cuideag

"HUGE WITCH" needs to be scrawled over the first one. Or, you know, a word that rhymes with witch.

I like mine clean.

Size. I do like my FCs small and close-knit. Which is not to say I only want to interact with a small group of people, no, but I am much more comfortable in smaller groups. Blame it partially on anxiety issues, partially on just feeling like a smaller group lets everyone's voice and presence be heard and seen that much better. Which isn't to say that I don't like growth, but I have come to genuinely believe that smaller groups with careful growth tend to retain a stronger, more amicable FC culture. Unreasonable requirements. Echoing so many others especially regarding voice chat requirements. I don't do the chat that often as it stands, I am absolutely not going to be told it's a mandatory thing. Noooo thanks. Also, PVE requirements. I would rather be able to help people catch up on content than be in a group that intentionally bars people who have not done X or Y encounter. Extreme hardcore raider mentality is an instant turn-off. Community is more important to me than ilevel or achievements because it is hella fun and hella rewarding helping people through to see content they might not otherwise get to see for whatever reason. Behavior. If I spot someone being abusive or just gross then the first thing I will do is look at the FC tag. I have a pretty low tolerance for certain types of behaviors and I will definitely avoid FCs if there are problematic people tied to them, ESPECIALLY if those problematic people happen to be in the leadership of said FC. I'm kind of a jerk, maybe, but I don't feel obligated to hang out with people I can't stand. IC /FC chat. This one might be a bit weird. I used to look specifically for in-character guild chats but honestly it just doesn't work for me anymore because I feel it takes away from RPing 'in person' as it were. I like FC chat to be active so I can get to know my fellow FC mates and coordinate things from there, or just goof off and enjoy whatever shenanigans are going on. Strict IC requirements for private channels stifle that for me and it is for that reason that I generally avoid IC LSes for the most part.

In another [video game] life, I think Jajara would fit in as an Animal Crossing NPC. Probably a dog of some sort, a cocker spaniel or something like that. She might be one of those special NPCs that pops by now and again and gives villagers things in exchange for things. Make some cool hats or something in exchange for oranges, and make some vaguely snide remarks about that jerk fox guy who sells fake art. If she was a villager herself, her home would be decorated Egyptian, gold, and fruit themed things. Her basement would be full of potatoes. I think Delial would fit in as a side/companion NPC in something like Skyrim. Nothing that would really change the game, no, and you might not even notice her there at all. Just some slightly odd Nord woman living in a cabin all by herself out in the mountains. Occasionally she might have a visitor and they'd have some dialogue about illnesses or infidelity or something like that. Rarely, she might be healing someone. As the game progressed and the hours racked up, other folks from the nearest city would turn up missing. Might find bodies in odd places along the mountain range. If you bring her a few very specific things, she might offer to read your future and give you odd buffs/debuffs depending on what was given. A room in her cabin is full of jars full of herbs and bones. Killing her rewards you with a sharp, decent quality knife and some human hearts. Very suspicious.

Queen Freyjalen (I hope I did not butcher that) because I am very curious about her backstory. Oscare because......... yes. Broody dark skinned highlanders are my bag. Rivienne because unreasonably attractive elezen are also my bag. Good gracious. Brynhilde is so fascinating but I have only had the pleasure of interacting with her a handful of times. One of these days, I will actually bump into a C'kayah. There are so many rad people who have put up with my inconsistent schedules lately and I wish I could RP with all of you some more. Trying to get back into the game! Bless u all, my dear friends.

A chocobo fled through the night. Earlier, a gunshot sounded the beginning of the collapse of Wolfsong's plan. The grunts he had hired were too eager, too cut-throat. If they had waited, they might have gotten somewhere. Yet if they had waited, Delial could have died. Idiot. Gharen Wolfsong was not meant for treachery. There were those who could navigate lies and utilize lives to turn the odds in their favor. Shaelen Stormchild knew Delial knew of the trap and yet she came, and when the trap was sprung not on Delial but on Shaelen, she did what any sane woman might have done. The Brass Blades did little enough to stop her from what she could hear of their conversation. Delial had been shot and Shaelen had been manacled but neither of them would end up with what it was they wanted in the first place. You had her and you let her go. Let her run. The chocobo was not so kind as to slow nor smooth its gait. One of the hired Blades had done her the service of bandaging up her wound and Wolfsong had spent entirely too much time trying to patch her up as well but still it ached and stung whenever her ride jostled uncomfortably (which was, incidentally, all the time). He had spoken as though Stormchild was his last, best hope at fitting a noose around Lazarov's throat yet he had held back to aid Delial instead. "I told ye ye'd nae be dyin' this sun an' I meant te keep my word," he said. Shaelen was right: he and his sister both were bleeding hearts of the worst sort. Far too soft, and far too naive, and not at all the sort to try to scheme. That did not, however, deter Delial. Her chocobo trotted its way towards Horizon indifferent to its bleeding rider. She would have to move quickly, set out word and reward. Her clothes were stained and ruined from where the bullet had passed straight through her belly but at least she was still alive. The same could not be said for one of the Blades. His death would be easy enough to pin in Shaelen, she was sure, and rousing local interest in finding Stormchild would make Thanalan all the more treacherous for the smuggler. There were plenty who were out to find Lazarov as well and once she had Shaelen Stormchild... Delial grinned. Once she had Stormchild, it would only be a matter of time. She had wanted Delial's head as payment for what she had done to Aylard Greyarm, but she was not so stupid a woman as to risk her life for Nero Lazarov. Shaelen had not survived so long by being as soft as her former colleagues. Gharen might have resigned to accept this blunder as a loss, but Delial Grimsong knew better. "You may be the forgiving sort," she told him, "But I am not. What use is influence when you can have blood?"

