OOC: How's My Driving?

[overthedratini]

Concrit post! Feel free and welcome to tell me how you feel about my playing here. Anonymous commenting is on, IP logging is off, and comments are screened. If you need to get me, feel free to drop a comment here or hit me up on AIM at lagann impact and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

If you need anything else, just hit the ooc or info tags

Comments

[anonymous]

There's a distinct pattern with this character I'm seeing. Despite that you said in both comments in this very crit post a number of months ago that you would make more of an effort to tag outside your circle with him, it still has yet to really happen.

I've gone back through your posts and what I could find of your comments recently, and I noticed it hasn't changed all that much over time. It's still mostly the same characters who get the significant, CR-making threads, and if not the same handful of characters, the same handful of players. The most recent post in his journal was a nice shift away from this trend; there were a lot of long threads in that one, even though some of them were just him skirting around admitting he misses various people the whole time (which I'm concerned is OOC for him, mainly since the way he did it felt very, very off). So you may want to make a more concentrated effort to get Johan out and talking to different people, with players you may not know personally. I feel like the fact that you haven't been has been limiting him as a character, because you stick to largely the same group of people most of the time. This is extremely strange to me, because I don't see you doing it with any of your other characters.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you to not play with them at all, or even to play with them less than you have been, but to maybe try and balance out the strong CR with attempts at newer CR, or posts that aren't tailored for those specific people. You can play with who you want, of course you can, but I'm just worried that sticking to the same group all the time might be constricting Johan developmentally, like you're trying to veer him away from being a duelist, or using the members of his travel group as substitutes for his duel monster family.

It's clear you're trying to expand him as a person for the better, I can tell this, and the want to do so is a good thing. But instead of what you intended, it feels like he's only shifted gears very slightly, from one specific person to... a different two, maybe three specific people. In the end, it isn't actually much of a change, just different people getting the same exact tunnel-visioned treatment that Judai got from Johan under normal circumstances. One could argue that this is IC somehow in the absence of said Judai, but for the purposes of someone who is trying to better his character without taking all the core facets of the character into consideration (dueling, spirits, Judai, the Gem Beasts: all of which literally make up his entire character when placed alongside his core personality, and yet most of which have been hugely shunted off to the side in favor of the aforementioned handful of characters), it's something that should be brought to attention.

[overthedratini]

In regards to all of this-- Really, I'll be frank. At this point, this was all towards the end of Johan's life cycle, and to be quite honest, it was really tiresome and even painful to play him when every other time I logged in there was something on this post - not like this comment, but something like "you're dragging them down" or whatever other crap the people had decided to post.

... And, yeah, I was trying to expand Johan as a character, and I really do think I did. I agree that maybe the focus went away from dueling, but that did get touched on way, way back, early on, BECAUSE of how important it was - it was something that desperately needed to be touched on or he just wouldn't be able to function. Heck, it was part of how he became so close to Kay in the first place. Not only that, it wasn't as if he was ignoring it completely: this world was like his pseudo-ideal world, where everyone could see spirits. Maybe his weren't here, yes, but it's still a happy place for him. Why should he be down in the dumps constantly?

Anyway, I've talked to a lot of people about it, and a lot of them really don't see the issue that gets brought up over and over . It's natural for characters to want to talk more with ones they're closer to and, what's more, Johan was living with these characters. Every day, he was traveling with them, sleeping with them, there were probably times when he even had to bathe with them, etc.

I do agree with a lot of this, but not for the reasons you've said. I don't think he was being tunnel-visioned at all. Sure, I wasn't tagging every single post, but that's a statement to my activity and the strength of his muse at that point, if anything else, not Johan's ICness. In fact, the vast majority of the problems that seem to come up time and time again seem to all come back to how I wasn't active enough, if anything. There were times when I WAS tagging around a lot, getting to know people all over, and I think if you looked way back, even you could find it. And really? All characters get around and they make friends in RP.

If I was having Johan jump around and do all of this, but with Judai, instead of grow and try to have other friends, and yes, other close friends, even closer friends, I get the distinct feeling no one would have given a damn. And that's really ridiculous, I think.

... In the end, however, I'm here now playing Johan for Route's fourth wall, and aside from future ones, this is probably the last time I'll be playing him. I really, really hope that's enough for all of you. This is the last time I'll be talking about it, so if anyone has anything to say, reply here.