#the code of the theme is sorted for both blogs its just sorting muses out. ensuring new additions have blurbs

[dangaer]

morning everyone!! with next week being prioritised by this blog, i thought it would be good to mention i'm definitely considering completing my rules overhaul. i have my other blogs theme to finish but after that i will be updating this blogs theme and what i can advise to expect.

a.) new rules (this will come before the theme and ill make a seperate post on it - no major changes, i just don't like how i wrote them 4 years ago!) b.) muse additions ( my lack of phone has pushed me into picking up my switch again and i've finished one virch.e route so expect additions - will also make a post on who they are once the muses are up. ) c.) either a following sort out / me copying what i did with my other blog by doing a meme spam to various mutuals? (i need to do it more on my other blog but between the two ... yeah.) d.) compalnion update! (this is the next week for yes. my notepad is now my phone @ work yesterday and i've brainstormed a lot. maybe this month ... will be the month? <- dont quote me on that )

[northropi]

Quick Design Crisis Notes

I'll eventually have a more in-depth look into the future of these two designs when I get a little comic together about it, probably on the other blog. For now, let's go over some stuff I've been coming to terms with about the two. To catch anyone up:

Despite my PFP reflecting a now-quite-a-bit older design- I believe at this point the theme was still a zombified Pterosaur-girl with mechanical bits as prosthetics- the design I've actually been running with for a while is a zombified Dragon with mechanical bits as prosthetics. If you can't tell, not that much changed externally, except for a few details. That is, until...

After the Dragon design won out as a "quick few tweaks to the actual design but some fairly big lore changes that no one will notice," I... Kind of got dysphoric, in a way. Little features about how she looked were starting to gnaw at me, as I slowly started to interpret monstrous features as masculine- and subtly masculine aspects of her appearance started to bother me more than they did at first, driving me to want to just fold and make a flat-out fem character as, I suppose, escapism. So, the next character up, using a lot of assets and details from the previous design but with a new facial structure and an entirely different species and backstory, was a creepy doll thing.

However, this didn't go smoothly, and while I managed to put a lot together for her (granted, not outfits, both the Dragon and Doll models shown were still using placeholders), she's sort of fallen out of favor over a tweaked version of the Zombie Dragon design- now avoiding the traits I was getting in my own head over and kind of just introducing a nicer overall flavor- though the idea of somehow implementing doll traits into the character (such as wearing a porcelain mask to cover a decaying, skeletal face) were still floating around, waiting to be implemented if I decided to at the last second.

So that was it for the doll.

But not for a doll.

I had kind of joked for a while that if I inevitably rebranded enough it'd eventually lead to a robot, and the doll character... Well, she kinda accelerated that path. I really liked the idea of using a construct, mechanical character to represent myself, and while the Doll and Zombie motifs were ways to get that in while leaving in elements of Magic for me to play with, well, I guess I did always lean more towards technological aesthetics anyways. Previously I've also mused on the fact that I'd find a plain robot character unfitting because I don't know how to code, but honestly a robot character could be made to play off of that- like, she's sort of intimidated by people who are because she is code.

And with that I think I've fairly quickly arrived upon a character that ticks all the boxes I need her to, at least with some fleshing out. Still, it's not over yet. There's a lot of details about both designs that need refining. The Dragon, and especially the true form, have long needed updates- and I kind of want to pull through with those even if I don't end up keeping that character as my sona. The Robot needs special care to make sure a lot of motifs carry over organically (ironically), including a design that seems relatively grounded and utilitarian but still carries the seabird and reptile themes I like so much. And all this comes to a head with the fact that the Robot is a Robot and the Dragon is a Dragon.

I've mused with ideas like giving the Robot a full-blown walking tank form to match the Dragon's true form, but that feels a little... Weird. Like giving her multiple bodies would feel to "code-y," running into the problem I mentioned before as she becomes less "Robot" and more "AI," plus it'd kind of feel like a vehicle I guess? It feels less like a part of her than the Dragon does with its form shenanigans, and I feel would either overshadow her humanoid form (ie combat becomes relevant to the lore, which she obviously does in her walking tank mode, resulting in less time with the humanoid mode), or would be irrelevant (ie no combat, so why have a walking tank form?). So making a non-humanoid alt form for the robot is complicated, but having it without much in the way of mental gymnastics on the Dragon is kind of fun.

