Dlamp's RP Ramblings

[dlamp]

Y'know, this is probably one of the few places where I still go by dlamp. That's my username for almost everything, but I'm typically known as Allen X in most online areas I frequent. And Dlamp's Ramblings don't have the same ring as Allen's Ramblings.

But alas.

Folks, I'm about to do something that I've been both excited and dreading for the past few months. Back when I was part of the Tumblr RP community I usually did essays and opinion pieces I called Ramblings. In these I would discuss various aspects of the RP community, my take on them, the reason why I thought some of the habits I saw forming were forming, things of that nature. And while I'm no longer doing RP things on Tumblr anymore, I still feel the urge to write down my opinions and takes on things in terms of RPing every now and then, even more so now that I've come back to this site.

So, with me being a lot more active here I've been thinking of doing just that.

I'll be starting an essay series here through this thread. I'll be discussing just about every topic I think is relevant. From profiles, to posting, and setting up matches, and so on. Think of this less as proper and organized series of essays and more of me just occasionally going on long-winded discussion about about various points of RPing and writing in this fun little community we have. Ideally, this can be used as a discussion/advice column about RPing and general writing, but it's mostly for me to vent, discuss various topics, and chew on a few aspects of RPing I notice about this specific forum.

Overall, I just want a chance to talk about some of my experiences. I've been doing this RP thing for over ten years, and in my ripe old age of 27 I want to talk a little bit about my time with this rather unique hobby of ours. My take on things, the lessons I've learned, things like that. Hopefully, some advice and guidance will come along with that.

And... that was going to be this first post of many, but I feel I should go into a bit more detail about myself, so...

My RP History

To go over my history of RPing in a nutshell I spent about 6-ish years on the RP forums of Gaiaonline (most of middle and high school years), 8-ish years with about 4 Tumblr RP blogs (most of my late high school and college years), and using pure post-by-post RPing sites like LAW for about 10-ish years (post-high school to now).

And folks, some of these places were fucking crucibles.

I'll go over the details of each in other essays about the specifics, but to keep things short, Gaiaonline taught me a lot about formatting, characterization, and presentation. A lot of the reason I can manipulate and utilize BBCode to make my profiles as nice as I think they look as well as I can is thanks to years of Gaiaonline forcing me to learn the basics for the sake of writing with others. It was also the place where I learned how to read a community's mood and cohesion and make my characters more palpable to a group from the get-go due to Gaiaonline's RP community being rather clique-ish with certain groups and threads. Sorry if that sounds a little backhanded, but Gaiaonline did a lot of good and bad things for me.

Tumblr... was a crucible in its own way, but writing on that site taught me to be flexible, cautious, and have standards for my partners. It taught me the importance of presentation and communicating with partners to form a decent narrative. It taught me how to say a lot with little, and some of the mental gymnastics one does in our community for certain elements of it. And it showed me the absolute hellstorm of opinions and ego in the RP community if one isn't careful about where they walk and if they keep themselves in a bubble for too long.

Also powerscaling, a lot about powerscaling that I'll talk about in a different essay.

Needless to say I've been doing this for a while and I have a lot of experience in the field, and I have a lot of thoughts as a result. For now, I'll consider this my intro essay and call it here. As I start writing these out I'll be linking to each specific topic I cover. The first thing I plan on writing will be on profiles so keep an eye out for that.

Anyway, that'll be it for me, I'll... probably be working on a drawing or something. I'll see you all in the next essay.

[dlamp]

Alright, let’s get these Ramblings started in full. I’ve been thinking about the order I’ll do these for a bit and I’ve decided to start at what would be the beginning for most people new to the forum and work my way from there. To that end I’ll start by talking about profiles, then planning out threads, then writing posts, and then general interaction with the community.

So… profiles. Let’s start this off with a simple question first.

Why Make Profiles?

Okay, I know it sounds a little silly to even ask this question in the first place considering you can’t even fully interact with most of the forum without one, buuuut this was honestly a question a few months back in the discord, so I think it’ll do some good to explain why we even write out these things in the first place.

For me, the short answer is creating a separation of writer and character.

For a fetish RP site like LAW -and to be clear, LAW is a fetish RP by the admittance of its moderators and admin- there needs to be a degree of safety between the writers plotting out threads and stories. Some of us are okay with writing smut and erotic content, but outright sexting is at least not my thing. A profile of a character/avatar one plans to use for their writing endeavors on a site like this helps to separate the writer from the action a little. A wall that helps keep some form of boundaries and create a space to write all the desired content of a specific writer without worrying about the topics of those desires being seen as too invasive, violent, or promiscuous.

Basically, it’s the difference between RPing as yourself vs. RPing as your self-insert.

Now, there are a few asterisks to the above statements, but I’ll save the details of those when I start discussing general interactions with other folks. But for the short version: don’t be fucking weird, man.

That’s the basics of it anyway. And before we continue on toward actual profiles…

Winner’s Rules

I feel like it’s important to discuss Winner’s rules in regards to profiles, and I’ll be bringing up the general forum rules and guidelines whenever I can in the future as both a basis for these essays and to not state anything that directly goes against the will of the admin and moderators here. With that said, the rules on profiles are as follows:

To make a character you can roleplay with, please post her in the roster section, under their corresponding section. If you are new to the site, before you can use them, you'll need to get approval. Myself or a mod will give your character post a "thanks" or simply reply to the post and say that they're approved after you've posted them. Getting approved isn't hard as long as you (write) a decent amount and have at least one reference picture. Use the Reference Checker Thread to ensure that the pic/character you want to use has not been taken. Once your character has been approved, your subsequent character profiles will not require approval unless you are told explicitly to add more to them. For a general idea of pertinent information to include for a character, here's a barebones template.

Name:
Age: (Your character should be 18 or older)
Hair Color:
Eye Color:
Height:
Weight:

Entrance music:
Alignment: (Heel/Face/Tweener/etc)
Nationality:
Fighting Style: (Striker/High Flyer/Grappler/etc.)
Finishing move/s:

Personality:
History:

I recommend that everyone double check the rules every now and then, as Winner has posted a lot of good advice and guidelines for roleplaying, and explains it in a way that will be politer and kinder than I’m probably going to be in future topics.

In any case, what I find interesting about Winner’s barebones version of an accepted profile isn’t what’s on it, but what isn’t.
And that’s a stats page.

Stats and Power Scaling

This is where one of those crucibles I came from starts to show its head. Back when I was active on Tumblr there was a rather big issue in trying to properly write a good fight sequences. Okay, there were many reasons for that, and I’ll probably talk about them in future essays, but for this Rambling I’ll say one of the bigger issues was power scaling.

For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to be as brief and quick as possible on the definition of power scaling since every time the phrase comes up it invokes too many different reactions for me to really keep track of and deal with. In a nutshell, power scaling is measuring one character’s strength and abilities to another in order to figure out how strong they are. To use a quote from the vs battle wiki:

The logic behind powerscaling works much that of transitive relation. In which if A > B and B > C, then A > C.

So, this is basically a narrative device, something to be used more by the writer than the community at large.

But what does this have to do with the forum and LAW?

Well, in terms of RPing, very little. One a site like LAW where everything is more or less following a mix of our real world physics and logistics with a little bit of anime flair it’s almost impossible to do a proper comparison of a character’s skill and ability to another’s. Not only due to the lack of need for a stats/leveling system, but also due to the nature of how most matches and fights are planned out between writers. Again, this is for later topics on plotting threads, but the short of it is Winner’s minimal requirements seems to put the focus on more the character’s fighting style, personality, and how the two play into each other than the technical and physical abilities of the characters.

This means that you can be a lot vaguer about what your character can do physically and have more wiggle room for them pulling off certain stunts and attacks or enduring certain stunts and attacks without outright breaking the canon of the character unless stating something that completely conflicts with the character in question. For example, as of me writing this essay my character Amano, who is a fledgling martial artist and has only had about a year of practical combat experience, is more or less still standing after enduring a brutal amount of punishment in a barbed wire match, having the energy to even shout and argue with her opponent while bleeding out all over the floor. No one questions this because… well, a lot of reasons but the main one for this essay is that her profile and canon don’t say she’s a glass cannon that can’t take punish and in fact state she can handle more hardcore styled matches.

