Time Stuff
As a quick and simple answer, I can explain what my usual process is for timing.
Basically, I treat scenes as an extended now unless there's a particular reason (rare) for me to put them in time shenanigans. In the same sense as a game clock progresses even when the game is off, time keeps moving while a scene is going. Any resulting oddities, like a conversation between two friends lasting a month or so, or someone doing nothing for a month, gets ascribed to either quirks of the universe or the time oddities that we've used previously to justify time shenanigans and similar unless someone involved particularly wants to write about the interim period. Removes all date-tracking and time-tracking pressure.
What I want out of WAAPT
In a general way, my goal here is to write stories.
I think that WAAPT provides an environment to do that with people whose company I enjoy and whose writing I enjoy, and I have characters here I like writing for. I think that the collaborative format opens up avenues that wouldn't exist otherwise, which I think is very cool.
But!
I have many other demands on my time and interest. I have other writing projects, games, and leaving aside my shaky relationship to employment, I do have a goal of a steady job. Consequently, WAAPT is something I treat as a hobby that I contribute to whenever I feel like. Because of that, I don't really object to the current model of things mostly being personal plots, or the usual length of arcs. I have my own plans that I execute when I want to, I help other people with theirs when they want me to. From those plots and plans, I'm generally comfortable with the emergent narrative, which tends to strike an average tone between the more lighthearted or the more intense personal plotlines.
So, honestly, while there are plots I'd like to see progress, I'm okay with long stretches of what is effectively a group of collaborative fanfics in a shared universe. Because I'm pretty comfortable writing into that universe and what I'm adding to it is fun to write and I think to read.
In terms of advancing the more overarching, player-affecting plots, though, I...still want to write stories.
(I think that at some level we need to accept that anything we do is likely to happen over the span of days or weeks, even if it's a plot that affects everyone, like an arc finale. Just getting that out there— I doubt we're ever going to return to the time when we could all dedicate whole days to WAAPT, and I think that's fine.)
In a story that contains conflict, which WAAPT does, I'm generally interested in things happening with respect to the chance they have to not happen. Victory is interesting because of the possibility of defeat, kindness and hope are actions that are taken in spite of other, easier options, because of the ideals of the characters that take them.
Obviously, I write to some extent for escapist purposes. But escapism, for me, comes less from a predefined assumption that things will turn out alright, and more from the ability of people to struggle together and make things turn out alright, when no such thing is guaranteed. I'm not interested in a story where higher forces can bail out the main characters any time something goes wrong, or where the assumption is that the setting itself is fixed in stone. I think that the overarching plotlines of WAAPT are at their best when, as they generally do, they affect things.
Dunsparce didn't stop being a thing or anything.Time Stuff
I usually handle it... aaaaaaaaaproximately like Every does.
What I Want Out Of WAAPT
WAAPT for me is like. A playground for telling stories with friends. It's what keeps me coming back to it, the collaborative aspect, and the fact that I can be as zany and goofy as I want within The Rules of the setting. It's like a doofy ADVENTURE series but with everyone working together. I don't care too much about stakes or thematics so long as I can have fun with friends - if I want something more personal and visceral narratively that lets me fly more solo I've got my numerous other writing projects, including my Pokemon fanfics.
I feel like a strength of WAAPT is its segmented nature and people can run what plots they want at any given time, and people can contribute to plots they're interested in. It's very flexible and free and lets people take on various things tonally without interfering with each other. That part's great. I don't want WAAPT as a whole to be like the tabletop games we do or an edgy fangame but people can explore and touch on those kinds of things in sideplots, which is great. I mainly just get worried about that kind of stuff reaching a macro level the whole setting is forced to acknowledge, and am picky about character death.
On a more personal level though I have been feeling a bit lonely. Finding RP partners is harder than it used to with everyone's schedules and people moving in and out of the RP and other factors and the collaborative aspect of this RP is so FUN to me it's hard to go without when I already have my fanfics. But I've realized that sometimes if I've gotta eke out a niche in my own corner of WAAPT well, then that's OK.
Contact Me!I feel like time in WAAPT as being tied to real time is a part of the setting and ultimately do agree that at least Every's idea of the extended Now is a nice way to handle things. I guess I assume like, time stuff is generally in line with real time but not exactly. I think this works because it allows everyone to set the time of their own scenes. Ultimately one flaw of that is it can take a while for bigger plots to happen and admittedly the best way I can think of to handle that is at most "if this is affecting people, set sort of a goal time for when this could get done by, with the understanding people need flexibility and if it reaches the goal time but people still need more time or stuff doesn't work out that's totally fine and can be worked around. My concern if we divorce ourselves entirely from real time outside of things like the long now is mostly that we're a collaborative setting and trying to get us to do something together is like herding cats so trying to set an entirely different time scale for the RP would have to be based on everyone, not just some plots, and that feels like it'd be adding complexity for little gain.
Personally what I like about WAAPT is that it's a setting where several people can write very disparate, but interlinking stories together.
