Roleplay Pet Peeves

[Elephantom]

Armchair Historians and Strategists are annoying. and most of them get their Information from PBS or History Channel. while i find entertainment in these documentaries myself. i don't take them as fact, because i know information warps over time and what might have been truth at one point might be considered myth later.


cold iron is expensive to make, and has to be made by hand without a forge and without coal. i don't know where these which hunters manage to get it all.

I can bet that their excuse is that they're non-magical ferrokinetics — runes, runes, runes, yada yada yada. 

 

[Lord Pug]

So I figured out all the roleplay stuff with my partner and everyone was great and they were going to post the first post. And then, what do they do? They do this:



Chantelle walked down the sidewalk leading to the massive school covered in glass. She awes at the modern design of the building and smiled in delight at the pretty campus. Her old school was very old and was in decay, with rotting wood and a lawn full of dead nettles and weeds. It was a week after school had opened but it was Chantelle's first day. She was unable to move into town before this due to complications with her family's plane ticket being delayed several times. She sighs as she plays with her hair nervously, she remembers her parents talking about how expensive the flight was and couldn't help but think about little money they already had and how they would even get by in this city. Chantelle shakes her head, trying to clear her head of the thoughts. Her mother told her this morning to focus in school! Chantelle hoped that the work here wouldn't be too complicated. This morning, she was certainly surprised at wearing a uniform in school for the first time as well. Although, she was relieved at not having to choose a different outfit every morning. She wasn't too sure how people would react to her dresses, as they were a little ragged and had a lot of patch work. 
Everything in this city was very unfamiliar to her, with buildings that could touch the sky and the amount of bright lights that would shine at night. Chantelle admits she misses the chorus of crickets that would sing during the evening but at the same time the new surroundings was so whimsical to her. Everything moved so fast and fluid, with beautiful architecture and with all the different people walking around. It was breath taking to her but a little overwhelming to the small town girl. Chantelle spotted some other students walking along as well, some seemed older and younger than her but they wore the same uniform. She felt butterflies start to flutter in her stomach at the thought of making new friends, but she took a deep breath to calm herself. Her father always told her during breakfast not to be scared of meeting new people since she always talked their ear off anyways. She didn't go and interrupt the others conversations since she would meet her new friends in homeroom, that and she didn't know whether they were in the same year or not. Walking into the school, she pulls out the folded up schedule and looked for the room number where she would go. The paper had a number and then a letter, 1-B, much different than what she was use to. Chantelle looked at the nearest class room and saw the label was 2-D. She gulped, she didn't know which direction to go in this big building as she tightened her grip on her bag. She should've paid more attention to where she was supposed to go. Students were already going into their home rooms and the hall way was emptying quickly. Chantelle tapped the shoulder of a blonde girl passing as she prepared to ask in the correct language,
"I'm sorry miss! But can you show me where this classroom is? It's my first day…"


Like, holy SHIT. HOLY SHIT. Big wall of text alert! Alert! Big wall of text!

Please, please, please, don't do this, everyone. It's literally nearly impossible for me to read this, it's painful.

 

[Truthblade]

When people describe their character as pretty/handsome/attractive. It doesn't make me go insane, but it does make me roll my eyes. Just let our characters decide if their attractive.

 

[lazytowns]

@Lord Pug bonus points, she just dribbled crap about her character's thoughts and then only progressed the roleplay by having her muse approach a teacher in five hundred words. all talk, no action. 


(then again, you get people who have their characters deafeat hitler, find the cure for cancer and resolve poverty in one reply.)

 

[JujuBee]

one thing that totally shits me is people who need atleast 20+ gifs/photos in their character sheet to substitute for the inadequate amount of text in there. better yet, people who take a tidy lookin' faceclaim and slap all of these modifications onto their appearance— " yeah, she looks like mula kunis but her hair is blonde and her eyes are bright blue. plus she's whiter and she has DD boobs and her ass has two cheeks on it also she's like 4"7 because apparently it's cute to have short female characters." to me this just seems like a way of shitting on people who look perfectly fine because they don't live up to absurdly sexualized and unrealistic standards, it's totally disrespectful to the face you're claiming.  fyi NOBODY CARES WHAT YOUR CHARACTERS ASS LOOKS LIKE

Being short is now considered cute?! It isn't cute at fucking all. Being a short female is a curse sometimes. xD  


Especially when it's all someone wants to talk about.


