Dion

I Wanna Hear Your Opinions On The Different Wrting Levels/Forums.

I didn't want to say it but can you two maybe take this criticism debate somewhere else?

EDIT: That is to say, it might be wise to make a criticism thread where you can critique each others posts bit by bit, rather than going back and forth in a thread that specifically has: not posts listed in the title, but RP subsections.

I Wanna Hear Your Opinions On The Different Wrting Levels/Forums.

I have one thing to add about the free roleplay that I just thought of while reading some of the new replies in this thread -- it's very annoying to wake up and see that there are over 10 new pages (or less, most likely more) but it hit me that reading +- 10 pages of one-liners that are mostly conversational back and forths or something is less of a pain than reading 10 pages of casual-length posts (if we go by the standard that the sectional headline has, it would be doable, but the actual standard seems to be much higher than 'around 2 paragraphs') so perhaps it's less of an issue than we might think.

I'd certainly still not appreciate it, but I guess it wouldn't be a dealbreaker or maker.

EDIT: I guess it's also easier to plow through 10 pages of one liners than to plow through this thread where everyone seems to have the exact same opinions.

Roleplayer Appreciation Thread.

@Bee eat my ass

A widdle Aries.

@ChanceTheAries i'm an aries too but i'm very toxic so stay out of my way

I Wanna Hear Your Opinions On The Different Wrting Levels/Forums.

Free Roleplay (17 Viewing)
16,381 Topics, 477,983 Posts

Free roleplay is where I typically mentally place people who;

• just started roleplaying
• don't have a lot of time (1-liners are easier to write in a hunch than a 6k+ character post
• don't feel motivated to write a lot

buy coincidentally also where I mentally place people who;

• are not very literate
• don't care much for prose, care more about characters performing actions
• judgemental as it may be, people who are lazy

People who are in free roleplay typically don't improve their writing a lot, and tend to get stuck in free roleplay. It has it's fair share of characters and I don't mean IC characters, but rather, OOC characters. I know that, in reality, free RP gets its fair share of average writers, but that says nothing when every RP has at least one OOC character playing in it.

On the other hand I'm not really aware of free roleplay starting any drama -- it's generally a quiet place where people rapid fire posts back and forth and that's pretty fine with me. Let the kids have their playground, I'd say, and that's pretty true for free roleplay -- it also helps curb the overflow of people who don't write a whole lot into roleplays that, well, require you to write a whole lot. I'm glad free roleplay exists, both out of my own self preservation (I don't like to RP with people who do free roleplay, sorry) and for their self preservation (they have their own area where they can have fun, and that's important too).

Casual Roleplay (77 Viewing)
9,818 Topics, 1,750,610 Posts

SADLY, this is the mainstay of RPG. I remember back in the day when it was a pretty nice place to hangout in, but I guess over the years either the dynamic of casual RP has changed, or I've become more pessimistic and nostalgic. Either way, where my grips with free roleplay are more qualitative and focused on writing/the actual roleplays, the issues I have with casual RP are almost entirely community based. Most issues that we hear of in the 'mainstream' issues of RP come from here and when you think about it that's not so strange, given that it has 50% of the topics free RP has at this moment, but almost 4x the posts. This is clearly where most people RP, so it's only natural that we hear about issues from this place more than others.

I feel like back in the day, there was a lot more variety in the RP's (not counting the time when literally every fucking RP was a MLP AU of some fandom) where as nowadays it's all centered around the same errr, genre's. Maybe that's just my warped vision, I must admit it's been some time since I actually joined an RP there since none of them seem to interest me anymore (maybe I'm just getting older (and probably not wiser) where as my younger self loved writing about random shit).

Now, these issues are all.. self-inflicted and probably stem from some twisted nostalgia back to the days where I was careless in my writing and didn't really care about improving my writing. I just wanted to play Naruto and kill bad guys and be the le epic xD sensei I was meant to be. However, a real issue for me is that we've seen a condensation from free and advanced towards casual RP, where we have overflow and casual RP is not casual anymore -- with new genre's such as low casual and high casual, I often ponder why we even need an advanced and free section.