Stories I tend to like to write center around relationships, I'd say, with relationships between humans, humans and Pokemon, and other Pokemon all being good. I tend to like when xenofictiony stuff is explored but not always necessarily the best at that myself. This ultimately leans me towards the lighter and more bizarre end of the WAAPT spectrum but I do like indulging in darker themes now and again. Ultimately a WAAPT for me would allow me to keep writing the stories I like with the people I care about and I think by and large there's no problem with me doing that.
My personal preference for settings tends towards low death settings and I guess while I am guilty of stuff myself, I do tend to go with "a meaningful death in stories feels more interesting than a meaningless or background death". I'm also not always the fondest of how death affects tone but it's not like it Hasn't happened in WAAPT. I guess this means that death in this setting is usually gonna hit me weirdly and not necessarily produce the intended result but I'm just one data point and all.
Granted, I am pretty busy and have other things going on plus a job, so, yeah, I can't be counted on to be here all the time either. That generally encourages me to try and go light and unencumbered and not necessarily tie people down into waiting for me nowadays but down to pop in and help when I can. Could get back into writing or making bigger things if I come up with a good idea but we shall see.
I likewise have been sort of under the impression that everyone's like this and things are done over a long time span now and the span of time people wanna go with should be taken into account when making plans along with volume and interconnectedness, like, making sure that our loads don't get too heavy and also that days where little happens is also fine.
Edited by CorvusAtrox on Aug 17th 2022 at 5:01:22 AM
"life is just a series of increasingly canon-eluding ao3 tags" ~ everydunsparce "Keep your hellfruit away from me, tempter" ~ also EveryMy view of WAAPT, like many things, is shaped by nostalgia, so bear with me.
When I joined WAAPT, I was endlessly fascinated by what came before me. There's a reason I was so determined to read the entire 6041 pages that already existed when I made my debut, so that I could enjoy the experiences that came before me, and as I read through, there were so many things that I saw and responded like, "I want to make my mark on this world, too. I want to integrate myself into this world that's been constructed.
And, like? In those first 6041 pages, nobody was afraid to do something world-shattering. Steven Stone was a mind-controlled thrall of 'M for years. Cyrus destroyed and remade the universe. Mt. Pyre almost erupted. Gamer, DS, and Luke were all the canon protagonists of their regions. Nothing was too out there.
And guys? WAAPT always had dark. WAAPT had darker. Things always turned out okay in the end, but it was interesting because it actually felt like it was a darkest moment. And it didn't stop after we decided the first year was Early Installment Weirdness — the AU got transformation nuked, Cipher shadowed Heatran and our own characters' Pokemon, Ransei was ruled by our OCs who killed and got killed.
We've matured over the past decade. But I really don't want to scrub clean WAAPT's history as a frequently dark, heavy, occasionally deeply fucked up world, that canon Pokemon could never have. I want to shatter the world again, with ten years experience of writing good stories, with the trust that we're better at writing those things, and know how to make it all right in the end.
But most importantly, I want to be able to make marks on the existing world, not just write stuff that could be detached and still be its own unrelated thing.
(So yeah, I want darker WAAPT.)
What I want out of WAAPT, and what I enjoy about it is... well it's a sandbox. I've had far more fun with this RP than any other, I love the community and I love being able to tell my own mini stories or interact with more people. I've screwed up a few times but I love that you guys are willing to tell me how to fix it going forward, and how as a result I've screwed up less. Whether dark or light, fluff or edge, WAAPT to me is a community of crazy storytelling based in the world of Pokemon.
A response a full day in the making
Covid booster hit me like a truck and I've felt a lot of malaise in the past few hours. I have mustered what little energy I could to make this post.
I share most of Umbra's, Tagg's, Corvus' and to a perhaps greater extent Quantum's opinion on the matter. I've always seen the RP as a sort of getaway, and since things hit the shitter for us IRL, I've noticed that escapism has become far more important for me. I'm all for meaningful drama and dramatic tension, but I have reservations about it that others have put in better words.
I can however, voice my own reservations based on a rather self-centered need, and one that can be remedied in some way should the voices of those in favor outvote my own. The very concept of truth dying is, well, a sore spot for me on a personal level, especially given the context of what I have to live with. My coping mechanisms eventually kick in when the real bad guys win IRL; I find that similarly evil fictional bad guys winning without so much as a setback or visual portent that hints that they just sowed the seeds of their destruction is very difficult for me to stomach.
Now I like a bit of dark drama, where even winning doesn't guarantee that the heroes go out of it unscathed, but there's a profound difference between the evil conspiracy robbing the heroes of their sense of safety and the villains being capable of killing gods. It's not something a lot of people can recover from. I'm unsure if this is even enough, but should it come to pass (and even if it just seems to but doesn't), I'd have made the suggestion that the act be televised in some way so the atrocity can be seen the world over. A show of force that, while demoralizing to the J-Team, has the entire planet up in arms.
If this goes against the proposal, I will simply not participate in that plot or direct my attention to something else, at least for the interim. My characters, if need be, can comment on the events after the fact rather than be directly involved.
