Hey Charles! So this is something I've debated bringing up for a good while now, mostly since I figured you were already aware of it, and I thought it'd just work itself out over time. But it hasn't, and it's starting to become a real issue, so I was hoping maybe we'd be able to talk out a solution.
You haven't really been active in Tana for a while now. It started mostly in November, which tbh pretty much everyone in DWRP stopped rping for a good month or so. But then holidays happened and you had a lot of rl stuff going on, which is obviously all well and good -- and I'm only mentioning it since I don't want you think I'm complaining about taking break for any of that! All of that was fine!
But after you joined Trustfell, it started to become really obvious that you were relegating Tanagura stuff to the back of the line. I've always been of the opinion that rp should be fun, so playing what you think is the most fun should take priority, but I'm also not gonna lie and say it didn't hurt to see you racking up literally thousands of comments in another game, while I was lucky to see even a tag a week in Tanagura.
I've said before that I don't mind slow tags, and for the most part I really don't. I'm slow as balls too on a good day, and I know you've mentioned that Rin is your hardest character to play of your currently active ones. But to be honest, I'm really disappointed with how that ended up affecting the Stalker plot, which I had been setting up and planning since way back in Summer. I only intended it to last for two or three months, but I couldn't move it any faster without being forced to handwave all of Rin's involvement. And since the plot itself was originally something orchestrated by Mephisto to test Rin (nevermind the fact that Rin is Arietta's closest CR), it didn't really make sense for Rin to not be there.
One of the bigger problems was with trying to get Rin involved with Mephisto's side of the plot, which ended up not happening at all, since the thread in question basically never happened. It took so long to get started I actually forgot what direction I was going in with it, and there was no opportunity to follow-up Mephisto's biting comments (ie. the implication that he needs to watch over Arietta better) because a thread that happened ICly back in November didn't get to the main point until February. And even that main point was basically handwaved.
But the biggest problem goes back to Arietta not telling Rin what was happening. I managed to come up with a convenient excuse (ie. Rin's kidnapping) but for the most part, that wasn't at all intended to be a plot point. Considering all their development up to now, Arietta would have absolutely told Rin about what was happening well back in December when she spoke to Gyro, but for OOC reasons, we weren't able to thread consistently enough for that to happen. I felt like I was being forced to justify why Arietta was behaving OOCly by not telling Rin in the thread where he did find out, and it was frustrating to have most of Rin's anger centered on something I didn't really have any control over.
You've said before that you're invested in sticking it out with Tana until the end, and obviously I don't want to encourage you to drop. But I do think you need to re-evaluate how you're playing in the game so that even with a slow tagging speed, things can still happen at a realistic pace. Things like taking on less threads at a time, limiting yourself to tagging out to better control the number of threads you have, or even setting thread goals/time limits like "I'm going to get this thread to X point within the month before wrapping it up".
I know there have been multiple times in the past few months where you've talked about doing open logs, or starting more threads -- and I feel like shit for constantly pointing out that we already have like 5 ongoing threads that haven't moved in the weeks since we started them. I'm not lying when I say you're my favorite person to tag with in the game, which is why I always shoot your tags back practically the second I receive them. If it were feasible for us to have like 20 threads at once, I'd be the first to jump on it.
But like right now -- that Tastietta smut thread is already two months old, and Arietta still has her clothes on (which you actually missed in your last tag, but I preferred to improvise around it so the thread could move forward). And even though there's literally a boatload of stuff I've been wanting to do with Rin and Mephisto, most of their threads don't get very far. I gotta be honest, it makes me feel like you don't actually want to rp with me. And really, if that's the case -- just tell me that. We can plot around each other if we have to, and it's easy to find reasons for why Mephisto wouldn't interact with Rin if you're not fond of him.
I don't really know how to wrap this up, but I'm sorry it got so long. But I mainly wanted to address this here rather than on plurk since it's harder for me to word myself right when typing on the fly, and I don't want to come off sounding like a demanding asshole begging for threads (which if I do, I'm sorry).
Okay so I'm going to shoot out a broad response here but if you'd like to do a discussion let's get into a private plurk or IM or something and work that out. I know a lot of the issue here is that I'm generally bad with OOC communication and I do think doing that would be a step towards fixing that. So like I'm glad that you reached out because I get where that's a legitimate concern for you. And I'm going to apologize in advance if I come off excuse-y because that's not my intent and I know it's been a serious issue. I've been sort of assuming that I can re-gusto and re-balance how I've done things in Tanagura by sort of just plowing through like I usually do but if it's become an issue enough to upset you (and it does upset me to) then it's clear that yeah I should probably reassess my thread balance and allocation in plot things in particular.
