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Misunderstanding Emotes

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Ulphus:
Hi All,

A situation that I've encountered once or twice is that someone will use a signature emote for certain situations, and the people around them have significantly different reactions to it, because the word means different things to different people.

One example is the smirk.

When "Character smirks" comes up, my gut reaction is that they're going for the arrogant look of superiority - "To smile in an affected, often offensively self-satisfied manner"

After a particularly weird RP session, I cornered one of the players where I'd started to want to avoid their character and asked them what they meant when they said they smirked. IIRC, they thought it was just a mouth movement, somewhat like a smile with the lips closed, but not quite a grin. They didn't intend to deliver any negative connotation at all.

They're not the only player to use smirking without realising that some people assume they're being dicks IC.

Another example was the "wry grin" - I've seen a character use this intending to imply a dry sense of humour, and "a distortion or lopsidedness of the facial features" - but the person they were using it on thought they meant "bitterly or disdainfully ironic or amusing"

This went on for 12 months before he figured out OOC that she wasn't being rude everytime she smiled at his comments, and she figured out why he got upset with her at random times and stormed off...

What I'd like to ask of you lot is what other misunderstandings have you encountered. What descriptions have implied completely the wrong idea in the minds of the people you're trying to RP with, or what have you misunderstood about what other people have emoted at you.

Laerise [PIE]:
It's normal though, happens all the time in RL - I think its just natural that IC characters missunderstand mimic as well - and it can make for fun scenes :)

Ulphus:
Our bandwidth is distinctly limited in text based RP. IRL I get a huge number of cues to do with body language that in RP I have to try and guess from a few words in an emote.

If I think someone is being an arrogant jerk, I'd like to think it's because they're being at least a little arrogant, not because we have different meanings for the same words...

Zuzanna Alondra:
I personally have hit this on more the one occasion to the point that if I'm having an RP "chat" with someone more then a few lines long I often have a second OOC window open and practially copy paste the phrase, "Can I get a feel for the voice tone on that?"

I have also often pulled Havohej into vent if he wasn't already and had him say aloud a line I wasn't sure about in the tone the character is using.

Pretty much if your even mildly unsure - pull up an OOC chat and ask.  I've hit cultural differences too where a quick question clears everything up.

Still I think there's likely bad blood ICly between Zu and Verone for misread voice tone and emotes - I need to patch that up someday.

Mitara Newelle:

--- Quote ---When "Character smirks" comes up, my gut reaction is that they're going for the arrogant look of superiority - "To smile in an affected, often offensively self-satisfied manner"
--- End quote ---
You'd read Mit perfectly then, it's a trademark of hers :)

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