Doing it wrong is a pretty subjective (and loaded term). Personally I have not had the opportunity to rp with you or to witness you rping, so all I can really drop into this discussion is 'wisdom' I learned by being an over enthusiastic annoyance in my early roleplaying years (World of Darkness makes for cringe-worthy 14 year old roleplay histories).
First and foremost, and I am still learning this in my career to this day, your excitement may not be shared, OOC or IC. Some people are just there to poop in the punch, but it may just be that some fascinating gem of lore or other artefact just isn't as beguiling to everyone else. Pushing the point when you're getting little to no response will just lead to you feeling you are 'doinitrong' when in fact it is just a difference of interests. Try dropping it in casually from time to time to fish for interest, or even start an IGS thread (good luck on the mess we call the dust514 IGS) to gather interest before arranging live sessions.
Character 'gimmicks' are left right and center. I want to go on the record as stating I support 'never say doinitrong', and merely point out that the use of gimmickry (I am defined by possession X, I am old and that is my primary character trait etc.) is lazy characterisation, but by no means wrong.
Imagine you are in an office. You work here, and you know the people in the cubicles around you. For each of them you know half a dozen interesting features; Jan to your left has 3 kids, earns more than her husband, likes beach holidays (she keeps showing you those snaps from 2010), has a bit of a horsey laugh but a great sense of humour, goes to church on sundays and despises political discussions. You know this much about everyone around you, just from working with them, through incidental contact over lunch or the odd work meal. The next 'circle of hell' (cubicles further away), includes people you know maybe two interesting things about, and mostly through observation or hearsay - here you characterise lazily, not out of sloth, but out of neccessity. Bill is a sleaze, because he's always hitting on Jan despite her prominent positioning of family photos at her workstation. Jim is sporty, as he always hits the gym before work to 'improve his mood'. In each case you identify a facet and a link (likely tenuous). The last circle of office hell social connectivity, outside of any friends you may have outside of work who happen to share the office, includes complete hearsay, or the 'uni-gimmick characters'. Sandy is a lesbian, David is obsessive, Michael supports an out of town team. None of these things should be character defining, and in some cases are private information that has entered the wild. Here people are not people, but are characterised as the inevitable product of an anchored stereotype.
Now let's get back to EVE roleplay. The circles of office hell reflect the circles of character perception. The deepest your character can be perceived to be is one step removed from the center of the circles - your mind. Even if I read a full document detailing every living moment you imagined from your character, I would still be a step removed from your mind's eye view. Now there is no need, therefore, to know every waking moment, but there are templates I personally use for character construction, to ensure that people can derive real information about my mannerisms and their origins, or infer their own meaning (right or wrong). A sample template could be based on the EVE character creator:
Race (top level abstract of your upbringing, build on PF to place yourself on the spectrum of typical to atypical, embrace the shades of grey but don't feel the need to be special yet)
Bloodline (again, an abstraction of who you are in potentia. Shades of grey, embrace them. Still not special yet, you are one of billions even if you're a tap dancing gimp biomodded to vomit rainbows)
Schooling (Starting to get there, you're an immortal, so you're the top fraction of a percent of all students in your institution, and are by your very nature a precious resource. Or you're a dust merc. Same rules. How did this happen? How did you feel? Did it clash with your upbringing, racial expectations, parent's hopes for you? You're starting to define a unique individual)
First Tutorial you Chose (If dust, bit of a moot point, replace with your first dropsuit choice. Eitherway - you had an attraction to something. Build this into your character. Are they a speed freak? Lumbering hard man/woman? Fickle and easly distracted? Behavioural choices and ticks can start to be developed, anchored on this element - and in return, you may spawn additional life events to anchor these one to solidify their 'reality'. Here we are defining the ID - the gut instinct, whether it acts out of passion or logic, or any other motivator)
Favourite Tutorial (Again, substitute dropsuit/weapon for dusties. Further development. You rational self, your ability to choose. Is it weak/strong? Has it led you to success, failure or somewhere in between? Do you trust your own judgement based on hard results? This is your character's ego we're developing, their sense of self and the ability to analyse the self in terms of the world and people around them)
What you did then (when you first started out in the big bad world of being immortal, what did you do? Did power corrupt? Did you hang on to your previous life or cut all ties? How important your history is to you may determine how frequently others are exposed to it, determining the 'visible aspects' you put on show out of habit or design)
What you do now (What we do in the present is usually the reality of the near past forcing you to compromise on your future. Are you happy with your lot in life? Have you achieved tyour goals? How do you feel about this. Essentially, how self-actualised are you as a character, and either way, what personality quirks have conspired with.against, or been harness to provide your current situation. Here we define how you view your life - journey, effectively over, a mess, a triumph. How you present this to others will likely differ, but this root feeling will colour even your masks you wear socially)
What you hope to do soon (Do you want to improve your lot? Change the world? Change the cluster!? Big or small, this aspect of character development is likely going to be the first place others interact with you meaningfully. Hopes and dreams are malleable and frwquently require assistance, coercion or cooperation. The past is fairly immutable, but becomes important in the game of give and take, emotional blackmail or building friendships based on common history. Pay close attention to your character's desires and how you present them, these are your 'five minutes of fame' in the mind of each new individual you come across, and will colour their perceptions of you thereafter.)
What your end goals are (Intimate hopes and fears. Not your Reddit bucket list or Tweeted 'before I die'. Genuine, visceral, before death goals that have a profound meaning to you. Find true faith? True love? Make some sense of the world? 'Find yourself'? Make 'it'? This is something people should, if they care to, be guessing. It is something so mediocre or grand, when compared against the reality and timescale, that others would probably scoff at it. It may not be embarrassing, but it is of such scope and personal inspiration that others likely just won't 'get it'. This is the deep end of dreamland, but if you are driven by some far future goal, this may be a very important developmental point for your character, and knowledge and acceptance of this goal as laudable, realistic or already having been achieved may be the foundation of the strongest IC relationships, platonic or otherwise (for instance true lovers will probably share their most intimate goals with one another, and thus may self actualise ICly simply because of this, so long as it lasts))
So there you have it. My unofficial and completely unauthorised characterisation map. Sorry it is a bit of a wall of text, but I thought it best to explain precisely where I am coming from. As I have said, depth is optional, depth is not necessarily effort and depth for the sake of depth is somewhat of a cardinal literary sin. Choose how deep you want to go, how realistic (setting appropriateness not-withstanding) you want your character to be and go with it. The above discussion is a personal framework of mine, based off of a previous writing hobby and 6 years of wasting my time in media education/jobs. Your character is yours alone, and doing it wrong is subjective up to a point.
If you want a bit of extra reading, look up Auteur Theory to read a little into the interplay of audience, director and writer in the creation of perception, specifically with regards to early to near-modern cinema.
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Topic: i require criticism & advice! (Read 4465 times)