The Whatever that Happened to that One Girl

When last we left HunterSister, she and that one man-whore paladin in my guild were dating. (Here’s when last we left HunterSister) Well, they were dating — and you know when I say “dating” that’s just a code word for screwing and posting sappy, gaussian-blurred photos on our guild site — and then ALLEGEDLY she was whacked and game-stalking him and we laughed because goddamn, everyone saw that coming.

So I guess that didn’t work out (shocking), and our man-whore paladin moved on to other female gamers, eventually landing on (pun!) a female paladin in our guild.

Now, this gal was an interesting character. Friendly, outgoing, and a reasonably skilled player (that’s code for “kinda sucked, but not enough to get kicked”). After about a week of guild membership, she’s comfortable enough with us to reveal more of her personality, which is somewhat clever sexual innuendos and occasional bawdiness. Who doesn’t love bawdy? I love bawdy, I’ll bet you do too.

Un-for-tun-ate-ly, one of the consequences of a female gamer working bawdy humor is unwanted attention. I saw a few things in /guildchat that gave me pause, and I wondered if it bothered her, but she would carry on like there was no harm. Cool, because I hate policing the guild.

Then, late winter 2007, we had this huge guild meeting in Ventrilo. Planned agenda: the future, namely raiding, recruiting, downsizing (that was my agenda item because goddamn, we were just TOO BIG for a max 25-man raid scheme), and restructuring of guild leadership. Actual agenda: airing of grievances.

One of those grievances, which took up AN HOUR OF DISCUSSION TIME, was that bawdy paladin girl didn’t appreciate the similarly bawdy (my opinion) comments made in return. Summarized: she didn’t like the inappropriate comments made to her and the guild dudes often stepped over the (invisible) line when talking to her. And of course, the gentlemen officership expressed GREAT ALARM and rushed to comfort her while scolding the rest of us. Truly, most of us knew exactly who she was probably talking about — the suspects had tried to initiate outrageous conversations with other guild women in the past, however, when rebuffed, the suspects had ceased and never bothered those women again.

Isn’t that ok? It is in my opinion. Someone says something that someone else doesn’t want to talk about, the someone else says stop, and the offensive someone stops. Another crisis averted!

So, I asked her, who are we talking about, and did you ask them to stop? And, of course, as is the way of modern times, she doesn’t want to say who it is, and yes she did ask him/them to stop and he/they didn’t. Christ. I really hate that. Some dude(s) is sexually harassing her or borderline harassing and she won’t say who. How are we supposed to deal with that? Here’s how we did deal with that: Hey guys, don’t sexually harass anyone. Kthx!

Talk about an edict with no teeth. (I mean, duh?)

She seemed satisfied and the meeting crawled forward.

Few weeks after that, there’s this new level 65-ish druid in the guild and I asked the officers why in the hell were we recruiting new people when we’re already obese with members, and further, why in the hell were we inviting low levels?? Oh, that’s the bawdy paladin’s real life husband.

!!!

She really kept that a secret. Not that married people aren’t bawdy, but usually they mention their spouse at least ONCE.

Their game relationship was somewhat unusual, too — they never played together, hardly spoke to each other, and his presence didn’t curtail the bawdiness one bit. I appreciated that, because I love bawdy. I’ll bet you do too.

Another thing his presence didn’t curtail, her private Ventrilo sessions with whomever was her favored guildmember of the month. Interesting.

Fast forward a month, and she announced to the guild that she was getting a divorce. (I believe that was our 2nd or 3rd real life divorce.) Also interesting.

Shortly after her announcement, the mutineers and I jumped ship and started our own guild. We offered to take her aboard, but she’s one of those guild teases — ya I’ll join, I can’t join just yet, no I won’t join, ask me tomorrow, for sure I’ll join next week, seriously I’ll join tomorrow night after raids, etc. etc. until we just don’t give a shit anymore. Last I heard, she couldn’t join because her guild boyfriend (real life boyfriend now) hated us. Another interesting. That guy wasn’t even in our old guild two months ago! Girl moves fast.

Back to our man-whore paladin. He was done with HunterSister because she was crazy. She was different, I’d grant him that. A divorced woman in her mid-30s who digs horses, and fairies (the fantasy kind, not … well, you know.), and glitter, and sometimes her Myspace had tears raining down the page with motivational messages like “believe in your woman-ness” and “everywhere is LOVE, LOVE, LOOOOOOOOOOOVE!!!” or something, and she hearts puppies and kittens and babies and lip gloss too! You don’t find that every day … in someone over the age of 13.

Until she deleted her Myspace after ANOTHER bad breakup, it was a good source of regular entertainment. She had this predictable cycle where she’d be single and looking for the perfect man who she just knows is out there (her words) and she’d have a photo with some skin — not too much (as if), just some. Then, she’d be IN A RELATIONSHIP and the photo would go to less skin, like a turtleneck and jeans, and she’s so lucky to have this guy. Then oh noes, the tears would rain down her page and she’d post some blog about not trusting men because they’re all liars and the cycle would start all over again.

My theory, then and now, is that all these guys would get frightened away by the doll and model horse collections she must have all over her apartment. I walk into some house with dolls and model horses all over and I walk right back out. My line in the sand, no doll or model horse collections.

Anyways, our man-whore paladin ran away, probably trampling several other guys also fleeing.

Now I used to think our man-whore was a stable individual, but then he started doing this routine: he’d log on a few hours before raids, he’d run around doing daily quests or whatever, then he’d get in a snit over some offhand remark in /guildchat and log off — sometimes he’d be gone for days, sulking, I assumed. He’d come back (maybe after intense therapy or multiple listens to a My Chemical Romance CD, who knows), he’d raid normally and joke around, and then one day, back to snits and sulking offline. A grown man sulking, that can’t be attractive.

