[Tu Shanshu] How's My Driving?

[gathersnomoss]

What it says on the tin.

Comments

[skeletonenigma]

Hey! I'm here not as a mod, but as a fellow player, with concerns regarding both Zelgadis and Iroh in Tu Shanshu.

I'm honestly flummoxed by your tags for a variety of reasons. There's definitely something to be said for brevity, and most of the time tagging with something is better than a long delay of trying to make your character do more than they would ICly do. However - and I apologise if I come across as abrupt or blunt here - you never seem to do anything else. Most, if not all, of the time your tags are a chore to respond to. A grand majority of them are single sentences, a line of dialogue and nothing else. Sometimes tags like that are necessary (particularly on the network where anything more than a line of dialogue is usually emotion-heavy or plot-relevant), but they should not be your default in action logs, especially when you're tagging in to someone else's open starter.

A number of times, you've tagged into situations where players are giving other characters the chance to intervene or notice something their own character is doing, and your characters tag in doing something completely different and ultimately irrelevant, putting all of the onus on the other player to start an interaction. This really isn't fair, as they've already put in the effort of making an interaction possible. You seem to expect your tagging partners to do all of the work in moving a thread along, which can get very tiring and frustrating, especially when you don't engage with anything that gets offered (again, most of your tag-backs tend to ignore the subtleties or layers in a character's response entirely and default to a single line of dialogue.)

One of the reasons I'm flummoxed by this is that you seem to know your characters extremely well! I've seen you a few times on plurk talking about them or their thought processes, and you've always come across as thorough, insightful, and passionate. I'm completely at a loss as to why you don't bring that same knowledge and enthusiasm into your tags. It feels as though you tag just to get tags out of the way, rather than actually enjoying the give-and-take nature of RP or character exploration. I think that's one of the reasons I find it most frustrating; I honestly believe you could do much better, and I don't understand why you're not putting in the effort. It feels like you consider RP more of an obligation than a hobby.

I've been noticing this issue for a while now, but found out some time ago that you've received critique on this before. In light of that, I haven't said anything until now because I wasn't sure I had a legitimate concern; but after having heard this same concern raised by other players very recently, I felt it was unfair not to bring it to your attention.

Thank you for your time!

-Am

[gathersnomoss]

Yeah. I'm used to a short, quick tagging style. I've been trying to focus on giving something to reply to, but I guess I'm not hitting it.

A lot of it is that I worry that people don't care to listen to me introspect, and I spend so much time worrying that I'm stepping on others' toes in threads that I don't take much control beyond my character.

[skeletonenigma]

I definitely understand the worry about treading on others' toes - it's something all of us experience at one point or another. But from what I've been told, I think a lot of players would appreciate if you introspected a little more! You might be surprised how much there is for another character to react or respond to if their player knows a little more about something as simple as your character's thought process. And even if that isn't the case, people always appreciate seeing the same amount of effort put into a thread as they're putting into it.

If you find you're still worried about overstepping boundaries, I definitely recommend contacting the relevant player and asking. It's a lot easier to tell someone something in their tag doesn't work than it is to tell them there isn't enough in their tag, if that makes sense. And a little OOC coordination can go a long way in smoothing potential conflicts before they even happen.

I do have to point out, however - and again, please forgive me if this comes across as blunt - that you've been critiqued on this nearly two years ago by another player in Tushan, and you replied then that you're used to a comment-spam style of RP. I understand that there's a learning curve when adapting to a new game, especially one as prose-heavy as Tushan, but two years is a lot of time in which to work on it.