#;we're in the same rp group but we haven't talked at all!

[draconscious]

NAME : dan!!

PRONOUNS : he/him

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION : tumblr im. discord. passenger pigeon. I'm very slow sometimes but you should plot with me!!

NAME OF MUSE(s) : clair, cynthia, barry, jupiter/eris + so many mooore (how did it come to this? LMAO)

BEST EXPERIENCE(S) : dedicating this section to both ash (@analuein) and aya (@distortsverity)! ash and I have been writing together for infinity years right here on tumblr. no matter the muse, it's always a blast spinning up plots and watching the magic unfold from there with her. from thorton to violet, to noland and clair. from wildencounters to indie. it's been a fantastic ride. day one. 😎

I transitioned from group rp to indie a few years ago and--at the time--I was all alone. I had no connections, just a lonely barry blog to my name. I wrote drabbles by myself in the dark for two weeks until aya came across my blog with her hikari, and everything just clicked. aya made me feel included, reached out with ideas, plots and feedback, and showed love to barry and all of my muse(s)--and to this day, I still feel TREMENDOUSLY grateful for the helping hand when I felt so isolated. I definitely would not still be writing here without her.

since then, I've had an amazing time here. writing with so many different people, muses, and groups--it's all so good. my best experiences happen when I'm writing (or even plotting) with someone, and everything just works, flows, and fits together and I can just feel that shared excitement. that feeling that we're building a great story together. that's magical. that's why I'm still around, trying new muses, diving headlong into amazing plots/dynamics, letting my imagination run wild, and--as always--writing a lot. much love to EVERYONE who has helped keep that fire burning over the years, but especially ash and aya for giving that flame a chance in the first place. tysm. ❤️

RP PET PEEVES / DEALBREAKERS : it's been said, but--on a personal level--I wish private communication would happen more, specifically when it comes to interest levels. my time is becoming more and more limited here (sad as that is) and I have always written at a slower, longer pace. so, given how fast this place moves, I would appreciate knowing if a thread has grown stale, or if something's off.

I'm flexible. I'd like to think that I'm pretty laid-back. I want you to have fun, and you need to drop or backburner our thread because life, interest, etc. that's okay. I promise. I also don't mind reminders about cold threads or overdue replies on my end. if that's the case, please let me know right away, and I'll pick it back up or let you know my thoughts. we can try new things, or not. just let me know what you'd like to do, and we can adjust from there. that being said, lack of time or muse =/= lack of interest. I get that. you never need to rush a reply with me, and I will always (for better or worse) assume interest is still there unless told otherwise by you. I'm no herlock sholmes. (I wish I was...)

so, as a courtesy, I'd ask to please talk to me if something's wrong. if you feel the need to drop our thread or aren't interested in an interaction and/or want to start fresh. I won't be upset (quote me on that.) I just want to make sure that the writing vibes are still good, and I want to spend my time here writing things that you (and others) are still into. and in the end, it's not really a big deal--this place is great and I adore my past/present/future thread partners--but it's something that I would appreciate!

(also since I haven't made it clear before: no AI with me, please. let's meet at the same level.)

MUSE PREFERENCES: strong women and brash, sunshiney dudes. (I'll really try anyone, but I certainly have types 😊)

PLOTS OR MEMES : whatever's easier for you to get in the door with--c'mon in!! I don't find myself with the time to reblog many memes lately, but my inbox/IMs are always open for spot interactions, and I'll do a lil' starter call here and there!!

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES : I don't mind receiving either, but I always tend to lose myself in the sauce and write a lot oops. you never have to match my length. as long as we're writing together, that's chill enough for me!

