The Roleplay Cycle and Its Effect on Inner Kids

There has been considerable discussion at home lately about the way that I run through cycles in my hobbies and interests. I'm not depressed: I'm always interested in something; Sometimes the thing I'm interested in isn't role play. I think that these cycles are normal for most people because you can see them throughout the role play community, on forums, on Tumblr, in every genre. 

Most of us seem to cycle through these phases together, which means that the role play community will have fewer good, strong groups during the "purging periods" and more good, strong, serious groups during the "binging" periods. A third and forth phase of the cycle complete it, much like the lunar phases. Our interest waxes and it wanes, with periods of fullness and periods of darkness. Surely Ava and I aren't the only ones who experience this phenomenon.

Recently I've had to express my apologies to several of our members, because I'm in the purging part of my cycle, obsessed with music and reading and less with posting and character creation. I work hard to keep up, but there are times I simply don't have the time with everything else that I have going on.

What I wanted to talk about was the way that these purge cycles affect my inner kids. It seems to have the opposite effect of the one expected: They appreciate the time to come out of their shells in the real world and engage in the hobbies that we share with one another. Some enjoy the music lessons, others dig deep into books I wouldn't otherwise read, and most of them try their hand at blogging now and again.

The inner kids around me, unfortunately, suffer. Mine do just fine with these "purges" but the kids I'm taking care of tend to suffer while I work through to keep the balance. This is why I often choose not to adopt other people's inner kids, so that I don't have to worry about their suffering abandonment when I cannot, or do not wish to, post on Birchwood Isle.

I'm already coming out of it now. Some of this cycle was brought on early by situations beyond my control but which happened on Birchwood Isle. It's getting better now, and I'm hoping to get some things done shortly. 

Please don't be afraid to join us, and don't be afraid of your own cycles, either!

Weekly Roleplay Tip: Plot in Public

Who's ready for a weekly roleplay tip of the week? We also do these in our Wednesday Weekly Encouragements for those interested in reading more from us. There are effectively two weekly tips every week!

This week's Saturday Roleplay Tip comes to you thanks to several incidents that we've had on Birchwood Isle. I won't belabor the point, but the tip still stands.

We encourage our members -- and members of other ageplay groups -- to plot in public, particularly when it comes to pairing up inner kids with potential parents.

While we understand that most of you exchange contact information and plot in instant messengers or even over the phone or text messages, we discourage this behavior at Birchwood Isle and therefore prompt every member to create a "Member plot page" which allows all members to plot with all characters belonging to a specific member without having to hunt down individual plot pages.

There is no way for us to enforce this matter with our members, and therefore we rarely press the issue unless it becomes a problem (as it has in the past). 

However, we strongly encourage our members to make sure that their plots are posted somewhere that the staff can review them in case of a disagreement or problem. If someone comes to us to tell us that the plot isn't going the way that they had planned with their partner, it is much easier for us to make things right if we can see the problem!

On Birchwood Isle, we ask that you create a plot page for your inner kid or inner adult as soon as you get a chance. If you wish to plot with a staffer or another person with a multitude of characters, please make the effort to use our member plot pages to get in touch with us. Obviously personal and instant messages are tempting, but we suggest that keeping things in the open helps the staff to help you!

Weekly Canon: Marcel Juneau

Marcel Juneau is the seven-year-old brother of 

Dominique Juneau of Birchwood Isle. He attends 

BWI Elementary, where he is a second grader.

His Nationality is American. He is currently open.

Who is Marcel?

Marcel is the little brother of new arrival (to the island) Dominique Juneau. When the American social services threatened to take him and his sisters away from their brother (well-known to be a homosexual), big brother moved the two younger siblings onto the island where they would be safer. He's never known a father other than Dominique, and often calls his brother "Dad" instead of referring to him by his first name.

A sweet and cheerful little boy, Marcel struggles to understand his sister's mood swings or the dark history of his parents' past, and so he avoids learning anything more than what's necessary. It's easier for him to lose himself in a fantasy world than it is for him to engage with his sister's fascination with what happened to their parents (who were lynched).

He's popular with his peers and is getting along just fine in spite of the fact that some of his peers point the finger at him because of his brother's odd behavior or his sister's fanatic rantings. Marcel is almost always in a good mood, and it's hard to bring him down!

Who Should Play Marcel?

The best player for Marcel is somebody who can handle the family's (very triggering) history with sensitivity. He's a little black boy born in the south whose parents died brutally. As far as anyone knows his parents were murdered because they refused to discourage their elder son from dressing like a girl. There are a lot of issues at play here, and the right player will understand these issues and be able to handle them with sensitivity. Experience playing boys is helpful, but not required.

Why Would Someone Want to Play Marcel?

