the pet peeves of roleplaying. | a discussion by bones.

[bones]

Salutations, my friends. 

My name is Bones and I’ve decided to start writing these sort of guides and discussion posts for topics that are suggest to me or I otherwise come up with, myself.  

I recently got a suggestion for a discussion thread talking about… 

Pet Peeves in the Roleplaying Environment. 

( Thank You, XMadnessLoverX for suggesting the topic!) 

We’ve all got pet peeves, little things that tick us off and might even a roleplay altogether. 

Even I, your friendly neighborhood skeleton, have some pet peeves that can either make or break a partner for me. 

But let’s talk about some of our pet peeves, because this is a discussion, after all. 

. . . 

A big, biiiig pet peeve of mine is when you send a starter to a partner and they never reply. 

Granted, I understand life is busy. I really do. 

Life has a way of throwing the unexpected at us and sometimes what it throws at us isn’t that easy to handle. 

However! It’s rude, in my opinion, to keep your partner in the dark about it. 

You don’t have to tell them your life story… 

“oh my parents died and suddenly I’ve got a lightning shaped scar on my head and I’m just a baby who is now getting adopted by my cruddy uncle and aunt..” 

No, you don’t have to do all that. 

But it’s nice to throw out a,  

“Hey, something came up. I got your starter and I’ll reply to it as soon as I can, if you can wait for me that’d be awesome.” 

You’re letting your partner know that you saw their starter, acknowledged it, and promised to reply later. 

It’s easy peasy, and it’ll keep your partner content from bothering you.  

Heck, they might even be so kind as to offer help with whatever you’re struggling with.  

But when you don’t do that and your partner messages you like “hey what’s up, we good?”  

Please refrain from false promises of getting around to the reply.  

It’s okay if you are like “Hey, busy with school -- I’ll reply this weekend.” 

But please keep that promise. 

Don’t promise to do something, then don’t and then don’t even bother to talk to your partner when the weekend passes and you forgot or got busy.  

IT IS IMPORTANT TO TALK TO YOUR PARTNERS! 

It is important to trust and respect your partner enough to tell them the truth, rather than try not to hurt their feelings.  

Talk to them, talk to them, TALK TO THEM. 

Also! If you didn’t like the starter, it’s okay to say something. 

Don’t be the loser who ditches someone right after a starter.

It’s a sucky thing to do and there’s a special place in hell for those kind of people.  

Tell them what you didn’t like, and if they can’t respect that -- well, at least you tried.  

I think I’ve ranted enough on the subject, and though I have plenty more pet peeves --

I want to hear some of yours! 

What bothers you all? 

Let me know!

[xmadnessloverx]

Before the roleplay, what really bothers me other than ditching is rude behavior. I know we've all ran into certain people on quizilla before that was just completely rude to you, and it makes you not want to roleplay with that person. I once asked a person on quizilla for a roleplay and she said these exact words: "Uh, yeah. That was three months ago and I have enough people to roleplay with." Now, I have found that completely rude, in all honesty. They have no reason to behave like that. I mean, the person could have told me that they're full in a nicer way or that they aren't accepting other roleplayers right now.

Another pet peeve of mine, is, of course, ditching. I can understand that they have a life outside the Internet. I do too, and I also have wifi that isn't so great, and it tends to go out at random times. It is irritating yes, but it's the only wifi that my family can afford right now. I've had gone a week without internet before, and that's because my wifi sucks. I've also had a pet peeve where someone accuses me of ditching, though I have forgiven that person for the error. I'm not the type of person to hold grudges at all though. It does upset me when people make false accusations against me.

Here's another one as well. When the character is completely OOC (Out of character). I don't expect it to be perfect, but I am not always perfect when it comes to portraying canon characters, and I try my best to portray the characters. However, I had someone on DeviantArt tell me that [INSERT NAME HERE] is out of character, and then claim that they knew it was my first time playing that person. It was a bit hurtful to say at the least though. I mean, if it is your first time playing the character, then the other should know that it can't be perfect at first. I know everyone makes mistakes, though that's what's happened to me before. I don't expect the character to be perfect in how they act, but I will say something if the character is completely OOC (Let's say 25% in character), but in a nice way of course. I'll also be willing to help them out as well.

