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The difference between Literate and Illiterate Roleplay


The Supreme One
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There are various differences when it comes down to comparing ‘literate’ and ‘illiterate’ roleplay.

 

A skilled, literate roleplayer seeks out ‘quality over quantity’.

 

While filler content can sometimes mask itself as literacy; a true literate roleplayer knows that simplicity or making content easy to understand is always the most important aspect of a literate writer.

 

Take a moment to let that sink in, because if you really think about it; you’ll realize this is true.

 

Who truly wants to read content, they can’t really understand?

 

Another important aspect of literate roleplay boils down to wording; or word usage.

 

Remember the point posted above; that simplicity is important. Using complex words, or sentences; is not a form of true literate writing.

 

Once again; you want your reader or roleplay partners to understand what you are saying.

 

Another aspect of literate roleplaying is the way a post ‘flows’, which ultimately is not as important as the other aspects of literacy.

 

That doesn’t mean it’s not important though, because we all know that a post that sounds good; can also impact the reader on a deeper level.

 

Now if we start talking about illiterate roleplay; there are many other factors to focus on.

 

An illiterate roleplayer may, or may not have issues with their spelling, grammar, and or punctuation.

 

However, this is not the case for all illiterate roleplayers; some simple choose to write as they do.

 

An illiterate roleplayer typically has issues with being able to read, or write; usually because they are still in the process of learning.

 

Some might even be from a foreign place; and have little to no access to the resources that the rest of us do.

Many look down upon illiterate roleplayers, but I always do my best to try to aid them in improving.

 

The last aspect of illiterate writing that I’m going to go into today; is post stuffing, or fluffing.

 

An illiterate roleplayer sometimes tries to mask their illiteracy with fluff, or filler. As I stated before; a true literate writer knows the difference between filler and essential content.

 

Just because a post is long; does not make it well written. Some of the best posts are short, and straight to the point. They only include what’s needed, and nothing more.

 

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Everything has an end, everything but me that is. I shall live for an eternity, watching as the petals fall from the trees. 

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  • 5 months later...

I enjoyed reading this! It’s absolutely true, I remember when word-count used to be the thing that separated “literate” from “illiterate” roleplayers - you were only considered a “lit/advanced” writer if you regularly produced 700-1,000 word replies.

 

That doesn’t seem to be the case nowadays; I know a few people who can do that and their writing is wonderful, but the majority of the people I write with hover around 200-500 words and their writing is also just as wonderful to read.

 

Far too often I would completely jeopardize the flow of my post because I was 4 or 5 words off from a word-count requirement. 


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On 3/12/2023 at 10:37 AM, Cootie said:

I enjoyed reading this! It’s absolutely true, I remember when word-count used to be the thing that separated “literate” from “illiterate” roleplayers - you were only considered a “lit/advanced” writer if you regularly produced 700-1,000 word replies.

 

That doesn’t seem to be the case nowadays; I know a few people who can do that and their writing is wonderful, but the majority of the people I write with hover around 200-500 words and their writing is also just as wonderful to read.

 

Far too often I would completely jeopardize the flow of my post because I was 4 or 5 words off from a word-count requirement. 

 

Thank you, I appreciate your response. 🙂

 

Back in the day on Myspace, replies like 22-44 paragraphs were the average for me and my friends.

 

I remember fighting against Soki Noric and The Legendary Monster, topping more than 60 paragraphs.

 

We wrote pure stories just because it was fun. But as time went on, there were fewer people who wrote novella or old world-styled roleplay, so our story style pretty much died off.

 

But it was still fun pretty much depicting an entire book for a Dragon Ball Z-style fight vs Monster, or an Edo period battle with my hand-to-hand fight against Soki Noric, who was a very skilled samurai, using the Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū style.

 

Swords vs hands; me using Mutsu Enmei Ryu.

 

However, being that people no longer really seemed to reply anymore, it came down to simplifying the writing and making it shorter.

 

'When you can get your point across to people in the fewest words as possible and make a strong impact with them, that's when you finally start making a real difference.'

 

 

Edited by The Supreme One
Grammar errors
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Everything has an end, everything but me that is. I shall live for an eternity, watching as the petals fall from the trees. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

As an aspiring linguist, I can’t stand the roleplay terms “literate” and “illiterate”… they just feel so condescending and off-putting. Everyone who roleplays is literate. Being literate is the base entry fee to this hobby.

