Sarantali

Good news! I'm going to have to postpone the event until the weekend due to both my sister and step sister having their babies. Holy moly. I'll give a definite date after my brain stops reeling but most likely it'll be the same time on Saturday

[align=center][/align] [align=center]Will that handsome Miqo'te ever notice you? Will that shipment of cabbages come in fresh or will something come afoul of the ship? Should you have that ceremony that week or the next? The answers, as they say, are written in the stars and now, that secret wisdom can be brought to you![/align] OOC Information This is a social event, meant for fun or even to give people ideas for where they can go with their story and to just give a setting wherein people can meet and interact. As I will be drawing cards IRL to give a reading, each person will take somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes. I've found a pretty neat site about translating the Astrologian deck, I may be using tarot cards instead. In that case, presume that this is a folk Xaela tradition variant (it's not precisely as if we follow the 12 or would use that constellation naming pattern anyhow) If you sign up below, you'll get priority but otherwise readings will be first come, first serve. Where is it? Little Solace Rules This will be a lore friendly event; little fudges that don't necessary interfere with main lore (see my above Xaela tradition variant) are of course fine! Big things that would necessitate other people react and change their understanding of the world are not. Please keep from any RP Hostaging; that is any RP events that take "hostage" of the scene and demand other people pay attention or react solely to your character or what they're doing so everyone can share time.

Was my personal lore for Sarantali.

Hello! I go by Gumiho online though sometimes Kitsuiko and I'm a semi-new/semi-returning player to FF14. I started waaaaay back when this game started... for a week, then RL hit me. Years later, I'm back thanks to some wonderful RL friends who play here inviting me into their guild. I am an experienced RPer, I run LARPs IRL (Legend of Five Rings if anyone knows that game), and am an avowed White Wolf/Exalted junkie. In the past, I've played CoX on Virtue, SWTOR, BDO (I still kinda miss their character creator...), and TSW. Outside from these, I also LOVE Don't Starve Together and am always up for a game if anyone wants one on those long, cold, maintenance nights. I'm a teacher - I actually really love teaching middle school ELA to my surprise, though in the fall I'm going back to college full time for my Masters. I draw (waaay buried deep are the old Koren art threads.. that was me), I love board games, and generally like to think I'm an easy person to approach. Oh! I LOVE hearing about characters so if you ever see me and you want to bounce an idea off of someone or have someone get excited about how cool an idea is? I'm your huckleberry. It's summer right now so I'm off work recovering from my first year teaching, thus I'm on around 9:00am EST to about 10pm EST with any regularity. I'm looking to make even more RP connections with my character, Sarantali Kha. She's a bit snarkily playful, very loyal, and suffering under too much responsibility as the temporary leader of her sub-tribe group (I'm not that snowflake to make her the leader of all of the Kha in my backstory!) due to her missing brother. Further (added bonus?) I like giving tarot readings and Sarantali does do them in character as the acting, remaining onmyoji of her family. So, hit me up if you ever see me for one. I'm typically online in game for messaging, but, I also have my discord: Gumiho #5152 so feel free to drop a line and set up some RP. PPS. I am SUPER flexible. So long as it doesn't force me in a corner, I'm fine with noodle incidents and just running with them, like: "Hey, Sarantali -- your family never did pay me back those goats, your brother promised me a herd!" "Oh, it's you. Curse any children lately?" And I just make up something to go along with it as a story starter.

FELLOW MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHERS! And in the same field, too!

Hello there! This actually pertains to everyone but I was wondering how other RPers were playing it. Obviously if you share a surname you're more or less in the same tribe but are people playing it as if we're all literally from one huge family or if there are sub-tribes within the tribe and we're a bit more stretched out? Like, the same way I IRL have family in Michigan and Indiana but we're the same family. I wasn't sure and I didn't want to impinge upon anyone's RP with my character so I've been defining things from my character as a sub-clan or group from the Kha (The Mongke Kha) to make sure that if anyone said anything different I could just be like "We're weird, lol" or such. If people ARE doing their own sub-groups which have their own tradition within the Kha, what are they like? It'd be nice to collect the different variations of my cousins.

