Okay, so...here's something I've been thinkin' on for a little while; why is it so hard for characters to make small talk? Make no mistake, I'm not accusing or blaming anyone of it like it's bad. I'm a huge offender, and I may just be wrong and paranoid and dumb! But from what I've noticed, it seems to be really hard for me to make casual conversation with my characters, and judging by the fact that most others never seem to with theirs, I can only assume I'm not the only one with the problem, or at least, it never crosses anyone else's mind to try. I see a lot of times where characters tend to sit down and discuss their life and worldviews in detail rather than their hobbies and interests in a casual manner. The effect is kind of hard to describe, but Jack and Jim tend to enjoy discussing/revealing setting- or character-relevant information, trying to find something non-verbal to do, or whatnot rather than, you know, like..."have you ever been bowling?" "Do you play this videogame?" "Hey, where'd you learn to cook like this?" "How was your day at work?" "What's your PC setup at home like?" "Damn, where'd you get this super-slick ship?" And so on. It tends to usually be things like "Where did you come from, where were you born, when where you born, why, to whom" or "hey, how and why did you become a shifter or a vampyr or a spir or an android and what is it like and how does your body work now," "how did you get put in the hospital and why and how are we gonna get the people that did it" ... I'm doing a bad job of describing it, but like - I get the nagging feeling in the back of my brain that my characters don't actually hold conversations like normal people is what I guess I'm getting at. That may be because characters tend to do their hobbies and such - you know, reading, video games, other games, programming, designing something, drawing, so on, so forth - off-screen entirely, since RPing those things tend to be tedious to most people, which results in many people not being well-practiced in what their characters are supposed to do and say when they aren't fighting or working. It's also probably not helped by the fact that the majority of GC characters aren't normal people, having varying shades of living normal lives and down-to-earth aspirations/desires depending on the actual content of their characters; I'd consider Akuseru or Adela far closer to believably-normal, first-world people than, say, Gulvar or Dave (which is, of course, the point of those characters, so that isn't, like, a bad thing) for example. I'd also like to stress that I don't think it's unheard of for people/characters to do it - for instance, I occasionally see employees at Ikeda Memorial Hospital doing it in the Haven discord, but it's still rare; it's most common in the main discord's Nexus IRC, being about 50% small-talk - it's just that I almost never do. Topics always tend to be serious when characters speak outside of a pressing situation, even if it's for good reason - to further develop them or the person they're talking to, or the setting, or to establish something the player behind them can call back to later on, and so on. So, GC, what's your opinion? Is Silver just a stupid paranoid poopoo peepee head who's out of the loop as ever, or is this a phenomenon that others have noticed too? What're certain ways to change one's mentality so that having characters make believable short-talk is easier, assuming I'm not just overthinking it to begin with?
It's difficult because sitting in front of a PC brings up different kind of atmosphere than being in social contact with someone else. It's a setting different to real life and with different rules. The more it deviates from real life, the harder it will be. And the GC setting wasn't really treated in a conservative way. It has a big scale and incredible/ridiculous content and from what I've noticed, for the most part throughout the years people were concerned more about fun equipment, aliens and paranormal stuff rather than development of characters and down-to-earth situations. It's also a poor setting (as in compared to real life, which has so many details). Your theory of mind of that particular character is not yet well-shaped. I have RPed as Misery continously for years and at this point I don't have to think long before coming up with a reply. I know what she'd say pretty much as soon as I finish reading someone's message. In contrast, I haven't RPed as Jura for too long and not continously and now RPing as her is difficult for me, especially when you take the contrasting traits of the two into the considerations. What I'd recommend would be: having less characters and thinking about their life every day, reflecting on their interactions with other characters. Might seem odd, but I think about mine every time I lie down to sleep. Really makes things easier in the long run.
I think you've got a pretty good point, and I've got a pretty stupid, but simple solution for this. Lately to keep conversations in rp going I've been using the one thing no gc member has ever used, dating tips. Specifically I've been looking up dating questions, which in most cases can stir up some fun and interesting conversation between characters. Like when my Floran, Loura, asked "What do you think ssayss the mosst about a persson?". While at first the person she was with, Suzume, didn't have a response Loura gave her take, which was "My ansswer hass to be... the lengthss people go to hurt otherss." A very Fringe based ideal. Meanwhile, Suzume, who is still adapting to Fringe life gave a more positive perspective on her views, "I... would say the length they'd go to help people they cared about." It was a good rp, and it came up because of good dating questions- so try and look some up and see if you can fit them into your rp.
