+ finish more character arcs. ive managed to complete a couple by the end of this year, which i'm hella proud of, and have opened up the stage for at least two i'd really really want to see through and/or complete next year because the sheer daydream haze of their point a/present vs point b/endgame makes me very emo, so definitely complete more arcs.

+ talk with more people. my npc energy and inconsistent social battery tends to be the death of me more often than not, and gives me a long backlog of dms. i wanna be better about that, esp since i have an open door "you can hit me up re anything whenever" policy. so i rlly wanna improve there.

+ complete more threads. i always say i'll do this, but i feel like i get worse at that every year LMAO. i think maybe doing a number goal here would be rlly helpful so i'll take smth out of asu's book and say complete 50 (non-solo) threads by the end of next year. 

+ involve more people in bigger plots. i like to believe i'm good at this as is, thanks to dm brain and a personal tendency to just enjoy connecting everything and anything together + have been told as much by several other people, but i do love seeing big plots come together and people having their time to shine in the spotlight. so i want to do this more. mcu endgame climaxes lets go.

+ do thread caps. anyone who knows me personally will know i'm stupidly ambitious with a tendency to overextend and consistently push beyond my limits out of spite and for the sake of making things happen. it's gotten me rlly far in both rp and in life, but i rlly do need to start easing up on myself, and learn to say no or cut more often. started doing this a lot more for my sake later this year and it's genuinely been rlly helpful, so i'd like to continue that.

+ ship with more people! started taking strides in this late this year, and i'd love to continue that energy moving forward. some of the ships/near ships rlly close to my heart have been those with people i'm not major rp partners with, which i think is a good sign to try that out more now.

+ read more books. another one of those "i say i'll do every year and somehow get worse each year" but this time i think i've kicked my reading slump a fair amount to confidently make this a goal. i'll make it quantifiable too and say 30 books by end of next year?

+ not feed my own personal insecurities on my work, characters, writing, and rp ability by telling the sad tortured artist impostor syndrome brainworm at the back of my head to shut up and enjoy the ride. enough said. i've gotten WAY better at this this year than i have in previous years, and generally reached the point of my life & work where i can say i'm damn happy about the work i put out but it still crops up every once in a blue moon and gives me massive slumps, so i'm beating that baby back with a stick. 

while i rationally know its good as a whole, its genuinely terrifying how highly my supervisor views my work ethic and skill i shouldnt be trusted with this level of important work aaaaaaaaaaaa

stayed up later than planned bc of a late night vc with an irl friend that rlly gave the energy of "midnight existentialism and Deep Conversations about the self, the human condition, and societal discourse" while playing video games and honestly, would do it again. even if coffee is proving not to be enough to keep me up at work LOL

second day of streaming and playing the re4 remake and theres smth so satisfying about seeing the accuracy result at the end of each chapter improve with each chapter i go through

there's a different kind of chaotic energy in the vc when you (bad aim, used to lagging computers, scared of the horror genre) stream the resident evil 4 remake and keep dying while your rl friend, also in vc, is reviewing for her chemistry board exam and dying at the same time but both of you need the company so you don't go insane.

there were actual tears coming out of our eyes from the amount of laughing we did once we found the leon model costumes and god, i did NOT realize how quickly time passed

hi. another admin here, and i wanted to say that… yeah, i empathize with that so much, especially with what you said about failure. there’s a long amount of context that lead to me ending up as the admin of the site i’m on, and have been running for three years, but it rlly made me want to just Do Things Right(TM), especially for its community and the site at large, and consistently worried that if i messed up somewhere; that if the site died due to the wrong thing (i.e. toxicity, drama, simply quietly fizzling out) — i was failing a lot of people, including myself. and that was something i refused to let happen. it unfortunately lead to me making a lot of wrong decisions out of the concern that if i let [xyz] explode, or said something about [zyx], or w/e else — it would cause some kind of colossal Thing(TM) that would completely fuck up the site and put many members of the community in the crossfire of something that isn’t theirs to deal with in the first place. (looking back at those choices, i know i could have made better ones, but i know my truth and reasons for making those choices, and i can accept that. the only thing to rlly do now is move forward.)

