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Do you "settle"?


Josie
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Do you settle when joining sites?  

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Hmmm... for a while I just joined RPs on which the plot seemed interesting to me, whether the staff or the environment were great or not.  I thought I couldn't find a decent site without running my own, and I hadn't wanted to invest the time in doing that again.  Then, after some pretty bad experiences, I decided that what I wanted was a community in which I could RP, and that maybe the plot wasn't as important as I previously thought, but that didn't work either.  

 

For a long time, I put up with a flaky admin who lied constantly about the reasons she forgot about or abandoned plots, who was super controlling and would get all pissy and let a site go dark if she didn't get her way.  I kind of thought it didn't matter if I was just playing in my corner of the site with some good writers, but it turned out that it did matter so... now I'm making my own, again, because I really, really want a cool plot with some cool people without having to worry about asshole site admins sabotaging the site because people aren't writing only their plots.  Yep.  

 

That got a bit away from me, I have to admit, but it was mostly still on-topic, right?  =P

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lol y'all salty deadpools. 

 

Anyway, I always settle. Always. Unless I make the site myself, I will always be settling. For me, I do have to balance things out. Like if plots are good and I like the people on the forum, I'll be a lot more

forgiving of a skin I can't stand. If there is no app, bonus points because that is REALLY hard to find. 

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I rarely settle.  I'm a perfectionist, I guess, and I need everything to be as close to what I'm looking for as possible.  Otherwise I know I'm not going to be happy and I'll end up wasting everyone's time by making characters and leaving in a few weeks (if I last that long).

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I'm a rather particular man.  My characters and expectations are usually well developed before I go site hunting.  Unfortunately, the traditionalism I have doesn't correspond with most people.  I started as a fourteen-year-old into historical fantasy.  Such has never really changed.

 

After I got sick, my activity levels fluctuated.  I had to close the boards I owned, and I was forced to step down from moderating duties.  Ever since, I've lacked the chance of structuring things as precisely as wanted.  High word counts aren't popular nowadays, driving me to ponder games without.  Many individuals also condemn my Victorian composition style.  I observe posts communities' posts as a guest to see whether or not I blend.

 

Compromising is my indefinite course.  As long as I am able to enjoy the settings, can closely translate my Oliver Twist inspired lads, prepare detailed applications, and thread with those who pen long starters and replies, I will be fine.  After all, no venue is untarnished.

Edited by Jacob
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I have no issue with settling, though I'm very picky as to what I settle on. I can live with a word count even though my preference is none, and if I get along with the admins and most of the other members, having there be one person I don't hit off with isn't a big deal. I'm willing to compromise on setting if the plot is something I'm excited about and can make the types of characters I want to play. And sometimes, settling has opened my eyes to things I had never even thought about. For example, I joined a site that covered several of my interests even though I wasn't really gung-ho about the setting at first. I was able to play a character archetype that intrigued me but couldn't be pulled off everywhere, and I just ended up falling in love with the setting because it allowed for some really cool plots.

 

However, there are some things I absolutely will not settle on. I don't like joining placing with strict activity requirements because I have plenty of other things going on in my life and other interests that mean I won't churn out posts everyday. Also, community is really important to me, so I won't join a site where I don't get along with the existing members and admins. If I can't get plots playing what I'm interested in, ie, everyone belongs to one faction to the neglect of the ones I'm more passionate about, then I won't join. If I'm looking at a fandom site and characters in a faction have really lore-breaking names, I usually just nope out. For example, if a Lord of the Rings site had Rohirrim with Asian-sounding names instead of Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse. And this will sound really counter-intuitive, but I avoid joining sites set someplace I've lived. I get too annoyed when people write locals from my hometown and miss all the cultural elements. Then there's all the incorrect geography. Street X isn't next to Street Y, and it's not possible to get from Point A to Point B in five minutes even while sprinting. Sure, it's petty, but I'm super proud of my hometown and like to see it represented correctly.

 

Unless I make my own site, I don't think it'll be possible to join a site that is 100% perfect. I'm willing to compromise so long as it doesn't restrict my ability to really enjoy the site. Being able to have the plots/characters that I'm interested in is the most important. And aesthetically, the site needs to be readable, navigable, and pleasing enough that I won't mind staring at it for hours. 

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Usually what appeals to me is a creative, nice layout, with images for role playing. I also like a member base that is around my age, so not yet quite dealing with real life situations and issues, but at the same time not 13 either. 

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10 hours ago, Elizabeth Chay said:

Usually what appeals to me is a creative, nice layout, with images for role playing. I also like a member base that is around my age, so not yet quite dealing with real life situations and issues, but at the same time not 13 either. 

This is off topic. We're not discussing what attracts you to a forum, but if you join a forum even though there's things you don't like about it (and why you do) or if you only join forums that have everything right about them (and why you do).

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'Settling' for a site is actually the only thing that pushed me to create the site I wanted but wasn't getting. I didn't like the lore (or lack thereof rather) and the characters were flat sues that didn't give me the dynamic interactions I was craving. It was the closest thing to what I actually wanted though, so I joined anyway. I made my horribly distorted character that was only in essence at best of what I wanted to play, followed their silly PB rules, and even forced myself to plot with characters I really didn't want to plot with. Needless to say, I got so restless and infuriated over the course of that week that I kinda went AWOL, started concepts for my own premise, and then finally dumped the site entirely after reading the half-felt replies I'd received to my several starters. The only reason I hadn't just started with making my own site in the first place was because I didn't want the workload that came with it. However, now that it's all said and done, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm finally getting to make and use the characters I've always wanted to and it's all thanks to that less than grand site I'd settled with those five months ago. Will I ever settle again? I think I've learned my lesson about that. I'm better off just doing what I want rather than trying to fit to something I know I don't belong in. But that's just me. 

