HMD!

[rebelwithaclock]

Hey guys! This post is for anyone that would like to give me some comments on how I'm playing Chrono, or to ask any questions they might have on my choices made in RPing him, etc. I really want to keep as IC as possible while playing him, and I also want to make sure that I'm fun to play with, so if there's anything you think I need to know to make sure I stay within those goals then please let me know!

This is also a place you can comment to if you want to get in touch with me through LJ comments for plotting or anything else! Other ways you can get a hold of me will be listed below:
AIM: BrightBlueInk
Plurk: BrightBlueInk
E-mail: HaleySings[at]gmail[dot]com
Feel free to ask me about any other ways you'd like to contact me, too!

Anon comments should be enabled, and IP logging should be off. (Let me know if they aren't and I'll fix it!) Comments are unscreened, because I prefer to be able to have a conversation on playing issues with people, and I think it's easier when comments aren't being screened. Plus, it helps people know what's already been addressed. I'm willing to change this if it makes people uncomfortable though!

Comments

[tuned_wrong]

Pardon me for bringing this here rather than just approaching you over Plurk about it, but I think that this is deserving this venue.

My problem is, you might have guessed it, your lack of reliability as a player. You are a fun person to be around, fantastic at the characters you play, active, fast, full of fun and creative ideas for tags and plots alike and to top it all off you are also a joy to interact with ooc! IF you are actually around. :(

I know that RL and circumstances happen and I don’t mean to blame you for it, but in your case it has gotten to the extend where your sudden disappearances and dropping of things without any warning has become the rule rather than its exception. We have been playing for almost a year together and within all this time and all of the CR between our characters (not only with Chrono but also Shader and Sasame) I can still count the number of threads and/or logs that were finished by the fingers of one hand – while still having some of them left.

I’m sorry if this comes off as harsh, but, and I am being honest here, while plotting with you is a real joy it isn’t when I can be sure that the plots will be played half out at best before you vanish again for weeks without a word of advance warning or a chance to figure out a way of what happened in them so that the people who play with you could move on in a fitting way without having to wait for you whenever you might end up coming back. You also said that you wanted to backtag what you dropped before but from what I have seen (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) you never do.

What you do this way isn’t giving others a small (or huge) delay, you make the plot crash and burn because nobody has an idea what happened to you, if it’s okay to move on IC and how to do it, what can and can’t be assumed – and no way to contact you about anything of it!

You leave others hanging with nothing to work with and seem to expect things to be okay and resolved when you come back, but that’s sadly not how it works and as both a castmate and somebody who enjoys playing with you I find it very disheartening, especially when I have to tell others that the plot we all looked forward to won’t happen anytime soon – which I only know because I have the drop & hiatus page of the game tracked and you on my Plurk. Same when somebody contacts me about you and your disappearance/the planned plot/the thread you were having with them because I’m a castmember and they can’t reach you no matter what they try.

I didn’t say anything about this for a long time because I thought that, welp, shit happens but by now it just happened a bit too often as that I could still remain silent without beginning to slowly but surely resent you for it. Which I really, really don’t want to! I want to look forward to plotting to you the same way I look forward to reading your tags. I like you and I have had heaps of fun playing with you so far because you make it a mindblowingly fun experience (I especially love our threads with Chrono and Aion!) and I also have no right to tell you not to take a hiatus or an off time from the game when your life is busy or when you just don’t feel like playing or for any other reason that might come up. Those things are fine!

However, I want to sincerely ask you to give others a chance when you need to vanish for a while. Give us an advance warning, post to the OOC community and not just the mod journal about your hiatus, send a quick PM to at least one of the other players telling them what’s up and suggesting what to do without you if it’s a plot so that they can hash things out with the others while you’re off… All those things would help a lot!!

I apologize if this concrit has ended up as being awkwardly written or accusatory, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just that I’m frustrated and know for a fact that I’m not the only one feeling that way (though I’m willing to bet that I’m the one feeling it the strongest) and I needed to let those things out and just tell you about it before something explodes. I want to be able to enjoy playing with you and be proud of my castmates as I was before, not to think ‘well, that’s the next plot that we’ll have to handwave an end to’.

Sorry for all the Tl;Dr and much love!

