Tivahlt

Yes, it was supposed to be Bloodscythe, I wrote that at 5 am so my proofreading was pretty much nonexistent. Sorry about that. Also, the "Grimm" actually comes from the Brothers Grimm. I grew up on those stories and I based Tiv's personality on their recurring "optimistic and kind of stupid, but somehow finds the right solution" character type. I can see what you're saying, though. EDIT: Navarre, I think your name is very nice. It rolls off the tongue fairly easily and I can definitely see a hyur having that name. It makes me think of a scholar from Ul'dah for some reason. 9/10! EDIT EDIT: Sterne, I like your name a lot too. the first name especially looks and sounds very cool. I'm not sure where he got the "Evans" from for his pseudonym, though. Sterne makes sense for obvious reasons, but Evans just doesn't seem to fit. For the real name, 8/10. For the pseudonym, 6/10.

T'kyiah Soren - 7.5. The first name is awesome and fits the lore, but the last name sounds very bland to me. Chiané Naevioux - no points for making me use a special character! D: Nah just kidding, I'd say it's a 6. It's a good name, but it doesn't look like it's pronounced the way you explained it, at least to me. It looks like the last name would be pronounced "NAH-eh-Vioh" or "NAY-vioh" and the other last name would be "nar-dahn-TAY." But then, I'm not French. I expect all of you to tear my names a new one, so if I get any pansy reviews I'm going to be sad. Mali Boodscythe - is a Seawolf Roegadyn using a pseudonym. Her real name is Skaenwyda Ganzsaldwyn. Roegadyn names sure are a mouthful. Tivahlt Grimmgeist - is a Moonkeeper Miqo'te from a far off land, with a name that is so lore-breaking it hurts. But I love him all the same~ Kadezan Kanazan - is a Dunesfolk Lalafell and THE MOST ADORABLE CHARACTER I HAVE EVER MADE. He's so cute and tiny I just want to squeeze the life out of him.

I love this benchmark soooooo much, I've been doing silly things with it. First off, Mali:

Put in my two cents. So sad that Sea Wolf girls get no love D: Only 1.25%? We need more amazon pirates guys! Step it up!

This is a really cool idea! I like the shamanistic story for Bea, it's awesome. It makes sense that there would be an intricate story behind it, too. You make me feel so unoriginal. Anyway, let me try... There's more info on all of Mali's scars in her wiki page, but the things you can actually see from the character creator are a scar on her left cheek, some red warpaint, and a red eye (she wasn't born with heterochromia, so I'm counting it). The scar on her left cheek is from her first attempt at swinging an axe...considering where else she could have ended up cutting herself, especially if she had swung a few inches lower, having a scar on her face is probably the preferable outcome. The red eye is from some botched conjury/white magic; her eye was hit pretty badly in the battle of Carteneau (where she also got a lot of scars that aren't visible...gimme some body scar options, square!), and she wasn't able to be healed before she was flung through time. When she popped out in the present and finally got some healing, it was too late for any of her wounds to be "good as new," but not so late that she was pushing up daisies. The eye is pretty much stuck in a permanent state of subconjunctival hemorrhage (DO NOT click that link if you are faint of heart, it's some major eye squick), but with the blood concentrated in her iris rather than the sclera because magic is weird (and I couldn't have an all-red eye option). Out of character, I wanted her to be noticeably damaged from the battle but I didn't like most of the facial scar options (and the only one I liked already had a plot point), so I got creative. But if we ever get body modifications, then Mali is going to have ALL THE SCARS! /meme The warpaint is just something she picked up from adventuring for a really long time. It doesn't get much more complicated than that. There's no special significance, she just thought that it was useful for both intimidating her enemies (and giving off a "tough" aura off the battlefield) and obscuring her features to make her less recognizable, at least to certain people, that didn't hinder her sight like a mask or a hood. After putting on various designs almost daily for nine years it has become so much of a habit that she feels uncomfortable if her face isn't painted. Of course she also has a certain big black tattoo on her back, but she doesn't like talking about that. tl;dr version: Everything on Mali is a result of fighting and/or adventuring. All of it. I don't think any of my other characters have facial markings, really...Tiv has some green-ish makeup to make him look more sickly, and that's about it. He technically has more stuff on his body but I'm gonna go ahead and say those don't count, like Mali's, since they aren't there in the game. :\ There's not much else I can say on this topic, really. I need to go make more characters with scars and make-up.