Define mixing lore. Would people be upset if someone in game started casting a spell and using a runic magic and described how they were weaving things into the elemental runes to ward away something? That's not something that's technically in game. It's sort of your own magical lore situation. What about equipment? Magitek is ostensibly built using equipment -- is it okay to start to "create" objects to do these things; Aetheric Flux Stabilization Wands, Alternating Magitek Drill? Those don't necessarily exist. Heck, how magitek is actually built is pretty much up in the air? What do characters who are a part of that say or do when their jobs come up? Can you call upon a singular element and try to merge yourself as close as possible to understand the very essence of water as if it were a living totem to try and learn everything about the magic of it such that water "speaks" to you? For that matter, when you cast magic can you have your magic speak to you? Can you feel an addictive rush when you cast powerful spells? Are you changed a little by casting so much violent magic? Again-- these are all things that aren't a part of lore per se. But these aren't things you can really sweep under the rug and say your characters wouldn't talk about, consider, etc. Something has to be said, right? Lore is going to get mixed a little because almost no game is going to have enough lore to fill in all of the cracks for all concepts. (Miqo'te Occult tradition... I'm looking at you). I honestly don't think there's anything wrong with adding bits and pieces there to round out conversations so long as it "feels" right for the setting. That said, just be sure to file off your serial numbers so that it feels right for the setting.

Duno. They like they'd need to be polyamorous too still with the few males they have. Who knows~ It seems like a big cultural thing to happen to not mention... especially when they go through great lengths to describe the breeding culture for the Sun Seekers. The options are either: 1. They happened to forget to describe the Moon Keepers are polyamorous even after going through describing the breeding rights of the Sun Seekers in full detail along with names for their breeding specifications, situations, and cultural norms... they just forgot... 2. The Keepers aren't polyamorous. It could be the case but it doesn't seem to make logical sense that they just "forgot" to mention a key bit of lore for one group after going over it in detail for another. Given the matriarchal ideal and the fact that female Miqo'te were known for going off into the world at much higher rates it seems much more likely that, rather than forgetting to write lore, less female Miqo'te of the Moon Keepers settle down to form families. After all, they aren't necessarily needed for breeding stock and families are small anyhow. Further a little under half of the NPCs from 1.0 appeared to be Sun Seekers (the ones with names. Since some of the Moon Keepers had Sun Seekers names I might have miscounted mobs). Given traditions and who-leaves-where it seems to work itself out there.

Outside from the fact I think that Keepers are a bit more monogamous than this culture seems to be in contrast to the Seekers who seem to be more polyamorous... so I don't know how well that would work ; Also they seem to have big families which take care of their own averse to the Keeper's more isolationist feel... I get the sense from how they're written they wouldn't necessarily take in family from another tribe so tending to the elderly or left children would actually be more of a thing. That said there's a lot of interesting ideas here.

Starting into Felix. Live stream is now up http://www.livestream.com/tishieart

Yay for you guys! I still miss Ash's ears.

http://regalius.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9441631 Some of the information here is from 1.0 but this is a thread gathering all the information about Miqo'te in and out of game. I'll keep an ear out. ...seriously, miqo'te occult tradition? I'll find more about you, one day!

Long posts from me don't mean angry. If I'm going to disagree with someone's opinion then I best have facts and reasoning to back up why I think something else. I'm never a "you're wrong because" person -- I like proving why I think this and then if you had evidence otherwise you could be all "But that doesn't logically follow because of that" averse to just stating it out.

