’s not rehashing old ground but creating similar ground from what you’ve already grown to learn about your character. It’s also easier to remember what happened to who when you have a tail to roleplay, a coffee machine to hate, or a brand new blaster weapon unknowingly fueled by souls.

The other player may take this as an attack, and feel replaced, but those fears are generally unfounded and someone looking to raise Cain for any reason because they want to ‘get back at you’. This is actually a pretty kind way of handling a character in an entire new light, because as long as you make it clear you don’t want to invalidate the character, simply write them in an AU now that their old story has been told, it’s... kind of sweet. It’s a little bit Enshrined Life, and a little bit Hard Reboot without going too far in either direction of ‘I will love you forever, and enshrine our time together in perfect replica’ and ‘I will destroy everything we worked for, and make sure it never surfaces again in my clean rebirth.’

The Past Life

This is a spin on the Hard Reboot too, instead of completely removing everything and starting over from scratch with it never happening, your character is rebooted with the feel that something is missing. They remember parts of their past, either as a past life, or some sort of magical amnesia caused by time being restarted by someone else. The memory changes how they act, there’s enough there to make up for them not being exactly as they started out, without them quite making that click who caused it because they never see the other person again.Instead, they move on, plagued by dreams. It can be a bit more of a memorial in this version, letting the other player know they’re still important, but letting you move on. There’s love and loss, but enough change for it not to be a sudden jump of distance, to more of a slow decay over time as they either stop paying attention to the flashbacks, or the flashbacks peter out entirely leaving them whole in their new life without the patterns of the old ghosting over it. It’s a little bit like the Hard Past, except where Hard Past is a clear attachment to the past, this one is an attachment to a life they lived before, not another universe, but a reincarnation. It softens the slice of Hard Reboot quite a lot, and also gives a testament that your stories together meant something enough to carry with the character for each one of their new lives. Also a nice neutral way to go, emotionally.

The Universal Splits

It’s a “I died for you, you died for me” deal where you are now both from universes from which the other person died. Your characters may not be aware of it, but it’s a point in time and space where there was a choice, and that choice is which of you would die, disappear, get kidnapped, or any of the various ways that two people end up split up in real life suddenly. Death is just the sharpest and cleanest without forcing anything weird on them. Your character now continues life, bereft, because of their loss. At some point, this i one of the easy recovery versions. Your universes converge somehow, you both explain the other died in your universe, and strive to work together to live in this, your merged universe, together again even if it’s a little awkward to know you’ve never met, yet know all about each other because your lives were shared with identical copies.

This one pushes something on the other player, taking control of their character for that one instance. It may become a point of contention for them if they wanna start a fight, but it also opens a door for them to play their character similarly. This is actually kind of neat, because you get two worlds for the price of one, and like I said above, they can merge again in case of trouble! It’s definitely related to the Hard Past, in fact it’s pretty much the same thing. The difference here lies in the firm explanation, the easy mode recovery, and the grief your character can feel brand new instead of later down the line thanks to a timeskip.

The Forced Split

This version is a little less clean than Universal Splits, and gets rid of the total grieving loss pattern. Instead, you force an argument, some nasty thing to break up the relationship. You remain in the same universe, but you make up a reason to fight, or even separate amicably. You make something up. Make up a reason they just couldn’t be together anymore and ride it. Something you never expected has happened, and you’re off to the races.

This takes away that safety net of two universes, and is kind of a rude move. You essentially take complete control of your characters, force them to separate by making up something that happened that the other party doesn’t get a chance to agree to, and then claim it happened to both of them. Essentially, you write your own history to spite and attack them. If they’ve done something like write your character suddenly abandoning them because they were a lying scumbag the whole time, might be time to do the same back to them. This is mostly just a mean move, an option, but mean. This is your option to cause shit and be peevish and spiteful.

The Lengthy Vacation

Ever hear that trope of the dad who walked off for smokes and never came home? That’s this. No breakup, no loss, no fight, no death, no removal of their existence, no rebirth from scratch. Your partner is just... out on vacation. They went out for a little while. For some reason they decided they wanted a job in New York, so you’re staying home to take care of the kids/dog/potted plant/your own job. They unfortunately have stayed gone for a really long time. Think John Winchester from Supernatural, Dad went hunting and he hasn’t been home in a while. Except if you two never make up, they don’t come home and eventually just get phased out of their life in a subtle way as new important things come up. This can lead to the drama of ‘cheating’ on your significant other, if you find new romance, unless you roll to the left and go with the Hard Past motif when you spot a new cuddle buddy.

This is also a neutral way of handling it. They’re just missing for a while, you imply nothing weird is happening, they just took off for a bit and you’re both accepting of it. You live a happy life, continue on your way, get occasional ‘phone calls’ or ‘letters home’ in passing mention. This gives them a chance to come back to the roleplay at any time, and patch things up. It also gives them the chance to never come home at all, and you move on in time assuming when they went to war, they died. You could even have fun drama when/if they come back. It’s all cool. Just kind of letting things... slip along and disappear as time heals the wounds without disavowing them openly.

So... yes! Those are the methods I’ve thought of/used myself, even though they seem similar in content, I’m sure ya’ll can pick out where they differ; if I haven’t done it for you. Pick one that feel right to you. Something that makes you feel like the bigger person, the better person as an outcome. People regret being mean later on, so while the spiteful option is an option, they’re also an attack. They sort of left you hanging here, which sucks big time and is why your hand is being forced anyways, so a little ‘rude’ in taking over to give yourself an out that doesn’t openly hurt them is perfectly understandable. Especially if you’re willing to retcon or fix things after-the-fact if they come back or complain.

Since you’re not talking, communication as my usual go-to has been essentially hacked off at the knees. If you could communicate, in case anyone else in this situation comes along, TAKE THE CHANCE. Find a way for you both to feel comfortable and fulfilled, even if you aren’t sure you’re gonna be friends anymore. I highly suggest the amenable splits that let you kind of fog over the reason, or make up thinking they died. Nothing that makes the other person look bad.

Good luck, I’m super sorry about the IRL fights hurting your characters, and I really hope you find a choice that makes you comfortable and happy. Same goes for anyone who has experienced this. Remember, do what feels like it’ll make you a better person, not what feels like great revenge at that second. It’ll come back to haunt you, and I personally prefer to be haunted by happiness.

#rp partners #rp #rph #rpc #roleplaying #RPedia #Ask RPedia #Feel better #I'm sorry this happened #good luck

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