Thread about Musical Taste and Emo People

[Janus]

OK this is a quote that I came across and thought it was a good beginning to a thread that might diverge from the orriginal topic. Hence my posting it here

*COUGHS*

I'm not emo for the sake of emo.

I'm emo out of fear of death. So.. yeah there!

What is Emo?

I was chatting to GBX a bit about this and I came out with the impression that it is over reacting to something, however in my discussion I came across a situation where he thought I was being emo and I didn't agree.

Now GBX has nothing but my deepest respect both as a DM and as a person so the encounter left me a little confused. So I thought I'd get a post out about what Emo was and what people thought about it.

In the above quote Deepshades was talking about being Emo and as I got an insiders view of what Sylloven was doing and frankly I thought it was just good role playing. Indeed I would say that Deepshades is a very good role player. The best sceen I have ever done was being fed on by Sylloven the vampire.

She role played it brilliantly picking up on everything I was saying and weaving it into a vampiric seduction (and no it had no sexual content it was just really good role playing). Indeed I would say Sylloven as a vampire was a truely great badguy/girl... thingie. She had a brilliant back ground worked out and roleplayed it beautifully, weaving it into her actions so that if you didn't get to know her as most people didn't she was someone you could really hate. If you did get to know her though she was a living breathing (well OK metaphorically speaking) person with hopes and fears and needs and desires. Basically someone you could really roleplay with.

Humm... anyway getting a little off topic here (yay Sylloven). Anyway everything Sylloven was doing when she was being 'emo' was in my opinion actually perfectly in character and perfectly rational and reasonable. You fear you are being hunted by something you think you can't escape or defeat. What do you do? It's a character choise, Sylloven chose to try and escape the world by getting drunk. Loads of people do it in real life.

From this it seems like the term 'Emo' is pretty subjective if it means over reacting.

So... somebody help?

[sparkeh]

...we not talking about emo as in the musical sense are we..?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo

[Rhifox]

TBH, emo is one of those words that has a double meaning of both a serious, non-insultive way and a non-serious, often negative way. Like what's happened with the word 'gay. The literal meaning of it is just fine, which is emotional, feelings, that kind of thing. That's how most of my RP is and I admit that I do not play happy characters. I just try and play realistic hopeless characters that aren't overly 'oh woe is me' to everyone they meet.

The problem is the vast amount of characters you get that are just running around being overly 'oh I am so sad, hear my traumatic story about how my parents died and my home village was destroyed by orcs' to every stranger they meet off the street.

[Saulus]

Moving to off topic, discussing "emo" is definetly not a general Sundren topic.

[Venture]

Emo is the state of music today, terrible, long live rock 'n f*ckin roll.

[Saulus]

Emo is the state of music today, terrible, long live rock 'n f*ckin roll.

Agreed.

[Echelon13]

Seconded.

Also, I fail to see this issue being important enough to have a whole thread for it's discussion.

/wrists, you crybabies.

[Saulus]

Seconded.

Also, I fail to see this issue being important enough to have a whole thread for it's discussion.

/wrists, you crybabies.

Also agreed, of course this is the off topic forum, so I couldn't care less.

[nutranurse]

You all are damned purists! Rock n' Roll is for OLD PEOPLE Get with the times!

First-wave emo was good (it was not all whine, bitch, moan) and was closer to emotive punk than anything.
However then mainstream labels got a whiff of this and latched on.

[Brygun]

Just take those old records off the shelf


((nothing like a rock video with someone in underwear jumping furniture indoors))

[Blue_Wyrm]

I'm of the school of thought that encyclopedias are useless and that words belong to everyone (not just the liches Meriam and Webster); I've heard the word used as a qualifiant of "overreacting" or "emotionnal overkill", and it seems to be the accepted meaning. So be it.

And... I like Metallica just as much as I like Sonata Arctica, several known bluesmen and jazz songstresses. Well, I really don't know if I ever heard any emo, as in the music genre. And if I did, well I wasn't told. So I'm not gonna say anything over the music genre, except that I don't really like some of the haircuts associated with the genre.

[Aux]

Emo= bedwetters

Long live rock n roll, hip hop, and real punk rock.

[Janus]

Moving to off topic, discussing "emo" is definetly not a general Sundren topic.

I was actually going somewhere with this that is I hope as relevant as people running around too fast and grinding. (IE Slow down you move too fast)

In my discussion with GBX he sad that he didn't approve of Emo. He even did a shout about it saying he was coming down on people for it.

If so I thought we could use a reasonable definition of what Emo is and how to avoid it whils still role playing rather than Roll playing (Ie playing a role rather than playing by just rolling dice... and by implication grinding.

I'm a big fan of Role Playing and I can't stand one dimensional characters or people who just run around and grind completely out of character for the whole time. However actual role playing involves emotion (or Emo as it seems to have been renamed). You have to know what your character is feeling to know how they react.

Realisticaly people are not rational and logical. We are driven by our emotions. If this were not the case there would be no crime and life would be very boring. Hence emotion is a key part of what your character does if they aren't simply one dimensional (hence my rant about Deepshades portrayal of Sylloven earlier).

I hope now you are beginning to see my problem. If Emo is just emotion then we are being asked to role play but not given the tools to do it. If it is over reaction to emotion then we needa reasonable definition of what over reaction is as with the state of Sundren. Vampires feeding on you, seeing your friends die every day. You dying and coming back from the dead. Monsters trying to kill you. Other people trying to kill you etc etc etc. The stress levels (and levels of post trauma stress) are gonna be through the roof. This is going to cause some pretty severe reactions to things beyond the normal every day getting pissed at people and wanting to thump them.

I'm in no way saying that the stress is an excuse for bad behaviour, but I think a discussion would be helpful.

Anyone wanna take it from here?

[Leevoth]

I think this whole thing is silly. Emo can be used to describe several things. Either it is a kind of music, a very depressing lifestyle, or basic expression of emotions. The whole term or concept of emo has gotten so diluted everyone has their own thoughts and biases towards it. But if people are going to start getting punished for being 'Emo' in game then we need better definition for it.

Tristan

[nutranurse]

Emo= bedwetters

Long live rock n roll, hip hop, and real punk rock.

Rock n roll is fading
Hip Hop is dead
Punk is dead