Darien Cadell

I love "bleed". I get a serious thrill from the way my character's emotions affect me, negative and positive. I like when my characters are tortured or pissed off or giddy with joy. And I like being able to vicariously do things that I can't do in real life, my personality bleeding through into the characters I create. I'm not like my characters. I tend to play characters that are 90-95% jerk when I'd consider myself only at most 50% jerk in reality. But I love them and I love being them nonetheless. But there are very solid dangers to bleed addressed in the article. It can mess with real people's real emotions in real ways, especially if handled badly. What I hate about the permeability of that line between writer and character is that when things go really bad (or really good for that matter) in real life, I cannot keep my RL issues entirely outside of my characters. It's not possible. And it ruins things. Brutally. It's not so much that my characters experience my emotions (though that happens sometimes, it's usually coincidental) but that my state of mind is no longer conducive to creating or participating in story. At all. And I see everything I enjoyed about roleplay drifting away, because I'm just not in a place where I can enjoy it, let alone apply skill to it as a craft. I've had so many amazing characters that I've loved so dearly destroyed by thoroughly unrelated RL circumstances and issues that bleed into what I'm capable of and how I manage my fictions, usually by causing me to become hesitant, straight up abandoning various situations, or making choices that in retrospect were not awesome.

Both cluttered and organized, my specialty.

I... I can't... The laughing hurts so much.

1. Your character gets judged! What stereotype do other students see them as? (Nerd, jock, etc.) Emo kid, possibly goth. 2. Your character gets an A+! What class(es)? Geography, whichever foreign languages she's taking. 3. Your character fails a class. Boo! Which one(s)? Music/Drama if stuck in them for some reason, Phys Ed, anything where significant social interaction is required to pass. 4. What sorts of people gather to your character? Are they popular or a loner? Definitive loner. She likes angry, bitter, sarcastic people, but seeing her "hanging out" with anyone is unlikely. 5. Your character goes to future career counseling! What is their ideal job!? Serial killer. Wait, that's not one of the results? Maybe basement mail clerk. Don't touch her stapler.

MUDs/MUSHes/MUCKs of all kinds are where I started. D&D, FFXI, WoW and other places after, but that's where I started.

Maaaybe Erica Luttrell, the Val Santiago version. [video=youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mAdD0oVdu0&t=148

She doesn't really get embarrassed. She just gets angry. If someone tried, say, telling her she's cute when she's angry, she'd just be highly unimpressed and do a lot of glaring and scowling. If she tripped on her shoelace, she'd probably rip her shoe off and stomp around one-shoed for the rest of the day. If she acted like an idiot, which she does occasionally, she'd generally own it, so there's not much room for shallow shame.

I kind of know what she'd be like, because the worst things that happened to her to make her so angry and hateful happened very recently. Before that, she was relatively happy-go-lucky, calm and friendly, despite losing family in the Calamity like everyone else. I can almost picture what she'd be like if that also hadn't happened to her, painfully cheerful tourist-type, wanting to make happy memories everywhere she went. As it is, she's a complete mess, but it's such a recent development that I actually had the opportunity to play her sweet, calm self before that side of her got shredded, making her the solitary, sullen rain cloud she is today.

Healerbird is Bluebell ...for reasons. Racingbird is Galaxy Goose... because it made me laugh.

Qhora sat on a bench in the Gold Court, staring intently into a steaming cup of something thick and black. When someone sat beside her, she shifted uncomfortably but didn't look up. There was a long silence. Finally, she said quietly, "Everyone thinks you're dead." "I am." At this, she looked up. "Right." She frowned at him. "They'll never forgive you." He smiled back. "Who?" "Any of them. Especially Sindl." She looked back into her cup, then took a slow sip. "He'll live." "They all will." She paused. "Except you?" "Except me." He nodded. "Why'd you do it?" "Do what?" She drew a finger across her throat, refusing to meet his gaze. "Please don't tell me it was a girl." He laughed loud. The sound was harsh in her ears. "It's not that simple." "But?" "I didn't kill myself." "Mm." There was another long silence during which he seemed perfectly comfortable and she felt like ants were crawling along her spine while she finished her drink. Cup empty at last, she sighed, then asked, "What do you want?" "Tell him I'm sorry?" "Tell him yourself." "I can't." "Why not?" He grabbed her wrist, rough and unfriendly, forcing her to look up at him. "He can't see me." She winced. His touch felt like a static shock without the instant release. "W-what?" "But you. You're dead, too." He let go of her arm and stood up. Her eyes went wide. She rubbed at her wrist where his fingers left pale marks against her dark skin. "If I am, he can still see me." He smirked. "I know. It's not that simple." "I'm not telling him anything for you," she muttered, scowling. He shrugged. "Do you believe in the Twelve?" "No. So what?" He grinned, and she thought she saw poison in his expression. "They believe in you." "Bullshit," she hissed, but he was already walking away.

