How's My Driving?

[arielmods]

HMD

It's that time finally! Here's our first How's My Driving? post. This sitewide meme will go up on the 20th of every month and it's encouraged that everyone post! Please post a list of your current in-game characters as a reference for other members to use for comments or critique.

Remember to keep it civil. Outright flaming will not be tolerated and we will deal with any hostile comments as soon as possible. Critique should be constructive. Offer ways a player can improve their characters, solve any problems you might have, etc. rather than just telling them they're horrible with no examples or pointers.

Likewise, this isn't a love meme. It's great to tell someone you think they're doing a good job or you love playing with them! Just give reasons for why you think they're awesome or what they're doing well. We're not discouraging positive comments. Love is great, but so is hearing why you are so you know what to keep doing.

Anon comments are enabled and IP logging is off for those who'd prefer a little anonymity, but please don't abuse this feature to be rude to other players.

If anything comes up, please visit the concerns page to let us know or contact us through any of the other various ways listed.

Form:
<b>Character Name</b> | <i>Series</i> | <user name=JOURNAL NAME> | <a href="URL HERE">Journal HMD</a>

Comments

[pulledfromthepit]

Dean Winchester | Supernatural | pulledfromthepit | [Journal HMD]

[(Anonymous)]

You said on the anon memes that you were open to crit, so here's hoping it's true. :) Although I think you have a fairly good grasp on Dean's character, I feel you've slipped on the details when it comes to the way Dean reacts to sex with different genders in ways that the chip doesn't entirely compensate for.

Now I'm totally down with Dean being played as bi-sexual and it's more or less proven in canon that he isn't really homophobic, but Dean has been raised in a very hetero-normative society and he definitely has different expectations of different genders. He likes the ladies to be impressed with him and flirts accordingly, but with most men there's sense of competition and posturing. He wants them to know he's badass and not to be messed with...which isn't to say there aren't dangerous ladies in his life who sometimes get this treatment, but with the kind of life Dean's led he's more used to aggressive men getting in his face and has had to learn to deal with that.

My issue is, from what I've seen of your Dean in Ariel, is that he treats both genders pretty much the same in regards to sex which doesn't seem quite right. Given his character, I sort of feel that he wouldn't lose that need to establish a sort of pecking order, even if he was choosing to bottom, instead of just approaching guys with the same sort of open flirtatiousness he'd use for women.

[pulledfromthepit]

Yes, please. I love getting good crit on my writing.

I can see where you're coming from, now that I think about it. I think a lot of it is that I'm hesitant to play up that part of his personality in general, because I'm worried about taking it too far and having him be one of those characters who's always having to one-up everyone else and be the big guy in every single thing ever... which is a trait I hate to see in other characters. So, it's possible I push him too far in the opposite direction.

I will look over what I've done so far and try to work for more of a balance in the future. Thanks for pointing it out!

[(Anonymous)]

I can sort of understand your concern there, but in small doses, I think it would be more entertaining to play that out. You only really need to do it once with any given character, and once Dean's figured out where they slot into his life, I imagine he'd be more relaxed about approaching them for further encounters. Given that Dean's shown to be able to follow orders with people he trusts, he doesn't always have to be the one who wins those encounters either. He can legitimately decide someone could outdo him in certain ways and still want to have sex with them. I just imagine he'd be a little more tense about it.

But thank you for taking the crit so well. Not everyone does, as I'm sure you know.

[pulledfromthepit]

Yeah, that makes sense. It's not something I think I can change with any of my current CR, but I can definitely work on it for his future encounters. Fortunately, I haven't really gotten a chance to tag out much in game yet, so it won't affect too many other characters.

I do know and I really hope people will continue to crit me when I need it. I can't promise I will absolutely agree with everything I'm told, but I'll definitely listen and take it into consideration.