I read everything. All the journal entries, all the IC posts. Here are the reasons I do:
For the writers, because they have given me this gift, and I want to appreciate it. People often work very hard on those posts and they are very proud of them, for good reason. Some of this stuff is great (and by the way, Verandis, you are, too, a good writer). If it's not your thing to read stuff, that's cool too, but I have always been a voracious reader and I enjoy them.
Lexy is an amazingly perceptive person. It is a major part of his character concept that he is very insightful where human emotions and motivations are concerned. I'm not as good at those things as Lexy is, plus often in-game interactions don't allow for the depth and detail that the posts do. Reading character journals, even though the information is OOC, gives me a better insight as to who the character is, and lets me play my character better in relation to that other character.
Which does not mean I'm going to have him guess another character's innermost secrets because I read it in his journal. A journal that says "Hah-hah; I have them all fooled! It will be so easy to betray them all!", is not going to make me, and should not make me, suddenly be suspicious of that character. But often one can get a better idea of what the player is trying to have his character convey in game if one reads the character journal, and that's what I mean.
And here's why I write them:
I love my character, and I want to share him with others. I enjoy writing (though it takes me forever).
I suck at the physical aspects of this game. I make up for often not having time to type that emote by writing in depth later. I hope that other players can get a better sense of who Lexy is by reading such things, and use it in their game-play. He would be revealing his personality all the time in actual game-play but I don't have the skills to adequately convey it there.
I also write for the DMs, so they know what is going on with Lexy and they can use it if they want to. When I was a DM for a live game that had a mailing list, I read everything on the list and every piece of private communication that went back and forth IC between the players, so that I always had the big picture and was better able to pull the strings and yank the chains. The better the DMs know the character, the better able they are to push the right buttons for that character, and that equals more fun for me!
Not so much with Lexy's, because he doesn't keep a diary, but I like to write about the other characters in the game, as a tribute to how well-played they are. I love it when I read about my character in someone else's journal, so I know how much fun that is, and I like to do that for other people. If Lexy did keep a diary (I wish I had the time, and that he was the type to) he would fill it with observations about the other characters in the game.
However, there are some things I do not write even in IC-but-OOC forums. Though I will write nasty things about characters whose players are proud of their being nasty, I try not to write things that will hurt other peoples feelings, or belittle their characters, and I try not to write spoilers about ongoing plots until the information doesn't matter anymore.
As for being made fun of for emotes that aren't quite right, humph! Lexy almost never wears a helm, so I've on several occasions emoted his facial expressions and afterward went: "Doh! He's wearing a helm!" Druid said good stuff regarding how to emote inner thoughts. Again, since Lexy is so perceptive, I'm glad to get such clues. If a character is feeling angry or depressed or euphoric, I think it's helpful to say so, and with my horrible typing skills it's better to just say that one word rather than a long description of what it looks like, because by the time I finish the long description the right timing for the information has long passed. I have no problem with "Thinks to herself" versus "Seems lost in thought"; both convey the point and life's too short to quibble. I am firmly of the "the more emoting the better" camp.
As far as IC posts on the boards, I tend to write stuff that happens in a public place and could be seen by others. Then if someone wants to have heard about it, they can react to it. I tend to actually have my character do in game whatever it is I'm writing about, such as I'll have them actually go the the glade and kneel down and pray for as long as I say they prayed in my post, and leave whatever I say they left, or do whatever I say they did there. And I prefer to post prayers to gods and such publicly instead of PM them to the DM just because I am the kind of person who is curious myself, and who likes to include and to share.
And finally, not only should you never speak/act for any NPC without prior consent from a DM, you should also never speak/act for someone else's PC without prior consent from that player. I have on occasion adapted chat logs for posting on the boards, and before I do I always run it by the other players involved first if I have changed or added anything at all, however slight, to clarify, and if they say it's okay it gets posted.
Thanks for listening!
13thHour : [Tell] *your alignment has long since passed any possible further move to 'sexy' due to reinventing the scale*
[url=http://wiki.ysgard.org/index.php?title=PCs:Lexy]Lexy on the Wiki![/url]
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