7 Things Age Players do Wrong at Birchwood Isle

I know that nobody wants to hear that they're doing it wrong, and I also recognize that much of what this blog covers is "this is what you're doing wrong" and "how to make it better." We've been at this a long time, with Birchwood Isle coming up on four years running, and it's predecessor, Foster Forest, having run for close to seven years (off and on) before going belly up to make way for the grand project that is BWI. Ageplay has been part of my life for about seventeen years, and I've been running groups for fifteen. Very few people have been around this block as long as I have, and of those who have, none that I am aware of have been so consistent in playing nor have they maintained their own groups.

I'm not saying I'm better at this than you are: I'm saying that I likely have more experience than you do and that come what may, I know what's best for Birchwood Isle.

Some of our articles have universal application within ageplay role plays, and some of them have universal application in role play generally. This one relates specifically to Birchwood Isle, and the things that come up most often to disrupt our role play community.

1. Respond to a call for more teenagers with 13 or 14-year-olds. This is largely the fault of our founder team, as both of us have been unclear in the past about what it is that we're actually looking for when we ask for teenagers. Teenagers in this age range are still considered "younger" children and don't fill the need for high-school-aged teens.
2. Respond to a call for adults with an adult who won't adopt. Unless an adult is in a position to interact with the children of Birchwood Isle either in the group homes or as a potential adoptive parent, there is no use for the adult and he or she might as well relinquish the face claim to someone who will create a utilitarian adult.
3. Depersonalize adult characters to turn them into "spanking machines." We expect all of the characters on Birchwood Isle to show some character development and to have strong personalities. Some members treat our adults as though they are all interchangeable provided they are the "right" gender and face claim.
4. Refuse to interact with one or more genders. Birchwood Isle is proud to have a mix of genders (male, female, cis and transgender, as well as non-binary) and we also have a small group of members who insist on playing with only one gender. When we accept you, it is assumed that you will interact at least with binary male and female characters. Refusal to interact with males is upsetting to us.
5. Choose an adult character when shown a list including children and teens. We know you want to get spanked, and we recognize that the majority of you want to get spanked as early and often as possible. However, when you are shown a (short) list of administrative characters, we expect you to choose a character closer to your own character's age, not to aim to get spanked right away.
6. Refuse plots with administrator children while asking for plots with their adults. This happens more often than I'm comfortable admitting. Child and teen characters are often passed over in lieu of adult characters new members prefer to get to know in the hopes of getting spanked or adopted. The key to getting spanked or adopted is the child or teen characters!
7. Not reading what's posted for your information. For example, I have posted in more than one location that I do not like to spank little girls, and that I prefer to play males. Many members continue to ask me to spank their little girls with one of my adult females. This is a combination that turns my stomach for reasons I won't get into here (except to say that I have triggers, too!).

Nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. We only ban for one reason, and that's predatory behavior. Different things come across as predatory, and I will list those here since it's related to the above information. Unless you are doing or have done one of the things listed here, you will not be banned (at least not permanently).

1. Reject all characters of a particular gender while demanding members create children for your character of a specific age and gender. One person was banned because he insisted on only role playing with girls and demanded that they all be teenage girls. He was very clear and insistent that they would be under strict rules and frequently spanked. (It should be noted that this member also mentioned publicly, in our chat box, a girl he knew who enjoyed detentions because they made her feel "loved." The risk of pedophilia was too high to keep him.)
2. Demand that a punishment meet certain criteria or expectations. It is one thing to have a preference for a certain scenario, but you may not demand of our adults. This is considered predatory. One member was banned when he refused to accept that an adult couldn't complete a thread due to the dire consequences it would mean for his teenage character, and called me all kinds of names for not changing my adult character to accommodate him. He was just here to get his jollies, and nothing else.
3. Attach to a single character, family, or member and refuse to play with others. This has happened a total of two times on Birchwood Isle, and in both cases the member was unsatisfied and wound up leaving the group. In one case the member was also banned. Not only is this behavior highly predatory as it preys upon the object of fixation, but it is the beginnings of a "clique," which are dangerous in our community environment.
4. Singling out a member or character and then leaving the group with a final message asking that member to role play with you privately. This was our last ban, and it would appear that the member arrived on the site for the sole purpose of singling out a new role play partner. We are not a personals service and I have rarely felt so crept on as I did with this particular situation. Please don't ask our members for 1x1 role play: It's incredibly bad manners!

