Life Gaiden

That not-quite expletive in the title of this post is my somewhat inadequate attempt to phonetically show the sounds I made when I saw my list of subscribed threads on Bleachanime.org forums today. Believe me, I do swear and curse without compunction, it's just that my brain couldn't cope with that level of stress and so, sort of, broke when it saw that web page and wouldn't make words. I had to reply to the Aesir HQ, post my ranking recommendations and continue training Adam, our newest recruit. And I am so bloody stressed! Because I'm back at university and have soooooo many meetings and lectures to go to already and I have been given two deadlines in two days. Blaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh! And, even though, I know that deadlines are infinitely more important than roleplay clans (or even blogs), and that everyone on the forum would be more than understanding if I took time off, I still feel like I need to fulfil my commitments.

Anyway, it's not even as if I'm under that much pressure, really. I've made sure of that. I'm not about make myself ill. It's just that, every so often, I have these irrational little moments where I think I'm failing at life.

But, happy thoughts, happy thoughts ... Let's talk about Adam, my pupil. It felt ace calling him that, and when he called me “sensei”, I wondered if I should grow a beard ... Not to boast, or anything, though, but I've found that being an RP mentor comes strangely naturally to me, even if I am a little nit-picky with some of my points, like insisting that he double-check posts and watch his paragraphs. And I can’t for the life of me explain how to embed links to him. (Basically, my attempt went something along the lines of “Do you see those buttons at the top of your post box? Hover over each one until you find the one that says ‘embed link’, because I can’t explain what that icon is supposed to look like.) I wonder if both of these facts – my utter inability to explain HTML (“It just is!”) and my ability to deconstruct RP were because I had never RPed before when I came to the forum and so had to pick everything up through observing others and through trial and error. Though, I would also say that it helps that Adam is a great RPer and student and picks things up exceedingly quickly.

Actually, that's one thing that I like about the dynamic of recruit training on BA. They actually consist of two parallel trainings: one where the member picks up tips on writing and one where their character also learns tips, but on how to fight. Idk, maybe it's because I'm a lit student that that quasi-symbolic mechanism interests me so much.

UPDATE: I'm off the hook with Aesir for a little while because some of the other members (Fuer and Avarice) have no internet right now. Phew!

I know that this is really soon after the last one, but, well, we've just had monthly rankings and I found them an interesting study of the political way that the Bleachanime RP divisions work. You see, yes, it is done for the fun of it, and the system of seats is primarily there to ensure the smooth running of the divisions, with the most active members and best writers taking up the highest seats, but that doesn't mean that higher seats aren't coveted.

To explain: the divisions have ranks for seated officers between 15 (it used to be 20) and 3, with the most powerful being the lowest number. Then, above them there's the fukutaichou and taichou and below there's the recruits. Every month, division members will rank each other's performance by filling in a form in the ranking recommendation thread. (No, seriously, there is paperwork involved in this pursuit.) Then, on the 1st of every month the captain and vice-captain will write their own assessments and make decisions on what everyone's new seats should be.

That's the standard format, but, this month, a few things happened that particularly piqued my interest. I mean, there were things which interested me particularly, such as the fact that I got a three-seat promo, but in other news:

1) The loss of two recruits - Actually, this isn't that weird: a recruit or even a seated officer who has a zero post-count will get booted out of a division if they don't give a good reason. What interested me here was one of the recruits in particular. The name they used was Silver NightHowl, and I'd been suspicious of them from the moment they joined. I don't want to seem cruel and/or paranoid, but her reply to all of our welcome posts rang a little hollow, shall we say?:

Hey, I'm Silver Nighthowl. I'm a female aged 16, I love bleach and Okami more than anything! I love to RP and make new friends. It's so great to be in my favorite squad, I look forward to making everlasting friendships in this squad. <3

Then, in her application to join, she completely misunderstood the exercise and wrote about her character's strengths, not her own, citing the fact that she could use shunpo and wielded two zanpaktou. The latter is an easy mistake to make. It's just that that previously mentioned reply, kinda creeped me out. Idk, maybe it’s too much watching the news got me worried about internet predators. Maybe it wasn't a fake account, and maybe Silver was just a 16-yr-old girl who got bored with BA.

2) Sasuke's resignation + three 8th seats - Well, there's two things here, and I'll start with the first chronologically: before one of our members, Sasuke, resigned, we had three 8th seats in the division. Now, doubling of seats is pretty common, especially since the division capacity was reduced from 20 to 15. It sometimes means that someone who's had a tough month can keep their seat and someone who has shown promise can be rewarded, and it stops the ranking board from becoming one of those sliding tile puzzles. But, wow, a month where three people held the same seat was pretty unprecedented. What happened was that the two current 9th-seats had had low-activity months, but still gained a small promotion, whereas the 10th seat (Sasuke) had been an absolute boss with his activity and so gained a good two-seat promotion. Sometimes, things just work out like that, I guess.

