Mae

I brought up Garuda because of an earlier statement of "If that were the case, female characters wouldn't have breasts at all. Breasts exist solely for the purpose of producing milk for babies" that was echo'd a few times. We're a species that's hard-wired to equal breasts with femininity, regardless if something is a mammal or not. I know Garuda's an asexual being, I was trying to point out the flawed logic of "breasts = mammal" in a fantasy setting, not trying to insinuate that Garuda -was- a mammal. If Devs weren't appealing to our human-mammalian sensibilities first, Garuda's appearance would have been designed to be appealing to her Beastmen and that likely would've resulted in something MUCH more Ixal-like.

Just wandering through, and wondering what graphics setting people are using to actually see traces of nipple on their characters, cause I don't. Granted, I play mine on a lower setting to help with lag (I'm on a mobile connection). Also, Garuda has breasts. Does that make Garuda a mammal? Generally speaking as a species, humans are wired with a breasts = female response. We don't have natural plumage/colour/pattern variants that separate the sexes, and our sense of smell is lacking for us to (regularly) home on on pheromones. We therefore rely (subconsciously) on what we see for a physical build as first indicator to another human's sex. Go do an internet search for anthropomorphic art, you're bound to find dragons, cars, snakes, lizards, and turtles that have breasts of some degree to emphasize that they're female. We're given (mostly) human-like avatars with the dev's expectations that vast majority of us are going to customize into something we personally find attractive. This includes fairly normal breasts (the dev's could've gone and given Miqo'te a double-row of them going down their torsos like a feline, because why not? They've already given feline ears and tails to a humanoid) because of wired responses. Are we mammals in-game? More than likely, but it's something that we are taking for granted because SE has given us no reason to think otherwise. As for the bellybutton issue... Watch from 8:37 to 8:47.

*cracks knuckles* Oookay, first off, some terminology: -- emmenagogue: an herb to start menstruation, and is often used for the purpose of avoiding/ridding pregnancy -- abortifacient: an herb used solely for avoiding/ridding pregnancy [edited in note: don't go crazy on this term, please... it is what it is, the morality of the term and it's implications can be discussed somewhere else.] The item description for Pennyroyal correctly identifies it as an emmenagogue.The game also correctly identifies it as being extremely toxic. Even using half of the... 'recommended dose' to start menstruation has on occasion killed women in the real world. Do what you want in-game with that knowledge, but I highly recommend that in the real world that you do NOT use it. Mistletoe berries have an old reputation for being used as birth control: it wasn't kissing that you did under the mistletoe, it was bumpin' uglies while using mistletoe. Much safer than pennyroyal, but still has some risk (non-fatal, thankfully) and is typically labeled as an abortifacient. The game has a few different versions of mistletoe in it. Mugwort and ginger (root) are also known emmenagogues. Can cause lightheadedness and a bit of nausea, but generally safe when use correctly. Parsley... I have found a lot of folk references for parsley, but no actual medical backing. Fresh parsley is... uhhh... inserted... for twenty-four hours after copulation, and somehow prevents pregnancy, possibly in the same way Wild Carrot does (see below). So, that's it for actual in-game items. There are a few more I can think of off the top of my head that don't have in-game icons/references, but their in-game existence wouldn't be too much of a stretch. Ergot is a fungal infection of rye plants that has been used as an abortifacient in early/mid term and to induce labor... but it can be dangerous as it can cause the uterus to rupture. It is also known to be a hallucinogenic and cause hysteria, and a painful burning sensation in limbs. Wild carrot (Queen's Anne's Lace) seeds. The game has cultivated carrots, parsnips, and parsley, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to believe that Queen Anne's Lace would also exist. There are also terrain flowers that look a lot like these in both the Shroud and La Nosca. Anyways. Seeds are chewed or brewed into a tea and taken after copulation, and makes the uterus 'unsuitable' for egg implantation. The game makes no distinction to what type of elm we're dealing with or if there is or isn't multiple types of the tree, so it is possible that Slippery Elm might exist. Works much like ergot in that it's an abortifacient in early/mid term and used to induce labor in the late term. It is also used to ease labor, and has many other common uses that makes it fairly safe (it's even in some baby food to help ease/prevent colic).