Like, I guess this is weird to the prevailing anti-self-insert attitude of the internet (which isn't wrong per se but VTuber and explicit Sona designs afford some room for self-indulgency), but having a character that is just Funny Scaly Woman but also Giant Three-Headed Albatross-Turtle whenever she feels like it is really... Yeah, fun. It's fun, it can be a nice gag for skits and comics, it lets me alternate between presenting as a humanoid for humanoid sorts of things and a nice pretty non-humanoid for ambient beauty shots or something, artistically treating her as an animal in nature in a way that even if I did go through with the Robot's big mode idea I'd still miss out on due to the way that form would turn out... To go over that last part a bit, yeah, ok, legged giant robot is unrealistic, sure, but it'd still be a grounded design, I just like making them that way, so I couldn't just make her a Dragon with a screen face and chrome skin and call it a day. She'd be a distinctly unnatural being, missing parts that animals have in favor of the streamlined design of a perhaps-improvised-but-still-pragmatic war machine- and maybe that could be a thing, separated from nature enough for that to work as a juxtaposition, but she likes it enough to try and associate with it, but also I don't fucking know let's talk about legs and wings and turboshafts and shit.

In true me fashion this is already a tad outdated. Rather than having a stocky tail that acts as an entire powerpack to which the wings are affixed, she'll probably have the engines powering the wings embedded in her body somewhere and the wings affixed to extensions of the hip, with the tail being a more biomimetic structure for balance and fuel storage- because I like short chonky tails. The wing itself is still more or less the same, with some slight detailing pending, and of course the color scheme will be... Something.

Her backstory is that she used to be a delivery robot for Legally Distinct Logistics Megacorp before everyone blew up everything and is now just trying to be helpful with long-distance deliveries between survivor camps, so she'll be designed with the idea of sterile alabaster corporatism in mind with a personalized scheme and hasty repairs over it.

The decidedly more normal limbs are actually where problems are cropping up. I'm not entirely sure how the arms and legs should look. The arms, true to life and in tradition for these characters, will be scrawny, metal tubes with a couple servos jammed in with distinctly rudimentary hands. I want to implement some sort of folding mechanism for them, maybe a sort of pauldron that locks to the hand as the forearm comes to lie parallel to the humerus, turning the arm into a single sort of pod thing.

The legs, however, are something that, true to life and in tradition for these characters, will be the opposite. Strong-looking, relevant to her flight controls, and I'm fond of the idea of making them look like floats on seaplanes and flying boats for the idea that she can basically kneeslide into a water landing when operating in such place. But I'm not sure exactly how that's going to work. She could go with plantigrade legs that end in nubs, or maybe some digitigrade look- recently I've been trying to feel out an idea for a digitigrade look where the "knee" mostly translates instead of rotates, allowing the leg to quickly retract and extend into and out of itself for jumping as well as reducing profile drag. This is also interesting because it sort of solves the little side debate in my head on how tall she should be by allowing her to control height on demand- in any case it's likely she could go back to older versions of the character being lanky monsters or become pretty short for the simple reason that I kinda find those ideas fun.

I'm also probably keeping the big central horn the later versions of the Dragon got- albeit as a clearly mechanical structure that contains her actual optics including a camera and LIDAR, with the eyes being mostly just aesthetic lights.

And, well, all that out of the way... I should probably follow up on this by drawing it while the ideas are still fresh in my mind, for once.

[getinthefunvee]

//how does a new writer to the roleplay community on tumblr get started? Ive sent out starters, I've replied to starters, I've answered memes, I've reblogged memes, I've made my own posts, I hardly OOC. Everyone seems so exclusive. It's not encouraging, and it seems rather cold. What advice can you give?

// Hi there, nonny! Let’s see if I can offer a little RP Ancient™ advice.

The first thing to know about the RPC is: when you start out (or reboot, or come back from a long hiatus–and boy, do I know about those) it takes a lot of time & effort before you get into a steady RP flow. It’s always been like that, so that part? Is purely about relationships, because that’s what RP is: a sort of mutual pact between two (or more) people to put in a similar amount of effort to entertain one another. Quite often, longer-term RP partners turn into IRL friends, because you spend so much time investing in one another. You help each other grow as both writers/RPers and your muses influence each others’ growth. It requires a fair amount of putting yourself out there and extroversion and, yes, rejection–just like IRL relationships.

Here are some things to consider if you’ve been at it for a couple months and still feel like you’re floundering:

1) Is your character pleasant to RP with? Okay, this isn’t an attack, but a chance to step back and consider: what would the other character(s) get out of interacting with mine? A character needs to have depth, an interesting personality, a unique voice, a fully actualised emotional range. If you write a villain, grouchy, or a superpowered person, it’s off-putting if they’re essentially a walking God-mode, all-knowing, superior, unrelentingly do nothing but maim/kill off others, or shut down every interaction with glares/bitchy comebacks. That’s no fun for anyone to interact with, so if you’ve fallen into any of those tropes, you may wish to think abound expanding on your repertoire.

