grooming rant

 Werebelushi:

Today's rant is about the whole 'grooming' thing in general...like almost anything these days that seems to involve interaction with someone else gets labelled as grooming even if it's online.  Getting presents from your friend that were on your Amazon wishlist? Grooming. Having a loving relationship with someone who you consider a surrogate family member? Grooming. Roleplaying online? Grooming. Which brings me to the Hessian Hex RPs Nathan used to do, for the sake of context I am going to explain the context of these RPs these are roleplays reflecting elements from the Tim Burton movie 'Sleepy Hollow' in particular the Hessian Horseman who is a character he likes.  The plot - Nathan's counterpart in this universe is with an exchangable female sidekick character whose age does not matter because she is not really human,  and he gets cursed to become the Hessian in a manner akin to a werecreature movie or show.  And throughout he has to deal with the fact his transformation acts up when he sees blood because there are vampire parallels, it is kind of like vampirism but not really.

He has to deal with this curse with the help of the exchangable female sidekick character who very much has been following him without, the curse was placed upon him by a witch (who was based on Helena Bonham Carter because this is a Burton related RP mini-series after all), and he defeats her...unfortunately he is still cursed, but he gains a mentor in the form of Christopher Walken (which is awesome) and Walken reveals himself to be the original victim of the curse and in context it happened while making the movie,  and he offers to teach Nathan everything he knows.  Nathan of course agrees to this, and a loving teacher and student relationship happens.  

But there is a problem, the actress who usually plays the sidekick character has other projects she is starring in, so the mini-series goes on for a little bit without her but two new characters get introduced to the cast, Jon (who has hypno powers and loves vampires, so he uses this to his advantage and befriends and conditions Nathan, helping him to embrace his inner 'Walken' so to speak, and thus the Walken saga is born! Now as this supernatural version of Christopher Walken he can hypnotize people and turn them into vampiric Hessian-esque beings with his powers and he is embodying the role of a master of evil. Several years later, Chris is married and has his own clan!

So exchangable female sidekick character is absent for the majority of the series from this point onward and rather than just kill the character off again (which happened before in a previous episode of this series, but she was brought back to life before the actress who played her became absent only to come back as a meta joke, yeah the actress came back but it was a meta joke and the actress complained to the producers because they used her character for a cruel joke involving a mind control scene, acting like the character is really her and thus she officially departed afterwards, but no big loss since she was not that important to the storyline anyway), or recast with a different actress, we got a new female supporting character who was more fascinating and more complex than she was! And what an improvement over the original actress she was, she had a lot of charm and development and charisma,  also helps unlike the original  character she could contribute a lot more because she was a supernatural being too.  No offense to the original character but she was so...uhhh, just there, she was supportive but she could not really connect with Nathan's character and well I think that it was good she left anyway.

However this new character had plans for him, she offered to help him with his problem and she did by making him purely vampiric and erasing his human aspects, however in a twist of fate she turns out to have used him and then after she got killed off, she got reincarnated as another form and in this form she despised him, often considers him an enemy!  She then dies as this form and comes back...this time the gimmick is that she is now 'he', she has been reincarnated as a male and is vengeful and psychotic, she/he dies and comes back again, this time back to being human and this time there is a whole war subplot.  Then there's a seperate storyline in which his Walken-esque vampire alter-ego tries to turn them only for 'dictatorship' accusations to happen (uhhh you are supposed to mindlessly obey what someone says when they hypnotize you! That's how hypnosis supposedly works!) and then after all that...we do not get any closure about the original exchangable female sidekick character.  Since at this point, she no longer exists.

The twist is here...that even though it was this very RP that got Nathan accused of 'grooming', he had been groomed himself, numerous times in other RPs.  How is roleplaying alone especially one of this nature that isn't remotely this sexual in context considered grooming?  It is fictional and it can be just be viewed as such.  And anyway, isn't volunteering to be involved in a roleplay with someone based on consent?  I mean if you say yes to roleplaying them or ask someone else for consent on a roleplay, and they say yes, then they are consenting.  

The problem is...how can things that are not even remotely sexual be considered grooming?