How's My Driving | January 2014

[ironwood]

WELCOME WELCOME, THE QUARTER QUELL HAS ARRIV-- wait a minute, wrong script. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! It's that time of the (new) year again! Read on for the details of this, the newest of our quarterly HMDs.

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

[andaway]

Honestly I wasn’t going to say anything because in a plot so big it’s impossible to keep everyone happy but I saw you raised your concerns about it and I thought I’d do the same so next time a situation like this arises it’s solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Also let me apologize for a) how late this is, and b) having a hard time explanining things like this in my third language without being missleading, so if something I say isn’t clear do point it out.

Also please don’t take it personaly, I’m telling you this in your thread because you, Brandy and Kate were the ones with the singing voice in the plotting plurks and I already told Kate these things privately. Consider this something I had to say to both you and Brandy.

The Hannibal plot was solved so everyone had a little to do and that’s fine, it’s what we agreeded to... but I must say the general feeling Lee and I got was that our involved was being handwaved, dismissed or outright ignored. I’m not talking about actual roles in the plot, since basically what Lois and Clark ended up doing was, in general terms, what we had outlined in the plot. But you have to understand that, from out point of view, we went from finally having some kind of involvement in a plot where both of our characters had been affected yet hadn’t been allowed to react (Hannibal hurt Lois, and used Clark’s powers) to basically... feeling like we were being used so others could thread what they really want to.

In Kate’s words you guys quasi snatched the rug from under our feet. I understand all of you wanted some kind of closure for your characters, but I’d have appreciated a little more tact.

What it comes in the end is that we had the plot outlined with everyone that was involved in Eshai’s murder and had the permissions required from the mods. We were extremely careful to make sure Sharon got to deal with Hannibal in the end and we even offered to wait until Sharon had already known who the culprit was. Then, when you guys expressed discomfort at how the plot would turn out (which I understand, keeping it as some sort of surprise made us more excited but it backfired in the end and I will take the full blame for that) we were more than happy to plot stuff out alongide the victims. Even in the middle of family celebrations I did my best to plot and be a link to you guys and Lee.

And we both felt completely dismissed. (I say we knowingly because Lee and I both have had to calm the other down at different points of this plotting, we felt so disregarded and ignored.)

Lois was treated like some object that had somehow gotten in the way, when she’s a very skilled investigative reporter who had Sharon’s trust and had joined the investigations. She didn’t just stumble into him by mere luck, and I can certify Lee had spent a lot of time reading over Hannibal’s interactions with people to make sure Lois had the best angle for the ‘interview’ to investigate him. Clark has been investigating the murders for months himself, and even Sharon herself noted she was following Superman’s steps regarding the metahuman side of the investigations... and you guys made it seem like he was the delivery guy from A to B, then C. And we were completely cut off from any of the fallout, because Hayley-Tony-Bruce always got priority (at least that’s the feeling I got from the plurks at least). If Kate hadn’t noticed how upset I was and asked me what was wrong the suggestion for Lois to be the one to make the post wouldn’t have been made.

Honestly? If after Sharon had gotten Hannibal you guys had suggested this and played it out I would have been fine with it. It’s not the plot I have problems with. What I’m asking is a little more consideration for people’s feelings.

[angermanaging]

I'm typing this really fast on my phone before work so excuse any errors.

I completely understand your complaint here and I am sincerely sorry to have directed the brunt of my frustration at you. It was really misdirected. From my perspective, I actually hadn't meant to get involved in the plot at all anymore, simply because previous attempts months ago consistently lead to dead ends or were logistically difficult to navigate with so many people involved and no clear director. I also didn't want to railroad a character into a plot when others had much more at stake than Bruce.

However, it had been raised to become such a critical issue in the game, after months of him dealing with the emotional fallout from his closest CR, that it is impossible to keep him IC and have him ignore what was going on. I was still intending to do that regardless when Kate expressed her own frustration to me, and I know Brandy was frustrated as well, so I tried one last time to come up with a way to finally be involved more directly in a way that didn't force anyone to be OOC. At that point I felt my own (and their) their feelings had been so ignored for so long that I was curt and focused on the practicalities, and I am sorry.

In the future, I think, as I said to the mods, explicit organization and communication from the get go, every step of the way, rather than just at the last minute, is really the solution. I know that if I had felt I was being heard earlier (regardless of what that meant for my role or anyone else's role in the plot), this would have been a much less charged issue. But it really was never my intention to make you or Lee feel as if you had bit parts since the emotional thrust of the issue really lies with them, and I really would like to and am eager to play out how it will affect their CR. I'm glad you decided to clear the air, and thank you for saying something.

[andaway]

I'm sorry I replied to late, I just thought today no reply might seem like I was ignoring you when no, I totally agree with what you said and I am more than happy to work things out (both OOCly and ICly)! What happened cannot be helped but I think now we all know where we stand and next plotting should go better, and more smoothly for everyone.

[manofiron]

Sorry about the lateness of this response, but I only saw your comment today.

In the future, if there’s a problem with my playing or my involvement with a plot or anything else related to providing a good RP experience for players, I would really appreciate it if you would address me directly. I’m not Chel and I don’t track Chel’s posts to things like this, so the fact that I saw this at all to read about your concerns was pure accident.

To be completely frank with you, I feel much the same way that you do about your character being used to further threads that other people wanted to have. So I completely understand how frustrating that is. I didn’t get the threads I wanted to get out of the conclusion of this plot either. In fact, I got a bunch of IC development that I really didn’t want and that has negatively affected my character in ways that I’m really not enjoying having to deal with.

I also understand that communication during this plot broke down everywhere and that no one was ever on the same page about what was going. I think that had a lot to do with causing hurt feelings for everyone, especially since there were a number of people doing investigations into the murders for various reasons. As I’ve seen numerous people mention here and there on the HMD, I do believe that communication between all parties involved in a plot of this scope is essential, as it prevents misunderstandings and hurt feelings all around.

I am very sorry that you and Lee felt disregarded and ignored. I’m hopeful that the experience we all had with the stumbling blocks encountered during this plot can be used in general to improve future ones, so that everyone has a good experience and gets what they want out of the plots they’re involved with. And I’m really glad you shared your thoughts about this with us, as I think this kind of frankness helps facilitate communication and helps make for a better playing experience for everyone.

[andaway]

My apologies because I assumed you'd see this, which is stupid since you're indeed not Chel and had no obligation to check this. I just didn't want anyone to feel attacked and I'd have basically copypasted this whole thing to you, which felt unnecessary. I didn't mean this to be a yelling rant or anything, just a way to make sure no one had to feel what we (including you now, and everyone who felt this way) felt during this plotting.

I do believe communication was the key to the problem, and now that everyone (I hope!) has said everything they had to say things will smooth out all the better and next plotting shouldn't have all these bumps.