2) Are you putting in as much effort as your partners or prospective partners? We’re all different. Effort is relative, and everyone looks for something a little different, but essentially when you get a reply, you want to feel as though the other person is as invested as you are. That means matching length (it never has to be line-for-line, but if someone’s written 6 paragraphs and you only have 2 lines of reply, please talk to them: they’ll want to know why their reply only stimulated 2 lines of response from your muse, or to know that you’re only comfortable writing shorter things; otherwise, you’re not likely to get another reply), driving plot forward (I can’t tell you how many RPs I’ve had fizzle because someone’s several-paragraphs-long replies only at core yield ‘and they nodded’, forcing me to consistently develop all action/development–we’re not always ‘on’ and not every post is a ‘masterpiece’, nor should it have to be, but if one person is doing 100% of the leg work on this every single time, it’s not going to end well), and developing character relationships (be they platonic or otherwise) in an engaging, satisfying way. Also, each RPC has its own conventions, so you may wish to check that you’re ‘conforming’ to those, at least broadly–ie, if the Marvel RPC convention for short replies is 100x100 or smaller static icons and you’re using 300x150 GIFs and large font, people may find it off-putting. 

3) How many muns have you spoken to? This is part of putting yourself out there. Sometimes the person is a mutual, sometimes they’re not. Do always read people’s rules (I presume everyone would already do this) just to make sure they’re comfortable being contacted by ask vs IM. Don’t leap in with ‘hi wanna plot’; do introduce yourself, say hello, tell them what you enjoy about their characterisation, and suggest that if they were open to the idea of RPing, here are a few suggestions for possible plots you’ve considered with their character in mind. Not all of that has to be in one message, but when someone approaches me like this I’m almost uniformly thrilled to play with them.

4) Are you being too limited in your focus? You’re starting out, and maybe you like to write novella plots and/or huge world-building AUs. Awesome! However, you need to develop relationships for those to take off. Many people just getting the hang of RPing do short-form threads. This does three things: 1) helps you establish your character’s voice, 2) offers content/’samples’ for people browsing your blog to view, and 3) gets your URL out there on other people’s dashes. (I meet the vast majority of my RP partners because I loved how they wrote with someone I already RP with, or they saw me on their dash and liked what I did. I cannot overstate the importance of this!)

5) How accessible is your content? This may be just me, but is your blog at least somewhat legible? I’ll be the first to say, hey, my blog font: not super comfy to read! I use ‘read on dash’ for my own posts! I am a fucking sham!! <– trufax. I should probably fix that! Listen, I totally get the desire to have an ~aesthetic~, but here are things that make me squint like the old ho that I am: 1) tinytinytiny font–I’ve legit seen 4pt font used, why would you do this, you are evil; 2) scrambled blog code that makes content inaccessible (ie your theme means I can’t scroll to the end of your rules because the ~smoky shadows~ fully obscure the last paragraph; your text scrolls out of the box, onto your background art, rendering it unreadable; broken links!); 3) difficult/obscure navigation (if I have to wave my cursor around your page for 5min before I can find a link, I’m mad); 4) okay this is probably just me, because it’s super popular, but: autoplay, some of us get easily overwhelmed by sensory input and if I have my noise-isolating earphones on and I tab over to your blog and suddenly it’s SUPER LOUD ASSAULT, it’s really jarring.

6) Are you exploring other RPCs? Some communities are much more welcoming to new/inexperienced RPers than others. That’s definitely sad, but it’s a good thing to know. I love the Marvel RPC because of the friends I’ve met through it, but it’s one of the more clique-y and exclusive-focused RPCs I’ve ever been in. By contrast, DARP (Dragon Age, ayy) is very welcoming–and, for me, often a little *too* chipper and extroverted. I’m not saying this to call one better than another, but just to illustrate that RPCs can be very different from one another. If you’re having a hard time in one, consider expanding out to another–it doesn’t mean you have to ditch your character or your desire to be in another RPC, but it may give you the experience and confidence to tackle some of the harder-to-access RPCs on Tumblr.

I don’t want to overwhelm you, and I can only speak from my own experience, but hopefully that gives you something to start with, nonnie! If anyone wants to pitch in, please do feel free to comment.

[kote-the-inn-keeper]

A helpful guide to all the new rp blogs starting up around here!

1. Make sure your blog is pleasing to look at.

     This is a MAJOR part of just about any blog. If the text is too small, the formatting it weird, or things are too cluttered; no one is going to be checking out your blog. It can be hard for some people -- depending on the browser or electronic they are using -- to read or get to the next page of your blog. So make sure you pick a pleasing, easy to work theme. You can look up themes here on tumblr, on google, or on specific tumblrs that have recommendations for all sorts of themes for every need and want.