BEST TIME TO WRITE : my healthcare job is killing me. I'll try to sneak on for some stuff here and there, but I'm most active during evening/nighttime CST US. confirmed night time scrawler. 🦉

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S) : some common threads linking all of my muses to me is the fact that we always want to be active, we have (too) high expectations of ourselves, we grew up and are still growing up, and we spend too much time working (and loathe it LMAO)

[hotsugarkrp]

jumping on the bandwagon to say i agree with the other anon post and their concerns. i’m reaching out as a mun whose muse has talked to the majority of the rp but only has a handful of dms and interactions weekly. i’ve also heard the same feedback from the few people my muse has talked to, so this may be an issue many are relating to.

i know there isn’t much the admins can do when a lot of socializing happens in DMs; you all are doing the best you can do and i see that and appreciate everything you’ve been doing thus far. from what i’ve been hearing though, it’s pretty daunting to reach out to the admins regarding one or a group of people they may believe are bubble rping because of a lack of proof to back up that claim besides “this person hasn’t replied to me in days but i see them actively posting on their story, main feed, and group chats.” you also don’t want to seem like /that/ person who doesn’t respect a mun’s time while they’re online.

additionally, i don’t know how plausible reaching out about a specific muse is if only one person is reaching out about them. it’s also not like members can reach out to other muses/muns about it either because then that’s gossiping. this is all to say that calling out a person or groups may not be something everyone is comfortable doing. on the other side of the spectrum, some muns may feel overwhelmed with the amount of attention their muse(s) receive, so wagging a finger at them may do more harm than good.

a potential solution could be encouraging mun’s to be more communicative if they’re swamped with interactions, or making a new system similar to the ‘emoji after 3 days for response’ method since many feel a little embarrassed to reply after ghosting for so long, and others do not feel comfortable double (or often triple) replying.

it is such a let down and a huge kick to the confidence when your muse tries to socialize but no one gives them time to get to know them, especially if they don’t have a group to fall back on. so rather than targeting specific people, it might be beneficial to create a system everyone can utilize to avoid people feeling overwhelmed or lonely at hot sugar.

Hi nonny.

Reaching out to us about something like bubble rping isn't as scary as you might think. We as a team are here to listen to you, and we genuinely care about the health of this community. If you think someone is engaging in this sort of exclusive behavior, chances are we as admins have noticed it too! But we like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so unless it's obvious that someone is face hogging or bubble rp'ing, etc, we don't usually initiate an investigation unless one or more of our members reports it directly to the mod account. Because even though we do our best to talk to everyone in the community that we can with our own muses, it very well could be that maybe our muses just don't vibe with theirs or they're interacting with a group of different muses we just haven't gotten a chance to yet.

Which is why we ask our members to come talk to us and report something if they notice it. When we investigate, we look at their public interactions first, like posts, comments, and any presence in public chats. And then, if those give us cause for concern, we approach them and ask them to provide proof that private interactions beyond their group or ship are happening. If our investigation shows that bubble rp'ing is not happening and they just might be behind on their dm's, that's fine! No harm done. Your report will be kept confidential and we can all move on.

At the end of the day, we are a large community and we expect our members to engage with that community in some capacity. Whether it's privately in dm's with people outside of your muse's assumed circle, interacting in public group chats, making genuine comments on posts (more than what's required for your ac), hosting/joining hyperbeams or listening parties, etc. What we're looking for here is the effort to interact with the community. We know it can be daunting for members to reply to a community of over 200, and that's not what we're asking for. But if you're making a genuine effort, we see and encourage that.

We do hear your suggestion, and we always want to encourage our members to be communicative about their ability to interact with others. If you're overwhelmed or just busy irl, post a checkin! If you feel the need to reach out ooc after ghosting for personal reasons, do so! 9/10 times, our members are understanding and happy to move past any awkwardness with a quick and simple apology. But at that point, it's on you to take some responsibility for how you're engaging in the community.