 

To me, a good, competent roleplayer is one who has good reading comprehension, who has a collaborative spirit, and who puts clear effort into their writing and characterization. Their technical skill level doesn’t matter at all in my eyes, let alone the length of their posts.

 

Like, yes, don’t be a lazy replier and give people a flaccid one-liner in response to multipara writing, but aside from that? Seriously, effort trumps everything else. I’ve seen more “literate” writers than I can count who are great at writing huge volumes of pretty-looking text that does absolutely nothing to move the plot forward or evoke anything thought-provoking… purple prose is a killer, man.

 

I’d take a second language learner or a novice RPer who has clear passion for their character and the plot over someone who judges others over arbitrary things like post length or aesthetics any day.

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39 minutes ago, nemesis said:

'Everyone who roleplays is literate.'

 

Ah - but this is a fine line here and I tried to cover some of that in the first part of my post. Like I tried to state before there are a lot of roleplayers who mask or stuff their writing with fillers and overcomplicated sentence structures, words they don't understand, or simply grammar mistakes that break roleplays because they don't wish to take the time to learn rules in roleplays. Sometimes they think making the posts harder to read or understand is the way to win. If they can defeat their opponent through making them give up on reading their post, they win. But that's not really roleplaying. 

 

Some are things that are easy fixes, and some are problems people refuse to acknowledge and work towards fixing on their own. 

 

Everything has an end, everything but me that is. I shall live for an eternity, watching as the petals fall from the trees. 

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Okay, fair—I’ve definitely run into people before who suddenly fall back on the “English isn’t my first language” defense (and suddenly play up that aspect) when they are in fact fully (even beautifully) fluent at it, in order to blatantly try and skew things to be the way they want… so I feel you there haha. I think if someone has their mind set on being manipulative, they’ll use whatever excuse is most convenient, though. It’s not really about language anymore as much as it is powerplay at that point, you know?

 

I think there’s just a line to be drawn between people who refuse to try to improve their craft and people who aren’t very good, but are engaged and trying to get better. Both of these get lumped under the “illiterate” umbrella, when really it’s “doesn’t want to put in effort/wants to be handed results” and “amateurish, but wants to participate and contribute”. Everyone’s got to start somewhere, and I think the latter get unfairly maligned a lot because of the former’s behavior.

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Yea that's true, anyone can turn try to turn any situation into one of those 'no win' kind of events. Where they just want to pry on other people for some reason or another. It's more than likely because it fuels them somehow. The only way to truly win those battles is to just walk away from them. 

 

I remember a group of 'potentially' skilled writers on myspace called Akatsuki Dawn.

 

However, the problem with them was their foul language in ooc, and the extreme overuse of labyrinthine or complex and confusing words in their roleplays. Their ooc was so bad that it was a nightmare trying to debate anything with them, it wasn't worth discussing role-plays once they started, to the point you just wanted to leave. 

 

I always try to work with others and wish to help teach those who don't understand to help improve the roleplaying world, and to help improve roleplay, and connections with others. 

Everything has an end, everything but me that is. I shall live for an eternity, watching as the petals fall from the trees. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

For me, literate is able to put together a sentence and word flow. I also feel like a literate RPer knows differences between their/there/they're, etc. which a lot of people nowadays seem to have issues doing. To me, I get really put off by someone saying they are literate then posting "He walked to there house." 

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  • 8 months later...

I think too, something important to consider is the evolving meaning of the word in the context of being RP jargon.

 

To be a "literate" person means you can read and write, and so all roleplayers are "literate" by the definition. But roleplayers coined the term "literate" to typically classify a specific type of roleplay style they enjoy. While I think the term's root is judgmental, it's one of those things where "literate" in the roleplaying sphere has taken on a connotation of a genre. Kind of the issue that "indie" as a genre runs into, where "indie" was sourced from "independent" developer, but its definition expands and comes under contention as time goes on.

 

I tend to use the term "long-form" more recently, but it's less about length and more about depth. I've read a lot of posts that have a whole lot of words but contain no content, which you describe with "fluffing". I definitely enjoy the length that most of the roleplays I'm in have settled in now -- where value is placed on quality over quantity, and vocabulary and word count isn't conflated with quality. More and more, I really enjoy good character building and interactions so much more, and that's what I associate with "literate" nowadays.

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