Do you find Achaea's Emotes have deeper meanings/interpretations to you?

Aminah

This is weird, but whatever. I find I interpret meanings from these emotes.


Ack - someone truly made a mistake and realized it
Beam - genuine happiness
Beckon - without a target, this emote appears very hostile. With a target, quite normal.
Chin - a kind emote, showing is probably actually thinking (or buying time to think)
Grin - One of the kindest emotes
Heh - something wasn't really funny, but a person feels obligated to at least recognize the attempt
Peer - one of the most common and strange emotes. I don't know what this looks like. I use it when someone does or says something dangerous or inappropriate.
Raise - one of the most aggressive emotes in the game
Sagenod - commonly used 2 ways - 1, someone is giving good advice but doesn't want to seem like a know it all. 2, ironically.
Sparkle - very common; friendly
Smile - a little bit stiff and not always friendly
Sway - Don't know what to do or say; strange moment

What do you think? Do any emotes cause a reaction in you? Is this similar or different to you? Or crazy?

Rom

That's sort of the purpose of emotes..

Blujixapug

gazeout: benign, paternalistic condescension with a subtextually ambiguous sideline of absent-minded physical contact

Herenicus

What gets me is that 

You raise an eyebrow questioningly.

is meant to be such a subtle reaction. 

But when that brow is the only visible change in your character's body language, it is suddenly very dramatic. 

Watchman

I generally tend to modify my interpretations of them based on who does them and how they portray their character, rather than having an explicitly set definition.

Krypton

I am overcome with emotion whenever I recall the good, old days of:

"Bitchnuts!" you profane.

Tahquil

Ditto with Watchman. It depends who does them but I think I do have different meanings to other people. 

Example : hug
them : a form of warm greeting to a friend
tahquil : an overly familiar invasion of personal space that borders on rude and oh god its going to take a day at least to shake the feeling of violation and ack cooties what the hell were they thinking?!?

Krypton

BITCHSLAP also has deep and sentimental history for many Achaeans. They removed it from the game once, but have since given it back to us. Praise be to the Gods.

Now we just need ORGASM back, and the old version of LOL ("<person> has just proven himself to be unfit for survival").

Aereidhna

I think ack is actually supposed to be like...I ate something icky and am spitting it out, but to me it is like...somewhere in between wow that was stupid of me and oh my gosh I'm so sorry this sucky thing just happened. Sort of akin to facepalming but...not as...judgemental.

Peer as written I think is literally supposed to be like a leer or an inappopriately intense amount of scrutiny towards someone...to me it is actually side eye. Like straight up. 99% of the time it is in a friendly way - I use it when someone does something like try to overpay me for things or sometimes when they tickle me or make oddball comments. It's not bad side eye, like not throwing shade, but more like, "Nope, not having it."

Tael

Aminah said:

This is weird, but whatever. I find I interpret meanings from these emotes.

I actually don't think this is weird at all! I think everyone shares this kind of understanding to some degree - I mean, they must, or people wouldn't be creating these patterns of usage with the emotes.

This is a really, really neat observation of something I don't think I was ever consciously aware of before.

The emotes have meanings associated with them by correspondence to real-life actions - raising an eyebrow already means something in real life for instance. But in a shared social space like Achaea where those reactions are discretised and labeled, it actually totally makes sense that the collective players of the game would develop additional layers of meaning that apply only to the game. The fact that "sagenod" means something that isn't immediately apparent just from the text, that people use it in a specific way that communicates something specific to Achaea, isn't really that much different from the fact that "bashing" means something specific in Achaea.

My own contribution is the difference between various bows and salutes. That's one of the things I've noticed for a long time - there's a lot of characterisation hidden in what people choose as their "greeting" emote, from simplebow to incline to salute.

Trilliana

I see grin as a mischievous smile, plotting something...  smile is genuine, softsmile is one of those smiles that mean well, but there's something keeping it from being genuin... I'm sure I could think of more, but I'm too tired.

Delrona

I cringe when I have to ask someone which object and they use Point. "<Blah> points accusingly at <object>." I always feel like I just did something horribly wrong by asking a simple question.

Synbios

Blujixapug said:

gazeout: benign, paternalistic condescension with a subtextually ambiguous sideline of absent-minded physical contact

This is what I see every time that emote is done.

Razzlo

I find a lot of them way to expressive for my taste. I think I am going to end up making my own versions of a few as my irritation increases at not properly reacting the specific way I want. 

Multon

Aminah said:

...

Heh - something wasn't really funny, but a person feels obligated to at least recognize the attempt

...

Raise - one of the most aggressive emotes in the game

...

Heh - It's funny, I've pretty much adopted "heh" as Multon's go to laugh. The plain old "laugh" emote results in something along the lines of "a trillingly melodic laugh" or something like, and I think I used it once... And flinched in pain at how OOC it seems for Multon to do anything that could be described as "trillingly melodic". So I've ended up adopting it as just my regular laugh, though, I sort of conceive it as less a sarcastic laugh, and more a sort of thick, big, lumpy sounding henchmen, which is how I try to sound anyway... hence the "low, guttural Mhaldorian accent" I've got Multon speaking with...

(Again, subtlety is is just not Multon's thing...)

Raise - I do not use aggressively at all, though I admit, how I mean it to be taken changes based on the circumstances. In Mhaldor, since there is this sort of strict hierarchy, you can't just be falling over laughing if someone makes a mistake or does something otherwise funny, especially if they're higher ranked than you, which is generally a safe thing to presume, even if they aren't someone else might be, and they might be watching... Either way, seeing as unsolicited bouts of laughter can be bad for your health, I've found that "raise" is a nice way of saying that something is kinda funny or odd, without being over the top about it... 

E.g.

Dynamis-X says "I am going failing now."

Multon rolls on the floor laughing out loud at Dynamis-X.

Dynamis-X frowns and says "Sailing, I am going sailing."

Dynamis-X stares daggers at Multon.

Dynamis-X says "I think I will go fishing."

Comprehension flashes across Multon's face.

Dynamis-X says to Multon "I will need bait..."

Multon gulps.

[LATER]

Multon is eaten by sea-monster and dies horribly.

Multon is executed upon his return to the city because the sea-monster got unhooked from the line.

 -OR ALTERNATIVELY-

Dynamis-X says "I am going failing now."

Multon raises an eyebrow at Dynamis-X.

Dynamis-X sighs saying, "Sailing, I meant sailing..."

Comprehension flashes across Multon's face.

Dynamis-X rolls his/her eyes at Multon.

Dynamis-X says to Multon, "I weep for the future..."

Multon stares blankly.

[LATER]

Dynamis-X catches a sea-monster and Multon does not die horribly.

Multon is caught in a blizzard, and dies horribly after being stomped on by half Eleusis.

---

You see the second outcome is much better for all concerned? Except Multon, of course, but I'm working on it...

Merriweather

'Girn' infuriated me because I can't type for shit.

Snapplepan

TICKLE is either:

A: The most genuine way to show affection between people who've known each other for a while or

B: The most shameless kind of cyrenian flirting.

Shirszae

Smile has always seemed insincere to me/shirsz, the kind of smile people paste on photographs just to be done with.