Eva

With as many artists as we have here, and the number of really awesome screenshots we'll all be taking, a souped-up gallery may be worth shelling out a bit extra for. I'd certainly be willing to help contribute so long as others concur that it's a worthwhile addition as well.

I also agree about the cursor. It comes across as tacky and unprofessional.

Eva glanced up as the newcomer made himself at home around the campfire. Her smile withered a bit as she reached into her satchel and withdrew another tin cup and poured the steaming beverage from the kettle into it. As oddly comfortable as he seemed amidst a group of strangers, his traveling companion seemed just the opposite - or maybe just appropriately wary. It was hard to really tell. "Isaac Vadoma, and Kali Syeira," she spoke the words slowly, violet eyes glimpsing each individual momentarily in turn. "Isaac, it's nice to make your acquaintance. And you as well Kali." She had found that repeating the name several times during introductions helped her to retain it in her memory. It had frustrated her to no end that she was so terrible at remembering peoples' names. "They call me Eva." She shook her head a bit, as though sloughing off the shock of this fellow's sudden arrival and spirited attempt to integrate himself with everyone. "Oh, and this is E'iri whom we've just met for the first time this eve, and these two ladies wearing scowls for some reason are A'eyshn and Manari." She motioned to each of the miqo'te in turn, smiling, and arching her eyebrow inquisitively at the Keeper for a moment as though the frown looked somewhat out of place on her face. "We're done with the fire I think, if you want to cook your fish. Or there's quite a bit of the roasted dodo left if you want to help yourselves. I should warn you - it's a bit spicy though." She turned to face E'iri again, her smile returning steadily to her face as she spoke, "You never said where you were headed or what you were up to this eve, aside from that you live somewhere nearby. I hope I'm not rude to ask, but what brought you out here anyway, aside from the food?" She smiled politely at E'iri, awaiting his response.

I kind of started on mine last night and kind of put a fair bit of time into it. :oops: So if things do get shuffled around a bit, please don't change who I'm drawing.

Welcome back to the madness awesomeness!

For whatever it may be worth I kind of like the element of secrecy to this, but if everyone else would prefer to drop that, I'm not vehemently opposed to it. I just thought it would be fun if everyone was kind of surprised at the end.

Oh EVA'S WIKI PAGE is kind of a work-in-progress, but the physical information is all accurate and there are a few artistic renderings and some screenshots out there already. Couple other hi-res screenshots if it helps at all: LINK | LINK [spoil]The shorthand version of all the wiki description stuff is that she looks pretty much the same as the character model in the screenshots except she has a much larger chest, and has much longer hair. She's been wearing a braid in her hair lately as well (kind of visible in the avatar). I suppose that isn't mentioned on the wiki. I really need to get around to updating that... Her tattoo will probably be undergoing a transformation (from bluish to gray) come ARR, as well.[/spoil] I'm looking forward to drawing though. I've been brushing up a bit this past week. (get it? *guffaws*) EDIT: Oh, since it was solicited in the OP, I should mention that we also have no real preference for how she is drawn for this with regard to poses or clothing or such, just so long as it's tasteful/classy. The info in the wiki give a lot of info about her mannerisms and preferences and such.

[spoil]Sorry for the late reply. It's been kind of hectic with the holiday season and all. I also went ahead and mod-nuked the two OOC posts above so as to keep the flow of things on track and IC.[/spoil] Eva remained lost in her own thoughts as Manari droned on about the woods, reflections of flames dancing in her violet eyes as she stared off into them. Even the rustle of the footsteps of the approaching pair of newcomers she'd heard whispering in the shadows earlier didn't break her from her reverie. It wasn't until the raven-haired miqo'te fellow spoke that she blinked a few times and looked up at him, then to the odd woman clinging to his arm like a frightened child. She caught a glimpse of Aysun in her peripheral vision eating some of the dodo and frowning at the new arrivals. She caught herself staring at the woman attached to the fellow's arm and finally broke eye contact to meet his gaze a moment before speaking up, hoping her voice sounded more friendly than awkward, "Oh, hello there." With her words, she held up her tin teacup and gestured with her other hand to the pot, hoping afterwards that it would be construed as a welcoming gesture, but she wasn't sure what to make of either of the newcomers and found herself glancing at E'iri and the others after greeting them.

