Critique Thou

From what I have seen of other threads(Critque) they seem to have had good turn outs, so following in that vein, I eventually came to the conclusion that there was no harm in making one myself as well. In addition to that reasoning, for much the same reason as Silim, I've been feeling distant, though these are personal reasons I've sorted out with Tsubine. I felt like there was a personal circle of Tsubine, Dai, Snopy, and Serenity, and things like our opinions, ideas, and other things didn't really matter so I just felt like not coming on in weeks. Of course, there was still that hurt in my heart for not having a chance to explore the new ideas with my race, which only served to make matters worse. In any case, I know that I do love rping and the chance to roleplay on BB based on Dialogue alone(because I don't understand how the battle system works and I don't try to touch things I don't understand. ) Which brings me to asking about things that could help me better myself as both roleplayer and writer, friend and confidant. There are some things I do believe I can fix as a writer, and I'll post them here and you add to that, it's a bit of a self-critique but not in a bad way, these are just things I planned on improving for a long time.


Self Critique 1: Over-Ambition: I feel like I fixed this a long time ago buttttt one glaring trait I possessed back then is that I possessed too much ambition when it came to plots for my characters, my urobuchi phase(a favorite writer of mine who specializes in writing tragic stories) if you will. I would try to break my characters to a T and there was no more a proper example than when I was on BBS, where Iori was a broken bird, in spirit, mind and body, and I took her through alot of cruel hard ships that nearly ruined the character for me. On NH, I fixed this, but it's something I want to control where i'm not necessarily trying to make my characters so tragic on the outside, and not revealed as much. In other words, learning the perfect balance between tragic drama and a reprieve at the end of it all.


Self Critique 2: One Dimensional characters: When I was first on NH, my muse for the site literally died at one point---partly because of missing out on plots due to my own inactivity, yet not completely so. A huge part of the feeling is that I tried to make so many characters that it was hard to come up with well-formulated personalities, delicately constructed desires, and personal thoughts. There were gems like my character Yuiko, Alicia, and a few others but overall... the rest were literally just copied from other series in certain ways with their personalities and other things retained, just brought into a different universe---the bleach universe to be exact. I'm not saying I probably won't try to make more than 5 or 6, I may make quite a few but trust myself to know it should never even reach into a 200, 100, 90, or even an 80, 70, 60, or 50.

I plan on fleshing out the crucial parts of my characters personalities so that the writing becomes more genuine and intense and overall, so it leads to an enjoyable experience for me and my partner.

Primary examples have been in the changes with Iori and Miki.


I deconstructed Miki's first personality which was one that revolved around promiscuity, to rebuilding it into a very deceitful character who lies but is struggling with personal turmoils on the inside.

Iori is still very much the same with her tomboyish personality, but from a talk with Silim, I decided to include some interesting real world issues, thus creating a more rebellious rather than "Tomboy because it's cool" personality. I hope to do this with future characters.


Self Critique 3: Pride: Everyone of you can attest to the fact that as a writer and a person, I sometimes wallow in self-depreciation, no matter what I'm told. Some days I can be so ashamed if I'm not able to come up with a perfectly constructed sentence beaming with eloquence, that I berate myself, concluding that petty, simple mistakes like these make me a bad writer. That's idiotic. What's worse is that, I didn't even try to do anything to improve myself, accepting failure, content with wallowing in the mud, when I should have been aspiring to reach a mighty moutain, and accept failure and get better from it in order to get there. Well, from now on, that's what I will make a conscious effort to achieve. If I do come on looking out of sorts, it'll honestly be because of my personal life or something else entirely, but it will no longer be because of my writing.


Disclaimer: I know it's unfair to ask for activity not to be spoken about as it may be the main reason for my troubles, but I realllllllly can't help at times. As I tell Tsubine, I don't have my own computer, most of everything tech wise in the house is my mother, including this laptop i'm on. Now that she has something else she can use, I can say there will be time for me to be more active, but try not to crucify me about it, because it's something that can't be helped.

