Forums » RP Discussion » Pet Peves in characters and/or RP

Rape in and of itself, I have no problem with. I can't stand when it's just tossed in for the angst, or because it's 'cool'. I can't stand when rape is used to excuse behavior that has nothing to do with rape survivor's syndrome, or when it seems to have absolutely no last effects on the character at all- it's just there to make her tragic so other characters will feel sorry for her and dote on her.

Really, almost any aspect of a potential backstory can be done well. Sadly, it's usually not.

It's funny how many of these peeves turn out to be someone else's favorite thing. There are a lot of character types that are overdone or frequently done badly that have trained people to raise their hackles at right away, but that doesn't mean there aren't people out there who are playing them well.

I agree! It's more about the player than the character, I think. If a young teenager who just started RPing made a princess characters, that character would differ a lot from a similar princess character made by an older player who has been RPing for years. Plus, characters can evolve! You can find plenty of people who have been playing the same character for a long time and they started off as a lame-o but have grown into good, believable characters with time.

Still, there are just some of those things...

Ah, yes, this is true.

my characters were hated as children, not raped or dead parents'd. because of it they are strong willed indifferent introverted individuals. ^-^

I have a lot of peeves. My biggest and most prominent is the lack of research shown when making a character. I know roleplay is a game, but for me, seeing the effort a player goes through to make up a character or race or history really puts that extra oopmh into things. And hey, if it shows anything, the player is either A. intelligent or B. smart enough to use google to their advantage.

A lythari is not a werewolf, for example, so don't play them like they are the same thing. Kitsune of 7+ tails are nigh godlike according to Japanese myth. If you where stabbed in the gut, you're bleeding out and probably going to pass out, so why are you still talking and waving your hands around as if you got a paper cut? I cringe every time I see a character supposedly get injured, then insta-heal whether magic exists in the continuity or not. I know, that's a consent thing, but can it be done in a believable fashion, please? A few scars won't ruin a character, they make them better because it shows character growth.

That's probably just me though. .-. But researching stuff makes me a happy person. Lack of it makes me want to have a face to concrete meeting with the foundation of my house.

You're not alone in hating lack of research. After the amount of work I put into my characters, their races, their world history, their magic, etc, it's painful to play them against characters that have obviously not been researched at all. That, and I'm a research-whore in the first place. You should see some of my historically-based fanfics.

...In response to one of the earlier topics, characters with unrealistic weights, I just realized that I DO have a character taller than six feet that weighs 80 pounds. In my defense, the character is supposed to be a scarily emaciated bag of bones!

If there's a reason for it, then it's all good! It when people are like 'I'll make them so tall but not very heavy, BUT LOLMUSCULAR too!' that it starts becoming a problem. Meat ain't made of air, folks!

It's like people forgot they can look up a height to weight ratio chart when figuring that stuff out. .-.

Look things up online? That sounds like work. They don't want to work, roleplaying is supposed to be fun! It's a game! ^^

/sarcasm

THIS! I don't mind some exposition on occasion, but when I get 8 lines of this sort of thing and a half of a line of something my character can react to, it's utterly maddening. I particularly hate it when this sort of post follows one of mine with things to potentially react to, and there is no reaction. It really stalls the RP, and I lose my motivation. That's never a good thing!

YES! YesyesyesyesYES!

Picture this: A town in which necromancy is highly illegal, the type of town where pitchforks and torches are applied... and in walks a necromancer, parading around town in his/her black robe, hood drawn over their eyes, a red or white skull somewhere on their clothing, possibly holding eerily glowing weapons or a staff with a demon's skull on it... AND PEOPLE HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THAT?! Honestly... >_< Luckily I think this is something only young and inexperienced roleplayers do.

Also, yes. I'm definitely a fan of people who alternate their character's outfit. I mean, it's not necessary to bother people with it by putting all the details in the character sheet, but in long-term and recurring RPs where your character meets another character almost daily or a couple of times in a few weeks, it's great to see a little line in the opening post with what the character is wearing that day.

I think this speaks to a larger problem of "open mindedness" that seems to plague RP continuities populated by players of all ages. Now, in real life being open minded and accepting is a great thing, but when you have a setting in which everyone there's supposed to have some generally accepted cultural beliefs but not a single person bothers to play it, it's in my book sort of a tragedy.