Finally, another pet peeve is when people fight with me over love interests. I've had that happen to me numerous times, and I've had two or three people threaten me before, and it was not pretty at all. So, I didn't roleplay with those that have threatened me at all. This had happened when I first started roleplaying back in mid 2009. I am a Roleplayer of seven years after all. Has that ever happened to any of you; having someone get angry or upset over love interests?

I believe that is it for the pet peeves of mine. And thanks for crediting me for the suggestion. I really appreciate it, Bones. ^.^

[historynut19]

I really don't like it when people just ditch when we just started the roleplay. It kind of gets my anxiety up and makes me feel a bit....um....lost in a way? Like did I do something wrong? Kinda thing I guess.

[xmadnessloverx]

Sept 14, 2016 9:59:50 GMT -6 historynut19 said:

I really don't like it when people just ditch when we just started the roleplay. It kind of gets my anxiety up and makes me feel a bit....um....lost in a way? Like did I do something wrong? Kinda thing I guess.

I know exactly how you feel when it comes to ditching. Yet, I'm always patient when waiting for replies. I'm the same way when I get ditched, I always think to myself did I do something wrong? I may be a slow replier, but I also love having conversations with my roleplayers outside the roleplay. Basically, my advice is you could talk to your roleplayers and offer to start out of roleplay conversations. I hope that helps. But yeah, ditching is irritating. 

[historynut19]

Sept 14, 2016 13:03:11 GMT -6 xmadnessloverx said:

Sept 14, 2016 9:59:50 GMT -6 historynut19 said:

I really don't like it when people just ditch when we just started the roleplay. It kind of gets my anxiety up and makes me feel a bit....um....lost in a way? Like did I do something wrong? Kinda thing I guess.

I know exactly how you feel when it comes to ditching. Yet, I'm always patient when waiting for replies. I'm the same way when I get ditched, I always think to myself did I do something wrong? I may be a slow replier, but I also love having conversations with my roleplayers outside the roleplay. Basically, my advice is you could talk to your roleplayers and offer to start out of roleplay conversations. I hope that helps. But yeah, ditching is irritating.

I mean we do talk but then they leave even after I start...? It's weird, I guess

[bones]

I see that ditching appears to be a mutual problem among roleplayers!

How curious!

[sleepingdragon]

My only pet peeve would be ditching as well, especially when you're getting ready to start or in the middle of a reply. Ditching half way through a roleplay, without any sort of update, sort of makes me wonder if I did something wrong.

I mean.. I can understand not replying right away to a starter or response, due to life getting in the way, but it still feels nice to have some sort of message. Anything to know that they're not forgetting about your roleplay.

[bones]

I do believe that a lot of the reasoning behind people ditching is they don't want to hurt feelings or possibly cause conflict. 

I can't say that that is exactly why or if it's even a true statement, but I can kinda see where they would feel ditching is better than having that happen? 

Not condoning it, of course, but I'm just trying to see their point of view.

There are, sadly, a lot of vicious roleplayers out there. I think the good outweigh the bad, but that doesn't change the fact that you can come across these asshats at random. 

There is, also/maybe/perhaps, the fact that people just don't care about roleplaying or their partners. 

They do it for fun and fun holds no responsibilities. They aren't obligated to talk to you or help you understand -- they're just here to have a fun time. (True Neutral, anyone?)

I think it's nice to communicate with your partner, even if you're scared to might hurt them. Communication is important. But if someone starts being a butthole about something then I totally understand ditching them and never talking to them again. But if they're nice, don't be mean and leave them hanging, you know?

Tell your partners what's up, even if YOU don't WANT to.

[an0nymouse]

Firstly, can I just say that I love reading about roleplay pet peeves? It really opens people up and you get to see things that bother them outside of their rules (provided, of course, you take the time to read other Threads and whatnot). Just my little musing.

I've got so many pet peeves that I don't really want to list them all out in fear I'll look like a giant d-bag, but I'll sort of cover the ones that have always sort of stood out to me.

