Arelian Solin

Monthly boomp! We're still super active and digging into 3.1! Second guild arc begins soon, too! Applications are still open and we're looking forward to meeting some of you!

Short little bump! We just wrapped up our first plot arc, and as such our recruitment is OPEN once more! Thank you to all of our current members for being super rad and helping to providing an awesome atmosphere to do the delectably devious things we like to do!

Hi Casden! I was directed here by Moonlit earlier this morning but just now am having a moment free to run over and give you a holler. To keep it brief, Middle Men is run by three Doman refugees--so to say they have a vested interested in helping others smuggle their way into Eorzea is an understatement. If you'd like to try and work something out, I can PM you a few more details/ideas from our behalf or you can shoot me a PM with more details on what you're looking for--either works!

First month bump! We've been active for a month now and our numbers continue to steadily grow. We've had a handful of events already and even got a company house! Feel free to step on by sometime. We're located in Lavender Beds, Ward 7 Plot 15.

Honestly, the only time there's too much RP is when you begin to stress about being pulled in several different directions. Like with anything fun, it is totally possible to have too much of a good thing! However, I definitely do think there's a certain... stigma, maybe, attached to the idea of "RP partners" with some people. A lot of people I've talked to in the past have wanted it to mean "exclusive rights to RP with this person," when in reality that's just... Well, it's downright creepy to want that much of a say over someone's time. Even if--and especially in some cases--the roleplay is romantic in nature. Do I have a "main" RP partner? Totally! But that just means that it's one person that I turn to when I'm bored and I can rely on almost 100% of the time to help me brainstorm new ideas. I have a metric shitload of RP partners that I like to RP with--and it's a term I use to denote anyone that I invest any amount of time into. I do think the responsible thing to do is to be upfront with someone about the sort of commitment you can give to them and their characters, and if they find that unacceptable it's perfectly okay if they decide to not invest their time into the storyline you're going to craft. No harm, no foul! The problem is, as you say, when people begin to feel entitled to your time and try to force you into a situation where you do what they want you to do. I mean, hell. If i tell someone I'm not available and they proceed to throw a hissy fit? I'm dropping them like a hot potato. I've cut off friendships cold turkey because they weren't happy with the sort of commitment I was willing to give to our characters and pitched a damn fit. Especially when it's a romantic relationship--those tend to be the worst. People trying to treat me like I'm their SO simply because our characters are in a relationship is one of the scariest things I've run into.

A lot of NPCs use non-conventional naming for their surnames. Hamon Holyfist in particular comes to mind. It's difficult to base "appropriate" names off of NPCs since many of them don't follow the rules. Though it's easy to argue that there really aren't many rules for names to begin with--start a new life, choose a new name for yourself. That sorta thing. Anyone that points to a Japanese name and calls it anime is pretty ignorant. It'd be one thing to be an Ichigo or a Naruto or a Goku, but eh. Toshihiro doesn't have that anime look to it. Plus, if someone is going to avoid RPing with you because the name follows the naming conventions set forth by The Voice of God simply because it looks "anime" they're basically a gigantic jerkass.

Hi there! I'd like to go ahead and offer my Free Company, Middle Men, as something for you to look at! I think it fits a lot of your requisites rather well. We're a fairly new group--but we're growing at a steady pace already, and we just opened recruitment a few days ago. Our focus is on keeping our playerbase small and tightly-knit while keeping a steady flow of events, larger arcs, and miniature plots going to keep those who do make the cut engaged and developing their characters. As a more antagonistic/criminal-esque company, we strive to keep communication open and clear and to make sure that IC and OOC remain separate at all times. We're also super heavy RP and most of us literally only do the actual PvE end of the game for fashion. Listen, it's vital that we have nice clothes for our characters. Give us a look and if you like what you see, feel free to apply! If you have any questions--and I do mean any--please don't hesitate to drop me a line over here, ingame, or on enjin itself. Looking forward to seeing you around!

Hi there! I'd love to have my Raen run into Syranelle sometime. He's an alchemist by trade and has been doing general healing work--mostly among refugees--through the use of potions and poultices since arriving in Gridania several weeks ago. They could talk botany! Or perhaps either character has heard of the other through their respective healing works in the Twelveswood. Shoot me a PM, grab me ingame--anything really! I'd love to get a chance to meet your character!

Kaiten wears a ring--specifically a silver and mythril-wrought band--on his left ring finger. It's a wedding band he received when he and his wife were betrothed to one-another during their younger years. Having had it since his early adolescence means it's been reshaped and re-sized several times and it holds no small amount of sentimental value. It's incredibly unlikely to see him without it.

It's very much the Maori dance! You can watch a group of them do it in Ok'zundu in the Sea of Clouds. It's fantastic.

Man I am hype as hell for Vanudance. Time to sit in strange places and do the muscle dance at people come 3.1.

Holy hell, man. RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE, PROFILE FROM 2 YEARS AGO. That is to say--updated for my new character and my preferences! Hello everyone!

