Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE Character Development => Topic started by: Ulphus on 21 Apr 2010, 14:31
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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.
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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 :)
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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...
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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.
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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"
You'd read Mit perfectly then, it's a trademark of hers :)
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This is a real problem with text-based comms in general, as people have pointed out. Hell, it's still a problem with voice. so much communication is non-verbal, and we lose that in a chat window or on the phone or vent.
Still, at least with language, we have dictionaries to formalise meanings, even if some people manage to get the wrong end of the stick regardless. We at least stand a chance of saying something and people knowing exactly what we mean by it.
What I tend to find a problem are emoticons. There's no consensus, no dictionary, and no agreement here. People use smilies that can mean any number of things and rather than add clarity to written communications they can often confound it.
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What I tend to find a problem are emoticons. There's no consensus, no dictionary, and no agreement here. People use smilies that can mean any number of things and rather than add clarity to written communications they can often confound it.
Well, I won't use them in IC conversations for much that reason. I try not to use "lol" either. I just find it jarring when people do. I'm usually pretending that what I'm typing is a spoken conversation, and emoticons and rofls just... well, break it for me.
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Thing is Mitty, amongst Amarrians (who are all arrogant dicks, AM I RITE?!) smirks go practically unnoticed since everyone is so used to them! Ald smirks a lot too, but good-naturedly usually. Like he got the better of someone in the conversation, but is amicable about it.
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What I'd like to ask of you lot is what other misunderstandings have you encountered
Mostly the opposite of your smirk problem. I get this issue where for some reason people seem to think Lillith isn't being derisive and scornful with her smirks.
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Thing is Mitty, amongst Amarrians (who are all arrogant dicks, AM I RITE?!) smirks go practically unnoticed since everyone is so used to them! Ald smirks a lot too, but good-naturedly usually. Like he got the better of someone in the conversation, but is amicable about it.
Oh, well, good thing about Laerise is that she's always a genuine arrogant shithead who will go out of her way to repay any perceived slight just in kind :P
More seriously though, sometimes stuff confuses me, then I do a quick ooc convo to check it up - on other occasions, especially regarding 'foreigners' I don't mind confusing stuff one bit.
It's very common to be unacquainted (?) with certain regional expressions and I expect EVE to be at least as varied as germany in that respect, so :)
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I see at least two separate issues here, and probably more if I got detailed.
One is a simple lack of vocabulary. Not in an insulting way (per Laerise's point), but some folks just don't quite understand certain words or phrases, like "smirk" in the OP. One could subdivide this further into issues where one of the parties is communicating in his second language versus a person whose education may have not covered that word, but I don't know that that would really mean very much in most cases.
The other issue, though, is the limitations of the medium. I actually believe this has more to do with the communicator, as a skilled writer certainly can convey emotion and nuance effectively. Most of us just need to keep working on that.
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Thing is Mitty,
I'ma call her Mitts nao. Is that okay? I think that's okay :P
Yeah, Ulph, there's a lot of commonly manhandled tropes I've run into. I don't know if they'd belong here.
I've actually begun to assume that things like smirking and shrugging as standalone actions, IE * Ashar KorAzor smirks. * are fully intended to carry only the lowest common denominator meaning and implication.
I try to never use them independent of qualifiers or a broader statement. You're far more likely to be told that a ghost of a smile plays over my character's features than that she smirked, or just that Ashar or an alt 'smiled a bit,' with the tense adjusted for context.
I propose a thread featuring a list of common chat tropes. I propose we lend better definitions and exposure to these overused tropes in this thread.
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I find RPing with different people expands my emote vocabulary quite a lot. I really like some of the little touches that people put in, and steal them shamelessly when I think it's appropriate.
Regarding the OP, one of the Smirk issues was between a Kiwi and a Texan (at least, I think he's Texan), and the other between a Kiwi and someone from York, so yes, different languages...
I never did any text based RP before playing Eve, so I'm still learning. A common chat trope list would be something I'd be interested in reading, although I'm not sure I'd be able to contribute an extensive list.
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Regarding the OP, one of the Smirk issues was between a Kiwi and a Texan (at least, I think he's Texan), and the other between a Kiwi and someone from York, so yes, different languages...
Ulf doesnt know any smirking Texans!...oh..wait...hmmm...
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One thing I've noticed is lack of positive eve after spending much of a convo grinning or smiling I'm sure my jaw muscles must ache.
I think the hardest thing to try and convey is sarcasm and irony, though tbh I struglle in RL with the latter, both my characters use sarcasm a lot and it can be interesting when it goes right over peoples heads
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/me raises a sardonic eyebrow at Rob's comment.
How about that for sarcasm?
On the subject of misunderstandings, there are a few cultural differences that have had me twitching before I realised what the other person was thinking.
Shrugging appears to be an "I don't know" in the States, whereas in my experience in Britain, it's more "I don't care."
We also had a character in RE-AW once who got punched in the face for saying "Whatever." To her it meant "I don't mind" but to me it meant "You are boring me. Please shut up." So Eva thumped her one.
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How exactly does one positively identify an eyebrow is sardonic?
Contextual cues don't get you all the way there unless you have a good sense of an individual's tendencies.
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Shrugging appears to be an "I don't know" in the States, whereas in my experience in Britain, it's more "I don't care."
Actually in the US it means either/or. You would know the difference based more on other cues, like facial expression and further body language.