Dis

Dear Group in Aurum Vale tonight, When I tell you to target the Seedlings first, I mean the Seedlings first. When I died a second time from having 8+ Stacks of Burr on me, and the healer couldn't rez because of running, because she didn't think Swiftcast was important enough, I decided I was done. Regards, The tank who dropped a group for the first time ever, and hates you all for it.

Glioca usually gets 'Lady' tacked on in front of her name by people in RP. It's almost always Lady Sargonnai for the first few meetings. 3.0 is fun because it's Mistress Sargonnai, and it sounds so formal and posh. It's going to be hilarious when I finally go through on my Roe lady, and she's Mistress Moonlight. Makes it sound like she's a lounge singer, or something. I do agree with the bit about Ishgardians not knowing about how to deal with Miqo names, and defaulting to Master Tia is kind of hilarious. That said, I like Klinzahr's use of Ser. Works for most characters, I think, if you're being respectful.

I deal with White Magic (specifically being a White Mage ICly) to the effect of Glioca knowing there was more beyond being a Conjurer, and researching and developing spells on her own that tie in other fields of magic to mimic what little information she could find on White Magic. She generally uses spells and calls them something else anyway (not the spell names seen in game), so she passes what would be White Magic off as incredibly strong healing magic that totally isn't White Magic. I've not run up against anyone yet who has had a problem with me doing that. She doesn't specifically call herself a White Mage, which helps. I think using the spells and calling it something else tends to be the easiest pass I've seen others have no issue with. "Sure, you can use similar powerful healing magic, but don't call yourself so and so class because that's technically not allowable according to the lore." Which does make sense in that it would be strange for the Elementals to suddenly be cool with a ton of White Mages running around.

Dear Black Mage, Hi! I know you're really eager to run forward and grab that Minotaur in Fractal. When the Scholar is buffing the party. And then you seemed surprised when we all died because you interrupted her cast, turned the boss toward her, and when it almost immediately swiped her to death, did it again. Immediately. You didn't accidentally run in. You stopped at the door, and then turned on slow walk, and walked into the Minotaur. We got another Black Mage after you who didn't pull ahead of me to try and tank everything (every pull in the dungeon pre-Minotaur), or constantly spam Flare and otherwise not really DPS the mobs down. Please go die in a fire. - Signed, your irritated Tank.

I find it hard to pin down a specific fear for my main, because she's lived a while, seen a lot of things, done a lot, and what rattles her is more deeply emotional than tangible physical fears. Liviana is scared to death of mites. They're large, and have a lot of legs, and all of her no. She runs, throws things, screams like a little girl and generally tries to put as many yalms between herself and the mites as humanly possible. If she was the WoL, she'd make it as far as the Gridania quest where you go into Tam Tara, find out about the Diremites, and immediately retire. I don't think she'll ever get over the fear, and while she'll eventually be able to do it, it'd probably be with huge anime tears in her eyes with someone else forcing her to not run away by binding her legs to the floor, or something similar. I'd have to think hard on my other characters, but Livi's fear is really stark and immediate and pops out very vividly in my head because of how utterly terrified she is of them. I'm still trying to figure out if there's a specific why, or if it's just because of how they look, but either way, just.. nope.

Again, with a server where so many people have alts, they, the player, could already know how those quests go. So they already know how the class plays, how it works when grinding, general basis on how the skills work and look. Just.. not on that low level character, is all. It doesn't mean they lack the knowledge, just that you can't see the knowledge OOCly on their character to know if they did or not, that's all.

This much at least I can agree with. Glioca makes candies, and I know personally how to make the type of candy she does (have made it before quite a bit myself), so I generally have the knowledge of how she does it, and can play it out well enough that someone else could technically follow those instructions and realistically make candy if they got a recipe. But that just requires knowing how, not leveling Culinarian.