In all seriousness, as children we all RP'd. Every time we played house, tied a sheet around our necks and pretended to be a caped superhero, played cops and robbers/cowboys and indians, or set off to slay the monsters that lived in the woods behind the house with a sword made from the cardboard tube from a wrapping paper roll and a kitchen pot for a helmet. At some point, though, we drifted away from these games of pretend... either by naturally 'outgrowing' them or we were told that it was time to grow up. Mainstreaming RP beyond childhood, though... it would be cool, but I personally think that the negative press D&D and other fantasy-based modules would've eventually happened no matter what. Coming from a highly religious family (who, admittedly, are a bit of a paradox with how accepting they've been of my life choices), I can see how some of the stuff I just read could be utterly terrifying. Are the highly religious wrong for thinking that way? No, because that's just how they are. Are they wrong for trying to get other people to believe the same? No, but that's because that's just how they are AND they do it with the best intentions from the point of view that they've been raised in. ... Hopefully that wasn't too controversial... I don't wanna see a huge religion debate being sparked... Oh Great and Powerful Mods, feel free to strike that out if I crossed a line... Also, when some things become mainstream, I tend to find that they run the risk of losing their luster/appeal. Maybe I have an inner hipster (ohgodsIhopenot...), but part of the fun I have/had with my niche interests is the hunt for X-item or stumbling on another person/group that does Y-thing... and that fun and interest has died for some things when they became "popular". I actually liked Naruto during it's first run in Shonen Jump; I don't read Japanese, I had a classmate who did and he read them to the afterschool Animation Club (I'm 30 years old, do the math to find out how long ago that was >_>; ), but when the anime made it here... I dunno, the sudden appearance of it EVERYWHERE just totally and utterly turned me off to it. ... I wish for one month, we could switch places with the crazy sports fans. Trading card game tournaments, conventions, LARP events, marathon RP competitions, documentaries on the Great Fantasy Writers, wonderfully-horrible and cheesy superhero movies/TV series/cartoons, anime, and sci-fi classics all getting the Prime Time TV slots and news coverage, while all the sports fans have to hide in their basements to watch their games, endure weird looks for wearing their sports-related clothes/fandom trinkets, and feel judged whenever they go to a game/go tailgating.

I think we were mostly using age 18 as a baseline because of the population spreads. Off the top of my head, I don't think there's a country that's got their age of majority/legality over 18, so it's kind of the "safe" age to assume unless confirmed between two partners to be otherwise. Localization teams will change lore to be in-line with the laws of their region. If that sort of lore is ever deemed necessary to be released, it will either a) be hard-set by the devs so that it is legal to ALL regions or b) the localization teams will adjust it for the country/region they're serving. It won't matter if region X has a lower age, in your region the age is different and that's the one you'll be judged upon. In the end, if you're not in compliance with the laws if your country/region (regardless of where/what your partner is sitting/doing) and if you end up being under investigation, a prosecutor who's out for blood can make your life miserable. And if you're pulling someone else out of compliance with the laws of their country/region, you could get them in trouble.

It depends on how it was 'found out'. If it was found out legitimately ICly, I'd have to roll with it. OOCly, if it was something I didn't want found out quite yet I'd be a little peeved.. mostly at myself, because I obviously didn't do a good job keeping the information hidden. If I suspected metagaming/Batman Logic, it'd be a major problem OOCly. Especially if the information was being spread around. I've never had it happen before where I wasn't able to perform some sort of immediate damage control. There's a person with my RP group in another game... he's about as sharp as a cotton ball and he's got a bad habit of lurking nearby and saying he's not IC, then turning around and using information he picked up during his lurking. Thankfully the rest of the group is quick to discard when someone calls him out on it, but it's still a distraction/disruption to have to stop and explain to him every time that he's using information that he shouldn't have. We're a small group, so even if we don't catch right away what he's doing, damage control is very quick... I'd hate to have to watch out for that sort of behaviour in a larger community setting.