[brightblueink]

Hey Picaro--no worries, this doesn't sound accusatory at all, it's all very fair. I'm definitely in the wrong here and I expected you to be rightly pretty frustrated (or worse) when I came back. Admittedly I let myself get intimidated by that instead of coming to you right away to communicate clearly--and then, when I came back, I let it intimidate me into not apologizing to you (and everyone else) when I should right away. So I think the only way to start this off is to apologize, both for being so irresponsible and unreliable, and then not coming to you directly and apologizing right away when I knew I should and forcing you to come to me instead.

I think this issue is sort of a trainwreck of my different personality flaws crashing against each other until they all become very exacerbate and out of control. I'm trying not to say that to excuse the problem--it's my own fault that I let them get this out of hand in the first place instead of sitting down and working on fixing them. I'm just trying to say that I'm aware this is a problem--a major one--but that I also know my awareness isn't enough if I don't actually work to fix it. I'm a little intimidated and overwhelmed by the problem but I do genuinely want to fix it, so...thank you for giving me a kick in the pants in the right direction.

I'm not exactly sure how to fix the problem at this point--I think I need some level of structure and a schedule to help myself balance everything, but I haven't yet figured out a good schedule that I can commit to that balances my work and RP well. The job I have now is very flexible which is normally a good thing, but that also means I often don't know what my work will look like on a day to day basis very well into the future. It is something I want to try, though, so I'm going to do my best to figure out something, instead of putting it off because it's difficult or scary. I'll try to work with my boss in getting a general idea of what work might look like and then work a schedule around that, including RP times.

I know that's only part of the problem, though, and also doesn't really give you much to go on (since it's not like you're going to be hovering over my shoulder and watching the schedule and seeing if I'm following it, which would be silly). Another big part of the problem is my tendency to communicate poorly, if at all, and just plain not being around. This is something I want to work on, too, but I know intentions aren't going to mean enough if I don't do it, so I also need to give you the best avenues I can to reach me when you need to give me a nudge or push me in the right direction. I've come up with two solutions--neither are them are perfect, but they should hopefully at least give you more options when I DO fail at being responsible about this:

1) Yuki has my cell number, so she can text me. This isn't perfect for a few reasons--I'm not in the habit of using my phone much, so if I leave the house I tend to forget to take it with me, and I know Yuki's RL is pretty hectic so she's often not around. The first is another thing I just need to work on, so I'll try to get in the habit of checking my phone more often, particularly if I forget to bring it with me. (Luckily, my new "office" has my phone sitting right next to it, so this should be something I can work on.) As for Yuki's schedule, I think...I'm also going to give my cell phone number to Tobi, so that'd be another person who could text me if needed. (I'd give it to you personally but since we live in different countries I'd be worried that it'd be too expensive/difficult to text me where you are--although if I'm wrong about this and you'd like my cell number, too, please let me know and I'll be happy to give it to you, too.)

2) My new desktop sits right in my room, and I'll be using it as a work computer, too, so it's pretty hard to ignore. I'm going to try to get into the habit of daily plurking at least once (so I have to look at plurk), always leaving gmail open (so that I'm checking my email and that gmail's chat service is an option to reach me) and leaving AIM up from the moment I get up during the day. If you notice me skipping a day where I'm not answering email, plurking, on AIM etc--please please please feel free to call me out on it when you see me around again. Don't feel obligated to do this--it's my responsibility--but I don't want you to feel like you can't point out when you see me failing on this end of things! I'd actually really appreciate it.

I feel like these are sort of week solutions to the problem right now, and I'm really sorry about that. If there's any time you see me screwing up on this and want to point it out to me or suggest to me something that I should do, please don't hesitate to say something? Again, I don't want to make you feel obligated, but I do really, really appreciate it when people point stuff out to me. It helps to keep me accountable, I think.

Also, thank you for coming to me like this--this might sound weird, but I'm really glad you did! I really much prefer people coming to me when something's wrong rather than bottling it up. It's good for me to have everything out--both so I'm aware of it, and also to give me a push in the right direction. It really does renew my motivation to try to get better instead of sitting on my ass and making excuses. (And I know it's a bit hypocritical of me to say since I'm so bad at reaching out to people, eheh. I'll try to be working on that, too. But...yeah, you don't have anything at all to apologize for, this is helpful, and good. Thank you.)

