Illiterates Role Players.

[shiftyglob]

Please keep in mind that this is not a hate thread towards anyone or anything, I'm not pointing any fingers, just stating an opinion. It is not meant to hurt anyone's feelings in any way, shape, or form, and I apologize in advance if it does.


Through out all of Feral Heart there are illiterate Role Players, most of them are new to the game and/or have never role played before, Yet most people don't seem to understand this.. Yeah, they go around shouting 'noob' when ever they have the chance, but 'noob' seems to stand for 'idiot' rather then 'Inexperienced', its just an insult. And many Literate players ignore and block the Illiterates at the first sign of illiteracy, almost as if they forgot that at one point, they two didn't know how to role play, and they were making short -runs up and bites your neck- posts. So, I have noticed that the illiterate people are teaching each other how to role play, and lets just say its not really going well. Most of them in the past six months have picked up the 'No miss, no dodge, no nothing' habit, and I believe this is mostly due to the fact that they don't have nice, literate people to learn from that are willing to spend time with them. Instead, the literate people go around saying 'come back when you get better at roleplaying', but how can they get better when they have no idea what they're doing in the first place? It'd be like sending your kid to a school without any teachers and expecting them to get good at math, it just wouldn't work.
Even if the literate players really don't want to play with the illiterates, instead of kindly saying 'sorry but I'm already roleplaying with someone else', they tend to insult the person instead, which leads to the new players to think that being hateful is just what literacy is, which then leads to the misunderstanding that 'role play isn't for fun for all parties, its so I can beat people up' (which I see a lot of). And no, I'm not saying  every literate person out there is like this, but there are a lot of them. No finger pointing going on here.
I think that people should stop and realize that yes, the new people are illiterate, but they are still people, and they should be treated as such. They shouldn't be insulted just because they cant write six paragraphs without a single spelling mistake or be ignored just because they aren't 'up to your level'. By giving them a little bit of your role play time they will begin to learn to be literate, and you might make a new, great friend in the process. Just because they're illiterate doesn't mean they're stupid, they have the capability to learn, and most of them are extremely willing to learn. So why shouldn't we teach them? I see (and I am one of them) a bunch of literate Role Players sitting around 'I'm bored', 'I want to role play', yet they wont just go and role play with one of the many illiterate people sitting around looking for a role play partner as well.
As long as you can understand a post, and its more then -walks-, then you can still make a literate post in reply. Like if someone's post is -Walks up to 'name' and smiles- "hello", that's just the simplified version of the super common -The lioness walked down the beach, feeling the soft sand between her toes and the gentle caress of the ocean breeze through her pelt. Her gaze followed along the shoreline and she spotted a stranger up ahead looking out at the ocean forlornly. A kind smile graced her lips as she decided to go greet them with a sweet "Hello."- (Yeah.. That's not the greatest post ever, but I hope it gets the idea across). Sure, the second post is probably a bit more enjoyable to read, but the first one says the exact same thing, just with less content and character view, but you can still make the exact same replies to both. And you shouldn't have to dumb down your posts to role play with them either, most of them would rather you didn't anyway because they enjoy reading your well written posts just as much as all of your literate role play buddies. So with that in mind, it shouldn't be all that hard to play with illiterates, right?

[Pinkan]

I have to say the dudette is right, just because there are illiterate people (i am one of them)
doesn't mean they can't change. They just need to be taught.
I'm lucky enough to find people who are willing to teach me,
but some people don't have such luck. Hope Miss Shifty's post here can make
literate people understand how we illiterates feel.

~Domo arigato!~

[Silhouette]

So I'm not a frequent player of the game anymore but I feel its safe for me to say this given this happens in roleplay regardless of where you spend your time (be it here or another game).

Anyway, I can't honestly say I entirely agree with this thread. I just cannot. Now before the bash fest begins let me say during my time in Feral heart I did roleplay with "illiterate" roleplayers even though other people have considered me to be "literate." Now with that said I can understand where the problems lie. Trying to make an ideal of "well why can't you just---" Just...doesn't work. Let me explain.

