Featured Character: Pauk! For August we are featuring people who are fairly new to the world of written rpgs! Pauk is a semi-recent arrival to the boards and forum role-playing, but has already managed to make an impact. She is enthusiastic, friendly and eager to learn and grow. I am impressed whenever someone brand new to this style of writing can hold their own with salty-dogs of the rp world like Pauk has. So let's congratulate and encourage her! 1. So how long have you been roleplaying? And how did you stumble upon this niche hobby? Less than a year. Mizahar was the first forum I started roleplaying on, and pretty much the first place I've RPed ever. Really, I kept searching around for RP forums because I really wanted to, and all of the other ones were too confusing and/or dumb looking. I think my sister may have pointed this one out to me. 2. What do you think is the best moment in rp? Generally, on Miza, it's when you get some big accomplishment like getting a gnosis, master a skill or be the first to do something. Also, getting a thread graded is fun. I also like stumbling upon a new lore in the Wiki. 3. Have any other players inspired you? Yes. A lot of PCs and the people behind them have inspired me, like Jules. There's also Tock, and every time I read her I want to make my PCs weirder and weirder. I could never name all of the PCs that have inspired me. Even if I could remember what inspired me, I could never remember which PC. 4. What do you think makes a good character? A good character? Flaws, obsessions, personality. Even a name can make a character. I like to try and balance out my PCs through everything they do. It's like trying to find the right seasonings for a soup. It takes a while to balance them out, but it's a lot more fun to play. A character doesn't have to be completely original to be fun to play, but a cookie cutter PC that seems all to common could become tedious. 5. Where did/do you draw you inspiration from for Pauk? Originally, I had wanted Pauk to be a Myrian Tiger Kelvic. It didn't work out, but I still wanted him to be a tiger. I was just looking at tiger pictures when I saw a cinnamon tiger, and I loved the colour so much Pauk just had to be one. Just to make him more fun to play, I added his gender fluidity and his love to paint. I also fell in love with the city of Taloba, and I did want to make a Myrian, but making a male, baby Kelvic in the matriarchal society of the Myrians seemed too much fun to pass up. I tried to model him somewhat after the Myrians, at least by looks. I wouldn't want him to stand out any more. 6. How do you think the mindset of a Kelvic, like Pauk, is different from your standard human's? Kelvic are animals. They're magical animals with a natural gift in morphing, but for the most part, act like animals. They have higher thinking and higher intelligence than a normal animal, and they can understand things much easier than a normal animal, but they're just animals. Special happenings in their life can influence what they do, and they can be trained to act like a normal human, but at the base of it all, they run almost purely by instinct. That is, until they bond. After they bond, they'll do whatever it is their bondmate tells them to do, and they'll adopt whatever customs of their bondmate, such as religion. They'll still run with their instincts, but they're more controlled and they're more influenced by their bondmate. At least, that's what I like to think of it as. A lot of people (including me) disregard the base instinct and the need to bond and interact and just like to think of their Kelvic like cool shapeshifting people. I know I have plenty of behavior websites bookmarked for both of my Kelvic. 7. Tell me about your favorite thread to date. I have a lot of favorite threads. I could say 'Lost', where an 8 year old Chapiko guilts an Ahnatepian noble into helping her find her mother, or I could say 'Adventure Awaits...' that has just started, but I'm still incredibly excited to see where it goes, because Raiha and I are the first to go through the Door of Mysteries. For Pauk, it's 'Two Birds of a Feather...Er, Fur', with Mihai. That thread was fun to write, and Pauk even lost the 'territory' of his bed. Mihai and Pauk have the same fur colouring, so it was easy for me to come up with a name and to start it, and watching Mihai and Pauk interact was so cute. In my opinion, at least. 8. What would you love to see happen in Pauk's future? Become a master painter. It would do almost nothing for him, but I want to see it happen. He's competent in painting and he still paints stick figures, but he's still pretty much a baby. So I mean, you can't expect a baby to be painting beautiful portraits of your pet Yorkie or something. I also want him to bond to someone. It would be great for him, because all I imagine Pauk doing all day is sit around throwing paint at the wall or sleeping on his roof because he no longer considers his bed 'his'. I'm surprised he hasn't been kicked out of Taloba yet. Maybe I should make him do something with his life, for once. 9. Pauk has an interest in painting. Where did that come from and how is it meaningful to the character? I wanted a PC to be a painter. I just kinda forced that onto Pauk and after a few confrontations/debates in chat, I changed his history to give him a better reason why he'd paint. Really, it's because his mother's bondmate taught him to paint, but he never really wanted to bond to Pauk because he was a predator, unlike his mother. He thought that Pauk would never be able to be around paintings because he would be too wild. But still Pauk paints because in his mind, it means that if he's good enough, he'd bond to him, too. So he was taught to paint, but his mother's bondmate never thought he'd be anywhere good enough or calm enough to actually become a painter. 10. If you could design the perfect bondmate for Pauk, what would he/she look like? Well, (s)he'd have to look nice. Not clothing-wise, but temperament wise. I could never see Pauk with a mean or abusive bondmate. It would completely break him. Their appearance wouldn't really matter, but Pauk is young and childish, so someone that looked scary would have next to no chance of him even wanting to be around them long enough. The only exception would be a Myrian, because he loves Myrians. He likes to consider himself a Myrian. No matter how scary, he probably wouldn't be afraid of any Myrians because he grew up around them. In fact, he'd most likely only bond to a Myrian. Or at least, someone who looked like a Myrian. 11. What's your favorite thing in Miza? I like how organized and that there's actual rules. I once tried a free-form RP and it was a horrible experience for me, especially since it was after I'd already tried Miza. I kept trying to find some rules or regulations to hold onto, but there weren't any there. I also like how the STs and founders and mods aren't completely out there and untouchable. Like, they make sure other people know they're real people and not robots who hide every mistake. I can talk to them and ask questions without being afraid they'll push me off a ledge into a never-ending abyss. The lore is also developed a lot, but there's still a lot of things that have never been done, and the world is constantly expanding and changing. Magic and fighting are realistic, and so is traveling. Not one race is too overpowered for their own good, because they all have weaknesses. |