Input on my request thread

[GarrusVakarian2869]

Mx Any - GarrusVakarian2869's Freaky Funky RP Thread - Unleash your wild side! [NEW FANDOMS!]

About Me... 𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘 𝒻𝑒𝓁𝓁𝑜𝓌 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓀𝓈 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑔𝑒𝑒𝓀𝓈! 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚎 𝙶𝚅. 𝙸'𝚖 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝑜 𝓅𝓁𝒶𝓎 𝒶𝓃𝓎 𝑔𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝒹𝑜 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓉𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝓅𝒶𝒾𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓈𝒸𝑒𝓃𝒶𝓇𝒾𝑜𝓈. 𝒲𝒽𝑒𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒾𝓉'𝓈 𝑜𝒸 𝓍 𝑜𝒸 𝑜𝓇 𝒻𝒶𝓃𝒹𝑜𝓂-𝓇𝑒𝓁𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝓅𝒶𝒾𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈, ℐ 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝓂𝒾𝓈𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 ℐ 𝒶𝓂 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑔𝓊𝓎 𝓉𝑜 𝑔𝑜 𝓉𝑜. ℳ𝓎 𝓂𝒶𝒾𝓃 𝒸𝓇𝒶𝓋𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒻𝓊𝓇𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 ℐ...

bluemoonroleplaying.com

I know this thread needs improvement so I'm willing to take whatever possible suggestions y'all have. Lay it on me!

 

[Bellini]

Assuming you mean this thread? This is the only one I found in your recent posts that the link led me to. If not, disregard. Keep in mind this is just my opinion, so it's not the be-all, end-all!

I tend to stray away from threads that have big, giant warnings across the top. I know it's important that people read your thread - I prefer the same - but those that will, will do it anyway, and those that won't, won't. The big red warning only deters me from reading further, as starting a thread off on a "negative" note is rough going.

The introductory sentence is a bit of a run-on. I think something like "Hello! You can call me GV. I'm currently looking for partners willing to play female characters, or possibly femboy versions of female characters. Here's a bit about me:" would get the point across more succinctly.

The tables are a bit messy; I think presenting them just as a bulleted list would work fine, since there isn't an extreme amount of content there. Six bullet points in a row would look neater than two columns of an unbalanced table, in my opinion. Something like:
​

• Post Frequency: I try to respond as soon as possible; if I take more than a day, feel free to message me and remind me.​
• Post Style: Varies depending on partner, but if you have any preferences, let me know. I can write in first or third person, but I prefer third.​
• OOC: At least friendly discussion about the plot is necessary, and I'd prefer chat out of character as well.​
• Plot/Smut: More smut than plot preferred.​

​

reads a lot neater to me. Your time zone can go up in your list of facts about you, if you'd like to include it. Just feels out of place with everything else here.

I don't mind the spoilers, but since the section on expectations is so short, I don't think it really needs one. Same thing I said above about the negativity, though - you're marketing yourself towards potential partners, so leaving in things like "I'm sick of getting close to starting a roleplay only for my partner to tell me they don't wanna do one of my must haves" is a bit of a turn off. Simply stating "Please make sure you've read my kinks below before messaging me" would work for those it's going to work on anyway, and you can always follow up message someone if you don't think they've read it from the start.

I think the kink list and pairings list are fine, but I'd list a few plots if you have 'em. It's never a bad thing to show that you have story ideas, and who knows, the story you have in mind might hook a potential partner more than just seeing their favorite pairing there.

All in all, a good strong start, but I think with a bit of tweaking you could get a lot more interest. :3​

 

[GarrusVakarian2869]

Assuming you mean this thread? This is the only one I found in your recent posts that the link led me to. If not, disregard. Keep in mind this is just my opinion, so it's not the be-all, end-all!

I tend to stray away from threads that have big, giant warnings across the top. I know it's important that people read your thread - I prefer the same - but those that will, will do it anyway, and those that won't, won't. The big red warning only deters me from reading further, as starting a thread off on a "negative" note is rough going.

