Letting Go...

Could you do that? Could I do that?

Now, I'm not actually talking about leaving WoW, but something else. For me, my characters are just that. Mine. Mine to play, and, pretty much, mine only. I am hardly ever compelled to let someone else hop on my characters, even if I'm there. Why? Well... I guess, it's just how things are.

First of all, I act a certain way. Vaguely decorous, if you want to ignore the fact that I have a fascination with the spacebar, and all of my characters tend to end up jumping as they move. [Unless I actually think about it. But, generally speaking, if any character is going a fair enough distance away, you'll see them jumping. Dunno why... Oh, I'll blame it on Sango. Yeah! Works for me!]

Two, /y doesn't exist for me. Ever. I have it turned off, and I have never used it, as I've always found it irritating when someone used it, for they tended to be using it in combination with the inability to find their caps lock key to turn it off, so it's giant, red, obnoxious, and has a lot of exclamation points after it and is gross.

Three. I know that I personally hate messaging someone with familiarity, and getting the whole "oh, it's not _____ at the moment, but ____". Kinda strange.

I guess, in general, I like to make positive impressions on people, even if I don't like them very much. Show up, do my job, if I like them, I offer my services in the future (most people don't take me up on it, but I tend to do it anyway) as well as thank them for the group, and then leave. If I don't, well. Depends on my mood. Foul mood, I get my stuff and leave. Okay mood, say thanks shortly, and leave. Good stuff for the grapevine, you see, just to avoid the whole, "Losse? Oh, she's a good/fair healer and all, but... you don't want to group with her."

God knows what someone else would do if they were on my characters... and didn't say it wasn't me... and the other person can't figure it out... or is completely in the dark about my ways.

Maybe it's just a Lin thing. I don't know.

The other night, I was staying over at a friend's. He had to go off to work, so I was left alone to entertain myself. Hopped in WoW, got pulled into a rather crappy SSC group, and was still in there when he came back three hours later.

(He was gone for four hours, but the first hour I spent in Heroic Sethekk Halls, healing a bear that had forgotten his bear gear in the bank and, due to my suggestion, had tanked the whole instance in kitty gear [RAWR! Go over geared druids. On both his part and mine, since many of his kitty pieces had lots of armor... but he wasn't uncrittable]. He didn't use his CC options (a sheep and a trap) very often, and we only had one wipe the whole instance. Good stuff.)

Anyway. Beside the tangent, though... He brought food back, so he ate while I listened through the pep and instructional talk right before Fathom-Lord Karathress, then suggested that he play my druid while I ate. Only stopped to consider it for a moment.

Food (for I was hungry) and letting go of my precious characters, even if I was to be kinda looking over his shoulder while he did so, or eat later and pray that we don't die on the boss too much.

Food, so food it was.

I got up, gave him a quick Druid Healing 101 lesson (I push, he clicks, by the way. He has a T6 paladin, and fairly decently geared shadow priest, so it wasn't a complete "oh, here! This is called WoW, and I'm playing a druid, and this is how this fight goes". If it had been, I would have chosen food.) As a paladin, he clicks his healy spell. Clicks it really, really, really fast... which makes me think he ought to have a really strong and worked out pointer finger.

I point out Lifebloom, and tell him that it stacks three times. And I like to have a Rejuvenation up on the guy I'm healing too. Those two HoTs, and, if he falls below seventy, hit Regrowth. Refresh Lifebloom when it's near the end of the timer, and that's druid healing. (More or less anyway!)

Fight starts, and I start eating...

And watch him do his Super-Clicky-Ness on Lifebloom. GCD defeats it... but he still tried. Had to reiterate on the fact druid healing is supposed to be "slow" and "steady". We're trees. Fast doesn't come in our vocabulary. Raid wipes.

Right before this (while he was eating), he realized that he knew many of the people of the raid... and didn't like them. The raid leader happened to be dead, and... well. Friend had something against the raid leader. Does kitty-humping mean anything to you?

Did to him.

So I watched helplessly as he went and ruined Losse's image for that raid. And made use of /y for the first time ever on my account. And said stuff in /g that I didn't quite see...

And people wonder why exactly why I tend not to let other people play my characters. I get the feeling my image in the raid's mind went from what little ground I may have accomplished to some negative number that would be really rather hard to escape from.

I understood that it was all in good fun, but for the rest of the raid? I don't know. Two of them knew that it wasn't actually me, but a friend of mine. Two, out of twenty-five...

I think I'm just too uptight... but still. My characters are mine, and I'm going to keep sticking to the fact that only I can play them.