Roleplaying writing styles
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@Quibbler is my bestest short-pose buddy.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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I'm not sure if I'd count myself as one of the most laziest people in the world...but I used to put in so much thought to how to frame a pose, now I just...pose. Beyond simply asking myself "does this fit the voice of the character and the situation" I don't think much about it. I find my poses varying in length and complexity based on the scene type, how busy it is, and if I'm finding anything to engage in.
I wish I was good enough to make all the pose styles different on each character. But I can't.
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@ILuvGrumpyCat You can. You're just lazy and most of the time there's no merit in it.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin Bite me.
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"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin Seriously though. Once upon a time I'd have agreed. But these days I find that end up, 80 percent of the time, sounding just generically me in pose style. No awesome. No coolness.
As for big scenes? Ugh. I've begun to hate them with a passion, which is new. I used to love them, and ran big scenes on Reach on one of my characters all the time. Now I avoid them, which limits a lot of RP. I find them to be too many people posing too big and too fast and just empty poses with nothing to RESPOND to. Just my feelings these days.
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Nothing like a good ZINGER amirite?
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@ILuvGrumpyCat said in Roleplaying writing styles:
@Coin Seriously though. Once upon a time I'd have agreed. But these days I find that end up, 80 percent of the time, sounding just generically me in pose style. No awesome. No coolness.
As for big scenes? Ugh. I've begun to hate them with a passion, which is new. I used to love them, and ran big scenes on Reach on one of my characters all the time. Now I avoid them, which limits a lot of RP. I find them to be too many people posing too big and too fast and just empty poses with nothing to RESPOND to. Just my feelings these days.
I think we all have a "generic me" style that we RP in when we're not feeling particularly passionate about whatever we're playing. Some people just straight up don't RP when that happens so you never get to see it, though.
I know that I have a very "generic me" way of posing and the only real way to avoid it is for my character to feel unique in my brain; for them to have a voice I can shout in in my poses. Every character I've had that has lasted more than, I dunno, a month, has had a voice I could discover and cultivate. If I can't find it, I chuck the character.
The problem is that if you're not really feeling MUing at all in general, you start to ignore the voice and start to just pose "generic me". And, I mean, sometimes a person's generic RP voice is fun. But sometimes it's bland as fuck, and it's important to be aware of when you're using the character's voice and when you're not, so you can understand why some people really love playing with you on one character (whose voice you're exploiting) and not another (whom you don't really feel is going anywhere).
@Miss-Demeanor once told me that I'm super fun when I'm into it, but that it's super obvious when I'm not. I think that it has to do with this.
P.S. If you ever wonder why that one friend is uninterested in playing with your one alt that you always play with them, but then when you make a "secret alt" that they don't know about, they're all about playing with you constantly? Chances are you're putting way more passion, drive, and tapping into that character's voice in that secret alt than you are in your other one, and whether consciously or not, your RP partner is registering that, and their ability to enjoy and reciprocate is immediately affected by it. This is not always the case, sometimes people are just being fucking assholes, or you are, or you both are, whatever... but sometimes, just sometimes, it just might be that you're just more fun when you're really into it.
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I've got a few minutes in between work tasks, so I thought I'd preach to the masses about how being referred to in the 2nd person creeps me out. Most of us agree. So this is probably nothing new to you, but it just gives me weird-chills. It creeps me out.
So please, dear god, if you type "you" when referring to a character, pleasePleasePleasePLEASE pay attention:
Here's how it goes down in my head. The pose will be in bold. The italics will be what I'm thinking.
She steps out of the car and takes your hand, and looks you deep in the eyes, and says "You mean so much to me." BECAUSE MY FUCKING HUSBAND CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO SPEND TIME WITH ME AND I'M GETTING REALLY ATTACHED TO YOU. HEY. MAN IN THE BOX THAT BRINGS ME RL FULFILLMENT AND JOY BECAUSE MY HUSBAND WON'T WATCH MOTHERFUCKING GILMORE GIRLS WITH ME??? YES. YOU? DON'T EVER LEAVE. I WILL CHASE YOU BECAUSE GOD DAMNIT I NEED THIS!