Alexander tl;dr is here! I only used this and I successfully main-tanked all of Alexander--so it's more than enough for the mechanics present there. The only one that takes a little bit of "seeing" would be floor 4, honestly. edit: Oops, beaten. So let's add some more discussion! I'm one of those crazy people that rushed my first class to 60 so I could experience everything while it was shiny and new and--well, I dunno. I'm not gonna say it was necessary but it was fun. Now, though? Now everything I do, literally everything, is in the name of acquiring new RP clothes. Have you seen some of the new stuff? Oh my god. Fashion is the true endgame.

Welcome to the server! Feel free to reach out if you ever wanna RP or if you need to bounce some ideas around!

[align=center]As a note: Middle Men recruitment is OPEN![/align]

[align=center] [/align] There’s a room in a house in lavender beds where the smell of incense clings to the walls and coins click-click-clack together as they’re counted. Two hundred and one, two hundred and two, two hundred and three. . . “Anyone can tell you that Eorzea is ripe for the taking.” The coin counter says through a mouth lined with needles and a silver wrought tongue. “Why with the adventurers all gone up north… the civil unrest.” Two hundred and four, two hundred and five... “The common man? The common man doesn’t want to worry. The common man wants protection. He wants a life he can live with a little piece of mind. What of the shrewd man? Or the opportunistic man? Well, a commonality might be found through all that turmoil. You gotta build something in the gaps. The key is to stay flexible. Be the man in the middle of it all." [align=center]Welcome to Middle Men - A heavy RP Free Company on the Balmung Server[/align] [align=center][align=left]What is Middle Men? [/align] [align=left]Middle Men is, in general terms, a collection of individuals with loose morals that intend to build something better for themselves and those that fall under their wing. To be more specific than that, Middle Men is a group that focuses on criminal activity of varying degrees to secure a better life for themselves. We aren’t a band of evil-doers, nor are we a group motivated by lofty and idealistic notions--no. This is a group that is modeled precisely after the sort of 1920s gangsters that you’re likely thinking of. [/align] [align=left]Well what makes you guys different? To sum it quickly and succinctly, we offer a positive, LGBTQ-friendly roleplay environment that exists both ingame and out of game through our enjin-based forums with an emphasis on maintaining an atmosphere that allows for a darker, grittier kind of storytelling. We also have a high focus on events that are made for you, our members. To go into a little more detail, we strive to create an environment that’s friendly, welcoming, and above all emphasizes good communication with other groups of roleplayers to prevent us from operating within a small bubble. We do this by making sure (through enforcing our rules) that we don’t create a setting that can make others immediately uncomfortable--be it through unlabeled, extreme violence, sudden, and in some cases unwanted, sexual content or anything that could feasibly “squick” people out--without proper warning. We’re also committed to making sure our events are open to the greater community as well as allying ourselves with other Free Companies to allow a greater array of stuff to do. After all, you can’t be an antagonist without people to antagonize. [/align] [align=left] Okay, I'm interested! But what kind of characters are you looking for? [/align] [align=left]If you're still interested after reading all this verbose nonsense, you're exactly the sort of person we want to work with and to join our family. Middle Men is the sort of home that works well for criminally-minded characters, or simply people with loose enough morals to get the job done. [/align] [align=left]Do you like heists? Alley-way standoffs with other gangs? Or is your character simply someone that's looking to get by--and just so happens to ahve a particular set of skills that could in some way prove useful. We aren't looking for villains, necessarily, but rather people that might consider themselves antagonists. Even if your character skews slightly more towards the good end of the spectrum--MDDL is fine with a bit of good, charitable work here and there. After all, those sorts of things make it harder for the good guys to simply dump you in the river. [/align] [/align]

The stock Warrior of Light that they've used in the trailers.

I feel like a thread of this nature crops up every few months, and it's always the same things being repeated by nearly the same people. So let me start this post off by making one thing very clear: Calling out shitty behavior, no matter who it is, is not starting drama nor is it toxic. It is the antithesis to what made other MMO communities as horrible as they are now. Letting manipulative behavior continue all while pushing it under the rug to avoid any perceived drama is exactly where problems start. That said. It's possible to go overboard--it's possible to take it too far. You should never call someone out until you have confirmation of someone's shitty behavior first hand (See: The botched failzeroth bullshit on tumblr before Heavensward came out. That wasn't cool). If you see someone doing something you don't like? Call them out on it. You don't need to make huge diatribes on tumblr or the RPC about it, but pulling people aside and telling them that you don't think their behavior is acceptable is good and necessary for a community--any community--to thrive. Making blanket ranting posts doesn't make anything better, it just makes people slightly butthurt because what if they're talking about me? It's passive aggressive at best. Accepting how things are, if you don't like it, isn't necessary and isn't really all that good for one's enjoyment of anything. Be the change you wish to see! And after all that, I say that this community really isn't half as bad as any ranting posts/tumblr drama makes it out to be. It's one of the most diverse (OOCly at least), positive and friendly communities I've ever had the enjoyment of being a part of. If you focus too much on the negative, it's easy to see nothing but that. Smile! Tell some dumb motherfuckers that they're being negative/too aggressive and distance yourself from them if they respond poorly to that.