What the RP means to me
I joined WAAPT years ago as a momentary diversion, more as a gag. It's since become the primary work of fiction I've invested myself in, far surpassing original and other fanworks. However, I am notably on the sidelines most of the time since my ecosystem of characters is self contained. In a way, I've always treated the shared universe as something to comment at and be a part of, rather than something one directly participates in.
The School plot represents the first time that my characters are actively invested in the main plot. Most action revolves around self-directed plots that take place in the sidelines, most frequently plots involving my superhero knockoff characters. I've even written them in a way that justifies my extended absences. While I'm not around, they're doing the dayjobs I told everyone they had.
I loved participating in what little plots I do with the others. However, it does grate on a bit that we almost never really do things in real time anymore. I do propose we formally acknowledge this and make it so that all our plots are TS'd unless indicated.
Now more than ever, it seems, I want to be involved in stuff that reminds me less of everyday BS, and the RP had at least allowed me to live that vicariously. This doesn't preclude things getting dark or deep or heavy, but I'd like to have a little light around. I find hope scary in real life, but not so in fiction. I'd like it to stay that way, or at least retain my ability to have a slice of it that does.
Edited by MasterJayAM on Aug 18th 2022 at 5:40:43 AM
I feel like people have already worded it better than I could, but I figured I'd add my two cents anyway for posterity or w/e.
I'm kind of a simple person, admittedly. I see opportunity for drama and the little drama seeking part of my brain goes "ehehehehe drama"- when it's in a space I have some amount of control over, anyway. That's probably what my position amounts to, really. This is a space where I can safely satisfy the little gremlin part of my brain while knowing it's not going to amount to anything harmful. I feel comfortable with this amount of darkness- though I guess that's the rub, isn't it. People aren't comfortable with this level of darkness.
I think what I'm trying to say is I have faith that the community won't go overly dark- especially since we're having this discussion at all.
I like WAAPT for the people surrounding it and the little injokes we have and the plots we make together, though I also do like it for the more selfish reason that it's got concepts that are fun for me personally to play with. I'm not sure what specifically I want out of that other than for it to... continue, I guess. I've always had a bad habit of making myself a walled garden to play house in but it turns out that's a lot more fun when you're not alone and people actually know what the fuck you're talking about. And now that I've gotten a taste of that it's hard to imagine going back.
This was kind of a ramble, but I hope parts of it at least made sense.
we will survive.Oh gosh I'm terrible at articulating thoughts aaaa
Like, I dunno. WAAPT has been a lot of different things for me over the years but like there are reasons I've come back again and again despite my many hiatuses and "I think I'm done for good"s. And at the heart of that is just, like, I like writing with my friends. The biggest reason for my multi-year hiatus was that I felt like I lost that somewhere along the way, like I was in my own bubble and couldn't fit into anyone else's. I missed the spontaneity that used to be in my interactions, where like a conversation improvised and completed in an hour or two would have a lasting impact. But that era's long gone, and our real life responsibilities have grown too heavy to sustain anything similar. And anyway, the slower pace of today's WAAPT is, I think, exactly what I need in my life right now. That said, I need to have the courage to just like do more, I constantly want to but am an anxious mess and haven't written in forever because I'm scared of letting people down because honestly I care more about other people's writing than my own and I get scared I'm just burdening them and aaaa
But yeah, all that rambling aside, in terms of tone I'm really okay with any level of darkness unless it gets to the point where it's too persistently miserable for me to have any fun writing, and I'm fairly certain none of the current playerbase has any desire to get within like a bajillion miles of that point. And we're way better writers now than we were back in the day. More recent dark stuff is like without exception dark with a purpose, exploring interesting themes that add to existing characters' narratives, rather than just edgy for the sake of it.
And as an aside, I'm not one to plan ahead, and get bored easily if I feel like I already know where everything is going. For that reason I always crave changes to the status quo, but it's always more meaningful to me when those changes are built on established elements rather than just "new outside threat x" or "new media-inspired element y" or so on. Which might be a factor in why I take like seventy zillion years to get involved with any given new setting thing and more often just explore things from Pokémon canon or those that have been part of the WAAPT universe for years upon years upon years. And this has nothing to do with the RP but since this is an incomprehensible ramble anyway I am compelled to add that this might also be one of my favorite things about fantasy/mystery as a genre, in that it needs to establish its setting's rules early on for the sake of fair logic, and in well-written works these rules will be thoroughly examined and tie into the story's central themes and so on. But I digress.
So, um, yeah. Here is my train of words that got derailed several times on the way but hopefully still arrives to its destination with some of its cargo accounted for! Thank you for reading, green heart! 💚
I'm done here.Checked the D!thread due to all the pings. As long as WAAPT exists I'm happy. Don't care what we do. Flexibility is fine, structure is fine. There's room for grimdarkness and G-rated fluff, but if we need to tone one down I'll adjust. I'm just glad to sit with the cool kids.