Jajara... ... and Delial.

I am not super sure I could pin down what Jajara is because a lot of what I imagine traditional nomadic dunesfolk shenanigans would be like draws from South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African lifestyles and fashions and such. She might end up being Indian with nomadic Mongol ancestry. Shrug! Delial might be a Scot. She doesn't mind the English so much, though, and she might even go so far as to talk like one because why not? There are plenty of people in other countries who wouldn't even be able to tell the difference anyway.

Jajara avoids it. She does not know how to deal with it and she does not like it. So she will bury herself in something else instead: pick up a hundred projects and more and work herself into exhaustion just so she can focus on something else. I don't think she really ever gets over it because she can't acknowledge that it's even really there. She's lost friends and ultimately ended up blaming herself and that's about as far as she can get. 'I should have been there. I could have done something. No, I probably couldn't. But I should have been there. I could have done something...' Delial is a brooder. She hoards up the things that hurt her and she lets them stew and boil and sharpen for years and years. Someone does the wrong thing or says the wrong words and she will turn it into an unholy rage, all the better to hurt and scathe the offender. Delial doesn't let go. She can't. There are so few things and so few people that she genuinely cares about and it irritates her to know that, knowing that she [un]willingly gives these people such power over her. When she grieves, she grieves bitterly, and she grieves more than she lets on. EDIT: OOPS. I guess there was another thread lol

I'll probably pre-order the Heavensward CE because heck yes but naw, I don't anymore. No real reason to unless it's for specialty things like, yeah, CEs.

Settling accounts. She did not like the sound of that at all. They were words which had hung over her head time and time again, however hard she tried to ignore them. Her days passed one by one and never did she live under the illusion that her affairs may very well come to a swift and abrupt end during any of them. She had relished the time away from Ul'dah and the insanity it seemed to inspire in its denizens but she had always known it would call back to her some day. Lieutenant Od'hilkas had been one of several loose ends and now that he had been given her message, she was free to turn her attention back to another. Delial's stride was even, relaxed. The sun shifted onward, and the Highlander strode in its shadow with Vesper Bay at her back and Crescent Cove in her future. Nothing good had ever happened there, a thought which had not at all been lost upon her. So many great and bitter memories clung about the place. Though she had not set a single foot in the house beneath the cliff, she could still taste the stale rot the very thought of it brought to the back of her throat. She had come to loathe the sea and the pier and the way the water had seemed to take color so brilliantly one sun so many moons ago. The paved road was one she had walked many a time and she took some small comfort in that familiarity at least for the others had done nothing but vex her. The returning theme of settling accounts did not sit well with her yet there it was. Nor did the thought of betrayal... yet there it was, once more proving to be one of the few things she could rely on. Wolfsong's 'proposal', if it could be called as such, perplexed her as much as it insulted her. She had made a career out of being disappointed by others but she had not expected to add Gharen Wolfsong to that list so soon, for he was an honest man even at his worst. The more she turned the situation over in her head the more nonsensical it became. Delial knew just how foolish it could be to expose a trap to the very prey he had meant to ensnare. Her steps slowed as she came upon the fork in the road. It was still too early to make for Crescent Cove and that still left time for at least one thing that needed to be done. Delial gave a sigh as her feet departed from the stones and her favoured boots sloshed into the shallow water. If there had been any other travellers upon the road, they would have seen a robed woman stalking a single dark-feathered buzzard preening itself upon a stubborn remains of a broken archway. It ignored her while trudged closer, and it ignored her when she drew a blade in one hand and a tome in the other. Once before she had come this way leave what remained of Aylard Greyarm those very same birds. If there was anything Delial Grimsong truly believed it, it was that there was nothing that came without a price. The knife ended what the aether did not. She rested the still-warm corpse upon the nearby face of a stone and cut clean and methodical, recreating the same lines she had been taught when she was still a girl full of promise. She spoke words of prayer and bowed her head to honor the gods to whom she spoke: Rhalgr, Halone, Nymeia, Thaliak. Her fingers dipped into the cavities she carved and with that blood she smeared the long, thin lines that she had long neglected over the curves of her cheekbones, dotted three, three, and three marks again over and under her eyes. When all was done, she leaned over the carcass and summoned upon a spark of flame to consume it. It was madness that she had even considered returning to Thanalan but at the very least it gave her the excuse of settling a few things. Once before, Gharen had followed her to the house beneath the cliff despite surely suspecting it must have been a trap. She had thought him foolish then, just as she thought herself foolish now. Delial felt more solid bearing the marks she had worn much of her life, and when she stepped out of the water and back onto the stony road, she stepped taller. There was nothing in life that came without a price, this she believed, and she was not about to let herself become an exception.