So yeah basically up front, you're totally right and this week in particular has shown me that because while it's not been my slowest Tana week ever I have ended up with 10ish Tana threads at the bottom of my inbox for several days past when I just wasn't doing any tags for a few days. Which means it persisted past when I was just sort of in a general funk, which means it's worth considering and I'm totally open to talking out specifics with you in particular to keep fair.
That said to go in order of relevance here:
- I do not have anything against you, playing with you, or playing off Mephisto or anything like that. I was surprised when I got Mephisto and I was unsure early on how to interact with him because of the 12+ month rewards where I confess because I never thought I would get a Mephisto I didn't give terribly much thought to how Rin would interact with him with his different memories. I've settled into a point I hope feels more acceptable now? But if you're still feeling hesitation there I sincerely apologize. I know I'm feeling more legit about threads with him in my normal rotation now. And of course I hop my love for Arietta goes unspoken. You're my main RP partner in Tanagura and at any given time I have the most going on with you and the most eagerness for stuff with you so trust me that when I am doing Rin tags I am bouncing on yours and boomeranging as best I'm able / have the mojo for.
- Holy shit I'm so sorry about that with the stalker plot. I confess, I had no idea that the intention was for Mephisto to even have the testing Rin component to it until the very end, and while I understand the secrecy, if I knew the intent before hand I like to think I would have handled that differently. But that's also in the past so I can't change that and I'm deeply sorry for putting you in an uncomfortable spot. Like, seriously. I would not have wanted to do that. I'll make sure to communicate better about things in future, like I was going for with the kidnapping thing (which I did in order to get a new direction and for a while I was feeling a new lease on Tanagura life.
- This is the lamest excuse I know (I'm not trying to excuse, more contextualize) but trustfell was my first limited run game and I went in with unknown expectations. And for the first several weeks of it, I actually was feeling (and maybe doing? You can object to how it felt for me if it's factually untrue) more motivated to do all my other RP stuff like Tanagura than I had been in a while because it was something so new for me and reinvigorated my feel for the hobby. The later weeks I was aware that I was being a shit though and I did feel bad. The fact is that I didn't necessarily expect to survive until the endgame (1) and that if/when I do that again I would handle it better with thread limitations and possibly even a started "I'm going to be slower" hiatus now that I know how all consuming the tail end of it can feel. Because after a certain point I admit it was less a practical reality and more an emotional reality because I also basically didn't do meme stuff or stuff at my other game (Sol Raveh) either, the later of which I got a similar complaint about holding up a plot from a similarly beloved RP partner and that was also shit of me.
Honestly I've never liked a time cap system but that might be a solid idea, as well as thread limitation. Normally I actually like thread limitation per person (I always feel bad when we end up with a bajillion things at once because I feel like that both can hold up things and makes for confusing inter-continuity of them ideally it might be better to keep it to round about three if I was actually cooking with gas)
So yeah let's discuss wherever you'd want to discuss if you feel we oughta on structurally I hear you and will probably change how I go about things in future.
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You haven't really been active in Tana for a while now. It started mostly in November, which tbh pretty much everyone in DWRP stopped rping for a good month or so. But then holidays happened and you had a lot of rl stuff going on, which is obviously all well and good -- and I'm only mentioning it since I don't want you think I'm complaining about taking break for any of that! All of that was fine!
But after you joined Trustfell, it started to become really obvious that you were relegating Tanagura stuff to the back of the line. I've always been of the opinion that rp should be fun, so playing what you think is the most fun should take priority, but I'm also not gonna lie and say it didn't hurt to see you racking up literally thousands of comments in another game, while I was lucky to see even a tag a week in Tanagura.
I've said before that I don't mind slow tags, and for the most part I really don't. I'm slow as balls too on a good day, and I know you've mentioned that Rin is your hardest character to play of your currently active ones. But to be honest, I'm really disappointed with how that ended up affecting the Stalker plot, which I had been setting up and planning since way back in Summer. I only intended it to last for two or three months, but I couldn't move it any faster without being forced to handwave all of Rin's involvement. And since the plot itself was originally something orchestrated by Mephisto to test Rin (nevermind the fact that Rin is Arietta's closest CR), it didn't really make sense for Rin to not be there.
One of the bigger problems was with trying to get Rin involved with Mephisto's side of the plot, which ended up not happening at all, since the thread in question basically never happened. It took so long to get started I actually forgot what direction I was going in with it, and there was no opportunity to follow-up Mephisto's biting comments (ie. the implication that he needs to watch over Arietta better) because a thread that happened ICly back in November didn't get to the main point until February. And even that main point was basically handwaved.
But the biggest problem goes back to Arietta not telling Rin what was happening. I managed to come up with a convenient excuse (ie. Rin's kidnapping) but for the most part, that wasn't at all intended to be a plot point. Considering all their development up to now, Arietta would have absolutely told Rin about what was happening well back in December when she spoke to Gyro, but for OOC reasons, we weren't able to thread consistently enough for that to happen. I felt like I was being forced to justify why Arietta was behaving OOCly by not telling Rin in the thread where he did find out, and it was frustrating to have most of Rin's anger centered on something I didn't really have any control over.