Kissing is usually fine -- in a legal sense, as long as it's above the jawline and there's no tongue, it's not typically considered an act of sex. It can be looked down upon by society/cultural norms, but that's about it.

It doesn't matter if your supposed 15-year-old partner is from Iceland, if you're in the US and over 18(for argument's sake, most US states are 18), you could risk trouble by US authorities if the US authorities investigated you. If you're a minor engaging in ERP, if you refrain from telling your 18+ partner, you can still get them in trouble if your parents find out and decide to press charges. And even if you lied to your partner and told them that you were old enough, if your parents have a good enough lawyer you still risk getting your partner branded as a sex offender. As for the "only the character is a Minor" thing... it depends on so many things. Laws in the country wanting to prosecute, the explicitness of the act in question, the medium used. Big-name writers have both editors and legal teams that keep them from crossing lines, but even still some books are banned from sale (by county/town law) because they're too explicit. For example, the town I grew up in, only recently could the bookstore and public library put "Clan of the Cave Bear" on the shelves because of laws, but the rest of the Earth's Children series has been available since their original releases. -- Random factoid I discovered on the internet: some "dating sim" games and "hentai comics" feature characters that are under 18; in their country of origin they're legal but in order for these items to be sold to other countries, localization teams change dialogues and bios to make the characters fit the regions they're selling to so consumers don't run afoul of child pornography laws. Really, in the end, the whole topic is going to depend on lawyers. And if a lawyer can get a man a $3,000,000 settlement from an RV dealership because the dealership failed to inform the man that cruise control is not auto-pilot, and the man crashed his RV when he got up from behind the wheel in traffic on the highway to make a pot of coffee... yeah.

Relaxing in a hotel room after a stressful day, and marveling at the pile of stuff we've pulled out of the truck, and knowing we're only -half- done.

The very first time you talk to a delivery moogle, it has some dialogue that something along the lines that the "tiny horned ones" (Padjal, most likely) convinced some moogles that they shouldn't hide behind their glamour anymore and become mail handlers. The owner of one of the chocobo stables in the Shroud has also seen moogles -- she named her stable after them in honor of being saved by one, but she hasn't seen one since then. Papalymo and Yda do not possess the Echo, but they can see Kuplo Kopp... and I don't believe either are from Gridania/the Shroud. So... I think in the end, anyone can see a moogle, it just primarily depends on if the moogle WANTS to be seen. If a moogle is hiding behind Moogle Magic, then it takes something 'special' to see them (Echo or whatever), like in the Gridania opening scene.

Some males can get away with that long hair and still look masculine. Some can totally rock the new skirt. Clearly, Luc'a is -not- one of those males.

Consider going to a quieter server for now to pal around with your friend. When things calm down, they can server transfer or just re-roll. I typically don't have a problem making a new character on Balmung between 4amEST and 7amEST Monday through Thursday, but I'm not going to even try doing that for a bit because of the new content. Balmung is a popular server, the overwhelming majority of people who fill the server to the point where it's locked are actively playing. That a major content patch just came out is adding to the server population; people have resubbed or picked up the game for the first time. Even if SE went and reinstated the auto-logout, it wouldn't be enough to make a difference right now. Removing the auto-logout has really nothing to do with the amount of people AFK for a long period of time. Pre-2.2, if you wanted to stay logged in while sleeping/at school/at work, you could do it easily by leaving yourself in an activity that flagged you as 'busy' by the server -- stopping mid-dialogue with an NPC, stopping in the middle of a synth. They removed it more for the people who would be called away for twenty minutes and then would have to fight against other people who had been called away for twenty minutes to get back in. I live at work. I'm here 24/7, 340-ish days a year. But I'm only DOING work an average of two hours a day, in an average of twenty minute bursts that happen at random. The auto-logout just kept adding me back to the unholy mess that was the queue; I can't tell you how many times I'd be sitting back down and reaching for my keyboard, only to watch the "You've been disconnected" message pop up.