I... don't really understand what that means. Are you saying tribal peoples who hunt for food don't love nature (because hunting/playing/living in nature doesn't mean loving it) or were you saying the Miqo'te were a race who despoiled nature and thus don't love it? Because I don't really... didn't really follow that... Nononono. Not saying that they're some kind of Captain Planet villain or anything, just they take what they need/ they do what they do to survive. They may have a healthy respect for their habitat, but their reputation as poachers implies that they may not always have conservation on their minds. In the eyes of the Viera they could be seen less as a devout lover of nature, and more as an invasive species. Poaching is more of a legal problem than a naturalistic one. I mean, it just means that someone sneaks onto your land and hunts etc. Katniss in Hunger Games is a poacher -- and I think it's pretty clear she has a MUCH better understanding of how conservation works. Poaching is also the major crime of Robin Hood. Again, mostly legal. Heck, one of the major issues that people claimed (ironically) against Native Americans were that they were poachers because they didn't have land use rights where they hunted Poaching has that reputation to us NOW because we inherently think of poachers as the ones who kill elephants for their tusks and leave the bodies to rot, but historically most poaching was subsistence poaching—i.e., the taking of game or fish by impoverished peasants to augment a scanty diet. Given the setting it seems much more fitting that the Miqo'te give no concern for law... not that they despoil the land or are hunting environmentally protected species and plants. I say that because in order for THAT other quality of poaching to make sense we would also necessarily need to see a few things; first of which being those environmentally protected species and plants. But, even more than that they would either have to be a culture of consumers or a culture of trade -- they don't really qualify for either since they're isolationist-tribal for their two most major. Given their description: Comparatively few in number, they maintain an insular group mentality within their clans, tending to avoid contact with the other races. Many individuals lead isolated lifestyles, even when living in the more populous cities. It doesn't seem particularly likely that the Miqo'te are huge on trade. We also know that they followed certain species over as they crossed which begs us to believe they were at least originally semi-nomadic following the herds at the time. In order to have the effect on their natural surroundings they would have to over-consume. However, that's a HUGE racial quality. You don't just "hint" that a race is one of over-consumption... that'd be like leaving off a race had a war-like tendency for another! Even games that are light on their lore (GW2) bring up that sort of thing. It's absent with the articles on the Miqo'te so we can easily say that they are not over-consumers. That is to say the main "Friction" between the Miqo'te and other races seems to be predicated on their standoffishness rather than their consumption. Mind, I've just a little bit of research so I'm still learning. If you know other articles I'd love to see them to add them to my list.

Realistically... what would be the difference between a Beastmaster and their pet and an Arcanist and THEIR pet? Ostensibly any class that gets added should do more than just palette swap -- it should be a different type of play. Chemist would add another healing class, or a time mage someone to support, thief is something integral to a lot of the game and stealing could be a fun mechanic... songstress actually could do a lot of support and healing and that could be interesting (but how do you keep it from being bard?)

It could also be that Keepers don't really form large tribes like Seekers do. Lore describes them as matriarchal families, and, their groups are usually two families, sometimes three at the largest. So, it's... less necessary of a social structure to go out and seek out other Keeper players for that cultural feel. Hence, fewer posts about people seeking out those ties. Seekers are Lions. We're more... the cats that sit up on your bookshelf and will tell you when you are graced to pay us attention :lol: My character is a Keeper of the Moon but her family was very, very mobile as they were oft on anthropological research studies. If you don't mind a character tie that requires constant travel I can help.

[video=youtube] [video=youtube] [video=youtube] I did a lot of crying in 6. I also didn't get well through 10 due to a certain inability to hug someone before someone left.

I... don't really understand what that means. Are you saying tribal peoples who hunt for food don't love nature (because hunting/playing/living in nature doesn't mean loving it) or were you saying the Miqo'te were a race who despoiled nature and thus don't love it? Because I don't really... didn't really follow that...

A more pure negative version; I'm liking these for Koren's personal "style" as I think it suits who she is. Though they sadly hide her epic boobs.

