This post might be blunt but I am going to write it anyway.
I rped an introvert character for a while. Nothing hermit-like but just quite shy. It turns out a lot of people got annoyed with my character because she was an introvert. You need to think of it from a real-life scenario. If you walked up to someone who very clearly did not want to talk, would you keep trying to drag it out of them to talk? Probably not. It would come off rude if you were clearly making a person uncomfortable who did not want to talk or was shy and uncomfortable with sudden social interactions.
This is the issue with rping an introvert character. RP conversations will die and connections will be missed because other characters will not want to try to drag the conversation on (especially if your character is giving short replies or otherwise looking uncomfortable), and it is very hard on the OOC person to keep trying to figure out points that might grasp your characters attention/interest and break out of the bubble. While you can discuss things OOCly, at some point you reach a meta barrier that might force interaction a bit too much. (Ex: "Hey! Talk about astronomy. My character loves astronomy and will open right up!") especially if the other character has little or no interest in the fields that would cause your character to open up.Â
Most introverts and shy people IRL have a small set of very close friends. It would be unreasonable to think that your character would suddenly get into a good conversation with every character he or she meets and become best friends (or even friends) with anyone. An introverted character is a very hard task to manage, and I know from experience. The task was a bit too hard for me, so now while I have a slightly introverted character, I have, for the sake of interactions and plots, made him a bit more sociable (though not a social butterfly by any means).
Sorry if this post was blunt, I do not mean this specifically towards you or that you are doing anything wrong, just trying to share my experiences and what people have told me about my own introverted/shy characters.
I rped an introvert character for a while. Nothing hermit-like but just quite shy. It turns out a lot of people got annoyed with my character because she was an introvert. You need to think of it from a real-life scenario. If you walked up to someone who very clearly did not want to talk, would you keep trying to drag it out of them to talk? Probably not. It would come off rude if you were clearly making a person uncomfortable who did not want to talk or was shy and uncomfortable with sudden social interactions.
This is the issue with rping an introvert character. RP conversations will die and connections will be missed because other characters will not want to try to drag the conversation on (especially if your character is giving short replies or otherwise looking uncomfortable), and it is very hard on the OOC person to keep trying to figure out points that might grasp your characters attention/interest and break out of the bubble. While you can discuss things OOCly, at some point you reach a meta barrier that might force interaction a bit too much. (Ex: "Hey! Talk about astronomy. My character loves astronomy and will open right up!") especially if the other character has little or no interest in the fields that would cause your character to open up.Â
Most introverts and shy people IRL have a small set of very close friends. It would be unreasonable to think that your character would suddenly get into a good conversation with every character he or she meets and become best friends (or even friends) with anyone. An introverted character is a very hard task to manage, and I know from experience. The task was a bit too hard for me, so now while I have a slightly introverted character, I have, for the sake of interactions and plots, made him a bit more sociable (though not a social butterfly by any means).
Sorry if this post was blunt, I do not mean this specifically towards you or that you are doing anything wrong, just trying to share my experiences and what people have told me about my own introverted/shy characters.