2. Aesthetic and pleasing to the eye.

     If your blog is a mess (as said above), or in bright/hard to read color combos, no one is going to bother to keep around or check it out either. Try to avoid bright colors [like neons] as your main color background! Try to keep text lighter or darker than your background so its easy to read and actually readable. Some people have their text dark and their background dark (or the opposite with all brights) and it’s impossible to read. If no one can read it, they won’t be bothering. Plus, some people have eye problems, reading problems, and the like. SO make sure when you pick a theme: you adjust the text to be readable, don’t pick fonts that are tiny or in a weird font type, and you can see what is going on!

3. Explain yourself.

     Make an about. Who are you? Is this a side blog? Make a mun page. Who are you rping? Do you have multiple people or one? Headcanons you use? Make a page about your style and what you are bringing to the table. Are you a script rper (1 -3 lines, use * or any like variation for actions) or a paragraph writing (descriptions, generally at least a full paragraph of writing or more, and the like)? What kinds of rps are you okay with, and what are you not okay with? Are you looking for specific types of rps, or general rps? 

     These are things you need to explain and put out there so people who come in and are interested can find this information quick and easy! Some people’s styles mesh well, others do not. So having your style out there / explained may help with those types of issues so both (or one) parties can adjust themselves accordingly to rp. Or, not rp at all! 

4. TAGGING and Condensing.

     Tag. Your. Shit. I’m serious. Some people want to see your threads and keep up with them, other people don’t want to see them and will blacklist. It helps not only people who follow you, but yourself and your rp partner as well. You can search the thread name and pull it up immediately -- in case it got buried in your notifications, or you need to check something. This goes especially if you are a script rper. It can get spammy as hell really quick, and it can get annoying if someone doesn’t want to see that. Good tags are a major help to your blog and keeping people coming to enjoy your writing. So don’t just tag the other person you are rping with, give the thread a name or a code word or something.

     (On top of tagging the usual / needed tags your followers may need. But that’s a no brainer)

     If your rp thread starts getting long, either make a new one and carry over the tag, or condense the rp thread as a whole. Condensing posts confused even me for a long time, because no one explained it to me. But if you go and look up how to, there are a few ways. This is one that I know and use personally. Here’s another version with more words. This helps from annoyingly long posts from taking up someones dash, and keeps it so you can check back in the thread if you named it something/go to your posts, and can continue with the same piece. 

     Have an OOC (out of character) tag/s or way to tell you are talking OOC. Some people just tag as ooc, others have fancy names. Some people use a tag and use shapes: [[ , (( , // , << , || to tell people they are out of character and speaking as themselves. Extra emphasis’ on those tend to be initializing the text so it’s read separate from what is written.; though, not needed. That’s a stylistic choice. Most come in doubles, as I said before, because it’s the most common way of doing it since... god knows when, and it also shows that it’s not an aside, break, or addition in some manner to the post itself. If you use shapes that aren’t on the keyboard, make sure you put somewhere that that is your OOC! Things like emojis and the like (which is very much less common, but out there).

5. Other

     Take into consideration those you are rping with, and those who follow you as you pick your look and the way your run the blog. Rp blogs are just like any other blog, so keep that in mind. Don’t spam the living hell out of people, since you wouldn’t do that on your main blog. Remember starting off takes some time!! It’s not immediate and it takes people a while to find your blog; so make some friends, rp with some new people, and be chill. Asks won’t always be flooding your inbox, so have other content on your blog as well that is related in some way to your character. it will help with drawing people in and getting a feel for how you rp your muse.

     Oh! On another note, some of you may not know the terms mun/muse. Mun is you! Muse is your character that you rp as. They are a Muse to you because you created a whole blog for them, write about/for them, and all that. So when people say Mun and Muse, know the difference! A lot of rp asks memes have those words in them, so read which is doing what.

     Make sure your links are working! If they don’t work, it can get frustrating for everyone who is trying to find out what you do and for yourself when no one is reading it. On that related note, go read other people’s pages!! I’m serious, if you expect people to read yours, go read theirs. Even if you don’t expect it, it’s basic kindness to go and read up on someone else’s things before you hurl yourself at them with something. They may have things they aren’t okay with listed, subjects that need to be avoided, or the like. So look for those and list those yourself if needed.

     Don’t expect instant replies. People have lives and get busy or lose inspiration for a bit. Which is all fine! It happens to a lot of people and they need to take a break before they come back. If you are worried about threads being lost, POLITELY message them (if they said that is chill) about the thread / remind them / send them a permalink to it so they have it on hand to come back to when they are back up for writing.

That’s about all I have to offer! Take this information into consideration, I kind of know what I’m talking about. I’ve been running this blog for 4 - 5 years now, so... Thanks for reading!