The first problem with people who post in complete sentences versus those who do not is that it does not give the other person enough to work with. "Sits" Mkay. Fine. For a first post it would suffice. I'm not a  stickler for the length of a post but I would like SOME information even if it is short. So, while I can deal with  something like "-yawns because shes tired-" because it least gives me some extra insight, something like "-lies down-" "-drinks water-" "-howls-" in the duration of several posts, unfortunately I can't draw ANY conclusions about that person's character's personality, likes/dislikes, fears, purpose of even being there so when it comes my turn to post [especially over time]... I have NO material with which to make the RP interesting. Can my character take advantage of their character being fearful? What about possibly having similar interests and the two befriending each other? What about the weather? I can't learn ANYTHING [or work with anything] because these things are presented to me in "-lies down-" "-drinks water-" and "-howls-"

Even IF you can deal with this, and I have for the sake of teaching other people how to RP who have asked me, you find yourself being the ONLY one working to move the RP forward ESPECIALLY when its a one on one. And teaching someone in a group is a heck of a lot more difficult because you have to give the person feedback about not just the part of their post toward you but everyone else as well. Thats a LOT to keep track of. Playing "teacher" all the time is EXHAUSTING and quite frankly I hate when perfectly nice people end up branded the "bad guy" just because they just want to be alone and RP with each other and not play "teacher." You really think they should be obligated to play teacher? No.  

In addition to that, RP should be give and take. You give an amount of acknowledgement, I'll return the same unfortunately it is a very common trend that MOST [although not all] of the "illiterate" roleplayers are about as poor at reading between the lines and drawing their own conclusions and working with these conclusions as they are writing their posts. I'm sorry but its a truth, an ugly truth. There are a few exceptions but the majority are notorious for this. They also tend to lack character development. Now I WILL say I /have/ met  literate roleplayers who have beautiful writing but their characters have zero development. And let me tell you I was looking for a reason to jump ship on the person because the roleplay was /incredibly/ dull thanks to their bland character [Additionally, any time me or my companions would try to bring excitement in, they promptly shot it down]. However because this person was nice and I could not find anything particularly /wrong/ with their posts, I kept roleplaying. The problem is illiterate roleplayers tend to have this problem AND the lack of details AND poor writing AND the tendancies to fall into cliches and predictable circumstances,  make them both uninteresting and difficult to RP with.

Again let me say this isn't true for EVERYONE but it /is/ a frequent trend and I spent a LOT of my time befriending and teacher not-so-good roleplayers. I'm more than happy to help people but on /my time/ and /my terms./ I feel bad that people treated them like dirt. That is uncalled for. However, barging in on someone's roleplay and expecting them to teach you and deal with all of your conflicts while they're happily busy with someone else is /just/ as uncalled for. Understand that some of the literate roleplayers here in Feral Heart are REALLY out on a limb right now. They're strung between struggling with RPing/teaching people all of the time, often not all of which stay for more than a day before disappearing OR roleplaying with other literate people who unfortunately are a mixed bag of nice people [ a small fraction] and total jerks [the majority, at least in Feral Heart's case]. Its not a fun spot to be in and unlike the "illiterates" they don't have a little "support" group. They have people who bash them when they're tired of teaching people and would just rather be left alone and RP with people on their same level for a little while. There's a third side here.

[LordSuragaha]

I'll be very bold and raw with this because it's something that severely aggravates me in this community...

First off not directed at any of you but I don't understand why people have coined these terms illiterate and literate to describe someone's reading or writing levels. If a person is truely "literate" in their terms they should realize that they're using these terms all wrong. Look it up in a dictionary people because you guys are just bending the true definition of words and making your selves sound ridiculous. Using these terms illiterate and literate in these ways is no different than "Wolf Speaking" to be honest.

Secondly these so called "literates" are mostly just being snobs. I have hosted plenty great rps in the past with users of all reading levels and we've had a lot of fun. These so called "literate" people are just discriminating people because they have a few spelling errors or different writing styles from theirs claiming that they can't understand what these people are saying... Give me a break! Unless a user is talking another language I don't see how you can't understand them. If the person was able to get on this site and far enough to download and play the game themself I'm pretty damn sure they can write at a level that is readable to most here.  Also many of these "literate" folks claiming that they can't understand these so called "illiterates" are understanding them enough to correct them so let's all cut the nonsense. If you can understand a person enough to correct them you can understand then enough to rp with them.