Using the system mechanics is just as implausible. Your character can't see my level. Your character shouldn't treat mine a certain way because of level, the same way mine can't see your level. You just are what you RP that you are. I ran across a 50 Ninja in full AF, whose AF had been glamored into the trashy shepards tunic and worn pants. They passed as a commoner, but they obviously had training as a Ninja, and were a Ninja in disguise. I'd have no way of knowing that IC, and would be metagaming if I tried to state otherwise about their stance/etc when they gave nothing away. Glioca uses the Rainbow Shirt, hempen pants, sabatons, rimless glasses, and no shield when IC, and represents herself as a Mystic Knight, someone who combines spellcraft and swordplay. There is no current in-game representation of it, but Mystic Knight is canon in the Final Fantasy universe elsewhere, and was I want to say used similarly as a Rune Fencer in XI. Does this mean I can't use it in game? Despite the fact I think it's an interesting type of character and an interesting fighting style? That's very limiting and means I have to be one of the current character classes, none of which wholly fit her character concept. Going into the bit about characters in fancy armor, even the low-leveled NPC Sultansworn wear the Paladin AF as a uniform. Including those less skilled than the captain of the Sultansworn. They're a more untrained individual in fancy armor. I point you to the newest Armorsmith quest. Blanstyr, the Roe we fought against in a smithing contest looks great in the armor he makes for himself, but has absolutely no skill and is saved by a party of low-level adventurers out in the fields around Lower La Noscea. Armor/level doesn't make skill, it just helps in the game mechanic sense. Similarly, in an RP fight, a more heavily armored character might have an advantage against a non-armored character. Unless of course you're fighting a mage who sets your armor alight with fire and boils you out of it, but that's a whole other kettle of fish. Either way, I think you get where I was going with that. We don't currently know what classes originated in what areas. We have some ideas based on Xaela lore (Dazkar are archers, for example), but Ninja can only be obtained by learning about it from NPC's from Doma. Reversing the above point, should non-Doman Ninja be dismissed as lore-breaking? Even if their character traveled to Othard as part of their backstory? But if we're going strictly off what we see in the game as far as classes and levels, that contradicts believing things not represented in the game. That's why there are so many issues. Picking and choosing means that you want to dismiss certain concepts and embrace other concepts, and while that's great on a personal level, that limits your RP and can potentially cause you to blow someone's cover, for example, if they're doing a certain thing with their character ICly and you make a comment about them not being a threat, or being overly skilled because of their gear. If that low level character is strong but slumming it (max level on another toon but representing a different class because of appearance gear), or if that high level character is game-strong but totally unskilled in RP Voidsent RP is actually supported by lore and not breaking it, provided the character is possessed (most commonly seen). We see it in the Haukke Manor questline with Lady Amandine, and it's referenced in the Thaumaturge questline when Cocobusi is possessed by a voidsent as part of the quest chain. I understand that things like this are personal preference, but at the same time, if I was the RPer you derailed, I know I'd be upset. Especially because someone I was trying to interact with was metagaming on me. Most of us as players would be incensed if someone was attempting to metagame in an RP with us, but for some reason, OOC levels seems to be an acceptable place to metagame at for a lot of players, and I actually find that kind of disturbing.

-snip- Its no problem. I had a feeling after I posted it, that this phrase would cause some confusion. I should have better clarified what I meant. First of all, you're right. We the players are ultimately engaged in a game of pretend, whether RPing or not. The phrase "let's pretend" was used for lack of a better phrase, but I really meant it within the context of being IC. When performing a wholly text-based RP, it seems to me as if the characters themselves are playing a game of "let's pretend." Like they came up to each other and one said, "Pretend I'm swinging my sword at you" or something similar. It just makes me think of the characters themselves as if they are engaged in a child's game of pretend, chasing each other around, swinging invisible swords, and making swooshing and clanging noises. It all just seems a bit silly to me. I hope this helps clarify what I meant. Also, your reaction pics made me laugh.:lol: The thing is, that MMO RP isn't all that much different from text-based RP. It's similar to my tabletop games as well, because I often let levels slide around when a player comes to me with a really good character concept (someone in one of my DM'd games is playing a princess who happens to be level three right now). You pretend to be something you aren't, and represent it in type because the MSQ/assigned story doesn't fit anything outside a particular niche (Warrior of Light from a far-away land not anywhere in the current city-states, like Gegenji pointed out). There are currently a lot of character concepts seen in RP that aren't really represented in the game. Doman's, for example, would have to just be Ninja's, and would be pidgeonholed into that class because as far as we know, only Ninja/Shinobi come from Doma. I haven't seen much representation of other classes from Doma. But I've seen other Doman RPer's who are other classes, and use those classes as a representation of that other class (Gladiator for a swordsman, or Dark Knight come to mind). You'd also have to dismiss a character who is void-touched or voidsent, because those aren't things we can technically represent through our characters and levels. There are a lot of character concepts that you'd end up having to handwave away using this mindset, because either the players behind the screen just don't have time to level, or, like it was said way earlier in the thread, their main PvE character is on another server, and they primarily come to Balmung for the RP, not the PvE. Viewing OOC character strength (and note that they call this OOC achivement in the thread title for a reason) as an indicator of IC power level has always seemed rather.. Well.. let's just call a spade a spade. Using OOC achivement to determine IC power level is technically what you'd call metagaming, because metagaming is using out of character knowledge (I know your character is level 10 because I targeted you and saw it OOCly) in an in-character context (My character won't take you serious despite the fact you say you're an active gladiator who has been in the arena for a few seasons, and are wearing gladiator gear and a sword, because I saw that you're level 10).