I mean, there’s also plotting narrative beats, character logic superseding in-universe logic, pacing, communication with my writing partner, and a few other things, but let’s keep the focus on the profiles for now.

All that said, those that do use stats and power scaling are somewhat beholden to them, or at the very least somewhat obligated to keep it in the realm of consistency. Again, on a site like this where plot beats and narrative supersede almost everything else, this isn’t too much of an issue, just don’t write anything too conflicting.

Oh wow… I’m bitching about power scaling again. And I swore I wouldn’t do that on this site too. Alright, time to wrap this up before I go on an even nuttier tangent.

Conclusion

Okay okay, to just wrap up this portion, Winner’s requirements for a profile are a lot looser and more freeform than most other sites I’ve been to. You only need enough information to give everyone a good idea of your character and you’re only beholden to as much as you write, so try not to write too much and have yourself stuck with a character too limited in their function and abilities.

This is only the first essay on profiles, as I plan to talk a more about them in detail, step by step, point by point, but I’m also getting rather longwinded in this section, so I’ll wrap this up with some quick tips.

Dlamp’s Quick Profile Tips

• Fighting style is probably gonna’ be the most important aspect of your character in terms of Winner’s bare bones requirements, so focus on fleshing that part out if any.
• It wouldn’t hurt to bold the subject of each point so there’s a degree of separation from the subject and the text. I’ll have a coded version of what I mean below.
• Since this forum has people from different parts of the world it wouldn’t hurt to use both imperial and metric units when describing a character’s height and weight.
• I’ll go in more detail in a future essay, but try and keep your initial personality section to one paragraph and your bio page to two paragraphs. The keywords are try and initial, as things change when you’ve been actively using a character for a year and have to update their info.

That’ll be it for me. I’ll be sticking with talking about profiles for the next while and writing about some of the specifics. Oh, and here's that code I promised:

Code: Select all

[b]Name[/b]:
[b]Age[/b]: (Your character should be 18 or older)
[b]Hair Color[/b]:
[b]Eye Color[/b]:
[b]Height[/b]:
[b]Weight[/b]:

[b]Entrance Music[/b]:
[b]Alignment[/b]: (Heel/Face/Tweener/etc)
[b]Nationality[/b]:
[b]Fighting Style[/b]: (Striker/High Flyer/Grappler/etc.)
[b]Finishing move(s)[/b]:

[b]Personality[/b]:
[b]History[/b]: 

[dlamp]

Alright, with the basics of the profile out of the way let’s talk a bit about the specifics, the details that go into writing a profile and getting started on the forum. Nothing too technical, just looking at Winner’s bare bones template again and discussing it in specifics when writing up a profile, some of the key points I find when I’m writing up a character sheet, and some more general advice when writing.
And like last time, I’ll start this off with a question.

What should be in a profile?

Again, a bit of a silly question, but I’m honestly doing this more for me than you guys. I don’t want to go careening into the sun and bitch about power scaling for 3 paragraphs again, so this is to keep the topic focused.

That said, to me a good profile is one that gives a decent snapshot of the character.

And I do mean a snapshot. Enough information that we have an idea of what the character is about, but not so much information that it feels like overload. That happy medium is going to vary person to person, but I’ll be going over where that line is for me personally as I talk about the individual parts of the profile.

But before I go into detail on each part I think it’s worth taking another look at the rules.

Winner’s Rules

Again, to make sure I’m not saying anything that goes against the rules of the forum I’ll be quoting and posting the relevant rules for each essay to reel myself in a little. With that said, aside from the bare bones template, Winner also adds:

These fields, plus a picture should be enough on their own. Use a paragraph or two for Personality and History... Consider adding additional fields to give your character more depth as a wrestler and as a character… Perhaps they have personality quirks or a story that led them to find employment at LAW. Maybe talk about their wrestling style… Maybe you want to discuss their standard/commonly used moves? All these things are fun to consider when making your character and help others get a better feel for how you'd like them to operate and how you'd like to use them. Also, please consider adding fields for Match History...

Admittedly, I'm scratching out a lot from that quote, but only because I plan on going into detail about it myself. in any case, the overall idea is to do your best to make a cool character, and to put some effort into.

And using Winner’s bare bone’s template I’ll go over what I think should be in each area. So to start:

The Basics

Name:
Age: (Your character should be 18 or older)
Hair Color:
Eye Color:
Height:
Weight:
Nationality:

These are the easiest and most straightforward to cover as everything is exactly as written. But to be clear:

• Name: The name is your character’s name. Ideally first and last name since most people… well, have first and last names. Most people using only one name usually have it stylized that way or it’s an alias of some kind. Speaking of, while Winner’s template doesn’t require it, most wrestlers usually fight under an alias or ring name of some kind and that can just be put under the real name.
• Age: Age is how old your character. They have to be portrayed as at least 18 since this is a fetish RP site that allows and somewhat encourages writing smut. And with that said there are some laws (specifically in the US) that could get us all in big trouble if the characters aren’t depicted at consenting ages.
• Hair & Eye Color: Hair and eye color are self-explanatory, just make sure they lineup with your reference pictures or you have some disclaimer that the reference pictures don’t fully reflect the character’s actual appearance.
• Height & Weight: This is important. This is very important. This is, in fact, the most important part of any profile for a roleplay site that focuses on action and combat. Height and weight do much more to determine things like reach, physical strength, body structure, and so much more than some would know. Height and weight are some of the first things a wrestler/fighter would notice about their opponent at a glance and would immediately form strategies around. I can’t stress enough that some care needs to be taken when decided this factor of the character. Not only making sure the reference images match up with what you’ve written to an extent, but also making it clear to your partners as to what kind of opponent they’re dealing with. All in all, just make sure the character is in the proper weight class for where it’s being posted. It also wouldn’t hurt to use both imperial and metric units when writing out the specifics, considering we have a lot of people from all over the world on this forum. Winner has also left this link to a height and weight chart for women that explains what kind of frame/body type a woman would have with the heights and weights a writer may have chose to get an understanding of the character.
• Nationality/Ethnicity: Basically where your character is from and their ancestry. Since LAW is mostly based in Japan with a few international locations it’d help to explain how your character went from their home country to Japan and for what reasons. As far as I’m aware, it’s actually pretty common that foreigners go to Japan for business/work visa, including wrestling/entertainment.

But that’s enough of the basics, next up is the meaty stuff that effects how many matches are likely going to play out.

The Wrestling Stuff

Entrance music:
Alignment: (Heel/Face/Tweener/etc)
Fighting Style: (Striker/High Flyer/Grappler/etc.)
Finishing move/s:

Like I said in the last Rambling, this is where most of your characterization will come from, at least in-ring characterization.

• Entrance Music: I think it’s worth noting that the entrance music and type of entrance your wrestler can have is almost limitless. From my understanding of the wrestling business (which is admitted very little), if you can make something work, you can make it work. The entrance music doesn’t need to resonant with the character your writing, it doesn’t even need to fit if you wanna’ go with something comedic. I’ve seen some interesting examples on different sites, but I’ll probably discuss those in a separate Rambling. Basically, go nuts and don’t feel too worried about it.
• Alignment: I plan on discussing the face-heel dynamic and kayfabe in another Rambling, but to keep it short while my current profiles are more based on Dungeons and Dragons alignment, I’ve slowly been shifting things to be more linking with the traditional pro wrestling alignments of face and heels. Something I’ll say is that tweeners, characters that are neither face nor heel, are somewhat common in joshi wrestling (which LAW is based off of to an extent), as joshi wrestling has some looser rules in terms of alignment and storylines as far as my research goes. Again, a subject for a different Rambling, but just something to keep in mind. Faces are typically good guys that play to the crowd and heels are bad guys that ignore or antagonist the crowd, that’s the short of it anyway.
• Fighting Style: This isn’t just limited to just saying if your character is striker, grappler, powerhouse, or so on. You can go further in your explanation and I recommend it. If they’re a striker then do they use traditional strikes like elbows, dropkicks, and running attacks? Do they use a specific martial art in their repertoire? If they’re a grappler do they focus on submissions? Do they try to get a lot of pins? Does the fighting style have a specific strength or weakness that goes into it? Is taunting or conversing with the opponent a part of their strategy? The sky’s the limit, at least to an extent. This is probably the most important part of the character next to height and weight, as this is the best way to show your RP partners what they’re getting into when they face your character.
• Finishing/Signature Move(s): These are the big moves your character uses in a match. Signature moves are the flashy attacks that your character is known to use throughout a match, while finishers are moves that your character does when they’re about to finish a match, usually a flashy throw, knockout strike, or guaranteed pin/submission technique. I personally see finishing moves and signature moves as further characterization in the ring, the finishing touches to make your character pop a little. But… if you’ve looked through my profiles you’ll know most of my characters don’t have them. I… just don’t have the creativity for them yet.

