It sounds like we're saying the same thing: backstories are supposed to help plotting and connections.

If that's still your experience, I'm happy for you, but please understand it has absolutely not been for me and it was hurtful to hear that I must secretly hate reading or something for talking about my experiences with it. I can empathize you have probably met people who did dismiss your character's profiles, though; I know how much that sucks.

I still don't feel heard — I agree with you about the fraud thing, for example — but instead I'll just say that I continue to respect your efforts for this board and enjoy your participation. I laugh at your Genshin posts, even if I don't always remember to go back and like them.

I still advocate for sharing histories; I am not saying "never write anything down, full enigma, go!"

I am saying "save the nuanced exploration and cathartic top-shelf for the actual activity we're participating in together", because yes.

I do enjoy my threads more when I still have things to say about a character and why they tick; I am excited to post more when I get to delve into it still and haven't already "written it all better".
I also find that many characters feel weirdly disjointed now and just never talk about their past influences, where there's this clear delineation between "oh, it's an origin story" vs. everything else.

I can only clarify for myself, but my issue is the exact opposite.

Imagine this: You read a gripping narrative, in media res flashbacks and everything, and through it all, you discover the touching twists and turns of the character before you now, how constant parental neglect devastated their self-esteem in poetic terms you can only dream of, and the heart of ironwrought will it took for them to overcome the social isolation that followed later in life and easily could have drowned them. Their entire soul, lain bare before you.

Now imagine that instead of passively consuming this when you're not actually supposed to know any of this information, they wrote this scene for you and you get to respond.

It's not that "these words are too much and I refuse to read them"; it's "this would have been way better as an actual plot point we got to explore together", and also because let's be real: backstories aren't about information anymore, they're just the literary equivalent of the skin aesthetic armsrace. They're the Secret Writing Sample application field where you're supposed to judge peoples' writing styles, not actually learn about a character.

I would prefer people impress me with their posts, not the thing that's supposed to be a glossary.

Gonna start a panfan and call it onlyFandoms

I've talked about this elsewhere, but I will also die on the hill that standard "long-form" histories are clearly development that belong in Development forums, not the place where I'm just trying to see how old your character was when they moved to the city so mine's been a childhood friend for how many years

Please for the love of hot muscle ladies, can we normalize bullet-point timelines??

I have the controversial opinion that this goes for abilities/magic/super intricate tech, too. Just tell me in general how your character approaches problems, we have the whole thread to talk specifics

Big advocate of 50/50, with the condition that both need to be directed and specific.

The forum 50 for me is listing the exact Wanted Plots, Development, and Relationship Dynamics your character is looking for, per character; this can go into a plotter if the forum has the space, but imo it's easier and better if we all started putting this as a section in our character profiles directly. Like I'd even go so far as to say it's more important to have this section than an actual personality written, because I've written characters before where I literally had no idea how they'd react to people and circumstances, but I knew all the shit I wanted them involved in and developed from there to splendid effect.

I started doing a Wanted Plots section on my profiles towards this, but only on one char and I should def add it to the other :thonks:

The discord 50 is diving into PMs of people directly, which admittedly could also be forum PMs for those who still prefer them. Point here is to.. just read what other people have written on their profiles and pitch threads or loose premises to them specifically. I'm actually really against generic "looking for threads" messages in public spaces, not because I dislike them specifically, but because I find they often just don't accomplish anything — there's this known phenomenon with human psychology where in a big enough group, if an emergency happens and you're asking for someone to call 911, the majority of people will completely walk by because "someone else will do it", and I find that mentality occurs a lot in servers too. Everyone thinks someone else will get to it, they don't have any ideas so why bother, and/or we just forget. My goto has always been divebombing directly into someone's DMs like a Bazelgeuse that just spawned on-map or calling them out specifically in a channel and pitching a loose premise or specific setup, and I've never felt under-threaded in my RP life.

This includes my trans, gay, and PoC characters. I often see people talk about how they can't get plots when they write these types, and I just.. I genuinely cannot sympathize. Then again, the only plot I've never been able to write is an m×m romance despite writing literally every other configuration and everyone insisting this is way easier to get than f×f, so maybe I really do live in the upside down ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tl;dr write on your profiles what stuff you're looking for and read random profiles + carpet bomb DMs asking people if they'd like to write a cool fight thread where yeah sure their character could beat up yours on paper, but what if a building collapsed midway through and they fell into an antideluvian booby-trapped tomb of death and had to get over their intense hatred to escape the spike pit lava pool traps?? it'll change your life

Y'all ever start writing some shit and then delete it because who actually cares

:[

Unrelated aside, but I figured out how to totally overhaul jcink's UCP with your own webpage instead and also how to make the default member list just an actual member directory, like automatically per parent account. I've been tempted to write a ToDo about these, but then time + JavaScript knowledge is required and I'm not convinced most people will bother vs. the I time I spend writing a tutorial

> recommend game to friend
> give comparison of what I like and think he will like about it, but also caveats and what I could see being annoying in case he's bothered by certain things
> friend actually works for the gd company and has helped develop it

auggggggh wcji2ifjs83jcnznxka

TIL my most millennial trait is that I look up software on wikipedia and use the homepage links listed there to install new programs because I trust it more than the over-SEO'd garbage results if I had tried to search for it directly

RP Confession: I love magic schools, but I never know how to make them without just being SoL

• #1 prestige academy in the world and everyone goes there, even with a horribly conflicted world state that spills into the school?
• It's not actually a "school" so much as a "training facility" and they're all in some kind of active training program? _{(( but then why a school and not just a - ))}
• Maybe the Dragon Age/The Magicians route, where magic has serious drawbacks and if you're not actively learning to defend yourself from demons, your degree will be awarded to a lobotomized vegetable?
• is it bullies? are bullies the plot??

I can't with the "there are also supernaturals and people are shitty to them" takes

I guess there's always the argument that "this setting inherently leans itself to personal development and therefore doesn't need overarching turmoil — you get exactly as much plot as you bring to the table", but then that just doesn't feel satisfying to my political-intrigue loving ass

More aside, but ponderances like this are also kinda why I dislike HP, because people just don't bother making original magic schools when everyone and their grandma knows the lore for HP and you can just go "It's HP, but Ancient Egyptian and the houses are our Gods" and like ten million more people will jump on that over reading original lore

Idk, anyone else got a similar sticking point, whether it's with magic schools or another genre?