Now, I understand that we like to categorize each other, but at that point we're needlessly making shit more complex, and it feels like a slippery slope. What are the actual criteria for any category? The descriptors are already vague as can be and all defer to the ALLMIGHTY POWER OF THE GM to see what the actual standards are for an RP. So if the standards for casual are already vague, what is below that, what is low-casual? Is it just casual roleplay for disinterested people who can't conjure the power to write a 2 paragraph response? What is high-casual? Advanced RP for people who can't conjure the power to consistently write well thought out responses? Why do we need them?

I'm afraid I don't have the answer, it'd be arrogant to pretend I do, and something tells me that there is no catch all answer regardless because some might genuinely feel that the category high-casual describes them, or perhaps there is something else. My personal hunch is that people flock to casual RP not for the standards it prescribes, but because as I mentioned before, this is where the people are.

And to run an RP you need people, it's simple economics.

In turn, this diminishes what casual RP is (in my eyes) and makes it 'general roleplay' where you can basically post whatever the fuck you want. Perhaps this is why I don't like roleplaying here anymore -- you can have advanced, casual, and free roleplayers in one RP, and I'm not particularly fond of that.

Advanced Roleplay (12 Viewing)
1,708 Topics, 261,670 Posts

It used to be elitist writers who feel they are better than the rest, now it's just casual roleplayers that have progressed and become better writers. The standards prescribed don't really hold up any more in my humble opinion and I think any casual roleplayer could write in advanced RP if they put their mind to it. Not everybody wants to do that. That's fine -- roleplaying is a hobby, not a job. You don't always have to improve yourself, least of all if the purpose is 'having fun.'

I actually have very little to say about this place nowadays. It seems very quiet. I don't often see new roleplays because new ideas rarely pass the interest check it feels like.

It'd probably be my go-to forum if I actually found an RP there I was interested in.

Arena Roleplay
694 Topics, 41,570 Posts

The community annoys me greatly. I don't get the purpose of arena roleplay and despite the claims that it requires ''more skill than actual roleplay'' I've never found that to be true. It seems having a big personality and a big mouth is what matters here. It might've been a good fit for me then.

It doesn't really matter either way -- I've seen more activity here from bots than actual roleplayers.

1x1 Roleplay (12 Viewing)
4,079 Topics, 247,931 Posts

Mixed bag, can't really say anything cohesive about it other than I've had some great experiences writing 1x1 RP's and I've had some really, really bad experiences writing 1x1 RP's. The bad outnumber the good, but the few that were good were typically incredibly good.

Nation Roleplay (3 Viewing)
574 Topics, 92,592 Posts

Actually really interested in this -- never had a RP last long enough for me to try it out, since most died once the GM realized how much work using statistics is on his end. I'd still like to try it, but it'd need to be a new game -- there's one incredibly succesful long term nation RP that I was interested in but I think I prefer reading it over anything else.

Nation Roleplay (3 Viewing)
574 Topics, 92,592 Posts

Would also still like to try this but it's hard to find a game I'm interested in -- being new to DND dynamics and so forth I've always felt like I'm too dumb to play (probably true) but after a failed attempt at a DND campaign in my discord group, I've gotten a bit more interested in it and might throw my hat in now that I've seen how 'easy' it is to make a character.

A STREET PHARMACIST BIOGRAPHY

ACE OF WANDS

"You remember King Arthur's sword?"

"Excalibur." I say excitedly.

"Yes. This is our Excalibur." My father dropped the bat on the ground with a loud PLUNK, enough to make my willowy nine year old self to jump back. My dad looked at me and gave his strange, single, smileless laugh. Huh.

"Instead of a stone, you keep it by the door. If I'm not here, you're the man of the house, and this is what you use if someone is trying to get in and take something."