We are Eva. That's right 'we'. Our otherworldly names are Michael (usually Mike, or sometimes Luke) and Jacqueline (usually just Jackie). He's 32 and I'm 31 at the time that this post was made. We have been married a little bit over seven months now and share ownership of Eva - though she was operated primarily by my husband for the first ten months or so of her adventuring life. Although I had a hand in the character creation process and some of her earlier developments. We both play the character about 50% of the time and pretty openly communicate with one another about her involvements and "bringing each other up to speed" with regards to RP. There's only been one or two hiccups, but mostly it's been a lot of fun keeping on the same page with our RP, and we enjoy this more than creating separate characters - although we each do keep a separate alt as well. Neither of us really like talking about ourselves on forums or in the game too much because we feel it breaks up the sense of immersion a bit, but I'm kind of making an exception here. I'm a claims adjustor for a health insurance company and work from home five days a week. I enjoy perusing art on DA and other sites and I'm probably the one behind most of the commissioned artwork of Eva [and others] that's out there. I also avidly read various webcomics and enjoy watching television (<3 DWTS and a good dozen or so others) and swimming in the summertime and spending time with my niece. Mike is a remote support technician and works for a different health insurance company. He is much more technical and those computer specs in the above post would probably make a LOT more sense to him than they do to me. Lately he has been trying to teach himself to paint digitally. He also ran a RP group in FF11 that he often speaks fondly about but that all took place before we ever met. He is a lot more soft-spoken than me and really enjoys reading and working on his computers and tinkering. He is also the patient one but sometimes common sense eludes him (and I'm going to pay for posting that later I'm sure lol). He enjoys swimming as well, and biking. We live together in an apartment in western Connecticut (about an hour from NYC) with our globular cat named Edgy (aka "Devourer of Worlds"). We're looking into homeownership next year and all the fun and headaches that go along with that. I'm not really sure what more I can say so I'll kind of leave it at that. EDIT: We also both LOVE tea, although he drinks coffee sometimes as well (yuk). :love:

"Well, I have no real agenda for this evening, but I figured I'd curl up next to the fireplace at home with a good book when I got home later." The blonde duskwight woman stroked her chin thoughtfully. "But I'm in no hurry. And this culinary experiment seems to have been something of a success, what with the Twelveswood not having burned to the ground or anything. I think next time I may try safely cooking this on my stove, but it wasn't worth the risk tonight. And besides, unexpected company is a welcome surprise." She grinned sheepishly, smiling at the others around the campfire. "Ah, and to answer your earlier question Manari, I'm doing all right I suppose." Her sheepish grin transitioned into a more natural friendly smile as she bobbed her head slightly as she continued, "It's good to meander outside of Gridania's walls once in awhile, and breathe the forest air. Though I do miss the rain..." Bowing her head, a somber look crossed her face as she struggled to remember the last time she felt the patter of raindrops on her face when she cast her gaze heavenward. It had been awhile. Always overcast skies, but never rain at all lately since Dalamud grew ever nearer. Those last words seemed to hang in the air as the woman's eyes appeared to stare through the fire, her mind momentarily somewhere else, probably a million malms away.

I'm up for trying, though my skill probably isn't anywhere near what others is and my style is still a bit unrefined. If nothing else it will provide an opportunity to practice a bit (which I sorely need). I may need to turn to some of the other artists as I go for suggestions though (assuming any are willing to offer a helping hand). I'm just probably going to need at least a couple weeks' time for this as well. I'm kind of methodical/perfectionistic. But it sounds like fun and I'm certainly interested in the challenge.

Wrote a long post but it got gobbled up. The gist was twofold so I'll try to summarize what I had written: 1. As Aysun pointed out, any inconsistency between people who choose to compress everything pre-ARR into 1572 and people who choose to "push back" the start of adventuring time to 1570 is going to be pretty negligable. I'm not sure anyone would really nitpick specific dates and such, and rather than referencing a specific timeframe, more abstract methods like "Remember when...?" can easily be used to circumvent this. 2. What may be a bit more of a concern for folks is the passage of time (or lack thereof) post-ARR. I know a majority of RPers right now haven't been RPing since the game's launch back in 2010 and compressing events into one year may not be such a detrimental thing, but the LoreBomb that was recently posted suggested that the passage of time would be more or less halted for the sake of in-game story incidents, so presumably after the launch of ARR we'll be perpetually locked into the year 1577. Consider if you RP for five years, will it be feasable to have all of entirety of your character's RP life taking place inside only that one year? For myself I'm doing something like this: 2010 == 1570 2011 == 1571 2012 == 1572 (Dalamud impact) 2013 == 1577 (after the 5-year gap) 2014 == 1578 2015 == 1579 etc. etc. But I don't think this is the right way of doing things, nor do I think compressing the time for anyone that chooses to do that is wrong - I just think this is probably the most graceful way to explain the passage of time and character development appropriately, so that is my choice. *shrugs*

Wish I could help more today since I find myself in a bit of a lull at work, but corporate mandates we use only Internet Explorer here (and version 8 at that... -.-) so I'm not really able to help a whole lot. Adding blank spaces in various places or dummy characters (I just drop an 'x') to see how they might change things in each of the browsers is very helpful though. Trial and error. I would offer to help a bit more tonight since I've got a small army of browsers lined up on my home computer but I'm going to be, uh, ah... playing around in the forest tonight when I get home from work. *coughcough* But yeah, definitely play around with it and if you're still struggling with it this weekend I'll give it another look. I mean to set up a different template for my own, so diving back in will be a good thing.