Whatever happens with this Reshiram thing is fine by me. But I don't care about legendaries, so I don't have a dog in this fight.
Addendum, I'm still creatively braindead and increasingly angry that my posts won't write themselves. Send help.
There is no disdain in nature, there is no humiliation.Honestly, I don't think getting rid of our current date system would actually make things better, that's not really the issue here, it would probably actually make it worse.
As for the rest, it's a bit of a ramble, but here we go:
As I figure most if not everyone here knows, I've been in WAAPT since the beginning and have been involved in every major Arc, from its Forum Game days to when I got Tangent to use their mod powers to move it over.
What is WAAPT to me? It's interesting to make a Pokémon world that's like our world, in both its good and bad aspects. The opportunity to collab with others to make a greater whole, the sort of thing that's hard to do if my primary writing was fanfic, for instance. Like Umbra's said, a place where we can have all sorts of things exist in at least relative harmony. Bad things can and do happen, though within our meta control, but the heroes do eventually triumph over evil. The question is less "Will the heroes win?" and more "How?" and "How much will it cost?"
I'm hardly a stranger to darkness, some of the darkest stuff that's ever happened in this RP is stuff that I've personally written. Though I do have to point out, as has already been mentioned, most of the absolute darkest stuff was either in an alternate universe whose consequences don't directly hit the OU, a sideplot where those who didn't want to deal with it didn't have to, or both.
And for the most part, I've had my fill of worse than AU or Orre-level darkness for an OU main plot, it just doesn't interest me anymore and is more likely to just depress me for the reasons I've already stated. While I've got no issue piling on the drama on my characters, there comes a point where I just don't want to do it anymore, which is why I've laid off RP!Tagg for the most part, I've done basically everything that isn't having me write something I know I wouldn't want like killing off Ann (Cliche) or having the School gun down his parents or something.
But for me, permadeath for heroic characters is something I prefer to keep to a a minimum if at all. Whatever boons come out of the death must greatly outweigh the death itself for me to be fine with it.
I'm pretty adaptable, I figure that's probably why I've managed to stick around this long, I'm basically fine with Arcs being just slice of life or more dramatic fare.
But as much as I love WAAPT and have no plans on leaving unless something meatspace-wise happens, I do have days of, "Do I really fit in anymore?"
To start, I tend to separate WAAPT's players into three categories when it comes to ratio of human to mon attention. There's people (Not so common anymore) who focus so much on their Pokémon that the human PC is really more a vessel to cart the mons around, those who focus mostly on their human characters with the mons mostly to the wayside save for one or two, and the nebulous between that that leans more on one end of the other but roughly equal prominence anyway.
Me, I'd describe myself as the third in the rough middle, but things for me when it comes to interactions have changed. I like having my mons interact with other people's Pokémon because I feel that gives them more opportunities to develop than me just playing telephone with myself, but that can't really happen as much anymore since from my observations the playerbase that's around is primarily more concerned with their humans than their mons, which isn't a criticism, that's just how it is.
Why do I feel stuck in the endless now? Well, part of that is the fact that when I wasn't driving a plot myself (The fiasco that was the IK meta has made me swear off from ever running a main arc again), I'd usually have some other player to hang out with, but with the mon stuff I've mentioned, basically everyone I used to do that stuff with is either retired or busy enough that the difference is merely academic.
Sure I like having my human characters interact with people and stuff, but when the mons aren't doing anything, that just feels wrong to me.
And the stuff that does come up, it's either something I wouldn't be directly interested in, or my characters are simply not in an optimal place to participate since I'm admittedly not one to meander once RP!Tagg's got a Badge/done a rematch since it's a bit "been there, done that" for me.
There's doing new stuff, but apart from issues making ideas there's a part of me that feels... frightened at the prospect, mainly due to the fact that it seems like almost every time I try doing something with someone, something happens and it ends up being consigned to limbo. Sure I could do things myself, I'm not especially "other people motivated" even if I obviously like being praised for my writing, but this is an RP, might as well start writing fanfic full time if that's all I'm doing.
And also, I want to do things with certain people, it's simply not the same without them.
Having the players do their own Gym fights does prevent them from waiting forever when we've got less than than we used too, but it does have the downside of there also being less stuff to do.
And unlike those who I write with most, who have their tabletops and other friend groups and fics to do and whatnot when we're talking non-meatspace stuff, WAAPT's kinda my only gig.
And for me personally, I have noted that if I'm writing a battle just by myself it's harder for me to be motivated to write to my full abilities more often than not if I'm not playing off, well, another player. It can feel more like when I was playing fake swordfights with pencils as a child,
Obviously the old days of 20+ pages a day are long gone because they're frankly unsustainable even if we did have the free time we used to, but I do kinda wish we could at least do the three to six months of old Arcs.
I have more than once mulled over suggesting that going forward we might want to switch our Arcs into a more Journeys-style thing (Ie. region ensemble) since if we'll be doing 1-2 year long Arcs for the foreseeable future unless something changes single region Arcs feel increasingly untenable as we get older and busier because we're just stuck there for years, but that might be beyond the point of this convo.