5 Reasons Seven-Year-Old Girls are the Default Ageplay Character (and 4 Reasons Why They SHOULDN'T be)

We see so many seven-year-old little girls on Birchwood Isle that when a new member joins, we start looking for little girl face claims before we've even started talking to the new member. The truth is that we're getting short on celebrities who fit the descriptions we're being given because there are so many seven-year-old girls.

Why? Because seven-year-old little girls have become the age play default character.

My co-admin and I have been asking ourselves for quite some time why seven-year-old girls are the default character, and we've come up with the following reasons that people repeatedly fall back on seven-year-olds (with an occasional variation to six or eight). This is our attempt to answer that question with honesty and fairness.

1. Seven is the median age between three (generally considered our youngest age) and ten (generally considered to be the oldest age to be considered a "little kid"). We assume, therefore, that upon having chosen to play a "young child" that our members reach for an age that gives them the best of both worlds. Seven year olds are both "young" and "independent," seemingly giving them opportunities to enjoy the cuddling and closeness of very young children alongside the autonomy of making their own decisions like older kids.
   
   
   The Reality: On Birchwood Isle, children under the age of ten aren't given free access to the town, and those who belong at the foster home have very little autonomy at all. Their decisions are made for them, they eat what they are given to them, dress in the clothes laid out for them, and are expected to obey the adults. This autonomy only comes for these children when they are older than ten. Furthermore, the staff of New Beginnings rarely cuddle the children. Cuddling and a lot of the affection you're looking for comes when bonds form and not before.
   
   
   
2. Seven-year-olds are able to fully communicate a wide range of emotions, but are still dependent on adults to tell them what the difference is between right and wrong. The fact that the child is able to communicate makes them potential fun to play with other children, while the fact that they have an underdeveloped sense of right and wrong means that they are able to get into trouble without the appearance of being a "bad" or especially "bratty" kid. One year younger, and children aren't communicating well yet. One year older, and they are growing close to the age of reason and an understanding of the difference between right and wrong.
   
   
   The Reality: Nothing -- including being below the age of knowledge of right and wrong -- excuses repeated behaviors. In fact, I will go so far as to say that this excuse to play dumb about correction is one of the most irritating things about children in this age range, and it represents one of the main reasons that I do not enjoy role playing with seven-year-old little girls. If your character is old enough to communicate well, she is also old enough to understand if not why what she did was wrong but that what she did was wrong.
   
   
   
3. Seven-year-olds are young enough to be considered "cute" and therefore at an age where they are presumably more likely to be adopted by adults in an ageplay group. In theory, adults want to adopt younger children. This is certainly true in the real world where adoptive parents look for infants instead of older foster children. Many role players believe that this applies to all groups, and default to an age where they think their child character or inner kid is likely to be adopted but is still old enough to interact at school and with peers.
   
   
   The Reality: Birchwood Isle isn't real life, and though in the real world younger children are more likely to be adopted than older children, our staff in particular is often seeking to sponsor, foster, or adopt older children and teenagers. The younger the child, the harder it is to form a bond with them through role play, and the more likely they are to wait in the foster home for somebody to pick up a sponsorship and/or to adopt them.
   
   
   
4. Female role players often play female characters because it is easier and more familiar for them. Many male age players enjoy playing opposite gender for the perceived humiliation. Girls are therefore more popular to play because people simply like to play girls. It's easier for many people to play same-gender than it is to play cross-gender and so since there are more female role players in age play than there are male, there are likewise more female characters and inner kids.
   
   
   The Reality: Boys are often more fun than girls to play because they tend to be more rambunctious and better at getting up to mischief. In particular if you're interested in spanking role play, it's often easier to get a boy into trouble than it is to get a girl into trouble, and it is nearly guaranteed to be more interesting than one more thread with a little girl out of bed or sassing an adult.
   
   
   
5. Little girls are considered "cuter" because of the way they can be dressed up or their hair can be styled. Some players are especially fond of describing the "cute" things about their child characters, including such things as the clothing that they wear or the way that they style their hair. Sometimes it's that the little girl carries around a particular stuffed animal with her (something boys this age wouldn't dream of doing). It can be assumed that the player believes these "cute" behaviors make the child more likely to be adopted.
   
   
   The Reality: Describing your character's appearance and various things that make her "cute" is fun for you, but annoying to your role play partner. "Cute" is wrapped up in the character's personality, not in her dresses, not in her sweaters, not in her pigtails or the freckles on her nose. A character with a lot of physical flaws can be "cute" because of the way that she acts. Choosing to play a little girl for the "cute" factor is annoying to many of the adult-playing members of Birchwood Isle.