There isn't much that I can say that I haven't told you before.

Characters:

You've gotten over your 'mental anguish is best thing for a character always' you went through, so I can't say anything to that.

Uh... Don't try to do series rips like many of us used to. It was fun then, now it's just a major hindrance since you have to think hard on how a character that isn't your own would react to something.

Faceclaims. I know you're probably doing it to show interest in an FC, but when you reserve so many and you still don't have a character done (let alone finish a character from your last set of reserves), it gets to the point to where people might get annoyed at you for 'hogging' an FC.

Writing:

This is the biggest one. Everything doesn't need to be the 'purple prose' you talk about. Adding some detail and using some interesting vocabulary will have a chance of setting a scene better. But if you overdo it, it will sound like a 14 year old's fanfiction. And nobody wants that. Dialogue is sort-of exempt. If a character is really verbose, then that's fine. But don't be surprised if someone goes 'The fuck you just said?'

@ Tsubine


Characters: This is pretty much something I also wanted to point in my post about one dimensional characters, and me trying to copy-pasta characters from other series, leading me to be stuck in what to do because i'm trying to imagine WHAT that character would do in the situation, devolving into even worse territory for Visual novels that weren't even translated(I.e: Minato, Mercurius, Ren, etc. )  If I do make characters with the fcs, I'll think long and hard on how to make them into my own creation rather than a series rip-off.  

As far as faceclaims go, I won't say I won't reserve to show interest and I really wasn't trying to do that but with you taking Saber thinking I wasn't going to join when I gave you no clue beyond hesitation made me a little wonky with it lately.  Because if I don't reserve at all, I may lose out on something I really want, the only compromise I'll meet on is that I'll think a few days if it's something I really want, and if it's something I just did because it looked hot, but otherwise, I'm not sure what to do about this one.

Writing: Honestly, I don't think i'm longer in the phase where literally everything has to be purple prose.  At the same time, I don't think I enjoy wanting to be bare with my writing either, unless it fits the character.   I'm largely particular on how I want something written and alot of the books I read are advanced in vocabulary, though if the story is attractive enough, I'll read it in spite of how its prose may be(I have done this with a few stephen king novels, even though they aren't as bare as I once thought they were).  I don't even think I want to be writing where literally everything is a poem/shakespeare, but I think in the end, I guess it could be best summed up as wanting to be a more... advanced writer, but not needlessly using grandiose language.

I'm a sucker for it and it's still a goal to strive towards within REASON, grandiose but not overdone, something to the extent of those I look up to... because welp, every writer I enjoy does write on advanced/high diction levels.  But I definitely don't think I want to be purple prose anymore now that I understand it's meaning, but I guess looking at a conversation I engaged on this page might be the best way to sum up my feelings on this.  In the end, I don't want to be the type of writer where the flowers swallow the reader and they lose sight of the story, but I don't want the flowers to be withered either.... if that makes sense.


The page I was referring to: https://gareblogs.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/a-brief-sample-of-my-writing/


Though I can say that even if the writing is advanced, I'm very strong on character voice when it comes to dialogue, thus if I were writing a powerfully-written/grand post with Iori(using her as an example) and she had to speak, she wouldn't start speaking like shakespeare and throwing out a poem, that would not fit. Due to her upbringing, she wouldn't speak in a verbose manner and would speak along the lines of Kaine(only example) or something where sure, she might speak in a way that indicates she knows what she's saying but it wouldn't be put elegantly because she is a rebellious soul. It'd probably involve a swear word or two, because i'm big on having my speech patterns for characters actually fitting their personality. Heck, she could even be said to have some intelligence anyways, due to later being raised for a few years under Wataru and his mother, but that's it. She's no poet, nothing about her is colorful but she's smart and in control of herself... if that makes sense.