...run away. I must run away.
Fuck. How do I get out of this without coming across like an asshole? I hope to god I'm not some kind of proxy husband or loneliness fulfillment engine, because I put a lot of firearms skill into this sheet. I wanted to do a lot of combat in this game, but there's none of that shit going on so there's filler RP that includes potential nudity scenes, which seemed a really good idea at the time...
<NAME> pages: Hey, are you there? Can I throw another pose in real quick? I hope this doesn't make you uncomfortable, so... OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. Please don't.
She turns and pushes open the door and leads you through, where her super lavish, super comfortable mansion's bedroom is. She turns and tugs some kind of rope behind her neck and all of her clothes come off so that you can see my naked body. "I need you. I love you."
Okay, nope. nopenope. Does she even have enough resources to have this kind of place? God, I hope she doesn't wig the fuck out when my character turns this down. Time to find a way out of this one.
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Someone I currently RP with sometimes uses 'you' in her poses, but I think for her it's probably more a holdover from games where it was standard.
This, largely, is because I've seen her do it in a scene of three people. The other night, for example, three characters were in a kitchen, talking, while she prepared dinner. Her pose had a 'She places glasses in front of both of you.'
But I've also got a char in an IC relationship with hers and it's never come across as skeevy in the ways it has in... well, situations like @Ghost is referencing.
So the people that argue 'well it might be they used to be on games where it's the style' - I agree. But I can now say that it is very obvious when it's style/habit and when it's because they're blurring the lines between IC and OOC.
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I guess my point, in the end, is that:
- I am not my character
- You are not affecting me
- My character's actions, beliefs, or opinions do not reflect my own
- (and, most importantly) There is a line made of tape that separates myself from you. If I were intending on inviting people I roleplay with past that line and into my personal life, then I would make it apparent that I was choosing to do so. For your sake and mine, I hope that you understand that these are fictional characters, and I don't have the mental and emotional power to worry about offending every player, every character, and every npc on both an IC and OOC level.
- Please, dear god, don't be a Tulpa.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
Gilmore Girls, is there nothing it can't ruin?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure said in Roleplaying writing styles:
Gilmore Girls, is there nothing it can't ruin?
I hate Rory so goddamned much.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@Ghost said in Roleplaying writing styles:
I hate Rory so goddamned much.
No one talks that way. And if they did so in front of me, they would die.
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I give that .75 Ally McBeals.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure said in Roleplaying writing styles:
I give that .75 Ally McBeals.
I'd say fuck ally mcbeal but, without her, we wouldn't have such shows as "Single Female Lawyer" and "Harrison Ford is Still Alive Somewhere."
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@Ghost said in Roleplaying writing styles:
- I am not my character
- You are not affecting me
- My character's actions, beliefs, or opinions do not reflect my own
- (and, most importantly) There is a line made of tape that separates myself from you.
All of those things are true. I must however warn against needlessly generalizing about what it means to cross those lines.
You do get to have peeves. If second-person posing is one of them more power to you. I'll happily go out of my way to avoid triggering it.
You don't get to be right about it. I've used 'you' in poses in the past yet I have a better-than-average grasp on the difference between IC and OOC.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:
arn against needlessly generalizing abo
Yeah, I don't mean to be an overgeneralizing DICK about it. Like @Auspice said, I know there's plenty of people out there, like you, who use that style of posing that aren't doing it because there's some assumption of blurred IC/OOC lines.
It just...makes me feel uncomfortable, and it does so largely because I don't personally believe that asking someone why they do so, in the heat of the moment, would yield a truly honest answer.
I've run into more trouble than good with the hobby, so color me pessimistic, but it's a red flag.
