Dis

This is such a touchy topic for so many reasons. Glioca isn't your typical Elezen, because Glioca isn't really from Eorzea (complicated story), but she considers the world her home, however she won't change her entire being to conform to a race when she finds those types of limitations usually hold her back from interactions with what could possibly be very good people whose race just doesn't line up with her own for whatever reason. She's very open-minded, and accepting of other races (except Miqo'te, of which she has distinct dislike of, due to things that have happened in her semi-recent past), and of varied sexualities, identities, and preferences. But, not all of my characters are so chill. I do think that people shouldn't always play up to a certain stereotype of a character archetype, because that limits their ability to stretch their creativity, but even those types of characters (ones who hammer right along the lines of the lore) have their place in making a fully fleshed out and expansive world, especially in terms of a setting where personal interaction is a huge part of establishing a character.

Glioca's Journal Red Leather Tome

[ Whatever entry had lain here has since been torn out, only the jagged edge of a page a remainder of what had been here. ]

This simple tome is thick and well-worn. The pages have been thumbed through a number of times, and crinkle gently when turned. Its pages are bound in a rich red leather cover, with ornamental silver bindings at the corners, and silver leaf along the edge of each page, as one might find in a grimoire. An elegant rune on the cover serves as an arcane lock which keeps the tome sealed tight against prying eyes. An elaborate quill made from a larger-than-usual crow’s feather rests beside the book, a sealed pot of black ink beside it. Opening the pages, one would find simple words on the first page, the writing neat but sprawling. [align=center] The Personal Journal Of [/align] The following page is covered with small but elaborate drawings, most of things not commonly found on Eorzea, or that many Eorzeans would have no knowledge of, others of things more common, such as various creatures. All around the margins, the pages are decorated with interwoven roses, vines that present a solid border around the page. At the bottom of that second page, in much neater and smaller script: "Musings and theories, formula and fact. Herein lies the muttering incoherence of my thoughts, that I might someday categorize them." The first few pages thereafter contain long entries, with very few words coherent, much of it written in cipher and a multi-lingual shorthand meant to be confusing to any but the writer. Beyond that, more recently dated entries flow instead in simple script.

Glioca, just doin' that magic.

A'rklonn and Glioca, sharing a moment, contemplating on their past year, and making plans for the future.

My main character is actually a world-traveler, and a very old one at that. Despite her age, she's still a novice in many things (physical combat, especially), and a jack-of-all-trades, so she never really focuses on any one thing, except perhaps magic, which she's usually skilled at. Glioca is a character that I've had for about thirteen, almost fourteen years now, and actually started as a one paragraph NPC in an old game called Dark Ages (NOT DAoC, which is an entirely different game), and when I left the game, I took the concept and name with me, wrote an AU history as to why she left her world, and have been adventuring with her all over the multiverse, from Sci-Fi to High Fantasy. While she's technically classed as a Power in D&D (where her main profile exists), she exists in a number of places, though she doesn't always have all of her memories, and most often is born or reborn as someone entirely new on a world, though there is still a retention of a few key character traits, even with a new name, and the main personality and ability of the core character lies dormant. I've played her in a number of MMO's, and generally work to fit her into the lore as it exists, rather than just slapping a name on her and saying 'hey, I world-traveled her over here, so everything about her is totally identical!', because that just isn't the case. She's been a number of things over the years across the genres I've played her in, and her only true constant is that she's a healer, and will warp whatever technology and magic she can come across to stretch the boundaries of what is currently plausible on a world, because she generally comes to care about its people and usually wants to help them. Further expanding on that, each world is considered, because she's a power, to have a set of rules that have to be followed strictly in order for her to exist on that world: never using too much power at the risk of destroying her own body and banishing her from that world, never giving someone too much knowledge about other worlds lest they think her crazy, and rarely if ever bringing an individual with her from a past world that she has visited, because not everyone is capable of withstanding the method she uses to traverse dimensions and the planes. On Eorzea, Glioca is primarily a scholar (the scholastic type, not just the class), and healer, who sometimes picks up weapons to learn more. She has a vast well of knowledge she draws from, which sometimes gives her an advantage in terms of her abilities and skills, but for the most part, she always tries to blend in on whatever world she's on: one part for not making herself seem insane, though it sometimes slips through in conversations and she's viewed as eccentric, which she often played up, and another part so that interactions with her are maintained as something fun and she doesn't really lord over everyone else, unless that's her actual goal, usually only when made angry, or insulted. She tends to call everyone 'young', and refers to them as 'childlike', even grown adults, which for her part is age, but most tend to see it as one more sign of her eccentricities. Not ironically, one of the few people she told about her method of travel called her insane, despite acknowledging her skill, and chalked it up to her being a crazy mage. Which made for some great RP interaction. The biggest thing that people find implausible about her is usually her body-hopping, that being that she generally finds a body that is recently deceased, houses her soul inside it, and maintains a presence there. On Eorzea, this is explained as a form of the Echo, which likens her to an Ascian, though she actually isn't, and will only possess generally unimportant deceased, typically a last-of-their-line type of thing, usually from large battles or during times of war. She spends her time on whatever world she's on attempting to learn as much as she can from it, and experiencing the life there. Her actual reason more recently is finding a place among the vast realms that she and her family can call home. All of that being said, I have other characters that fit inside the lore, most of my other characters, in fact, were created in-lore and meant to be entirely lore-friendly. One or two of my characters work for Glioca doing various tasks, and at least one of them thinks she's a crazy old lady, while the other just avoids her as much as possible, and still another kind of see's her as a mother figure because she took in him and his sister. Regarding the points Hiro brought up, I've never actually understood the dislike that some people seem to have from world-traveling characters, though I have seen the character concept done, if not wrong, poorly. If a character brings in too much information from other sources and doesn't find a way to moderate how it is used it, it can create problems during character interactions with them, but again, gives the opportunity for disbelief, or for a character hedging out into the idea that travel is possible from realm to realm. Fitting Glioca into a world thanks to the lore is one of the most fun parts of bringing her to anywhere she ends up. There are others that world-travel that I've encountered, and it's great fun running into those characters as both Glioca, and my other characters who express various levels of disbelief about their story. I find nothing distasteful about a world-traveling character, quite the contrary. I find it interesting, especially when an individual provides their reasoning for that character being on a particular world. That said, if others don't want to interact with her because of her history and backstory, that's fine too, and I don't fault them for that. Everyone has a certain playstyle they avoid, and that's their own choice. All I ever ask is that people don't dismiss all of my characters just because of one particular character with a specific backstory. That actually seems to be a larger problem in some communities than others, and I'm thankful I haven't run into that here in the Final Fantasy community. 2016 Edit: Oh, how very wrong I was about this. I only hoped it was true. The reality, sadly, was far different.