He's different from most of the other canon characters that we have on offer at Birchwood Isle. For starters, he's "mundane" (meaning that he's entirely human), but he's also a part of an unusual family situation in which his elder brother is the custodian. The older brother is currently played by me (Devin). 

The family drama is interesting and should give you a lot of plot points to get started, as well. You won't have any trouble finding people to play with Marcel, as he fits in with our largest age group at present on the island. He will also be assigned a social worker due to his unusual family situation.

How to Claim Marcel

If you are interested in playing Marcel, the first thing that you'll need to do is create an account on Birchwood Isle. We highly recommend that your first account username be your alias, as this will give you an "out" in case you change your mind about the character.

For canon characters, we will then move you into a user group that will allow you to create a "plot page" for Marcel. Once this has been completed, we will complete his profile for you and approve your account so you can see the rest of the board!

You may wish to reserve Marcel when you first register, to make sure that you get the full seven-day period to finish his plot page. To do that, go to the Juneau Family Page and request him there. We'll take care of making sure his name is crossed off on the list!

4 Reasons we Discourage Cliques

Sometimes I think that the language we use at Birchwood Isle can be a bit confusing for potential members, and we might be chasing some people away. For that reason, I want to be as clear as I can. We discourage cliques, but encourage people to come to Birchwood Isle with their own roleplay partners. We don't believe that having a committed role play partner (like Ava and I have one another) means that you are automatically a part of a "clique."

As long as you continue to role play with other members, pairs do not a clique make.

The problem isn't two people who enjoy role playing together. The problem is the exclusion of other members. Everybody wants to be included when they join a roleplay group, and Birchwood Isle strives to make sure that everybody can find a place with us for their inner kid.

We discourage cliques for the following reasons: 

1. Cliques prevent new members from getting involved. If two or three members team up together and only post with one another, those two or three people may prevent new members from having anyone to role play with by focusing on one another's threads and being unwilling to provide stimulating plots to involve them.
2. Cliques lock characters into relationships with no outlet. In general, a clique locks the characters belonging to the clique's members into relationships with one another and prevent them from maintaining or obtaining outside relationships with other characters. This is harmful to the group and also to the individuals.
3. Cliques don't serve the group, only individual members. It's important on Birchwood Isle that all members contribute to the overall culture of the group. When members clique with one another, no member of the clique actually contributes to the group. The characters ultimately take up space.
4. Cliques make people feel passively bullied by exclusion. Most of the people who come to ageplay groups such as Birchwood Isle have at some point in their lives experienced trauma. None of us need to feel bullied all over again when we aren't "part of the group." Cliques make people feel bullied by pushing them out of the group.

Our staff has made a commitment to include everybody. You should receive a personal message within two days of acceptance from one of the staff members with plot suggestions to get you started. 

Please do bear in mind, however, that you should be reaching out to other members with plots as well! To take us up on this opportunity, please...

Join Birchwood Isle

Creature Feature: The Johanssen Witches

Though it wasn't the first time that we crossed the line to include some or our more outlandish characters on Birchwood Isle, the Johanssen Witches are the first time that we did it openly, with the introduction of the Archer Somers canon family. The family is filled up now with every character taken by a member of Birchwood Isle, but there are plenty of Johanssens left for members to pick up (as the canon families in this line are released).

The Johanssens aren't the only witches on the island, but their line is unique for several reasons that you might find interesting. If you'd like to consider playing a Johanssen witch as these characters become available, you'll want to read through this information before taking that leap. Members who have joined this line have asked for further information, and we hope that what we provide is sufficient to help you understand them.

Note that future "creature features" might feature other witch lines. Each has its own unique qualities!

You should know several things about the Johanssens from the beginning.

1. This is a female line of witches. Both female and male lines exist on Birchwood Isle. The Johanssen line is female. Each woman in this line is morally obligated to birth seven daughters. Other children (whether she has more than seven children or mixes with a male line to produce boy children) do not count toward the total of seven children.
2. These witches have active powers. Most of the Johanssen witches are pagans, and practice witchcraft the way that modern pagans do. However, they also have active powers which means that they have abilities in addition to their ability to perform spells. If you need a point of reference, Practical Magic is a good example of the types of powers Johanssen women possess.
3. Each woman has unique powers. In this line, most of the women have one or two active powers, and these powers are unique, meaning that not every woman will have the same powers as the other women in her family. The exception to this is the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter.
4. Every seventh daughter of a seventh daughter inherits the powers of her sisters. She will also inherit the active powers of every other witch who came before her. This is the reason that continuing the line is so important to the Johanssen witches. The youngest girl of the youngest girl will always be the most powerful.
5. The seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter (etc) is not yet born. Saren Somers is the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter (Ruby Johanssen) and she has six biological daughters. At the moment she is pregnant with the seventh daughter in her line.
6. Abrielle Somers is currently the most powerful witch in the line. Nobody's quite sure why, except that a prophecy said she would have a very special child. She is now seventeen and pregnant with an unusual child. Most Johanssen women don't have boys, and Brieley is pregnant with a boy child. He is so powerful that she has absorbed the power from her baby.
7. The current line goes back seven generations. The seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter hasn't been born yet. Saren Somers is currently pregnant with her.