"The true Excalibur wasn't the one from the stone, dad. Arthur couldn't get the true Excalibur until he became a man and the Lady of the Lake --"

"Shut it."

----

I'm sixteen, making eyes at the girl across the table from me instead of reading Fences. I was one of three white students in the school, and after Precious and 47, Black Lit was getting kind of repetitive. The only fun the teacher lets me get away with is that when it's my turn to speak, I can recite the lines in a voice not too unlike Chef from South Park. There weren't many things I liked at that age, so mindless fun was more-or-less the thing tethering me to normalcy, keeping me from dropping out for as long as I did.

Mr. Ameen calls my name, and I'm plucked from Planet Eyefucking and back onto Earth, where I am in Remedial English reading fucking Fences. It takes me a few seconds to find the lines.

"You're gonna have to use it. You wanna draw that bat back on me . . . You're gonna have to use it."

Before the other reader can continue, the bell rings, and the chaos of dismissal starts anew. At the time, I hadn't thought much of it. I hopped back in my spacecraft, and set course once more for Planet Eyefucking. I never learned how the play ended, because I skipped the remaining classes that marking period to have sex. Which is a shame, because Fences isn't half bad.

----
I am nineteen. My father comes clean about a long affair two days before Christmas Eve, and my mother throws him out of the house without stabbing him again. A month later, my parents are in the ugliest part of their divorce. After running from notaries and living at three different addresses, my father returns home for his things and his handed notarized papers by his only son. I return upstairs while my parents begin to argue for one of the last times to begin bringing trash bags of my father's books down to the vestibule to keep him at the entrance of the house.

They are heavy, unread tomes. I have to step lightly to avoid the corners of the books tearing the bag's black skin open. By the time I can get downstairs, their argument has turned into shouting, mostly on my mother's side. My mother is insulted by some remark he made, and wants him to wait in his car. He refuses, stating it is his house too. My mother retorts that he hadn't put a dime on its payment.

This continues back and forth, as it had countless times by then, and I return upstairs to bring more books down silently. My parents never got along very well, infatuation or not, and these arguments were not a rare thing. I return downstairs with the second bag, and my father is beginning to raise his voice. I step towards the door and look outside at his car. He never held a job as long as I had known him, and now he had an SUV. I idly wondered if it was his mistress's. I look back, and the argument has escalated further in those few seconds. My mother's face is red. She tells him, in uncertain terms, that he has to get out of her house or she will call the police. He tells her it would take too long for them to get here to stop him.
Without a thought process, without deciding on an action or questioning it in my head, I feel myself lift the bat and charge towards him. As per usual, I didn't have any good lines, nothing to write down in any actual books. I shouted for him to get out as loud as I could. He dropped the books he had been holding, and pressed himself back into the wall, the way you can see all of a person's chins begin to fold. His eyes were bigger than I had ever seen them. All those things happened in a split second, but the silence afterwards felt like an eternity. The hands that had been holding books were now raised slightly. Eyes that had once looked down on me with a fatherly glint were now bloodshot and wide with fear. I was the man of the house now, and he was in my house.

My father waited in his car, and I brought his bags outside while my mom cried upstairs. On the last bag, my father came out of the car and waited on the doorstep with a sorry look in his eyes. He looked like he had something important to say, some apology that would make up for years in and out of jail, for the past month of torment, and for inciting that kind of anger in me. Outside, looking in from the January snow, I almost felt bad for him. I opened the door and handed him his final bag, and waited for what he had to say. That silence was quicker.

"You know, son, it wasn't right --"

No. Just another lecture. He had robbed me of a decent childhood, and now he was trying to rob me of my moment of freedom.

"Don't you ever darken my fucking doorstep again."

