MU Peeves Thread
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I don’t actually mean I get all aggro with people who thoughtpose benign things/things about themselves or their state of mind. Just people who thoughtpose passive aggressively.
I don’t actually mind thoughtposing; I do it myself! I just make sure if my thoughtposes are belittling or questioning anyone, it’s me.
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Is that the trend now? Thoughtposing? I know it used to be a thing some years ago, but lately I’ve seen it cropping up more and more frequently. So I don’t know if that means I just haven’t noticed it all that much or if it’s coming back into style again, like low-rise jeans.
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No disrespect to the cool people here who do it as their ‘style’ or whatever, but I hate thoughtposting so much I’ll tap out of a scene it’s done in and quit games saturated with it.
It makes no sense to me. Twitching in consternation or raising a puzzled eyebrow, etc, don’t constitute this in my opinion, and oftentimes there are ways to inject the same flavor of information with other more appropriate literary devices - or, you know, just… expressions and mannerisms such as the above.
The ‘line’ I have with it is literally the difference between ‘Jane stares daggers at Dick - what could he possibly have done to warrant such venom?!’ versus ‘Dick couldn’t get it up on demand this morning and as a result, Jane is in high dudgeon, stopping just short of publicly shaming him for his lack of turgidity in her time of abject need.’
If there’s no way I could know a thing short of reading Jane’s mind, Jane needs to fuck off with the info until such time as it can be conveyed appropriately. Passive-aggressive thoughtposting I just get overtly nasty about, and ever since I quit Twitter/doomscrolling, I have a lot of petty nastiness saved up.
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@eye8urcake said in MU Peeves Thread:
No disrespect to the cool people here who do it as their ‘style’ or whatever, but I hate thoughtposting so much I’ll tap out of a scene it’s done in and quit games saturated with it.
It makes no sense to me.
Although I don’t myself do this, I can see why it’s being used - exposition (the equivalent of 'thought posting) is pretty common in novels, for example.
It can also help if you want to convey something you’d like the audience to be aware of OOC but for whatever reason isn’t convenient or significant enough to RP about. My character being intimidated by yours because they remind him of a strict teacher he had in third grade might not be something that’s going to come up in a scene but it can be a fun touch to include.
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@Arkandel I tend to assume people who HATE it really just hate that it gets used passive-aggressively. Because that’s really the only time it’s a whole “Oh you can’t respond to that IC” thing.
When I write things like that the usual intent is that “There are 20 subtle clues that tell you that this sort of emotion / attitude exists”
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@Arkandel said in MU Peeves Thread:
My character being intimidated by yours because they remind him of a strict teacher he had in third grade might not be something that’s going to come up in a scene but it can be a fun touch to include.
I mean…imho they’re not even close to aggravating like their passhole-aggresshole cousins, but metadetails like that are kinda mildly annoying when people get a little too self-indulgent and wax on and on about things no one else in the scene can possibly know, especially when you’re left with nothing to actually respond to, which I personally encountered way more frequently than people deliberately being dicks, to be honest. I think it’s one of those flourishes that make for fantastic reading in novels, but not so much fun in RP.
It is a matter of personal taste to be sure, but I found doing that to be such a bad habit and so easy to fall into that I trained myself to intentionally avoid including those things in favor of actual physical details people can see and react to, and found it keeps my writing punchier and more engaging.
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@eye8urcake said in MU Peeves Thread:
The ‘line’ I have with it is literally the difference between ‘Jane stares daggers at Dick - what could he possibly have done to warrant such venom?!’ versus ‘Dick couldn’t get it up on demand this morning and as a result, Jane is in high dudgeon, stopping just short of publicly shaming him for his lack of turgidity in her time of abject need.’
are you saying that your ‘line’ is vast and broad and encompasses a whole array of possibilities? because those two examples are super far apart
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I don’t mind little internal details and history (I even love it in certain contexts–but I totally agree with @Wizz that audience and context matters a lot. Are you pumping up your poses to 4 paragraphs in the middle a court scene or other large ass thing where people are struggling to keep the thread in the first place? Or is this a slow 1 on 1?).
But where it really bothers me is when it is used to make someone feel unwelcome. Or trying to shame someone in public to center the attention on the poser.
Poser is so sad and hides behind Favorite PC because that mean old Other PC is making him feel uncomfortable and shy because she is a STRANGER in the midst of all these friends and so he needs to clam right up! “Hi,” Poser says to Other PC. “How are you?” But all that happy bouncey smile he had before Other PC entered the room? It’s all gone now. She just looks like she’s mean! (usually this will be more flowery, but the content is the same.)