"Oh my gosh you're so small! You're so cute. I can put my arm on your head!" 

 

[lazytowns]

@JujuBee "can you reach that?" 


"you make me feel tall!"


"you're short."


*fuming, blood vessel bursts in eye*

 

[duegxybus]

But when someone you're mad at finally decides to sit down, you just sorta stand in front of them and-

 

[Umbrie]

I can bet that their excuse is that they're non-magical ferrokinetics — runes, runes, runes, yada yada yada. 

if you are a Ferrokinetic, it is clearly magical. but i have seen both Runes and Psionics used as excuses. both of which are magic.

 

[Lord Pug]

Do you know what I love? Do you know what I love?!


When the person I'm RPing with can barely write anything!


I specifically say no one-liners and if I'm not feeling the RP, I'll tell you, and you tell me to yet I give people 3 paragraphs and they give:


I said yes and nodded my head.


I just fucking love when that happens!


No I don't I'm being sarcastic.

 

[Elephantom]

if you are a Ferrokinetic, it is clearly magical. but i have seen both Runes and Psionics used as excuses. both of which are magic.

Explain it to them knuckleheads, I'm sure they'll understand. 

 

[amdreams]

I'm also a bit bothered by anyone who isn't a teenager attending high school as students. These beings hundreds to thousands of years old who apparently need to attend high school because . . . reasons . . .Amnesia or whatever, if any of my characters find out IC, they will make fun of them. 


In general though, I can look past it, other than some IC teasing every now and then. But what creeps me out is when these characters start romancing minors. Like there was this one rp where this 100 year old vampire, who has an ex-wife and 16 year old son, was dating a 14 year old girl. And I get that it's fiction or whatever, but whenever he was doing those questionably romantic gestures or telling her how much he was in love with her, acting very much like a teen in heat, my skin crawled. Like, how is that . . . okay? And this was made creepier by the fact that in his backstory, he confessed attraction to another girl and her mother in the past. I just can't. 

 

[Elephantom]

I'm also a bit bothered by anyone who isn't a teenager attending high school as students. These beings hundreds to thousands of years old who apparently need to attend high school because . . . reasons . . .Amnesia or whatever, if any of my characters find out IC, they will make fun of them. 


In general though, I can look past it, other than some IC teasing every now and then. But what creeps me out is when these characters start romancing minors. Like there was this one rp where this 100 year old vampire, who has an ex-wife and 16 year old son, was dating a 14 year old girl. And I get that it's fiction or whatever, but whenever he was doing those questionably romantic gestures or telling her how much he was in love with her, acting very much like a teen in heat, my skin crawled. Like, how is that . . . okay? And this was made creepier by the fact that in his backstory, he confessed attraction to another girl and her mother in the past. I just can't. 

Just a day in the life of a pedophile.

 

[Umbrie]

I'm also a bit bothered by anyone who isn't a teenager attending high school as students. These beings hundreds to thousands of years old who apparently need to attend high school because . . . reasons . . .Amnesia or whatever, if any of my characters find out IC, they will make fun of them. 


In general though, I can look past it, other than some IC teasing every now and then. But what creeps me out is when these characters start romancing minors. Like there was this one rp where this 100 year old vampire, who has an ex-wife and 16 year old son, was dating a 14 year old girl. And I get that it's fiction or whatever, but whenever he was doing those questionably romantic gestures or telling her how much he was in love with her, acting very much like a teen in heat, my skin crawled. Like, how is that . . . okay? And this was made creepier by the fact that in his backstory, he confessed attraction to another girl and her mother in the past. I just can't. 

Just a day in the life of a pedophile.

100 year old Vampires should not be Attending High School.


neither should nearly 2,000 year old nymphs. but my excuse, is she poses as a Transfer student to a school every 50 years to brush up on stuff from 6th grade to college to ensure she is caught up with the times.  never spending more than a decade in school, and generally keeping herself up to date, while also researching a lot of this information on various wikis and stuff, but she uses a fake birth certificate, false identity and the like each time, and with cellular reconstruction, she can make changes to her physical appearance, which can do things like give her a slightly different complexion, maybe a different hair or eyecolor, maybe slightly different but still cute facial features, add or subtract so many inches of height, or make minor bodily augmentations. even though she isn't actually aging, she can make herself appear slightly older or slightly younger as needed. but she isn't romancing students. she generally avoids romance with students.

