beyond any self-confidence issues, one of the struggles about making art for characters is that it can take a bit for me to decide on a design and draw anything I wanna use, which is one of the reasons why I can understand that using face claims is easier. I’m fighting my own feelings of inadequacy and the fact that thinking of new designs and making art isn’t easy, no matter how many years of experience I have, which slows me down quite a bit. Oh, and the infinite exhaustion and whatever health issues I’m currently dealing x.x Making art isn't easy, nor is character design, but I still love to see it and will always encourage it, but I know how fcs can be more practical, since we're all mostly exhausted nowadays, ya?

I miss it when not requiring any face images at all was more common, I have a soft spot for appearance descriptions. I hold no strong dislike over fcs at all but I still feel like I live/have lived in a completely different world considering some of the mentalities I observe about them in general.

Most of the time I won’t recognize where fcs are from since I live under a rock, so amusingly these characters become [character name] for me. And it won’t stop me from drawing art of my collaborators’/friends’ characters, whether or not they’re using fcs or not, since I just love giving gifts whenever I have the inspiration and energy for it. + I have fond memories of when I used to edit face claim images for my friends to fit their detailed appearance descriptions better.

I adore reading RP positivity threads or just listening to people rave and ramble on about how much they like their current RPs/RP buddies/sites/characters and so on <3

planning to finish this ref sheet before the end of the year. wish me luck...

having to fix my glasses when I don't have backup glasses was painful but It has been done (I need new glasses so bad)

I finally figured out a major thing that stops me from joinning new RP sites and now I gotta figure out how to fix this or make it easier on me. thinking

Short answer: art!

I prefer illustrations/etc for faces, I don’t have any interest in RL RP and don’t like using those face claims. I tend to draw my characters! Drawing and writing goes hand-in-hand for me, so it’s important to me that I can draw my characters (and others’ too). And my style usually fits decently into the general aesthetic for anime-manga boards.

When I started RP, I only really played humans with friends, and they all either used their art, were description-only, or used illustrations. On the other hand, the Animal RP I used to be on, used illustrations as well quite often, typically had a mixture of art and photo manips as acceptable. So, it’s also what I’m more used to overall.

An aside which amuses me: I really don’t know who most face claims are. It’s amusing growing used to seeing a character as a character on an RP forum and then stumbling upon fan art of them in the wild and being all...Wow! That’s [RP character]?! I’m definitely not up to date with anything, ha

when will it snow

When will it snow

When will it snow.

boo!

Should note that this will be all from my experience of “briefly friends and I decided to try playing on Discord in 2020” and “I have roleplayed on forums almost exclusively and only used instant messengers for chat/plotting/joking around/etc”

— Discord feels cramped compared to forums, this is a big thing my friends and I had noticed when we played. Though I can imagine, if you only know Discord and are used to that, I can see forums feeling overwhelming and may take an adjustment period

— Forums can have less pressure to respond instantly, which is, as stated, will benefit players who cannot be around as often or can’t post as frequently as others. It’s much harder to miss things. Because on Discord sometimes things get forgotten because everything happened so long ago or so fast, or because it was auto-archived and lost amongst a list of faded out threads/forum posts

— Focus. Keeping my RP stuff on forums instead of in servers/on Discord helps me focus on replying better, as there is a separation between here I hang out and chat with my friends and the place where I write. Additionally, having plotting be done in private messages instead of Discord messages makes it easier to keep track of

— Discord... there’s no promise the service will be around forever if it is seen no longer worth it to keep it up and running. This has happened to other instant messaging services. While there is no assurance that our current free hosts will remain around forever either (RIP Icyboards, Zetaboards, InvisionFree etc.), they have been around for a long time already and survived many others. Additionally, there’s forum software you can get and so you can host your own site if you want to.

This is especially important to me — I don’t want to lose the stories I’ve made with people, or have to scramble to back-up a Discord server with thousands upon thousands of messages on it. Anyways, this is a reminder to y’all: please backup your forums/writing/etc etc! Nothing lasts forever.

— While Discord has better built-in accessibility, forums can be made extremely accessible, as stated though: the issue is that, by default, they aren’t really, but there are resources about this online and people who will be willing to help you with this

— There is joy to be found in the expression available to you using forum skins/layouts/etc etc. Discord does have a lot of options in regards to bots and again, I know the fact that I find it hard to use is mainly because /I’m/ not used to it. But as stated, don’t try to throw your hat in the skinning arm’s race — just make/use something you and your current players like!! It can always be changed and updated

— You can still have the Discord up for your site alongside the forum and re-open RP there if it doesn’t work out. This, also for growth, if this is a concern.

— I’m running out of steam here on other thoughts. But if your community is on-board with trying something new with forum boards, I recommend trying. PP in particular is a pretty helpful community if you have any other questions/concerns.