(no subject)

[fasterthanthought]

So today Giles was talking to Buffy about Lex Luthor and how to deal with him. It really sunk in how this niggling problem I've been having for the past few months with Impulse, which has gotten to the point where I feel like I have to say something because it's been affecting my play of him.



There are a lot of reasons for this, and it's not a blame deal except for myself if anything, as I know you guys are awesome OOCly and helpful! Most of this is just me being retarded over little things until it got to the point where it was unmanagable, but I've been uncomfortable playing Bart with YJ for a while now. I just feel like there's been a lot of changing of the dynamic and playing him against Kon and Tim the way he did seventh months prior just...feels off to me. Plus the way it happened has been rather nebulous since we've been missing a lot due to RL and other things. As a result I've been less enthusiastic about bringing him out and less confident in my voice regarding him in general but it's more obvious with related parties like YJ, Lady or Buffy.

Honestly I don't know what to do about it. I can't suggest anything because I don't know how you guys feel or if you noticed. I chalked it up to my neuroticism because it was little things, but the little things sort of continued and got to this point. I still love playing Impulse, like that thread I had earlier with TT!Robin and Virgil had no anxiety at all and it was lots of fun. But other cases it gets to the point where I don't feel comfortable playing. For example, there are a lot of reasons why I don't have fun when playing Bart with Boys' 15 or posts like the hot or not, so I won't jump them no matter how good a reason I would have for doing so. And that's not fair to anyone.

That's it really. I just felt like it had gotten to the point where you should be informed of my issues since it affects your characters. Especially if there might be upheaval with Luthor. I want to reiterate that you guys are fantastic people, but ICly I am finding it difficult to talk to you and I really don't know what else to do about it.

Comments

[its-the-cape.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one who noticed. I just uh.. didn't know if I should bring it up or... well. It's been going on a while.

Definitely agreeing with you that the shift in dynamic has been dramatic and er... worrying.. is a subtle way to put it. Tim used to not be wary that his facepalming and yelling at his teammates for retardedness would end up in anything bad and uh.. now I... or he... is less comfortable with that. Among other things.

I know personally I've been better at resolving things with Kon overall, and I've been actively trying to find ins for him with Boys 15 because it is something I'm aware of and that Tim would be aware of. And threading with Kon ICly is not the same as when I first apped but not harder or worse, just different.

With Bart I've kind of been at a loss as to how to resolve things because we had to skip a lot of the IC dealing-with-Tim's-changes stuff. Tim is completely different than when I got in as Robin and his reactions don't play off of Bart the same way. I definitely do want to get them interacting again (I MISS BART A LOT), I think it's just a matter of finding out what their rhythm is now? Or even giving Tim a reason ICly to backtrack and start dealing with Bart the way he did before, as opposed to how he does now (which is a lot more tolerant and... Tim-ish... as opposed to Robin-ish... if that makes sense at all).

I think it might help if we also talked about how we view each other's characterizations, if you're comfortable with that? 'Cause I know I've made a lot of changes, and if you think they're off, or want a reason for them I'm totally willing to go over them. And hopefully that'll help you decide where to take Bart.

I know I'm saying 'don't be shy!' but well, I've kind of been shy of bringing stuff up with you too, so you don't have to PM me if that's less comfortable for you, but... don't be afraid to either? Whatever way's best for you, since I'm basically good with any method, though my preferred is probably gchat.

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

Jumping in to comment because "I've been actively trying to find ins for him with Boys 15" struck me as...about half of a good step. Basically, in what I've observed of the YJ dynamic, Kon and Bart have been working from the beginning of camp to make Tim feel as comfortable as they can, and Boys 15 is what finally let him feel comfortable, which is great! But for two people with as many abandoment/not-good-enough issues as Kon and Bart have, I'd question the logic (in terms of "making the dynamic more comfortable") of having Tim basically say "you guys should come hang out more with my new friends, to whom I am very close after a relatively short period of time, and who succeeded in a few months at making me feel like I fit in here while you two failed for a year." Which I know is putting the worst spin on it possible, but it's also accurate spin. I think what might make a lot more sense in terms of making the dynamic more comfortable would be Tim showing an interest in Kon and Bart's friends to a greater extent than he does. I know that in my play of Buffy, one thing that made it a lot easier for her to feel as if she didn't have to pick between her friends at camp and her friends at home was that Kon and Bart have both always been unfailingly friendly with them.

