Again, in case you didn’t read the other problematic story, I was a bad (arguably disturbed) kid and while this isn’t an endorsement of my past behavior, I probably treat it with too much levity. Either you like these stories or you’re normal. I don’t mind being called out, but be warned this tale (as all the others) contains shitty behavior on my part including seriously messing with IRL relationships. It’s also really long. At least there’s no NSFW.

Anyway, I’m not sure this story is worse or better than the last…but, like the last this one takes place in the early Facebook RP community. I maintained my ‘legit’ character account - a vampire girl LOOSELY belonging to the Castlevania universe. For some reason, I caught the attention of some Assassin’s Creed RPers - an Altair and an Ezio. Both were romantically interested in my character but I rebuffed them (not knowing anything about AC) and eventually a Sasuke and a Riku from Kingdom Hearts joined the shipping wars. I had no real desire to romantically RP but I did want to sow chaos while maintaining my good standing, so I made an account I was fairly sure couldn’t be traced back to me.

This character was for Desmond Miles (also from AC) and while I didn’t know anything about him I basically used him to try to bully the other guys away. Naturally, I didn’t RP him very well. It was pretty obvious that ‘Desmond’ was a troll from how I interacted with people, purposefully godmodded (‘during the fight a satellite falls on Ezio, killing him instantly, blah blah’ without addressing the obvious consequences of killing my own ancestor) and even leveled abuse at my actual character to legitimize him as a separate presence. I remember at one point Riku pointed out that Desmond’s presence made no sense in the setting (not sure how his or Sasuke’s did) so I justified my presence by saying ‘the Animus pooped itself, sorry’ which wasn’t met with warm reception.

Weirdly enough, this all kind of worked. For some reason a couple of those guys changed their character profiles to be Desmond RPers (I guess to show me up) and my real character then had a ‘legit’ reason to not like them since my own Desmond had treated her so badly (and the other two were his ancestors or something), which they finally accepted.

But that was only the beginning. I’d had so much fun annoying these guys as Desmond that I couldn’t stop. Soon, Desmond Miles was public enemy #1 in our community. I’d barge into other in-progress RPs and godmod with the dumb satellite thing, or other ridiculous and disruptive things like being present in people’s medieval castles without their permission, watching Law and Order in their bed rooms (with a link to the theme song). I guess I also thought that watching the show Charmed was really embarrassing since my mom and aunts liked it so I’d write these long, sprawling starter posts setting a dark and lonely atmosphere at an empty home or a cyberpunk city at night only for it to end in my target’s family/friends/coworkers finding out that their character’s favorite show was Charmed and all laughing at them. Idk.

Anyway, there was this one RPer who played Sakura from Street Fighter and told me to piss off because she’d only RP with other Street Fighter characters. She demonstrably did not though, seemingly doing domestic RPs with anyone who wasn’t a dumb troll. So I’d always interrupt her RPs by popping out of dumpsters/trash cans/cabinets/passing cars/man holes/ripping off my old lady disguise to challenge her to a street fight. She would never take me up on this but her partners would normally engage only to be met with the satellite again.

One day, to my surprise, I started getting scolded on Sakura’s posts by someone using their real account - a lady who quickly revealed herself to be Sakura’s IRL mother. She berated me (nothing over the line honestly, basically just telling me to get a life). Because she wasn’t RPing, I didn’t know how to bug her so I started hitting on her to which she said “DON’T EVEN START WITH ME, DESMOND. You’re a little boy you’re probably like seventeen.” And being a teenaged girl, I thought this made me a master of disguise. I actually took a liking to Sakura’s mother and though I know her real name, I’ll call her Deborah.

Deborah was really well meaning and just wanted to protect her daughter, but when she wasn’t interrupting her daughter’s RPs to chide me, she was interrupting her daughter’s RPs to chide HER for the suggestive content of the RP or for her profile pictures being ecchi art of the character. I remember those pictures pretty vividly but I don’t go into detail since I’m pretty sure at least at some points in the franchise that Sakura is underage. Debbie’s distaste at all this was very funny, actually kind of wholesome, but I’m sure it was very embarrassing for Sakura. Eventually Deborah admitted to not really knowing what the hell was going on so I private messaged her to explain what RP was and that her daughter was essentially playing dollhouse with characters she liked but that there were a lot of other possibilities.

