My gripe is really more of a stylistic one. The overuse of ellipses! It's fine when they're used in the course of writing if they're meant to convey natural pauses, or sudden changes in a line of thought - things like that. What gets me is when people end every sentence by trailing off, whether it's dialogue or narrative. I'm never sure what to make of the tone, but it always comes off as lifeless, bored, or sad - or like they're speaking like Ben Stein? It's hard to imagine many changes to intonation are going on there; you just start to read it as a monotone. It's very weird.
I haven't actually role played in a long time, but I remember when I was younger and would occasionally partake in more free-form RPs (in chatrooms and the like), it was always a headscratcher, the way people would establish their characters. In my opinion, first posts should focus on moving them into position so they can interact with the world/other characters. What always ended up happening, though, was this: Character enters scene. Character is trait and trait and very very strong - so strong everyone can feel it. It is scary. Character is very imposing. Character goes and sits in corner, looking away from the room, warning people off with their aura.
Like, you hit some important set-up points there, but the way you left off is not very conducive to allowing peeps to interact with you, is it? And it wouldn't so bad except that many times, they would resist being pulled back into the group. Such was the case with the wistful sad maidens who would go and sit by the lake, heaving a sigh; so it was with the nature-attuned who would traipse away to sit on a tree branch, staring into the sunset. I understand setting up your character as a mysterious sort with allure, but if you move your character away from the people and action you're causing yourself some trouble! Now that everyone else is introduced and pairing off, it's going to be hard to move your character into their midst organically.