 

[Sibelle Grey]

I'm also a bit bothered by anyone who isn't a teenager attending high school as students. These beings hundreds to thousands of years old who apparently need to attend high school because . . . reasons . . .Amnesia or whatever, if any of my characters find out IC, they will make fun of them. 


In general though, I can look past it, other than some IC teasing every now and then. But what creeps me out is when these characters start romancing minors. Like there was this one rp where this 100 year old vampire, who has an ex-wife and 16 year old son, was dating a 14 year old girl. And I get that it's fiction or whatever, but whenever he was doing those questionably romantic gestures or telling her how much he was in love with her, acting very much like a teen in heat, my skin crawled. Like, how is that . . . okay? And this was made creepier by the fact that in his backstory, he confessed attraction to another girl and her mother in the past. I just can't. 

Ohmigod ohmygod this. I blame the fiction I read a few years back for making me think any of this was okay (dare I say, swoonworthy? Vampire Diaries, I'm looking at you-- Twilight, you can keep walking, I never liked you). If this guy looks like a seventeen-year-old, acts like a seventeen-year-old, but was born 417 years ago . . . he's not seventeen and some high-school senior being his ~soulmate~ is pretty creepy. I've never actually seen this is an RP, and I pray I never come across this. 

 

[simj26]

Ohmigod ohmygod this. I blame the fiction I read a few years back for making me think any of this was okay (dare I say, swoonworthy? Vampire Diaries, I'm looking at you-- Twilight, you can keep walking, I never liked you). If this guy looks like a seventeen-year-old, acts like a seventeen-year-old, but was born 417 years ago . . . he's not seventeen and some high-school senior being his ~soulmate~ is pretty creepy. I've never actually seen this is an RP, and I pray I never come across this. 

Your mileage may vary on this, i think. Mayfly-December romances are pretty okay in my book, unless one half of the party is under the legal age of consent. Immortals are, after all, still allowed to love, are they not? 

 

[Elephantom]

Bit of a correction, a sexual preference for pubescent children (generally around 12-14 years of age) is not pedophilia, but hebephilia. Pedophiles are attracted to prepubescent children and "prepubescent" is quite different from merely "under the legal age of consent". That's all I will say in the subject matter.

That I know already, but few people do. Paedophilia is a more accessible term, and if you're inclined to not believe that, then I can only do so little about it. 

 

[Melpomene]

Can I just add that I have a certain hatred for people that feel the need to put their characters in a place no one can get to, or no one is even close to.


I even have this problem in 1x1s. One time they actually put their character in the town over. Why couldn't they put the character in the town I had put my character in? I don't know, they must just like being difficult.

 

[Sibelle Grey]

Your mileage may vary on this, i think. Mayfly-December romances are pretty okay in my book, unless one half of the party is under the legal age of consent. Immortals are, after all, still allowed to love, are they not? 

Immortality shouldn't condemn anyone to a life of eternal solitude, I just think teenage girls aren't ideal. I think my principal issue with the vampire-human books I've read (and there have been quite a few, I'm a sucker for YA) is that I just can't suspend my disbelief long enough to stop rolling my eyes every few pages. Is it angsty, then fluffy, sometimes interesting, and apparently here to stay? Yes. Is it believable? Not to me. Which kind of makes sense, considering it involves, ya know, vampires, but in hindsight, a lot of it was wayyy unbelievable. 


I just can't really go for a centuries-old person suddenly deciding, after a month or two of knowing them, that Random Teenage Girl n°6478 is the person they've been waiting for. The person they're willing to kill and die for. They've lived for centuries, and they haven't matured a day past whatever age they were turned at? If not physically, then at least mentally or emotionally. I don't believe that you could be eighteen for three hundred years and still be an average eighteen-year-old, if a bit broodier and lonelier. Time has to have changed them somehow, and then there is that entire "I feed on blood and am immortal" aspect. Vampires were human. They are no longer entirely human. Call me old-fashioned, but when I think vampire, I still think "creature that can-- and generally wants to, if only on a biological level-- drain you dry". There are subtypes (I've made up quite a few myself, as I've written), but that's still the general idea. It isn't just an age difference, although over-fifty-year age differences are a problem of mine in and of themselves.


