This is almost like a brutal ode to myself for a bitchfest. It drives me crazy when I see others capable of spinning out long scrolls of text, and I have trouble knitting out a flimsy three-para. This doesn't include scene starters though; most of the times I can fare decently, especially if I can introduce NPCS. But once I build up some forms of hope for my partners ... If getting your point across in a post is a destination, then: • The role player who [u]writes Advanced[/u] is the driver with a nice, gold-painted Cadillac enjoying the ride in the longest route. • Then we have the ones who linger in [u]Casual[/u] but are honestly really deserving of a level up. The Cadillac drivers who take the highway. • And then we have me! In my helpless Land Rover (limited vocab and descriptive phrases ) who depends on a GPS to get there so she's unable to "enjoy the ride". // Does anyone suffer from this? Always feeling incompetent and overshadowed by other roleplayers? A logical part of me says I should let it go~ let it go~ and have fun, but it's a little hard when [b]those that meet your criteria (grammar, spelling, interest) are always so freaking amazing[/b], but when you try to lower your standards, you're afraid of being stuck with someone who avoids the shift key like a plague and has never heard of commas and fullstops. I may be traumatised, and it frustrates me I have a hard time getting over it. Some years back when I started roleplaying, I was a two-liner. (How can one express anything with one sentence for a scene?) Tried to roleplay on a chatting site, and some girl didn't have standards scribbled on her profile - [i]and[/i] a friend was daring me to make a starter with her. I tried, and got shot down, hard. "You can obviously tell I write better than you so run along and play with people your level. You'll never be able to play with me because by the time you're my level? I'm still above you." Maybe if I was her friend and someone weak like I was approached her, and all of us were aware she's super "literate", I'd even think the weak-me deserved it (not as harsh). So, in a way, I fear that I brought this trauma to myself. Idk, gutted I was. But it stuck to me that I can never be good enough for great roleplayers out there. You know self-prophecy? Yeah. So aware, so afraid. That I am perpetually in the "mediocre" limbo at best so I don't [i]dare[/i] to try and approach roleplayers that are more fluent, amaze-balls, and seamlessly capable of barfing word rainbows. [b][i]TL;dr You are your worst critic.[/i][/b] *PS: Some people may make fun of purple prose, but sometimes, when the writer executes it well, I kinda suspect it's not just a talent or skill, it's some damn arcane magic.