• Spamming - I once had a partner that, if I hadn't replied in an hour, she would resend her message. I literally mean every hour she would resend her message. There was a day where I was at school and had at least eight messages from her. It didn't matter if I said I'd be busy and wouldn't be able to reply that day, she'd still email me constantly. It got really overwhelming and - as much as everyone hates it - I ditched and blocked her because talking and saying my feelings made no difference. That was at least five years ago, and I still have partners that, after eight hours of not hearing from me, will ask, "Did you get my email? Are you ignoring me? What did I do wrong?" I totally get the fear of ditching, but you can't hound your partners for an email that often (or some people may be okay with it, I digress). To me, it feels like I'm getting backed into a corner and that I have to reply right there and then or I'm not a good person. 
• Ditching During The Beginning - I've been ditched a lot and I've ditched a few times, but of all times I've ever ditched, it was never in the beginning. I've had a lot of issues being dropped during discussions about plots or character exchange. It has always made me look at my replies and characters and wonder why they dropped; did I put too much or too little detail into something? Did my character slightly resemble their character and annoy them? Did they just not want to roleplay with me? 
• Mirror Roleplaying and Spotlight Hogging - These used to be really bad back when I was a Quizilla user. It seemed like everyone I roleplayed was doing it. I'd have my character and their love interest do something and their reply was almost an exact copy of what I'd written. It was really annoying because I'd been trying to progress the roleplay and they weren't contributing at all. And spotlight hogging? I think that's a pet peeve that a lot of people share. Kind of disheartening when you are pushed into a dark corner and replies for your side are shit, whereas your partner's character is getting so much attention.

Those are just my pet peeves....or some of them. 


-an0nymouse

[sleepingdragon]

Sept 15, 2016 14:07:23 GMT -6 bones said:

I do believe that a lot of the reasoning behind people ditching is they don't want to hurt feelings or possibly cause conflict. 

I can't say that that is exactly why or if it's even a true statement, but I can kinda see where they would feel ditching is better than having that happen? 

Not condoning it, of course, but I'm just trying to see their point of view.

There are, sadly, a lot of vicious roleplayers out there. I think the good outweigh the bad, but that doesn't change the fact that you can come across these asshats at random. 

There is, also/maybe/perhaps, the fact that people just don't care about roleplaying or their partners. 

They do it for fun and fun holds no responsibilities. They aren't obligated to talk to you or help you understand -- they're just here to have a fun time. (True Neutral, anyone?)

I think it's nice to communicate with your partner, even if you're scared to might hurt them. Communication is important. But if someone starts being a butthole about something then I totally understand ditching them and never talking to them again. But if they're nice, don't be mean and leave them hanging, you know?

Tell your partners what's up, even if YOU don't WANT to.

You're not wrong, honestly. It's plausible most people try not to hurt anyone or create conflict by leaving, especially if they hope to avoid any conflict in the first place. If you consider other things, forgetfulness and personal matters are another thing that can result in ditching. I had one or two partners not reply for a couple months until recently- college classes were becoming time consuming and difficult. When you factor in everything, there's a lot of reasons why ditching might occur whether it's intentional or accidental. Nonetheless, you're right, communication is important when it comes to roleplay.  

[Cipher]

Hope it's okay if I jump in!! Sorry if this seems super cringy and vent-y.

I totally get why ditching is super annoying and hurtful and I feel really awful because admittedly I'm super bad for ditching RPs. Part of it is like what Bones said, I'm scared to hurt the other person's feelings when I feel like an RP isn't really going anywhere or the subject matter is uncomfortable for me. I'm really afraid of hurting someone's feelings or them lashing out at me when I say I can't continue... Or I'm not very sure how to word my feelings. It's a bit easier for me to bring stuff up if I'm friends with my partner OOC and such. Anyway, I know it's pretty silly of me to be scared to hurt feelings so I run away :').