Since I came to FFXIV in August of last year, I think the one thing that has stuck out the most for me about XIV is actually the community. I can go anywhere on any of my toons, even Glioca, whose former "background" tends to turn people away a bit. And I still have no difficulty finding people willing to role-play with me. Compared to some of the communities I've come from, this community has a lot of open-minded players, and it makes me glad to see that from the perspective of another player. There's a niche for everyone. It makes it easy for new players to try and jump into an interaction if they want to. Coming from games like Rift and EverQuest II, where everything felt very closed off and segregated if you weren't part of so-and-so's crowd, that's fantastic to see. The other thing I love about this place is what I see in the Quicksand, and I think Edgar mentioned it before. The place feels alive. I wish there was more open-world RP in other areas, but it's nice to just feel like I'm in a living world. The interaction all over the place, even in Ishgard it's starting up, makes the world feel like it breathes and moves, and that's down to the community. The other thing is that even if we don't like something, we're often willing to agree to disagree and keep moving and playing. We don't let it slow us down, not to such a degree that it brings someone's RP to a grinding halt if they don't agree with someone else.

I have three Elezen, three Au Ra, one Hyur, and one Roegadyn. As far as racial diversity between them, two are Wildwood and related (Glioca and Aelden), one is Wildwood, but as I've not RP'd her yet or written up extensive background on her, I might modify her to be Duskwight, her name would work for either race. My Au Ra are spread with one Raen, and two Xaela. My Hyur is a Midlander, and my Roegadyn is a Hellsguard.

The main reason I used glamour is because at the time, a lot of people weren't willing to go 'Okay, so your avatar looks like this, but your character is actually this, cool.' Had that been the case, it would have just been a case of her looking like one thing visually, and being another thing in actuality. One of the main reasons I played off the glamour is because of what was acceptable at the time for anyone else I interacted with. Given that I only role-played her with my husband's alt for the most part, I could just as easily pawn that off and make her have been the real deal the whole time. But on the off-chance I went to interact with someone, I needed a reasoning, and that was, as A'rk said, simply the most common. Most people play Paladin's as Free Paladins, instead of Sultansworn, because that's become the most common, since they 'opened' training up to Adventurers. It doesn't make their character uncreative to be a Free Paladin, just that's the most common explanation for it.

I think that's why I went with the glamour bit on my soon-to-be-renamed Ninja. She was RP'd very little, in a small circle, most of whom are no longer active in game, and primarily with my husband's alt, who 'always knew she was x, and just kept quiet about it', during private interactions, he'd make out as if he was jerking on her tail, or commenting on her horns, so it isn't a jarring change. And once I knew that I was going to be changing her come Heavenward, I stopped RPing her out in public. I can appreciate people who want to make major changes, and I try to roll with it the best I can. Another explanation that I haven't seen people use much is the Echo. We've seen with the Ascians that it's entirely possible to use Echo to jump bodies. And the Echo isn't just restricted to the Warrior of Light. Minfilia has it, and she's not a WoL, as far as I know, and the Ascian's have it. And it has potential, as long as people aren't claiming Hydaelyn's blessing at the same time. That would more be full WoL potential, and likely seen as a form of god-modding by most of this community. That also opens up a whole new area of role-play, because suddenly this person is in this new body, and trying to adapt. One of the things that maybe irks me most is people who transition to a new body with a drastically different mass and form and are totally comfortable inside that new body. There's no period of awkwardly getting used to their new height, or horns/ears/tails (where applicable).

I like the example of using a glamour, and then once the glamour is gone, using the fantasia to represent the 'unglamoured' state. Or crazy alchemy. Or aetherical screw-ups. Or magical boo-boos. I recently fantasia'd two of my characters. One was glamoured and was always that way, the other died, and I'm using him for his character levels, because I don't feel like leveling another character up past 20. If someone can make it really plausible, then it doesn't bother me too much. If the character is in the new body, like with lifestream shenanigans or something similar.