Anyway, that’s it for all the wrestler stuff, so it’s time to discuss that final bit of the template.

The Personal Info

Personality:
History:

The last points here are where a lot of the meat of a profile is gonna’ be, at least length-wise. This is where things start to connect and we get a fuller idea of what your character is about.

• Personality: In terms of the last two points on Winner’s template, personality is probably the most important between the two, at least for me. This covers how your character acts and can be separated into two areas: How they behave in the ring, and how they behave outside the ring, assuming the behavior changes at all. It’s a pretty common trope for wrestlers, especially heels, have a nicer/shier personality outside the ring, as the wrestling format allows them break out of their shell and act bolder with little consequence toward their personal selves. Granted, in LAW where kayfabe doesn’t exist this is a trickier line to follow, but it’s very possible. And as the rules state, this should be in paragraph form, I’d say a minimum of 3-4 sentence should do.
• History/Bio: I see history and bio as a bit more tertiary than the personality. This isn’t to say you can’t make this part meaty, but the purpose of this section, at least to me, is to starting connected the personality and alignment, give some context to how and why your character acts the way they do. You don’t need to be too longwinded explanation on their birth and upbringing, nor a mini novella of their biography. Just the key factors of their life that led them to LAW.

Alright, that’s everything in Winner’s bare bones template covered, but there’s a few more things to talk about yet.

Extra Things

So, remember when I said that I scratched a lot out of that quote of Winner’s rules? Well now I’m gonna’ talk about exactly what I cut out, but to give that quote now that I’ve said my piece:

These fields, plus a picture should be enough on their own. Use a paragraph or two for Personality and History… Consider adding additional fields to give your character more depth as a wrestler and as a character. Perhaps they have personality quirks or a story that led them to find employment at LAW. Maybe talk about their wrestling style. Are they a high flyer? A powerhouse? A brawler? Do they have signature moves to accompany their finishers or attempt to set them up? Maybe you want to discuss their standard/commonly used moves? All these things are fun to consider when making your character and help others get a better feel for how you'd like them to operate and how you'd like to use them. Also, please consider adding fields for Match History, a character timeline to chronicle the events of their career at LAW, and a field for Championships/Accolades/Milestones.

Okay, I’m technically still cutting out a portion of that quote, but it’s not relevant to the current discussion. Even with the template finished there are still some recommended additions to add to your profile to make it pop a little, both by Winner’s recommendation and my own. If you’ve read my Writing Profiles post you already know about most of what I’m going to say, but if you haven’t, here’s the rundown:

• Strengths and Weaknesses: Like I said in the original post I think this a more organic way of explaining a character’s capabilities and limitations without using a stat line. This also helps avoid meta gaming to an extent as well, but that’s a discussion for another Rambling.
• Move Set: This is a handy way of having a shorthand of what the character can and will do at any situation to keep their fighting style and strategies in character to some extent.
• Extra Facts: A bit of trivia never hurts, and provided the writer actually calls back to it, it can be a good amount of continuity too.
• Record: A general record of all the finished matches and how they turned out, ideally linking those matches as well. Accolades and different achievements be discussed as well.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the bare bones profile page does enough to show what a character can do and some of their limitations, but a little more detail here and there never hurts. The key thing is that you do your best and write your best.

Anyway, I’m going to go a little out of order and talk about the wrestling alignment in greater detail for the next essay. So… I’ll see you all then.

[dlamp]

Okay, so this essay has honestly been a completely pain to write up. My last two Ramblings had a lot more structure to them since I was tackling things that Winner had already covered in their rules and FAQ sections, so my essays had a clear line of what I could and should discuss to so I was neither breaking the rules or saying something that directly went against what Winner already wrote. That isn’t a complaint by the way, I do prefer writing with at least a few ground rules so I don’t accidentally start talking about things that aren’t relevant to the topic at hand and keep intent of each essay focused to how each topic relates to the forum as a whole.

I don’t have that luxury here.

There’s no real rule or note on the wrestling alignments that Winner has written as far as I've seen, so… I’m walking into this blind. And not helping is the fact that unlike a lot of people on this forum and as ironic as it’s going to sound, I don’t have any experience or interest in Professional Wrestling as an entertainment medium, so most of what I’m going to be talking about is based on wiki articles and some online videos discussing the topic.

So… if this essay sounds like I’m completely talking out my ass then I’ll be more than willing to take that L.

But with that said, while I was doing that research and diving through those wiki articles on the subject of wrestling alignments I started to realize just how malleable and different LAW is as both a storytelling platform and general setting from actual Professional Wrestling. So… let’s talk about that for a minute. And like usual, let’s start this off with yet another silly question:

Why do we use wrestling alignments?

So… Winner doesn’t have any rules or notes about wrestling alignments to my knowledge save for the fact that it’s a part of their bare bones example of a profile. This means I’m going to be doing a bit of speculation and personal interpretation, so… might be talking out my ass here a little bit.

But back to the question, to give the short answer this calls back to my discussion in the Profile Specifics: the alignments help to give a snapshot of how your character will behave in the ring and their general temperament while fighting. In a similar vein to how we use horoscopes and blood types to shorthand a character’s personality for anime characters so too do we use wrestling alignments on LAW to a similar effect. It’s to give your partner a quick idea of if their character play to the crowd and fight accord to the stated rules or if they break and bend those rules while acting rude and aggressive.

That’s the best reason I can give without going too off-the-rails, but to be honest even this explanation is a little sketchy due to the lack of in-universe kayfabe in LAW along with a few other factors that muddy the waters a little, but I’m not going to discuss the lack of kayfabe in specifics until months later. Moreover, to my understanding of what the pro wrestling wiki is telling me, the terms Face, Heel, and Tweener are more slag words than proper terminology. They’re shorthands to define and categorize the role of a wrestler during specific storylines and their general public opinion. And in a world where kayfabe isn’t a thing using these categorizations is a bit difficult.

So for this essay (and for my sanity) I’m going just break everything down into about 3 points:

• Explain the specific alignment and how they are used in traditional Pro Wrestling.
• Give examples of how people of that specific alignment usually behave.
• Explain how this alignment relates to LAW and how to utilize it in RP threads

I’m… honestly stepping into some unknown territory, so… like I said, might start talking out my ass a little here. But anyway, onto those terms…

Faces

According to the pro wrestling wiki:

In wrestling, a face is a character who is portrayed as being moral or approving (that is, faces are "good guys" or "crowd favorites").

The wiki mostly gives examples of specific wrestlers following that alignment afterwards that rather than explain the idea further in their introductory section, but Faces are essentially the heroes of the match or the company, the fan favorites and all around good guys. They’re usually agreeable, charismatic, and overall likeable in the traditional sense. In typical pro wrestling a face is used in the same way a typical celebrity is: a face for the company, an inspirational figure, a leader of sorts to a large segment of the company, and the one that uses their charisma and political sway to get some things moving and promote the company. Faces are the people of the wrestling company that are just the all-around good folk that the crowd loves and cheers for. And Faces tend to also be longtime title holders or prominent in their own right. And most faces tend to follow a few common traits:

• Following the rules of the match
• Playing to the crowd (doing requested moves, getting the crowd involved in the action, etc.)
• Actively and positively promoting the company
• Being generally charismatic
• Having a positive energy and personality
• Fighting with a very technical and professional fighting style
• Punishing heel wrestlers through (usually) fair means
• Usually having a more positive and friendly gimmick/persona

The list goes on, but these are the basics of Face behavior. There are some exceptions to this too. A Face wrestler cheating in a way to level the playing field of a heel wrestler’s antics or interrupting a match to save a friend or stop a torturous/career-ending submission being done to a star of the company, and the list goes on. The key thing is there’s usually some internal justification and logic for a Face’s more dishonorable actions, lest it break the magic and have the character feel inconsistent. Overall, a Face must be a likeable character to a general public. And while we as writers have control over how the crowd of any specific match reacts there needs to be some logic to the cheering and praising.