So much of this. I think it's actually kind of hilarious-in-a-good-way that a Japanese company (a country that is often stereotyped, for a reason, as xenophobic and full of misogyny) is leading the way in female and non-white characters in positions of power. Hell it's so great to see it at all, and it really says something about where humans as a whole are going, not just in video games but in every facet of life. Square Enix, keep doing that. It's awesome.

The calamity was not the cause of the time skip, that was caused by Louisoix (the old elezen man in the opening) calling down Althyk, the god of time, as a last-ditch attempt to save the adventurers with the Echo (long story short, they're special snowflakes. All adventurers are, which is why the out-of-body experience happens after character creation). Everyone else stayed in their present and had to work things out the hard way, and was affected by a sort of selective amnesia that erased the details of the time-skipped adventurers from their memory. They're aware that they existed and did great things, but they can't remember their faces, or names, or their relations to them. Supposedly only people that have the Echo remember them clearly because magic. So, basically, if you were a civilian or a non-adventurer soldier, you were not part of the time skip. You can play your character as one of the adventurers at the final battle (there are a few new players doing this) but they wouldn't just be "at the wrong place at the right time," they would have been fighting in the battle. We don't know what the state of the other parts of the planet are currently. We don't have any information on if they were affected or are aware of the situation in Eorzea, at least as far as I know. Until the dev team gives us an answer, I'm going to say "whatevs, if you make it work then it works." Technically certain races are centralized around certain areas (wildwood Elezens are usually in the Black Shroud/Gridania, Dunesfolk Lalafell are usually from Ul'dah) but there is no reason why your character can't come from wherever the hell you want. It's an age of exploration and commerce, all kinds of people move around and settle down in other places than their "home area." There aren't any known towns outside of the city-states, but there are small settlements and camps scattered throughout the outlying areas. It's not impossible to say that they came from one of those (or a similar small town, though that would be harder to justify) or, if their family is nomadic or live in specific areas that aren't on the map (Duskwight Elezen and caves, for instance) then it's easier to handwave. The only schools I've seen have been the guilds for classes and crafts. It's not impossible to say there may be other forms of schooling, but for the most part it looks like a medieval master-apprentice system. Parchment and writing utensils are probably common, given that it's the only other form of communication besides linkshells. Most people (at least, the important NPCs) are literate, so it would probably be easy to justify your character being literate and keeping journals, or writing stories.

This. If you don't have a PS1 or PS2 though, then I feel really really bad for you. The GBA versions are kind of pathetic, but at least they're free if you use emulators. If you have a PS3 you can buy 7-9 on PSN, which I would recommend because they are craaaaazy expensive in their original formats. Not sure about the pricing on X or XII, I still have them so I've never looked it up. XIII's price is pretty low now though, it's in that "not new enough to be expensive, but not old/unpopular enough to stop printing" phase.

Games I'm playing: FFIX mostly. I have it on my PSP (along with Silent Hill, FFVII, and Vagrant Story) so I usually play while watching TV or sitting in bed waiting for the meds to kick in. I have tons of games that I should be playing, but lately I've been on a big nostalgia kick. Maybe someday I'll play games that are less than ten years old. That's about as recent as I can afford... Games I'm looking forward to: MOFOING FFXIV. Other than that I'm kind of "meh" on most upcoming titles. Not like I can buy them anyway.

It's really easy if you switch to "view source" (the very last button in the post options up top.) After that, just put in: [spoiler]This is where your text and images go in the spoiler.[/spoiler] [spoiler=You can add titles to the spoiler too!]It's super easy.[/spoiler] When you preview the post, it should look like:

oh! I was unaware sorry... I didn't see it.... haha maybe i should look harder next time. It's cool, we're only human. ...or Miqo'te.

/em raises his/her hand.

Vashies I'm not sure if you're aware or not, but all of this information is already available on the RPC wiki. No offense, but I don't really understand the need for these threads.