Our staff fully recognizes and accepts emotionally real inner kids. We have emotionally-real inner children of our own, and we understand where you're coming from. Both Ava (my co-founder) and I have inner children in this age range, and we accept that there may be other reasons that your inner child is a seven-year-old girl. If you identify this character as an inner child, chances are that none of the above applies to you. However, we would still like for you to consider what follows before signing up to play one on Birchwood Isle.

We're going to have a harder time finding a sponsor, foster parent, or adoptive parent for your seven-year-old little girl for several reasons.

1. We simply have too many seven-year-old little girls already. The vast majority of the children at the New Beginnings Home for Orphaned and Abandoned Children are little girls. This means that your character or inner kid has more competition than if you were playing a little boy or an older girl. Adults looking to adopt girl children in this age range are going to be looking at all the girls who are available, and yours is going to have to really stand out. She won't do this by getting spanked more or taking up more attention from adults, and so for those most inclined to role play seven-year-old little girls, playing one actually defeats the purpose, as she will not stand out in this environment.
2. Most parents looking for little girls are currently full. We allow each sponsoring adult to sponsor up to three children at one time. The adults in our group who are currently seeking to sponsor little girls are full, and will be for three months, provided that all of the people involved remain in the group for the duration of the sponsorship period. This means that you may wait for no less than two to three months before there is an opening to sponsor (the first step in our adoption process) a little girl in this age range. Is it worth it, considering that a child as young as nine may be more appealing to some of our adults?
3. We need teenagers and little boys. There are needed character groups on our group right now, which means that we are actively seeking players willing to play high-school-aged teenagers and little boys. However frequently we send out notes requesting characters in these age ranges, we are met with a steady stream of little girls. Little girls are a dime a dozen, but when we get somebody wanting to play a boy or a high-schooler, we get honestly excited. Even better if it's a male teenager as far as our founder team is concerned. Another little girl is another little girl. An unexpected gem will get us fawning all over you.
4. I, Devin, on a personal level do not like F/g spanking. For those  not "in the know" on pairings, F/g refers to an adult female and a little girl. Since the majority of our members prefer female adults, and I do the majority of the spanking, this means that your seven-year-old little girl is probably at some point going to put me in a position to feel uncomfortable with the pairing. There's no reason for me to go into detail about why this pairing bothers me, but I will go so far as to say that I sometimes find this pairing triggering, and I would much prefer to avoid playing it or reading it if I can. M/g (adult male and little girl), F/f (adult female and older girl) and other pairings are fine, but F/g upsets me.

The question, therefore, is what do you do? 

If you still want to be part of Birchwood Isle, having read and understood this, then my recommendation is that you take a look at our list of needed character types of consider picking up a requested character (who is usually part of a biological family).

Most of all, we highly recommend playing an older child or a high-school-aged teenager. We accept that most of you who play girls will always prefer to play girls and that asking you to play boys won't ever get us the results that we want. All that we ask is that you consider our points carefully before bringing us (yet another) seven-year-old girl.

Character Types We'd Like to See More of at Birchwood Isle

You may have seen my earlier post about character types that we see most frequently on Birchwood Isle. I created that post in order to encourage people to avoid repetitive character types we see frequently. While there is nothing patently wrong with a seven-year-old little girl with dark hair, green eyes, and a big gap in her teeth, this has become the default character type that we see most often, and we'd like to encourage our members and potential members to fill some other voids.

In order to help potential members (and existing members making new characters) to determine what we need the most, this post will go through the specific needs and hopefully give you some specific ideas.

As always, we encourage our members to make the characters they are most comfortable playing, and to not push themselves to create a character just to fill a void!

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#1 Little Boys

While we have an abundance of little girls, we do not have all that many little boys. This leaves the little boys (anywhere from 4 to 12 years old) without playmates, creating frustration for their players. 

It also creates an unbalanced adoption situation, because as much as we recognize that most adopters seem to prefer female children, there are those among us (including both of our head admins) who prefer boy children over girl children.

We would like to see more boy children, but please note that we prefer that these children be played by those with confidence that they can play a boy who acts like a boy, and not a girl who has boy body parts.  

If you are interested in playing a little boy between 4 and 12 years old, we'd love to have you! Please consider contacting someone on our administrative team about what you'd like to do and we can help you to get started with this type of character. Your own real-life gender doesn't matter!