But as far as LAW goes, things are a little muddy. For a number of reasons.

The main reason is that lack of kayfabe. Again, the subject of kayfabe as a whole is completely different essay, but for the short of it, kayfabe is essentially a pro wrestling term to describe and discuss the fictional story and events within the company as if they were real. Basically, all the background discussion, plotting and choreographing of a scene and storyline. The moments when we start talking about pro wrestling as a profession and not a story.

This is not the case in LAW, not in-universe anyway.

Again, a discussion for later, but in LAW every fight had, hit taken, and word said is happening in real time and is very much real and not a scripted event within the world. So for a Face, staying “in-character” is a bigger deal. Any moment of cheating and foul play isn’t a staged event playing to a script, it really is a good and usually fair fighter using less acceptable means to get a desperate win, and if it isn’t following an in-universe logic to make sense it breaks that magic even harder than in actual pro wrestling. Faces are usually stars and darlings of the company, and in reality people that hold themselves and are held up by others to a higher standard, usually face some stark consequences for… losing face if you’ll pardon the pun. And this is one of the major difficulties of writing for a Face in LAW: in a world where you have the theatrics of pro wrestling with the live combat of an MMA match, how can you maintain a positive image? Not helping the fact is that LAW also has +18 fetish matches.

And that’s the second rub. LAW is a +18 Fetish RP site, and when a lot of matches here usually hint or encourage a more promiscuous, sensual, and erotic aspect to them it makes it difficult to keep a good character on the moral high ground while… well, fighting in a match where you have to strip your opponent and bang them with or without their consent until they climax up to three times. It is understandably difficult to keep a good guy character good when they’re in a match that encourages them to humiliate, strip, and sexually attack their opponent. Not to say this can’t be done, but it takes a lot of charisma, planning, good character writing, and in-universe justification to keep things in character. There are ways around this, usually by there being a mutual understanding of both characters knowing what their getting into and treating the matches more as competitive affairs of the match rather than malicious attempts at embarrassing and assaulting one another, and often making sure the loser of the match is still in good spirits even after all the antics done in the ring, but… it’s difficult.

But that’s enough of that, let’s talk about the other side of things.

Heels

Again, according to the Pro Wrestling Wiki:

In wrestling, a Heel is a villain character. Heels are portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner, breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside of the bounds of the rules of the match. In non-wrestling jargon, heels are often the "bad guys" in pro wrestling storylines. They are typically opposed by a face (crowd favorite).

And as you can see, Heels have a much more defined role in pro wrestling. They’re the bad guys, the guys you wanna’ see go down, the cheaters, the villains, and so on. These are the people that help give the Face wrestlers a clear line between what a good guy and a bad guy is. With their cheating antics, cruel and sadistic fighting styles, use of rather intense match types, and overall negative persona it gives the Faces a bigger boost, as a Face’s good nature could be seen as boring without a good antagonist to contrast it. And that’s the biggest role a Heel has, that a villain has in general, to promote, test, and challenge the ideals and positive nature of the Face. When a Heel is acting cruel to another wrestler and they get booed and rejected it for it’s usually because the wrestler being treated cruelty is undeserving of it or too inexperienced to take it. They’re obstacles, examples, and antagonist, never letting the heroes simply rest on their laurels without a fight and a reminder to never stoop to their level. But getting back to the point, there are a few things heels often do in their matches and general behavior such as:

• Cheat or bend the rules to get a victory
• Actively antagonize or insult the crowd
• Bash/Badmouth other wrestlers within the company
• Punish/Assault Face wrestlers through ruthless and sadistic means
• Generally be unpleasant and rude
• Have a more wild and unrefined fighting style
• Having a negative and villainous persona/gimmick

And again, there are some exceptions. A Heel having their Vegeta-moment and pulling off the occasional act of kindness or honorable behavior to a respected rival, offering a truly fair fight against wrestlers they like or feel they can beat fairly, having a charismatic personality that supersedes their otherwise villainous behavior, and so on. But the main idea is that Heels are often seen as the villains in some way, shape, or form to challenge the Faces.

And while Heels are much easier to write compared to Faces on LAW, as they can be as loud and rowdy as they want without “breaking character,” I also believe Heels need to take a lot more care into how they interact with others.

This is a more meta reasoning than writing a Face and one I plan on touching in detail in future essays, but difficulty of writing a Heel falls more on the writers of Heels than the characters themselves. Again, this is something I’ll cover in the far-future, but for now the short of it is that as writers and role-players on a +18 Fetish RP site, consent is the most important factor in writing with our partners. While a Heel’s job is to be villainous and said villainy can and likely will touch on a lot of sensitive and darker topics, that villainy should never breach a level your partner can’t handle or isn’t ready for. That isn’t to say you need to write a disclaimer for your Heel characters, but everyone’s line is a bit different and simply discussing how far that line can go before writing any given thread can go a long way in separating the character’s feelings and actions with your own. Again, this is a far more complicated topic that is honestly worth an essay in itself, but… just be careful when a writer wants to do something with your Heel and make sure everyone’s writing at a level that’s both in character and isn’t pushing anyone into something their uncomfortable with.

I think you all get the point here and I’d rather not discuss this any further, so let’s talk about the last alignment.

Tweeners

Tweeners… do not really exist in Pro Wrestling. No, I’m not kidding. I know it’s a term of pro wrestling, but as far as its use it seems to mostly be a 90s thing. But… to quote the wiki:

A tweener is a character who is portrayed as being morally neutral or ambiguous (that is, they are between a face and a heel)… Another term to describe this type of character is an anti-hero (or an anti-villain)

So a character that isn’t really aligned to any one side. But I also said that wrestling alignment is determined by crowd reception and character action. A wrestler that gets no reaction from the crowd in actual pro wrestling is usually either a failed face or a heel in the making. The crowd really doesn’t just… watch and stare or give a neutral reaction to things when two people are tussling in the ring unless it’s a really boring match. And most of the time a character that isn’t directly antagonizing the crowd is a Face by default.

But this thankfully isn’t Pro Wrestling, and LAW has no kayfabe. Meaning there are some examples that fit the bill of what a Tweener could be. Namely wrestlers and fighters that don’t have a specific storyline, goal, or interest in marketing themselves as an entity of LAW as a wrestling company. This is where that lack of kayfabe starts to turn into an advantages, at least for Tweener characters. A character that doesn’t take a side in things within LAW aren’t so much Faces and Heels as they are just… wrestlers. Or fighters. Or sexy gals and guys wanting to just have fun in the ring. There’s actually a bit of wiggle room, but here’s a few ideas/examples I came up with for what would fit a Tweener:

• Professional athletes/martial artists that are in the ring as competitors and not gimmicky wrestlers
• Sex fighters where the crowd would realistically not care who wins so long as sexy things are happening
• Completely newbie fighters that don’t have a major gimmick/stance yet
• Wildcard fighters that can honestly be unpredictable to how they engage with the crowd

These are the best ideas I can come up with at the moment. A Tweener, at least for LAW, would be a character that is outside of and avoids most of the machination of other characters/storylines. Mostly there as neutral entities wanting to get in the ring, but not exactly fighting for any specific cause. That’s not to say that the crowd can’t be with or against them, or that they can’t be involved in storylines, but their role tends to be more of a sort of surrogate than an active participant.