Personally, I don't really think about the characters as "boring" or "snowflake" until I've made them, at which point I tweak them if they fall into either category. Instead, I just make a character that I would enjoy playing, or one that I think would have interesting (though not always positive) interactions with the world and with other characters. Sometimes I base them on a certain personality trait or stereotype (polite and soft-spoken, shy and awkward, loud and brash), or a key event that could greatly influence a character's personality (the loss of a loved one, or returning to a loved one after a long period apart, etc.), or some sort of weakness and/or strength (naturally gifted at magic but physically frail or even close to dying. Fears failure more than anything else, even death! A gifted fighter that can't resist a pretty face or puppy-dog eyes.) or just whatever interests me (I wanna be crazy! I wanna be a ninja! I wanna be evil! I want a bigass sword!) and then expand from there until I create something that has desires, needs, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, good and bad all mixed together. There is no "wrong" character trait, it's just a matter of how you play it. Granted I've spent a lot of time learning how to write (former English major and all) so it's easier for me to balance the "good" things (the Mary-sue-ifiers) and the "bad" things (Boring McBorington makers), but it really just comes down to, "do they have more than one or two dimensions?" and, "would this person exist in real life?" I mean, granted, I doubt I'd ever see a genuine Miqo'te walking down the street, but that's obviously not what I'm talking about. If it helps, then take traits from people you know, but try to keep that to a minimum. You can use traits from yourself even, but for the love of the twelve don't just make a self-insert. You're doing it wrong. This is not Sword Art Online. Also, something I like to use is the "Mary Sue Litmus Test" if I'm not sure the character is useable. It's not meant to be taken seriously by any means (there are lots of characters in the world of entertainment that would score high on these tests, but aren't Mary Sues) but it can help give you a frame of reference in both ways; is the character a Mary Sue, or are they so bland that they don't even register? I like...all of them? Aside from things like god-mode, or things that would be better suited to a kindergarten playground ("you can't hit me because I have a super awesome protect spell! Yeah well I have a sword that goes through protect spells because I channel aether through it!" I've never actually seen anything quite like that, but you get the idea) I've found that even the weirdest shit can be interesting to play with if done right. I've seen people break lore (I've done it once or twice myself) but make it work so well that I'd rather just take it as canon. I've seen people with borderline superpowers that balance it with believability. The key here is moderation, more than anything. Balance out the weird shit with more "normal" traits, or give some good reasoning for why it works. I've played with people whose characters were shy and not necessarily conducive to social interaction (a.k.a. RP) who were able to make that trait work and become an interesting mechanic. I've yet to find any "boring" characters, even the most unassuming of folks can be interesting. I can only think of one player waaaaaay back in 1.0 where I had a (rather brief) encounter with them that I didn't enjoy, and it was because they went god-mode. It wasn't a fault in the character, but a fault in the player. As a side note I think people also need to remember that conflict and bending (or even breaking) the rules is a good thing. both are things that drive stories, change characters, and sometimes rewrite the very fabric of "reality." Rules (or Lore in this case) always have exceptions, holes can be filled in many different ways. I'm not saying that everyone should just throw the lore out and do whatever they want, but I think characters that are made by playing around with the Lore, rather than using it as a strict set of rules that cannot be deviated from in any way, are more fun to interact with. They add a little bit of chaos to the mix, and I am a sucker for chaos. My most memorable recent RP was almost entirely spent arguing with and threatening other characters, and playing with characters that occasionally bent the "rules," and it was amazing. It let everyone show the depth of their characters and interact in complex and interesting ways, and learn new things both in and out of character. Every once in a while I see someone (not just in FFXIV, but in every RP avenue) get offended by things not going their way, or not being up to their "standards," rather than looking at the "story" as a whole and seeing why their way might not be the best. Never take yourself too seriously, even if your character is a very serious person. Everyone is human and imperfect, regardless of what their avatar might be. At the end of the day RP is just very slow, written improvisation, and there is something that every improv actor learns first before anything else: You never say "no," you always say "yes, and." In other words, just go with the flow! As long as the other player isn't going god-mode, at least. You can totally say "no" then. Because they're dumb.

My list of things to do on day one: Fix original!Mali's appearance (going from Miqo'te to Roegadyn...that's going to be strange to say the least) Fix original!Tiv's appearance (Female to male...much easier ) Grind the shit out of alt!Mali on Midgardsormr so I can rub it in my friends' faces. At this point I've seen the story up to level 20 about five times, I think I get the jist of it. Maybe on the second or third day I'll actually be able to make my Lalafella and play the game for fun. :dazed: