(07-01-2015, 08:58 AM)Magellan Wrote: On the subject of IC romance, people who meet, fall in lovs, and get married within two weeks of knowing each other. What exactly have you built this 'marriage' on. ERP? It's one thing if your character is very impulsive. That'd make sense. But shouldn't characters typically show a little more restraint?

(07-01-2015, 10:59 AM)Steel Wolf Wrote: My pet peeve is my own personal character indecision, which kinda leads me into a self-destructive little ourboros of self-doubt, shyness and uncertainty about character. I'm pretty sure it's caused me to strike as flaky and jerkassed to people who were otherwise welcoming and wonderful to the point of percieved ostracism, which further speeds up the spin cycle.

Hate that one.

(07-01-2015, 12:31 PM)Verad Wrote: I have two pet peeves. The first of them is the word peeve. Sound it out. Say it until it loses meaning. It's an ugly, annoying word. Grates at the ear. Lends itself towards the nasal. I'm usually a fan of alliteration and all, but "pet peeve" itself is a real teeth-grinder.

The second is that RPers have all unconsciously adopted the stylistic quirks of late Victorian realists and modernists in their writing styles, at least as far as Strunk and White condensed and repackaged them in that awful style guide, and taken them as givens. No purple prose, be concise, don't tell the other character what yours is thinking in internal monologue, so on. These aren't universal truths of writing; they're culturally and historically-situated literary tastes which have somehow managed to live beyond their purpose for the aesthetic movements which spawned them. The sooner they die, or the sooner they are recognized as tastes and not as fundamentals, the better.

(07-01-2015, 12:31 PM)Verad Wrote: No purple prose, be concise, don't tell the other character what yours is thinking in internal monologue, so on. These aren't universal truths of writing; they're culturally and historically-situated literary tastes which have somehow managed to live beyond their purpose for the aesthetic movements which spawned them. The sooner they die, or the sooner they are recognized as tastes and not as fundamentals, the better.

(07-01-2015, 04:33 PM)Hammersmith Wrote: There's a reason this style sticks as a default.  Purple prose takes a lot of time to write, and inflates an RP time of say, 30 minutes, to an hour to hours depending on how many people are getting fancy with their wording. 

Internal monologues are normally avoided because, well, RP is a group effort, a conversation in process, and you don't NORMALLY see what's going on inside someones head.  You see their face, their body language, you hear their voice.  You don't know that that bundle of flowers reminded our protagonist that he needs to visit his mother, she's been ill lately.

The style is default BECAUSE it's practical and concise.  It also has it's place, and YOU ARE FREE TO VIOLATE it, but keep in mind time constraints because this kind of writing and metaphysical engagement hooks more time onto the already length RP process.

(07-01-2015, 04:19 PM)Caspar Wrote: It's been a while since uni. Do your refer to grammatical control or descriptive style? I thought purple prose was overly descriptive and figurative, rather than concise and literal as I thought Realism implied.

(07-01-2015, 04:40 PM)Verad Wrote:

(07-01-2015, 04:33 PM)Hammersmith Wrote: There's a reason this style sticks as a default.  Purple prose takes a lot of time to write, and inflates an RP time of say, 30 minutes, to an hour to hours depending on how many people are getting fancy with their wording. 

Internal monologues are normally avoided because, well, RP is a group effort, a conversation in process, and you don't NORMALLY see what's going on inside someones head.  You see their face, their body language, you hear their voice.  You don't know that that bundle of flowers reminded our protagonist that he needs to visit his mother, she's been ill lately.

The style is default BECAUSE it's practical and concise.  It also has it's place, and YOU ARE FREE TO VIOLATE it, but keep in mind time constraints because this kind of writing and metaphysical engagement hooks more time onto the already length RP process.

Writing quickly in any form takes practice. The style of the prose doesn't much matter in this regard - a novice roleplayer is going to struggle with post-length whether they're writing in strict, just-the-facts modernism or not.

As for internal monologues and being unable to see what's going on in somebody's head, well, this is also part of the aesthetic of the literary realists and the modernists, and your justification is their justification. It is arguing that the goal is the most accurate possible representation of the real. This is not my goal. I have a different one, and it benefits more from internal monologue and narrative voice than it does from keeping my character's emotional cards close to their chest.

To suggest I am free to "violate" this practice suggests that there is something wrong in the act of deviating from it. Rather, I ignore it.

(07-01-2015, 04:44 PM)Caspar Wrote: I guess your previous post confused me. You advocate visible internal monologue or wish to move away from it? Touchscreen typing is hard, ugh.

(07-01-2015, 04:49 PM)Verad Wrote:

(07-01-2015, 04:44 PM)Caspar Wrote: I guess your previous post confused me. You advocate visible internal monologue or wish to move away from it? Touchscreen typing is hard, ugh.

I would love visible internal monologue. I enjoy narrative asides, meditations on things that are unrelated directly but nevertheless thematically related to the action at hand, and other such markers that break the illusion that we are characters in a real world. In this regard I admit I'm a bit reactionary because the realists and modernists were a break away from this sort of thing.

On the other hand, I'd also thrill to see anybody attempting postmodern writing aesthetics in RP. Somebody attempting Burroughs' cut-up style in roleplay, however successful, would have my respect, as would anybody who figured out how to take House of Leaves and turn that into a character. Either possibility or others I haven't considered would be welcome.

Important note: This is not to say I won't play with people who don't do these sorts of things, and I do so with some frequency. I've long-since had to reconcile myself with the fact that most people working in genre writing like fantasy RP are a bit stuck in this particular style, in part because they're more interested in content than aesthetic. That's why it's a peeve and not a dealbreaker.