I have some suspicion this is because most people like to view the characters they play as "good guys" and so PCness compels them not to see class differences. But being a good RPer isn't about making everything into paradise. Trying to fix everything is just as annoying as being good at everything. Conflict drives story, and in a civilization with deep seated prejudice, your character would need an outstanding reason not to have at LEAST a mild distaste for the "other," whether it be nobility vs. populace or dwarves. vs. elves, not just this "They've never done anything to me" stuff. Heck, even if your character was saved by the "other" and was forever after grateful, they probably still wouldn't stop using the slurs in talking about them. Really. How long did it take AFTER the civil war for either side to even start to consider that the N-word might actually not be appropriate? It did not happen overnight, and even freedom fighters were still throwing it around with abandon. And just because the north felt slavery was wrong, that didn't mean they thought total integration was a good idea either.

And then there's other cultural beliefs like, at certain time periods if you wore a miniskirt you'd be stoned to death, and people were so conservative about the lower half of the body that poets wrote many a verse about how tantalizing getting to see a glimpse of ankle was, and people are traipsing around in tight skirts with slits up to their hip and no one bats an eye? How are we supposed to have juicy court scandal if walking around half-naked doesn't require us all to break out the fainting salts? Or even to declare "Oh, I say!"?

I'm under the distinct impression that somehow prejudices and sexual prohibitions are more palatable to players when they are playing in a historical setting that is something other than their own. For instance, americans are more willing to play (and enforce) a certain amount of historical accuracy for feudal japan, but those same players in a European fantasy setting are suddenly churning out characters totally okay with all the life choices every character wants to make, whether it be evil necromancy or being an elf in a world where elves are supposed to be hated. It's like they're trying to make up for the character flaws of their ancestors or something. But this homogenizing of settings into one general "everything goes" fantasy backdrop is not a good thing. Conflict drives action, period end of story. You are doing no favors to anyone by fixing all of an IC continuity's social problems. Turning the world into a paradise is just a RP disaster.

The only places I've seen this not happen at all has been in star trek RPing continuities. Possibly because when people want to play goody two shoes that love everyone all the time, they collect in the federation and that doesn't ruin the setting at all, it just makes sense. And everyone else laughs and cackles about how much their klingon character hates romulans. Why is it more okay for klingons to hate romulans than a magical race to hate another magical race? I will never know.

Fairy tales. We grew up hearing about helpful fairies and wise elves and all that. Magical creatures are split between those that are Good and Light and Love Everyone, and nasty creatures that hate everyone equally and are Evil and Dark and Not Nice. Our childhood learning tells us elves, fairies, and other such creatures are above hate and only dislike others on a one-to-one basis.

Klingons and Romulans, on the other hand, were introduced to us as mortal enemies, right? I'm not a Trekkie, my father forced me to watch Babylon 5, but I'm pretty sure that Klingons and Romulans have always wanted to wipe each other out. It's okay for them to hate each other because we've never seen them in any other light.

I completely agree with the rest of your post, though. People seem to have a hard time understanding that the world they play in isn't the one they live in. We're paranoid about being openminded in real life, so I guess it spills over into our roleplaying. I got warned on Gaia because my racist neo-Nazi called a black character a nigger. Even in-character, that's not okay. Even though the player of the black character in question didn't have a problem with it. -3-

Well, seeing the present world, it could have been offensive to some people passing by and seeing your post to see that word employed directly. Some people still don't get the difference between IC and OOC.
In cases where something my character says couldn't really be translated into words, or could be offensive, I think I'd usually try to cut the dialog short and imply it in the description part of the post (usually that's when the character would be mumbling or speaking incoherently under his/her breath).

Which, somehow, makes me think of another one of my peeves I didn't mention!
When the roleplay centers around two characters of different species, and the other player takes the liberty of determining in character what your own character's species acts like, their habits and their capacities. The character is basically saying, "You're X, all X's are this-that". I mean, it's your own character, so its exact species should be determined by you.

I don't mind if the other character's just saying, "I've heard rumors that...", but when they're just going on and on about how a character of that exact species would be mistaken about the behaviour of its own people, that drives me crazy.

About mental illnesses being played incorrectly:

I saw a guy who was playing someone as having DID, but he called it schizophrenia. I whispered him to correct him, and he said that it would make it "more understandable to other RPers". I told him it would be reinforcing misinformation, and he said, "Schizophrenia just sounds cooler."

So basically he was being a lazy ass douche and couldn't be bothered to change something for the better. I hate that- it seems like everyone I ever correct throws a huge hissy fit or makes stupid excuses as to why they can't/don't want to change things for the better.

Depends! There's a lot of white-washed disneyfied fairy tales out there now, but in a great number of traditions fairies and elves range from annoying to downright malicious tricksters who kidnap, ensnare and kill mortals (and one another) in all kinds of creative ways. I grew up with both varieties, the disney fae and the capricious fae that ought to be feared. They both have their place, but the super cutesy version strikes me as less authentic. Or at the very least, less interesting. Good spirits certainly exist in traditional lore, but I know of no tradition that includes only good spirits. Besides, tolkien anyone? That is a huge pillar of fantasy, and in the LOTR universe, elves and dwarves do not get along.

And yeah, it's not surprising to me that Gaia didn't want the n-word in use even IC. The thing about sites like Gaia, which include RP but are primarily just social sites and digital bling-building hubs, is that they are having to play defense against angry parents. It is totally irrelevant whether or not the Gaia staff understands the difference between IC and OOC, because they know that parents do not understand it; or alternatively, even if they understand it is pretend-play, they may not wish their children to participate in a game that would include racist material or get the message that it's okay to play or joke that way. Because people of all ages play Gaia and any of them can wander by and read anything that happens on their forums, I would surmise that Gaia staffers find themselves having to police all kinds of things that are "just pretend." It takes nothing to set off an irate parent and have them calling you constantly complaining you weren't protecting their children. I strongly sympathize with staffers who are being forced to walk that line, because it is an ever-present tension in any open forum where a mix of ages exist. It's downright impossible to please everyone, and often your options leave no one pleased.

I would like to timidly point out that I personally have never read Tolkien. And I can count on one hand the number of people I know who've done more than see one of the movies based on the books. Most people, at least in my experience, are far more familiar with the Disneyfied versions of fairy tales than the original ones. In the areas of the US where I've lived, people who like the original Grimm versions are considered weird or even dangerous. Good beings are good, bad beings are bad, and only humans flip-flop between the two.

Considering said neo-Nazi was immediately called out by his Aryan idol (and punched in the face by the character he was insulting), I don't think the roleplay gave the impression that was okay, but I see your point. But the whole issue sets of another rant that has absolutely nothing to do with roleplay but basically boils down to: "If you can't be arsed to raise your kid yourself, don't blame the internet for what they find there." It's a parent's responsibility to teach their kid what is and isn't right, not Gaia's, and as long as the content doesn't exceed the site rating, the site can't be held responsible. Gaia's rating is PG-13. According to the MPAA, that means that some content may not be suitable for children under the age of 13. If a 13-year-old child doesn't know it's not all right to be racist, then the parent's doing something wrong and needs to correct it instead of blaming it on the internet, and if they're under 13, the parent should have read the rules, realized the site rating, and understood that the child might come across some things not quite suitable for them. The internet isn't here to raise our children.

And sadly, that's not even the rant version, just the very basics of the argument.

My biggest, all-time pet peeve is the terrible weights on 'curvy' females who stand 6'2" tall and only weigh a perfect 105 pounds.

I'm 6'1" myself and large in frame, I weigh 280lbs and thanks to my build and the way the weight settles, I hardly look 'obese' as I am classified. Most people guess me at a normal weight. People seem oblivious to how weight makes a character of certain height and build look. A woman who's 3 inches shorter and has an entirely different build will probably look terrible with my numbers, but I know of plenty truly big boned women like myself who pull it off nicely. (This is me at 280 pounds)

I get tired of hearing the word 'curvy' to describe a perfectly normal, healthy woman who is the perfect picture of what an average woman who eats well and exercises looks like. Or when a char is called chubby simply because they have some meat on their hips.... It's ridiculous and saddening that a healthy image is considered big or even overweight and that curvy is used to describe a woman who should technically be a walking skeleton.

I also don't think there are enough 'bigger' men and women in roleplays. It seems most players are interested only in the perfect rendition of what they'd like to look like or how the perfect man/woman they'd want is supposed to be. I just think to myself, "What is wrong with this guy?" Sure, he's not your average Adonis with his sparkling golden locks, perfect tan and tight six-pack... But he's got other things going for him too! I actually think he looks quite attractive, possibly because he could bump into me in real life and be a person to touch.