With the YJ dynamic, I've noticed Kon and Bart share a lot of friends and friendly acquaintances, and Tim having a pretty separate group, and while Kon especially puts a lot of effort into getting close to people Tim likes even though he's jealous, I see very little of Tim doing the same. I remember from the beginning this came up because Bart and Kon had both talked about Robin extensively from the beginning of camp and Robin ended up coming and not being that social, so he didn't get very close, even to people who were really eager about him, like Ari. So now that Tim is more social, I think that his looking for ins into Kon and Bart's circles instead of just trying to get them to join his might help the dynamic far more in the long run.

...god that was really long to just reply to one small point BUT it struck me because the "my friends vs. your friends" was something I've had trouble with with the Scoobies and in the end I think that if it doesn't go both ways it ends up feeling very unbalanced. And Bart, hit me for jumping your thread later.

[its-the-cape.livejournal.com]

I think that his looking for ins into Kon and Bart's circles instead of just trying to get them to join his might help the dynamic far more in the long run.

So this makes all kinds of sense and I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me on its own... I mean, I was looking at it from a 'let's all share friends' point of view, especially recently cause we've got new campers and stuff so introductions are easy. But yeah, I haven't recently gone to talk to... probably most of the people Robin was first introduced to. I remember when Jenny arrived Kon mentioned her to Tim and I was sort of looking at that as an in, but Jenny's been on hiatus and is really one person among many options...

It's something I'll work on. One thing I'm worried about with this is that while Tim's been more open about his identity stuff it's still... not completely open (though I'm failing increasingly to help him hide it in most cases?) and I don't want to make Kon and Bart have to hide things from people if Tim is ever brought up, as opposed to Robin being brought up...? What are your guys' feelings on this? 'Cause keeping Tim's secrets might be something they're used to already-- I'm not sure. Or maybe Tim could be convinced that it's fine to tell people he gets closer to? Uh, just some thoughts.

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

I sort of thought Tim did tell people he got close to? But either way, I...probably wouldn't worry too much about it? Not the identity, but who's been mentioned as what, because I doubt most people would remember, and they'd probably be perfectly happy to just be introduced to "Kon's friend Tim" or "Bart's friend Tim" without anyone going "OH IT'S THEIR FRIEND HE MUST BE ROBIN" or whatever. People are generally pretty good about that, in my experience.

[its-the-cape.livejournal.com]

It's kind of a selective and retarded process where I go 'oh shit, this person finding out is probably inevitable, huh' and then I tell them. And I need to find a better system for this. It didn't happen a lot until more recently, and it was... basically people in the cabin, yeah ;;;. Like Tim is relatively close to Violet but she doesn't actually know about the Robin thing. But yeah, I figure most people would be fine with that, I just didn't.. know if it'd end up as another division? Divisor? Something? But Bart did mention that the guys would probably be okay with this so we're probably gonna up the interaction first and figure it out from there.

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a complicated process, especially when there are people you're actually telling. The fact that Peter will never ever tell anyone about his secret identity makes my life a lot easier (i-ignoring the fact that everyone already knows \o/).

[im-impulse.livejournal.com]

The not properly dealing with IC changing seems like a major timing failure for all involved, yeah. And I am sorry that it's gotten so far. But the fact that Tim is completely different from the Robin who you apped before makes it really hard for me as a player and Bart as a character to find any ground with him.

Talking about characterizations is a great step. If I were to characterize Bart's thoughts on it he probably feels Tim is just...this other person. Robin is his BFF and for Bart, where the mask is just something you put on that doesn't change your personality, having Tim be Tim without a lot of resolution, especially considering how canon shows what a hardass he was about it while they were in YJ and in camp it was very, very short in terms of his change, is a disassociation. Plus there isn't a lot of Robin around, and he would be the one character I think who's screwed up enough to actively maintain his identity seperation or act like Robin. I guess it's a balance. I know Bart's been here for two years and has changed a little but I still try very hard to bring out what I feel makes Impulse the character people recognize. And you may be playing Tim perfectly IC from Robin's run when he is Tim since they are different identities but Robin-from-YJ isn't there much.