Trying out a new art style working primarily in negative space. Turns out today is my boy's birthday party. I'm a genius. Anyhow, I'm gone for most of the evening but I'll be working or 18 hours tomorrow

I make no promises that the above picture isn't the real world equivalent of what Koren would "see" for someone who used that potion if it's taken IC. :lol: Aaand react accordingly. I also add [video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzY2Qcu5i2A

Five Geek Social Fallacies Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies -- ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each other. Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It's difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge. It's my hope that drawing attention to some of them may be a step in the right direction. I want to note that I'm not trying to say that every geek subscribes to every one of the fallacies I outline here; every individual subscribes to a different set of ideas, and adheres to any given idea with a different amount of zeal. In any event, here are five geek social fallacies I've identified. There are likely more. Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil GSF1 is one of the most common fallacies, and one of the most deeply held. Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side of the transaction is repugnant to them. In its non-pathological form, GSF1 is benign, and even commendable: it is long past time we all grew up and stopped with the junior high popularity games. However, in its pathological form, GSF1 prevents its carrier from participating in -- or tolerating -- the exclusion of anyone from anything, be it a party, a comic book store, or a web forum, and no matter how obnoxious, offensive, or aromatic the prospective excludee may be. As a result, nearly every geek social group of significant size has at least one member that 80% of the members hate, and the remaining 20% merely tolerate. If GSF1 exists in sufficient concentration -- and it usually does -- it is impossible to expel a person who actively detracts from every social event. GSF1 protocol permits you not to invite someone you don't like to a given event, but if someone spills the beans and our hypothetical Cat Piss Man invites himself, there is no recourse. You must put up with him, or you will be an Evil Ostracizer and might as well go out for the football team. This phenomenon has a number of unpleasant consequences. For one thing, it actively hinders the wider acceptance of geek-related activities: I don't know that RPGs and comics would be more popular if there were fewer trolls who smell of cheese hassling the new blood, but I'm sure it couldn't hurt. For another, when nothing smacking of social selectiveness can be discussed in public, people inevitably begin to organize activities in secret. These conspiracies often lead to more problems down the line, and the end result is as juvenile as anything a seventh-grader ever dreamed of. My Addition: This is exceptionally true of roleplaying groups on line. Selection processes that let in everyone despite a roleplaying test, that don't ask people to leave despite characters not meshing, that are focused on making a big happy family.... that ironically end up excluding people. People are all welcome but since one person's story is about them being slightly stronger than the average human and another person's story is about them having the power of ten gods... they avoid each other. People meet in secret to run stories; there's the "real main group" of players and RPers and the other people. Seriously. Do not feel bad about politely telling people "This doesn't fit in with our guild/group/whatever" or rejecting some concepts just so long as you explain why or are willing to work with them to have them change to fit. Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am The origins of GSF2 are closely allied to the origins of GSF1. After being victimized by social exclusion, many geeks experience their "tribe" as a non-judgmental haven where they can take refuge from the cruel world outside. This seems straightforward and reasonable. It's important for people to have a space where they feel safe and accepted. Ideally, everyone's social group would be a safe haven. When people who rely too heavily upon that refuge feel insecure in that haven, however, a commendable ideal mutates into its pathological form, GSF2. Carriers of GSF2 believe that since a friend accepts them as they are, anyone who criticizes them is not their friend. Thus, they can't take criticism from friends -- criticism is experienced as a treacherous betrayal of the friendship, no matter how inappropriate the criticized behavior may be. Conversely, most carriers will never criticize a friend under any circumstances; the duty to be supportive trumps any impulse to point out unacceptable behavior. GSF2 has extensive consequences within a group. Its presence in substantial quantity within a social group vastly increases the group's conflict-averseness. People spend hours debating how to deal with conflicts, because they know (or sometimes merely fear) that the other person involved is