[quote=@Penny]
I rather think that the problem is people try to put too much character background into a post, rather than having a grip on the character and allowing small parts of it to inform the action.
[/quote]

Oi, yes, this happens a lot, too!

*She sidled up to the strange man at the bar, bells of a foreign land chiming softly around her ankles while ochre eyes that no local had ever glimpsed sparkled behind her silken veil. "Buy me a drink, stranger," she purred in her desert-laced accent, clearly a woman who had traveled from afar, the whiff of her dusky, exotic perfume surrounding him in a cloud that would surely spark intrigue in his mind and leave him thirsty for more knowledge of where this rare gem had been crafted.*

I think she's maybe not a local. I dunno.