(Man, I haven't made an entry in this blog in a while)

This is something that was mentioned in a status update. This also comes from a thread I made in the Life Advice section. In the blog entry, I'm going to elaborate on these things. For those unfamiliar with what I'm talking about so far, I'll put up the background for you -- at least so far as this particular conversation requires.

Who is Erythema? An OC of mine/ Originally intended as a rule 63 (gender-flipped) SunBurn who himself isn't much more than just an avatar for me during RPs. You might think -- and even I thought at first -- that it would mean that Erythema would have the exact same personality as SunBurn but the opposite turned out to be true. She turned out to be intense in character, cocky, a brute, reckless, pretty ferocious and even a creep. This heavily contrasts SunBurn's character as aware, focused, vulnerable (well that's pretty ironic, isn't it?), humble and being more of a pacifist. This just wasn't supposed to happen. I never really gave either of these characters much thought or even bothered to flesh them out. If you don't understand why or how it happened, don't worry about it; just keep in mind that this happened as a matter of fact. (To be fair, I have seen some positive sides to her and a few things both have in common but that's irrelevant to this discussion)

More on the meaning of the title itself. Taming her? Sounds silly for someone to tame their own OC. Sounds a bit schizophrenic, doesn't it? Recall that Erythema, just like SunBurn, is intended to be an avatar for myself for places where I would find it convenient to be seen as a female. In other words, she supposedly does represent me as a female. This is something I'm convinced of. That I just naturally take on such a brutal character as her just seems unnatural to me. I hope that made things a little clearer. Now for the meat of why "taming" her is seen by me as relevant.

I've done RPs as her before and two of which shook me up.

One is where my partner asked me to get violent with his OC Glimmer. It was difficult at first because I just couldn't set my mind to it but then this idea struck me. At the time, I had recently had a nightmare where (and I am not kidding you) Erythema was pretty literally beating SunBurn to death. Self-loathing is something that really plagued me at the time. The idea was to imbue all the shame I had felt towards myself into Glimmer. It worked -- too well. Erythema went completely berserk and to make a long story short, it had pretty much become a re-enactment of said nightmare. The difference being that Glimmer actually begged for her life and that I could really see how monstruous it is. After the RP was done, I needed to take some time off to reflect on it. The first question I asked myself is: "do I hate myself that much?" In the end I concluded that the self-loathing I had was simply exaggerated and unwarranted.

The other one is where I took part in an erotic RP with a different friend's OC, a (transgendered) stallion who we'll call AB. I really need to be careful how to get this across due to containing sexual themes... Right then, one thing Erythema and in turn I believe is that there's a double standard to sexual abuse. Male to female gets a lot of heat and justifiably so but female to male doesn't get nearly as much attention or flack. Heck, in some cases, the abusing female is even seen as a badass. I just saw this as the reality of things and this RP was an opportunity for me to act it out. So yeah, Erythema acted like a total creep here and did act on the idea that she could get away with sexually violating stallions. It played out pretty much like how I imagine such an encounter would play out with me at the receiving end. Again, after everything was done, I again needed to reflect on it. Well, it isn't justifiable and it does much more psychological harm than I thought it would. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse regardless of the genders of the parties involved.

All of this has lead me to believe that Erythema is this alter ego of mine and that in getting to understand her better is to understand myself better and to tame her is to tame some of my own inner demons. What she has done in RPs is not only ecpose those demons but placed them in a detached perspective. It's that detached perspective that led me to be freed by them; first from self-loathing and then from the double standard. It is my hope that she can end up doing more for me in the future.