v-s.net v0.6

Thursday, 8:31 am in Furc!

So I admit it; I started playing Furcadia again.  When I was obsessed with my laptop I took a bit of a holiday since there’s no equivalent of Furnarchy3/DogProxy for OSX and, well, I admit it; I still don’t know how to whisper to people without those little pop-up whisper windows (plus it’s no fun idling all day if you’re just going to miss all your whispers).  Anyway, as usual I’ve been lurking around The Golden Tether (mostly because it’s just about the only dream in FurN that’s not butt-ugly), reading people’s descs and hoping some good RP will just magically fall into my lap.

Now, for those of you who are smart enough not to Furc, there’s this tendency amongst the people there towards what’s known as ‘para-rp’ [sic].  Near as I can tell, para-rp involves, well, roleplaying in paragraphs.  Now don’t get me wrong, logic tells me exactly where this tendency started; I’m sure that I’d be just as annoyed as the next person to finish of a screen full of beautiful, descriptive text only to get “Daemon Darkheart hits u with my massive sword & u die!” in return.  Just in the same way as I know, logically, that reading fiction containing someone else’s Mary Sue is roughly equivalent on the Fun-O-Meter as gouging one’s own eyeball out with a keyboard.  But there’s a question that pops up constantly in (the more erudite) fanfiction discussion, and that is When is a Mary Sue not a Mary Sue?  It seems that Mary Sues are a bit like pornography; you can’t define them, but you know one when you see one.  Most ‘Mary Sue Tests’ out there at least give a cursory caveat that all tests for Sueism are relative.  Relative to what, exactly?  It’s a known fact that running most popular comic and fantasy heroes through Sue-detectors will come up positive (often hugely so), and every now someone will dare to ask the question, “What makes my character a ‘Sue’ when, say, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman character technically scores higher?”

It’s a good question, and rarely ever gets the answer that it deserves.  It deserves, I think, a re-evaluation of what we’re even asking; people get so focused on this so-called methodology of ‘Sue-detection’ that they forget what the whole thing was about in the first place.

It was about bad writing.

Just about anyone can make a Sue (or Stu) by arbitrary internet standards, but the fact remains that the tag is not generally applied to published characters outside the scope of fanfiction.  Discworld’s Death might score in the hundreds on the test, but why don’t we think of him as a Stu?  It’s really quite simple; it’s because he’s written well.  It seems to me – and it always has – that the ultimate test of so-called ‘Sueism’ is not whether a character has a fancy name, or uniquely coloured eyes, or is fluent in a lot of languages but rather whether or not we care about them.  Do they connect with us emotionally?  Are they are well-developed character?

Sueism is a symptom, but curing the symptom is not curing the ‘illness’.  You can check off all the anti-Sue checks that you want, but at the end of the day it’s not going to make you a good writer (and if you were a good writer to start with, the anti-Sue checks are almost irrelevant except as a cerebral exercise).  It might make you a more conscious writer, which is in itself a start, but if you’ve got absolutely zero natural talent for fiction to start with?  Sorry, it ain’t gonna help.

To me, para-rp in Furc is exactly the same; it’s treating the symptom of bad writing (and, to a certain extend, bad character development), but sticking to strict para-rp ‘rules’ isn’t going to make you a better writer/roleplayer if you weren’t any good at it to start with.  It might make you marginally more tolerable, but sorry; roleplaying, like writing and acting (its two related skills), is just One Of Those Things.  You can certainly practice to get better at it, but unless you’ve got some natural ability, you’re only ever going to get to mediocre.*

Before we continue, I’m going to let those of you who’re new to this whole dealey to take some time to read these.  They’re some fairly typical para-rp-style rules.  I’m not going to rebutt them point-by-point (mostly because it’s unnecessary), but it will at least give you a general idea of the sort of thing I’m talking about in the next section.

Para-rp rules generally fall into two categories; character creation and etiquette.  Most of the latter stuff is generally a-okay, and usually falls into the broad category of “don’t be an asshat”.  The former stuff, on the other hand, is far too much like a Mary Sue test for my liking.

I’m going to address the death-thing first, just to get it off my chest.