The introductory sentence is a bit of a run-on. I think something like "Hello! You can call me GV. I'm currently looking for partners willing to play female characters, or possibly femboy versions of female characters. Here's a bit about me:" would get the point across more succinctly.

The tables are a bit messy; I think presenting them just as a bulleted list would work fine, since there isn't an extreme amount of content there. Six bullet points in a row would look neater than two columns of an unbalanced table, in my opinion. Something like:

reads a lot neater to me. Your time zone can go up in your list of facts about you, if you'd like to include it. Just feels out of place with everything else here.

I don't mind the spoilers, but since the section on expectations is so short, I don't think it really needs one. Same thing I said above about the negativity, though - you're marketing yourself towards potential partners, so leaving in things like "I'm sick of getting close to starting a roleplay only for my partner to tell me they don't wanna do one of my must haves" is a bit of a turn off. Simply stating "Please make sure you've read my kinks below before messaging me" would work for those it's going to work on anyway, and you can always follow up message someone if you don't think they've read it from the start.

I think the kink list and pairings list are fine, but I'd list a few plots if you have 'em. It's never a bad thing to show that you have story ideas, and who knows, the story you have in mind might hook a potential partner more than just seeing their favorite pairing there.

All in all, a good strong start, but I think with a bit of tweaking you could get a lot more interest. :3​

I'm putting into action said critiques, I appreciate it so much.

 

[GarrusVakarian2869]

Bump, still trying to make things better visually

 

[Tassu]

Alright, so I am not your target audience, so there's that to consider. I am also going to be critical (?) but hopefully in a way that makes sense.

This is painful to read. Chancing fonts and text colors cause your eyes to skip. I can see you are going for art, but when your goal is to convey information to the people skimming your RT, you do not want their eyes blinking because they cannot casually focus on the words on the screen. This same carries through your entire RT. Text keeps changing color and size seemingly randomly, making it hard to focus on.

Perhaps pick one color and font for headlines, another for your text blocks? Avoid colors that cause retinal burn or blend into the background.

 

[GarrusVakarian2869]

Alright, so I am not your target audience, so there's that to consider. I am also going to be critical (?) but hopefully in a way that makes sense.

This is painful to read. Chancing fonts and text colors cause your eyes to skip. I can see you are going for art, but when your goal is to convey information to the people skimming your RT, you do not want their eyes blinking because they cannot casually focus on the words on the screen. This same carries through your entire RT. Text keeps changing color and size seemingly randomly, making it hard to focus on.

Perhaps pick one color and font for headlines, another for your text blocks? Avoid colors that cause retinal burn or blend into the background.

what would be a better color palette?

 

[GarrusVakarian2869]

Mx Any - GarrusVakarian2869's Freaky Funky Booty Shakin' RP Thread! ]

About Me... Hello fellow freaks and geeks! You can call me GV. I’m willing to play any gender and will do all sorts of pairings and scenarios. Whether it’s OC x OC or fandom-related pairings, I promise you that I am your go to guy. My main cravings are listed further within the thread, but I am...

bluemoonroleplaying.com

Bump, struggling to get traction

 

[Bellini]

Boop, I'll pop back in to give my opinion on this iteration! Again, just my opinion, yada yada yada.

Personally, I hate fonts like Courier New for request threads, and the mix of fonts is just way too much. I'd recommend picking one body font and maybe one header font if you really want a difference, but I don't think that's necessary most of the time. I also think the constant changing between centering and other orientations is hard to read. The information seems arranged well, but it's a hodge-podge and it doesn't make me want to try and decipher it just to get the information I need. If you want to keep your current setup, I'd left-align or justify anything except headers, and take a lot of the colors and fonts out.

If you want my advice on exactly how I'd lay it out, I'm happy to go more in depth, but personally, I'd say strip the code and just keep the info and reformat it from the start, it'll probably be less of a hassle than manually removing the different colors/fonts.

