Forums » RP Discussion » Pet peeves - Let's rant about RP stuff we hate!

Ah, forced romances... That's another pet peeve of mine. The first RP I ever hosted found a player as an unnaturally attractive 18 year old anime girl who, despite being the captain of a pirate ship, insisted on acting as girlish as possible around my character, who she was actively shooting at and who was trying to kill her. (For example, we have the lovely line, "he didn't even like how cute I was being just for him. Her face started to get all red as she put her hands to her face, hiding her rose red cheeks Well, that's to be expected of his species."

His species? Oh yeah, did I mention she's flirting with an alien? Look, if your anime girl has a thing for tall, thin, bald cat cyclopes, she can keep it in her pants. Aliens cannot mate with humans, and you'd be hard-pressed to justify them being attracted to each other.

I think it's funny how I look through the "Find RP" page, and there's a hundred 18+ supernatural romance RPs...

And then there's me, with the sci-fi detective story, the sci-fi fugitive story, the sci-fi political thriller...

The (pan/xenosexual) Asari beg to differ.

This actually drives me up a wall in almost all science fiction ever. The odds that their genes would be compatible is so astronomically low, not to mention their methods of reproduction, not to mention there's no reason they'd even be carbon based.

Some universes will try to explain this with some kind of unifying theory, such as in Star Trek where there is an "original race" that seeded the galaxy with their genetics, thus producing a proliferation of semi-compatible human-like races that all have similar reproductive processes and more or less compatible standards of beauty, but even so.

I don't know if ME has attempted to hand-wave away the radical astro-biology preposterous that is a bunch of bipedal humanoids throughout the galaxy or not, but even with that in place it's very very hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

Long live true aliens, who share nothing in common with humans at all!

That said, I'm a huge sci-fi fan and can grit my teeth and force myself to ignore the human-whatever hybrids that galaxies eventually overflow with, but if I think about it for even a second it takes me weeks to shove those facts back under the rug and pretend it isn't like trying to convince me up is down.

Asari don't use anything from other species directly. They're a self-replicating species who take the two sets of DNA and randomize one set by using some sort of template from someone else's DNA, whether that's another Asari or a human or whatever else is organic and sentient. They basically clone themselves but shake up half the DNA to prevent a clone. The children are always Asari, so they can never cross-breed with other species. They can still have sexual relationships with others in more traditional senses, though.

I've actually found this to be a very interesting way of allowing emotional and physical relationships between two species without throwing sensible reasoning out the window. Xenosexuality is something a bit like pansexuality in my eyes, where you're not drawn to a physical being of a specific gender/sex but to an emotional being. So forming relationships and being attracted to non-human alien species doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.

I like the idea of a "salt" being used in reproduction, though the idea that they even have DNA and can use DNA from other species (who themselves may or may not have such a thing) remains so wackily convenient to me that it's hard to suspend my disbelief. There's no reason that DNA from one species would look like "DNA" to another species. It might be made and stored in completely different ways with completely different materials, meaning the preference for other species' "genetic" material isn't actually more likely (and is in fact much less likely) than them eating handfuls of sand or licking carrion or laying out in the rain and using the staccato rhythm of impacts on their skin for their salt.

I think this is getting too specific for the thread, though; with every dumb character concept/overblown plot/scientific absurdity, someone out there is doing a great job at it. I think the pet peeve is how often this is done without anyone even pausing to consider why in the universe it works, when the overwhelming astronomical odds say that it shouldn't work. Like, ever. Much like every other pet peeve in the thread, if you can come up with a concept for why, or your character is just so good people don't care, have at -- this is just one of those ones that I have a much higher bar for accepting than, say, the latest vamp myth variant to be added to the pile.

• When every character is white, cisgendered, perfectly attractive by conventional standards
• Magical fix-all solutions - problems must never exist, rainbow unicorn poop and sparkles everywhere!

Next three are closely related:

• People RPing very problematic things for shock value
• People who's characters are a fetishized view of another culture/race/gender/sexuality/disability/etc (an easy example would be 'hermaphrodites'. Hello, ya'll realize trans and intersex people exist for real, and that term has been used to dehumanize the latter group? Just stahp)
• MENTAL ANEUROTYPICALITY LISTS HOLY GOD. 'yeah my character is bipolar and has multiple personalities and also is a sociopath and OCD and and and' and then the character is RPed by text book definitions or Hollywood portrayals and oh my god just stop please stop no better yet go away

I have a lot of other 'yeah no bye's, but we'll leave it at that, as these are the ones that bother me the most, and the most often.

Oh, I don't think they meant "perfect" in the congenial sense. The OC mentioned was a mutilated elf that couldn't speak a word of common {she was one of those "you have a nice personality" types}. I agree.

