Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Scherezad]

Hi all;

Only have a few moments to spare on my break, so I thought to ask you all a question about my RP habits. Consider it an opinion poll.

My character has, you might say, affected speech. It's challenging to write and fills up buffers with, um, with, well uh, ruh, rep. repetition. And, um, and pauses. And junk. This is due to her brain trauma, and it's fairly integral to the character (though not entirely so), so I want to keep it, but I'm aware of how frustrating it can be to have to wade through all of that to pull out the meaning of the sentence.

Can anyone else think of another way to relay her speech pathology? I've been toying with ideas, but, well, uh, it, it's hard. Properly, she, um, she, she would uh, well.

She'd talk, uh, well, like

like, um, you know.

slower.

And that'd be even more annoying, but would at least break the blocks into smaller pieces, making it easier to digest. It'd also mean she'd likely be interrupted more, which is much more realistic - people with speech impediments are constantly being interrupted. Still, buffer scroll.

Any opinions or thoughts?

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Keep doing it the way you are. Flooding with lots of line breaks makes it harder for others to keep up with previous points from other participants.

The human brain is remarkably good at focusing out the repetitions and so forth that Schere uses to represent her speech. After awhile I barely see them.

[Gottii]

RP is often not efficient, by nature.

Keep, um, well, I...I really like what you're doing.  You, umm, you...you should continue, if you want, of course.

[Louella Dougans]

I like Scherezad's speech pattern, it makes her more memorable. I think there's only a couple other characters that speak in a recognisable fashion.

I sometimes like, totes use like, words and stuff. Totes.

Other people, like Synthetic Cultist, use oddly Capitalised Letters in a sentence to Give emphasis on things, sometimes Not the expected Word.

[Adreena Madeveda]

I tend to consider
the repeated use
of clogging a channel
like that
bad form

Besides, even if sometimes that makes Scherezad difficult to understand, in a "Did she start a new sentence without finishing the first one ?" way, as far as I'm concerned it only helps me interact with this character : I had a friend with a heavy stutter, had to be a tad concentrate not to lose the meaning of his sentences midway after several seconds of "t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t". That a similar attention is required with Scherezad is perfectly fine

[Anslol]

Keep as is. Win Schere is win :3

[BloodBird]

I like Scherezad's speech pattern, it makes her more memorable. I think there's only a couple other characters that speak in a recognisable fashion.

I sometimes like, totes use like, words and stuff. Totes.

Other people, like Synthetic Cultist, use oddly Capitalised Letters in a sentence to Give emphasis on things, sometimes Not the expected Word.

This.

Never change that awesome thing you do.

BOTH of you.

[Aria Jenneth]

Affected speech helps give a character character. Do keep.

It's particularly neat if you play with it a bit. For example, your character might start speech therapy, and slowly improve (gradually reduce frequency of affected bits), but relapse completely when under stress. Alternatively, the stresses of capsuleer life might prevent any meaningful progress at all.

[Makkal]

Using exposition would probably dilute the effect and doesn't fit well into the streaming text boxes EVE uses. Breaking it up into different lines makes it more obtrusive, not less.

[Silver Night]

You could also do something like starting to using very short sentences, which has some of the breaking effect of separate lines without being spammy. This could be in addition to her regular speech pattern.

[Esna Pitoojee]

"As is" works fine. It's quite clear in RP to me that she is not speaking, to put it bluntly, normally.

[Scherezad]

It's particularly neat if you play with it a bit. For example, your character might start speech therapy, and slowly improve (gradually reduce frequency of affected bits), but relapse completely when under stress. Alternatively, the stresses of capsuleer life might prevent any meaningful progress at all.

I do this in a few ways, though I tend to be a little over-subtle about it. She's a little aphasic (as am I) and will space out sometimes; when under stress she'll be unable to extract meaning out of words and will tend to talk in a bit of a word salad. Abnem ep added all ut ut oss! In general though, I keep those things relatively low-key, so I'm not sure how much everyone is aware of it.

I'm glad everyone isn't displeased with how she speaks normally, though! I will fight my tendency to increase obnoxiousness. This does leave an aspect of her life unexplored though, and it's a big one for people with speech pathology: The ability to finish your own sentences. Most people will finish a stuttering person's sentence instead of letting them do so on their own. It's central to a sense of self-worth for many of these people, and it's very important to Scherezad. Not sure how to bring that into gameplay, though.

[Gwen Ikiryo]

I've been trying to slowly phase out my own characters speech issues (due to being hassled about it OOCly by a couple people, in the most part) but if you don't get that/can suffer it better then me, then keep it the way it is! It gives her a unique flair.

...I can empathize with feeling like you're spamming the chat, though. Sometimes I feel like I'm dumping huge blocks of text in the chat, when my character reaches her point in a sort of roundabout, awkward way, rather then cutting directly to it like many people about.

[Sepherim]

I think it's very nice to have such displays of "strange ways of expressing things". It gives depth and believability to the communication and is fun and interesting to interact with.

[Morwen Lagann]

Do not get rid of it unless it is through Schere actually getting better. It's a very distinctive trait that makes her stand out, and it's nice to see someone who's different but successfully so.

It would be interesting to see it change over time if you did do that, though.