Shoryu Magami

Hangman {Game}

@Mae

Bingo.

Hangman {Game}

@Arkaquiavel

Yo, cool to see someone else taking a shot.

Unfortunately, that's our first strike.

Hangman {Game}

This'll be the first of a couple bumps before I assume people aren't interested in this and I move on.

Sum up your week in roleplaying in just 3 words

The stakes rise.

𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙

Chateau de Sophie, Lobby | April 14, 2012 (12:57 PM)

_{♫ The Bouncer OST - Aria Kaldea}

`I exist... because of you...` Annabelle Joanne Taylor (known as 'Anna' in the media) thought to herself, deep in the ocean of an emotional introspect as she gently played the piano in the lobby of the Chateau de Sophie.

The young woman was very attractive, with delicate features - a true feminine beauty - and a tender expression on her light Caucasian face. She looked quite young even without relying on make-up, being 'baby-faced' while still having features that would be considered rather 'hot' alongside being 'cute', which was helped by her noticeable womanly figure. Her sky blue eyes were warm, yet melancholy and deep at the same time; in fact, they had an expression as if she had many things on her mind that she was not saying.

Despite the calm look on her face causing her eyes to appear small and even a bit sleepy, her eyes were actually known to be fairly big and expressive when she showed more excitable or troubled emotion, making her have rather dynamic facial features. Her hair was a strawberry blonde - appearing darker than it actually was due to the lighting - and was both long (almost down to her waist) and wavy. The hair at the front of her face was styled into large parted bangs -- the ones at the right being swept behind her ear - though a few bangs still sit in front of her ear and frame her face - while the ones on the left were draping down over her forehead and framing down the left side of her face; in fact, her left eye could easily have been covered by it if she wished. Some of her hair was hanging over the front of her right shoulder as well.

With the sole exception of her black heels, none of her outfit was actually visible, because she was wearing a pale red winter overcoat with dark red trim and collar over her outfit, and the coat went down virtually to her feet. Though the coat was currently open - the temperature in the room was fairly comfortable, but still a little cool for her - the way she was seated at the piano would make it difficult to see her outfit, unless the person looking was going out of their way to see it. She was wearing a black mid-calf length cocktail dress with frilly spaghetti straps, and had her most cherished possession - a pair of small golden crucifixes attached to a thin golden chain - around her neck like always. As she played the piano, her black gloves were left off alongside a large white purse that was seated closely next to her.

`No matter what happens next... I am honoured to even be deemed worthy to be here...` Anna thought to herself sincerely.

While she continued to play gently, Anna turned her face to the side and noticed Simon, the bartender she had become acquaintances with - perhaps even friends with - stepping out of the hallway that led to the guest dormitory, with that funny young woman known as Paula following slowly behind him. For some reason though, Paula looked uncharacteristically melancholy. Simon always had a sort of mystique and melancholy to him, even if he was always warm and sentimental -- very similar to Anna herself, in that sense. Simon seemed a lot more willing to goof around than Anna though, but then maybe... in another life... she could have afforded to be more laid-back too.

Anna guessed that the young man - well, she assumed it was a young man, but he almost looked like a boy - who had recently arrived was now in his room. Anna had figured out from the moment the albino entered the room that he must be another one of the guests just like her, and she had been seeing Simon texting someone - presumably Paula - for hours on-and-off now. Throughout the conversation between the three at the bar, Anna had been listening, but she was also lost in her own world as she played, so she missed some of what they were saying. The bar was not too far away from the piano, but she would still have needed to pay attention to follow the conversation -- apart from Paula anyway, who nearly always spoke like she had no idea what an inside voice was.

"Oh hey," Paula said, still seeming a bit melancholy, but then her voice perked up to its usual tone again, "you should let me take that, Simon. It is my job, after all!" she said, smiling a bit.

"Sure thing," Simon replied calmly, "thanks."