I mean it is laughable most of the time but it also can be very uncomfortable, esp. when shit like that is dropped in a larger or public scene. I do think there are times when friends/buddies can do this sort of thing to each other, esp. in private scenes. Totally could see that being a fun back and forth, ect. But when someone continually does stuff like that it kills my enthusiasm to play with them. Even when it’s not directed at me, frankly. Because I have rarely seen this being used in any other context other than trying to drive a specific someone off OR conversely, to protect the poser’s “turf” be it place, another PC, or whatever from someone they think might intrude. If response nips it in the bud, then it might just be a playstyle. But whenever I have someone come at my PC like this, I know it’s someone to keep an eye on/at arms’ length until I know what/if the pattern is.
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Games that keep limping along even after it has become pretty obvious staff doesn’t want to do stuff on the game anymore. Simple requests take months, with no indication in all that time, no activity from staff (Little to no interactions with players, no plots, etc), staff is always ‘dark’. A variety of other things too. I get wanting to keep a game open for players or out of nostalgia but, to me, that is only hurting the game over keeping good memories of it.
Just to be clear I’m not talking about games with a small playerbase, small player bases does not mean ‘inactive’ or ‘unwanted by staff’.
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@icanbeyourmuse said in MU Peeves Thread:
Games that keep limping along even after it has become pretty obvious staff doesn’t want to do stuff on the game anymore.
I agree whole hardly with your statement.
It becomes worse if the staff don’t even acknowledge their own short comings…
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@hellfrog The first example is acceptable, the second can go fuck itself.
<Snipped in edit. I explained it well enough in the original post>.@Arkandel said in MU Peeves Thread:
@eye8urcake said in MU Peeves Thread:
No disrespect to the cool people here who do it as their ‘style’ or whatever, but I hate thoughtposting so much I’ll tap out of a scene it’s done in and quit games saturated with it.
It makes no sense to me.
Although I don’t myself do this, I can see why it’s being used - exposition (the equivalent of 'thought posting) is pretty common in novels, for example.
It can also help if you want to convey something you’d like the audience to be aware of OOC but for whatever reason isn’t convenient or significant enough to RP about. My character being intimidated by yours because they remind him of a strict teacher he had in third grade might not be something that’s going to come up in a scene but it can be a fun touch to include.
To me, that’s not ‘fun’. If my PC wouldn’t know about your PC shitting his pants about his third grade teacher, then including it is lame. It’s not a book, it doesn’t hit the same, and frankly, your PC being crazy intimidated and my PC not knowing why would create curiosity that might open up an avenue to RP that you’re slamming the door on with that kind of random (what to me is) nonsense.
Going, ‘Wow, why’s John so freaked out, I’m curious, I’m going to sniff around to find out why,’ is not only more fun to me, but it’s the point of a roleplay game. In a book, I don’t have those avenues and I can’t attempt to suss such things out on my own, so ‘I cowered at her feet, as terrified as I was when Miss Iron Panties snapped at me in the exact same tone twenty-five years ago in third grade’ makes sense.
People getting defensive about this are making me feel bad, which kind of pisses me off. It’s the peeves thread, and we’re talking about opinions.
I don’t consider any of you ‘bad writers’ because I dislike this particular style or method of posing, I just personally wouldn’t (and haven’t) enjoy (enjoyed) interacting with people who write this way, just like I dislike interacting with people who slip back and forth between present and past tense in poses. It makes me uncomfortable and I personally prefer not to wade through it.
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@eye8urcake said in MU Peeves Thread:
People getting defensive about this are making me feel bad, which kind of pisses me off. It’s the peeves thread, and we’re talking about opinions.
And they’re expressing their opinion.
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My reflex is to say I can’t stand thought-posing, but a part of me worries that maybe I do it sometimes without realizing and so I don’t really wanna call it out just in case someone replies with “But you do that all the time!”
I will however go on record as being a crazy person who gets annoyed by poses written in past tense (we’re roleplaying, not writing collaborative fanfiction!) I’ll stomach it, but it’s always so bloody jarring.
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@Sammich said in MU Peeves Thread:
I will however go on record as being a crazy person who gets annoyed by poses written in past tense (we’re roleplaying, not writing collaborative fanfiction!) I’ll stomach it, but it’s always so bloody jarring.
I don’t think that’s crazy. Totally personal preference on this one.
If I’m doing a one-on-one scene, I totally don’t mind if people get as collaborative fiction as they want. People gonna vibe with what they’re gonna vibe with and bounce off what they’re gonna bounce off.
To that point, I even enjoy second-person mixes of past and present tense when only playing with one partner. Collaborative fiction is grand.
I’ll accept my awful taste award.
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I’ve never experienced the terrible degrees of thoughtposing listed here before. It sounds awful.
Past tense stuff though I’ve known some people to do it. I used to find it jarring but now days when a scene is one-on-one I tend to just adapt to whatever the other person does. Start posing past tense, I probably will too, just to make it read better.
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My first RP experiences were on forums and WoW RP servers, where past tense was the norm. It took me a hot minute to adjust to present tense when I started MUing.
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Yeah I always figured it’d be something like that. People get used to what they get used to!
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@Livia I’ll just start posing first person at you, then.