That seems a lot more reasonable than some comments I've seen about the use of level in judgment. That said, it's going to be hilarious when I finish leveling my alt, and people see her as a level 60 monk. My goal is to make her the inverse of a powerful low-level character. She's going to be a high leveled character who's just plain bad. The 'skilled adventurer' assessment with her would be completely wrong, if someone presumed that about her. I think that's part of why I wondered about the level bit. Glioca's only a moderate swordswoman (she can bash other things and not hurt herself), and a much better healer, having had far more experience with it. The alt I mentioned, Liviana, I plan on spending a week soon and grinding her out to 50, at least, but she's just so terrible at fighting, because she has almost no hand-eye coordination. She's not likely to pick a fight with anyone, and would sooner run from battle, but there's still that imbalance if people look at her level and don't just interact with her first to realize certain things about her. Maybe it's the fact that I've played so many years free-form before MMO RP was a thing, that I have such a drastically (apparently) different view than others. There were no such things as levels for gauging character strength, just how well people wrote. Thank you for being so candid, and explaining it a bit better though. I will say I tend to like your method better than most.

So, on giving this further thought, I have a genuine inquiry, in regards to power level versus back story versus character level. When Ninja first released, a friend of mine decided he wanted a level 50 Ninja, but he didn’t want that Ninja to be his main character, who had a fully fleshed out back story. Instead, he opted to level up a new character, who he gave a very cursory backstory to. We spent ten minutes sussing out that character’s story based on what bit of lore about Ninja we had, and off he went, leveling that toon. Within less than two days, he’d hit 50, completed all of the MSQ, and was in full Syrcus Tower gear, thanks to my queueing with him as my main, who was at the time a White Mage. I made a character at the same time, also a Ninja. I spent a good week working on her backstory,history, personality, character concepts. During that time I managed to level her to 30. She’s still 30, because my FC was lacking a dedicated tank, and that meant going back to my main to level her up, because it was needed at the time. I role-played that character more than a dozen times, and always played that she was a ninja from Doma, who was sent ahead with her partner, and the pair of them had been slumming it as pugilists, trying to expand their skills and not show off the fact they had and knew more than they appeared to. I spent a week getting her to 30, as I was working on her story. I didn’t feel a need to rush her to max level, and still don’t, even now that she’s an Au Ra, and her story adjusted accordingly (only minor tweaking was needed). Given that my friends Ninja is/was 50, and my Ninja was only 30, but had a richer backstory and was more fleshed out as an individual, would he honestly be taken more seriously as a character, just based on his OOC level? In comparative time spent, even though I leveled much slower, I put more cumulative work into that character, especially in role-play. Would I then be told I hadn’t dedicated enough to her because I spent more time RPing her than I did playing her in PvE? Further, Freelance, I don’t think that just a look (at someone’s character level) can be a good judge. Glioca, for example, carries herself very nonchalantly, and looking at her, people would have a hard time thinking she was a swordswoman who also used conjury to supplement herself as she fought. She’s usually in pants and a loose top, and rarely wears full plate, the closest she's come is now that she's in armor plated boots, but cloth everything else. She looks more like a bum/pirate right now than she does a skilled paladin, but that’s precisely what her character levels say she is. Her character levels also no longer reflect that she’s more skilled in conjury than she is with sword fighting. How would you gauge that disparity just by looking at my cumulative character levels? Would your character assume she’s a better swordswoman than anything else? If (huge if) we got into a fight,would you decry me using conjury one-handed, as she often does, with her rune-covered sword as a kind of focus to cast? Would using more than one set of skills be considered god-moding? At what point do we cease to look at character levels and look solely at someone's role-play skill as a gauge of how powerful they are? Are we all just too bitter because of past experiences, and letting those experiences cloud our judgments a players, and therefore shut ourselves out of potential interactions that could be fun just because someone doesn't 'measure up' on an OOC level? I’m not going for a sarcastic angle here, and apologize if anyone reads it as such, but I’m honestly curious what the answers to these questions are. Only a little sorry for the wall of text. (Edited for formatting because wtf forum, y u do dis to me?)