Edited by rmctagg09 on Aug 18th 2022 at 6:30:20 AM
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.So, I guess I should weigh in given my tenure here.
Why I'm Here
So this isn't likely going to be some big thesis statement like the other posts here but the way I see it I'm deeply attached to the RP for a few reasons.
Firstly, the fact that it's here and it's been a community for so long and constitutes probably at least half of my social life. It's also been, surprisingly, one of the most stable roleplays I've been involved with with most of the others I sign up dying pretty quickly (I guess this mildly contributes to how this kind of moment we've come into as a group kind of just mildly scares me as some kind of fracturing point?).
I'm also deeply attached to my character therein for much the same reason of stability and such; RP!Pent has been my precious meta-aware bean and it's been a maybe unhealthy amount of my life devoted to developing that character into interesting directions (to the point of having a hard time making new characters within WAAPT). Does lead to the problem where RP!Pent has accrued so much power and weird traits that it's kind of hard to participate in things without that participation being tinged with a vague sense that none of the danger is actual danger to them. Also kinda noticed I put a lot of human focus and I sorta want to remedy that but same issue where choosing to let the Pokemon handle things in any situation of legitimate danger is choosing a handicap.
But I think the big thing is that the RP being so stable but also so filled with established weirdness but also the potential for further weirdness arising means I can just... Make ideas and actually have them develop because I am seemingly incapable of writing stuff just by myself for my own enjoyment. Like I don't think there's anywhere else in my RP spheres where I can take an existing story and see how the unusual mechanics but also the structure and themes are altered by imposing it on a vastly different thematic reality or by having people accustomed to that reality become the protagonists. Just like... Poke at the niches or the fabric of a story and see what can be done when that's actually explored.
The Whole Reshiram Thing
I do kinda feel like we've gone so long without there really being any stakes or the status quo having much change. I kinda do yearn for a little bit of a shakeup that unsettles the idea that on a collective front the heroes are basically inevitable victors. And I've come up with a bunch of interesting half-formed thoughts of symbols the plan as written could have or how the personal themes of RP!Pent conflict with those of the story in a way that makes for interesting narrative.
But for reasons I can't really articulate I don't think the plan as written really works. Like it just feels like the kind of idea I'd make, formulate a doc for and then just it sits there until the opportunity to actually do it has passed because I didn't feel capable and no one stepped up to help make it. Which is weird, because this plan has been worked on and has got both a capable writer behind it and people helping improve it but for some reason I've still got those vibes of something I'd envision but never pull off.
Yeah sorry for my opinion on this being kinda being just vibe-based without any useful feedback.
It's clearly a case of backroom political albumizing.I have not been involved in this role play for that long, so I am not certain what weight is due for my opinions on how the role play progresses in the future. I will say, however, that I am willing to perform any duties and adapt to any changes in the status quo that are required of me, regardless of whatever consequences they may have for myself or the characters I portray.
Why I'm Here
I'll admit my activity has been sporadic-at-best for the last year or two, predominantly due to real-life chicanery, but I really, truly value the amount of writing experience this whole RP has given me over the years. Stretching my legs and writing, fleshing out ideas that just come to my head at a moment's notice, and making story developments that other people can build on and make their own.
RE: The School, Reshiram, and Death
That being said, my opinions on this entire matter are... complicated.
I understand that, while establishing the School, I made their intro very dark. I essentially created an organization based entirely around heartless eugenics experiments with wholly constructed children, and Tanya's introduction had her killing one of those human experiments on-screen.
I am now beginning to regret this being the introduction to the School as a whole.
As I think on it, my original intention for the School was to be an ancient organization whose machinations had finally come to light through clumsiness and hubris and would be taken down in a concerted effort of espionage and combat more based on the strategic level rather than be determined strictly by trainer-to-trainer combat.
From what I've heard, this is not how things have panned out.
But, we'll put a pin in that and come back to it in a second.
First we must address the other matter - Reshiram. While I was initially supportive and curious as to the storytelling possibilities of a major character death, the more and more I think on it the less and less I like it. Major character deaths, unless the character is specifically set up to help establish or facilitate the development of another character, personally and specifically, should be treated with the upmost respect and dignity, with the conflict between the character-to-be-sacrificed and the antagonist who is their nemesis be established well ahead of time and with proper time and consideration given to the matter in-story. And I'm not just talking about The Obi-Wan, who is introduced as an expendable mentor who is only given considerably more development and weight post facto, I'm talking about Emmerlyn, whose sacrifice was given true, proper weight via storytelling several hours of gameplay prior to the actual event happening.
And here we go back to that pin in the School conversation that I mentioned earlier to tie these two together.
For the last two years, and for the twelve years prior to that, I've had to watch good people (and animals) die for no good reason. Not for a conflict, not for a heroic sacrifice, not for a damn reason at all, and in a manner that was entirely avoidable with just an ounce of precaution.
And I cannot fucking stand it.