I wasn't going to post anything here, since I have never roleplayed with you, buuuuuuuut. Don't take any of this the wrong way. I love ya, but I'm going to be honest about this and I honestly don't know what I am about to type.

Actually roleplay. That is all I can say. Seriously, roleplay. You get so caught up in writing these characters that you never actually get to the point, and the thing that makes it worth while. Of course a character isn't going to feel worthwhile when they don't get used.

You sit there for weeks or months trying to write the character so insanely well, and yet I'll be 100% totally and completely honest. I don't CARE how much effort you put into the app once my character is in the thread. Really, I don't. I don't care if it looks like Hamlet, I don't care if it looks like a 3 year old wrote it. What matters is what actually happens in the thread. For both the writer and the observer, the actual threads are the fun part. I'm not looking at the app like "Hmm this doesn't seem like what character x would do here, let me look at their app". What I care about is the thread is moving and it's fun. And you'll find that you don't have to break your back over writing to make the thread fun for both parties. As long as you have a brain, and the characters aren't just sitting there munching on some cereal, it'll probably be a fun thread (to ME anyway).

You have a brain, and last I checked the threads you've done aren't "cereal" eating threads. Still, you want this to be worth it? Cut down the workload on the apps. Cause if making apps can consistently be regarded as a "workload", you're doing something wrong. I understand occasionally getting stumped, or you can't seem to stop getting 1+1 to somehow equal 47 and a half, but when it's too consistent it's too consistent. Look at Yuri's app. I literally described in the app her art skill as "Look, it's a horse! Wait...that's a bowl of fruit? Why does it have legs?" Trust me, that'd make plenty of eloquent writers cringe I'm sure. But I like it, and goofy as it is, it gets the point across.

And this is just a note, but not all characters have to be totally fucked to be a good character. You may have addressed this in the same note you said the "urobutcher phase" was just a phase, but I still feel it's pertinent to mention. Cause I know you liked making all the misery in the world happen to your character, and I know your making Miki in a way that some might say she is insane. Again, look at how I did Yuri on Broken Blade. She has her problems, but she is still a perfectly happy high school aged girl. She did start a flirting habit in order to get people to like her, but because she does have a good heart she's generally harmless. Besides, variety is more fun to work with. If I made every single character of mine super tragic, then characters who fit that would all stop being fun...pluuuuus we do need the less tragic people in order to help out the more damaged one.

Now I shall end the monologue with this. Roleplay, ROLEPLAY DAMN IT! I'm sure if you started roleplaying and gained some confidence in your work, it'd be pretty fun to roleplay with you, but it never happens! I know you don't gots your own tech, and dat be fine. But I reiterate, the roleplay is the whole point of this. I'm sure once you get into it, you'll be happier. And once you get into it maybe we can finally get some actual plots moving like we've been saying we should for 3 years.

I get where you are coming from and yes, i'll agree taking that time use to be a bane of mine where I would focus on everything about the character and put so much effort into writing the app that it became too much, but I've changed mindset wise at least with that. Honestly, before NH went down in favor of BB, I was almost finished Miki's app, and still am. Tech problems are honestly the real root of my problems regardless of the app stuff because even with effort apps, I believe I could get those done within a two-three week span or less depending on the character. As far as the thing about characters, I make characters according to what would make a good story. I've come to enjoy lots of tragedy and turmoil in works but I do understand how it would be off putting. Miki could've stayed her seductive, promiscuous self, but I decided to flip that in lieu of something more deeper, adding a different layer that wasn't there. And honestly, Miki is such a great liar that she can hide emotions, so it doesn't matter how insane or broken she is on the inside. I'm learning not to put tragedy at the forefront but rather in layers, that happier characters or any character in general, wants to indulge in or unwrap. Additionally, I planned on doing more slice-of-life type writing because of the dialogue potential with some newer characters i've got planned, so there will be more of a chance for me to just role play and think of fun thread situations in school settings, at the very least.