[quote=@Rockatiel]
Why do people get so sensitive if a character is mean to their character? Sometimes people take it personally? Like goddamn if my character is criticizing your character it doesn't mean I'm criticizing you. In the same vein, if my character is unkind in some way, it's just part of the story and how things are going... It doesn't mean anything about what I think of their char.
[/quote]

Oh boy, I had a lot to do with this shit when I first started RPing. Frankly, if I've learned anything over the years, it's that some people almost live vicariously through their characters; like, they see an insult to their character as an insult to them, and they take big leaps to make sure their character comes out smelling of roses no matter the circumstances. They can say what they want about not actually caring about what happens in character, their actions always betray their investment in their own character. It might not be all people, but some people definitely act like this.

I'll tell a little story to illustrate my point; I once had a character make another character out to be a pervert. It wasn't a big deal; they just pretended to believe they were a pervert after they did something vaguely pervert like. It should have been clear that the character was just having a giggle, and that considering it was happening in a group including only one other person, it wasn't some big deal that needed to be addressed. Except it was. At the time, nothing happened, nobody got mad out of character or anything, but later on I found out the head GM of the whole damn thing had something to say about it. See, this RP had a newsletter like thing being run by a few other members of the RP, and they interviewed him one day and he explained that he wanted to correct the "bad reputation" the character had gotten or some shit like that (it was years ago). What this told me was that 1; apparently my character's little joke was such a big deal the head GM had to make an announcement about how they were going to try and correct the situation, 2; the person whose character mine had uh, "slandered", probably was actually offended by what my character did, and went so far as to bitch to the head GM to get them to do something about it, and 3; in spite of what my character having done being such a trivial, small scale thing, I managed to get no less than two people so offended that they wanted it "corrected". 

Fortunately, I had already left the RP, so it didn't matter what they did, but it still amazed me that so much attention was drawn to such a pathetically insignificant action one of my characters had undertaken. I mean, given the size of the RP at the time, I somehow doubt that too many people were even reading my post, since it concerned nobody other than me, the offended person, and one other player, hence the head GM must have either been alerted to my post or had way too much time on their hands. That and other experiences are way I remain convinced some people are just too damn invested in their RPing.