There’s this seemingly constant assumption that in order for a Furc character to be ‘good’ it has to have the capacity to die.  I’m going to admit it right now that I have specifically have one Furc character who doesn’t die (here), so I might have a vested interest, but I’m going to plow on regardless.  The reason I think this insistence on having demonstrably mortal characters is odd is because, at least in their own specific continuum, almost all fictional characters are more-or-less immortal.  It’s kinda part of the point.  Every fictional character I can think of – from Odysseus to Harry Potter – has a kind of functional immortality for the length of their story (and, unless it’s specifically stated, ever afterwards if they managed to survive).  Pick a fictional character, any fictional character.  Now think of all the outlandish, dangerous and death-defying situations they get into.  Characters don’t die in these situations, one assumes, because they generally have to survive to continue on to perform more death-defying swashbucklery in the rest of the book.  You can easily mount the argument that every single fictional character is either a) immortal (for those characters whose death is not specified) or b) only vulnerable to one ‘death’ (the death that they suffer, when they suffer it).  I’m also going to point out at this juncture that, just because we ‘know’ a character is functionally immortal (even the most mundane of fictional humans can have functional immortality) doesn’t mean we empathise with them less.  In fact, one of the only genres where characters generally aren’t assumed to be automatically immortal is survival horror; obviously in survival horror the vast majority of the tension and interest is that of character death, thus we need to believe our characters can or will die at some stage.  Having ‘immortal’ characters in survival horror reduces the effectiveness of the genre, whereas having an ‘immortal’ character in (say) fantasy often increases the effectiveness.  Fantasy is all about the doing of daring; we make the assumption that our favorite protagonists are probably going to get away with doing amazing things (this is Pratchett’s Million to One Chances Come Good Nine Times Out of Ten).  In some sub genres of fantasy, mortality versus daring acts actually seems to work in the opposite direction; how else can you account for the fact that Cloud Strife can get injured falling off his motorcycle but not jumping the height of a rather tall building.

So why then do we have this assumption that our Furc characters have to die in order to be a ‘good’ character?

Again, I think we’re treating the symptom rather than the problem.  What we’re really ‘treating’ here is people who just don’t know how to rollplay; those people who like to pick virtual fights and are keen to ‘kill’ other players but refuse to ‘die’ themselves.  It’s also used as a kind of arbitrary ego boots in certain respects; “I killed you, you can’t come back, that’s Godmodding!”

Functional or explicit immortality, nine times out of ten, is just not that big a deal.  For non-combative situations, what does it matter?  Like accusations of Marysueism, ‘Godmodding’ through immortality is a charge often levelled by certain players against characters whose players they don’t like on a personal level.  Yeah, okay we’re all sick of the Sixth Son of Lucifer, immortal demon prince, showing up, but someone else’s boring character is their own business; just don’t roleplay with them.  And, realistically, even the Sixth Son of Lucifer can be an interesting and engaging character in the right hands.

And for combat situations?  Here’s where we get into the difference between roleplaying and rollplaying.  Up to this point we’ve been talking about roleplaying; essentially, a kind of structured fiction writing involving other people.  Rollplaying, on the other hand, is a bit different.  Rollplaying is tabletop DnD; an environment where we have strict rules about who can do what an how often, where death and failure are options that are systemically enforced rather than merely a literary and dramatic convention.  Combat can be both rollplayed and roleplayed, though the latter takes a bit of trust beforehand (eg. I have to trust that you will help the fight to be ‘fair’ and dramatic, and vice versa).  Furcadia itself has four ‘conventions’ for roll- and roleplaying, that roughly correspond to ‘hardcore’ rollplaying, ‘soft’ rollplaying (Rule of Cool) and roleplaying (Persona Play).  Most dreams are generally assumed to fall under the heading of Persona Play, which functions entirely under what is known as the Rule of Consent.  While the Rules of Cool more-or-less enforce decisions based on statistics and a little luck, the Rule of Consent is exactly that; nothing happens to your character except what you allow to happen.  The death issue comes up when the lines between Persona Play and Cool play get blurred, either through deliberate misunderstanding or hard-headed egoism.  There’s also not just a little bit of a lack of imagination involved, either.  So say you’re loitering about in a public space, minding your own business, whipping your slaves or whatever it is people get up to in furn.  Suddenly, out of nowhere someone makes a challenge, an attack, and you retaliate; I mean, of course you do, right?  However, it soon becomes apparent that they aren’t interested in fighting fair.  Autohitting, weird spells coming out of nowhere… whatever, you know the drill.  The question is… what do you do?