I could be mistaken, but I'm remembering something from the New Year's event where it was said that horses were utterly forbidden in the Twelveswood. Like... expect instant Greenwrath if you bring a horse in, the context seemed that strong. Whether or not it would actually happen or if it was a long-running rumor the chocobo breeders propagate to keep their monopoly is open for debate. I could be wrong on remembering that, though, and I dunno if event stuff is always considered canon.

I've got a project that I've been researching and working on for at least twelve years now, a take on "what if all the myths/legends from around the world were real/based on actual events/actual creatures?" I have a mountain of research and notes, but very little in actual storywriting... I keep getting only so far before I start to hate my main character or I'll find something new and interesting and decide that I absolutely MUST include it and have to rewrite my outline >_>

When it comes to stuff like this, I typically look to draw parallels between the game's setting and real-world tech/developments. If the tech/development was being worked on in the Renaissance (doesn't have to have been perfected), then I typically think it's fair to be used in-game. Sooo... There's evidence of use of cigarette use as far back as the 9th century with the Mayans, with the medium being packed into both tobacco leaves and corn husks. Whether or not the medium was exclusively tobacco is unknown, but the smoking of tobacco and various other herbs was a well-established practice in the Americas by that time. Smoking -anything- as a practice goes back as far as 3,000 years worldwide (... some cultures smoked clarified butter and fish guts?), but that's all been either as fire offerings, incense-like setups, bundles, and various pipe forms. There's reference to matches in China as far back as the 4th century. However, these weren't strike matches, just sticks that had been treated with sulfur to quickly ignite when introduced to a smoldering coal. Various other incarnations were worked on up through the centuries, but it wasn't until about 200 years after phosphorus was discovered that there was a leap from "need a hot coal" to "self igniting". Self-igniting matches chemical matches finally came about in the early 1800's, where the treated end of a stick was dipped into a bottle of sulfuric acid. This was expensive and dangerous. This was followed by a few versions that were variants of "chemicals are contained in a glass capsule at the bottom of the stick and needed to be crushed" that were slightly less dangerous (no sulfuric acid or asbestos), but just as expensive. The first strike matches came out about a decade after the first self-igniting chemical match, but was dangerous and impractical as it included rubbing a sulfur-tipped stick in a tube that was coated on the inside with phosphorus. A jump was made about a decade later to something closer to what we have now, and further improvements occurred over the next eighty years. So. Smoking cigarettes is probably just fine. Whether or not tobacco as we know it is in Eorzea might be debated by a few, but I consider it to be like coffee -- if someone's going to be dead-set against the existence of a plant that has no icon in the game, there's plenty of substitutes that have icons that would work just as well. All it is, essentially, is dried plant matter that's chopped and then stuffed into a tube of thin paper or dried leaves. The matches part could be more debatable, as self-igniting matches didn't show up in the real world until the 1800's. HOWEVER... Eorzean alchemists are obviously much more advanced than alchemists/scientists of the real world, so there's a lot of wiggle-room that way. Strike matches being available isn't that much of a stretch to me.

As someone who technically has it, it's kind of hard to use it effectively in RP. I've acknowledged certain aspects of it, such as understanding other languages aside from Eorzean Common, but the whole part about stepping or looking into a person's past really toes the line of meta and player consent, and opens the door to someone with the Echo saying "Well it's on your character's wiki page, I totally saw that happen with my magical snowflake powers". For this reason, I try to be extremely careful with it and what it can do, much less disclosing that she has it. The visions, totally can understand how people would want to avoid using those. But the ability to understand languages seems benign enough. I had actually thought about putting Echo-accessible(?) scenes/memories on my wiki page about a month ago... I wonder if I should go ahead, just as sort of experiment.

