Do long posts put people off?

[vvintersoldier]

Ahh I am agreeing entirely with Rev!!

[roman]

[align=center][div style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 10pt; width: 60%; text-align: justify;"]alright i feel like this thread could use some input from someone like me who usually starts with the shortest posts on the planet. like, my starting posts usually suck and rarely get more than a decent paragraph before they fizzle out. That's just me. I personally admire people who can crank out a 600+ post to start and continue that trend throughout. However, there are a couple things when it comes to starters which make it extremely difficult to reply to super long posts.

1) quality over quantity. some, but not all, posts can be super lengthy but nothing really contributes to the general idea of the thread? and it can honestly get extremely confusing. i've noticed that sometimes people forget to specify whether or not something is happening in the character's mind or if it's something my character can see/react to. that's hard for me because even if my muse is horrible, i do my best to acknowledge as many aspects in someone's post as possible. But if it's not specified where y/c is or what they're actually doing, it's hard to find something to write about. honestly if someone writes this huge essay about their character's inner turmoil but like, the actual action or plot of the thread is the character just sitting there staring at dirt, it's hard to find a reason for a socially anxious/antisocial character to be there. this is by no means a negative criticism, but try to keep in mind what information you're giving other people through your posts because if their characters are not involved in whatever drama is happening, people need a bit more substance in order for their character to walk into a random stranger's room just because you posted that y/c was angstily staring at a wall. does that make sense?? for example, if your character is angstily staring at a wall after 700 words of narrator explination, make it blatantly clear that the door has been left ajar and the sound of them crying carries down the hall. that way a shy, but concerned character can interact even if the post is only a paragraph.

2) i kind of mentioned above, but being outside or unaware of backstory or drama can make it hard to respond to a post, especially if previous interactions is important to the theme of the long post. for example, fandom characters tend to have this problem. there's all this backstory and stuff that goes into the reasons why they are suddenly animals and how they can to this world, etc. sometimes fandom characters even come into groups. i personally think it's all really cool and i admire the creativity that goes into it, but it must be taken into account that if the whole point of your thread is y/c reflecting on their past lives while being generally unapproachable, it's a little hard finding something that will explain why my character who is extremely shy would even approach a scary scowling lion who secretly misses having thumbs. this goes back to my first point where the quality of the post is extremely important. did you mention that they are looking at a trinket from their past? it is obvious that they are having a hard time adjusting to eating raw meat since they're now a lion and they're starting to show signs of starvation? that sort of thing.

i really do try my best to give some attention to long developmental posts or just long posts in general, especially because i like to acknowledge all those little small details in my own responses. but it is super duper hard if a majority of the post is just rambling and not enough detail about the actual environment your character is in. because people are responding to the physical world surrounding y/c as most of them are entirely unaware that they are secretly aliens or are having severe nightmares because they don't say anything about it. if your character just had an encounter with a god, have them exclaim something about Zeus being that absolute worst god ever!! if they're remembering a traumatic memory, write that they cry or lash out at an object because the emotions are just so overwhelming!! i admire people who have the muse to write one 500+ post after another, but ya'll gotta give us museless folk something concrete. i can write a five-liner responding to a character randomly leaping into stormy waters but i can't write a one-liner responding to a character who is hiding from the public while brooding.

i hope this helps <3

[peach]

i definitely agree with everything roman said. i've seen really gorgeous posts with tons of introspective development but just. . . nothing for my character to respond to. i've noticed sometimes people dealing with this by describing how their own character would hypothetically feel about the topic, but personally i feel weird doing that if there isn't a reason for my character to be thinking about it. also it still leaves little having actually gotten done in the thread imo. i always try to put in an action or facial expression for each emotion i describe, so it's clear that others can see how my character feels.

as far as the original question, i think there's a habit ingrained in the rp community where matching muse is sort of a courtesy, so a "no need to match muse" disclaimer could help even if many folks find it obvious. tldrs always help me too because sometimes the hurdle is more in reading the post than in writing the response. maybe putting your tldr at the top of a post so it's noticeable right away might help a bit!

[MirrorEdge]

To be honest, when I first started roleplaying, I found long posts very intimidating, but stuff such as tl;dr's are quite helpful, along with 'no need to match muse', as I'm sometimes shooting off replies at work, and even when I have time, I'm not one for lengthy posts, even though I do try to keep in mind the whole 'quality over quantity'.

[nefarius]

[align=center][div style=" background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid black; width: 550px; min-height: 9px; font-family:; line-height: 110%; text-align: justify; color:; padding: 20px"]I'm a little late to the party but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well.

To answer your question - for me, yes; longer posts do put me off because I don't often have patience to read through paragraphs upon paragraphs of stuff that isn't related to the overall purpose of the thread. It also makes me a little anxious because as someone who often rambles on in posts myself, I always concern myself with matching the muse of OP even when I don't have that kind of motivation available to me. If provided, I read the tl;dr and then skim through paragraphs to make sure I'm not missing anything too important. I try to be as thorough as possible despite having an admittedly short attention span.

[Luciferr]

/bops in

Long posts do intimidate me, I'll be honest - mostly because my eye tend to skip around on long paragraphs of block text if its not segmented and mostly because I ALWAYS want to match muse because otherwise I don't feel I give the OP their due, so usually I just say 'oh I'll do it later' and unfortunately later never comes,

and also due to my penchant for liking to play multiple characters, I often feel rushed to post with everyone to make sure I don't miss out so I do tend to go for the shorter starter threads - though my notable exception is private threads because thats much less stress inducing since I can take my time.

Tl;DR's/short summaries and reassurances about not having to match muse do help me personally but my anxiety over giving a good response usually still lingers.

this is just my own take on it? I always just feel bad when I can't match up or can't post on them/read them in entire tbh ;-;

and apologies to anyone on that oof.