The stuff that you used to resolve things with Kon sounds like a good step but Buffy basically mentioned all my reservations on it. I've tried to find ways for Bart to feel better about Tim by associating with his friends but, honestly, threading with the inhabitants of Boys' 15 does nothing to help that and might actually make things worse. Considering the one who Bart talks to the most of that group is Speed, who is great and IC but Speed's character treats Bart like Wally does, demeans him and makes him feel immature, while at the same time being less heroic or fast or anything Bart really values about himself. This would be fine on its own, but Tim is spending more time with him than he is with Bart. If Bart recognizes that he is going to resent it like hell because he feels he is being replaced for someone who is him-but-not-him, which hurts even more because he values Robin's sense of justice so obviously there must be something off with him about it. The other inhabitants I don't talk to and a lot of the stuff that happens in the cabin's dynamics sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable as a player. Which is just my way of saying, stuff like having Tim bring Jaime to talk with Bart is good, but the problem that has been making me feel off in play relates to more than that.

Hiding the identity stuff ties back into the disassociation. I think you did a good job of letting Bart and Kon know what was good and bad to do mention, and I think they're just naturally going to be protective of it anyway. I know I saw a thread where Kon got up in someone else's grill over bandying about the alter ego name. It's something that feels hardwired into our characters via canon interaction. Mostly it's a letting others know deal maybe? Like that one time Sophie came in the batcave without Kon or my foreknowledge felt like there was this effort to protect his identity that was being set aside without informing everyone. I know we resolved that before but maybe just being more attentive to stuff like "Hey guys, so and so knows my identity because of said reasons, be okay with that?" Like how you handled Jaime's identity, both ICly and OOCly alerting all parties involved.

Augh this was long. I picked a locked post in case there was anything private that needed to be said by you guys. If you want me to unlock it I have absolutely no problems with it! Just say so and I'll do that. But mostly I wanted something to re-read and have everyone's opinions out and articulated well. Especially since we all have conflicting schedules and this seems like the best way for everyone to be on the same page.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_superdork_/]

From my perspective, I know that you don't like Imp having angsty issues to deal with and that does effect what Kon brings to him. That's an OOC decision, but it does have IC consequences -- because Kon has hashed his issues out with Tim and Buffy, I feel more comfortable threading with them about serious and non-serious issues, whereas with Bart our opportunities for interacting are already curtailed, and then there's all of our real-life difficulties in finding time and stuff to thread on top of that.

Thing is, we haven't set aside time to do YJ stuff together in ages, and that's something the three of us (and Buffy and Lady possibly) do need to look at. This sort of relationship does require either regular play or constant ooc communication, and you've been really busy, Tim has been in China, and I am yo-yoing wildly between suffocated by study and all my health type issues. I've also been playing Kon less overall. So, there's a lot of factors in this, and while I agree with you there is a problem, I think its something the three of us need to examine.

There's also ... well, I've let Kon grow and develop in camp, and Tim says that Robin is not the same Robin she apped. That could be making a difference/adding distance here.

[im-impulse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and that's something I'm trying to change now that we have people from DC who were post-Infinite Crisis and all that and I don't want to curtail what would be a natural reaction to them. Mostly I just didn't want to have unreasonable angsty issues if that makes sense. For example, if Karolina wanted to app after Gert's death I would have been fine with that because it impacts Karolina, but I didn't want someone from YA just blabbing about it offhandedly when it wouldn't have mattered to their relationship or how they were played, but it could massively mess Gert up. Mostly I want the easiest way of handing problems that are both IC and don't adversely affect anyone, which means telling me if something goes on may make things harder on others, like saying "I need to tell Bart this" is what I wanted so we could plan it out. I wanted to make it simpler for everyone since I dislike dealing with lots of angst and issues, but I hate it even more if people I play with have to deal with it when I could be helping ease that.

Dealing with Lex in camp is why I wanted to mention it. Since Lex is a persistent and sudden change of dynamic, which really did a number on us last time when we had more time to plan and were closer overall. But I want to go into this situation with a clear idea of what's going on and I didn't know what you guys felt about it. All I knew is it was becoming increasingly more uncomfortable for me to play, but there was a balance between what was unjustifably worrying you versus what I felt was okay doing/playing since, to me, you guys seemed like you were enjoying yourselves more than ever. But I missed playing with Buffy and Lady (who are both included in this lock and if you are okay with it I can take the lock off or if you feel this should be private it can stay, either way's good with me) and over time it stopped being that way.