a GSF2 carrier, and any attempt to confront them directly will only make things worse. As a result, people let grudges brew much longer than is healthy, and they spend absurd amounts of time deconstructing their interpersonal dramas in search of a back way out of a dilemma. Ironically, GSF2 carriers often take criticism from coworkers, supervisors, and mentors quite well; those individuals aren't friends, and aren't expected to accept the carrier unconditionally. My Addition: This is why people have difficulty with groups. The idea that someone is being "exclusive" which is "wrong" if they say that they only want specific things within their guild/organization/whatnot. I saw a very heavy RP group open up on TSW about the Dragon. What it meant, what their culture was, spirituality, and so on. When they rejected people who weren't playing Dragon they were called elitist, stuck up, snobby... I watched one of those rejections happening because I wanted to observe their interview process. People just felt like they were entitled to join because they made a character regardless of whether or not it fit. Further, this comes up with people who... okay, let's not mince words: are actively bad RPers. This doesn't necessarily mean their typing (though it can) but people who do things in RP which are about facilitating their own enjoyment at the cost of others -- always demanding the camera by drama (I'm bleeding spontaneously give me attention now), who are mean to other RPers (I wanted to be X's boyfriend, I'm going to stalk your character and attack you now even though I was asked OOCly to please stop harassing people). Ideally before this gets back one should be able to say "hey. Please. about your roleplaying maybe you want to try doing X" but this fallacy rears its head. Not only is it difficult for people to accept being told to correct wrong things... sometimes it's hard to try and give advice. Advice like "put more spaces between your words because it's hard to follow" has sent people off. I think a lot of problems DO arise from people trying to be so kind to one person who's messing up they end up... you know, kinda ignoring what it means to the rest of the group who has to deal with them Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All Valuing friendships is a fine and worthy thing. When taken to an unhealthy extreme, however, GSF3 can manifest itself. Like GSF2, GSF3 is a "friendship test" fallacy: in this case, the carrier believes that any failure by a friend to put the interests of the friendship above all else means that they aren't really a friend at all. It should be obvious that there are a million ways that this can be a problem for the carrier's friends, but the most common one is a situation where friends' interests conflict -- if, for example, one friend asks you to keep a secret from another friend. If both friends are GSF3 carriers, you're screwed -- the first one will feel betrayed if you reveal the secret, and the other will feel betrayed if you don't. Your only hope is to keep the second friend from finding out, which is difficult if the secret in question was a party that a lot of people went to. GSF3 can be costly for the carrier as well. They often sacrifice work, family, and romantic obligations at the altar of friendship. In the end, the carrier has a great circle of friends, but not a lot else to show for their life. This is one reason why so many geek circles include people whose sole redeeming quality is loyalty: it's hard not to honor someone who goes to such lengths to be there for a friend, however destructive they may be in other respects. Individual carriers sometimes have exceptions to GSF3, which allow friends to place a certain protected class of people or things above friendship in a pinch: "significant others" is a common protected class, as is "work". Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive Every carrier of GSF4 has, at some point, said: "Wouldn't it be great to get all my groups of friends into one place for one big happy party?!" If you groaned at that last paragraph, you may be a recovering GSF4 carrier. GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong. The milder form of GSF4 merely prevents the carrier from perceiving evidence to contradict it; a carrier will refuse to comprehend that two of their friends (or two groups of friends) don't much care for each other, and will continue to try to bring them together at social events. They may even maintain that a full-scale vendetta is just a misunderstanding between friends that could easily be resolved if the principals would just sit down to talk it out. A more serious form of GSF4 becomes another "friendship test" fallacy: if you have a friend A, and a friend B, but A & B are not friends, then one of them must not really be your friend at all. It is surprisingly common for a carrier, when faced with two friends who don't get along, to simply drop one of them. On the other side of the equation, a carrier who doesn't like a friend of a friend will often get very passive-aggressive and covertly hostile to the friend of a friend, while vigorously maintaining that we're one big happy family and everyone is friends. GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend. My Take: The last two are connected frequently in RP but are slightly less detrimental to guilds as a whole. Just... you know, be aware these things happen and what they mean. Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together GSF5, put simply, maintains that every friend in a circle should be included in every activity to the full extent possible. This is subtly different from GSF1; GSF1 requires that no one, friend or not, be excluded, while GSF5 requires that every friend be invited. This means that to a GSF5 carrier, not being invited to something is intrinsically a snub, and will be responded to as such. This is perhaps the least destructive of the five, being at worst inconvenient. In a small circle, this is incestuous but basically harmless. In larger groups, it can make certain social events very difficult: parties which are way too large for their spaces and restaurant expeditions that include twenty people and no reservation are far from unusual. When everyone in a group is a GSF5 carrier, this isn't really a problem. If, however, there are members who aren't carriers, they may want occasionally to have smaller outings, and these can be hard to arrange without causing hurt feelings and social drama. It's hard to explain to a GSF5 carrier that just because you only wanted to have dinner with five other people tonight, it doesn't mean that your friendship is in terrible danger. For some reason, many GSF5 carriers are willing to make an exception for gender-segregated events. I don't know why. My Take: This results in so much OOC drama. You see this one a lot in WHY AREN'T YOU RPING WITH ME conflicts with people when you go off and meet more characters and it results in them getting jealous and starting to act strange. I've also seen guilds get really upset that someone was RPing away from their guild. Not from a specific event. Just at all. Yeah. Interactions Each fallacy has its own set of unfortunate consequences, but frequently they become worse in interaction. GSF4 often develops into its more extreme form when paired with GSF5; if everyone does everything together, it's much harder to maintain two friends who don't get along. One will usually fall by the wayside. Similarly, GSF1 and GSF5 can combine regrettably: when a failure to invite someone is equivalent to excluding them, you can't even get away with not inviting Captain Halitosis along on the road trip. GSF3 can combine disastrously with the other "friendship test" fallacies; carriers may insist that their friends join them in snubbing someone who fails the test, which occasionally leads to a chain reaction which causes the carrier to eventually reject all of their friends. This is not healthy; fortunately, severe versions of GSF3 are rare. Consequences Dealing with the effects of social fallacies is an essential part of managing one's social life among geeks, and this is much easier when one is aware of them and can identify which of your friends carry which fallacies. In the absence of this kind of awareness, three situations tend to arise when people come into contact with fallacies they don't hold themselves. Most common is simple conflict and hurt feelings. It's hard for people to talk through these conflicts because they usually stem from fairly primal value clashes; a GSF3 carrier may not even be able to articulate why it was such a big deal that their non-carrier friend blew off their movie night. Alternately, people often take on fallacies that are dominant in their social circle. If you join a group of GSF5 carriers, doing everything together is going to become a habit; if you spend enough time around GSF1 carriers, putting up with trolls is going to seem normal. Less commonly, people form a sort of counter-fallacy which I call "Your Feelings, Your Problem". YFYP carriers deal with other people's fallacies by ignoring them entirely, in the process acquiring a reputation for being charmingly tactless. Carriers tend to receive a sort of exemption from the usual standards: "that's just Dana", and so on. YFYP has its own problems, but if you would rather be an asshole than angstful, it may be the way to go. It's also remarkably easy to pull off in a GSF1-rich environment. What Can I Do? As I've said, I think that the best way to deal with social fallacies is to be aware of them, in yourself and in others. In yourself, you can try to deal with them; in others, understanding their behavior usually makes it less aggravating. Social fallacies don't make someone a bad person; on the contrary, they usually spring from the purest motives. But I believe they are worth deconstructing; in the long run, social fallacies cost a lot of stress and drama, to no real benefit. You can be tolerant without being indiscriminate, and you can be loyal to friends without being compulsive about it. Hey, Are You Talking About Me? I haven't used any examples that refer to specific situations, if it has you worried. Any resemblances to geeks living or dead are coincidental. With credit to the original article © 2003 Michael Suileabhain-Wilson. All rights reserved.