That said, they have the best and worst of both worlds in regards to the Face-Heel dynamic. While you don’t have to completely honorable and fair in their fights they do have to fight with some degree of respecting the rules lest they be seen as a cheating Heel. And while they don’t have the same worry of crossing a partner’s limits in terms of content there’s still some ground rules that should be cover on both sides to not push things too far. It’s essentially a happy medium, and maintaining that medium can be difficult depending on the match and characters the Tweener interacts with.

Anyway, that’s it for Tweeners and alignments as a whole, so…

Conclusion

The short of it all is that Faces, Heels and Tweeners are hard to do well on a platform that already blurs the line between the three due to the lack of kayfabe. Plotting and planning things out with your partners is the best way to make sure everyone’s character is acting “in-character” to maintain the proper perception of everyone’s alignment. And despite how big a deal I make of all that this is a fairly simple process of discussing what each writer wants to do in a match with their character.

Okay… this one took some energy out of me. Next up I’ll be talking about reference images, and boy is that going to be an easier topic to cover than this.

[dlamp]

This will be the first of what will likely be many addendums and last minute additions to essays. A lot of the time when I write out these essays I tend to miss a few bits of information I want to cover here and there. Part of this is due to some of the specific sub-topics I want to cover being too far from the essay’s original intent, too specific for an essay that’s meant to cover a more general viewpoint and explanation, or reads as being too pretentious given the goal of these essays being tool for new writers and not just Dlamp’s Personal Sounding Board™.

That said, there are a few points I miss out on in earnest and I’ll be doing these addendums to make up for that. Consider these less essays and more my editor notes of things I can talk about on a more personal level.

That said, there are some things I wanted to clarify before going into those editor notes. First being:

Essay Order

For those of you thinking that my talking about Wrestling Alignments right after covering Profile Specifics felt a little jarring when I was clearly dancing around the topic of reference images… well, you’re right. Originally I was going to discuss reference images after discuss profiles as that topic is technically the last bit of the profile to consider before posting and moving onto to planning matches. However, due to events happening outside the forum that effected quite a few people here I felt it would a bit tasteless to discuss that topic given I planned to talk on things like commissions and artists that I’ve seen actively drawing content relating to or directly for people on this forum. So I switched things up to a topic that was still profile-relevant. Assuming nothing else happens, I’ll likely be staying in my intended order for now.

That said… on the topic of that specific essay…

An Apology

For those that are frequent users of the LAW discord you might remember I asked for examples of Faces to use as examples in the essay. The original intent of that was to give newer writers an idea of what the communities saw as Faces and Heels and to try and make their own characters within the ballpark of that idea. However, when I had started asking about this there was a bit of discussion the week before on things like writers comparing themselves to others and feeling discouraged due to some writers on the site having a lacking engagement or involvement on the forum for various reasons, along with some other events that had people on edge.

I concluded it was better to not have those examples on the essay as to not have people worried about comparing their own characters to more established ones on the forum. To those that did give me examples to look into and even link me a few matches and profiles in private, thank you for the assistance and consideration, I apologize for not fully utilizing your effort.

But… speaking of people giving their effort…

I’m a Fucking Moron

Something I completely forgot was that I had made a questionnaire thread in the discussion forum to try and feel out things like the face-heel dynamic so I wasn’t stepping on people’s toes when I started talking about the more subjective topics I want to cover. For I somehow forgot it existed and didn’t utilize it at all. Half the work was already done for me and I completely forgot…

Why is the Dlamp of last month so galaxy-brained?

But, to remedy that a little I’m going to take a few quotes from people discussing that very topic and give you their takes on this here. I’ll be doing this a lot more when I start talking about more subjective topics in the futures. And that questionnaire is pinned to the discussion board if anyone wants to give their opinion and take on things. I’ll be happy to use what you all right as examples in future essay.
That said, here are a few quotes from others’ take on the Face-Heel dynamic:

I feel that the concept is very straightforward, even in a setting like LAW where there's no real kayfabe and matches/action are carried out as if they are real.

I always imagine the concept of heels and faces on a spectrum. Faces have a moral compass or some sort of honor code and generally strive towards their goals without being malicious... Heels are much more antagonizing and/or unsavory, especially towards the crowd... Some heels cheat, some heels don't. Some faces would never try to injure anyone. Some will when driven to that point…

… I feel that there are very basic things about both alignments that should always hold true… [A] heel stops being a heel when they take stock in and care about fans...
Similarly, some faces will fight dirty if provoked into doing so or out of desperation. But by definition, a face is in good graces with fans, or at least tries to be. The moment a face denounces the fans, I can't call that character a face.

I'm all for getting creative, but without rigid definitions somewhere, I don't really see the point in labels like heel and face. And I feel like characters who push the envelope on these things should use something else to define their alignments...

What do you think when you hear 'heels'? Are they those who enjoy hardcore, bloody fight like hell in a cell/barbed wire match? Those who enjoy humiliating others in hentai match? Does someone being an evil person only on the ring is a heel? What about those who acts violent and cheats against a certain style (let's say boxing) but respects and plays fair with another style (this time grappling)?

… Would you hate a character whose reason to be heel was because of their past suffering… If a heel shows mercy to someone weaker than her, would you change your mind and calling her a face, or still calling her a heel because she's been labelled as one? If a heel manages to win the crowd's heart via humiliating or torturing her opponent, is she a heel?

… I think faces generally need to follow the basic concept of how they go about [their] behavior. Faces for one reason or another play to the fans and do [their] best to cater and entertain, or at the very least don't bother trying to insult the fans, how they go about doing that can be [their] own way… Heels… are easier to define, Do they cheat? [T]ake pleasure in pissing the fans off… Congrats thats a heel…

Since I started RPs, I've been introduced to the wonderful world of Joshi wrestling, and I tend to follow writing stuff around the heels and faces of that category. Japan doesn't have truly heelish or truly facish individuals. Everyone is respected, and everyone is cheered to a point. It's the actions that get negativity, which is what I've been trying to do in my writing, though I do try to merge this with the American Wrestling presentation of heels and faces. I do like face v face matches as well, and depending on how the match goes, my characters can easily lean heel to boost the opposing wrestler as an underdog...or sometimes vice versa.

And with that mistake corrected, let’s move on to those editor notes in earnest.

Bios & Premade Accolades

This was something I was tempted to add in the Profile Specifics essay, but I didn’t want to go too crazy when talking about the basics of a profile nor did I want to get too preachy and pretentious about the specifics. But I think I can talk about this with a bit more neutrality in its own section.
That said… be careful about giving your characters certain accolades in their past. What I mean by this is giving your character pre-built prominence and fame. Something like coming from different wrestling promotions with a championship, being a famous star of some kind, things like that.
This isn’t to say you can’t do this, but a big part of future essays I plan to post on the actual writing of roleplay really depends on your opponent selling your character instead of you. Again, not to say you can’t or shouldn’t do things like this, but it’d help to discuss and plan things with your writing partner so you can better intergrade those aspects of the character in an organic matter. Also keep in mind that the more your profile and background is hyping up a character the more expectation people will have for you to deliver and sell that character properly.

Again, I’ll be going into more detail about this in future essays, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Joshi Wrestling

I meant to talk about this in the Wrestling Alignment essay, but due to my own personal weariness of writing that thing 6 times over I decided to cut that segment out. However, it is important so I’ll discuss it here:

The big thing to note about that essay is that I was discussing wrestling alignments in the sense of Western Professional Wrestling. It’s worth noting that LAW, being more based in Japan, would likely follow Joshi Wrestling alignments, which is very different.

Joshi Wrestling, or Japanese Female Professional Wrestling, has a slightly less focus on alignments and categorizing their wrestlers into good guy-bad guy slots. Like Vcom said in their quote, in Joshi Wrestling, most wrestlers are treated more like idols and performers, usually for the sake of keeping them marketable to a Japanese audience. From my understanding, a joshi wrestler isn’t actively trying to get a negative reaction from the crowd, as that would reduce their marketability. Their actions are meant to entertain and capture a crowd, if you’ve watched a few joshi matches and narratives you’ll notice the crowd doing more laughing and clapping than cheering and booing. And the few joshi wrestlers that work a more villainous angle tend to be doing so in a cartoonish and overly dramatic way. Again, entertaining more than trying to just spark a reaction.
The youtube channel JoShizzle has a few videos on several prominent Joshi Wrestlers if you want an idea of that, but I think it’s worth adding that this too is a direction one can go in.