Unless otherwise indicated, most of the witches in this line have moderate-to-strong powers, with Saren and Brieley Somers having especially strong powers. A small handful of the witches in this line have weak powers. Males in this line usually have no powers except under special circumstances.

There are currently four males in this line. They are two sets of twins  born to a set of twins: Monica's boys are Jason and Jamie Johanssen and her twin sister Bridget's boys are Ashley and Gabriel.

More families in this line are opening up regularly, and some spots are still available in the (Carissa) Johanssen-Rhodes family as well as in the Bridget Johanssen family. These branches are being written up as we speak, and will be released as canon characters.

Preference vs. Discrimination: What's the Difference?

Recently we were forced to ban a member we liked in part because of discriminatory behavior by this member. Thanks, in part, to this situation, we created a Diversity Policy for Birchwood Isle which lays out what we allow and what we don't allow in terms of discrimination against any group on our site.

On Birchwood Isle, we don't allow anyone to discriminate against anyone else for any reason. So while it may be an unpopular point of view, you cannot refuse to role play with a character for being straight, or white, or male, or wealthy, or cisgender, or any number of things.

You are permitted to have a preference in your role play! Some people prefer to role play with female adults, and some might have a preference for adopting female children. These are preferences, not discrimination. We highly recommend that you keep these types of preferences to yourself. Talking openly about preferences that exclude particular groups of people can be triggering to some people and is generally offensive to nearly everyone on Birchwood Isle. Elect to play with men instead of women if you want, but try not to post in your plot page (or other people's plot pages) that you don't want to role play with women.

If your preferences become discriminatory -- that is to say that if you prefer one group over the other so much that you cannot play with a particular group -- then that is discrimination, and this isn't going to be the right group for you: You'll be in violation of our discrimination policy.

Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of a class of people based on such things as gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. The key word here is prejudicial. 

If you choose to judge an individual (let's say my character/inner adult Josh Tanner) based on his gender (cismale) or his ethnicity (Samoan) without taking the time to learn about Josh as an individual, this is discrimination. 

While we understand the sexual nature of ageplay, and that your own orientation and preferences may relate to your preferences in a group such as ours, we also believe that inner kids are people too and that we cannot allow members to pick and choose people to play with based on discriminatory practices, policies, and behavior.

So you may prefer to play with women, but you may not refuse to play with men. 

If characters of a particular gender, race, or sexual orientation "trigger" you, let us know up front. We may be able to make accommodations, but more likely than not you'll find that this isn't the group for you.

Inner Kid Connection: Structure for Inner Kids

Of all the things that make us most proud of Birchwood Isle, our structure is at the top of the list of things we love about our island. Many ageplay groups provide little more than a forum and protective access which requires people to fill out an application before they can see the role play going on on the board. Inner kids are then able to post their stories, journals, or general calamities with little expectation of being cared for. 

While there are some very good forums of this type on the internet, we saw an opportunity and a  void where legit serious role playing groups were concerned, and since we felt that our inner kids would be best suited to more structure, we put the effort into forming a site where inner kids could be kept safe in every possible way.

The question that many people seem to ask is this: How does structure help keep my inner kid safe?

Our answer is simple: Inner kids feel safer when they have someone they can turn to and rely on in a crisis. Not only are both of our admins always available if you're having an issue on the site, but we provide guardianship for every inner child who comes to Birchwood Isle without his or her own parents. While we certainly don't adopt every foster kid who arrives on the island, we provide each of them with a guardian, a social worker, a therapist, a physician or pediatrician, a homeroom teacher, and for those over fourteen, the possibility of an employer as well. 

These support networks are incredible, and they are active at your request. Each of these characters is played by a staff member, and yes, we do keep up with the requested threads (at least for now).

This means that your inner kid will have a dedicated and trusted support staff.

When we talk about our "structure," this is what we mean. No kid comes onto the island to be ignored or to be expected to interact only with peers. We know each of our members individually, and we strive to get to know the inner children on Birchwood Isle as well.

To our knowledge, you're not going to find this anywhere else.

So while we might have some rules that other administrators find too "revealing" (we require all inners to be linked to one "alias" or "big person" for contact purposes, and we provide much of our basic information publicly to everyone, but not the bio forms, which frustrate some members), we do what we do for the protection of the individuals we serve at Birchwood Isle. After all, if it works for us, that means that on some level it works.

Birchwood Isle Changes sometimes, based on the needs of our staff and members. We will update you of any changes you need to know about.

In the meantime, you can...

Come Join Us!