I closed the door, locked it, and took a few steps back before turning around. He suddenly looked less pitiful. I turned off the light, and he vanished into the rest of the night. Oh well. At least I managed to think of a good one-liner that time.

yoo

@unculturedweeb one mahzbuck

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yoo

@unculturedweeb Omg hai ___^ I’m odin-san and I absolutely luuuv @_____@ anime <3 and my fav is naurto!!! Okies so anyways, im going to tell you about the BEST day of my life when I met my hot husband mahz!! <333333333 OMFGZ HE WAS SOOOOO FREAKIN KAWAII IN PERSON!!! Supa kawaii desu!!!!!!!! ______________________________________^

When I walked onto Tokyo street =____=I looked up and saw…MAHZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333!!!! “ KONNICHIWA OMGZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ SUPA SUPA SUPA KAWAII MAHZ-SAMA!!!!!” I yelled n____n then he turned chibi then un-chibi!!

A STREET PHARMACIST BIOGRAPHY

THE SUN
XIX

I was taken from my parents at a very young age -- I don't know which age, precisely, or how long I was gone. I don't want to do the math alone, and it's not the kind of thing you ask your parents about growing up. My mother had an argument with my unemployed father of three about him getting a job, and it ended with her stabbing him. Not usually a tremendous problem, but this particular stabbing was witnessed by my sister, who told her best friend the next day at school. This best friend's mother was a lesbian single mother in the 90's, who had previously been in a marriage where she was beaten regularly. Not an important detail to my life, but an important detail to this story. This woman reports the incident to the police, who in turn find out about my dad's lucrative drug dealing. They launch an investigation, and all of my siblings -- who are technically half-siblings -- are taken to their "other" parent, far away. The only one with no "other", I got sent to live with my grandmother. Her views were, and still are, not the views I'd associate with healthy parenting.

She was a Jehovah's Witness who had spent the 70's and 80's doing cocaine, and spent the 90's trying to split her perfect, golden son, and the woman he chose. She arrived at my house on their wedding day with a megaphone to call my mother a whore until my maternal cousins drove her off with bats, for instance.

The earliest complete memory I have is Family Court. The hallway inside is very long, with 70's plastered ceiling and seafoam green walls. There are tiny holes in the cracks in the wall, and I look into them and imagine tiny dancing bugs. My mom and dad are walking very slowly, so I run to the end of the hall and back again to show them how fast I am. They don't notice. My mom picks me up, and it is the last time my feet touch the floor. My sneakers won't light up if I can't stomp, so I protest for a few moments until my mom says something that makes me laugh. I bury my head in her sweater, and the familiar smell of lavender perfume calms me down. I don't think I even knew what a lavender was.

The courtroom itself is much less different than the ones you see on TV. It is all white, with fluorescent lights and bleached tile floors. The only thing wooden are the benches, but my mom keeps holding me tightly. There are cops everywhere, and they are mad to see me. I think I am going to jail, and start to cry. My mom plays with my hair and cries a little bit too, but she talks to me until I stop crying. She stops crying, but tears leave her eyes without making a sound. People talk for a very long time. Longer than I knew people could talk. They talk and talk and talk. I get hungry, then I get hungry and tired. I want to cry, but I do not want my mom to cry too. At least the talking has gone long enough for her to stop crying. Then the talking continues a little longer.

Eventually they stop talking, and everybody has to stand up at once. My mom lifts me off her chest and looks at me like I have a cut on my face. I start to worry until she gives me a hug, tighter than she usually does. Ten times tighter. She starts to cry a lot, even though I didn't get hurt. I try to smile and say something and hug her, and she stops crying, but she covers her mouth like she's going to throw up and then she starts crying even harder. Her face is red. I start to float away. My dad looks at me, and then he looks at the floor like he is in trouble. My brother and sisters aren't there. I suddenly feel scared again, and shout for my mom to come take me. I realize I'm not floating, but being carried by a different woman. This new woman smells like soap, and she keeps making a slow "shhh" sound. I shout for my mom again.

She doesn't. She just keeps crying. I shout again, and she starts walking towards me very fast until two policemen walk in front of her and start talking to her. My dad has not looked away from the floor. I look back at my mom, and I reach as far as I can, but I cannot reach her. Two doors close.