You've said before that you're invested in sticking it out with Tana until the end, and obviously I don't want to encourage you to drop. But I do think you need to re-evaluate how you're playing in the game so that even with a slow tagging speed, things can still happen at a realistic pace. Things like taking on less threads at a time, limiting yourself to tagging out to better control the number of threads you have, or even setting thread goals/time limits like "I'm going to get this thread to X point within the month before wrapping it up".
I know there have been multiple times in the past few months where you've talked about doing open logs, or starting more threads -- and I feel like shit for constantly pointing out that we already have like 5 ongoing threads that haven't moved in the weeks since we started them. I'm not lying when I say you're my favorite person to tag with in the game, which is why I always shoot your tags back practically the second I receive them. If it were feasible for us to have like 20 threads at once, I'd be the first to jump on it.
But like right now -- that Tastietta smut thread is already two months old, and Arietta still has her clothes on (which you actually missed in your last tag, but I preferred to improvise around it so the thread could move forward). And even though there's literally a boatload of stuff I've been wanting to do with Rin and Mephisto, most of their threads don't get very far. I gotta be honest, it makes me feel like you don't actually want to rp with me. And really, if that's the case -- just tell me that. We can plot around each other if we have to, and it's easy to find reasons for why Mephisto wouldn't interact with Rin if you're not fond of him.
I don't really know how to wrap this up, but I'm sorry it got so long. But I mainly wanted to address this here rather than on plurk since it's harder for me to word myself right when typing on the fly, and I don't want to come off sounding like a demanding asshole begging for threads (which if I do, I'm sorry).
no subject
So yeah basically up front, you're totally right and this week in particular has shown me that because while it's not been my slowest Tana week ever I have ended up with 10ish Tana threads at the bottom of my inbox for several days past when I just wasn't doing any tags for a few days. Which means it persisted past when I was just sort of in a general funk, which means it's worth considering and I'm totally open to talking out specifics with you in particular to keep fair.
That said to go in order of relevance here:
- I do not have anything against you, playing with you, or playing off Mephisto or anything like that. I was surprised when I got Mephisto and I was unsure early on how to interact with him because of the 12+ month rewards where I confess because I never thought I would get a Mephisto I didn't give terribly much thought to how Rin would interact with him with his different memories. I've settled into a point I hope feels more acceptable now? But if you're still feeling hesitation there I sincerely apologize. I know I'm feeling more legit about threads with him in my normal rotation now. And of course I hop my love for Arietta goes unspoken. You're my main RP partner in Tanagura and at any given time I have the most going on with you and the most eagerness for stuff with you so trust me that when I am doing Rin tags I am bouncing on yours and boomeranging as best I'm able / have the mojo for.
- Holy shit I'm so sorry about that with the stalker plot. I confess, I had no idea that the intention was for Mephisto to even have the testing Rin component to it until the very end, and while I understand the secrecy, if I knew the intent before hand I like to think I would have handled that differently. But that's also in the past so I can't change that and I'm deeply sorry for putting you in an uncomfortable spot. Like, seriously. I would not have wanted to do that. I'll make sure to communicate better about things in future, like I was going for with the kidnapping thing (which I did in order to get a new direction and for a while I was feeling a new lease on Tanagura life.
- This is the lamest excuse I know (I'm not trying to excuse, more contextualize) but trustfell was my first limited run game and I went in with unknown expectations. And for the first several weeks of it, I actually was feeling (and maybe doing? You can object to how it felt for me if it's factually untrue) more motivated to do all my other RP stuff like Tanagura than I had been in a while because it was something so new for me and reinvigorated my feel for the hobby. The later weeks I was aware that I was being a shit though and I did feel bad. The fact is that I didn't necessarily expect to survive until the endgame (1) and that if/when I do that again I would handle it better with thread limitations and possibly even a started "I'm going to be slower" hiatus now that I know how all consuming the tail end of it can feel. Because after a certain point I admit it was less a practical reality and more an emotional reality because I also basically didn't do meme stuff or stuff at my other game (Sol Raveh) either, the later of which I got a similar complaint about holding up a plot from a similarly beloved RP partner and that was also shit of me.
Honestly I've never liked a time cap system but that might be a solid idea, as well as thread limitation. Normally I actually like thread limitation per person (I always feel bad when we end up with a bajillion things at once because I feel like that both can hold up things and makes for confusing inter-continuity of them ideally it might be better to keep it to round about three if I was actually cooking with gas)
So yeah let's discuss wherever you'd want to discuss if you feel we oughta on structurally I hear you and will probably change how I go about things in future.