But, as to Sasuke's leaving, this is another reality of a BA division, which sort of makes it different to divisions in the anime/manga: we have a turnaround of members measured in months not years. Sometimes RL (that's the BA abbreviation for Real Life, in case that's been confusing before) will make continuing posting unfeasible. For example, I left for a while in the past due to work commitments. Sometimes, a member might move on to the BARPG (read: the big time). Our Captain recently left the division for this reason. And, sometimes, people will just get tired, either of BA in general or a certain division. I think, for Sasuke, it was a bit of both. He stated his intention to have a bit of a break from BA, but also to join the Vizard division somewhere down the line. I’ll miss having him around in the meantime, though. I’ve known him pretty much since joining the forum about two years ago and it’ll be weird to not share a division with him.

It’s funny, though, now that I think about it: BA absences seem to come in seasons. Back-to-school months are usually slow months, as are exam times, and I just take them as a fact of life. But, I can remember back when I was in the 3rd division, the first person I ever knew leave a division. I was really scandalised. To me, the place was wonderful! And why would anyone leave?! I couldn’t understand why other people weren’t surprised.

3) The fight for 3rd - Back on topic: moar rankings drama! Yes, in last month's recommendations there was a bit of a tussle for 3rd seat. Well, I wouldn't really call it that this month. I think that will really get going next month, but, for once in my life, I really put my cards on the table very hard with rankings and put forward our 6th seat - who has now been promoted to 5th - skipping the 4th seat. I felt a little cruel for doing this: as Mitsu, the vice stated in her assessments, while Will had shown insane organisational ability (a necessity in such a high seat) this month, forming the Aesir (more on that next time ...), Ari was one of those who had stood by the division through the dark times, and, in many ways, her writing displayed as much talent as Will's. But, this is one of the dilemmas of ranking, especially at the higher level: loyalty must always be rewarded, but so must effort and skill. Once at the high level, everyone is exceptional, so it's really hard to decide between them. I mean, I was honest, and it was hard for me, as I consider Ari a friend, but if it was bad for me, what's it going to be like for Mitsu next month? She did say in this month's assessments that now that it's been brought up, she's going to base her decision of who gets the seat on this month's performance. I can't wait!

I thought I should do a little BA update here, considering that I've just finished my first spar of this 'incarnation' (read as: return to the RPing circles).

For those who don't know, basically the spars in BA RP are text-based, turn-based combat: one person attacks, then the other person writes of the result of that attack and their reaction (you can't write about or bank on the outcome of your own attack). Then, the counter-attack is written. This continues, either within set parameters (usually used for tournaments), or until both participants' characters are too injured to continue.

It seems really weird when I write it down like that, and not that interesting.

But, it is interesting to me, both from a creative and mechanical perspective, and the two can even be combined. The creative fun can come from creating an environment, creative attacks and character development. The latter is difficult, but rewarding. I mean, one way to do this is by just saying something like, 'environment X reminded so-and-so of spar Y', but that isn't really fun, unless it really means something. The real fun character stuff in a spar usually comes from how you think your character would actually react to an attack - whether, for example, they keep their cool when things go badly.

Which sort of takes me to the mechanics, because, one of the most rewarding things about an RP spar is being able to use the physics and rules of the game-world - here, the various settings of Bleach - to your advantage in new and interesting ways, not explicitly explored by the manga/anime. One particularly cool example of this that I remember was during a kidou training, in which the teacher, focused his reiatsu in order to keep a Soukatsui hadou small in the palm of his hand, instead of blasting it off, and then used the hadou, Tenran, to turn it into a flaming tornado. It's especially fun to use the environment at times - setting fire to things to make a smokescreen or swinging from rafters.

But, as for my recent spar, I was using a pre-made arena with set debuffs - not my usual choice - so, while that was an interesting change, it didn't allow me as much of the creative fun that I get with spars. I also didn't really get to mess with physics, as I really wanted to try out my shikai for the first time. However, I had a lot of fun at times in that spar, and that was mainly due to character moments, especially in how she dealt with an absolutely unavoidable attack. I found it natural that my character's general response was the go ape-shit to compensate.

But, yeah, still hoping that the upcoming Kuroshitsuji cross-over event's going to be good.

Here I would just like to take a moment to explain a little part of my interest in Bleach - namely, the fact that I take part in casual Bleach roleplay. This takes part on the Bleachanime.org forums, and I say casual to distinguish what is called the Divisions and the official BARPG. In the former, there's various 'off-topic', fun RP threads alongside the more serious stuff and in the latter you're expected to adhere to canon and character at all times. For the uninitiated, when I say 'roleplay', what I mean is writing about our character in fights, in missions and in between-fight/mission banter.

I chose this 'roleplaying lite', if you will, not just because I am terrified when I even begin to think of the massive amount of commitment involved in the BARPG (which stands for Bleach Anime Role Playing Game, btw), but also because I think it has much more scope for interesting creative writing, character development and socialising.

I'm writing this now, as, as a part of this blog, I hope to give regular updates on my BA RP adventures.