Mmmmmaybe...

Theft has pretty much always been par for the course, but she's ticked off a few memorable options in the Wrath and Pride categories of the violent and hateful varieties. Not much affected by the other categories. If she were Greek, the Furies would be very upset with her.

Probably... P!nk. [video=youtube] Or... [video=youtube]

I'd say probably nomadic Bedouin by father and North African maybe Egyptian by mother, but she'd refuse to claim either, and if pressed would just shrug and say she doesn't really know where she comes from.

I got the idea from somewhere that mixed race babies in Eorzea end up like Lady and the Tramp babies, exact copies of one or the other parent, and that's why there's no half-n-halfs even though there can be half-n-halfs? Where did I get that idea? It's possible my brain just assumed it was an obvious fix. Lala-Roes can just have teeny tiny Roes that grow into normal sized ones. Yeah. That's it. I'm reaching. Qhora shares T'rahnu's secret. No babies. Ever. Her history makes her averse to the whole concept anyway.

Sullen, hateful

______________________________________________________________ Qhora Bajihri: Sullen and silent with a nigh perpetual frown, why she's helping at all is a matter of confusion. On the other hand, she may be the most dependable companion around, provided you don't expect conversation. ______________________________________________________________

I love having the amalj'aa drake mount IC. Great sort of mount for a risk taker who's been working with the Immortal Flames on occasion in efforts to become a nicer guy. Until I got that thing, I was all about the chocobo. But OOC, dat goobbue. I'm still working on coming up with a reason for him to ride such a thing IC. Hilarity may be all I really need. Having a sense of humor IC is a blessing. And yeah, while I have the ahriman, magitek, and unicorn mounts, Darien himself does not. That's just not gonna happen.

Wow. Big thread from long ago. I read several pages but not the whole thing. My immediate first thoughts were things I thought I'd read but have no references for anymore. 1.) I thought I read somewhere that "humanity" or "mankind" within FFXIV's context actually referred to all the sentient races as a collective whole, never to just hyur. That would encourage looking at the different races less biologically and more culturally. Of course, I don't know of a human culture that has restricted access between genders due to a very real numbers disparity (as opposed to restricted access imposed by the culture), but in my case, that's where the interest lies. What would a human culture do in such a situation (insert examples of colony development here)? and 2.) I thought I read somewhere that crossbreeds had a sort of Lady & the Tramp effect, where the resultant offspring is not a phenotypic mix but externally takes after one or the other of the parents, not both, which in the sense of what we see walking around the game makes it a lot more viable to play one. Yeah, my mother was a roegadyn and my father was a lalafell, but I take after my dad. Them's the breaks. Woo, thoughts without references or reading the entire massive thread.

No touchy. Not because of flashbacks or anything, but because of a very high degree of possessiveness over her own body.

