So this was inspired by a post in another thread, and I must preface this with the fact that I've never RPed on a Fate site, but I've wondered for a long time how you make a Fate Grail War work on an RP site, and the friends I've had who did RP Fate pretty universally told me "you don't", which. Foreboding.

But as someone who has, once upon a time, RPed Soul Eater, another combat-heavy series with a heavy focus on pairs where one person uses the other to fight, I feel like I can pretty confidently say... that I have absolutely no confidence in pretty much any RP that requires pair ups for characters to work. Sure, you'll have friends who join up together and have their pre-plotted master/servant or meister/weapon or what have you pairs, and that's fine and dandy; you'll eve get your strangers-joined-together-in-friendship who fill the missing role for each other, and that's great; but sooooo many characters will be partnerless, in a setting that you really can't afford to be if you want to partake, and I can't imagine there's any real way to circumvent that, beyond each "character" really just being both halves of a pair in one (such as playing the master and servant on the same account, written by the same person). But that also takes out some of the appeal for RPing in those settings, right? Like, the master/servant dynamic, or meister/weapon dynamic, or whatever other dynamic is hypothetically the strongest relationship either half will have to another person, because of the forced proximity and (at least partial) mutual goals.

Pair-up RPs sound so appealing to me on paper because it's a 'guarantee' you'll have at least one person with whom your character gets awesome setting-supported plots with, but, like. Actually thinking about how to make them so is just headache inducing. Have there been places in the past that have made this work? Are there potential ways to approach such an RP that we haven't really seen that might be promising for future RPs? Someone tell me there's hope -

After roughly three months filled with reading + making art (as well as writing alone), I'm roleplaying again with an old friend and noticed that I'm really happy with the way I approach writing and the work I'm putting out. It feels like when I spent several months drawing nothing but hands and can now produce a gesture for a hand study in about 30 seconds. Sometimes when you're doing that practicing and only making subpar work, it feels like you're not improving or changing anything, until one day you're like...oh, all that practicing really paid off.

I guess it's true! Reading regularly and extensively is so important for writing, and I guess there's no way around it. Even if I get in bed late I'm still trying to put in about 0.5 to 1 chapter a day for whatever book I have on my e-reader (usually stylistically or conceptually related to things I want to write about) and slowly making progress. Really happy with how far I've come and excited to see where this art journey takes me next.