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#2 High School Aged Teenagers

Our staff often gives shoutouts for more teenagers, because we need them in general. The response, more often than not, is seventh and eighth graders who are thirteen or fourteen years old. This is not what we're looking for. We would like to see more teenagers, for several reasons.Most importantly to us, teenagers provide friends for our inner teens. It's selfish, but it's true. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly to you, our head admins most want to adopt teenagers. Thirdly, and most important perhaps in general is that teenagers have access to the entire town, meaning their homes, their schools, and the businesses throughout town. They can work jobs, have a wider support network, and generally interact more than any other character group on Birchwood Isle.

If you feel comfortable playing a teenager, we highly recommend it. Teenage boys are of course always in higher demand than the girls, but we will be thrilled to accept teenagers of all genders, provided that they are of high school age. Please note that one or two more transgender teenagers would be interesting and add to our dynamic, if you are comfortable playing this scenario! We already have two one transgender and one genderfluid teenager on the island!

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#3 Characters of Color

There is no question that the age play community is incredibly white washed. The administrative team cannot burden the sole responsibility for adding a diverse cast of faces to those played on Birchwood Isle, and our community (the whole community) includes people of all colors, all ethnicities, and body types.

Representation may be less important in our community than in the broader role play community, but it thrills me every time someone is interested in playing an Asian, African, or Hispanic character on Birchwood Isle. Whether your character is a child or an adult, we'd love to see some faces that mix it up a bit and add some more diversity to our cast!

Characters with body diversity are also more than welcome. Right now we can proudly state that we have dwarf characters and characters who are heavier of build. What we really need from you now is some more non-white characters so that we can avoid the great white wall that is so common in ageplay groups. If you need help choosing a face claim, please just ask! We have a list of faces we'd like to see in play.

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#4 Older Adults

While age play is about playing your kids with their guardians and other adults, there is something nice about having older adults on the site as well. Right now our oldest character is 86 years old and a great-grandfather. We also have a 71 year-old great-grandfather who is a closeted homosexual. 

Older adults are great for grandparent figures or for supplemental adults. They are also highly realistic. We don't currently have any older adults among our canon characters, so you'll have to come up with one on your own, but we'd love to have them!

We also welcome our members creating their own requested families. If you are interested in playing an older adult, you may wish to create him or her with a family of children, grandchildren, and potentially great-grandchildren as well. 

Older adults enrich the environment that we have at Birchwood Isle and we think that you might enjoy playing them as much as we do! They can still work on the island, or may choose to live with family. One way or another, adults aged 60+ have few problems getting threads!

5 Character Types We See a Lot at Birchwood Isle (but Would Like to See Less Frequently)

Birchwood Isle has been open and going strong for about three months now and during that time we have noticed patterns in the types of characters we see coming in the most often. While we rarely place a restriction on a certain character type, we would like to make our members and potential members aware of the types of characters we see the most often, because these are always the character types that we are most on the verge of having to restrict.

You are still welcome to create characters in these groups. We love your inner kids and believe in the reality and importance of inner children, so our doors are always welcome to your inner child or children. However, if you are experimenting with a new character or are looking to fill a void on Birchwood Isle, we suggest you first check out our list of Character Types We Want to See More of at Birchwood Isle. This will help you to understand what we need the most and to fill actual needs.

We are not asking that you don't bring us these types of characters, only that you think twice about a different character type first.

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More than any other character type at Birchwood Isle, we see a lot of little girls. We define "little" as younger than ten years old.

We see so many seven year old little girls that our staff literally takes bets on whether or not the latest character is going to be a seven year-old little girl.

Birchwood Isle currently has far more female children than it does male children. It has far more children below the age of ten than it does children in other age groups.

Most of these little girls are seven years old. Most of them have dark brown hair. Most of them have blue or green eyes.

We are running out of celebrity face claims for these girls!

Our staff suggests that you consider playing an older child (10-14 years old) or, even better for our site, a high-school-aged teenager. These groups have far more opportunities to role play and are more likely to get attention from staff characters than younger characters are. Let me repeat: Our staff prefer teen role playing with teen characters to role playing with younger characters!

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We would never make the argument that children shouldn't read or that reading isn't good for the children of Birchwood Isle, but it has come to our attention that we have a relatively large number of very young children reading far above level. First and second graders do not, in general, read chapter books and carry these with them everywhere they go.

Our interview process won't catch this before the character is in play, and we won't ask you to make your child less of a reader in order to combat this problem, but we ask that those reading this consider a different hobby for their introverted kid.

Other options include art, independent science, playing with dolls, and other creative pursuits.

We do not recommend children adopt writing as an alternative for the same reason.

Whatever you choose, remember that even introverted children should interact with their peers and with adults at the New Beginnings home (or whichever home they live in). Keep in mind that no child who isn't social will be able to find an adoptive family!