A big thing to remember is that the male horns leave a gap that's at least wide enough for the guy's head to fit between, if not slightly more. They don't have the same problem that, say, WoW trolls did where they have tusks that can curl in really close to the face. When you look at how large the males are (and by proxy their big-ass heads), I'd hazard a guess and say that most races aren't gonna have any issues leanin' in for some smooches. You just gotta be a little careful with it! Now, falling on top of an Au Ra is likely to be dangerous. Which could be amusing.

I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't expect too much lore on Au Ra beyond the little snippet we've received in the character creation/maybe a few blurbs here and there ingame. No other race has been explored in-depth and so we really shouldn't expect the same for Au Ra. As far as the possible demonic-heritage. Honestly? I don't think it has anything to do with demons. Just like Miqo'te don't have anything to do with people gettin' down with some cats at some point in history. It's just the design aesthetic they were going for.

These metrics are actually super interesting! I'll be rerolling my main into an Au Ra by way of him being 100% retired from adventuring because nnnnnah. So my demonguy is gonna be a totally new character.

I call this design finalized but it probably isn'T SINCE WE HAVE 6 WEEKS LEFT. SHIT. Anyway, here's Kaiten! Had to get some color help from a friend because being colorblind makes this shit really frustrating sometimes. Have I mentioned I really like demon dudes? Like, 100% my preferred aesthetic. Have some more under a cut!

One of the more interesting questions is are the surnames changeable? For instance, Karasu's surname fits both his deeds and his given name a little too well for it to be a coincidence. Are surnames more of a title that's given--sorta like they used to be? Along those same lines, do the surnames change when a couple enters into marriage? Does the newlywed couple choose a new surname that fits their newfound conjoined purpose? My partner and I have been mulling this stuff over since forever. We're going to be playing a married Raen couple, so would they have taken on a new surname when they actually married, or what's the deal there? The best we could come up with was to say fuckit and give'em both the same last name--one that they chose when married. If the lore comes out and outright tells us it's wrong, we'll change it, but I'm not certain if the lore will actually address it or not.

So! Just the other night I was talking to a friend of mine when an interesting point came up, and it's one I've been pondering ever since. As far as I'm aware, there are two "main" types of RP that people participate in. The first being very much slice-of-life while the other is focused primarily on moving a plot of some sort forward. To be pedantic about it for a moment, I define the two as follows. Plot-based roleplay is when a group of people gather together for a common purpose. Be it a magic ritual, breaking into an imperial castrum, solving a murder-mystery... The breadth and depth of this runs to an absurd degree, but at the end of the day it's something that gives people a reason to gather and to have their characters interact. Slice-of-life roleplay is when you're just playing out a day in the life of someone inhabiting the particular world on a consistent basis. Interactions come and go and tend to mirror real life in the sense that there's rarely some over-arching goal that the people involved are working towards. While the two can mingle fairly often, there's usually a pretty strict divide between what people consider plot-based and what people consider slice-of-life-y. So I ask you, RPC. Do you have a preference? To get the conversation started, I'll talk about my own preferences first! I'm a plot-based roleplayer first and foremost. I'm at my best, and happiest, when I have some goals for my character to work towards, be it their own or helping further another's plot-line. I like having things planned that can throw wrenches into how the story is being told, and I like helping other people achieve a goal they've set out to finish. It's important to note that, in my opinion, plot-based RP doesn't have to be planned to an absurd degree--rather, it's quite literally just a light at the end of a tunnel that the character's can strive towards reaching. That being said, there's also a time and a place for slice-of-life stuff. Having my character just hang out at the bar or chitchat with people can be fulfilling and interesting ways to get to know my character a little bit better, and it's often the thing that sparks plots in the first place. I do end up extremely burnt out if this is all I'm doing, though. Gotta have that goal to work towards! Without it I end up getting really bored of a character relatively quickly.

I'm a mixed guy myself (Slavic Jew and Hispanic) so I'm either super goddamn pale or fairly dark depending on how much I get out of the house during any given season. My character's tend to have skin on the darker side of the spectrum for much the same reason as Ette, at the end of the day. I'm interested in exploring things that aren't typically portrayed in media for a darker-skinned character. Like being a turbo-nerd, magician, scholar, potential (non-violent) sociopath. That sort of thing. I wanna see more characters that have a depth outside of their "exotic" natures for having a skin-tone that fits a certain stereotype, whatever it may be. Though I also take into account the region of the world they're supposedly from and that individual character's particular habits. My highlander, for example, wasn't terribly dark-skinned but he was fairly tanned because he lives in the middle of the goddamn desert. Thinking about it, being pale in Ul'dah is probably a sign of obscene wealth and/or privilege. Same with Limsa Lominsa, to a degree.