Time to Man Up . . .

Hopefully if the clickbait that is the title works you'll now be in the throes of my lair with little to no esca--

anyway before i start i'm just going to say now that this thread is meant to be a mature discussion of an underlying topic. that's not to say you guys aren't mature but rather that we'd keep things civil and not attack other people rather the root of the problem, if anything this thread is aimed at bettering the site as such all opinions expressed should be towards that matter. also these are just my views from what i've seen so far and do not reflect the views of the other staff


alright rules done, boundaries set, lets go fishing. . .

In the time that I've been a mod on bsrp I've seen and graded my fair share of techniques,improvs etc and the like; most people will at one time have to have gone through me at the tech registration board (that's not to disclude any other mod that graded there). Some of the techniques i'll admit leave a lot to be desired (no names will be mentioned here) but for a good lot there's a brilliant attempt to display one's understanding and application of fighting and item creation and themes concerning their creation or training. Even more so I've graded my fair share of improv threads , some that've made me wish i could just click x on the tab and be done with it but the majority of you seem to know and understand the grasp of training and how one generally improves as a person.

which leads me to the heart of the question:

Why don't you fight?

I find it strange that a lot of what I see, let alone what I grade, just goes through the system we've made only to be shelved like some sort of trophy on one's character profile, never to see the light of day on the battlefield and instead showed off like a prized possession to whatever member asks to see your profile. I don't know about you guys but I feel it's a terrible waste of mine, yours and any other mods time if we go through the hassle of grading some of your stuff, have you go through the motions in training/improv only to never use said technique again.

Now im not saying that every technique that gets made needs to be used as soon as you've learned it, if anything im also guilty of the same mistake as well since I consider my characters tools of destruction and constantly work on refining their thinking as well as their arsenal, sometimes i have to literally restrain myself from constantly adding new techniques to my charries simply because I can, instead I try to focus on their development (e.g why would my character even need this technique in the first place, would using it knowing its effects still be in their character/style etc) and for the most part a majority of you are like this.

But the fact of the matter is, my characters were created to fight, anyone who's asked will tell you that I've created walking nukes with the mentality of your local psychopath, tools of destruction just waiting for the right moment to snap an unload and that is something I take pride in (not only cos it took me a while to make my little mental patients but to have them develop so).

Now that's not to say im against purely social rp or other character tropes for that matter, the more diverse the better, but bleach at its heart is a shonen anime; which without getting into too much technicality means it's pretty much centered if not based around conflict, if you're not in a fight you're training to survive one. Now that's not to say there aren't other aspects to it there are, but for the most part it's centered on who's fighting who or who's going to fight who next and pretty much the build up is geared towards that end.

So again let me ask , why don't you fight?

To put it simply you don't learn to swim if you live in the desert, why do you learn techniques if your character never ever steps foot on the battlefield? Now before you tell me TPM I've done my fair share of sparring threads or TPM my character is a pacifist and doesn't like to fight, i'll say to you that's all well and good but when have you last put your character's life on the line in a life or death battle? even gentle people like Sado were still placed in circumstances that prompted them to fight even though they did not wish to. Now before you tell me TPM my character's gotta hold his own against other people, this is in no way in disregards to those people who train simply so that their character can hold their own against whatever opponent they face, that's all fair and good, my point here is that we have people training all these techs, pumping out all these improvs so their characters can be able to defend themselves against threats that will never come. . . .

Why? Because no one fights!

I find it ironic that with the new system we have in place, the constant updates and refinement done by staff to keep it up to date, that there are less death battles going on now than there were when we had level 99x5 techs rolling around (names will not be mentioned here xD) especially with all the activity and threads in Karakura Town, you'd think that given how shini's and hollows hate each other so much that KKT would pretty much be a warzone the amount of threads that are in there from either race and yet you see very little skirmishes, maybe one or two life of death situations.

With respect to keeping the site from complete anarchy, but there should be chaos! hollows and shinis clashing in the streets day by day, hueco mundo should be like the african savannah where the struggle of life and death is constantly perpetuated day by day, there should be super sleuth detective shinigami hunting down rogues that escaped to the human world, the only area of reasonable peace and tranquility should be the gotei and possibly kkt depending on how well the shinigami on patrol defend it and even then there are still happenstances in the rukongai where more of the criminals are found. Now again this isn't in disregards to keeping peace or even having social threads, i believe they have an equal role in the build up to any good plot or story even in shonen based rp as does a general overall mood of peace and tranquility.