I think, when confronted with this situation, most people do either one (or both) of two things; ignore the culprit, or complain about so-called Godmodding.  Both situations are fairly obvious and, let’s face it, an erudite and witty public humiliation is not always going to be an option for everyone (most of us can’t think that fast, and it takes a few occurrences to start to developed any kind of canned response).  Nevertheless, you always still have options, even against idiots.  The most obvious one I can think of, which would work great if you have a crowd, is to think fast and figure out an elegant way of ‘faking’ your own death.  What you’re essentially getting into is not a battle between rules, but a battle between writing; who can write themselves out of a tricky situation, who can sway the crowd.  Then when Mr. Autohit comes back the next day with “lolz i killd u godmoder!” you can retaliate with your cadre of witnesses who can attest to your brilliant escape.  Or whatever.  Goddamnit just be creative.

The problem, as far as I can see it, is that certain people (you know who they are; not to mention I’m willing to bet that some of you who are busy ‘knowing’, are) are simply too stubborn, too hard-headed and too unimaginative to be perceived as ‘losing’ fights against random strangers.  And unfortunately, memes in Furcadia – like memes in most communities – tend to get spread around by the social elite; so if one or two of the ‘popular’ kids is perceived as doing one thing (‘para-rp’, ‘no godmodding’) then that often becomes de rigueur without anyone ever really questioning why such things become ‘popular’ and whether or not the people who propagate them have any kind of agenda (conscious or unconscious) in doing so.  And from what I’ve seen, the ‘popular kids’ do, indeed, have an agenda behind spreading the no-godmodding character-death meme… so long as it’s only applying to someone else’s characters.

The death-rule can also be applied to the second aspect of so-called godmodding; magic powers.  Again, this is One of Those Things.  It seems that everyone in Furcadia professes to hate ‘magic users’… while simultaneously having magic powers themselves.  Every second website has someone’s personal pet rules for using magic; because their magic is defined by said rules, it obviously can’t be godmodding as opposed to everyone else’s ‘rules’, which are.  The logical flaw in this assumption is so glaring I’m not even going to bother pointing it out.  Similar things crop up between the various sub-species; I have honest to God seen someone claim on their character site that their vampire wasn’t like all those other overpowered vampires out there because she was a Malkavian, as per the White Wolf Vampire: the Masquerade ruleset.  Oh, and she was one of the 4th Generation.  It sounds great to someone who’s never played V:tM I’m sure; it’s got the weight of a Real RPG Game behind it.  Of course, anyone who’s actually cracked the sourcebook open will know that 4th Genners aren’t player characters.  Ever.  Their powers are so godly that they aren’t even defined by rules.  I’m not saying that you should never play a 4th Generation Malkavian (I do loves me my Kooks), only that it’s ridiculous to say that your uber-vampire is somehow less outrageous than someone else’s uber-vampire because they are described using ‘rules’ from a published RPG.  White Wolf isn’t the only victim of this kind of ploy, either; I’ve lost count of how many celestial-drow-dragon halfbreeds I’ve seen walking around.  Yes, the combination is possible using core DnD rules (not to mention a massive EL modifier), but it’s also possible to cast Wish using core DnD rules, which just goes to show that just because something’s in the rulebook doesn’t mean it’s not overpowered.  Nor, for that mater, does it make you ‘clever’ or ‘original’.  Just for the record.