Writing with Heels

When I talked about writing heels I made a big deal that the writer of the heel had the burden of not pushing past their partner’s level of consent, to make their villainous character as villainous as your partner can handle without making them uncomfortable with the acts done to their character. I still stand by this, but I forgot to mention the reverse. While the burden is on the writer of the heel/villain to make sure they aren’t pushing past any boundary that their partner is unwilling to cross and make them uncomfortable, the partner also needs to not push things as well.

A writer of a heel/villain might already be holding their character back to their limit to interact with another, and if that writer starts to takes advantage of that perceived shield of safety by pushing the boundary too far themselves, then the contract is broken. And to keep this as short as possible, the best case scenario in that situation is that the writer of the heel/villain will politely ask their partner to edit their reply and keep in mind they asked for a softer version of their character. The (most realistic) worst case scenario is that the writer of the heel/villain will consider the contract broken and let their character run as wilder as they would otherwise, which would likely cause some major issues. Or that heel/villain writer just starts ghosting, it could go either way. I’ll keep it there since discussions on interacting with other writers is something I plan on saving for other essays.

But alright, I think that’s it for the first addendum. I’d say expect me to post one after every three or four essays. For now… time to start drafting that Reference Picture essay.

[dlamp]

Well, I’m happy to say that this next essay is going to be leagues easier to write out than the last now that I’m back to discussing topics I either have a good amount of personal knowledge on or have Winner’s rules to use as a guideline. Though admittedly this specific essay is easier more for the former rather than the latter.

I’m going to be discussing the last part of making a profile: reference images. How to use them, where to find them, and how to create them yourself if you want to go that route.

But first, as always, let’s start with a silly question:

Why do we use reference images?

I mean, aside from the fact that the rules of the forum requiring your characters have some kind of reference image this goes back to what I said on profiles: it’s a matter of separating the writer from the character. I already gave my spiel on that topic, but the short version is anything that helps create a clear wall between your characters and yourself in a forum that allows and encourages both violent and sexual writing should be taken into account so no one’s boundaries are being crossed. The reference image alone doesn’t do this, but the addition of it helps strengthen that idea. This is why I believe the rules state that the images used should ideally be of a 2D anime style to help further this separation between character and writer, as the already exaggerated anime artstyle helps create a clear difference between our reality and the world of LAW. But I can save a more detailed discussion on that for a later essay.

And with that explanation, let’s move onto the second portion of this discussion, which is, as usual:

Winner’s Rules

Honestly, Winner doesn’t really have rules regarding reference images as much as they have a casual reminder to just use a reference image, make sure that reference image isn’t of a real life person, and make sure the reference image lines up with the height and weight stats you put down to a reasonable degree. I’ve linked it before, but this is a link to a height and weight chart that explains what kind of frame a woman would have given the corresponding height-weight ratio. I recommend keeping this in mind when finding reference images.

But like I said in the intro, this essay is more a discussion of my personal knowledge of finding and using reference images than anything. So, let’s start with the easy part of just where to find reference images.

Where to find images?

Winner gives two links on their rules page for sites that have a decent gallery of images to use. I’ll be going over them quickly.

• Gelbooru: Gelbooru is a branch site of Danbooru, an anime image gallery that showcases many pieces of artwork and allows you to use tags to find specific characters, scenery, poses, and so on. I consider this the best choice of Winner’s two links, but I do want to warn everyone that Gelbooru also has a lot of NSFW artwork on their website, along with NSFW ads if that sort of thing bothers you or you don’t use an ad blocker. If it does then I recommend the sister site of Safebooru, which features only safe for work images.
• Sankaku Complex: Sankaku Complex is a similar site to Gelbooru in many ways, having a large gallery of images, letting you specify the images you want to see with tags, and so on. However, I think this is the less desirable of the two sites. For one, there’s a paywall up that limits your ability to see certain images where Gelbooru has no such thing to my knowledge. And second, while both sites hold NSFW images, Sankaku is much more prevalent with them. This site is an option, but not one I would personally take.
• Zerochan: While not listed in Winner’s segment, Zerochan is another anime image gallery. However, unlike the previous two sites, this one has more of a focus on official art a generally stricter view of what they allow on their site. This site is also Safe for Work site, though they also have a members’ only access to a few pieces of work where the modesty of such images I don’t know of, so keep that in mind.

Those are the main three sites I recommend when it comes to finding reference images. As for how to use them… well, I’d rather not explain BBCode in this essay and Winner has already explained the basics in their rules segment, so I’ll simply trust you all to go there and look for yourselves.
But now… to talk about something a little more… controversial.

Ownership & Faceclaims

So… let’s get this out of the way real quick. A good amount of us, myself included, tend to be using images we neither own nor have rights to use as references for our characters. In fact, these images might be the work and effort of someone else and we are reposting their property to a third-party site without their permission. I don’t say this to chastise the forum or wave some moral flag, but I think the fact should at least be stated, recognized, and understood to some degree.

And I might as well say it here in a neutral tone before someone else says it in a much blunter, hostile fashion, especially if it’s their artwork we’re using.

This is why I’ve been referring to them as reference images specifically. These are not the actual pictures of the characters, but a reference of the closest interpretation of how we view them. And to that end there might be some features of the artwork that don’t completely reflect the character we envision like body type, eye color, or even the displayed outfit. Granted, I know what I’ve said basically boils down to mental gymnastics to justify the act, but… it’s worth stating.

I also know that a handful of us use the images, names, backgrounds of certain owned characters to the most logic conclusion and pull characters out of their canon worlds and stick them into LAW, but that's a completely different discussion. I'll simply say to do that with care, make sure the integration makes sense, and that the images used are from official/personally owned sources or there could be a world of issues.

But with that said, there are ways to avoid this, or at least have your conscious rest a little easier if what I’ve state chips at the psyche a little. I’ll be going from easiest to most difficult (or at least most costly).

Sourcing Images

This is an easy one. Rather than outright post the image to a third-party site like LAW or Imgur you can just link the proper source of the image back to the original artist. Doing this means anyone looking at the image will be able to view and notice the artist and give them the views and attention that their work deserves and needs for whatever algorithm they’re hosting the original image on. And it’s fairly easy to find where the original image came from, as Gelbooru and Sankaku Complex both tend to link the proper source of where their images come from with the exception usually being images only found on an artist’s Patreon/Fanbox page, which is its own hot mess that I will not be touching here.

Anyway, this is the first and easiest method. Moving on to the next.

Commissioning Artwork

To avoid the mental and even legal hassle of using an image you don’t own, the obvious answer would be to use an image you do own. And while you’d think that means drawing your own character and saving time and money paying an artist… I’m gonna’ tell you that’s not that case and explain it when I get there.

That said, you can just pay an artist to draw your character for you.

Now, commissioning etiquette and conversing with artists for said commissions is something I only have experienced at anime conventions when speaking to an artist face-to-face, but I know a few moderators and users on this site do have experience with doing this more online than in person, so they’ll a greater source of information than me in this regard.

And you can find artists that are willing to be commissioned thanks to a thread made by Devilish here.

Devilish, if you are reading this thank you so much for having this available, it saved me hours of work and resource gathering. And if any moderator is reading this I highly suggest pinning Devilish’s thread to the discussion forum so everyone else can see it as well. That said, the post seems to be a year old and I don’t know how active all the available artists on it are, so take some caution.

Also, a personal note on my end, but despite any of the prices on the artist, if their prices are lower than 50 US Dollars for a full body, colored drawing with proper lineart then I recommend paying at least $50 to $65 if you can manage as that seems to be the standard for most freelance artists working on their art for a living as of me typing this essay.

But moving on to the next point.

Making Your Characters

Like I said, you’d think this was the easiest and cheapest way to get around actually using money is to draw the character yourself, but…

No.

