Forums » Smalltalk » Your Rp and Characters are not your worth.

I've seen this a lot through my years in varying types of roleplay communities, but it is almost always the most prevalent issue among writers who are on all types of levels of writing and creativity. People bank their self worth on their writing, their writing styles, their aesthetic preferences, how their profiles look, how their characters are built, how fast they build a character, how fast they make a plot line, or how fast they reply. All of it stems from this deep rooted need we all have to be accepted and loved.

However, most people don't seem to remember that our writing and our creative ideas and characters are not a part of our worth.

These stories, games, and characters we make, even if it's aiming towards a career goal of being a published writer, are not the part of us that actually matter. Your ability to flesh something out easily enough that you paint a picture for thousands of people or just one person doesn't get to determine how nice you are as a person, how good of a listener or advice giver you can be for your friends or the community. Your writing ability or reading level doesn't have anything to do with you being a kick butt person or even an interesting person.

Our self worth does not mean how many stories we have going, how long they are going, or how often we get propositioned for more stories.

Roleplay doesn't equal who you are as a person because this is just a teeny tiny little iota of the bigger picture of who we are and what we're going to become.

It is perfectly all right that we have anxieties, worries, insecurities, and hang ups revolving around roleplay and wanting people to accept our ideas and love our characters. That's totally fine, because those are normal reactions when we have something that we make personally and want to share it with other people. Don't get me wrong, but please! for the love of yourself that you need... don't put your self worth on this hobby, or any other hobby, or a career choice. You as a person being a good person to be good to other people and be good to yourself is where your self worth matters the absolute most.

You are worth love. You are worth the attention. You are worth being around at your best and your worst so long as you are willing to grow and accept any mistakes you make. So long as you are willing to be the best person you can be to those you interact with and most importantly to yourself.

Roleplay will always be fleeting in one way or another, so don't let your self worth be so fleeting. Your characters are not you, your writing is not you, and your profile aesthetics are not you. Your ability to draw or color is not you. They are iotas of your abilities and talents.

Please, try loving yourself more and reminding yourself that you are worth so much more than all of this.

Thank you. This needed to be said, and you did so beautifully. ❤️

This is an important topic.

I personally don't think I will ever be able to not tie my self-worth into my writing and my abilities in some manner. Especially because writing makes up so much of my time and my personality. It's my biggest hobby, my career, my passion, at least 60% of what I talk about is my writing and characters.

My writing well and being creative and having good ideas keeps people writing with me, which my brain takes as meaning I'm good, and my writing well and being creative is one thing that determines my income and because of capitalism it's very difficult not to define ones self worth on income, ability to make money, versus being unable to and feeling like a burden on someone. Which I struggle with the latter a lot, so my abilities are just tied to so much of my life and it's going to be a very long time before that pressure is even remotely eliviated.

But I do try not to be so hard on myself.

Thank you for this topic. 💕

This actually has been something I have been thinking a lot on lately. Though I don’t base my entire self worth on my writing and Characters, I do base it on them quite a bit.

Thanks for this, gives me something to think about

...I'll admit that while I agree with those words in general (especially with my roleplay since I don't attach myself to it that much), it got me to thinking as well. I will also admit that I am under a massive amount of fatigue, and I lack complete understanding of anything while out of it. So what I'm about to write... I'm beyond unsure about, and may not make that much sense to the current topic, I'm afraid.

Although I agree that my creativity does not define me, I also feel that it may be one of the only things that makes me interesting. (Other than the fact that I'm a Fate/Stay Night nerd, anyway.) If my creativity disappeared, I don't know what I'd do. It's one of the only things that I could always bank on, because it's helped me be more confident. It's opened up conversations and has allowed me to be social with other people. It's what's gotten me this far in my life.

But I also know that I can be interesting without it. I will always have worth without creativity, and I will always love myself even without that in play. But in a way, I'm also not ready to acknowledge that I am something without it. And that's where I'm lost. How can I agree that my creativity doesn't define me, but I also disagree as well?

I think it might be my pride as an artist and as a creative. Or maybe it's because art is the only thing I've ever known and identified with in full, with all my heart; to explore anything non-creative is not even a possibility for me. Maybe it's the fact that I recognize I currently lack personality since I'm still rediscovering myself.

Ultimately, I know that I have worth without my creativity and my passionate desire and love for artwork, but I can't live without it either. It's still a part of me; even though I can separate myself from it and recognize that I have worth without it, I can't simply ignore it and the drive and life it provides me with.

However, I honestly appreciate your reminder, and thank you for it; this has given me an opportunity to examine myself, and figure out why I feel as I do about this.

While I'm quoting you directly, I'm also speaking to the others in this thread who have responded somewhat similarly.

What I mean when I say our creativity and our writing is not our worth, what I am trying specifically to say is that because we have these things or because we are not as easily capable of them as other people does not make a difference in us being worth something. No matter where those levels of creativity are for any one of us it will not effect nor will it change how much we are a worthwhile person who is deserving of love, understanding, and acceptance.

What matters is how we treat ourselves and how we treat one another that determines the worthwhile nature of ourselves.

I can understand the confusion from what I said in my beginning post, but I assure you that your creativity is important and is still a part of you. You can be proud of it, prideful with it even, but what is not okay is when you take that talent, the career, the choices for your creative outlet and use it to determine how much people like us or not like us.

We are all worth something meaningful. We are all worth love, chances, attention, and the time of others so long as we focus on the fact that it is our actions and words that make us a worthwhile person. How we choose to learn from our mistakes, grow as a person and make the most of our lives and be kind.

What I want is for people to be willing to look in on ourselves, willing to recognize in ourselves that we are a worthwhile person when we do our very best to be the very best you that you can be for yourself and those around you.

Oh, okay! I'll admit that I was indeed lost for a moment, but now I understand and completely agree with what you're saying. That's actually part of my motto as an artist: even if other people don't care about what I do, I still care for what I do, and that's all that matters in the long run.

I felt that's what you were going for, but I was out of it, so I didn't quite understand. Thank you for clearing that up!

Thank you! I am glad I was able to make it make more sense. And you are exactly right.

Nile, I guess you are in my head as this is what I've been thinking about the whole day.

Although, such thoughts trouble me often, I've been thinking more about it lately, and thank you for giving suggestions and making me feel better about myself.

Well said, I'm sure there are some people around this community who needed to see this! Thank you for giving our community some more positivity!

thank you for this, it’s very much needed!

i often find myself doubting if i’m worth my roleplay partners time, especially when i feel like my writing isn’t nearly as good as theirs is, when my posts aren’t as long as i would like them to be and situations like that. it feeds my doubt and insecurity when i wait for a reply (whether it is ic or ooc) for a long time, because then i start overthinking that they’ve ghosted me because they didn’t feel like i was worthy of their time. then, it’s nice to see posts like these and remind myself that if they felt that way, they would most likely have told me already that they would want to drop the roleplay. i want to quickly add that i hope this can help somebody else and it was not just me venting :’)

It is about time this was said. True these things we create our characters and stories are but a fraction of who we are. Honestly, it felt good to read this and remind me. I should not change who I am and doubt myself. Truly I thank you for writing this. I've always doubted I was a good roleplayer and always felt I was never good enough for some of the people on here. That I could never ever make be on terms or equals...

Sadly though I have suffered backlash...From players who have seen my style and well, made fun of me. Because of that, I would change my style and change who I was just to feel like I could fit in. But reading this reminded me I have my own value and there is no number or item that can value my own value. So...Thank you ^^

So beautiful eloquent and true. Thank you for posting this ❤.

I am super glad to see that bringing this reminder up has been helpful to a lot of people. Thank you all!