Hello there! I noticed what you were talking about and created a "Test Character" wiki using your code as a basis for it so I could play around with it without disrupting your own wiki page. I see what you're talking about though, and after staring at the code dumbfounded for nearly an hour I gave up trying to figure it out and started poking around with things. I found that deleting all those line breaks fixed the gap in Chrome but caused the title of "Section 01" to disappear. Adding text between the sections forced the "Section 01" header to reappear though. I'm sure there's something more to that - maybe a property that Firefox treats differently in one of the div tags than Chrome does. I'm not sure. But I was able to achieve some uniformity by adding a blank space (rather than a character). You can view the code here. I'll leave this Test Character page intact for a bit - please feel welcome to play around with it yourself, as well. We'll remove it once everything is all squared away though. http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/wiki/index ... ction=edit Hope this helps somewhat. Apart from wiping the code and starting from scratch I'm not sure how much more help I could offer, but someone else might have a better eye for what's causing the inconsistency than me. The wiki layout looks fantastic though! Makes me want to go back and revamp my own a bit! :cheer:

Long¯live¯the¯overscore!!! :cheer:

I refuse to condense two+ years of RP activity to within one year's time. As a dynamic character, Eva is far different now than she was when things started and RPing out these gradual psychological and behavioral changes (coping with multiple losses, letting go, etc.) has been part of what we feel makes her kind of realistic as a character. Compressing that timeframe for the sake of S-E's inconsistencies would force those character growths to have been accelerated to a point where they no longer seem so realistic. So for Eva, the RP adventures would have begun in 1570 and I suppose it bumps her birth year back a bit from what we had previously thought, but that's fine. As far as what other people do, if there is some inconsistency with timelines than I think we can just sort of leave things abstract. "Remember when...?" as was suggested above. I wouldn't really expect many RPers to go into specifics anyway. But yeah... thanks for the paradox, S-E.

Happy Birthday Gerik~ <3

Sensing Aysun's discomfort, the fair-skinned elezen quickly chimed in, "Really anywhere you go there's a plethora of nasty beasts that will send you to an early grave if you're not careful." She sipped her tea nonchalantly, nodding slightly as though agreeing with herself. "I've only recently left the Twelveswood myself after spending most of my life here, maybe a couple years hence. I've read about oceans and seen the maps in my geography books but to actually sit on the shore and look out where there is water as far as the eye can see..." She paused again to have another cautious sip of her tea, "...well, there's some things words on parchment simply can't convey." Turning her attentions away from Aysun and E'iri she glanced over at Manari with a warm smile and motioned to her midsection, "I'm sorry to change the subject so abruptly, but... how's everything going with the wee one within? Seems it's been awhile since our paths have crossed~"

My own opinion is that it makes sense for people to have talents across a number of disciplines at varying levels. That feels real to me. People who level all jobs and expect to RP as an expert at all of them kind of put me off a bit, however. Eva kind of falls into the same 'healer' category (she's technically a nurse and the more aetherial aspect of the job sort of came into play later), but she is also an accomplished seamstress and capable of wielding a lance fairly well. That's about the extent of her skills, at least as they are based on the jobs. I've leveled stuff like leathercraft and monk but I don't normally RP those skills in any capacity unless to say she's just dabbling with something (the bit of leathercutting she knows was to support her weaving garments, for instance). It gets Mary Sue to me when someone is not only accomplished at multiple talents, but "the best". Much as I'm a fan of keeping things parallel with regard to job/class levels and actual RP skill, I get put off when I see Mr. Hero who can wield an axe or punch things while casting flare spells and curing his party the whole time as he weaves baskets with his feet. Summary: Multiple disciplines is fine, even if there's a lot of them, but consider the amount of time it takes to become decent/good/skilled/expert at something, and how many different things, and also upkeep of those talents - training and such. But a healer who can also sing is not such a stretch of an imagination. To me that would be like a Doctor who goes out on karaoke nights with friends, or such.