@#)*&$! I may have nerded all over the floor over the Astrologian outfit with the veil. Just a little bit.

Glioca: Ancient Wanderer Zephyrine: Secret Keeper Dark: Devilish Charmer Ele'sear: Unwavering Protector Qata'li: Playful Spirit Liliane: Fanatical Faith

I'm a little too attached to my main character as an Elezen to name-change her. That said, the Au Ra look really elegant and I'm looking forward to digging my teeth into the lore about them before I go off and make a new character that's of that race. But they seem interesting, if appearance are anything to go by, so I'm eagerly looking forward to the ability to make one. Kind of glad now that I haven't actively RP'd all of the toons I've made, so I'm not at all guilty about deleting an unplayed toon to make a new race/class combo.

Right, so, I wanted to post some kind of 'hey, I'm here' thread when I first joined the forum. Except I'm rubbish at that and usually spend all of my time lurking until I'm finally prompted to post something. But I decided I may as well go ahead and make some sort of formal introduction for myself now that I've posted on the forum somewhere. So, hello. I'm primarily a role-player, enjoy a lot of PvE, I PvP on rare occasions (twice so far, thank you queue times), and in general am an odd, and sometimes abrasive person. I've played on a number of MMO's during the years, and will hopefully be making FFXIV (Balmung) the last permanent game I take up residence in. I come paired with my husband, also a gamer/role-player on Balmung, who almost never posts on forums. So, yes. Introduction completed, I suppose.

I find this entire statement to be laughable. When someone makes a comment about not liking the way a particular race is portrayed, they're suddenly 'racist' versus that race (a non-issue considering it is a fantasy race in a game and not a legitimate race in the actual world and the last I checked, people are permitted to like or dislike any player-race they so see fit), and attacked with a mob mentality by the players in the LS. Despite the leader on at the time supposedly not agreeing with the individuals doing the attacking, they were justified. After an argument that occurred with my husband, and not myself, I logged out still in the LS, and logged back in to find myself kicked from the linkshell without cause or provocation. I did not speak up in defense of my husband except to state that the types of players we encountered were of a type we weren't fond of, and that had created the bias that he displayed. I was laughed at and told to stop playing in the Quicksand. I said nothing myself of the bias, save that I wasn't fond of it, and was disgusted, as another player also expressed, at the behavior of some of those in the LS. I mentioned in private conversation to Ilwe that I stayed in LS and contributed only occasionally because that was when I felt like chiming in, and that I could do so and actually contribute to the conversation. After this, I wouldn't plan to return to the linkshell even if invited, nor do I recommend anyone else join. As stated in this post, you can get all announcements from the forum itself, and the group tends to adopt a mob mentality more than they do finding a middle ground. And here I had hoped my first post on the forum would be much more positive. I will say, I also thought I would be asked to leave, not simply kicked when I was offline, and had no chance to ask why, or be told why I was being removed.