The soap lady tells me her name is Ms. Gross, and asks if I think she's gross. I ask her where my mom is. She tells me I can see my mom after I answer some questions on a test, and I don't know what to say. She asks if I have any questions about the test, and I ask her where my mom is again. She tells me the same thing, and then takes out a piece of paper. A tall black man walks into the room. He says his name is Mr. Karim, and says he is another social worker, and then he says he is from Africa. He asks if I know where Africa is, and I say no. He says it is over 4,000 miles away. I ask him if that is how far my mom is, and he looks at Ms. Gross like he is angry.

The first question is what my favorite food is, and how often I eat it. Then they ask how often I usually have dinner, which I think is a trick question, because dinner is every night. They ask if my parents ever yell, and I say yes. Mr. Karim looks happy. He asks if they yell at each other, and I say yes. He asks if they yell at me, and I say no, and Mr. Karim looks angry again. Ms. Gross asks me more questions I've since forgotten, and then she tells me I did very good on the test. I ask to see my mom, and she says the test isn't over. I ball my hands into what must have been my first fists and tell her she cheated. She brings out a chest of toys from under the table, and asks if I would like to play -- I tell her I want to see my mom again. She tells me part of the test is playing with toys, and I have to play to finish the test.

Mr. Karim asks if I want to see my mom, and suddenly I forget about Ms. Gross. I tell him I do, and he tells me that I have to finish the test to see her as quick as I can, so I agree to play with the toys. Ms. Gross spills the chest onto the carpet and she and Mr. Karim take out papers.

I start to play with a dinosaur, and they ask what it is and what it's doing. It's a dinosaur looking for food, which surprises me that they can't see. Then I play with a truck, and they ask the same questions. It's me driving my truck. Then I play with a doll of a black-haired woman, and they ask if it is my mom. That made me so angry. That was a different question. It wasn't my mom. They wouldn't let me see my mom. I launch the doll at Ms. Gross and it hits her in the chin. Mr. Karim gets up and makes a motion to block the doll after it has hit her, and Ms. Gross looks mad at me. She tells me it was bad to do that, and asks why I did it.

I tell her I finished the test.

---

They didn't let me see my mom after that. They took me to a woman I never met, who told me she was my dad's mom. I asked if she was taking me to my mom in her car, and she said no -- my mom was a very bad woman who i wouldn't see again. I start to cry, and she puts the radio on. It is people talking. She teaches me about God, and sin, and Jehovah. She tells me awful stories about the city we live in, and the terrible things that people do to other people. She makes me pay close attention to the bad things on the news to drive this home. She teaches me about 9/11, and Rape, and Murder, and Drugs. She shows me news articles with my dad being arrested, and she shows me a picture of him being carried away by the police. His hair is long and brown and he is bleeding from his mouth so much. I tell my grandma he looks like Jesus Christ, and she agrees. She teaches me about the world outside, but she doesn't teach me about the things inside. She washes me, wipes my ass, brushes my teeth, puts my clothes on, and does my work when I start preschool. She feeds me and feeds me and feeds me.'

One day, she brings two people to see me. One is Jesus, I think, and one is a woman. She keeps crying, and my grandma tells me I don't want to see her anymore. I tell her I don't want to see her anymore, but it feels strange. I know this person. She shows me the sweater she brought me. It is itchy and green, but it smells familiar. I feel my sanity crashing down like a thousand red hot comets. Mom. My mom. My mom. I cry and cry and cry like I have never cried. I thought she had left me forever. I thought she had died and moved away and a thousand other lies. And here she was. My parents bring me home. My mom holds me the whole ride back. She tells me my grandmother would throw out letters and hang up on birthday calls. She tells me the gifts she had bought for me over the years, and starts naming things I thought my grandmother had bought me on a whim. She tells me what birthdays are, and how old I am. I am four now. She tells me nobody will ever take me away again. We cry.