Edited by Krank
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tl;dr I'm a picky jerk and really need to quit, my life would get a helluva lot easier. Then again, maybe not.

 

Once upon a long time ago, I was always settling. Now, I'm so picky it's actually kind of ridiculous, I'll be honest; sometimes I'm willing to bend a little more than usual, but there's always something that is a must-have that I won't bend on, kind of depends on what I'm looking for at the time. I used to have decent luck finding something I was willing to at least give a shot. ... well, until post templates had their golden era, but semantics. To be fair, back then nobody could really do anything much better, the internet was still amid its glorious boom and kind of primitive in comparison to what it is now. My age, it shows. You sort of had to settle, as the RP community back then was really scattered and nobody had really figured out how to do magic with boards yet.

 

I have always hated the work and time that goes into running a game of my own ( still do ), so for a long time, I kept trying to just find that place, where I can hang my hat, grab a glass of wine, put my feet up, and be there for the long haul. Did I ever find it? Nope. Got worse over the years. I think the biggest thing that spurred it was I discovered I can make my own sites, and do it pretty well, but even after, I kept joining sites until uhh last year sometime. Tbh, I don't like how a lot of people run their games any more. There's always something that sets off that little voice in the back of my head that whispers, rather urgently, You can do this way, way better, champ, go do it better, you don't have to put up with this. It helps that I love world-building and designing. Eventually, I can't stay. I don't know if I changed or the rest of the world did, but it just doesn't work out any more.

 

Bonus points to rather serious social anxiety that I can only really overcome when I'm in a position of power. And I don't mean this like Trolololol I'm the lord and master, I mean like if I am in a staff position, I am important and vital to the site's well-being. My actions and reactions must be just right, or the board falls apart. That kind of thing hanging over my head makes it somehow a million times easier to reach out to other players, make connections, hash out plots, answer questions... Brains b weird. Toss me on a board I do not run with players I do not know on it and I'm probably over here, off to the side, doing my own thing and ignoring everyone else. Eventually, I come out of my shell. I need time to get used to how things work on a new board and get a feel for the character base before I can Slytherin, but I've had waaaaay too many admins pressure me about it because yanno apparently "just talk to people" actually works. Yeah, okay. Thereby, sometimes even if I do settle, I end up walking away later, because of a major deal-breaker that wasn't apparent before joining. I've joined and left so many sites over the years, it got tiresome. ( I really hate apps now. )

 

At some point I was like, I give up. I stopped settling. Anything I don't like, any bad feeling or red flag, even if I can't make sense of it, I make like Elsa and let it go. I'll even drop my own boards without batting an eye if it stops being fun and starts being a job ( by the time I get there, it's a ghost town anyway, don't look at me with that tone of voice ). I think all this touch and go with most sites I join just sort of made me really hardcore squint at everything I get interested in, and there are a lot of things I won't bend on. For some people, I'm sure these would be just a minor inconvenience, but for me, it's a serious impact of quality of life. Nowadays, if it's really minor, and the game's amazing besides, maybe, but ain't nobody got time for that bigger stuff. It made my anxiety a hundred times worse and joining new sites, taking part in sites I was already on, had become extremely scary for a long time. It actually took me a quite a while to recover from the stress enough to be able to even post this without weeks upon weeks of pep talking. And I likely still sat here staring at it for about an hour before hitting the post button. ( I did. )

 

No, fam. Just no. ... I may settle with a site that has a rock solid plot, and players I know and like on it, but I don't see that happening. I'm not exactly winning any popularity contests. Lol

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I have been thinking about this 'settling' business. I realized there are different reasons and ways that we settle. I don't know if this list is complete or not but...

 

 

Gut feeling - sometimes I'm settling because there's a gut feeling about the site. Sometimes I can tell what that feeling is. That the site is bad, that it won't last. Sometimes the feeling is that I just can't. Every time the feelings have been right and I have never lasted. The oddest feeling is 'I just can't'; I can't explain what is wrong or that there even is something wrong, but I feel stressed when responding, I can't keep up, and it ends up with me fading out. When I try to revisit, I feel like the members there are looking at me as if I just walked into the wrong room that's holding a meeting and they're trying to be polite but really I need to leave. And I can love the site to death and revere it, but I still just can't.

 

Craving - sometimes I settle because I am looking for something to satisfy a particular itch. Personally, in those places I settled, the itch was truly never scratched. Sometimes I liked the site enough to stay, sometimes not.

 

Memory / Idea / Home - And then sometimes what I am looking for isn't so much of a craving as a desire or need. Maybe I'm looking for a place to call home, a friend clique to be accepted by, to be that one member with so many years of history with the site, to be the person who did that one thing, maybe I am chasing a memory that happened, or trying to recreate a feeling.  That I'm looking for the "end result" of a journey rather than the cobblestones that start the path. Sometimes it's hurtful because when things don't work out it can feel like the idea has been broken and made hopeless and you can't help but take it personally. But it's always painful, because a journey is a thing that takes time, one post after another, and isn't the instant thing we want. But it can get there.

 

 

Edited by xexes
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I feel like I don't settle much. I don't really have very many deal breakers, and the few I do have are kind of.. hard limits? Suppose that works. If any site hits my hard limits, I know right off the bat that I can't /won't join it. I might lurk around the site a bit longer, poke around the lore and characters because I always like to see what people do with their boards and it can be fun to read stuff even though I personally wouldn't like to play it. But if a hard limit is met, no chance. 

 

Other things that bother me are more... nice to have. I prefer traditional apps, but I can do freeform. I prefer having plotter and app separately, but I can do shipper apps, and et cetera and et cetera. So I wouldn't really consider that settling. ymmv. 

 

 

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