A discussion on RP perspectives

[moz386]

In my many, many years of ERP I’ve noticed that furries tend to latch onto one of three types of posing:

“Bob looks deeply into your eyes.”

–or–

“I look deeply into your eyes.”

–or–

“Bob would look deeply into your eyes.”

That last one, the first time I saw it, seemed to pop out of left field and my eye twitched every time the party I was engaging with started a pose with “would.” I thought it was some kind of verbal tick, but then other people started doing it too. Like, why are you doing that? What do you mean you would? You’re literally doing it right now.

I’ve seen other pose perspectives but those tend to be the perspectives I’ve seen the most. Which perspective do you use and why do you like it?

[WakuWaku]

Hehe, I often will pose ‘:offers hugs’ rather than impose my hugs as happening. I think ‘:would hug’ would offer the same level of out. And maybe ‘:hugged you.’ leaves me with some feeling of in the past like you’re writing a story and this happened. It is best to keep in the present tense, yes.

[Shinyuu]

@moz386

I’ve seen other pose perspectives but those tend to be the perspectives I’ve seen the most. Which perspective do you use and why do you like it?

The proper English one, being the third person POV. Wolfery forces the sentences to start with the name, so you’re locked into that persepctive anyway. I tend to refer to the other parties in either second or third person depending on the context.

[Vernon_Otter]

The overuse of the word Would is a pet peeve of mine. Yes, you want to provide agency to the receiving party. But you don’t need to do it for EVERY DAMN SENTENCE. Sure, you walk closer to them. You don’t need to get permission to walk close to someone. Sit with them? Yes. But walk to them? No. And there are vastly more ways to offer agency than just using ‘would’. If this is something you do, please find other ways to write your poses, as I know it’s not just me being bugged by the overuse of “The almighty Would”.

[Aletheia]

I prefer the third person POV for the following reasons:

1. I am not my character, so I can’t talk in first person.
2. My character is interacting with your character, not you, human being on the other side of the screen.

I see my characters as something out of me, like pawns I move in a game and third person makes just sense, even when my sona was in Sinder: always used the third person.

[Vernon_Otter]

All right… Apparently this post caused a wave big enough to sink a friend-ship so I figure I’d better clarify…

Does my position on ‘would’ overuse mean I won’t interact or RP with you? Not at all. Does it mean I can’t enjoy your company? No. Can I still have an enormous amount of fun with you to the point where I look forward to seeing you every day? Most definitely. Please do not take my dislike for a writing habit as a dislike for you or your characters.

[Kelmi]

If it’s not a big enough issue to be a deal breaker, then why bring it up constantly? That’s what I don’t understand. I’d get pretty irked pretty quickly by constant impersonal passive-aggressive jabs at a learned writing style I had being improper.

As for the topic, personally, it makes no difference to me what perspective a partner uses as long as I can understand their intent and meaning. Beyond that, everything else is pretty much just syntactic sugar. English is a living language and thus a constantly evolving language. There’s a lot of grammatical constructs [sic] and vocabulary in the RP context already that would trigger even the most lenient school test administrator. New constructs and words get organically adopted constantly, and some get rejected of course. While I can appreciate that the most basic grammar is a requirement to be understood, especially as someone who speaks English as a second language, it just makes me self conscious and unlikely to engage when there’s huge disclaimers and tag banners about top tier grammar and linguistic skills being required to play with someone.

OTOH, I just think it’s their loss. I’ll keep trying to be open minded and sensitive to the limitations others might have and try not to criticize anyone’s writing skills unduly.

I default to 3rd person present tense simply due to clarity and 2nd person in private settings to avoid pronoun ambiguity. Even within 3rd person present tense you’ve got so many points of view to consider… Do you write as an omniscient narrator, do you pose thoughts, do you write intents…? Do you refer to yourself by pronouns only or do you repeat your own name throughout the pose? Do you use potentially context dependent ambiguous qualifiers like “the wolf” or “the man”? I’ve played in first person and I’ve played in conditional potential statements. I’ve probably committed heinous crimes against the English language on more than one occasion, and I’m entirely unrepentant of them. No single style would make me cry in joy and none of them would make me lose a bit of enjoyment of the scene in progress. Those were always contingent on much different aspects than cosmetic style choices.

[Saint]

Wolfery is a bit of a new environment for me RP-wise. I spent the better part of two decades on Furcadia, which has a similar Your Character Name attached to the Action you’re performing, but the etiquette there was quite different. We spoke in the past tense, often typed multiple actions out into a single semi- or full paragraph post, and reacted to them accordingly.

As such, I’m use to typing in the style of, say…

Saint reached out to touch moz386, curious to see what they felt like against his paw pads.

Short example, but I also don’t really mind when people use the word ‘would’ at the start of every pose or post if that’s how they’re comfortable writing. As long as the rest of their writing is solid, I’ll overlook it. More often than not I use the match-approach to writing with folk anyway! I don’t like to exclude people, so I’ll just match their energy if they want to interact with me in an appropriate way. If you do short burst posts, I will. You like fluffy detail oriented paragraphs? I can do that, too!

[Shinyuu]

@Kelmi

There’s a lot of grammatical constructs [sic] and vocabulary in the RP context already that would trigger even the most lenient school test administrator

There’s living language, and there’s inability to discern ‘your’ from ‘you’re’, you know?

Grammar issues never bother me while interacting with people around Wolfery (but I gonna fook you up for punctuation /s). We all come from different backgrounds and different languages, and we’re forced to communicate in English. Some people know it better, some people know it worse. That’s alright. It’s normal to have different requirements for the baseline quality.