And yet there are no fights, there are no life or death struggles, there are no challenges to one's existence in order to have them defend it, for all the enmity between the specific races, shini and quincy, quincy and hollow, shini and hollow, bount and hollow and all that's inbetween kkt hasa city of super spiritual beings who've come to live and love each other despite their differences and settle down in harmonious codepedence amirite? lets all just settle our grievances with a friendly spar and no one has to die right. . . . .RIGHT?!?!(i'll talk more about this in a bit)

I get it, no one wants to lose their badass character in a life or death match, in my opinion its BECAUSE its so hard to get to AL, BECAUSE you have to go through mods through an entire arduous improvement process requiring time and energy to level up that one isn't exactly too fond of tossing that down the drain. But at the same time this also means one's attachment to their char prevents them from taking the necessary risks that are otherwise required to make a good story or plot, in the case that this is a shonen that would be fighting.

Which leads me to the purpose of this thread, this isn't an attack on anyone or any person in particular, part of the reason why I am staff is to make this a better place to rp, in all aspects social as well as fighting, now whether this means we as staff need to take a better look at the system we've made (personally i think we could maybe be less strict on improvs so its much easier for you guys to get stronger that way it's not hard on you if you do end up dying) or help you as the memberbase better utilize it, hell if that means we have to create some sort of archives where great battles are recorded so that great OC battles and events can be remembered as canon or even open up a fight school so that people are better equipped to fight then that can be arranged as well, cos lets face it there are some people who are terrified of engaging with a complete stranger rp wise, whether it be from lack of skill to literally just wanting to avoid objections.

Learning to fight not only helps you be more confident about holding your own against someone else but you also learn to think for yourselves, one of the biggest pet peeves i have is getting pm's from members about broken or OP techs whom i have literally never seen enter a fight by which i mean a serious fight and not some pwnage of a lower level nub in a training thread, its one thing where a tech is broken to the point where nothing you do works (thats fair and to those who keep pointing those out kudos to you), its another to report a tech simply because you can't be assed to try and work your way around it instead of just brute force rei flaring it a la kenpachi.

Part of learning to fight also means accepting when you've been outclassed and outwitted by your opponent, and this is by far the hardest thing to do (most especially for me since im a very sore loser, you can literally ask pika about our showdown matches) because it means your character despite their best efforts fell short, i feel its important to understand that like all rp fighting too is about learning to give and concede and compromise, merely because you have two people coming together to duke it out with characters they've put time and effort into and want to be the badasses they are in a context where there can only be one victor, this also means there has to be a loser(do bear in mind this doesn't always have to be bad, I've participated in many fights where I was outclassed and outskilled [often by opponents weaker than me too] but I still lost gloriously), but both participants can still contribute to a great story (many a time actually no one really ever dies).

Now im not gonna turn this into a fighting tutorial, nor am i saying we suddenly need to turn on the slaughterfest and hunt each other a la lord of the flies,  or even that you need to turn your characters into war machines with no consciences, this is more of a space to where you guys can pitch in with your thoughts on opinions on how we can effectively work towards fixing this, i cant emphasize enough that i do respect the social aspect of rp, this is by no means an attack on that aspect or any of the other character tropes that make up our site but more so trying to deal with issues concerning fighting, cos I personally do believe in risk and reward and if we all continue to try and live in our own little bubble of awesomeness, molly coddling our characters and arming them to the teeth with techniques we will never use we miss out on contributing to a great story and having your character live up to that billing or that alias you've given them.

I do believe that this could positively affect not just combat, but plots in general and even future tournament events if we can iron out these issues, as i mentioned these are just my thoughts on the matter and i do consider the fact that i may also be wrong in the matter, more importantly is creating a space where any view concerning the issue will be considered and lead towards making bsrp in general a better place.

tl;dr version for those that skipped to the end: we need to try and fix the problems concerning fighting and death in bsrp and doing so can help better plot and overall fighting in general.