I don’t mind ‘overpowered’ characters.  Superman is overpowered.  Death (either Gaiman’s or Pratchett’s) is overpowered.  Buffy is overpowered.  Harry Potter is overpowered.  Almost by definition, most ‘hero’ characters are, in fact, overpowered when compared to other people whom they encounter.  It’s also somewhat naive to say that the ‘only’ reason overpowered characters become ‘acceptable’ is when they encounter adversity.  I’m a big fan of Hellboy, for example, and enjoy watching the titular character beat up folklorish monsters.  For those who’ve never read or seen it, Hellboy is a demon, bought to earth by Rasputin and the Nazis, raised by (good) humans, who works for the government as a paranormal investigator.  He has a giant, stone hand which is a key to, more or less, causing the end of the world.  Bad guys generally like to take advantage of this fact.  Nevertheless, very little serious calamity ever really befalls Hellboy and most everything he encounters is dispatched with a brief fight and a few wisecracks.  I suspect I probably like Hellboy because he reminds me of my own Loki character (which is also probably the same reason I like, say, Discworld’s Death).  If Hellboy were in Furcadia, however, he would almost certainly be accused of ‘godmodding’; he’s strong, can take massive amounts of damage, holds the key to the apocalypse, has a special signature weapon, is adept at hedge-magic (of the charms and talismans variety), can speak archaic languages and is a ‘good-hearted demon’… not to mention has a thousand equivalents in furc.  So what’s the integral difference between Hellboy and his legions of (either deliberate or not; it’s a common archetype) Furcadian equivalents?  Why do we empathise with him but not with them?  The question is, of course, rhetorical; you should know by now.

That’s the first reason why I don’t believe in para-rp.  I believe it’s symptomatic of people who are generally mediocre writers naively clinging to a set of ‘rules’ that they believe will magically make them good writers (and, by extension, roleplayers).  I think most writers will be prepared to admit that, while there are certainly guidelines around fiction, there are no real hard-and-fast rules about what ‘works’.  If being a good writer was as simple as following a set of instructions then we’d all be published authors by now.  Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work like that.

The second reason I don’t ‘believe’ in para-rp follows on from the first; it’s the assumption that just because something is long that by necessity makes it good.  What.  Rubbish.

I’ve got two words for you, Furcadia: purple prose.  Go look it up.  Do it now; I’ll still be here when you get back.  Now re-read your character description, re-read the descs of your friends, of random strangers.  Count how many times you’ve used the words ”pon’, ‘ebon’, ‘occulars’, ‘auds’ or ‘crimson’.  Now go bang your head against the wall once per hit.  Congratulations; you are one step closer to becoming a good writer.

I’m going to state this plain; any writer worth their weight in ink will tell you that any idiot with a dictionary can write a lot of words.  It’s sort of the equivalent of building a bridge by throwing lots and lots of mud into a river; it’ll get you there eventually, but not in style.  What is infinitely harder in writing is to learn to effectively use the following two maxims; less is more and show don’t tell.

Less is more is probably the easier one of the two.  But not by much.  It’s also hard to describe, mostly because I think as kids we generally get taught (and the idea sticks) that to be a writer one has to evoke fantastic ‘mental landscapes’ with words.  The vast majority of people then extrapolate this out to mean that, to be a writer, one has to describe detail.  A lot of detail.  Which is an odd belief to have, really, because if you actually read books (good books, put down bloody Eragon) by authors who are acclaimed particularly for their ability to evoke strong mental images, it’s quite striking how little description they often use.  Instead, truly skilled authors, are often able to fall back on what – for want of a better word – are the pre-existing set of literary cliches most people keep in their heads.  You know, ‘dogged cop’, ‘geek’, ‘brooding anti-hero’; that sort of thing.  This is not to say that good authors reduce everything to caricatured description.  Far from it; good authors draw characters out by dialogue and action, and leave it up to their readers to fill in the physical outlines of characters.  Refinement – a particular scar here, some eye colour there – get slowly slipped into the narrative as the situation calls for it.  Thus while the author starts from a base which we ourselves create (and thus are more likely to empathise with), they can cleverly start to slide their mental image of the character into our own.  The one thing I hate seeing more than anything else when it comes to description in writing is that “So-and-so looked at himself in the mirror.  Brown hair, about average height” thing.  You know the one.  The reason I hate it is that it’s a) generally the sign of an all-round bad author, and b) it sounds so forced.  When you look at yourself in the mirror, you don’t generally take time to describe yourself to yourself.  You’ve got no need to; you might pick out details (“Is my hair okay?” “Does this shirt go with these shoes?”) but you generally don’t give a full run-down of your own appearance.