I don’t know what I expected but I didn’t expect Deborah to be interested in trying it. I helped her set up a character account and even made a new one to go with it and give her someone to start off with. We basically made sexy, gothic, anime versions of the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter. We actually ended up getting some ‘cool’ (relatively speaking) stuff going and even had various OCs that fit the theme and some American McGee’s Alice characters got involved as well (that Tim Burton movie hadn’t come out yet). We kept our distance from her daughter’s circle for a while but eventually mutual friends of mine became mutual friends with hers. Deborah made it quite obvious she was Sakura’s mom OOC as she’d still comment (though now in out-of-character brackets) when the content got too questionable.

Deborah wanted us to basically run a Wonderland scenario with Sakura as our ‘Alice’ but Sakura wanted NOTHING to do with this. I felt bad for both of them but was closer with Deborah, so I ran this scenario for her with other willing participants taking up the roles of the denizens of Wonderland. This cheered her up a lot and seemed to ignite a real passion for the hobby. Unfortunately this came with greater conflict between mother and daughter and Sakura wrote up a whole note of rules that basically precluded anyone from RPing with both her and her mother concurrently. Debbie was sad but respected this and stuck to our own stuff.

Here’s where I guess it gets a little dicey. Red Queen and Mad Hatter eventually became a romantic couple - though, to her credit there was no explicit content in any RPs, even hugging or kissing was all presumed to happen off screen. Though it’s worth noting in RPs between just us I was always doing that stupid Charmed and Law and Order shit. She must have found it amusing because she put up with it. I assumed she was either accounting for my being underage or was married IRL. At one point she did sort of ask my age but I don’t think she really wanted to know the answer because she said something like “You’re not really a seventeen year old boy, right?” To which I answered no; true only on a technicality. From there she seemed to assume I was a grown man, albeit one much younger than her.

Our relationship brought a lot of drama from all sides. Ezio, Altair, Riku, and Sasuke kept trying to intervene and tell Red Queen I was a bad guy (they knew Mad Hatter was a Desmond alt) and pointed to my earlier treatment of vampire girl (who they still didn’t know was me). She didn’t listen to them very much but did tell me the stuff I used to do was disturbing. I told her I knew vampire girl IRL (not…technically untrue) and it was a joke and an attempt to get those guys off her back. Also not entirely a lie (but not entirely true either) which eased her mind.

However, the final boss appeared one day: Deborah’s husband. Like Deborah he didn’t understand RP at first. He messaged my Mad Hatter account one day making fun of my anime profile picture and calling me a coward, saying I must have been a 40 year old man living in his mother’s basement. I, in turn, made fun of his actual appearance and attempted to roleplay with him anyway. I godmodded the satellite falling onto him (to which he called me a female body part) and did the whole scene of his friends and family (including Deborah and Sakura) making fun of him for liking Charmed. He wasn’t angry at the mention of his wife and daughter (?) but he was incredibly pissed that I insinuated that he watched Charmed. He demanded my real name and location and ‘dared’ me to change my picture to my real appearance. I told him my name was Desmond Miles and that I lived in Centralia, PA. For some reason I told him it was his lucky day, that I’d just had my glamor shots done (not realizing those were generally for little girls, that I meant head shots) and sent him a bunch of pictures of this Keanu Reeves photo set. He didn’t seem to know the difference and I was assured he was coming to kick my ass.

Deborah was really upset with me and said I should have let her handle her husband. She revealed they’ve been in the process of a divorce and that I could have really messed things up for her. I did try to apologize, but she understandably blocked me after that. I do actually feel kind of bad to this day, but Sakura actually thanked me for giving the guy a hard time and helping accelerate the break up. It’s not entirely bad I guess - years later (and also years ago, I only recently found the password, so I never responded) Deborah - now with a different last name - messaged Mad Hatter on his IC birthday and thanked him/me for getting her through one of the hardest times of her life with our Wonderland RP.

What a weird time.