This game is about having fun and many users have warped this game into a judgmental and borderline bullying community with stupidity like the labeling of "illiterates" & "literates". Since when did this game become a game about grammar? When I turn on Feral Heart I'm not coming into school and neither are the many other users here. They're coming on for a fun experience not to be tutored or worse bashed because they aren't some perfect writer etc. Tell me who appointed these so called "literates" Grammar Gods? If I or some other user felt like spelling casually or talking casually in this game without using punctuation for every phrase or maybe using a short cut for a phrase we should be able to and not get judged as any less of a person for doing it.

The title noob is no better either. How about we step out of grade school and leave the dumb and degrading titles out of this game? There is no reason to label someone that insulting. How about saying new comer rather than noob and welcoming them to the community if they say they are new rather than blocking, insulting, or ignoring them? For all the rude "literates" how about you step back and shush for a moment and go back in time to when you were a kid and weren't some "ultra awesome epic writer" as you claim to be now. We all started somewhere and I guarantee you it wasn't perfect and never will be.

People also need to learn to have a heart on this game. Consider just how something you say might affect a person. What if you're bullying someone about their writing style and they're already someone who has a complex or gets bullied? What if that person is depressed at home, getting abused, seeing their parents divorce, or mourning a death and Feral Heart is one of their get aways from reality? Through rp many users can escape their own reality and enter a more fun or beautiful world and here you "literates" just become one more downer in their life by making the Feral Heart community a hostile and bullying place. Let's also not forget that people miss spell or have different writing styles for numerous valid reasons like English isn't their first language, their young, they are dyslexic or have some other kind of disorder, it's easier and they want to write that way etc.


 It's very sad when people deny someone fun of rping just because their style is different or they miss spell a bit. I've seen users get excited to join a rp because the story sounds interesting and then these called "literate" down right denies them just because their reading level isn't up to par with their own. That's discrimination and that's cold. I've seen some users struggle to write the best they can just to join a rp to have some fun and still get denied even though their rp sample was detailed and interesting just because of some minor writing "flaw".  I think a lot of "literates" should be honored that anyone even if their writing level is a little "lower" is interested enough to want to join their rp.

People need to drop the labeling and remember what this community is really about. Having people of different varieties, skills, and natures is what makes this community so interesting and fun so please be kind to one another and just learn to have innocent fun. If you really want to help someone and give them some rp pointers there is nothing wrong with that so long as you aren't pushy or rude about it. Try having people of different rping skills join your rp and you might be surprised just how fun it can be. I've done it and it's great but most importantly everyone has fun. Work around each other and when you learn to be a good patient rper with users of all levels of writing in your rps then you can truely brag...

[Bad Luck]

On this topic, my opinion is a mixture between the preceding posts; of course, I also have a bit of my own input.

Like Silhouette, I'm not a frequent player of FeralHeart anymore. In fact, I don't believe I've participated in an actual roleplay for nearly two years, so I can't say that I'm entirely familiar with the current state of FeralHeart's roleplay community. I have been logging into the game a bit more often over the past week, so I have had a glimpse, but I haven't joined any roleplays. For me, it has proven to be extremely difficult to find with anyone who is even remotely willing to roleplay with me.

From my observations, the community's division of "illiterates" and "literates" says very little about the actual level of skill amongst roleplayers, much less the temperament of each individual. This certainly does not apply to everyone, but I can say that the "literate" roleplayers tends to be extremely incapable of expressing even the slightest degree of tolerance for anything that they deem to be an error. I've experienced this firsthand without even roleplaying. I'm the type to occasionally get a bit lazy with my typing when the conversation is far from serious, and almost every time I do this in-game--even if I'm merely showing minor mistakes such as typing in all lower case letters--a user who was, shortly before, advertising for a "literate" roleplay or showing some clear sign of participating in one will make scattered and snide attempts to correct me, despite the fact that I tend to blatantly mix literacy and illiteracy with any form of casual writing. The majority of the "literate" side of the community can be incredibly pretentious even though I can always find some serious errors in their writing as well. To summarize my first point, no one is perfect. I'm not perfect. We all make mistakes. You don't need to be perfect, and a rude approach does not help anyone. Everyone holds room for improvement.