I don't really feel qualified to judge the content because honestly, I can't really focus on it very long without my eyes starting to hurt, lol. But again, that's just me - I've got shit eyes when it comes to computer screens, so everyone else's mileage may vary.​

 

[vexxxacious]

I'll give an accessibility perspective: I think while accessibility will effect aesthetics, I don't want to knock aesthetics. They're your aesthetics to make, not mine.
Keep in mind that not every critique has to be put in to action, nor should it. Don't sacrifice self expression if you don't want to.

The Astigmatic Critique​

My eyes are improving with time, somehow, but I still struggle to read many fonts and colours.

Courier New is difficult to read

⇒ It is extremely wide in diameter which is useful but strokes are overall quite thin and short (proportionally), and bolding is so thick some characters become muddled. Your solution of bumping up the font size does indeed work, however.
⇒ This is technically also true for Times New Roman, which I use hypocritically, which also has the problem of appearing to be quite small. This is where I sacrifice accessibility for aesthetics, but I don't want to use this in a thread and if anyone ever asked me to use another format, I would. My condition for making a thread is that it is aesthetically cohesive while being totally accessible to everyone, and a good baseline for that is myself, I feel.

Colours blend in to the background

⇒ Contrast is how I pick out characters and the more contrasted it is the easier a time I'll have reading a letter or word, I need contrast in colour from the backdrop to be able to pick it out.
⇒ BMR generally uses the default dark-blue backdrop, so I pick a nice, very pastel pink. Lots of white in there, but still coloured. Especially taking in to considerations I sometimes use other colours. I do use a light blue for my titles, but the contrast is mostly in dark-to-light.
⇒ I will still use colour to indicate a change in tone.

Examples

Some examples of stuff I couldn't read without taking it in to an external text editor, typically because of colour.

I'm 20
Go by he/him
Pansexual
Pacific Standard Time
Love watching movies
Love listening to music
Huge MMA fan
Love listening to music
Huge Deftones fan ​

Here, I couldn't read the middle text, which I now know reads "Love listening to music" and "Huge MMA fan".

(Purple rain by Prince is my favorite)

Batman / Harley Quinn **​

I don't want to just knock you all day, though. Here's some good things​

⇒ Centring text a very nice idea. One of the benefits of putting your writing in a centred table, for example, is that is decreases a line's length while keeping the alignment (left, right or centre). This means eyes don't need to dart so dramatically from left to right. Obsidian, the software I use to write, has a feature called "Readable Line Length" which does this exact thing, works a blessing.

⇒ That does mean I have to take a point away for this, though.

(5 stars = in demand most):
**
***
****
*****​

⇒ I'm personally all for packing information in to blocks so information is immediately available without some long, rambling prose. This is why I bullet-point everything in long lists or long prose - the indentation also helps find my way through paragraphs - although with my aesthetic "⇒" sign.
⇒ I also like the WYSIWYG effect in Obsidian for this reason.

 

[Nera9948]

I found your content pretty good, but there is way too much going on in color scheme and such, its distracting, so I agree with everyone else there that this needs scaled down

 

[Siph]

Colour scheme and other markup-related things aside, I'd generally recommend against generic titles like "Siph's Request Thread" or "Curent RP Cravings". As popular as they seem to be, keep in mind that it doesn't matter how much work you put in the thread itself if people aren't enticed to click it in the first place. Rather than going full YouTube-style clickbait though, try to be genuinely descriptive about the content:

⇒ You mention that you're primarily looking for smut-focussed scenarios, so perhaps put that in the title too. Even better, since you already have a small list of must-have kinks, list some in the title -- that should also give the impression that you're looking for something kink/smut-heavy right away.

⇒ You list a whole bunch of fandoms and characters, so select some (your favourite) to feature in your title. You have a concrete Miles x Gwen prompt, so why not mention that pair up front?

⇒ This isn't my thing personally, but if you find yourself frequently changing and updating your cravings, you can add something like "Updated June 2023" at the end; if someone looked at your thread before but didn't see anything they were into, maybe there's something for them now.

Try to be concise and eye-catching, but descriptive. There's no harm in experimenting and changing your title every other bump to see what works best, either.
Thanks Vex for letting me borrow your pointers