In between the sulking, he told one of the guildmates that he and bawdy paladin were boyfriend girlfriend or dating or really close (in real life, tyvm) and he might join her guild or she his guild (i.e. my guild — and suuuure she will) and ISN’T LIFE GRAND!!

How lucky was that guild going to be to have the two of them? DAMN lucky.

Sooo. You know how these things work out with the … undiagnosed. Not well. And soon after them being really close (and you know “really close” is just code for screwing but no time to add guassian blur to sappy photos), there was trouble in paradise and she went back to her prior game/real life boyfriend and he went back to his true loves, My Chemical Romance and sulking.

Now this is what we wonder: who exactly is the whack job in these scenarios? I’m not so sure anymore.

But here’s a scarier thought: maybe he’s the one with the doll and model horse collections. Think about it.

21 thoughts on “The Whatever that Happened to that One Girl

  1. And the story continues to get better. She allegedly is back with the husband while keeping the multiple boyfriends.

  2. So, the thing that I’ve always wondered with AFK Gamer stories …

    None of this stuff surprises me. People are damned strange, I can accept that.

    Why the hell would you want your guildmates to know about your dirty laundry? Don’t people have like, crazy filters?

    I mean jeezus, if I didn’t have a crazy filter someone might know about my deep and abiding affection for precious moments tea sets.

  3. Much more scarier thought: This is just one known case you’re aware of. Multiply that by the 8 million subscribers that play WoW. Now *that* is a scary thought.

  4. Personally I think of the two of them, one has the model horse collection, and the other has the doll collection. Which is which—THAT is the question.

    Of course you want to know what’s really scary? I’ve seen far too many women in their 30s who seem to have a thing for glittery glistening moving shiny pictures that make me want to barf. I wish it was as rare as you seem to think. I could show you StumbleUpon pages… but no, that would be cruel, and I’d have to look at them too in order to find them and pass them on. I’m no masochist.

    What is it with your guilds and divorces?! I swear, all the ones I’ve been in have had really boring, happy marriages (thank god).

  5. Where do you find these people? I’ve been playing WoW for 2 years now and I’ve only really had one good (in league with your drama) story. Maybe people just aren’t as up front on my server, lol.

  6. Have to agree with you there Heather, lots of (not so boring though..) happy couples here too. All our drama comes from the guild-teens…and (thankfully?) not the relationship kind haha.

    Glitter…dolls..horses…animated tears…I can only imagine but I won’t because it’d give me nightmares.

  7. Trust me these drama whores are out there destroying guilds every day.

    I fail to understand people that insist on sharing the intimate details of their personal lives with their guildmates. I fail to understand, but I love that they do.

  8. I fail to understand people that share intimate details of their personal lives with their guild mates.

    Yet, I can’t look away.

  9. So, not to ignore the story, which was great, but I’m perplexed as to how you had a guild meeting in the late winter of 2007. I didn’t realize you had gotten that flux capacitor working again – congrats!

  10. Pure gold as usual, especially this line:

    My line in the sand, no doll or model horse collections

    You should start writing novels 🙂

  11. So how is it that every relationship in your guild turns immediately into real life sexy time making? Does everyone live within a 25 mile radius?

    Between that and the above mentioned compulsion to share dirty laundry, your guild is really easier to understand if pictured as living together in some sort of commune.

  12. @Michael, Ya, some people don’t have that sense of what is too much to share with the public/casual acquaintances. (witness: just about any Myspace) Quite a few overestimate the importance or durability of game friendships.

    @Morphene, I dunno how we find these people. Maybe I’m nosier than most so I’m aware of these peccadillos. We do talk alot in 5-mans, and we’re gossips. Obviously. 🙂

    @Ramada, I’m in the United States, so winter is late December thru early March. (right?) Meeting was either late February/early March of this year.

    @Ghost, thanks. I probably should write a novel and I’ll bet I could finish it while raiding and waiting for afk raiders. But that’s another rant entirely.

    @Staarkhand, no, we all don’t live close to each other which makes this even weirder. The man-whore above FLIES to meet his game girls. (That’s why we call his trips F*** Vacations.) His job does not involve travel so I’m not sure how he works this into his schedule. Altho, life in a close-knit raiding guild is something like living in a commune, eh?

    @Van Hemlock, hard to keep everyone straight without a playbill, huh? HunterSister was ManWhore’s April 2007 F*** Vacation. BawdyPaladin was ManWhore’s Summer F*** Vacation. He’s been sulking too much lately to line up his next F*** Vacation.

  13. I only wish there was time-stop photography for Myspace pages. Then we could watch the coming and going of her various F$@# buddies and emotional trauma.

    You could make a mint televising this stuff.

  14. Our drama is never nearly this entertaining. It’s like a messed up soap opera….

    “As Outland Turns”
    “Days of our Raids”
    “The Raiders and the Restless”

    heh

  15. One of the last guilds I was in while playing DAoC had the equivalent of this paladin as the guildleader. Fortunately, her being on the other coast prevented the horrid psychodrama with one of my real life friends from going completely over the top.

    Well, okay, no…it didn’t. But at least nobody caught any diseases.

  16. @Foton: It depends where in the US you’re at. If you’re in the southwest, like me, winter lasts from about Dec. 1st until Dec. 7th (give or take a few days). 😛

    All these stories make me glad I quit the “hardcore raiding” scene. It seems to attract a rather unique group of people. Like the one GL on our server who slept with two different MTs in her guild and got pregnant by one IIRC. So sad and yet so entertaining at the same time. Keep em coming!

  17. This is just like the IRC channels of old, except with Orcs.

    And a daily commitment to spending four of five hours hitting number buttons to get epics.

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