Rose Tyler

Here's what happened (or, the whys and wherefores of the deaths of Rose Tyler and Caprica Six)
The trouble probably started when I agreed to apply as Caprica Six to accompany Briege's application as Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica. Boe and I thought it would be fun for Caprica and Jack Harkness to meet, as they're both very sexual characters, and it would be entertaining to watch two fantastic flirts flirting with one another. The flirting led to them meeting alone, which led to them having sex, which caused a rift between Gaius and Caprica. Looking back on it, I think Briege resented this, and I think that's a big reason why she ceased playing Gaius.

BBB, who plays the Doctor, started grad school in the fall, which put a huge strain on her time. Boe and I were very understanding of this, and did our best not to pressure her to spend time on game that she should have been spending on school, but also tried to not make her feel left out. To this end, Boe and I refrained from threading Rose and Jack on the Cube, emailing threads privately to keep ourselves occupied, and cc'ed BBB on all of our game related email chatter. As I would later find out, BBB found that this game chatter was in itself pressure, when Boe and I only intended that she not feel excluded.

Briege brought in a new character, Belle. Belle attempted to seduce a drunk Jack into having sex with her to make her husband jealous. When I found out about this, I let Boe know that if Rose were to discover Jack had random sex with someone he just met, she would be very upset. The relationship between Jack and Rose was very important to both Boe and myself, even moreso, I think, because BBB was too busy to play the Doctor. We both wanted to preserve that relationship, so we worked out an in-game solution where Jack promised Rose that he would not have sex with anyone but his current lovers...that being Rose, the Doctor, and Caprica, because by this point, we had established, in game, a relationship of love between Jack and Caprica.

I came under attack OOC for this almost immediately from BBB and Briege. I suspect Briege was angry because I derailed her impending sex scene with Jack. I know she thought it was personal, as she as since said as much (even though she said no such thing when I spoke to her soon after the incident). I was under relentless pressure to change what I had done. I was told it wasn't canon, I was told it wasn't fair to Jack, etc etc etc, all OOC, none IC.

IC, BBB was playing the Doctor less and less frequently, letting weeks go by between responses on open threads, making plans (such as a camping trip with the Doctor and Rose) and then not following through. At the same time she was playing another character, Mark from RENT. I was uncomfortable with the seeming incongruity between her insistence that she had no time to play the Doctor, yet her apparent ability to play this other character. She told me her Mark muse was just more active. I accepted this explanation at the time, but I have since become dissatisfied with it, since it became clear that even when she had the muse inspiration to play the Doctor, she was still neglecting those threads and plans, instead playing with Romana, played, of course, by Briege.

I felt hurt and shut out, but every time I tried to tell BBB this, and ask for more Doctor/Rose time, she became angry and refused. I even asked if she would at least agree to post one Doctor comment a week, or one every two weeks. Even that was met with rejection and anger.

I also noticed that BBB became increasingly touchy about a variety of things. At one point I used as a premise for an open tag post that Rose woke up early one morning to find that the Doctor and Jack were out wandering somewhere. makes sense, I thought, since they don't sleep, and it seems unlikely they'd just lay in bed watching her sleep all night, every night. BBB became very snippy with me about it, though, saying I should have okayed it with her first. Later, I had Rose kiss Robert, a character played by Boe who looks exactly like Jack. BBB flipped out, and we wound up retconning the kiss. There was also a thread that Boe and I had worked on between Jack and Rose that we wound up agreeing to change because it involved themes that made BBB uncomfortable, and that she said she would be unable to separate from her playing of the Doctor.

The proverbial straw goes back to the Jack question. Shortly after Jack rejected Belle's advances due to his promise with Rose, Briege convinced a friend of hers and BBB's to join the game. This friend took the character Faith, and immediately went after Jack, specifically telling him that he needed to "be himself"...aka, needed to have sex with random people...and that he should break his promise with Rose. Specifically with her. This conversation was repeated more than once. Then, conveniently, the Doctor spoke to her about it, and then Faith spoke to Romana about it, leading Romana to tear into Rose IC. It stretches logic that the Doctor would talk to a random mass murderer instead of the woman he professes to love about something intimate to their relationship, and it was too well-timed for Faith to meet and talk with Romana for me to believe it was a coincidence. I felt ganged-up on, which I had been feeling more and more for a while, and it was at that point that it became clear that the game was causing me far more stress than enjoyment. I had considered leaving before. I decided then, with an impending explosion, it was a good time for me to sever ties.

And I should have done so then.

Several people, including Lai, asked me to stay. I certainly did not want to continue playing Rose, because BBB and Briege had made it unbearable, but felt bad about abandoning Caprica. it was suggested by Lai that we have a mediated chat. I knew it was a bad idea, and I told her so. What BBB and I needed was to NOT have contact. But she insisted, and I reluctantly agreed.

The mediated chat was a fiasco. The mods sided completely with BBB, believing many things that she said which were wholly untrue, including that I would harass her by email several times a day to game. It was decided that OOC bad feelings had crossed into IC interaction, and we could no longer play together. Rose would die, and I was left to decide what to do with Caprica.

At the time of the explosion, I had decided to keep Caprica. The plan for Rose was that she would be trapped and crushed. Jack would die in the explosion, come back to life, try to save her, but be unable to, and she would die in his arms. Simple, right?

Except BBB decides that the Doctor is going to sense that Rose is dead shortly after the explosion.

I contacted the mods, crying foul to that. Rose was NOT dead that soon, I explained. It took time. Jack had to come back to life. He would spend a while trying to heal her. People have survived crushing for days.

Once again, the mods sided entirely with BBB, accusing me of only wanting to cause IC and OOC grief, and upbraiding me in an email CC'ed to BBB and Briege. I defended myself in another email CC'ed to the same parties, and was told I shouldn't have, and if I contacted them again I'd be banned. I defended my decision to send the email (and did not CC BBB and Briege), and my posting privileges for Rose were revoked, because, "not only did you refuse to listen to us but then you proceeded to email us and rub our faces in your disrespect for our decisions and our authority. Which we will never take kindly to." In other words, I protested their decision, and was banned for my trouble.

I've been told I'm allowed to keep Caprica, but I honestly don't understand why the mods think I would stay in the game when they've treated me this way.

So that's the story, for any and all who are interested.

Current Mood: FREE