And they always love so intensely. It's all or nothing in the books I've read. Everyone falls so fast and so hard and so forever and I'm just like . . . . . Why.


I dunno. I wouldn't agree with a sixty-year-old dating a seventeen-year-old, so I wouldn't agree to a person who's lived sixty years dating an actual teenager. Unless said vampire literally hadn't matured much since being turned, and even then . . . If he has matured, then he's an adult in every way that counts, on top of being able to literally eat you, and I'm just not on board with that kind of power imbalance. Maybe because I'm a teenager and if a vampire suddenly decided I was The OneTM, I would be weirded tf out. 


So, in short: vampires who literally haven't aged a day, mentally as well as physically, dating teenagers . . . Kind of common and not super-creepy. Still wouldn't roleplay it, myself. Vampires who have matured over the decades, as humans and ex-humans tend to do, falling suddenly and madly in love with teenagers . . . Not here for it. I, myself, wouldn't roleplay it. 


That said, if anyone has any vampire-human romances that they enjoyed reading and would recommend, tIm all ears. 

 

[KikiYushima]

Godmodding, godmodding, godmodding, godmodding.


Godmodding is something that sends me into an absolute rage. I ran an RP forum for about 4-5 years and my coadminstrator was a godawful godmodder and powerplayer. All of his characters were stronger than everyone else's. He always sprang things on us without any sort of warning or consent. He could always find a way around whatever conflict was being set up.


It was a Pokemon-based form so we had the token evil team (Team Phantom was its name). They were rendered completely pointless due to how stupidly powerful his complete butchery of the character of Kratos Aurion was. All members eventually ended up defecting because they couldn't do anything without Kratos showing up and beating them into the dirt.


Tying into this is RP partners are too insistent on you replying too quickly. If I didn't reply for ten minutes, there was a message in the Cbox: "Hey Kiki, why haven't you replied yet?" Hello, I have like twelve other threads to reply to! Plus I'm human, not a machine; I ned breaks! To this day, because of him, I freak out badly if I don't reply in a timely manner.

 

[simj26]

Kratos Aurion

A blatant copy of an existing character from an official media with none of their redeeming qualities is my favourite thing to see in an rp. It brings so much to the table, ain't that right, folks?

 

[FunkAddiction]

Okay, I know I'm probably going get ignored or told "You shouldn't care what others think!" or "If you don't like this thread, don't read it." But I don't hate this thread at all, it just makes me feel a little anxious, especially looking at some of the comments that I think feels a little mean spirited towards people like me, who had little experience with roleplaying, for example, one Pet Peeve I've seen often mentioned is Powerplaying, A.K.A, Godmodding and the thing I can't help but notice is that I think most people don't seem to treat these like possible errors, but things that could be done on purpose just for the sake of ruining the roleplay for everybody participating in it, and yes, I think godmodding is something that can be used for trolling people with, which I think is unfair too but its possible that It may be a roleplayer that doesn't know how to develop their character in an interesting and original way.


I'm not accusing anybody of being rude or contempt, but this is just how I feel about certain opinions on this thread.

 

[Vudukudu]

-Roleplays where the rules say "Characters dying is expected and encouraged" followed by people getting unreasonably upset when their character is killed in a totally fair way.


-Superhuman characters who are blind/deaf whatever, but have a power that overrides it completely. 


-People who don't read the lore before making characters


-People who spend six days making character sheets perfect to hide the fact that they're not qualified to write in a detailed RP


-People who circumvent the rules of magic in fantasy RPs whenever they can (magic requires runes! My character found a way to skip over this!)


-Characters who exist solely to be miserable about stuff (Had one RP where this girl spent all her posts playing crappy pop love songs on her grandmother's guitar while everyone else actually confronted the trouble. Later complained that the party wasn't involving her.)


-Characters who's skillset has nothing to do with their background (My character is a college graduate suburban kid with a bachelors in Environmental Science. Is also a master of karate, theoretical physics, and highjacking cars.)

 

[Upton O Goode]

@IIQueenestII You're entirely correct that a degree of forgiveness ought to be given to new players, and it's entirely reasonable to think they might do such things out of ignorance rather than contempt. However, I know a lot of examples of godmodding aren't necessarily about new players. I've known people that have been RPing for far longer than I have that still deem it acceptable to make invincible 5 year old boys and to manipulate circumstances in an RP just to suit some arbitrary goal. By all means, if they're new, they should just be warned politely first, but at a certain point, you realise some people either just don't learn or don't want to learn.


