rpanons | 006

006

Rundown:

rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Temporary Change: To reduce the strain on Dreamwidth's servers new entries will go up when a post reaches 5,000. "One of our biggest load problems is entries that have a high number of comments -- loading those entries causes a big hit -- and we've been seeing an increase in the number of entries with lots of comments lately. If even a few high-traffic journals or communities started opening new posts when comments reached 2000 or 2500 instead of letting the post run until it hit the maximum number of comments, it would definitely help." - DW_News

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.

Concerns?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Why do you think you're bad at getting it? It might be a really easy fix if it's just something like being afraid of how someone might OOCly respond to Eridan being a jerk, unless you're playing against people who cannot separate IC from OOC.

It's more... okay, first I admit that playing a jerk may be something I shouldn't be doing right now, since I'm trying to be less of one in real life? So I've really been watching how I phrase things and I think that could be affecting my playing subconsciously.

It may also be the characters I have to play him off of in the games I play him in. (All following examples are purely from an IC standpoint; OOC feelings are entirely left out.) I mean, one guy has basically the patience of Job, because even when Eridan is being an arse he still just takes a few deep breaths before responding. Literally the only thing that got an outward rise out of him was when Eridan insulted his skills as an emperor. And then he backed down. So while I'd say its definitely negative C.R., it's not super negative?

What else... Hmm, from that game there's a Tavros, and I'd call that neutral C.R. because we're only one thread in and even though Eridan is being a classist jerk, Tavros isn't exactly the kind of character who necessarily stands up for himself at the slightest provocation like? There's also a character who's been flirting with Eridan from day one, and I'm kind of not sure how to deal with that entirely. On the one hand, I can't see him just shoving away a potential quadrant fill. On the other hand, she is human and did I mention Eridan is a bigoted jerk? Right now I've got him pretty much happy with it but, you know, not censoring himself or anything, so it's entirely possible and likely that her opinion of him will take a nosedive.

Actually, in that game it seems like a lot of the characters are the patient kind, because they mostly put up with him even at his worst like. Although I do anticipate negative C.R. should/once it gets out that he's taken the side of the bad guys in the game since he thinks it's the better side to be on. (Namely, the winning side. He'd probably stick with the good guys if they had a shot in Hell of winning, because it would be better for him.)

And then in the other game I play him in, the main issue is that the rest of the cast is all from prior to Return to the Core. So the Kanaya has no reason to want to "auspistice" between his two halves with a chainsaw, for instance.

He's got somewhat negative C.R. there thanks to a bit of accidental murder, but... well, Kanaya isn't a meddling fussyfangs for nothing, so if you guessed that Kanaya is meddling there, you'd be right! But otherwise, there's a lot of tension there, mostly distrust and dislike and disgust and such. (That's a lot of dis.)

Past that, the rest is what I'd categorise as neutral C.R., mostly. The most positive is... well, definitely with the Kanaya. And I suppose I'm partially to blame for that as I've been friends with the Kanaya mun since well before I picked up Eridan, and part of why she apped Kan was because I was apping Eridan, but. If this were plurk I'd be putting the (unsure) emoticon here. While I do like that they aren't trying to kill each other, I do worry about that inherent bias interfering.

(I guess my biggest fear is my own biases, of which I have plenty like.)

Well, I'm not sure that relationship is or isn't IC (Kanaya and Eridan), but I also haven't seen how that's developed in game so I can't really comment on that. If you're unsure about that I would suggest talking to your friend and then talking to other people who have been following your guys' CR closely and see if they think it's IC. It's possible your bias has gotten in the way, but it's also possible that you guys just developed stuff in such a way for it to be IC.

I will say though that it's probably OOC if Kanaya has been completely tolerant of Eridan's behavior, if she's in the quadrant and has still been making it clear of how displeased she'd be with things like Eridan hating landdwellers and the like that's more likely to be IC.

But, okay, you said that you're trying to be less of a jerk OOC and you're afraid that's having an impact IC. If that's actually the case what I suggest is to channel, as best you can, your old bad behavior into the IC part of things. And also to just lift jerky behavior you've seen elsewhere and put it into Eridan's, as long as it's in character of course. If you changing your behavior OOC is having an effect on this then this will probably help.