The term special snowflake is very derogatory to players who want a unique concept instead of a cookie cutter NPC type, and I find it rather insulting that people keep throwing it around like using the term toward someone else makes them somehow a better player. Just because someone doesn't want to be an everyman doesn't make them a special snowflake. Not every character has to be an everyman. Everyman characters, yes, they can be fun when done well, I have a few myself, but playing that, all the time, every day, is like slice of life RP. To a lot of players, it's boring as hell. If I want to deal with slice of life, I'll log off the game and go live my real life. I play an MMO for the same reason I RP - the fantastic, the things that can't be done in real life, the things that are interesting, or intriguing, interacting with people who are unique and different. You could consider anyone who is beyond moderately skilled to be a special snowflake, because those aren't the status quo type of character. The status quo are characters who are ordinary, and maybe they have rich personalities and backgrounds, but they're still the status quo. That's why they're the everyman. And I do enjoy interacting with characters like that. But it should be my choice to play something like that. Players shouldn't have it shoved down their throat that 'You either play this type of character or you're a special snowflake and that's bad.' It does nothing but try to punish people who want to be creative and inventive. It makes them feel like garbage for trying to play something beyond the everyman. It's why I never use that word, even when describing the most god-moddy character in existence. And why is that considered metagaming? Does this mean that every Ishgard player who hasn't yet reached Ishgard can't say anything about the current state of the City-State, despite the fact they're from Ishgard, just because they're not there in the MSQ? The MSQ doesn't reflect your character being from Ishgard. Or Ul'dah, or Gridania, or Limsa Lominsa. In all of the quests, you're from somewhere far away, and no one knows where, you just happened to end up in those places on a wagon drawn by Chocobo. You're a visitor. Those places aren't your home, or point of origin. So by that logic, you can't play someone from any of those city-states. Because your MSQ/side-quests say you're not from there. Again, there are inherent flaws with making the OOC mechanics and MSQ an integral part of RP. Namely that one was not made to fit into the other.

If you saw that as me talking down to you, I'm sorry you misinterpreted what I said. But it beggars the point. If I can be level 60 and play a weak character, why can't I be level 1 and play a strong character? Isn't that a bit of a double standard on the part of the RPer? "You have to be game strong to be RP strong." Don't you then have to be game weak to be RP weak? And I don't mean hiding your level, I mean genuinely a weak character, whose player leveled them up solely for certain gear because they like the styles, or because they enjoy the PvE aspect of the game, but don't want their in-game level to reflect in their RP? Also, Kellach, what about on an alt? If I play an alt whose slain a primal, I do know how the fights went, because I did them on my main, and re-watched the cutscene numerous times. Does that experience count for nothing for that character, if I happen to not want to level that character past a certain level before I start RPing with them? And considering the level cap has increased, does that mean I have to be 60 in all of my classes to be strong as those things? Is 50 no longer sufficient because that's no longer end game? Where do we stop counting OOC achievement as part of our writing exercises power level? Do I have to level Culinarian to 60 before Glioca continues making food? What about Weaving? There's an inherent problem in considering power level in a game where certain elements of the game achievement changes based on things like expansions, patches, and hotfixes.

People discredit legitimate effort put into PvE and PvP all the time. Look at this very poll. As of writing this, 57% of respondents say it isn't important at all, despite this being an MMORPG where PvE and PvP are the focus. I'm not saying one is less equal to the other. I'm saying there needs to be a balance (contrary to what the majority of roleplayers think), and if someone wants to take the title of King Badass, they need to prove it both creatively and within the mechanics of the game. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke up peoples' asses. If you walk up and try to tell me you're powerful just because you're in Demon armor from World of Darkness, Glioca's going to look you square in the face and laugh her ass off. For all she knows, that's just some cheap replica, and you're some scrub punk trying to make yourself look tougher than you are. Now, if you role-play out being powerful and strong, and your description is good, she's more likely to believe it. All a higher level means is better looking gear and more gearsets to use for RP cosmetic purposes. That's it. Period. PvE and PvP skill doesn't equal RP skill. It just doesn't. One is smashing buttons and knowing when to get the hell out of an AoE attack. The other is a creative writing exercise where you're interacting with different people and writing a story together. It's like telling someone that writes fiction for a living that until they write a non-fiction book, they're not a writer. The two have nothing to do with one another.

I don't expect it for crafters. If someone wants to say they're a good chef, and then they buy the pieces of food they 'give' someone off the market board, instead of making it themselves? Or just describe it? That's fine. The crafting system isn't really all that realistic either. As long as a player can describe the process of what they're making, that's fine for me. I'd rather see someone explain out the process of stitching a coat, than I would to see them hit a couple of buttons and hand me a player-made piece of gear. The first would make for an interesting role-play, as Glioca likes watching other artisans practice their craft. The second, to me, speaks of laziness in a RPer. When Glioca makes her candies, I describe everything out, and don't bother making Pearl Chocolates with my 50 Culinarian, because that isn't role-play, that's game mechanics. And the two are most decidedly not the same thing.