I mean seriously, I've seen people who are such detailed writers they're churning out nigh professional 8 paragraph long backstories for their characters but they also thought it was okay for them to stack the RP with all their strongest characters and then treat it like their personal fight box. These people tended to be the leaders of the games they were in, and they abused their authority to the fullest extent; they denied characters with the slightest hint of a strong power while continuing to make the most absurdly strong characters for themselves (the aforementioned invincible 5 year old boy was from one of said RPs). This was back when I had only first started RPing, while they had been around since years before I arrived. I always wondered why they never questioned what they were doing. Funnily enough, they could churn out these superpowered characters like nobdoy's business, each one with an equally long backstory and with a exhaustive power list to boot, but they usually took their sweet time posting in any RP they were in. 


And they always wondered why their RPs died so quickly.

 

[FunkAddiction]

@Merkurial The real problem I have is that I don't feel entirely okay with posting my own roleplay or taking part in one, I'm not the best at making a story or making the best character and threads like these make me feel insecure about what people think I am, I mean, do people think I'm a troll or a normal roleplayer when I make a bad character, or a post that doesn't make sense? However, this might be just me putting pressure on myself and probably has nothing to do with anything, but this has been on my chest for a long time.

 

[call me rae]

Okay, I know I'm probably going get ignored or told "You shouldn't care what others think!" or "If you don't like this thread, don't read it." But I don't hate this thread at all, it just makes me feel a little anxious, especially looking at some of the comments that I think feels a little mean spirited towards people like me, who had little experience with roleplaying, for example, one Pet Peeve I've seen often mentioned is Powerplaying, A.K.A, Godmodding and the thing I can't help but notice is that I think most people don't seem to treat these like possible errors, but things that could be done on purpose just for the sake of ruining the roleplay for everybody participating in it, and yes, I think godmodding is something that can be used for trolling people with, which I think is unfair too but its possible that It may be a roleplayer that doesn't know how to develop their character in an interesting and original way.


I'm not accusing anybody of being rude or contempt, but this is just how I feel about certain opinions on this thread.

In fairness this is just a personal opinion thread and most of the things mentioned are very case specific. I saw person A do XX thing and it pissed me off so I'm gonna go to rae's thread and vent about it to people who will take it in stride.


For instance we'll use two of my strongest pet peeves as an example.


A. explicit content. i will not do this anywhere for any reason. i think it is extremely disturbing and frankly the idea of roleplaying porn with another person weirds me the ever living heck out. 


But if Bob The Roleplayer asked me to do an explicit roleplay I wouldn't proceed to rain fire and brimstone on his head for daring to ask me to do something that he had no way of knowing bothered me ( or maybe he did and he was being an ass ). No I would just say No thank you, not my cup of tea. And call it a day.


B. psychic abilities. I just cannot handle these in any roleplay where they are not a specific plot point ( i.e. oracles saving the planet from extinction or whatever ). I can not handle telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, any ability to manipulate people/objects/time/reality with your mind. 


I can not. I will flat out refuse to allow such abilities in my roleplays except for one very specific exception who is someone I've roleplayed with for a long time and I know very well.


Otherwise I will just flatly refuse to allow such powers in my roleplay. Is that unfair? Probably. But it's a dealbreaker for me. And the reason for that is I spent one to many days screaming myself hoarse at my computer screen because some asshole decided to railroad my characters/the story I worked hard to make because their special telepathic/psychic/whatever was essentially god and playing with reality like a kid playing with silly putty.


It to this day makes me mad enough that I will flat out walk away from my computer. It like physically pisses me off to the point where it ruins a roleplay for me. Without fail.


In this case me saying no is not an attack on my partner. I will even say this to the people I'm roleplaying with. This is not personal. I am not saying anything about you as a person. I am saying that for myself. This ruins the experience for me. I can't do it. 


So in this case it becomes an issue of compromise.


Like nearly every one of the pet peeves I've listed in this thread with the exception of those two - if you do them I'm not going to scream bloody murder at you and tear you down as an individual. Chances are I'll


A. just give you a light tag to say - yo I think you might have made a mistake here.


B. ignore it because it's not worth breaking the flow of a roleplay to bring up a minor annoyance.