After Simon handed Paula a drink, the soon-to-be caterer of Monsieur Bonaparte's estate was off to get an early start at her job -- sort of ironic, given how the girl was seemingly late most of the time. Anna just continued playing the piano, really feeling like she could only be herself when she was doing so. It was an escape - a beautiful sanctuary - that allowed her to just get away from the rest of her life and really just completely be herself.

For just a moment, Simon smiled at Anna as he listened to her play, and the young woman offered him a smile in return, nodding her head softly. Soon enough, everything would start. Who knew what would happen?

𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙

@Aewin@Pudding@Melo@Ailyn Evensen@Snagglepuss89@tsukune@Shadow007@Eidolen@MayLien@Heap241
@banjoanjo@CrazyShadowy@JaceBeleren@aviendha

Status update:

• With the collaboration up, the next IC posts (apart from others that I might decide post up to introduce characters) are Tatiana and Sonya. I suspect that Lucia will post after Sven leaves the hotel. One of the 'player NPCs' is also getting an introduction soon. At the same time, Pudd and I will be working on the next collaboration with Leonard and Karlita.

• For those of you who've got 'player NPCs', I should also let you know how the work in the character tab. Basically, once the character has been formally introduced into the IC, or there has been enough mention of them that they aren't just a name with no explanation (what 'Rose' is currently for Leonard), you basically post up their 'Public CS' into the same post as their respective player character. Some sort of effort should be made to separate the player characters from NPCs, but I haven't settled on the method. You shouldn't use the [ hr ] BBCode though, because that'll be used for something else on my end and it'll make things confusing.

• The Chateau de Sophie now has an entry in 'The Glossary'.

• The Maximilian Foundation now has an entry in 'The Glossary'.

• Simon Chandler's CS has now been added to the 'NPCs' section of the character tab. Also, due to IC development revealing a secret about Simon during the same post as his introduction, he is now the first character to include the 'Spoiler' category, which is a method used to reveal parts of the 'Private CS' by placing them into the 'Public CS' after they get revealed IC.

If you're a sixteen-to-twenty-four-year-old male, you should be smoking cigarettes.

Sure, contributing to taxes is something, but nearly everything does that. I'm sure there's plenty of things the world would be better off without that have sales taxes.

Shoryu Magami

As I'm waking up and checking the [ @ Mention ] I got, I realize my last sentence wasn't all that clear regarding my meaning.

To put it bluntly, cigarette smoking contributing to sales taxes isn't relevant, because anything that replaces it would also contribute to sales taxes. Smoking doesn't actually contribute to society itself at all -- all it really does is pollutes the place, makes shit stink (coming from someone who spent the vast majority of his life with a broken nose that considerably hindered his ability to breathe and smell), and creates a lot of really bad addiction problems that significantly cripple society. It's a crutch at its best, but there's far worse things it brings to society too.

@Vilageidiotx

I mean, I don't hate smokers (in the same sense that I don't hate other people who I think are making bad life choices -- its their life, but it's less forgivable when other people are hurt because of it), but I do hate the idea of smoking and all the things that it does to people and to everything around them. The sheer fact that I don't see any actual benefit to it makes all the negative sort of difficult for me to be neutral about.

With that said though, yeah, you're right about the cost being ridiculous, since I know about people who've not only given themselves severe money problems due to the habit, but have also done some pretty bad shit in their lives in order to get their 'fix'. When all is said and done, it's still a drug.

State governments are supposed to appropriate a minimal amount of funds from tobacco sales taxes per year to cessation/quitting programs but so far only two states even meet the recommended level (North Dakota, Alaska) and one state (Oklahoma) even bothers to meet the half-way mark.

@Dinh AaronMk

Smoking's part of business at the end of the day, and generally speaking corporations and governments aren't interested in doing something that doesn't fill their pockets immediately. That's the reason why I said previously that it's not 'profitable' in the eyes of the people who can actually make a difference (I meant that in a broad sense, even if the discussion was car pollution at the time). Why would they care about getting rid of smoking in order to benefit society and the economy in the big picture (when less people are being crippled by the habit)? It's not gonna instantly turn them a profit, so they don't care. It's good to know that at least a couple states are using their heads, even if it's not enough to make up for those who aren't.

