in terms of the creativity and writing aspects — it is one part of a bigger picture of expression for me. i'm out here drawing, improving, etc. i'm so creative and love articulating myself through words it is disgusting. i could be so cracked as an individual if i exercised it more.

but i think my interest in roleplaying ties into my love for media such as music, video games, and movies. it helps me study the world and people a lot more than anything else.

it's why i gravitate towards playing characters that push extremes and different perspectives that aren't common place nor match what i think/feel as a person. even characters from different cultures and time periods. it gets me deep into the trenches of research and talking to people.

For me, coding is the obvious one. I started coding bc I started roleplaying and had to learn how to do apps on my neopet’s pet pages so I could rp in my warriors rp guilds and I think for a lot of us coders, we have similar origin stories. You kinda have to have at least a baseline understanding of code in order to rp it feels like. I enjoy coding, but I do think it often detracts from what I originally started doing this all for; which was to rp lmao. 

aside from that, I love video games. I’m not the most confident when it comes to canon rp, but it’s no coincidence that most of the characters I feel comfortable writing as are video game characters. I think it being a slightly more interactive experience makes it easier for me to feel confident in knowing the character’s personality? I dunno. 

definitely and most evidently, tabletop roleplay if you count it. the added bonus is that my regular group for that is with one of my oldest (and dearest!) close friend groups, whom i've met because of rp (we hit our 10th year anniversary together earlier this year!) . a fair amount of our group have retired from site rp, while some are still going with it, but neither camp has rlly stopped our mutual love of making characters, putting characters through the wringer, rping together, and storytelling as a whole — so tabletop easily became our medium to do that. i also have a second group for it with my oldest and closest rl friend group (15 years!) who all love media and fiction as a whole, with most of us having a long history of novel and fanfic writing + theatre, so tabletop also became a natural followup hobby, with me as the dm. the dm-ing experience also generally just helped me improve my ability in plotting big stuff, directing threads, and coming up with ways to involve so many different characters & factors & people in a larger narrative while finding the balance between giving players what they want in terms of stuff to do + a bigger story that i want to do just as well. absolutely adore it.

other hobbies related to roleplay would easily be writing, reading, and playing video games. and most, if not all, of that rlly just wraps around the greater idea of enjoying media, stories, fiction, and deepdiving into stuff like literary themes, arcs, and authorial ideas. i love digging into ideas and concepts fiction can a) represent, b) reflect, or c) confront — and that all rlly impacts how and what i write. a lot of my characters and narratives tend to revolve around deconstructing tropes, confronting themes and concepts about personhood/identity/existentialism/environments/relationships/destiny/change/what have you and how a person can rise or fall from that. and, consequently, those ideas are heavily integrated into the media i consume.

and then there's just creative stuff for my + ppl i know's characters. anyone who knows me personally might likely know that i do a lot of drawing, video editing, and photoshopping lockscreens, wallpapers, and edits for fun. and i almost always use ocs as the anchor/main focal point of pieces that. i also made my first animatic a week ago! super fun, and i just... enjoy generating content with the material ive made. it makes my writing, characters, and work just feel a lot more Real(TM) in a way, and it's just plain fun.

my irl job LMFAO

(if u know then u know *finger guns*)

i dunno if this counts but: online research! i love to google things i'm not quite sure about related to my character, the setting, or certain subjects. for accuracy and to get a feeling for my characters! i've looked up things such as "how long does it take to study for archeology in college?", the average height and weight of a male or female at specific ages. and various other mundane things. i also learned all sorts of synonyms for words too! it significantly expanded my knowledge over the years. c:

I was a fiction writer and avid reader first! Big theater nerd too. Love singing, love acting, love writing with emotion. Naturally fell into fanfiction, which led me to roleplaying in various mediums, which led me to playing with making indie visual novels and choose-your-own-adventure style games. Never finished one, which is a shame, but learning the coding was helpful either way. Definitely helps with things like forum roleplay, too!

Am a writer as my day job lol

heheh finally actually became a runner and finished my first 5K this Sunday successfully LMAOOO but stay tuned if I actually turn that into my main hobby instead of RPing, it's kinda painful FFF

But okay related to RPing— I used to write fanfiction and my own fantasy novels (all garbage), I was once a theater nerd, I love playing video games with excellent stories, I was a player and a DM for tabletop games (mostly DND), does cosplaying and getting into character count??? Reading had been one of my very first hobbies, both books and comics. I don't get to be creative in my actual job, so all of these things are great outlets. I'd had a photography phase and am still trying to get back into it because I want to take pictures for my friends instead of us having to hope that photographers aren't creepy sigh.

I used to love doing graphics and layout back when I was still in my journalism phase (I miss you undergrad), I'm longtime out of my music composition phase, I still love video editing upon occasion (and I had a lot of fun making videos for a past couple RPs that I had run to introduce new arcs, including voice acting).

Overall, where does this put me? Clearly I'm just easily distracted oops—