I'll see you around both OOCly and ICly. (And if I don't, send the hounds of Hades after me, seriously. ...If you want to. No obligation or anything.)

[brightblueink]

*exacerbated
*weak solutions

argh typos

Ah, I forgot to mention, if anyone else sees this, this stuff goes for everyone! Feel free to let me know if you have issues/point out when I'm not making myself available enough/etc, even if you think "oh, but I don't know her very well" or "we're not in the same crew" or something. I really need to make myself more available and accountable, so...yeah.

[tuned_wrong]

Apology accepted. :) Like I said, if it had happened only once I would have been slightly miffed for a day or two and then just would have shrugged my shoulders and moved on without further caring about it. The only reason why I didn’t is because it has started to happen that often and because somehow it seems to keep falling onto me explain your sudden missing to others, which isn’t always a fun chore.

I’m glad that you want to work on it and wish you the best with your schedule – hopefully it’ll help! About the solutions I will have to agree with you that they are weak, though. I don’t mean that I think they are bad - quite the opposite! - and I don’t mind giving you a poke from time to time when I think it’s getting bad again. I’ll also gladly take your phone number and treasure it, I can try to send you a text via email.

My critique about your solutions is more that they are only aimed for after it happens again and are thus a bit like you giving me/us a couple of buckets for when the roof burns again rather than trying to figure out a way to keep it from burning in the first place. Now I don’t want to chide your or tell you to never let it happen again. Things can come up at all times and nobody will or should be expected to prevent that. What I want to ask you for and what I think will really help is to try and improve on your communication a bit more. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to be constantly around and available, but you also shouldn’t expect anybody else (neither me nor Yuki nor Tobi) to keep watch on you and your performance and do what needs to be done every time you might do that ostrich- shtick again. We are not your caretakers and I don’t think it’d do you or us any good if we tried to be. Please don’t get that wrong, I’ll gladly help you when I can and I bet that the others will too, but you should not come to expect that of us just as you should not pressure yourself into a top-performance of a connectivity you are not feeling comfortable with.

I saw your last plurk and I think that it – the advance warning that you might be slow/not around much due to your job - is already a great start for what I was trying to ask you for: taking a hiatus and not being around is okay, just give others advance warnings instead of letting them hanging! In the ideal case I think it’d be good if you could post a notice of you being back to the OOC comm that could contain a short explanation of why you were suddenly gone and could also be combined with an advance warning that work/life is still going to keep you busy for a while and that you might be slow/gone at times. It doesn’t need to be long, a few lines are more than enough! That way nobody is going to wonder what is going on and people won’t get frustrated with you either, promise!

Sorry for being the mean one here again and thanks for taking it so gracefully!

(PS: Just watch out that I don’t send Hades after you in that case! Remember, I play that guy too. ;P
PPS: Just joking!)

[wordsgate]

Yeah, I know. I definitely shouldn't have left you to field all the questions and everything. I can completely understand why that would be frustrating. >>;

OK, I'll PM you my number! And yeah, I definitely mean the phone thing as a last resort--I definitely want to work on communication more, too, and I'm going to be focusing on that, I just wanted to make sure you had an out, too, if something happened again. Outside of this May I'm only working part-time, so I'm available enough that I *should* be around more. The problems have been more figuring out how to balance the new job with everything else (which I've been working on), so I don't think it'll be too terribly hard to be around more...this month. And June. XD; And I'll try to at least be around for a little bit in the evenings in May!

I'm glad the Plurk was a good start! And yeah, I'm definitely planning on posting to the OOC comm, too (and attacking backtags right after). After dinner, actually, so probably in an hour or so. I just need to figure out how to word it. ^^; But you're right, just something short would be good, I tend to ramble!

Also never feel like you're being the "mean one" for pointing out something I need to do! Seriously, it was mean of me to leave you hanging, and I really do think coming to talk to me about it was the kind thing to do instead of letting it stew until things blew up, or something.

(LOL I completely forgot you played Hades, too!)

[tuned_wrong]

Alright, thanks!^^ Balancing real life duties and hobbies can be a bit of a handful, much luck with it!

See you in the game! :)

(Rofl I think a lot of people do. XD)