The mod team does what we can to be encouraging, but after getting a wide assortment of asks and messages about selective rping and face hogging, we have to do something about it to keep our community healthy. Unfortunately, that does mean removing some people who aren't interested in being or able to be a part of the community. But if you have ideas on how to encourage members to be more communicative and welcoming, we're all ears! ❤

[6ftkyle]

@cheesy-poofs @impandgnomes well if you guys insist 👼

today in particular im hung up on the fact that stan's really such a multi-faceted character and most depictions of him are really flat. they usually pick one or two of his traits (or traits that dont really apply to him, but rather feed a ship dynamic they crave, but thats a whole different post to be made 😶 ) to roll with and let everything else kind of fall to the wayside.

and like thats fine! south park is very much a sand box kind of fandom, because theres so much content and continuity is dubious at best and half the fun of writing these characters is picking and choosing the traits you like to build a little guy that makes your brain feel good. but i think theres just way more options with stan than i realize until im thinking real hard about him.

i think its also kind of easy to think of him as 'boring' because a) the other members of the main 4 are much more outlandish and b) hes kind of understated. hes the straight man of the group by default, and that has a way of like tricking people into thinking he's just definitively a straight man. it's really not the case though, and we see that the most when he's dealing with characters outside the main 4.

i was going to write a list of my fave stan traits to play up, but then it was really long and unwieldy! but there's a lot of play with there, and honestly, i mix it up almost every time i write him. i rp a lot, and my rp buddy and i have a LOT of aus, so every time we're drafting a new one, i think in the back of my head 'well what aspect of stan haven't i explored yet, let's put that in this one'

one of my favorite aspects to explore when writing him as an adult (because I am in my 30s and it's more cathartic / interesting to me to write about people my ages still working through problems even when you're aware of them than it is to write about them as small kids or teenagers) is his struggle with addiction and how it plays into his depression.

a lot of the time when i see it done, it skews towards him having little to no control over it and absolutely leaning into coping with alcohol. i think thats a little unkind to stan's iron will. in canon he's already dealt with it, he's already shown that he's capable of self-awareness and that he wants to do his best to not fall into the same patterns as randy. backslides do exist, and i think there's a lot of interesting writing to be driven by exploring that struggle, but it's a real heavy topic that needs a nuance and a kindness that i have a hard time finding. a lot of people like to make him kind of helpless about it, and that he needs their man of choice to hold his hand through it and make him better, and like. i see the appeal of that, its not for me, but i get why people are into it. i just don't think its necessarily in character.

personally i think it's more interesting and more realistic for it to be a thing stan deals with almost entirely on his own. i think his mom encourages him to try therapy and he tries it and it doesn't help as much as he would like, but it does at least a little, and he comes to realize feeling a little less like shit, being just a little bit less miserable, is better than no progress at all. he probably goes on medication too, he just wants to feel better. and just like any other person with depression, therapy and medication doesn't fix it, there's still bad periods, but he feels better than he would without it.

i know one of the hotly debated depictions of stan is him as a jock because he's a sport enjoyer, but i think a lot of people are missing the very real subsect of people who enjoy sports, but don't / can't play them. i have an uncle who will talk my ear off about how his nebraska college football team is doing and what their prospects are like and i really think that's more stan's speed. i always think back to the scientology episode where they immediately pin that it's easy to distract stan from his questions by misquoting the denver bronco's season record and it works, stan immediately knows the correct record.

i get that's harder for people to write because then writers feel like they have to research sports stats and how analysis is done. it's so much easier to just slap a jersey on him and make him a caricature of a billion characters we've all seen in teen dramas. and like, again, if that's what people wanna do, it's fine, i guess, but it doesn't really feel like stan anymore to me. i think he plays sports as a kid because most kids do, but as he gets older he gets way more into the strategy than the actual playing.

and we see that he loves strategy and planning and the theoretical side of it because he also enjoys the same kind of strategic planning in board games. that's all warhammer fuckin' is. it scratches a certain center of his brain and like, if i wanted to get into meta, i think there's a lot of be said about that kind of control he has in board games / plotting sports strats that he does not have in his home or social life.

overall, like i said at the beginning of the post, i think the reason he gets done so dirty is mostly to make him fit a person's ideal shipping dynamics, and because it's so easy to accidentally read him as a blank slate. but i guess also it's that the most compelling aspects of his personality, at least for me, are complex to write and i get not everyone is looking to deeply explore the psyche of a dude who comes across so incredibly average.

i could actually go on so much more, but i gotta stop myself at some point.

having a lot of strong feelings about stan marsh today