How could there ever have been any question about this? The story line is an obvious single-player story thrust upon an MMO. I was hoping that they would explain that the Echo is actually more common than the super-special-snowflake storyline was suggesting. But NOPE! This was actually answered in 1.0 to an extent, but no so much in ARR. The echo isn't common in relation to the general populace. There are, however, a lot of people who awoke with the echo. It was inferred that the Path of the Twelve (which disbanded after the calamity) had many members. Again, in comparison to the general populace, a couple hundred people scattered across Eorzea is next to nothing. It's not as exclusive as people seem to think, though. At least, it wasn't during 1.0, and some of those characters are still around. The path of the twelve was only secretive because they were fearful of people figuring out about their "gift" and being afraid of them. Not because it was five or six people working in the dark. If you want your character to have the echo, give it to them. If you don't abuse it, most people shouldn't really care. It's a part of the world, and opens doors to interesting possibilities that would otherwise be unfeasible. But yeah. Just my opinion, on top of what was established in 1.0 Pretty much everything Merri said. The Echo is uncommon when you consider the entire population. But since it is canon that adventurers have certain qualities (aetheryte travel, for example) that set them apart from the rest of the population, it could be argued that the Echo is fairly common within the adventurer population -- it's just a matter of people knowing/realizing it's there. I'm actually surprised that more people RP not having the Echo, even as a latent thing that they don't ever use or acknowledge. It honestly didn't seem to be that big of a deal to me as long as it wasn't being abused.

I had hopes that I would still be visiting with family, and I had many plans on decorating my mum's house for Halloween and Harvest. However, I'm back on the truck doing the cross-country thing, so I'll be spending Halloween on the highway and dividing my attention between whatever I find to occupy me in-game and bridge-spotting duties... because some people think it's hilarious to drop pumpkins from overpasses onto trucks and cause accidents. And, yup, I believe in ghosts. Kind of hard not to when you grow up on a property that is haunted >_>

... The answer to the Highlander Male's lack of eyebrows doesn't make sense. Picture for me two Highlander Clans going to war with each other, Clan Red and Clan Blue: Red: RAWR! I HAVE SHAVED OFF MY EYEBROWS! FEAR ME! Blue: YAAAAR! I HAVE SHAVED OFF MY EYEBROWS! I AM TERRIFYING! Red: YOUR EYEBROW-LESS FACE IS HORRIFIC! I MUST FLEE! Blue: YOUR LACK OF EYEBROWS HAS MADE ME WISH I WORE MY BROWN PANTS! RUN AWAY! If y'all don't mind, I will continue with my belief that Highlander males have super bushy Mentat eyebrows and that they shave them off because to let them grow free would mean they risk limiting their sight, and that in a fight they could be used as a convenient hand-hold.

Glorious update to this one that has turned this chilly, rainy Pennsylvania day into black clouds of gloom... truck isn't going to be fixed until NEXT TUESDAY. Damnit, all we went into the shop for was a coolant leak the APU (basically, a little generator that gives us power for in-cab lights and heating/AC when we're stopped so we don't have to idle the truck), and they find a head gasket that's about to go and a radiator leak on the truck itself... I'm going back to bed.

/notamorningperson Oversized t-shirt and shorts... haven't achieved breakfast yet. While I understand the importance of breakfast, I don't like breakfast foods. Plans for the day include waiting to see if Detroit Diesel has finished fixing the truck, and if so then restocking and then getting back on the road. If they're not finished... hanging around a hotel room.