I do not want to bring that into this RP.
Yeah, it's how the world works. I've spent well over half my adult life learning that.
But we're not writing reality.
We're writing about heroes, anti-heroes, villains, and tiny creatures that can send several thousand watts of electricity through thin air.
We are writing about a world where despite the villains breaking reality to chain time and space to rewrite reality, the hero still wins.
We are writing about a world where despite the horrible things some of our characters have done in the past, life still goes on.
We are goddamn writing about characters who can do a goddamn good deed in this world just because they can.
And we have been writing about them for years.
We don't need cheap deaths to raise the stakes. That's what hack comic book writers do.
We don't need to force the world to be darker to create a brighter contrast between our heroes and the world at large.
We need to be smarter. We need to learn to work beyond these crutches that we'd forgotten we've been using for however long.
I don't think that's too much to ask.
So, the overwhelming thing people seem to like about WAAPT is a community where we're able to write stories together and people can choose to write very different ones.
Some other things mentioned by people are desire for tone...
Admittedly there's kind of a split in the middle, admittedly a lot of people being cool with either or wanting basically whatever tone comes naturally, some preferring things on the lighter end and others preferring dark. Most people seem cool with the plot overall as it is now and I think there's a slight lean towards liking darker stuff from what I'm hearing, but there are people who feel that the tone is too dark for their liking. Or at least, object to one of the points gotten into later.
Some people have expressed that WAAPT shouldn't necessarily be a place where the heroes always win because the chance that they could Lose makes it more interesting when they win. Others prefer the fantasy and the guarantee that things will be alright from a meta perspective. Of the people who mentioned it, I feel like we've kinda got an even split between the two if I'm not mistaken. I think figuring out how to deal with this along with tone would be good if mostly because some people feeling like a villainous group is untouchable and unable to have anything done about them and that feels disheartening and other people feeling like the villainous group isn't allowed to really get a meaningful win in feels kinda like the worst of both worlds.
Another common feeling sounds like things are best when they affect the world and alter the status quo and things might be getting a bit too set in stone for their liking. That said, given there is Also a significant number of people who expressed want death in general or heroic character death specifically to be kept low. These two aren't necessarily opposed to each other but at least as far as people pointing out one or the other they're usually expressed in opposition. I think either way, both should be kept in mind as we try and figure out how to set the tone.
This opinion doesn't seem as commonly expressed but two people did express a desire to do stuff specifically with Pokemon characters. One opinion did point out the RP is largely human focused now which keeps in track with very few mentions of it but that said I as one of those people do feel like there are still ways to get them ingrained since a lot of people who didn't mention them do still write for their Pokemon a fair bit.
Additionally, a few calls of loneliness and feeling of isolation were noted in the wake of this. That has been kind of a persistent problem if something we can do stuff about but advice in general is probably a good idea.
There were also a few calls to the past, noting both that WAAPT has done things like it currently does before and we should keep that in mind, and offering caveats and fears of what that might do in a meta sense.
And honestly... I think how WAAPT focuses in time-wise should be probably part of this too. There was one call of shifting away from real time for WAAPT which seemed to get a response of just assuming things are happening in a vague now and that scenes will take days or weeks with our usual speed.
That said... there was also a concern expressed of things lasting more than days or weeks, becoming months and getting pushed off further. I think some disjointed ideas were proposed here... stuff like the aforementioned idea to shift away from real time so we can get more done across less time despite being busy, applying schedules to make sure that things don't get pushed off for too long, committing to or interlinking things less because we're busier and can do less, or doing away with arcs altogether and trying something more Journeys style. Those don't necessarily have comments so could be good to deal with those or offer your own suggestions if you think they'd help!
So... does that cover it? If I missed or miscategorized points or people want to amend thoughts or more people wanna jump in to offer how They feel about WAAPT, feel free to do so at your best convenience, but now I think's the time we start talking about what we Do about all of this to try and get on the same page as much as we can so we can write stories together as a group!
Edited by CorvusAtrox on Aug 19th 2022 at 4:47:17 AM
"life is just a series of increasingly canon-eluding ao3 tags" ~ everydunsparce "Keep your hellfruit away from me, tempter" ~ also EveryI think that does cover it, yeah, but I admittedly feel weird about inherently associating "wants more status quo change" with "wants more deaths". I guess I admittedly hadn't been super clear about it, but things like "the Mobius arc's universe-bleed made half of Mauville City get Pokeformed and now understands Monese" are also plenty of fun in terms of status quo shakeups; it's a lasting reminder that our world is Goddamn Weird, and it doesn't just get undone when the plot gets resolved. Little things like that go a long way to making the world feel like it's ours.
But yeah, beyond that, you summed things up pretty well!
I will admit, though, Dune's input on the Reshiram thing helped me rethink and reflect on some stuff a bit more, but I'll wait until after Aster posts to give my thoughts on that.
I should clarify that by Journeys style I meant more like the Entralink Arc that isn't based around a singular region than getting rid of Arcs altogether, though I will admit considering long distances and not everyone having long-distance teleporters has a chance of making our disjointment worse.
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.So obviously I'm still somewhat new to this RP, having been here for less than two years at this point. I haven't been here for a shift of the status quo, and I don't really remember much of Reshiram at all in the last couple of years, so I don't know if I should really have much of an opinion on them dying.
However, since people are talking about permadeath, I feel I should speak as someone who has just done a character's permadeath about a week ago. I know that it might not have been a move that everyone was happy with, and I only went ahead with it after consulting other members of the RP, and I knew that it was considered a big step.
There are two points to address here. The first is an issue of tone, and the dark tone created from killing Vana through what was basically cancer. I did this for several reasons - to make the School seem worse, to motivate other characters, etc. Having read Dune's point, I know that this might have been too dark and too close to the real life that in some ways this RP is a way to forget. However, I stand by my choice.
The other thing I want to briefly address, which also follows on slightly from the last one, is that like I said, killing Vana was big. Again, I haven't been here since the start and don't know the full impact of killing Reshiram, but I don't know that everyone would be up for that level of darkness.
That's not to say that I don't love changes to the status quo. In writing that I do elsewhere, I love to change the status quo because it changes the types of stories that can be told. But the great thing about WAAPT is that I don't think the status quo needs to change for there to be different kinds of stories, because there are already so many people writing that all have their own ideas. This is a collaborative story, after all. Everyone can tell their own stories that add up to a greater whole, and they can sometimes tell them together and sometimes separate. And we have this whole world with ten years of unique lore to build on already.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not a fan of killing Reshiram. When I killed Vana, it affected my characters, and other writers could choose if it affected their characters too. If Reshiram is killed, then that's something that everyone kind of has to be a part of or be completely divorced from the world of the RP.
I don't know, maybe I'm making no sense whatsoever. I didn't plan out this post so it may be a bit rambly, but there are my fifty cents.
Given that reasoning, I do want to add in the following to that commentary on your post, Hoops. Killing off a main character doesn't just affect your characters, it might not affect everyone but it has the chance to affect basically anyone who knows them. I'm not sure if it's come in the D!Thread but I feel like at least part of the reason we're having this discussion and some of the tension last week was because of Vana's death and people's reactions to it. It's fair to stand by the decision but I feel like if we're treating Vana's death as an example to be followed we should also figure out how to better to deal with the meta tension that happens after the fact.
"life is just a series of increasingly canon-eluding ao3 tags" ~ everydunsparce "Keep your hellfruit away from me, tempter" ~ also EverySo I floated this idea in the chat last night but I figured I'd make the documentation official.
What do I do with Magearna?
So I've finally, finally hit the end of the Walking Mountain arc. I'd had the ending planned out for actual years, but now I have a problem.
I now have a Magearna that is just out and floating around.
And I have no idea where to put her.
"Well, where did you think of putting her when you were planning this?"
So the idea I floated was to have the Magearna take up residence in the Pyrite Town windmill, and over the course of months, years even, it would slowly expand from just a little windmill into a full-on tower of gears and clockwork, using wind energy to generate power for the town and potentially creating a knock-on effect that would improve the town in general.
It would take nearly a full generation of work before it reached the point of a "second Phenac" like I'd mentioned before, but still, a change to a canon location (even one that the Pokemon Company likely doesn't even remember) should probably have ample documentation around the discussion to look back to.
On the Reshiram Thingy
I have absolutely no thoughts or opinions on this. Whatever happens I'll be fine with.
On WAAPT
We Are All Pokemon Trainers... means a heck of a lot to me, to be honest. Without it, I would not have met some of my closest friends. I've had a lot of fun writing for my characters and their Pokemon, and I'm hoping to continue doing that in the future.
As for what I want out of it... honestly, I just want to write and have fun. So long as WAAPT exists, and continues to exist, I'll be happy.
On Where to Put Magearna
Right now, I'm unsure.
On UBese, Take III
Alright. I think I might have something here.
So! It's been a bit since I last posted about Kimberly Bond's intended UBese arc that happens post-League. In that time, I thought a lot about how I wanted the arc to work, since I had it pretty much planned out in my mind that this was going to be the climax of Kimberly Bond's character arc as she finally discovers something that she wants to do with her life, for herself.
I ultimately realized that the original plan I had— of her publishing a book that sets the UBese language in stone— wasn't going to work. Poipolian dialects, sure, but UBese itself can't be set in stone. There are so many different ideas regarding the UBese language, and just setting the main dialect of it to a single standard would negate all of those other ideas. I still wanted to keep the conlang as an aspect of the Poipolian dialect, but I was starting to feel like even that might not work.
And then it hit me.
My third idea, which I previously discussed with Corvus, is this:
Kim will still research Poipolian UBese, document her findings, and publish a book about them. That remains unchanged. What will change, however, is the content of said book. Instead of it being a full-fledged, set-in-stone guide to the Poipolian dialect of UBese, the book is instead a collection of theoretics, based on and supported by Kimberly Bond's findings. In other words, everything in Kim's UBese book and in her blog posts— the conlang, the grammar, the nature of the cipher, etc.— is a theory.