Anyway, I've got role-play stuff to do, but I figured I'd give my thoughts on some of the new comments.

<Insert Name; Will Edit Once Not Busy> {Hang-out Thread}

@Landaus Five-One

If I actually like a concept I create, it always ends up getting integrated into GA in some way if possible, and the stuff I've created for GRG is no exception (considering it's part of GA's multiverse anyway); in fact, I plan on creating 'expy' versions of my GRG characters in GA -- some of the GRG characters are always 'expies' of GA characters technically.

Right, overall I find that being too unpredictability with posting for role-plays is an issue. One of the biggest problems with this site is that a large portion of the community lack commitment. Role-playing is a social hobby at its core and people who can't show commitment are better suited to solo writing instead. Too many good role-plays get destroyed by people being flaky, which is why I've got pretty strict commitment requirements in GRG.

With tags, I assume you mean on this site if GA turned into a role-play. Well, it would definitely have 'Anime/Manga' due to the art style I use in my franchise, it would definitely have 'Modern' because regardless of what time the story is set in the world definitely resembles the modern era. 'Fantasy' and 'Sci-Fi' would be an extreme maybe, because the former usually means stuff like LoTR in my eyes and the latter might be deceptive due to the science fiction elements in GA being sort of an illusion or decoy. Most of the other tags I could mention would be spoilers.

I'm inclined to say it would just use the same tags that GRG is unless I decide another option makes sense, since GRG is part of GA's multiverse anyway. I don't know if 'Steampunk' is appropriate for a modern setting that has advanced technology, especially when the technology isn't what it seems to be.

There's a lot of tropes I can relate to GA, considering I actually have a document listing all the appropriate tropes for my story and even for each individual character, including how those tropes are used (straight, subverted, deconstructed, et cetera) and the explanation.

Subjects Outraged! King Fails to Protect the Realm!

@ELGainsborough

I can relate to being busy, but not to the writer's block part -- I'm a bit weird when it comes to that, because I don't think I've ever suffered from what people usually call writer's block, with the closest thing I have to it really being times when the massive amount of data I have to sort literally prevents me from writing due to needing to go through the information. Apart from that, I'm usually able to write no matter how hectic life gets, so long as whatever I'm writing interested me in the first place (there's exceptions, but I don't tend to lose interest or gain interesting in things -- I either have it or I don't).

With that said, you're right in suspecting that I'm not particularly disappointed. I mostly joined up with this role-play because you were looking for some action and I needed an opportunity to exercise a bit and remove some of the rust from my writing abilities. With that in mind, I'll keep this thread in mind, but I don't intend on pressuring you to continue it because I'm not particularly fussed one way or another if we keep going. No need to feel like there's a deadline or obligation here, because I've got other things to do anyway. While I do believe that deadlines are needed for role-plays because it's a social hobby that requires commitment (people should just write solo if they don't want deadlines), this thread isn't all that important to me since I've already gotten what I needed out of it. If you end up contacting me in the future, we'll see what we can put together.

Regarding the 'depth and care' placed into the environment, are you referring to the maintaining of the site itself from a moderator/administrator perspective, or with the individual role-plays themselves? I agree that the site itself needs to be taken care of, but a lot of the problems with individual role-plays on this site are largely caused by lack of commitment with some of the members. I'm actually running my own role-play on this site now, which is one of the more active threads on the site from what I can tell, and the quality and detail in the project has already gotten people really admiring my GM/writing abilities apparently. With this in mind, I think you can find those who care for their projects, but you actually have to look for them harder due to this community being rather immature.

All the best.

Edit: I've now actually decided to leave the site permanently, mostly due to a combination of the community together with the fact that I'm being held back by this place. There aforementioned issue I spoke of regarding the lack of dedication and quality in this community has more or less made me decide that the place doesn't deserve the care, investment and depth I give. I'm generally dissatisfied with this site and its community, which is all the more reason not to tolerate the immaturity. I'll be sticking around only long enough to collect some data I left here.