Im finishing up Para's and then starting on Evas. I might be a little behind today as it's my husband b-day party so I'll do my best! I'm pretty sure I'll at least get through these two considering Para's is almost done. Live stream will be up presently. http://www.livestream.com/tishieart

I think what dude was trying to say is: Outside from our personal group Balmung is being advertised as the roleplaying server by another organization that many gamers read This has the sub-fact that: 1. People who are looking for an RP server who have not found their way here already or who are trying to decide which place to go after a web-search may have a slightly increased chance of finding Balmung. What this sub-fact does not mean: 1. One server is better than the other. One is more established - that's a fact and there are perks with that fact and that fact is the primary reason I understand Gilgamesh to be formed. 2. That anyone on either side should go spamming the beta forums, youtube, or any other place to make things "even" or carry out a flamewar. If I may: Unintentionally I think there's a lot of sub-things being said that perpetuate this flame war: What does the statement "Our product doesn't have asbestos!" really say? Yes, it says that the product doesn't have this material in it. But, it also strongly implies that it doesn't have asbestos UNLIKE other similar products. They can get away with saying "We didn't say that X has asbestos in it" and make that claim but it's actually a bit sneaky on the marketing departments. I've seen a lot of commons here and in other threads "Our server will X" "Our server will Y" which include things like the aforementioned asbestos comment and I think that's where a lot of our anger comes from. In people (and I'm going to presume all of this is accidental and just good natured) 's enthusiasm to talk about the good points of their own place there IS a tendency to imply the other group has weak points that realistically haven't been established. Considering that people have chosen servers or in some case are the people who are being talked about... it's taken personally (how could it not be?) and then people get upset and the arguments get really heated. The middle school teacher in me asks you to really, really consider if you're giving an asbestos comment, thus. Just check before you post to make sure your words aren't implicating someone else in an action. We only have a short while until we get to all play a game we're super excited about... it'd be nice if we could put this behind us.

I've seen a lot of people say varying things on this. They have a main character, they have 5 main characters, etc. For me, personally, I tend to fall under the category that your "main character" is a character that you will be logging in on, every day, and spending the majority of time as them barring some extenuating circumstance (levelling something for a change of pace, going on your whatever build for whatever reason, another character in a story) that changes that. If Jane is on, then chances are nine times out of ten Lana the Hyur is who she's playing. I feel this way because there's a lot of other baggage main characters have. If I'm going to build any sort of meaningful relationship past generic friendship (best friends, rivals, lovers, enemies) then I tend to avoid people's "alternate" characters for that sort of thing. My main character is important to me and her story is important to me and getting that tied in with a character who someone could or couldn't play depending on their mood for the day is... well, it can be rough. I've definitely been in the place where I had to justify why my character's boyfriend who she'd rescued from dark forces just.. was, you know, not around for a couple of weeks and it did get a bit tiring especially when other people's stories (which were awesome!) started to affect my character and ostensibly she would go to her main peers to talk about this and cope but... none of them were on. That said, I recognize some people can juggle more than I (with me? Two characters. That's the most I can maintain before going batty) and thus they can main more than that. Since there are expectations that come with meeting other people's main characters both good and bad (the bad being people WAY too attached to their character, or people who love their single character so much they don't really want anything to happen to them because they've already plotted out how their growth is going to look and they're going to do X, Y and Z regardless of any interactions you put out there) I had questions that I thought might be interesting to get a read from for both new and old RPers: 1. What do you think is a main character? 2. What do you think makes a character an alternate character? 3. Do people have a responsibility to make certain "mains pair with mains" if you sense an interesting relationship (friends/rivals/lovers/enemies/long-lost relatives) forming or is it okay that someone's just not going to be around at random or for long periods of time? 4. Have you ever discovered that your main was paired off in one of those situations with someone's alt? They just didn't play them at all or played other characters? Did it stall out your story? What did you do? 5. What's the biggest stereotype you think of when you think of people who only have one main character? 6. What's the biggest stereotype you think of when you think of people who suffer alt-itis and swap characters often? 7. Which are you? A single or two main characters? 5 main characters? A bunch of alts? 8. How did you usually break up your time between your main characters? Play on demand? Always on one, demand for the other? One with one group and when they all sign off switch to the other?