Auugh how could I forget about JoJo?? It's probably the only thing I've been watching on a regular basis. SO GOOD.

Game Center CX (you're welcome) and Nichijou mostly. I have been trash about keeping up with most of the shows I like. Parks and Recreation is still taunting me from my Netflix queue, as is Arrested Development. Over the Garden Wall and Gravity Falls are on my "need to finish watching" list, as is Legend of Korra.

Jajara probably would have ended up the leader of one of her mother clan's sister clans. By now she might have had a child or two, but she probably would have kept up her training so she can still pull her weight as a warrior of the clan. Might have popped by Ul'dah now and again for trade in what might have been seen as a rather progressive move to push her clan's influence beyond the limit of the desert. Delial, in another life, might have ended up fighting for the Resistance. She would have joined her brothers and father in fighting against the Garlean menace. Rather than destroy cells she might have started her own, and might have fled to Little Ala Mhigo and the other city states to rally people to the cause.

Delial's not in a good place with all that junk right now. YUCK. Jajara has no idea what she's doing or how she hasn't goofed it up yet.

I wish we interacted more than me just bleeding on her hands. Not a bad way to start off though tbh

Silly animu bangs UNITE.

Good golly has it been two years? I remember him saying it would be pretty lengthy but hot dang. I have to see if there have been any new albums released in that time, though. The story was wonky as heck but I loved that there were hella talented folks that made some hella awesome music for it.

I think I stopped reading around then as well and I will be honest I had no idea what was going on even then. what even is homestuck. been kind of wanting to reread it from scratch (HA HA HA) but I dunnnnoooooooo. that is wild that it's still in intermission though? or is it a different intermission? hussie what. what are you doing.

We've gotten two new babies since the last time so I figured I'd share them here, because pet threads are the best threads (that aren't about lalafell anyway!). That little darling is Solaire, a baby boa constrictor imperator we picked up late last year. He has a little moustache on his nose and he was the meatiest of the snek babs until we got this next girl a few weeks ago... Chie the ball python! She has the cutest puppy face I CAN'T HANDLE IT. She really stuck out in my mind at the big expo she was being shown at so when the fiance said that he'd let me get one, I had to find her again. She's such a beautiful girl, and she's so gentle as well! She's currently about to shed, which is why she looks so faded out in the last one. The size difference between her and all the other babies is incredible, but that's okay! Full figured snakes are just as lovely as the little noodle snakes.

Jajara is kind of inadvertently named after a dragon of the same name from Legend of Mana. It happened to fit the Dunesfolk naming convention so it stuck! Delial is named after a character from House of Leaves, a figure which ends up being the source of a great deal of pain and grief for some of the main characters. Blackstone, her true name, was meant as an allusion to the power of the thaumaturges she's descended from: that during their raids and conquests, the fire they could summon would char the very stone and earth black. Grimsong was chosen to sort of allude to herself as something of an omen, and to allude to the fact that most of the things she does tends to be somewhat grim or troubling in nature.

Not super sure about Jajara but Delial is easy peasy. [video=youtube] [video=youtube]

Jajara is extremely dense when it comes to romance and becomes extremely flustered when she realizes that hey, someone might be flirting with her or somebody might be talking about the terrible things they do to each other in the bedroom and so on. She seems content on pretending she and everybody around her is nice and wholesome and possibly asexual despite that not being the case at all. Also, dresses. Delial is actually embarrassed by kindness, but it's a very particular kind. She has a super soft spot for people who do nice things for her IF she believes it is without ulterior motive. Yeah there's the folks who flirt and butter her up for sex or favor or whatever and she doesn't think overly much about that, it's what people do. But the ones who are just nice for the heck of it? It just seems so absurd that she can't help but get kind of giddy and giggly about it (as long as there are no witnesses).

I think I would immediately offend Jajara because I might immediately shriek with joy because GOOD GOLLY POTATOES ARE THE CUTEST. And then she'd break my knee. If Chuchukepa came along, she'd break my knee and then he'd set me on fire. Delial would probably get kicked out within a few hours because she would keep questioning the choice in decor and make jokes about eating the cats. She'd camp out in the backyard just to be spiteful and just stare to make sure I know she's there. If Saxon were along, we'd probably talk about girls. Just not that mean horrible one in the backyard. ... No, probably exclusively about that mean horrible one in the backyard.