Activity Check Results / HMD

[lucetimods]

The results for the Activity Check are in. Please note that the following characters were either inactive, didn't post to the activity check, or failed to speak to a moderator about their activity. Also added were characters who have dropped recently, for your convenience.

Copy-paste the following here:

manage_circle del_read absolutewill manage_circle del_read brokenpromise manage_circle del_read chibifalenas manage_circle del_read devilsuppressor manage_circle del_read eyesofremorse manage_circle del_read faithfulstudent manage_circle del_read fowlplots manage_circle del_read gungho manage_circle del_read hark_a_suicune manage_circle del_read silpheed manage_circle del_read smackmywitchup manage_circle del_read tenerezza manage_circle del_read tibias manage_circle del_read trashed manage_circle del_read silpheed manage_circle del_read holyknights manage_circle del_read airbound manage_circle del_read sharpness manage_circle del_read penstabby manage_circle del_read chainedraven manage_circle del_read bereavement manage_circle del_read nikori manage_circle del_read divinacommedia manage_circle del_read mythmaker manage_circle del_read burningdownfate manage_circle del_read powdersup manage_circle del_read happierdays manage_circle del_read selfinteresting manage_circle del_read dogboy manage_circle del_read thelittlemacthatcould manage_circle del_read cladinthedark manage_circle del_read skyborne_mage manage_circle del_read former_third manage_circle del_read kindhearted manage_circle del_read abetteryoda manage_circle del_read handmotions manage_circle del_read returnthyname manage_circle del_read fearless_leader manage_circle del_read reversible manage_circle del_read illusionarymoon manage_circle del_read consultsdetective

A number of you passed the activity check, but barely. (You know who you are.) Try to pick things up, as it's no fun to character-squat.

If there are any mistakes here, please let us know! Additionally, if your character was removed and you're still active, feel free to appeal to one of us about keeping your character. However, please remember next time to stay active and post to the Activity Check. Thank you!

And as always:

HMD

How's My Driving?

This is a crit post for both the community and game and for your characters. If you have something you'd like to see us improve upon with the game, PLEASE TELL US HERE! Anon commenting is on, but if anything gets really nasty there will be warnings and thread-freezing. This isn't required but everyone is encouraged to take advantage of the advice of your fellow players!

Just some pointers: no taking cheap shots, no dragging personal issues into things and for the love of all that is wise and great, please double check your replies and comments before posting them. Sometimes a change in phrasing can make all the difference between a helpful tone and a condescending one.

ALSO ALSO: We'd like to clarify that HMD means HMD- which means it's okay to have both good and bad crit. Some people have expressed concerns about posting good/bad crit when a character already has bad/good crit posted. We'd like to encourage you guys to do it anyway! You can drive well or badly, and even good drivers make mistakes. So give it a try \o

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Looking at the things Loki has done in the first couple months he has been in Luceti, I want to say that you're very active and that's good. Definitely no complaints there. But, I feel like you may be moving almost too quickly with Loki's development.

He has been in the game roughly a month long, going by the timestamp of your intro. At first, looking over the post, I think you were doing well. You captured Loki as a complicated guy, who was morally ambiguous and had a superiority inferiority complex. You had the best of both worlds in his character. But I think it was some time after the thing with Elicia and Hawkeye that you began to sort of falter with that. I think a lot of what people see in Loki is someone who feels he has been wronged by Odin and by Asgard, because he's considered to be an outsider among them. Naturally that isn't completely true (Thor in particular begged for Loki to come back peacefully) but that is beside the point. While Loki can be a sympathetic character, I think you're pushing that angle a little too hard and trying to turn him from a villain to an anti-villain.

If you took him from Thor I think I would understand this development a little more. In Thor while what he did was very wrong, he only did it in the desire to be accepted by Odin and show that he can be as much of a hero as Thor can be. He seems almost remorseful when talking to Odin in the very last scene before he drops down into the abyss. A Loki from Thor would act much like he does right now. You're taking him from Avengers, where his desire was to become ruler of an entire planet and didn't care who died along the way. This is the guy who planned to take over Earth with an alien race and enslave all humans. He didn't care who he was hurting and was ready to even kill an old man face to face. He also doesn't show much remorse, if at all, about everything he did. If you want to develop Loki into a more sympathetic character then I don't think that is a problem, because that is a road he can go down as a character. I think the issue is that you're going down that road illogically fast. Not even a month into being in Luceti and he seems almost like a different character from that in Avengers.

The bottom line of what I'm putting out is that I think you're skewing his dual-sided personality and trying to make him out to be too much of a good guy, who has everyone after him and they're wrong for doing that. I'm not saying Loki has to be cackling like an evil maniac all the time or making plots to take down the Avenger squad. But I do think you should reevaluate some things about the way you approach his character. From what I have seen I think you may be taking him from an ambiguously moral character and turning him into a "oh woe is me" guy, who regrets everything he has done almost too quickly.

On a side note I was also going to ask what was up with him being so engrossed with Elicia, but Zero beat me to the punch on that so I won't ask you to repeat it.

[complicatedliar]

Thank you for the feedback. I'll definitely put some thought into it.

I would ask that you take three things into consideration:

1) All good villains are the heroes of their own stories. They don't believe they're evil at all and feel that everything they have done is completely justified. So Loki does feel that he's been terribly wronged and misunderstood (and this holds true in Avengers, whence him claiming that Thor basically threw him off the Bifrost), whether that is true or not. But since Loki's posts are from his viewpoint, of course he thinks he's the good guy and everyone else just doesn't get how rough his life is.

2) Loki is in a position where he has no allies and has a group of people after him. Since most of the people in Luceti are clearly "good guys" and he doesn't have a lot to bargain with right now, it's in his best interest to try to convince people that he's really misunderstood and the Avengers are giant meany-heads since that will hopefully keep them off his case. But if he's trying to convince people to be on his side through force of personality alone, he really can't be that outwardly uncaring.

3) The dude lies like a rug. And beyond that, he's very adept at telling people what they want to hear. (Such as "maybe I do regret things but you know, I had to do them.")

Obviously, it's my own failing if point #2 and #3 haven't been coming out clearly.

[complicatedliar]

I should also add, it's a fair assumption for players to make that Loki is lying and/or bullshitting and/or telling people what he thinks they want to hear unless I specifically note within tags that he's not. I've kind of avoided putting that interpretive spin on the tags for the most part because it is really supposed to be impossible to tell if he's being truthful and I feel like it colors the tones of the post in a way I don't really like if I'm overly specific.

I will see about putting more of his manipulative inner thoughts into tags where appropriate, but I will still probably be very sparing with it.