How's My Driving | April 2013

[ironwood]

Spring has been sprung! All over the Western hemisphere, flowers are blooming, bunnies are bounding, and the little clickity-clack of rper fingers at keyboards is in the air! To kick off the season in style, it's time for our third HMD here at Tu Shanshu.

How's My Driving?
While each and every character must have an HMD page available, we offer a gamewide HMD once every calendar quarter. This is an opportunity to get together and discuss IC interpretations and portrayals in a respectful, beneficial fashion. In a nutshell, it's a chance to see how we're doing in the grand scheme of things.

There are a few ground rules to cover off before we can start:

• Participation in the quarterly HMD is 100% optional.
  
• Be respectful, anon or not. It's a lot easier to give and receive crit if all parties are making it a discussion of it rather than an argument.
  
• IP logging is off and anonymous commenting is on. You can offer crit signed-in if you like, but the option's there.
  

That's it, that's all!

And, to make things easier, here's a handy-dandy codeset:

<big><b><i>Player Name</i></b></big> <i>Character Name:</i> <i>Canon:</i> <i>User Name:</i> <I>Focus:</i> Optional. Do you have particular concerns about your portrayal that you'd like to be the focus of crit? You can link any threads you'd like a second opinion on here. If you're looking for structural feedback, or would prefer things like grammar not be mentioned, put it here.

Comments

[cowled]

Yeah. I think it might be a side effect of not having any of his team here? Reid does default to 'walking encyclopedia' when he doesn't have a deep human connection with people and it's sort of a hard balance to find.

You definitely make a good point. I'll give that a try. Ty, Kateling. <33

SO LATE TO THE PARTY.

[mopirates_moproblems]

Jenry
Character Name: James Norrington
Canon: Pirates of the Carribean Caribbean
User Name: mopirates_moproblems
Focus: Still settling in, but let me know how I'm doing! I'll try to get my activity up this week; real life is kicking my butt.

[heinously]

Ida
Character Name: Albel Nox
Canon: Star Ocean: Till The End of Time
User Name: heinously
Focus: I definitely need to work on improving my shaky activity as of late, which includes tagging out/staying reliable with backtags that I've let sit for a moment too long. Any feedback on Albel's voice itself is much appreciated, especially if my portrayal of what relatively little in-game canon material seems to be in conflict with others. Harmony is what I'm most concerned about; there's a significant number of overlapping facets to Albel's character and his psyche is fucked up in a major way, so naturally it can get difficult to expose all these complexities while remaining as true to the original as possible.

And of course, my personal hmd is right here, if you wish to offer crit/suggestions/comments anonymously!

[wherethestoryis]

Clark's probably the character besides mine I know best, so a quick note before I run off to Real Life: thread-stalking, I've seen a ton of 'Kal gets serious' stuff lately and you're hitting that just fine.

If I had to find fault, I think it would be that while you do regular-adult-guy aspects (both Kal and Clark personas), the sarcasm and irony are less apparent. Remember how he is in the newsroom and on the reporting job. I'd say go back through scans and any you really like for the snark, try to emulate.

[willofjustice]

K
Character Name: Amelia wil Tesla Saillune
Canon: Slayers
User Name: willofjustice
Focus: I've played Amelia off and on for years, but lost her voice for a couple before I came here and am now trying to get it back. Canon review is helping, but I always worry about hitting it. ^^; Doing my best to create a balance in her -- as she progresses through the series, she still maintains kind of a childlike openness/optimism, but there's a sense of development, too.

[hackingyoursensors]

Ellie
Character Name: Dick Grayson
Canon: Young Justice
User Name: hackingyoursensors
Focus: I'm worried about everything so...

Also I have a private HMD if you'd be more comfortable there.

[histruename]

Ash
Character Name: Hellboy
Canon: Hellboy (Comics)
User Name: histruename

Character Name: Raphael
Canon: TMNT (2k3)
User Name: meanandgreen

Focus: Mostly I'm just worried about being boring to tag, or if my tags are too verbose. Also I know my activity sucks, but I'd like to hear about it if it's bothering people. Tips for characterization/rp style/whatever are always good. So yeah... I'll take anything!

[fatedchaos]

Hey there!

I've noticed that while I think you have Fenris's voice down pretty well, there are a few things that you could keep in mind. This is just from first impressions after reading through his entry.

I've noticed you used far more contractions with Fenris than necessary. Not that he never uses them in his speech, but Fenris is a very careful speaker. He likes to speak clearly and emphasize his words somewhat, so he's more likely to say "I am" than "I'm", "they are" than "they're", etc.

Another thing I noticed was this tendency to have him hesitate or trip over his words, most notable in his thread with Molly. He does get flustered, especially if Hawke is piling compliments onto him, but he is usually a pretty collected and eloquent speaker unless there are slavers around, because fuck those guys. Like I said earlier, he chooses his words carefully, so I don't think he'd be that hesitant or flustered so easily.

[fatedchaos]

Ashe
Character Name: Vanessa Cleveland
Canon: Daughters of the Moon
User Name: fatedchaos
Focus: I know I haven't gotten her out as much as I've gotten Finnick out, so I'm hoping to work on that a bit.

Character Name: Finnick Odair
Canon: The Hunger Games
User Name: insecrets
Focus: I don't really know. I worry that I might be making him act too serious rather than always flirty and whatnot, but I also figure that he's not really under threat of President Snow killing his loved ones anymore, so it might not be as relevant to keep that persona on all the time.

[squint]

Aaaah, okay. That's actually good advice, just to watch the movie again and see @_@ Thank you!

[squint]

Thank you. ;_; He's a quiet ol' muse bu I'm working on bringing him out more!

[suoxi]

Let inara help you out bb B]

[gaudy]

Thank you for coming to me!

Fenris uses contractions quite frequently in game. They're peppered throughout his dialogue, especially the casual inter-companion stuff. (He tends to say "I'm" and "I am" about 50/50, as far as I can tell.) Is there anywhere specifically that you feel like I've contracted things too much or too frequently?

I'll definitely keep the hesitation in mind and work to avoid doing it in the future, though!

[soulwound]

Ooh, I probably should have taken a look at his dialogue page. I was just going off of his cut scenes, so please disregard that then. It seems as though it's more or less accurate enough as 50/50 in your threads.

I'm glad I could help!

[andaway]

Thank you dear, I'm just always caught on the cross-fire between 'too much sarcasm' and 'not enough' with him. I will check back on some issues this weekend to get a better grasp on his sense of humor again ^^

[bondsprofoundly]

Egg

Character Name: Castiel
Canon: Supernatural
User Name: bondsprofoundly
Focus: Any feedback on Cas would be great; I play him a lot in private rps and gdocs and stuff, and end up going AU with a lot of things so I never seem to get the hang of playing him in a journal-based setting. Also I'm afraid I don't get his "not quite human but not stupid just unaware of social cues" down pat, so anything there would be fantastic. DON'T FEEL OBLIGATED TO THO

Character Name: Raphael
Canon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012
User Name: seriouslytwisted
Focus: Anything would be great!