that consistent worry impacted my mental health a lot, more than i’m proud to admit, and hilariously more than the amount of straight up traumatizing rl bullshit i had to deal with at the same time. hell, it also nearly made me cry when i finished the 4.2 genshin impact archon quest because furina’s narrative just hit,,,, way too real to me LOL. regardless, all of this is just meant to say that you’re not alone in feeling that kind of way? i don’t think it’s embarrassing to have a hobby you poured a lot into (and i’ve been in your sites; i know you’ve poured a lot into them) impact how you feel emotionally. it’s being a person, and that’s hella real.

buuuut i also think that, at least based on personal experience, being Witness(TM) to a lot of shit when it comes to ppl and their worries getting the best of them, and especially made more clear after getting therapy bc of site bullshit LOL, sometimes the only thing that can be done is to look at yourself and your feelings, practice some kind tough love, and own up to the shit you deserve and don’t deserve. are you happy with the work you’re making? are you proud of it? if the answer is in any way, a no, then it’s worth a shot to figure out what will make things work — talk to the people around you, build a compromise, and just let people know that you also need some help, support, or w/e else. i think a lot of people have a tendency to forget, especially in an online space, that whoever is wearing the admin hat is a very real person just as well, who has their own personal feelings to trudge through, and ultimately are doing what they can while knowing what they do impacts a huge amount of people. lean on your support circles, own up to who you are, what you value, what you deserve, where you can do better — both to yourself and to the people around you, and i think that’ll go a long way.

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.

it's tough luck to be a girlboss but its honest work

also, on a totally unrelated note, its kinda wild that im being asked to host / do a workshop on design & design theory for an international media conglomerate, what life am i living

traveller, wraith, and scarlet have p much said everything for my take, honestly.

a lot of it boils down to what the content of the post / app / etc. is giving. maybe it's bc i'm a gal whose favorite ao3 tag is "character study" but i love introspective threads and debate threads for a reason—it lets you dig deep into a character, how they work, why they do, what they've gone through, and how they're still here. a good piece of writing advice i've gotten before (though it was for scriptwriting, rather than rp explicitly) was that in each scene, the involved characters must want something — it provides direction, momentum, and an anchor. and i tend to treat my threads the same way (at least on my character's end), which usually leads to threads i enjoy since there's that feeling of movement and development. moreover, since it's rp, trying to provide hooks in your post is super helpful! some kind of action, a question, a special tool that'll be needed later, an npc, w/e else.

that doesn't mean lengthy = better or shorter = better, imo. by this point, i've threaded with a lot of people who provide different standard post & app lengths, and i can earnestly say that neither camp has one thing above the other. it rlly falls into what you've communicating and providing in the piece; posts that span 3000+ words can be genuinely riveting if they're digging deep into the character's psyche in a way that's just compelling. at the same time, posts that are shorter than 500 can feel legitimately impressive if they're offering something to work with. i've read long as hell posts that i breezed through because of the content, long posts that said a lot but gave very little, short posts that i found to be super helpful in moving the thread, short posts that were rlly insubstantial and gave me nothing to work with, etc. etc. 

if post length is rlly important then i think just... communicating that with your partner is invaluable, and will save everyone involved a lot of time / effort / energy / stress / worry. set boundaries and set expectations, because god knows no one knows what's actually going on in anyone's head. the only way to rlly figure that out is to just talk, yknow?

also i want to ++ this from what traveller said bc i learned to take this sentiment (both as the person receiving the Talk of that, and the person who has given the Talk of that) this year and by god, was that groundbreaking and gave me significantly less grief in the long run:

just started watching invincible so lets gooooooo

krabby

my new laptop is HOME and it is sparking so much joy