I think all of our characters changed in different degrees, that's true. But if the problem is mostly that we weren't around/neglectful/missing each other OOCly that got to the situation where the changes become, well, incompatible? I mean, clearly, the one thing we should all be doing is improving on OOC communication.

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

One thing that might help with communication is if you guys were all even on the same chat program at the same time. I know you and Tim favor gchat and Imp prefers IRC, so in addition to being topped by life and timezones, there's also the issue when you guys aren't even necessarily in the same place to communicate.

As for the differences thing, I think every character here has changed some, but that the main time the distance comes in is when people start missing the development, and with all the timing issues you and Tim have communicated both IC and OOCly a lot more about the changing. Unless the character changes Kon and Tim have gone through mean they've outgrown Bart, it doesn't seem like those alone should kill the dynamic. But Bart's expressed an IC not-understanding of Tim's changes, which, to me, is a much bigger issue than the changes themselves. Bart went through a lot of changes with Kon earlier on in camp before timing ate us, and you guys did pretty well with it. So yeah, I don't think I'd say it's that characters have changed so much as characters have changed and it's unclear exactly how to reconcile the changes because of how long it's been without them being dealt with.

God I'm not even sure that was a real sentence.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_superdork_/]

IRC is pretty much not an option for me when I'm studying -- it's just too distracting. I'm willing to get on IRC for a specific purpose, but unless my workload changes dramatically (something I don't see happening till October) I guess this is something we'll have to be aware of and work around. My assumption that Bart didn't want to know what was up with Kon because of her wish to avoid angst was a bigger factor than what chat program we use, I think, and I'm pretty sure we've addressed that satisfactorily.

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I knew that, you've mentioned it. And I was bringing it up because Bart had already covered the angst thing--that's why I didn't. But I was bringing it as something that I've had trouble with before, not with any of you, because I'm really stupid about getting in touch with people with gchat. So I didn't mean it as "this is your biggest issue and it must be fixed" just as "you might want to consider this in addition to other things."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_superdork_/]

I'm really not sure how? I mean, sometimes gchat is too distracting. I'm probably spending too much time on it than I should be from a study perspective, and school's got to come first. I'm aware (and always have been aware) that this puts me at a communication disadvantage, but I feel more comfortable with e-mail than IRC, so its only really a problem when other people want to contact me, and that's not really something I can address. The other thing is that I'm around less and so is Kon. But the only thing I can do with that is keep repeating that if people get in touch, I am happy to bring him out for things. My options are pretty limited.

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

Okay, I feel bad just responding to other people's comments, so...here are some thoughts on how to resolve stuff? I feel bad because I don't have great OOC communication skills, because I'm horribly shy and of the people I play with regularly, I only can talk to about four of them OOC without feeling like I'm bothering them and forcing conversation upon them, and I have PMing/messaging people--that's why I prefer IRC, because I can talk to people without having to PM them. This is mostly just. Me being a freak. Anyway! Here are some things I've noticed in general that have caused me problems and how I've tried (poorly) to solve them.

1. Primary vs. secondary characters, and general amount of play. Buffy has always been my primary, and one problem I've had with her and Scoobies interaction is that they aren't around when I need to deal with stuff, generally. Or that because of timing issues, I just don't get to thread with them all that much. I...really hate assumed interaction, in general. In my ideal world, I would thread with my cabinmates everyday. With some assumed interaction, I know how it would go (Buffy/Kon threads are pretty predictable, etc.) but I never want to assume stuff. Plus, with, for example, Xander and Buffy, we'd go weeks without threading, important stuff would happen with Buffy, and it became...sort of unclear if Xander even knew, because ICly they would have discussed it, but OOCly it would suck to assume that conversation, and it was complicated. So basically whenever I was around a lot more (and I've always been the most around of our Buffy cast, sadly), it became difficult.