I only have two notable RP pet-peeves outside of god-moding and obscenely OP characters, everything else is minor at best and I'm happy to overlook.


I dislike characters that lack scientific or even fable depth. The whole concept of, "it just is." has always bothered me. I used to be very irritated by, "there's no science to it, it's just magic." but I've become a lot more accepting of the magic route; If only because science in general (to humanity as a whole) is still very limited, and it's difficult to put together the fragments of our understanding in a way that would effectively explain say.. S'meyer's vampires. Her idea, her lore, whatever.

I just like to see background info on the why a species is the way it is, or how a curse came to be, etc. It's not only more interesting, but it makes me feel like the RPer knows what they're doing.

Without good background info, I lose interest.


The other is when individuals personally state they want a definite separation of IC and OOC in their RPRs, but then go and make IC choices directly related to how they feel about someone OOC, or worse yet they have vitriolic reactions to IC occurrences. I genuinely just witnessed someone in a group do this. They cooked up IC reasons to ostracize someone from a plot because of how they felt about the other party OOC. Another time I watched someone become extremely emotionally distraught because a character's IC relationship went South.

I understand people get attached to plots and characters, but it's like trying to ban citizens of a nation from passing your country's boarders because of a lost football match.

I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't directly state, "Separation of IC and OOC" but that seems to only apply if they're the ones getting beaned. I've never been one for grudges and as a result I've always perceived the behavior as logically unsound and immature.

@ Masha - What if those problematic, shocking things serve a purpose, like a couple of my chars that are cannibals out of practicality?

@ Hindi - Hypocrisy in general is annoying. I've seen other cases of "this is what I expect from you" and then they don't stick to it themselves.


I'll actually admit that I have certain specific circumstances in which I'll ignore character puppeting (and even creep into it a little myself). It has to be:

• Someone I know well enough that I trust them not to get carried away.
• Something very minor and obviously assumable, like a carry-through of something already mentioned our perhaps a non-combat hand or shoulder grab.
• It has to serve a purpose along the lines of fast-forwarding or avoiding multiple short this-then-that posts that aren't really needed.

And even then, I'm happy to change what I did if they want, and expect the same. I do my best to stick to "this is what my character intends to do" and give the other time to respond.

My biggest RP pet peeve is really people taking forever to post. It makes me utterly lose interest. I'm used to a fast-paced guild where we cranked out para RP in a timely manner, so if I have to wait more than fifteen minutes and it's not a novel... I probably won't RP with you again. My time is very limited by my job, and therefore valuable to me. Unless it's skype RP/agreed upon beforehand to be at our own pace, I just get very vexed and stop caring about the scene.

Other than that, I hate when people have to "win" at every single combat. I usually RP fights to lose because I find struggle and loss to be more interesting than competition. I usually avoid arenas for this reason. Boring.

Then you're clearly not RPing it for shock value. I'm not sure you understood my statement.

Edit: I want to include that I actually have a cannibal character who isn't so out of practicality - who is so for her own indulgence. I have characters that do other, awful, problematic things. The key here is to be tasteful in your storytelling. Don't indulge yourself, don't run around shoving it in everyone's face like your character is some two dimensional thing who's only thing in life is to go 'HAW HAW I EAT PEOPLE LOOKIT ME EVERYONE LOOKIT ME'. Does that help, at all?

That reminds me of the whole special-snowflake mindset, where people over-indulge in unique physical and psychological attributes in the design. Just to stand out and get attention for it. Then get upset when anyone has something remotely similar or shares more than one trait.

"my character has PTSD from being in a war and has an accent, so you're copying me because yours has these two traits too."

I guess it's not a pet-peeve per se, but it is kind of weird when people do it.

That is incredibly uncomfortable! And immature. I avoid things like this like the plague. Honestly, I'm self conscious sometimes because of my more flashy characters - I'd hate to be mistaken for these people. But I think that awareness pushes me to work harder and shore up loose ends. In the end, the 'gross' is helpful?! Ahaha

I think if you execute it well IC, and actually take into account how these aspects will come together -- which in my observation you do well -- it's not a problem at all. I've also never once seen or heard about you picking on someone for having a similar design.

You have some flashy characters, but there's not an obvious reach to be "the most uniquest specialist character above all others."

*slowly backs away from the open forums* o____o;

Hm. I've gathered a bunch of Peeves over the years, because I was once a much more nitpicky, horrible and abrasive RPer (I'm trying to get better folks, I swear!), but there's some recurring ones that just really click in all the wrong ways with me:

Misusing/Overusing the conditional:

"Bob would eat an apple". It's petty, and ultimately meaningless, but it really just ticks me off. To all of you who don't know what I'm talking about by looking at the example, using 'would' makes your sentence a conditional, so in order for it to be correct, it needs to establish a condition. For example: "Bob would eat an apple, if he had one".

