Technician vs. Performer - RP Edition

[Wolfsbane706]

A disparity that has ruled the web for quite some time is the technician vs the performer. How would that normally apply to RP? The way I see it, the "technician" is someone who makes a detail-heavy post, but doesn't really put frills and designs on it. They might alter the color of some of the text to make dialogue more distinguishable, but that's probably the extent of it. The "performer" is someone who loads their posts down with frills: borders, backgrounds, text colors, you name it, they'll probably do it. The rhyme and reason behind both styles strangely tends to be lost to them both.

So, what do you think?

 

[Kagayours]

I don't normally put much fancy formatting on my posts, so, I guess that makes me the "technician". I often color the dialogue -- giving each character a different color -- but I don't do much beyond that. Why? Because:

1. It's more work. Not only does it have to look pretty (as in, no clashing colors or anything), you also have to code it correctly.
2. If you're not careful about it, it can render your posts unreadable to members with certain background themes, or to mobile users.

I really just don't see the need, especially given the potential risks. It's way more effort than I would put into a single post. I will sometimes make things a bit frillier if I have something special planned for the IC, but, even then, it's certainly not the all-out stuff with the fancy div boxes and backgrounds and all that. And when I say "a bit frillier", I mean I might add an image or Youtube video or something, or maybe a bit more color than usual. But uh, yeah, that's about it.

Granted, I'm talking specifically about IC posts, here. With CS's, I'll sometimes have a bit more fun with the coding, but, I still never go as far as doing all those fancy borders and background and stuff. I'm just more likely to play around with colors and other basic formatting stuff in a CS.

The first post of the Altera Arcana OOC is, by far, the frilliest post under my name -- but I consider it an outlier, since the formatting wasn't done by me, and I never would've bothered to do anything anywhere near as pretty if @WhisperingWillows hadn't offered to do all of that for me.

And even then, it had to be edited a couple of times in the first few days of its existence due to unforeseen readability issues with certain themes. @_@

 

[Absyinthe_Artica]

Well, I would definitely say I am the "performer" RP poster, however. I have detail extensive information within all of my "frilly" posts. On my previous site, they had a system where you could code your own HTML & CSS layouts for your individual forums. I enjoyed it thoroughly and did several requests for those type of layouts on that site. The community was far too hostile and toxic for my liking, however. I had to drop and block the site completely and made a permanent home with Iwaku as my Roleplay site. Since this forum only uses BBcode for their codes, I had to teach my self a different way to format my div thread boxes than what I was use to. Luckily, Iwaku still allows plenty of styling and"frilly" code work with the BBcode div boxes and I can stylize many different threads as I see fit. I'm still testing out all the different combinations of BBcodes that can be had and it is a lot of fun to design these graphically.

 

[Greenie]

I would most definitely be the technician. Aside from justifying my text and very occasionally using different coloured text for dialogue, I don't really do anything else. Maybe on a very rare occasion add a picture. As for CSs, I usually bold and italicise headings, but nothing more than that.

I personally find that adding too many frills can be distracting from the actual content of the post. A little bit like how too much bling will distract you from the actual person you're talking too. Then there's also the fact that I personally am not too great at using anything more than the basic formatting on a forum, and I prefer the simple look. A much too fancy looking post will immediately intimidate me, sometimes more than a post length. What if the person wants just as fancy a post and I can't deliver?? Thoughts like that tend to come to my mind.

 

[mingummy]

I'm a Performer. I don't do the fancy backgrounds and borders (my coding knowledge is much too amateur for that) but I like using gifs, colors, symbols, and spaces to make my rps more appealing. I find reading rp intros without any design to them stifling and heavy. Big blocks of text are daunting.

Of course it's different for writing IC, then the only thing I mess with is font and coloring speech.

 

[Decimate]

Technician here. The max amount of prettying I might do is be liberal with my white space, color/bold the dialogue, and italicize thoughts.

I am of the opinion that my post should stand on it's merits and content, not by it's pretty frills.

 

[junebug]

Technician, occasionally performer depending on who I rp with. I generally change my font and color my dialogue. If someone's willing to make character banners for our rp, by the gods let me have it and I might fhrow in a border too! :D

 

[Kestrel]

... You've kinda missed the analogy. Technician vs. performer is content vs. presentation. The easiest example is a description of an environment. You balance the details of how it looks with how it feels. The tree was ten metres tall vs. the tree was imposing and intimidating. The thing is though, that good writing isn't the one or the other. It's a balance. Cause frills without substance are just frills and if your description is boring to read it's.. well. Boring to read.

However performance isn't just throwing out a div box and get code. It is more than anything your writing style. Your ability to compel in addition to your ability to describe.

Between the two, I would lean towards technician. Mostly because my writing has been role-playing or practical for the most part, so understanding what is said has often been more practical to me. But I'd lie if I said I don't have my fair share of colourful or absurd use of language in my repertoire.

 

[Hana]

I tend more towards the technician side than the performer. At first, looking at this topic, I thought you meant technician as in someone who writes dry roleplay posts - lots of words and actions to get the story forward squeezed into a post, but little description or prose and detail. I can do both detailed and elaborate writing and simplify it depending on the scenes in a roleplay, who my partner is, and whether or not the roleplay simply demands it.

Only during certain times do I fit your definition of a performer. I do not mind adding 'frills' and backgrounds, as you put it, into my character sheets. But I prefer minimal formatting (the most is colored text and a different font style and size - and perhaps a character banner at the top of my post) for my IC posts. I find backgrounds and an overload of images and borders to be distracting, it detracts from what is of actual importance - the writing.

 

[The Mood is Write]

Technician, here. I format my first post so it features a character image without looking clunky, but everything else is just the post, no colors, only formatting to show emphasis (or different language use), and little else.