I hear this a lot that places aren't, but as someone who tries hard to be all inclusive I'm not able to see it. Just curious what other people see and experience.
I have a few things that go against being inclusive:
with a lore heavy au rp:
- having no clear timeline, no place to catch up on what's happened previously so it's hard to place your character in an unfamiliar situation
- admins that come across as unapproachable, not welcoming you, never talking to you
- lore becoming so limiting your creativity gets stifled
with a non/semi au:
- characters ignoring you because your muse is in another company/has no company
- characters that only talk to their group mates or people of the same nationality
- chat only rps for those of us who don't live in an american timezone, it can be very alienating
all rps:
- strict deadlines and activity rules that are unaccommodating to those of us who prefer to stay in our replies and prefer quality over quantity rather than chats
- no one reaching out to you to rp when you join. Admins used to plot with you to help introduce you into the rp and it was a nice way to feel at home in an rp but people really don't do that anymore because the admins are usually taken romantically
- small events that were fun and manageable that got people working together, stuff like that doesn't happen anymore either. It's either a big event you're forced to participate in or nothing at all
- characters only talking to you depending on what position in the bedroom your character has, having to state it on your application I know I'm putting my character in a box that will limit his interactions
- the focus of an rp being based on a specific uality or gender rather than just letting people meet and see where it goes, the inability to let characters have preferences, making plots that aren't just based around romantic attraction
- rps that are just full of tagged replies in chat
- characters ghosting and people being unable to communicate their needs and wants. so even when you find a partner to plot with they won't tell you when they're busy and you're just sitting around
I find it very distasteful when someone goes into a chatroom just to say how much they miss their partner or, even worse, just to look for them. If you want to talk to a specific person just slide into their walls/pms, you know? It also feels unwelcoming when there're too many tags on chatrooms and when the conversations are hard for an outsider to join in (like plot-heavy conversations between characters, that come from previous interactions). The former tends to happen in rps that are running for a long time
People want to feel wanted. It doesn't help how often you ask them how their day was, how they are, or what they're doing, they want to actively feel wanted. This is why so many rps end up stringing along by the thread of the 3-5 established couples in the rp that only rp with each other in their dms: because they feel wanted by their partners. What I find makes a RP community feel welcoming is active and collaborative communication. Bouncing around ideas for backgrounds, discussing ways their characters can connect, just actively encouraging everybody to not write their backgrounds in a bubble where they're the main characters, but weaving the narratives of others into theirs. A welcoming community is a community where you don't feel insecure or left out because you don't know anybody in the RP because when you land in the chatroom, it's a room that's discussing their characters, their backgrounds, their moods, the plots they want to do, and everything an OOC room should be. Sometimes the OOC room can get sidetracked and get personal, but bonding and communicating as people is important to see that the person you're writing with is a person separate from their character. I've seen a lot of people blur the lines between IC and OOC, but a truly welcoming RP will have a clear distinction between the two because as much as these rps are about the characters we write, there have been so many instances on this site where I find people stick in character even while they're ooc and make communication as writers difficult.
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