Less-being-more isn’t just restricted to character description, however it’s probably the most striking example.

The second great pillar of fiction writing is show don’t tell.  At its most simplistic, this means don’t tell us that your character is frightened or angry or happy; show us the manifestations of these emotions (ears pulled back, a subconscious growl, a wagging tail) and let us come to our own conclusions as to what your character’s emotional state is.  Similarly, don’t tell us that a battle is vicious or a ruler is cruel, show it to us with the piles of groaning, half-dead soldiers or the unrelenting poverty and desperation of the people.  Like less-is-more, work from the assumption that your audience is relatively intelligent and, when given sufficient clues, they will be able to join the dots about your character’s actions and motivations.

This is all great for fiction, Dee, but how does it apply to furc, and what does it have to do with you being anti-para-rp?  Good question, nameless reader!  I eavesdrop on quite a bit of RP, hanging out in the public areas of dreams, not to mention I’m an obsessive character site reader.  I have not met a single person in furn who doesn’t have some kind of waffly ‘rule’ on their bio page along the lines of “para-rp only pls”.  The thing is, I’ve watched these people RP and, guess what, their apparent insistence on para-rp doesn’t make them better roleplayers.  In fact, if anything, it makes them all the more intolerable to listen to because instead of one or two short, pointed actions you’re instead forced to slog through a whole screen of run-on sentences and pointless internal dialogue.  The internal dialogue stuff people use to pad out their para posts especially irritates me; firstly because it’s stupid (we’re not psychic, we can’t tell what your deep and meaningfuls are), secondly because it’s a prime example of telling-not-showing, and finally because people often use it to ‘cover up’ bad character development.  Too often I’ve seen some huge long emo character history typed out to the screen, followed by “… So-and-so couldn’t believe he was telling her so much about himself after theyd only jsut me it was like he’d known her forever.” [sic]  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been guilty of confessing deep dark character secrets to almost random strangers too in lieu of something better to talk about, but for godssakes if you do it don’t try and cover it up like this; just go with the flow.

The point is, that conversations in real life rarely ever give ‘equal airtime’ between participants.  I don’t say four lines, then you reply with four lines, then I say five and you say… no.  It doesn’t work like that (neither, for that matter, does fiction).  If someone is taking the dominant part of a conversation, or else one character is attempting to solicit information out of another without giving much away themselves, or if it’s an action that is short, sharp and to the point, or any of a hundred other things sometimes you just want to get to the point; sometimes one line is enough.  Sometimes half a line is enough (think of a “Stop!” interjection in a dramatic scene).  Slaving adherence to arbitrary rules of para-rp at the expense of good writing only serve to highlight exactly how bad a storyteller someone is.

Not to mention it makes torturous reading for the rest of us.

And that’s why I’m anti-para.

Edit :: It’s been pointed out to me by Aisun that my opinions are shared by Furc’s founder, amongst others.  It’s almost like a secret society; seems like there are a lot of people out there who think the same way, but aren’t necessarily prepared to admit it loudly due to the reaction they get from other players.  Fight the power, dudes!

Edit 2 :: Anti-para? Pro-scene; the meme continues…

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* Case in point; I played the trumpet from year 5 to about year 9.  No matter how much I practised, I never got any good at it, mostly because I just have no natural musical aptitude and didn’t really find practice ‘fun’.  The social status of being in Band was fun (getting to go on excursions and so forth), but the actual playing of the trumpet wasn’t.  In the end, I gave it up and went back to my writing, drawing and programming; all things which, though I’m not necessarily great at them, I find fun for the hell of it (and yeah, okay, modesty aside I’m certainly above average at).

• Tags » furc, furcadia, furn, para-rp, roleplaying, writing
• Comments By » ~nounbeast [h], ~Arwym Starlight [h], Youlanda, Davin Ortalia, Whatnot Sainomore