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Everybody wants to be intelligent, and our staff appreciates that many of our members relive parts of their own childhood through their inner children, finding ways to improve themselves by making their inner children everything they were not. While we understand this, however, it is overwhelming the number of highly intelligent kids that we get at Birchwood Isle.

I'm going to be very frank with you here: It offends me when a person feels the need to include their character's presumed intelligence quotient (IQ) in their plot pages or their biographies. While this is something that the player should always keep in mind, it only comes up publicly when the character is meant to be very high on the scale.

Your character doesn't need to be inferior in order to be realistic, but a group and community take all kinds. As the head admin, I play characters who struggle with learning disabilities, or who simply lack the skills and intelligence that other characters have. These characters are generally considered to be more interesting because they are less common and it adds dimension. Remember that if your character is a grand list of positive traits, this is what we would define as a "Mary Sue" character. Birchwood Isle is looking for highly developed characters.

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Birchwood Isle currently has enough kids coming from wealthy backgrounds into foster care on the island, and we do not need any more of these. There's nothing wrong with children coming from a wealth background to a life of poverty in foster care and the character development that comes through their transition, but we would like to see some variations from this point forward.

Please allow us to make it clear that any child coming to New Beginnings or Second Chances with a trust fund will not have access to that trust fun until she turns twenty-two years old. No foster child, therefore, will have special privileges and access that the others will not.

All children receive an allowance that pays for their bus pass, their school meals, and leaves them between $5 and $10 pocket money. Teenagers may obtain jobs in town to give them more spending money.

Trust fund children will be treated exactly the same as any child without a trust fund, and it will not make it easier for your inner kid to find an adoptive family: In fact, it might make it harder because these trust funds can make your character boring and less desirable. Think twice before doing this!

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Administrative characters make up the majority of the teen parents on the island, and we have to admit right out of the gate that teen parents themselves are not the problem. In this setting, kids coming from foster care, they aren't unrealistic. However, the problem that we've faced with most teen parents we've seen at Birchwood Isle is that they use their children in order to get into trouble.

Anyone choosing to play a teen parent must be playing a parent first and a teenager second, especially if you are going to have somebody play the child to your teenager. 

Because of what we've seen, we no longer accept teen parents as first characters, as many of our members now and in the past have chosen to abuse the privilege of playing them and it often turns into a disaster. If you wish to play a teen parent, consider a permanently pregnant female, or consider playing your own child so that abandonment only hurts you and not the person you're playing with who relies on you to parent their younger child. If you have a strong desire to play a teen parent, please note that abortion is illegal on the island and that all teenagers are encouraged to parent their children rather than give them up for adoption. This is a serious undertaking!

I'll have another article out tomorrow about which types of characters we'd like to see more of on Birchwood Isle, but if you're reading this before that article is available and linked, please consider bringing us a high-school-aged teenager, a boy child, or an adult.

More tomorrow!

The Ageplay and Discipline Role Play Community at Birchwood Isle

Birchwood Isle has given us many things to be proud of over the years it has been in development. I could name you half a dozen things about our group that makes it better than others of its type, but the one thing that stands out (most of all in 2015) is that Birchwood Isle Ageplay and Family Discipline Role Play has an incredible sense of community.

If you choose to stop into our chat box and say hello, you will likely be greeted by a chorus of members eager to meet you and answer any questions you have about Birchwood Isle. Most of our members continue to be active in our chat, getting to know other members personally. Our members are personable and remember you, your name, and much of what you've chosen to tell us.

Lots of things about Birchwood Isle make us special, but none so much as the way that we embrace every member of our community to illustrate to them that we see them as individuals. Our staff knows which members have chronic illnesses (and generally which chronic illnesses), which struggle with family issues, who has which talents, and what our members prefer to play. We stick to one another because we realize that as we build and support the members of our community in a way you won't find in many other places.

One of the ways that we do this is through our Weekly Encouragements. These weekly newsletters select one outstanding member of our community to highlight, update members on the progress of current events, provide a weekly tip, and allow members to involve other members by giving them the opportunity to encourage members as well with a weekly questionnaire to fill out.

Birchwood Isle is an inclusive community that strives for balance and inclusion for all members of the site. We encourage our players to contact one another for threads and to plot out ideas. Many age play sites don't encourage this level of interaction, and this is one of the most important things that makes Birchwood Isle exceptional.

If you don't believe us, come on by and chat with us in the box at the top of the page (for guests) or in the sidebar (for members).