Also, it sounds like even though you have all this neutral CR you're developing in such a way to get negative CR in the long run, so this doesn't sound too bad. Honestly, I think when the other characters have found out Eridan has sided with the bad guys instead of them you should be getting all the negative CR you can handle.

One thing though I'd like to ask about is why Eridan backed down with the first character you mentioned? I can see some situations where he would back down, but I can also see plenty where he wouldn't and having more of a chance to explore the areas in which he wouldn't back down might get you this negative CR with a few more characters. That doesn't mean he'd be a ridiculous hound with every character of course, but getting him into that same situation with other characters might work out.

Also, yeah that situation with him having a human crushing on him is a difficult one to play with. One way to handle it might be going with the insulting flirtation he's got going on in canon. You don't want it to be entirely the same thing because part of his backhanded flirting there had to do with him feeling black instead of red for everyone he was flirting with. That being said though, he could definitely flirt back in such a way as to say "Hey, despite you being a shitblood I kind of like you" or something like that.

But going back to biases, honestly if you're aware of them to begin with that's the first step to make sure you aren't playing something that's OOC and you can just examine that as best you can to make sure you're not giving into something just because of the bias. And also, honestly, it's okay to recognize that you're human and you might make mistakes. It happens, you just need to learn from what mistakes you can.

Oh, trust me, Kanaya is on his case about the whole genocide complex. Right now she's glad that the futility of trying to enact it is keeping him from doing anything, but she's also aware that she's probably going to have to find another reason for him to not go with that in the event that the 'respawn' system stops working for good.

Also, I think you misunderstood me re: backing down. It was the other guy who backed down, not Eridan. (This is the problem with pronouns...) Anyhow, I think that might change your perspective on it a little? I don't know, but if it does do let me know.

I'm mostly going with the, "You might be a shitblood but I kind of think you're likeably pathetic" interpretation as far as that one goes. We'll see how it works, but I've no intentions of sacrificing characterisation at this point in the name of a 'ship. If somehow later on he ends up not being as much as a douchecanoe, I do plan to reevaluate how he responds to things, but he's only been in the game a little more than a month, so it's not like anyone has really had a chance to change his opinions any.

Might have to channel all the old behaviour into the RP, all else fails. I'd rather avoid it if I can; it feels a bit like blending. Though it probably isn't, because it's not as if I'm not aware of the divide between IC and OOC. I guess my main worry with that is honestly? I was more than a bit of a tool. I was an arse. It's a wonder anyone who talked to me back then has even two words to say to me these days that aren't "Jog on." I'd rather not be that person again; not even for the sake of being IC. </airing personal shit all over anoncomm like someone currs>

Kanaya stuff sounds more IC then, just double check it with people if you're still worried about it.

YES that does change my perspective on that a little. It mostly just makes it so that you're still doing the right thing with Eridan and just running into characters who aren't responding super negatively to him. It honestly sounds like you're mostly going to have to hope there's less passive characters for him to clash with soon or him being found out as siding with the villains will be enough to get him all the negative CR.

And yeah, that's definitely too soon for development in such a way as to have him respond to people with less prejudice. It sounds like you're going the most IC direction for him with that though

On channeling that old behavior into RP, if you feel like it's starting to blend just back off on it for a bit or talk to people and see if they think you're putting too much of yourself in the character. I wouldn't think it'd be likely to happen since you're aware of the issue, but having backups is a good thing. If you feel like playing Eridan while channeling that behavior does actually make you more of a tool though then, if you really don't want to be that person and can't get Eridan's voice without becoming that person again then you may unfortunately have to drop him for awhile, or hopefully just hiatus for a bit. Just don't let anyone make you feel guilty if it comes to that point, which it hopefully won't.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

006

no subject

this deer is teal

that's okay, mine might be tealer

Dueling teal deers! Who is the most teal? (Actually, yours. I don't have anything to add here.)

no subject