As I said before, that does not refer to all "literate" roleplayers. I know a fair number who are tolerant and friendly, such as Silhouette. Those are the types of roleplayers that we should all strive to be, and no, I am not referring to the writing style or anything along those lines. Roleplaying is a form of collaborative writing. Productive collaboration demands that each participant puts in a good amount of effort and pays attention to the input of others. A good roleplayer knows how to properly work with others, regardless of "how well they write," and a good roleplayer knows how to adjust accordingly.

The "illiterate" roleplayers tend to be younger, so I can certainly understand why they often write in such a simplistic way. Honestly, I've never felt entirely aggravated by any of them. They're often significantly more pleasant to me, and most of them are definitely not trying to put anyone down.

If you don't want to roleplay with someone, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just be polite about it, at the very least.

By giving them a little bit of your role play time they will begin to learn to be literate, and you might make a new, great friend in the process.

THIS is my favorite part of the original post because this is exactly what happened to me about four years ago. I had developed a roleplay group with several of my close friends--ones I was entirely accustomed to roleplaying with. I made the peculiar decision to talk to a random person in-game; she was trying to start a roleplay group for any species, and it was very apparent that she didn't have much experience with roleplaying. She essentially displayed every aspect of what you all would define as "illiterate," but she didn't get mad at me for approaching her. She didn't attempt to berate me in any way for my strange progression of thoughts. After a while, I managed to convince her to join the group that my friends and I had created; keep in mind that this group was a bit strict about "literacy." Initially, all of them were frustrated with her. They found it very amusing to pick apart her posts in separate chats and criticize her characters, but after a while, she REALLY improved in a variety of ways. Eventually, she grew on everyone, and it was certainly enjoyable to have her participate in that group.

(Oh and if that math doesn't add up, it's because this all occurred in Impressive Title--not FeralHeart. Close enough, though.)

After I went through a very unstable and depressed phase (sort of recently), all of the older friends began to drift apart from me and even made obvious efforts to avoid me. Guess who stuck with me through all of it? She did. And I can honestly say that she has been my best and most supportive friend in the time that I have known her.

[Lady_Alizarin]

I agree with what was said by Shifty and Lord Sura. I really don't think it's fair to lable someone as "noob" and "illiterate" all based on their writing/typing skills and typos/grammar mistakes. It seems like people forget that we are all human, and all humans make mistakes. Typos and grammar errors are just a common thing people do. I mispell some words all the time, but my roleplay friends don't chew me out over it. They understand what I was trying to say and we just continue on with the story. No big deal. I like the friends I roleplay with. No matter how many typos or mistakes we make in our roleplay post, we aren't going to bash or chew each other out over it. Why would we waste our time arguing over a simple little mistake when we could spend our time roleplaying more?

There have been times when I have taught some people how to roleplay with some more lenghty roleplay posts. I don't type out a big long paragraph as a roleplay post, but I do type out something that is short, simple, and to the point. Example:

The old bobcat laid down next to Cyclonewing and said, "I wouldn't say I'm over the hill just yet. I've still got some strength in me to take down a healthy white-tail doe, if I wanted to." He rolled his bulky body in the grass and started stretching.

That's my typical style of roleplay posts. It's not too short, not too long... it's just right for me. People can understand what I'm saying, and it gives them enough detail to come up with a response. I've taught some new comers that style of roleplaying, they picked up on it and picked up on other styles too, and pretty soon we were roleplay buddies.
And some of the self-proclaimed "literates" would say that example post is way too short, and automatically lable me as "illiterate". I've been labled illiterate for posting a short simple post like that, even if my spelling and punctuation was correct. But hey, who are they to judge on what is literate and was is illiterate? I don't need their arrogance and stupidity to tell me how to roleplay. As long as I'm having a good time roleplaying with friends, that's really all that matters.

I also don't think it's fair to deny someone the chance to participate in a roleplay they saw as unique and interesting all because of some misspelling and punctuation errors. Some of the self-proclaimed "literates" are just too picky, and then they wonder why their roleplays don't turn out so well. They don't turn out well because they denied like 75% of the people who auditioned for their roleplay. If it were me, I wouldn't really care all that much about a few errors here and there. I make errors all the time, and if I make errors so does EVERYONE ELSE. Why? Because we are all HUMAN! None of us are perfect. Not even the self-proclaimed and snobish "literates".

