How's My Driving | July 2013

[ironwood]

Three months have already passed since the last HMD? You betcha! This means that it's time to kick off the fourth quarterly gamewide HMD here in Tu Shanshu! Things are getting structured a little differently this time, so read on for details.

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.
  
• New! We ask that each concrit provided consist of one positive and one constructive bit of feedback. Bring up something that you like about that player, and in the same comment provide something that you feel they could work on. This is to help round out the feedback and provide a better experience all around.
  

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

roy and company! (said company is comprised of Batman, Space Captains and Ear Collectors)

[jirk]

Roy
Character Name: Bruce Wayne
Canon: DCU
User Name: cowled ✘ thread tracking ✘ anon enabled/ip off HMD
Focus: I'm always interested in hearing people's opinions on how I'm managing the duality of his nature – that being the genius/billionaire/playboy/philanthropist and 'The Goddamned Batman'. I don't believe in making Bruce infallible the way he's written in the comics, but am I venturing into the realm of too incompetent? ALL THESE CONCERNS ARE CONCERNS I HAVE. Also re: visibility. Bruce has suffered some heavy CR losses in the last couple months and he's basically gone underground as a result (as you do) so I'm concerned that he's not getting out as much as he should. Thoughts? Also: he's been in the game now for... you know, twenty-someodd days less than a year, so is he still sounding/acting/reacting like him, or have I strayed too far off the beaten path that is ye olde Batdouche?

Character Name: Aisha al-Fadhil
Canon: The Losers
User Name: emasculates ✘ thread tracking ✘anon enabled/ip off HMD
Focus: Aisha is another character that's been in the game for more than ten months now, and I'm the first to admit she's made very little in the matter of waves in that time since she's reclusive, surly and—well, a walking trigger warning for a variety of subjects. (Her HMD doubles as an opt-out post if anyone's curious). For those of you that have threaded with her, does she seem consistent? Do people find it easy to thread against her or am I not pulling my weight in the threads and relying too much on passivity? Any thoughts people have would be super appreciated.

Character Name: Jim Kirk
Canon: Star Trek XI/XII sort of.
User Name: jirk ✘ thread tracking ✘ anon enabled/ip off HMD
Focus: Whoo boy. Okay, right now I'm massively concerned that Jim's being too much of a whiner emo baby instead of the sassy Captain we all know and want to kick in the teeth love. His canonpoint is post the universe-canon 2013 video game and takes into account the also universe-canon comics to an extent, and he had Spock dump the events of Star Trek: Into Darkness in his brain (captain's orders!) and that's massively shaken his confidence. It's not exactly a character arc I've written before so I'm constantly on tenterhooks as to whether or not it's coming across decently and not overly dramatic and/or attention-whorey so if anyone has any pointers or cues about how I'm handling that I would love to hear it.

[constants]

Crit for Jim! Because he's the only one I know well enough to actually crit.

Let me just start off by saying that I had things to crit you on and then went "well I should just go check that handy dandy thread tracker and make sure my crit is valid!" And then it, you know, wasn't because you were doing all the things I thought of. Because you're just sort of flawless like that. So I'm going to start off by saying that I really love your Jim! I think right now he's really solid on being sassy and hitting on women (esp. sassy with the bit running into the bar in the thread with Spock and Castiel and then commenting about the blacksmith)(yes I did actually scan or read all the June activity posted to your thread tracker, sorry for being such a creep I swear it's all in the name of crit and love). I'm not sure if all your June activity is in there, but at least from what I noticed it looks like you might not actually be carrying through the weight of his known future enough? Certainly he'd still be all funny and stuff, but except for the log right after and the thread with Bruce, I didn't notice a lot of it coming up. Again, this might be because the post isn't up to date/complete.

I'm sorry for that giant paragraph of text! Bottom line, I really like your Jim and he's fantastic and you're fantastic! Depending on if your thread tracking post is up to date or not you might be able to add a bit more Into Darkness induced emo into his character.

[jirk]

Do you mind if I ask what the things you thought of were? Because I'm def interested!

And yeah, my big concern is not over-doing the ID trauma so I tend to go vastly the other way, I don't really like drawing attention to my character's problems and I get nervous and jittery that people might think I'm running around looking for attention when I do it, haha. I did update my thread trackers though, since... I didn't realize I hadn't, oops.

The trauma mostly surfaces in threads with his close CR (a lot of the threads with Kyle and/or Spock touch on it) and it's almost all introspection, since Jim tries to project this aura of 'bulletproof' to everyone around him, but I'm glad to know I'm not pushing it too far in the direction I was worried about, and I'll try to make it a little more visible.

<33 ty bb you are fabulous and ilu.

[constants]

UHH I'm pretty sure they were doing more network tags (I feel like Jim would be that one person on Facebook who likes every status and comments on at least half of them), hitting on more girls, uuuuuh there might have been one more but I forgot overnight.

And I went and skimmed some of the newly added stuff (on my phone so that slows me down and I couldn't touch all of it) but I think that the stuff added rounds if out pretty well. And yeah, I get that be wouldn't really bring it up with other people, but I was thinking a bit more on how it internally affects his day to day choices too. Like, what has shifted? Has anything shifted? Or is he trying to sort of just make decisions without that information? I don't think I'm doing a great job of getting the idea in my brain across, but that's sort of it (its now 6AM and I woke up sometime before 5 so brain is nooot functioning at 100%).

[jirk]

I actually see Jim as the sort of person who can't still long enough to spend a significant chunk of time talking on the network (it's too much like paperwork!). I prefer doing logs with him because body language is such a huge part of his personal charisma and he likes the face-to-face so he can read/gauge people a little more intimately than the consoles allow. But I can definitely try tagging around a bit more there!

(omg your poor phone, I pity having to load some of those threads on it shriek)

Also: spoilers henceforth, highlight for visibility!

It has affected him a great deal! It's possible I'm not conveying it properly, but Jim's actually been finding himself being overwhelmed with fear quite a bit lately and it's lead to him being markedly less reckless than usual, which is bothering him so much because he knows it's because of the fact he watched himself die and he doesn't know how to fix it. Being afraid for his life is a seriously novel concept for him. He's used to just falling back on his luck and natural skill to make it through anything by the seat of his pants, so those little moments where he has to stop and remind himself to breathe are really taking their toll on their psyche. Of course, it's actually making him more reckless in some respects, because every time he goes 'I'm afraid' to himself he turns around and pushes himself past his comfort level because he refuses to give into or tolerate that apprehension.


... so yes. I hope that helps justify/rationalize some of my choices! And thank you so much for the feedback ugh I love talking about stuff like this. /reaches!

[emmingly]

NO SEE THAT WAS GOOD because now I understand! I was wondering if it was something that's hard to express like that. Since it's hard to express the reasons for not doing something when you... don't do it. So there's not any place to say that's the reason you're not doing it! (I'm sorry you're having to read my circular thoughts at night as well as my rambling ones in the morning.)

But yes, it sounds like you have everything worked out! I'm glad I can understand now why you're doing the flawless things you do~ /reaches back

also woop woop too lazy to log out of my main