I know many people justify this as adapting its use so that others may interact/interrupt the action and step in, in most cases in an attempt to not be seen as poweremoters, but I propose the solution: instead of things like "Bob would punch Sam", use things implying he's starting the movement! Simple things like "Bob aims a punch in Sam's direction" are an easy solution to this here problem.

Overly aggressive narrator:

I'm not going to go into the subject of badass, 'dark' characters who swear IC a bunch. If you can pull that off and make it work, all the better for you. But some people who play this type of character feel the need to use the same tones their character use in the narrative tied to their actions, cursing excessively, and generally trying to sound tough. This makes me as a player perceive the player behind that post as aggressive rather than the character, and makes interactions rather uncomfortable for me.

Thoughts in emotes:

Sometimes, characters are reserved and don't speak much. Sometimes, our style makes us more inclined to decorate our posts with extra detail that the character has not conveyed by actions explicitly, but perhaps merely hinted at. It's not easy to establish a decent balance in these cases, when we feel like communicating stuff that our characters can't or won't, in a believable manner. But if you say things like "Bob thinks you are an insufferable ass", or even more positive remarks like "Bob thinks you're the best thing since opposable thumbs", then sadly my character has no way to react to it, and if you're using it as a way to point out a character's shortcomings, you're giving him no chance to defend himself! Plus, in these cases it tends to sound like an OOC jab.

So my personal opinion here: If the thoughts your character is experiencing are related to another character, but his actions don't let it be known in the slightest, don't add them! After all, part of the fun is sometimes to be surprised by what a character really thinks! On the other hand, if it's just something of no greater significance other than to add some more symbology or mental imagery to it, and I can accept that! But still, try to have your emotes be more about actions, less about thoughts.

Cultural awareness:

Let's say, to not go to real world examples, that you play in a hypothetical world in which there is an absolute ruler. There's always been one, and you've never known any different. Your character, alongside many others, mutter under their breath about how horrible the ruler is. But suddenly your character comes up with a civil rights movement, and fights for democracy, a concept that hadn't even been theorized! Well, no, hopefully you don't do that.

Remember folks! Most of us aren't even aware of our cultural values unless we think really deeply about them! This is particularly noticeable when playing in the context of RP inspired in other historical times (medieval, colonial... prehistoric! you name it) and having characters with very modern cultural values. You can have people that think have ideas "ahead of their time", but even then they'll always be chained to the times they were brought up in! I know the example is pretty vague, but I really didn't want to go into real examples, and it's almost 3 AM and I'm fairly sleepy .

That's about it. I felt in a typing mood tonight I guess, but maybe someone can learn a thing or two from some of the tips!

The culture awareness one is something that plagues a lot of medians as well as RPs. I'm pretty sure it's part of that need for the character to be somebody that we can sympathize with, so they share our modern views and ideals. However, it just comes across as contrived and out of character.

This might be off topic, but the TV show Murdoch Mysteries is a particularly glaring offender.

Well, I understand that at the end of the day us, as players, we might, or usually have cultural backgrounds different from the ones we try to explore in RP, but nonetheless, I love it, and it's the sign of a good RPer to me, when they try their best to get in their mind of the culture they're inspiring themselves in. This of course, means approaching it with respect and maturity, and to others, perhaps with a good deal of sense of humor. Stereotypes can be fun, guys.

But isn't that the problem? When a person, instead of adopting the cultural norms of the society they're RPing in, sticks with the mindset they were raised with? They're not trying to explore the new culture, they're perpetuating their own while wearing the other culture over their head as a disguise.

What I mean is that it's really unrealistic to expect everyone to make an anthropological/historical thesis to RP a character. Or at least to have that be the rule. If I learned something in my own studies of Anthropology in university is of how hard it is to come out of our cultural mindset, basically because we're not even rationally aware of most of it. My peeve comes when you wear a cultural label alone and ignore the rest of factors. If it doesn't have any influence in the process of decision-making your character does.

I can never be an actual 17th century sailor, but when RPing one, I can gather facts and knowledge about what I want to portray and make the best approximation to it. That's more what I mean. But often you have to take into account that you can't alienate players who aren't as heavily invested unless you play with a tight-knit group of like-minded players. Maybe your portrayal of a scurvy-ridden, disgusting pirate that will die of infection by age 30 is better than the player playing a more fantastic fantasy pirate that has all his teeth, but is being so realistic that you're hard to establish contact with worth it? That's a completely different discussion.

Anyway. The way I see it, you should do your best to wrap your mind around the culture you're trying to RP, but my basic point is that even with that considered, we're always going to infuse our own OOC inspiration because it's... well, unavoidable. Because like you said, we need some middle ground in which we can sympathize with our character, or else it will end up abandoned. It's all about finding a balance, imho.