Instead of being UBese for Dummies as was originally intended, the book is now instead more akin to On the Origin of Species.
Due to the info in it being published theory, the book will not guarantee complete understanding of Poipolian UBese or even UBese in general. It does not guarantee direct communication with Ultra Beasts. It does leave discussion open for any other theories to come up that either support or negate Kimberly Bond's theory. The big main thing that now puts Kim on the philology map is not that she "figured out" the Poipolian dialect of the UBese language— it's a fact that there's a theory on UBese at all and that she published it.
I'm eager to know if anyone else has any other opinions on this— whether they agree, disagree, etc. Please let me know your thoughts in the discussion thread below.
Hi, I’m oghond, and I’m a Rushaholic. Sorry if I annoy you unintentionally. 😅I would be fine with the Pyrite thing
I am fine with this as such.
Okay I am definitely happy to pick up this topic again since you and Tagg both had problems with the nature of time in WAAPT if in different ways. I also remember Zeal expressing frustration with the nature of WAAPT's time as not being able to get a lot done in one day and potentially timeskip at some point in the past and it's definitely true that while we used to be an RP where we all had time to devote and things could work fine on a day to day scale that is not true anymore. However, it is also something that is well entrenched and any solution to could potentially affect everyone. So! What are some options for what to do about it:
Make Peace With It
At least so far in what opinions have been expressed, the majority of people have Not expressed that the flow of time impacts the way their plots work. Whether this is through lack of saying anything or feeling it but just not wanting to state it, a lot of people are happy with an endless now. If we did nothing, then rather than attempting to change it and run plots that are time sensitive, we should embrace the lack of time and decide that since time is meaningless and we're generally busy, that whether something takes a while to accomplish or not in IRL time should not impact how it is treated IRP. This would also mean that we don't expect things to be handled within a timescale that these events would actually happen IRL and that it shouldn't affect things. Based on the fact that people are Not happy with this even if a lot of people seem fine with it, I doubt this is the route we want to go.
Go to a Fully Decided Timescale
I think this is a way that RPs often work, determining the timescale by whoever runs it. The problem with applying that to WAAPT is that we don't structurally have a GM and if we did this then it would require buy in for everyone to change the time scale accordingly. This is something we certainly could do and if we did then maybe it could be set to a scale where we do arcs within that time. I feel like doing this would require more control than we want to apply to stuff and it could end up weird, but that's me. This feels like a bit more extreme option and one I at least don't think any of us want for WAAPT but if that's not the case, speak up.
Get Stricter on Scheduling from a Meta End
If we want to hold to the idea that time has meaning and we should get something done over a span of time, then when we do a time-sensitive event then we establish ahead of time that it is time sensitive and when we would want it to be finished by. This would then be taken into account by what rate we do things at and what we feel we'd be able to be able to accomplish in a given amount of time. I feel that this could allow for us to do things in a snappier quicker way and make sure everyone's roughly happy with what's going on but it could Also lead to schedule panic if something goes awry, someone has plans that aren't getting done at an expected rate or something else happens. If it got implemented fine then it could keep it so that stuff gets set for the proper amount of time but admittedly it also feels like it could lead to arguments.
Time Bubbles
If we don't want to put the pressure to apply timescale on an RL end, another option is... well, something like Silent's idea of "Slow WAAPT" and "Fast WAAPT". I don't think they'd need to like, necessarily be super split but the idea would be "we acknowledge what events happen IRL when we want to but it's sort of the Schrödingers Present" but if someone wants to have plot be on a specific timescale, then they are free to do so and encouraged to have control over that. This would allow people to stay on the timescale they want to be for their plots but it might also produce some desync, depending. I'd at least sort of encourage a "speed of plot" thing to happen where even if things logically should have already happened in the Schrödingers Present they occur as they are revealed in the plot thread. I admittedly think this might have the best idea of working well, allowing different stories to be told at the rate they want to happen and acknowledge things happening but can also see a problem happening of "someone wants to write something happening over 3 months in character over a 2 year span IRL" and the idea of the group time flow getting away from them but I'm admittedly not sure how to address such a scenario.
So, those are at least the ideas that came to mind for me. There quite possibly are more ways to handle this or the solution could end up taking ideas from more of these.
Edited by CorvusAtrox on Aug 31st 2022 at 1:05:51 PM
"life is just a series of increasingly canon-eluding ao3 tags" ~ everydunsparce "Keep your hellfruit away from me, tempter" ~ also EveryMagerarna
I'm cool with this!
Time Stuff
I'm personally leaning Make Peace With It or Time Bubbles
Contact Me!

emerges from a lifesize dust bunny
Hi. I support WAAPT Session Zero, I think.
More thoughts later, probably.
Edited by Tangent128 on Aug 17th 2022 at 10:45:05 AM
Do you highlight everything looking for secret messages?