I’ll spare you all the story for a different essay and simply say that drawing is a skill that takes a long time to cultivate and an even longer time to have at a level the people around you can accept it. And since most people prefer their art digital nowadays getting the equipment and programs for that can range anywhere from $60 to even $500 in US currency.

But to there are some ways around this. I’ll be going from cheapest to most costly, at least by my standards.

• charat.me: This is a character creator app that lets you use a few formats to character your own characters in an anime style.
  Spoiler

  
  That said, while this makes for a decent reference, the lack of varying body types and overall structure of the body makes them a look a bit plain, thin, and more akin to lightweights than any other weight class. They make for good references if you want to commission someone though, I’ll say that much. There are also some other character creators of this type, but I personally haven't bothered to look much for them. I might update this list with other creators in the future so keep that in mind.
• Character Creators: There are a few video games like Soul Calibur VI, the WWE video game series, a few MMO character creators that can let you make a character, screenshot the image, and use that image for a reference. Though… I personally don’t agree with using them as the more realistic style of those character creators tends to clash with anime aesthetic of the forum, but the moderators allow it and I won’t complain on their decision any further. This is an option, and an accepted one by most accounts. But speaking of character creators…
• VRoid Studio, Koikatsu Party & Custom Maid 3D 2: These are three games/programs on steam that allow you to creator 3D characters models in a more anime style than the above mentioned character creators, as well as games in their own right. These games have actual gameplay functions to them, but most people tend to use them for character creation and setting up 3D artwork. You can find a lot of these on Pixiv and some of the stuff that’s made is honestly some goddamn sorcery when it looks good. VRoid Studio is a free program, but I’m completely clueless as to how it works, so you might have to look up some tutorials on that if you want to go that route, same with Koikatsu and CM3D2. And while these do cost money, quite a pretty penny in fact, I think the price is worth it.
  
  There's also DAZ Studio, another 3D program, but there are other user on this site like thesteedman and xalex that can explain that program in far more depth than I. I'll simply say it too exists and reference models using DAZ have been accepted as reference images on this forum.
• Drawing it Yourself: Like I said, this is much more difficult than you’d think. It’s preferred to use digital art, and gathering the tools for that can range greatly, but it’s a possible route and I’m personally trying to follow this route…
  Spoiler

  
  To mild success.

But that’s it for the main ways of getting reference images.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s best to be mindful of the images you use, as well as understand these images are in fact just the references lest we’ve actually drawn or commissioned an artist to do otherwise.

As for what’s next in the essay series… that’s going to be a bit tricky. I believe I’ve discussed everything immediately relevant to making a profile. I’ve covered the basics of what it is and why we use them, the specific points of each key segment, the use of reference images, and even the more nuanced points of things like Wrestling Alignments. At this point, the next topic should be about the actual task of roleplaying.

But… well, things are going to get a little messy when I start talking about the specifics, so my next few essays might be more general/personal anecdotes along with a disclaimer on how future topics are going to go.

Anyway, I’ll see you all later.

[dlamp]

Okay, so with your profile made and accepted by the moderators and admin, the next step is to finally start setting up matches with other writers! And surprisingly, this is both a very easy and a very complicated matter depending on how you want to go about it. Not gonna' lie, this is going to be a much shorter essay than my previous ones. Winner's small blurb on this topic is honestly enough to go off of and this is one of those areas where if I go too in detail I'd be doing more ranting and lecturing than informing. And I'd rather not directly impede on how other people write, at least not for this topic. So I’ll just be going over the very basics of interacting with others on the site, how get a match set up with a fellow writer, and some general tips when it comes to doing all that.

So… let’s start with the usual silly question:

Why set up matches?
…

…

…

Okay, I know the question was meant to be silly, but even writing that out felt kind of stupid. I mean, half the reason you likely made the profile was to set up matches and get your character involved in LAW’s storylines and set up storylines of your own. But… I did ask the question, so I’m going to try and answer it with minimal snark.

Basically, you want to set up matches to make your character a known entity of the forum, to show both your partner and others viewing your threads and storylines that you are willing to engage with others. To play the role of your character and have them wrestle with other wrestlers on this wrestling role-playing forum.

…

…

…

Hey, I minimal snark, not an absence of it.

But that aside, I think the better question is how to set up those matches. And before we get to that let’s -as usual- get to what Winner says on the matter.

Winner’s Rules

Like with reference images, Winner doesn't have rules in regards to setting up matches and interacting with other writers, but they did give some guidelines when doing it.

Once you've found someone to rp with, talk things out with them. Communication is the most vital part of any roleplay or roleplay forum, so consulting your rp partner about the details of the rp is crucial. Not every little detail needs to be planned out beforehand. I, myself, have a lot of fun just improvising. But it does pay to discuss the rp to make sure there's no confusion and to make sure you're both getting what you want out of it

So in short, it helps to know what both sides are getting into and the goals of both sides for the match. But let’s go over the main ways of interacting and planning out threads.

Private Messaging

This is one of the most basic ways to get a writer’s attention. Just send them a private message on the forum with the interest of planning a thread and what characters you want to use. That’s how I tend to use PMs anyway, and we usually take the conversation to discord from there. A simple message titled with asking for a match and the characters in question you want to be involved is usually all that’s needed to kick things off. I usually title mine "Match Request" or "Match with [X]" for example, along with a short sentence or two describing the kind of match I might want to have. It helps make things clear on why I'm messaging them what I hope to do with our interactions.

But while that’s the simplest way it’s not the most common. The most common would be…

Discord

As of me typing this, Discord is the best way to plan and set up a match for LAW. Be it asking for matches on the specific RP planning channel or DMing a particular writer. Using this quick and very user-friendly chatting/messaging system is the go-to way of setting up matches. Most of us use it for general communication already, and most of us also likely have a link to the LAW discord server, as I believe the link is sent to every new writer by a mod when they join the forum.

But.

But. There are a few things to take note of.

I see interacting with other writers for RP things on Discord in the same vein as interacting with artist for a collab piece or asking for a commission. And while I did previously admit to not having experience with commissioning art I do have some notes on the subject and those notes surprisingly line up well with how I believe you should interact with writers. So, to make this quick:

DO NOT SAY HI TO WRITERS

Sorry to Caps Lock that one, but this is probably the biggest pet peeve of mine on this site and the Discord. I’m sure a few of you know this already from interacting with me, but I don’t exactly reply kindly when people just randomly say hi to me with no context. This because I’m usually either writing a reply, writing these essays, in a gaming session, having a conversation with other writers plotting things, or just talking with my personal friends in general. Being interrupted from all of that just because some random person wants an interaction is rudely ignorant at best. I need context to why you’re talking to me or I’m going to be understandably annoyed that someone I've never interacted with from some server is just DMing me for whatever reason with little context. So please, if you’re contacting a writer of this forum for RP-related things then say so, otherwise you might get a bit more than just a blunt reply.

Be Clear and Direct

With that said, the same general advice I have for planning threads through PMs is the same here, just state what idea you had and work from there. I’ve noticed a lot of people dancing around the topic of what exactly they want and that’s about as annoying as people randomly saying hi. Even if your plan is to just have a standard match and throw your character into something, just state that. It's better to at least have some sort of basic foundation and build from there then nothing at all.

And… that’s it. At least in terms of basic interaction and introduction. Like I said, this is going to be a smaller essay and me going further would be to likely interfere on what other writers do. But... to give you all what I think is an example of good use of Discord for planning RP-related things, then I'll point to the follow conversation I had last year with someone:



For context, I had NEVER seen this person before. I had no idea who they were, and at the time they contacted me I was actually on a hiatus from that forum in particular and I'm not moderator on that forum in question nor any voice of reason or person of clout there.

But you'll also notice my reaction and interaction was cordial and even friendly.

This is because the person introduced who they were, what forum they contacted me from, and what they hoped to gain from talking to me. And I actually wasn't too busy at the time of them contacting me. And while I was no moderator I was very familiar with the standards of that forum and felt confident I could help that person out with my opinion and critiques.

This is a good way to approach writers, and sadly one of the few writers I've had in the past year do so in this specific situation a way. But enough of that, with the basics out of the way I think I can get to the some general tips when setting up matches, so let's move on to the last topic of...