I have a few books standing on the shelf behind me right now that I picked up at various airports around the world. All are erotica. All are of varying quality. I can easily tell you that the editor of the best lesbian erotica did significantly worse than the one who looked after the Mammoth book of best new erotica. I can reliably tell you I can’t orgasm to any story in the former, because I just stumble over the words. My brain can’t relax; it tries to pick up on the issues in writing.

I very much agree with you that the languages are evolving. I literally have a Fowler’s dictionary of Modern English Usage on my desk, a really thick book about words changing. But somehow we don’t publish the books that are seventy per cent slang, do we? You don’t expect to see someone on Wolfery to communicate with smileys ow see thewm tawking pwimawiwy wike thiws. It’s a common courtesy to communicate in a language that’s comfortable to the other readers. And if you want to ‘would’ through all of your sentences, you just have to expect someone doesn’t know the origin of that way of phrasing and will take you up on it literally.

(what a cursed word)

@Kelmi

I’d get pretty irked pretty quickly by constant impersonal passive-aggressive jabs at a learned writing style I had being improper.

In the end, just try to be better. I don’t think anyone argues about the ‘woulds’ in bad faith, and all they want is to make the interaction more enjoyable. There’s always something new to learn about everything, language included. Wolfery is a chill and cosy place and no one will take typos to heart, but you might find it that people don’t enjoy your company as much if you bring your own rules to the table. If someone politely asks you if you could reduce your usage of ‘would’ when you roleplay together, or points out doughnuts should be spelled as donuts, oblige them and keep on enjoying each other’s company! But yeah, I totally agree with you that it surely feels annoying if everyone is constantly after you trying to ‘fix’ the way you write.

[Puma]

Hmm, the ‘would’ posing has always been strange to me, and hearing that it might be shorthand for seeking permission or consent to do an action is interesting and makes me think about it from a different perspective.

To those who pose with ‘would’, is that your intent?

I’ve been in the scene a long time and prefer third-person in public and second-person in private / dms, e.g.:

‘Bruno offers the fox a sandwich.’
vs
‘Bruno offers you a sandwich.’
depending on context.

‘Bruno would offer you a sandwich’ makes me think that a condition is stopping Bruno from offering the sandwich (maybe he ran out!!!)

[Saint]

This is how I typically read it. A way of posing consent, that is.

While it’s not my favorite method of posing: Saint would offer you sandwich provided nothing gets in the way of you taking it. such as someone else interrupting or you slapping it out of hand.

I, myself, prefer people throw consent out the window and simply make an attempt at something genuinely (provided it’s an action the players are alright with dealing with) and then I resolve the action on my turn. Nothing we write has to be set in stone just because we wrote it, other characters are free to undo or rewrite the scene with their reaction.

[Nirofur]

I’ve always found third person to be best. I don’t know if it’s as objectively perfect as some state, but I’m pretty sure it’s close to it.

Read literature. Standard fiction books, whether it’s science fiction, fantasy, or anything else. Nine times out of ten, you’ll find it’s either all or a majority third person. That’s just how the English language presents itself best, when writing about the interactions between two or more characters.

The only times I’ve ever found second person to read well is in erotica, specifically written towards the reader and not towards their character. It doesn’t work well in any roleplay where you’re playing a character, unless you’ve just self-injected your human form, one to one.

First person? See above, but triple the foolishness. It’s a hallmark of a brand new, inexperienced writer. And, nearly every time, a red flag big enough to fly over Moscow.

---

As to ‘would’ as part of a pose? No. Don’t. Please.

Ask for consent before writing a scene. Figure out what your partner wants. Don’t fear your own posts and writing ability enough to be scared about what you’re writing. Let the words flow, let the story dance along, without asking ‘is it okay if I —’ before every single action your character does to another.

[Shinyuu]

@Nirofur

First person? See above, but triple the foolishness. It’s a hallmark of a brand new, inexperienced writer. And, nearly every time, a red flag big enough to fly over Moscow.

First person is just hard to pull off. It has a very unique vibe to it, and several books I love were gorgeously written with that persepective down to the perfect insanity.

(A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, Eimear McBride)

@Nirofur

Read literature. Standard fiction books, whether it’s science fiction, fantasy, or anything else.

A sound advice all and all!

[Kelmi]

@Nirofur

The only times I’ve ever found second person to read well is in erotica, specifically written towards the reader and not towards their character. It doesn’t work well in any roleplay where you’re playing a character, unless you’ve just self-injected your human form, one to one.

I’d definitely object to this a little bit. There’s various different forms of immersion when playing. When I read a pose that’s written in second person, I don’t read it to be directed towards me, the player. Me, the player, does not even exist in the context that these poses are written in. To me, “you” in that scene perspective is my character, because in that moment I am my character, even if in the play I’m narrating from the point of view of their internal monologue or something close to it… Probably not 100% internal monologue, but within 1 ft of that. That’s what immersion is to me anyway. And also why third person will innately limit that immersion to an at-arms-length at closest. I imagine that can be one reason why someone would make a self-insert character… if they lack the mental ability to immerse into a character with less than perfect verisimilitude.

[Kelmi]

@Nirofur

Nine times out of ten, you’ll find it’s either all or a majority third person.

I had to fact check this statistic for my own mental health. Supposedly not… First person seems to be much more popular than just 10%, something closer to 50% and even higher in certain genres. Of course there’s fluctuation both ways based on genre, but 9 out of 10 is a gross misestimation.

[moz386]

The oversharing in this post has gone way, waaaaay off the rails.