InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I'm sensitive & I like it"

ravenwing263 (ravenwing263) wrote in rp_tutorials,
@ 2014-04-21 14:31:00

Not exactly off topic, but maybe not exactly on either

But can anyone explain to me how popularity of enforcing a rule that usernames must be IC? OOC usernames allow the user to show a bit of their character's personalities, while IC are often no more of a jumble of letters.

Can anyone explain the rational behind this rule and its near-universality?

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	hideko 2014-04-21 06:39 pm UTC (link)
	I like ooc usernames. I'm not really sure what the origin is for IC names? I've assumed it has to do with convenience (people can easily look and see char's name). D: (Reply to this) (Thread)

ravenwing263
2014-04-21 06:48 pm UTC (link)

That may be the intention in theory but it doesn't seem to work in progress, perhaps because so many real, normal names are taken and derivations need to be used.

Like, okay, look at the holds for the upcoming game

gents. You can find them here. (Warning, this is a porny game, and may have NSFW text on the hold page.)

That is a game that requires IC usernames, and if you look over the holds, you see mostly unintelligible UNs that "count" as IC. (There are a couple of OOC names there, folks who I assume intend to change journals or hadn't read the rules before holding, ignore those for the sake of this conversation.)

I don't see any where I could actually pick out the name and say, "oh, yeah, this character name is [John Smith]." With vowels omitted and whole chunks of words cut off, they don't make any obvious sense.

Now, sure, once you're in play in a game like this, you can check their profiles and see, "Oh, this character's name is 'Edward Kinney,' now his username of '~wrdknny' makes perfect sense." But if the idea is to have people not need to check profiles, the current trends doesn't work to that end.

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hideko
2014-04-21 06:58 pm UTC (link)

Oh, don't you worry about me. That link with the shirtless Chris Evan icon can keep itself open on my comp (j/k, but now I'm off to troll tumblr for real).

Oh no, I agree that sometimes the usernames can look more akin to beast than man. I guess when you do interact with a char in game, they make more sense (like you said). I guess whatever makes people happy, you know? I wish I could be of more help here! I am just kinda like 'well, what they are doing makes them happy. I'll just stay over here and do my thing'. Maybe someone else will give us a better answer?

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	blackflame28 2014-04-21 09:02 pm UTC (link)
	I personally like IC usernames. Then I know who I'm playing with right away, without having to open up their journal and/or profile. When it's OOC username until I am very familiar with the game or play with the other person a lot, then I don't know who I'm playing against. But that's my preference. (Reply to this) (Thread)

ravenwing263
2014-04-21 10:01 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, I can see how that would work if you used, like, names. But the tendency to use fragments of derivations of names completed ruins that effect for me.

So like, I have a retired werepanther character here. His name is "Kareem Okonwo." Now, I would actually argue that his current UN, ~thatoldblackcat probably provides a more meaningful first-glance understanding of the character than something full-namey like "~KareemOkonwo" would. But I'd argue it certainly provides a better understanding than what you mostly get with IC journals, which is usually a fragmentary derivation like "~remkonw" or something.

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paulus
2014-04-26 09:27 am UTC (link)

With most things, trends just happen with little rhyme or reason. Someone saw it, liked it and did it themselves. Look at the trend of icons where there were no eyebrows, or the super gaussian blur (see mine for example). It's called mob mentality. People see other people doing something and feel like they have to do the same. Peer pressure, ftw.

I know, personally, I prefer uniformity in the comms that I've modded. I'd want either IC or OOC but I don't want to see both in one place. It throws me off to see peoples names and then suddenly ~fatcat thrown into the mix. And there have been times where the people that have had the OOC names in a comm of majority IC journals aren't the best role players (I have many, many years of experience to back up that statement so I'm not just saying it because of one or two people but a whole slew of them), so it can show a sort of "maturity" in a role player.

That being said, there are times when OOC is totally appropriate (and often the rule):
- college/high school/young adult games where the characters range from 15-25 (maybe 30) will ask for OOC because the journals are more of a representation of their blogs/tumblrs/etc.
- specialty games (supernatural/mafia/etc) games, like your example with ~thatoldblackcat.
- fandom games (movies/tv shows/comics/books/etc) where the name of that character was snatched up immediately and is likely not even being used, so your only option is to get creative with it.

As for the fragmented versions, I like to do that in a way that I can re-use the journal sometime down the line if I need to. This journal is a last name. It can be male or female. Another journal I have is ~milro, where the characters name is Emilia Rose, but I can easily change that so something like Mildred Roman, or Michael Lance Roads.

It can also be laziness winning out. If someone has the option to type out 16 letters or 6 letters, which one do you think they'll choose? More often than not, they'll go with the 6, right? Easier to remember, harder to screw up. And if you do screw it up, you're not staring at it for a while trying to figure out just where you went wrong.

Ultimately, it's personal preference that decides whether that rule is going to be enforced. Some mods are more lenient that others. And don't be surprised if a few years down the line its the other way around and OOC is what is in demand.

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bottledskies
2014-05-27 10:30 pm UTC (link)

This is a really interesting question because I've wondered the exact same thing. I participate exclusively in PSL's, so the username is generally just a necessary formality in that instance because I've been writing the same characters with the same person for, like, six years (I didn't even realize that OOC usernames were even a thing people did until I came to IJ, and by that point I'd been writing the same characters for so long that I just remade the majority of them with similar IC names).

If I were to hypothesize, I'd probably just tack onto what

paulus stated--peer pressure is probably to blame; my first game had an unwritten "rule" about choosing an IC username--it was a fandom game and the creator had used the character name--and I think the rest of us just followed suit. I wish OOC names were more popular when I started, because I would have loved to get creative (there's only so many variations of a person's first and last name!).

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