General Plotting

I think it’s worth talking about how to plot things out in general. Nothing too detailed, just the basics. The plotting can be varied, but here’s a few things I recommend.

• Decide a Winner: Vcom has gone over this in more detail in their Competition vs Cooperation post, but for a quick summary of that it’s better to go into a thread deciding a winner and a certain flow of the action as to not cause unnecessary friction between you and your partner. Your character can (and should) be able to take a loss or two without it breaking their characterization, and just as so your character can (and should) be able to win a match in a way that is narratively satisfying and convincing. There’s a lot more to be discussed in that line of narrative and win-loss ratio, but the short of it is to make sure both parties know what’s happening and how it's happening.
• Decide the Flow: In a similar vein to deciding the winner, it’s best to figure out how the match is going to flow. This doesn’t have to a massive play-by-play script. Just a general idea of how even or one-sided a fight is, when the tables are turned (if tables are turned), and usually planning out what way the match is going to finish or what signs of wrapping up should be given to show to your partner the fight is about to reach the climax.
• Future Plans: This is more optional than anything, but if you want the relationship between the characters to continue past the match, then planning for the future after the match never hurts. Try to keep this to the immediate future though. I’ve seen too many writers get caught up in plans that have yet shown fruit, myself included.

I know a lot of what I’ve written sounds complicated, but it’s a simple matter of having a winner planned and how the winner gets to win. That’s the long and short of it.

Conclusion

Overall, setting up matches and planning things is just a matter of reaching out to communicate. It's as simple as that. Again, this was meant to be a shorter topic that my usual essays, and a bit of a cool down for the next few coming in. Speaking of... Well...

Yeah, I'm gonna' have to come clean now.

Folks, I'm out of topics that I can talk about nicely. From here on out I'm going to be getting into the nitty-gritty of writing replies, characterization, selling hits, and formatting. And all of these are things I can't talk about without stepping on toes and rustling some jimmies. If the somewhat snarky remarks and blunt tone of this essay bugged you...

Oh sweetie.. you're still reading Allen X with the kid gloves on.

But before those gloves start to come off for real and I really start explaining things, my next few essays are probably going to be much shorter and quicker than even this one. A quick series of disclaimers and assumptions I'm going to make going forward when I continue this series. But until then... I'll see you all later.

[dlamp]

Alright, after a few months of hiatus I'm going to try jumping back into the swing of things with these essays.

And... not gonna' lie, I've been thinking about how I wanna' talk the next 5 or so essays for a while.

I think I've got a good plan going, and one that's gonna' be a lot nicer in tone than I originally thought, but I'm gonna' need some more time to get my thoughts together on it before drafting them out. But to warm myself up a little I think I'll take advantage of something I did months ago that's now finally baring some fruit.

A few months back I made a thread called RP Info Profile, where I asked my fellow LAW users to type up a short profile of themselves, things that covered their timezone, their posting frequency and length, their preferences, and so on. This was more a follow-up thread to my Questions one, where I was getting a general idea on how some people felt about certain wrestling/writing topics. And while the data in the Questions was for personal use, the RP Info Profile thread was more for the use of the forum at large. And now that over 20 users have given their input I have enough data to talk about it more concretely.

So... I'm gonna' discuss the data a little. But first, like usual, the obvious and somewhat silly question:

Why Do This?

Okay, unlike the Setting Up Matches question this one honestly needs a bit of explaining. This is mostly to get me back into the swing of writing essays again since it's been over 2 months the last time I've done this. But there's also some precedence for it that'll be to the forum's benefit. I think complying all the information I have on its users (willing to write out the profile and participate) will help give a general consensus on what similarities are between most users and help people get an idea of what to expect from the average person here. This is especially key when talking about things like turn-offs and preferences, things that can sometimes be difficult to get out of people in a casual situation.

Anyway, let’s move on to the profile in question. I’ll be hitting this the same way I did my Profile Specifics section. So with that said...

The Profile

Name:

Timezone:

Main Character(s):

Posting Frequency:

Post Length:

Preferred Matches & Interactions:

Hentai:

Hard Turn-Offs:

Preferences:

Preferred Contact:

Other:

• Name

To no one’s surprise, most people tend to prefer being called by their username or some variation of it, though some do break that pattern. Few, but some.

• Timezone

So, this is where things get interesting. I think it’s important to note that this is truly a global forum, with people from all over the world in various timezones. I have written threads with people on this site where their 6AM is my 10PM, things get nutty sometimes here.

• Main Character(s)

Nothing really to note hear save for the fact that most people do have main characters that are good for almost anything. Though there are some people that have everyone on their roster being more or less available for anything. I also know that some people said they'd rather users look up their roster pages to see what catches their fancy and while I understand the intent, the reason I made this section in the first place was so that new people didn't have to search through rosters and find a user's most available/flexible character a little faster.

• Post Frequency & Length

Going to just stick these in the same category if that’s all the same to everyone else.

The big thing to note here is that most people have a weekly activity in general, meaning they likely have a specific point in the week where they try to sit down and get through their posts. Likely a day off work/college or otherwise making time for it through their lives. Some of us a more attentive than others, but the majority of folks are kinda’ spotty in their replies, likely due to work/life. On average most people manage to post somewhere between 3-6 times a week, but there's a good minority of folks who post every two weeks or even monthly due to the situation of things.

Also worth noting are seasons, as some of our workloads pick up or slow depending on the time of month which effects our availability. And I also feel its worth noting that a lot of these posts were originally made in the summer. It's coming to autumn now so there's a good chance people became less or more available depending on what's going on in their lives.

As far as length goes most people tend to write about 2 paragraphs on average. This is honestly something I was expecting due to reasons I'll discuss in a future essay.

• The Hentai Stuff (Willingness, Preferences, Turn-Offs)

Just gonna’ also put these in the same slot as well if that’s cool with everyone.

Anyway, no surprise that most people are okay with hentai and smut given the kind of forum this is. However, that often comes with some asterisks too. Some folks don’t mind hentai and smut for their threads and characters, but most folks have specific characters for it. That’s understandable, as it’s hard to do decent smut and story without one or the other completey taking over the character and situation. It’s also worth noting there’s a good section of people that are okay with lewd/suggestive themes in their threads, but full blown smut is out either due to it not fitting characters or the writer’s own inexperience with writing smut. To be clear, that’s not to shame people, but it was admitted as a reason for many people in the profiles.

As far as preferences go, most people didn’t specify in terms of smut content, but those that were okay with lewd scenes did have specific preferences. They vary enough that I won't cover them here, but it's worth keeping in mind when doing suggestive themes that people have specific preferences and limits. People also discussed their general preferences for threads and writing, and most of that tended to also focus on story, character exploration, and personal investment in the characters.

So… basically why most of us are here.

Okay, okay, that was rude of me, I apologize. However, it stands to reason that people are just as interested in writing characters as they are smut, even more so in the case of some.

And for turn-offs, it fell into two main categories, neither of which being a surprise to me. The first one being fetishes that involved more gross-out content like scat, farts, urination, and honestly anything involving bodily fluids in general. Not really a surprise since that's a turn-off for a lot of people, but sometimes people do have to mention the things that seem obvious for the sake of confirmation. The second turn-off is toward gore/blood. This also didn’t surprise me, as few people wanna' see cute/hot women bloodied and bruised over, but there seems to be a bit of a split on this one. Most people don’t prefer it outright, but some people just have a certain level of blood/injury they’re willing to tolerate. There’s a difference between a cut on the cheek or gnash in the arm, and a full-blown bleeding head wound after all. But make sure you keep that clear with your partner.

There were a few more specific turn-offs involving writing styles and writing preferences, but I’ll let you guys look for those yourselves. In that regard just know there's a decent minority that made it clear they don't like getting short, 2-sentence replies to their 2-paragraph posts.

• Preferred Contact

To no one’s surprise (or at least mine) most people prefer discord over PMs, but there is a small minority that do prefer PMs.


Okay, that’s everything. I’ve reworked how I want to do the next few essays, so expect more of them to come. But for now, that’ll be it from me.