[Wizardmymom]

This is something that deserves the poop-ton of words above this post.
Iwastoolazytoreadallofthembutowell.

Illiterates are definitely not given enough room.
Most 'literates' see illiterates to be:
1) Lame
2) Not knowing how to RP at all
3) Not knowing spelling at all
4) Not worth attention
5) All noobs/idiots.

This is not true!
I have met a ton of illiterates that are fun to RP with, and also very interesting.
Their characters can even be more fleshed out then mine, and I spend at least 5 minutes thinking about how to RP them.
The fact that most 'literates' see illiterates as noob and lame is wrong.


What Lady's RP sample said and what she said about the claims she got are CRAZY.
I think people see literate as post after post, with about 2867289742946 >>, >, or -c-
I go with:
"It's not -runs- or -howls-, you're literate"


But back on the topic at hand.
Illiteracy is seen as 'for noobs', 'incorrect', and 'for idiots'.
Some people I've met even say illiteracy is only used by trolls.
Untrue. >:l

It makes me upset to see illiterates blocked, mainly at Bonfire.
I've seen it loads of times:
An 'illiterate' walks up to a few RPing literates and asks politely if they can join.
Instantly, they are either asked if they are literate, or they are instantly shot down because they spelled 'Role Play' wrong due to lag.
Now, my problem with that is that both the
illiterate ASKED, and that
you post in local? ANYONE can respond.

Illiterates are thrown off so much, just because no one will take the time to explain HOW to be literate.
Though, I don't think it matters.
They got the point across?
They can RP, they are good.

What Bad Luck said, about how we're divided, is true.
We see illiterates as other people, and it's unfair.
Don't really know how to support this.... ;~;


It just hurts my head. ;~;

[~Stargazer~]

While I can't see myself writing any detailed posts like some above, I will say that I used to be illiterate image that for a second... I still remember my first time in game. I was running around random maps (Cape of Worlds if I remember), I was typing "helo?" In local and no one responds. I went to Stone Bridge (HUGE mistake) and said the same thing. Everyone started flaming me with insults v.v It's kinda fuzzy, but I learned literacy through the forums and the few people that wanted to derp with me in game. I slowly moved away from text talk and into 'literacy'. I don't use text talk even when I'm texting my friends now :I That's because of those idiots that told me text talk was bad -rolls eyes-.

[gold feathers]

I must agree on this. People have forgotten that they too were once 'illiterate' and they too were once to new to role-plays and Feral heart. They ignore those newer members and I have witnessed many situations like this.

I remember when I was 'illiterate' in other words just a little bad at spelling and writing skills in fact, even though I consider myself better at role-playing than I was 2 years ago I still make mistakes and make my RP samples etc way less detailed than I intend to. I guess I like to post really fast and I usually don't spend much time thinking over my posts and adding needed detail. hehe in fact I'm not bothered to make this post sound detailed either. But although it doesn't matter now, it certainly would matter when role-playing.(or so, thats what those snobs say hehe)

Anyway, what I'm trying to pass over is that we all were once at the very edge, confused, shy and most of all lonely. We were a little lost and when we did finally learn our way around, we would be limited to using the so called 'illiterate' groups because others disliked those with lesser writing skills.
 
A few years back, I wanted to join a more experienced group or as people call it 'literate' group in-game and when I sent them my RP sample, they of course rejected me saying I'm not good enough to join. Well.... I didn't try to fight my way because there really was no point. I was just thinking to myself, let them be stuck up and leave them in peace.

my friend later told me their group died because no one seemed to be able to join... haha xD

[TheFourLinks]

If the person was able to get on this site and far enough to download and play the game themself I'm pretty damn sure they can write at a level that is readable to most here.

Hey uh... Lord? While reading through your post I just happened to notice you let a curse slip. Might wanna be a little careful when you're typing things on the forums, as the rules do say not to curse. Not trying to be rude while posting this, though. ~Vio


-.- Okay seriously. Stop deleting this. If you're going to delete this, at least fix your post. I was nice and polite about this. If you're going to keep deleting this I want an explanation why.