A peeve of mine is directed more at RPC, an adult roleplaying chat (that I was waaaay too young to join when I did, honestly.) Obviously there are going to be people that are just looking for smut. That's the kind of site it is. The only problems I had with those particular people were the ones that would freak the shit out over you saying you're not interested and harass you even after you blocked/ignored them (One guy in particular kept making accounts to scream at me on. Lovely.) My issue with that community were the elitists on the site; the ones that hung out in a certain chat room ("Futanari Hot Springs" lmfao) and look down on people that RPed smut. On their overly complicated (bordering on dysfunctional because AESTHETICS) and ugly profiles with giant pictures of anime characters stolen from Gelbooru and tiny fonts, they'd go on about their really OP Mary Sue characters and that they don't do smut. "You have to work for it". That is absolutely fine! Yet these people were constantly roleplaying sexual stuff in the public chat. Or if you were lucky to be deemed "worthy" enough to RP with them (ie you knew basic HTML and posted memes in the chat), they'd jump right to the smut. The thing they say is dumb One friend of mine from the site would go on and on about how he REALLY CRAVED DEEP, COMPLEX STORIES WITH ORGANIC AND VARIED RELATIONSHIPS THAT DEVELOP OVER TIME and yet when I'd ask to RP... He'd skip the initial meeting and have it so that our characters were already "friends with benefits"/lovers/rivals-with-a-lot-of-sexual-tension and want smut. There was also a problem where he'd constantly play the same character and want me to RP as one of my OCs he has a crush on OR an anime character he liked... but wouldn't do the same for me? 

tl;dr: man i really do not care for elitist hypocrites. man i do not care for people that only want me to RP their spank material of the week. man i do not care for people that take control of my character.

Another pet peeve of mine, semi-related to people on RPC, were the people that constantly demanded paragraph/literate (and above) replies and would "do semi-para, THEY GUESS". Problem with this is when you did RP with these people, their replies were full of purple prose and complicated words that they didn't use correctly. Example would be the same guy as earlier, though he wasn't as bad as some other people (he could've just said his character created a small set of stairs and walked down them, he worded it like "___ would conjure up a picayune phantasmal group of steps and pereginate down his creation." Or something like that.) They try to sound really eloquent and smart... But end up looking really dumb and believing that "QUANTITY >>>> QUALITY". It's a bit annoying considering I honestly think that my replies are too long and it's mostly fluff... Yet these guys are going on about how the trim of their badass long coat is a shade of aubergine for a paragraph followed up by four more paragraphs about how my character's titties are totally bangin' and that he needs to get up in them guts because estrus (...which is something that females only go through but honestly whatever it's hentai RP land who am I to say anything.)

Spamming - I once had a partner that, if I hadn't replied in an hour, she would resend her message. I literally mean every hour she would resend her message. There was a day where I was at school and had at least eight messages from her. It didn't matter if I said I'd be busy and wouldn't be able to reply that day, she'd still email me constantly. It got really overwhelming and - as much as everyone hates it - I ditched and blocked her because talking and saying my feelings made no difference. That was at least five years ago, and I still have partners that, after eight hours of not hearing from me, will ask, "Did you get my email? Are you ignoring me? What did I do wrong?" I totally get the fear of ditching, but you can't hound your partners for an email that often (or some people may be okay with it, I digress). To me, it feels like I'm getting backed into a corner and that I have to reply right there and then or I'm not a good person

Gosh that was kind of my experience with RPing on Tumblr and it drove me up the wall. They also threw in some Cool (TM) Guilt Tripping about how everyone ignored their posts and wouldn't continue threads and I'm like 8'). It made me feel really bad because I'm already super bad for taking so long and no one else was apparently RPing with them. Being hounded for replies also made me... Just not want to do it, kind of like when you're told to go clean your room by your parent. You were planning on doing it but now you don't want to because you're petty and eleven years old 8'). 

There was also this huge drama thing that happened on in my old Tumblr RP group and it was all over this one person's character being "polyamorous." Which they used as an excuse to try to fuck everyone's characters (at least the ones that the mun was attracted to IRL) regardless of how their IC partners felt? But heaven forbid their character's partners just... talked to someone else's. They came crying to me OOC about how they felt awful because my friend's character, who was dating theirs, was "cheating" on theirs. I look at my friend's character's blog and... He's literally just talking to another character for the first time and they were getting along. I told them that I'd talk to my friend about it but I felt confused because their character was literally sleeping with someone other than either of their "official" partners and they didn't know about it. I proceeded to get screamed at over Skype for twenty minutes about how I don't understand polyamory and that I'm an awful human being for calling them out? 

I guess I just don't like hypocrites or people that take pretend relationships too seriously...?

This was really long and whiny and I apologize!!