What kind of stories has your character gotten into? He started off with mostly free company stuff. Then girls happened. Damn girls! But they're so pretty, and that way they move, them legs, and they smell so good... Where was I? And there were Garleans. Out of nowhere. Along with his Syndicate hitman, drug dealer, spree murderer, general agent of destruction lifestyle in the background. How has your character changed since the game re-launch? SDLKFJSDLFKJSDFKLJ That's all I have to say about that. I kid. He was designed to be a bad guy. The introduction of bad guys to the bad guys kind of threw him into a hero role on occasion, which proceeded to make his head explodey. Then girls. Considering his head is explodey by design, things got a bit messy. He tried leaving the free company to help himself get back on the uncomplicated easy track of life he'd been on, which has been a miserable failure. He does feel better being able to make his own decisions, but he still hasn't figured out what he's supposed to do about anything much at all. He's had a couple important people die on him (NPCs), which for someone with only a short-term memory is unpleasant. Those things threw him for loops. (I actually had both those deaths of pre-established characters in his life happen when someone I knew IRL died to help give myself an excuse for my own instability bleeding into him, but he deals with it better than I do, which isn't saying much.) He was a fairly unstable person who flopped between knowing exactly who he is and believing himself to be the broken ghost of another man. Now he's an extremely unstable person who flops between being okay with himself as an unforgiveable cold-hearted killer who protects himself with a spiky wall of snark and being determined to destroy the identity he built for himself so he can rebuild it as something that's a lot more helpful to the few people who matter to him, before they go and die on him, like they keep doing. Despite having lived through the war, he hasn't really lived through a war, so losing people who matter keeps hitting him hard. That and people haven't really mattered to him in general until recently. Living as a hitman is a lot easier to do when you don't give a damn about anybody. I'm still not sure where all these chips are going to fall. Or maybe they'll just stay in the air forever and he'll end up one of those mental cases in desperate need of a straightjacket so he stops hurting himself. What has been your favorite RP moment so far? I don't want to pick just one. I liked when Darien got his face punched for being a horndog. I liked when Armi tried to help him and he watched Armi sleep (completely unhorndog) so she would feel safe before any of the subsequent craziness even happened. What was the most shocking RP moment this year? Armi/Darien happening at all. She was ridiculously genuine and showed a subtle genius when he first met her and she was talking to a lamppost (yep), and that hooked him right out of the gate. He got protective of her pretty quickly, so she never really got to see his psychopathy in a clear and violent way. Add to that his intense guilt about hurting her, and certain other disenchantments due to Garleans, and the relationship seems like a slow inevitability in retrospect. But it could just as easily have never ever happened, and I can't even imagine how the past few months would have gone without it. That and actually falling for her. He is (was?) a bit of a player, so he'd drop the 'love' four letter word with relative ease. But it wasn't until he actually got jealous that he realized his player's handbook rules were no longer applying properly. Getting kidnapped. What? Getting propositioned by Garleans? Even less expected, though more in line with his personality. What was the most surprising thing you found out about your character? How much of a mess he really is, I guess. I thought I'd over-plotted him in the time between betas and launch, but when he got into the game, he just ran away from me completely. The only core concept he's really holding onto is his memory loss. Everything else is constant flux. How genuine he can be. He was initially very shallow as a sort of protection against his memory loss. He could be prodded into genuine-ness when discussing the particular subject of his amnesia, but when he started confusing the hell out of himself, he ended up pulling out the real, true honesty card more often than not. What relationships did your character build? His old best friendship is now a complete mess. They go back and forth between sharing jokes over coffee and screaming in full out rage at each other in the space of a few hours. It's sort of on the mend? Sort of? There's more civil discussion and less screaming now anyway, and some bro hugs. He's got lots of little friendships he didn't have before. And then there's Armi. Which is just crazy town in messy land. He's still technically out of the FC and I'm not sure where that's gonna end up, considering above mentioned best friendship is the crux on which his giving a damn about the FC hinges, but that technicality does skew his less close relationships in a weird way. What are you looking most forward to seeing in the future with your characters growth and story? I know Armi's plaaaans. So he'll probably go off the deep end in one way or another. He could either go full on hero mode or jump ship and head for the Empire. To be honest, I have no idea. He's a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in coliseum gear right now. I'm looking forward to figuring out what the hell he's gonna do next. It's like waiting for the next episode in the series. Except I'm the writer. And I'm not exactly stable either.

Poor Steve. Poor, poor Steve.

Liadan, I have something to tell you. I'm judging! Oh gods, how I'm judging! Oh wait, you didn't mean all six at once, did you? I've long been of the 'play the character see where things go' camp, always keep tabs on your RP partners make sure you're not weirding them out. Many a year ago, I used only fade-to-black. Before that, back in the days when I swore I would never do anything so blush-worthy, I got labeled an ERPer anyway and harassed as such despite my protests and the part where I kept my distance from everything even slightly more heavy than PG. So... at some point, I stopped giving a crap. I do whatever I want and generally just try not to offend people. I get embarrassed walking past people making out on park benches in real life, so I try to keep similar situations out of sight of poor other gamers. Back in the last game I played, I decided to do something new and play a straight up, shall we say, courtesan. I had intended her to be kind of a joke, but she ended up being one of the most interesting characters I've played and, curiously, strongly monogamous, which made her very, very bad at her day job. Just to say, ehhh, people who get their panties in a twist about panties should probably take a day off. And people who troll ERPers are just like any other brand of trolls and should be dealt with the same way, however you choose to do so. Not feeding them is the standard advice. We're here to have fun. Try not to stomp on other people's fun (whether that's by avoiding flashing strangers or avoiding throwing rocks at people holding hands, same concept) and get back playing?