Minus the gilsellers/spammers, I typically don't blacklist until I've reached the point where my patience has run out. There's plenty of people running around that a normal person would blacklist, but I'm kinda voyeuristic to people's bad behaviours and I also like to know when someone's talking about me. Sometimes, I -will- temp-blacklist someone who is RPing nearby and being a distraction to my RP; not because they're being offensive, but just because what they're doing IS distracting to what I'm trying to concentrate on. These people, I also write their names down on a piece of paper by my keyboard so I remember to remove them once I'm free to have distractions, or to quick-reference the name if they approach before I'm at a point where I can remove them. It's not a punishment, it's just for my sanity. As for reasons/examples for why I'll actually blacklist: 97% of my blacklist are gilsellers/spammers. I've experienced getting gilseller /tell spam from the same character multiple times over the course of a couple hours, and every once in a while I'll run into a zone where one is spamming in /shout and /yell. So, might as well just blacklist a name right away. Every few months, I go through and remove the first thirty or so of those names and all the (Deleted) entries -- by this time, these 'characters' are on accounts that have been caught and banned, so they're just taking up space. The next actual 2.5% are the following: "Tiny" -- This guy used to hound me to join his FC, and he didn't take 'no thanks' or 'not interested' as a good enough answer. Didn't matter how many times I told him to stop trying to invite me, I could expect upwards to five invites a day from him. So now, the first thing I do once I've gotten control of a new character is to blacklist him before he can start bugging me. Which might seem moot now since I have a FC that I can join with all my characters... but there was a few times where "Tiny" got to me while I was waiting for someone with invite privileges to come back from AFK. "On the /punt list" -- I was asked to join a LS that I had been told was for OOC RP event planning among FC leaders and their co-leaders/seconds-in-command. Joined... and slowly started getting hints that the LS was going to be an IC one with some REALLY bizarre ideas and themes that myself and my co-leader had no interests in. Eventually we left, and both of us got some harassment from the LS leader and a few other members for doing so. "Guttermouth" -- The only person who has the honor of being on my blacklist because of their RP. I get it that swearing has a place in RP, I swear IRL and IC, but when every third word out of your mouth is 'c--t' and my polite /tell request to please tone it down a bit is met with a LOT of venom... yeah. Took me a while to feel okay with blacklisting, as this was another RPer and I hate missing half a conversation when I lurk, but in the end this person's RP was just so repulsive to me that I finally hit that button. Which leaves that last .5%... "Ugh" -- "Ugh" has the dubious honors of being someone that I blacklist often, but need to take off the blacklist during RP because he RP's often with my group. Sometimes, I forget to put "Ugh" back on blacklist until after I've reached the point where I wish I could just jump through the computer and strangle him. My hatred of this person is long-standing and game-spanning, but I like the rest of my RP group and I'm not about to let "Ugh" run me off.

... Bath towels and a shower curtain. My folks had pretty much furnished that first apartment with hand-me-downs and spares, but if I remember correctly, they didn't have spares of those that they were willing to part with. And my boyfriend (now husband) and I weren't even able to afford those for the first week because the need (not desire or want) to move had been pressed on us with the worst possible time for both of us. I AM certain that the first few meals we had in there was cake. Food was also something we couldn't afford that first week, but a regular customer to where my husband worked at the time was so excited for us when she heard we'd gotten a place together that she went out and bought us a cake and ice cream to celebrate.

Wardrobe malfunctions are NOT how Flash works!

Actually... historically in the real world, this did happen when explorers/conquerors/missionaries encountered tribal people. Doesn't happen these days, but a few centuries back, 'civilized' wear was often pressed upon tribals because they were 'indecent'. In the context of the setting... I have to disagree. Yes, the battle bikini and battle banana hammock have a proud tradition in fantasy games, but they're a combination of "Fan Service" and "There Was A Perv On The Design Team". Which is more 4th wall breaking to me. Fantasy or not, the only time having less-to-no-clothes be practical in a fight is if you're bare-handed and wrestling someone who is also bare-handed, or sporting (see: coliseum fighting). If you're going into battle, you want to have more covering you; no serious archer is going to pass up shooting at a completely exposed belly, no matter how perfectly shaped or toned it is, to shoot at obviously-armored bouncing/dangling parts. Further context would be how most of the NPCs dress. Most are fairly well covered, even in Ul'dah and Thanalan (again echoing that you want covering clothes in the desert). Coliseum fighters and the refugees have less clothing, sure, but the former is more of a case of showmanship and the latter is because... well... they can't afford much.