I'm one of those people who trash talks. That said, someone usually has to do something so shitty it makes me genuinely furious in order to push me to that limit. Most of the problems I've had with people in the community at all have been strictly OOC drama, and those were mostly players I migrated into 14 with. Since I've joined, I don't think I've had a bit of drama that's been genuinely IC that's caused me to rant/vent about another player. However, those players I have had issues with, I've warned those who I've come in contact with who get 'close' to them. Usually something along the lines of "There was this drama, so be careful you don't get entrenched in it." Otherwise, I'm not willing to say anything behind someone's back that I won't say to their face. That probably makes me seem like a pretty nasty individual, but I just don't believe in saying it about them if I'm not willing to say it in front of them. That said, even my OOC issues, I've just kind of given the shoulder lately. Even the worst drama I had wasn't worth holding on to, because it limited my interactions with people because I was avoiding certain players. So I just started playing where I wanted, when I wanted, and I've been having a lot of fun with it. That said, I understand where OP is coming from. People tend to be pretty toxic to each other during any kind of conflict. It happens, it really does.

No, no we always can't. A lot of people, myself included, don't believe in Role-play on Skype because that's a strictly OOC environment. When I'm on Skype, I'm myself, and not my characters. That said, yeah, skipping out on a scheduled raid for RP sucks. I always try to wrap up RP before a scheduled run.

I'm of the opinion that OOC game mechanics should be their own thing, and RP skill and player experience should be the most important tidbit to pay attention to. My character is a world traveler (or was, she's settled on Eorzea as home), and came into the game with her previous experience. That said, initially, she was very poorly adept at using the skills on Eorzea, despite her experiences in other places. Even cutting down that aspect of her character, Meallaire, which is who Glioca was before she 'changed' after the Calamity, was over 200 years old thanks to Aether boo-boos. She had experience. Just because my character level was 10, that shouldn't negate either the work I'd put into her backstory, nor the work I'd put into her as a character. That said, I do understand what you mean, and from a D&D perspective, character level being equated with experience is perfectly understandable. That's how a character grows, and you have life/world experience as you adventure and complete tasks, interact with the world, etc. In this case, those interactions are strictly with other players, and not with the pre-set NPC's designed by the Dungeon Master. As such, you have to account for time role-played as the equivalent of your character's 'experience', rather than the game mechanics displayed by popping Cure II after a particularly riveting post. The perspective is definitely something I understand, but not something I can agree with, because you're basically cutting out a section of role-players who come to the game strictly to role-play, and maybe level their character only casually, and so aren't as high level as others. There are some good low-level gear sets that look good on characters, and so being forced to max level in order to display how 'strong' you are isn't very fair. Especially for those who spend most of their time RPing, and very little time involved in the PvE aspect of the game due to time constraints, etc. I think there has to be that suspension of disbelief to afford fairness to those who prioritize one aspect of the game (RP) over the other aspects of the game (PVE, PVP).

I know my main ended up in Ishgard as a sellsword, once she realized that hostilities between the two groups were escalating (as per 2.5 story stuff). She and her husband also own a shop in Ul'dah, so she's also made a few business contracts while there. Over all, she's just found a number of reasons to be past the gates. Some of my other characters, though, they'd have to literally be sent there, or drug there as part of a RP with other people, as they either have no interest in the conflict, or wouldn't see a benefit to getting involved on either side.

How long has it been since I wrote in this journal? I feel it has been quite some time indeed. I perhaps question my decision to refrain from writing, and will instead only say that a lack of lettering from me has meant good things in my life. More importantly, it has meant that I have found better pursuits than simply writing. I am living, with no greater need to record my life. Or perhaps that is where my folly comes in, and I should have been writing all along. A'rklonn and I finally had our marriage ceremony. It was a small and casual thing, with only a few people in attendance. I had invited fair few friends, but the timing of the ceremony, it was later than intended, and so few arrived, and with little more than family around us, we restated our joining bond. The ceremony was pretty, but I feel no more bound to him than I was before, though now we have a formal contract that can serve as proof in the varied lands that recognize the ceremony as legitimate. [Here, ink lays in several blotches, barely visible words beneath it, hastily marked out.] I suppose I could say that these last few months have been nothing but idle hands with no real work set to them, but that would be untrue. Much and more has happened, but little I feel like gracing these pages with.