The only time I've ever, I think, actually done okay with this kind of stuff is with Rikuou (and Kon but we can assume that Kon and I are always basically fine with OOC communication, I think), and it helped that Rikuou is on my timezone, around at similar times to me, and also has Rikuou as her primary. She's also usually on IRC, which means I don't have to e-mail her, which I hate. Anyway, I just...would PM Rikuou and fill her in whenever anything notably bad/good happened to Buffy, and we wouldn't even necessarily thread, but we'd do the "this is what's going on, this is how Buffy will look, this is what Rikuou should notice." And I never did that with Willow and Xander because I didn't remember to, and I feel shitty that I didn't. But it might not hurt--especially since you guys are on different timezones/messenger systems/etc.--if you guys adapted that and just...e-mailed each other state of the unions every week. Like "Kon did X this week, he feels Y, you guys would notice Z." I'm not saying that as a replacement for threads, and I'd definitely suggest sending out "omg traumatic event B happened when are you guys available to thread?" messages when needed, but I know I've gotten much worse at finding and stalking threads (and I know Imp's computer can't load posts over 1000 comments or so), so doing those might help when you don't necessarily have time for threads.

2. Consistency. I know when I was still trying to deal with Buffy's Tim issues, one problem that would come up a lot for me is that when Buffy's Tim issues were a focus, they'd have threads, but then as soon as it stopped being a focus, the threads stopped too, and I had a lot of trouble dealing with that because it did more harm than good for Buffy's feelings overall. Same with Scooby posts--we'd do a post, but we wouldn't really get a plan for "let's thread more often, more consistently," so even when we did posts, it didn't exactly solve the problems of "we don't thread enough," because it was a singular event instead of a regular occurrence. And I...am not actually very good at this! Because I'm crap at poking people for threads. But basically, I'd keep in mind that while this post is an awesome first step, and doing YJ threads is an awesome next step, the same problems are just going to come back unless stuff happens regularly. It might not even necessarily be a bad idea to try to come up with "at time Y we will thread every two weeks," although I think that might be impossible with your schedules, and is also kind of weird. But yeah. If you don't keep up threading, then it's just not going to get better.

...character limit? Seriously?

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

3. Agreement about assumed conversation. Basically, I'd really hash out the details of who, what, where, when, why. For Kon and Buffy, for example, I can assume that whether or not we've threaded on a given day, Kon and Buffy will see each other in the cabin at night, because they sleep together. And I can figure out basically how this conversation will go, because we've had it a million times and we're predictable. And I know Kon knows we do this, because we've discussed it. I've never been as clear, however, on what kind of interaction I should assume for Xander and Anya. Do they seek each other out daily? I don't even know what Anya does with her time, let alone Xander. So it's quite possible that while I assume "Xander teaches Anya about not fearing bunnies every day at one," Xander could be assuming "Anya and Xander spend their nights in the onsen threesoming with the walrus." And that's going to affect our IC threads without our even knowing it. So yeah, when you can't thread, I'd really figure out well what you're assuming goes on--do they all get together in the batcave for video games every day? Does Kon serve tea (sidenote, Kon, Lionel Luthor with a pink teacup and a bunny is basically the best thing ever) and crumpets and everyone has a good cry? Just agree on it so you're all working from the same basic premise of "this is how our characters interact when we can't actually play it."

Okay, this is mad long and I am technically at work, working. But...these are all for once you've figured out where to go, sort of ideas for how to not have this same thing happen again. You're all awesome and I hope you can work out a plan, and I hope this was in some way helpful instead of just, you know, incoherent.

Re: ...character limit? Seriously?

[its-the-cape.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm just gonna say right now overall, thanks for all of these suggestions and they are fantastic and full of helpfulness. The team managed to get together on IRC last night and we had a good chat about planning some posts and when to do them and stuff, so I think we'll all start getting better about that again now that we've broken the ice and aired our issues and stuff. And we do need to cover the assumed conversation kind of thing again cause I know what I think happens but it's been a while since I reiterated and got an agreement on that.

Randomly, I saved a log of that chat if you think you want to see it? I'm gonna try and go over it and comment with whatever major decisions we made so people are informed, but some people like logs, I dunno?

Re: ...character limit? Seriously?

[classprotector.livejournal.com]

It's cool! They really are your issues, and I feel bad for butting in as much as I have. But I have put thought into this for Scooby stuff and also because I've been failing at catching a lot of people recently, so I figured I'd put in what I could.