litphoria

Expresses an interest in play that focuses more on sexually exciting the partner or reader than telling an engaging/well-plotted story.

I think the intention for it was more of a "We do porn and intercourses here" than "We do sexual, non-intercourse things here" by the way it is written.
Which begs the question - why would it be needed as a separate interest rather than having Sex as Mandatory and Story in the No column? Sounds too specialized for me.

The atmosphere trait is garbage, is meant to simultaneously describe my character and the roleplays she'll be in and maybe also how the profile should be read while only giving me a choice of exactly one option from a narrow list. I'm not touching it.

I find this necessary. I want to express separately how I feel about (a) story, (b) sexual intercourse, (c) sexual play that does not involve intercourse. There's bondage play, but whether that's intended to be sexually stimulating is another matter. Some people just like bondage as part of a dramatic story that is only a little bit sexual. Now I can say yes, I want that, and I want them getting off it.

I've been thinking for weeks how to cover the latter in a trait and this seems to do nicely.

I think the intention for it was more of a "We do porn and intercourses here" than "We do sexual, non-intercourse things here" by the way it is written.

Just sounds to me like doing sexually exciting stuff, which is porn and intercourse and sexual and non-intercourse things.

Outercourse looks to have a massively broader description than it should, I'll refer to urban dictionary here - it's physical intercourse, minus penetration, meaning grinding or humping.

For me, Smut would be about using words, bondage, situations I put them in, etc to get them off and excite them, some of which might not require any physical contact at all and as little contact as phone calls.

I should probably also let Griz clarify what this is meant to be about, in case I'm totally misunderstanding the point here.

Satsuki has it dead on. This isn't about whether or not there's sex. Good example. 50 Shades of Gray--whether or not it's any good or accurate, and it's not--is not smut in the sense that it has a focus on the character arcs and relationships and plenty of stuff, even while it has a bunch of bdsm and sex. It's about telling a story, not exciting the reader.

Setting it as a trait isn't useful, because characters can do both. Some roleplays are simply about the smut, some are about the story. The difference between the two can be fuzzy, and it can be a matter of intent rather than final product at times. But being able to express that intent is useful, especially for Ads and searching. As well, it'll be useful when the upvote system is implemented, so that readers can have a way to say "this has a simple plot, but it's goddamn hot".

So I don't really know anymore if I want to split these kinds of things into themes or just broaden interests a bit more to include theme-like stuff. It seems like we could end up exploding our interest list pretty massively with this kind of stuff, and I'm not sure that'll add a lot of value. Thoughts?

Wrecked Avent: There are some high level themes that work very well (story, smut) and which are important for setting basic expectations for what you want in a roleplay and its tone.

If we branch out into everything themes can offer we would definitely blow out the interest system with a lot of stuff. We can manage things to avoid a slippery slope though.

The trait system currently features tools like giving/receiving which don't apply well to non-action themes. If we are going to fully embrace having lots of themes, it is worth distinguishing them with their own handling, mainly simply not having giving/receiving apply. However they probably should not have their own profile section and should just be there alongside interests in editing and creation. We could distinguish them visually if it is important, and we could have a "show me interests" vs "show me themes" toggle switch in editing to just target one or the other.

All of my thoughts!

I would agree with Jerah here on the point that if themes are to exist, they should be solely for RPs and nothing else - the Atmosphere trait was an attempt to have something like that on the profile and ended being one of the (from what I talked with people) Traitsdeemed to be least useful and too hard to attribute, as it can change rapidly. Having some simpleRoleplay-traits instead of trying to forcefully put such things in the profile options would be much, much better; it is the place for that, after all, and the profiles don't really need to have even more things put into them. Especially not things that are RP-specific.

Plus, making Intereststhat work as Themesis a very strange idea, given that the Interest-groups always seemed like Themes. So that would be some strange redundancy right there.

I would not want themes to be roleplay-only. I find it useful being able to express my level of interest in various themes, like sex and story, the consent levels, sexism and discrimination, combat in its various forms and rivalry, displacement and other things.

I forgot before, but there is also a strong correlation between themes and PG-13 interests. Most of the non-action theme-ish interests are Pg-13, most of the PG-13 interests are those. There is the same kind of correlation between action interests and totally 18+ interests.

So if we decide not to support themes, that will be a big problem for PG-13 support.

By PG I really just mean not adult, we have themes that would be more at home in an M-rating (violence) but that's still the PG-13 side of the age wall.

Also note that we may be able to distinguish having them only exist on user/writer profiles instead of character profiles. Similarly to how the "meta" traits are being regarded as (like Post Length).

We are opposites then in this regard, Jerah. For me those things are absolutely relevant to my character, and I want to signal to others my level of interest in those things on this character. (It's also relevant to a roleplay, but so is any interest.) I would also rather do the second: "this character will do XYZ, depending."

I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with "PG-13 support" though.

Wrecked Avent wants this to be a place for non-adult roleplays too. If we want this, we need to provide non-R18 characters with a full set of features, like interests. If we up and remove the majority of PG-13 interests, PG-13 play becomes a second class citizen on the site and it will not be for those.

You have listed a bunch of things that can be done in a PG-13 roleplay, but they do not currently exist as interests, so we do not know if they would actually pass the bar if submitted to the community. At the moment, most PG-13 interests on the site are themes.

FYI, the consent interests will be disappearing sooner or later.

You say that with more certainty than that feedback suggests, unless I'm missing something. I very much hope they do not.

What further needs to happen here? This trait's sat in Needs Discussion with no discussion since July.

interest, not trait*

It seems as though there was a lot of (unresolved) disagreement about whether this is good as an interest right now, or we want to wait until themes are a thing and put it there (or have an RP-only version of it).

Considering themes may be a long time away, and we already have theme-type things in our interest list we'd have to move over to themes (like "story"), that we not wait until themes are a thing.

(Personally I just imagined Themes would be in the same list anyway - there's Actionable stuff and there's Theme stuff, I can indicate interest in both the same way.)

I just realised I forgot to say "I suggest" in that last post and it doesn't make much sense.

I suggest that we not wait until themes are a thing. Put it in as an interest now. When we have themes, move it to themes, like all the other themes that are currently interests.