The two games are vastly different. The most alarming similarity I think would be the similarity with the five playable races. In FFXI they're Elvaan, Hume, Mithra, Tarutaru, and Galka. In FFXIV their respective counterparts are Elezen, Hyur, Miqo'te, Lalafell, and Roegadyn. There are some variations - for instance Galka have tails and Roegadyn do not. But the FF11 versions generally seemed to serve as the inspiration behind a more refined corresponding race in FF14. Other similarities include the avatars/primals, magic spells, jobs (all seven of which are in FF14 are also in FF11 along with thirteen others - and two more coming to FF11 next year apparently). Like the races, these jobs and their "artifact gear" look different between the 11 and 14 versions as well. Others will draw comparisons between places like Windurst (one of the cities in FF11) and Gridania (the forested city-state in FF14) but a lot of that is left to interpretation. As with most things there are similarities and there are differences. The developers have had roughly a decade to pump FF11 full of lore and numerous expansions have given the game a lot of different layers and made the world a much larger place, where FF14 is still relatively new and sometimes feels a little bit more clunky and restrictive by comparison, though I believe this is what the ARR will be addressing. I'm sure there is a lot more that can be added to this. My own opinion is that the gameplay overall is much smoother and less complex, but I realize that may also be because I spent much longer getting used to it. FF14 sometimes feels awkward to me. The concept of "classes" in FF14 kind of graduating into the jobs we've all grown to know and love in many FF games is one I still find a tough pill to swallow at times. And the lack of variety in that regard is often frustrating. That is to say when there are only 7 jobs, and so many having leveled all of them, it's difficult to feel unique. In FF11 there's much more variety. Hope this helps answer your question. Without knowing more specifics, I'm left to make kind of generalizations and express some of my own personal opinions. I like both games on equal levels, but I seldom play FF11 any longer. EDIT: Also the worlds of Vana'diel and Eorzea are quite different as well. Vana'diel feels more medieval overall but has smatterings of references of things like ancient technology and such. Eorzea at times almost feels a bit more steampunk and technology is a bit more widely distributed.

I have some video footage I'd like to record for a fun little side-project I'm working on. But mostly my sentiment mirrors Deirdre's. Eva's kind of gone poof into the aetherial rift by now, and I'm not really a huge fan of retroactive RP since it has a habit of changing timelines and such, so if anything we might pop on as an alt and play around a bit if there's any open RP going on or anything. I admit it might be an interesting opportunity for the folks who are aging their characters five years to RP out interactions and such. But for now we're playing through some newer and classic console games and I'm getting back into drawing again so kind of spending a lot of time with that. But if there's some non-canon event, or something we can bring our alt to that would be fun, we're all for that~ I assume everything is going to be as it was at the end of 1.23 with Dalamud still hanging menacingly in the sky and all that?

Moved to Observatory thread (since this isn't really a news item) after conferring with Kylin and merged to avoid duplicate threads. Neat info. :cheer:

Taking another morsel of the food between her fingers, Eva blew steam from it cautiously before popping it into her mouth. She left the pan beside the fire for anyone to take more meat if they wanted and leaned to her other side to tend to the kettle, removing from her satchel four tin cups that were stacked tidily inside one another. She didn't really look up from pouring as Aysun spoke of being the odd one out, but her response came quickly, "I'm not sure how you figure. It would seem I'm the only one here without a tail~" She smiled, offering the first of the cups to her. She continued softly, looking between Manari and E'iri, "I wasn't really expecting company so I don't have any honey or sugar or cream, but... tea?" She held the kettle up and raised an eyebrow to help punctuate her question. She opened her mouth, about to answer E'iri's question about what it's like beyond the Twelveswood, but figured it was directed to Aysun anyway. She herself had lived in the woods from the time she was just a schoolgirl and had never actually seen an ocean until after her 30th nameday. She looked to Aysun, curious what her answer would be, then began pouring a second cup of tea - for herself she figured, if neither of the others wanted any.

I kind of hope not. I'm sure they will come out with similar items to the bikinis and reindeer suits and such. But I feel like stuff like that for people that were around and dedicated themselves from the beginning and sort of "weathered the storm" so to speak should be able to keep the items and know that they're a certain kind of special/unique. Sort of like the goobbues. That's just my opinion though.

Awesome!! You can keep me there at the end too if other people sign up and want to go before me, that's ok. Eva's been drawn a lot and I also love to see the renditions of the other characters!! But I was thinking about it now that my brain is comfortably floating in a pool of caffeine, and something like that where she's pouring cups of tea from a kettle like that would definitely be perfect! :love: