Hello Fellow Mizaharians!
Keeping with our tradition, the Founders Circle and Regional Storytellers are proud to announce that the Featured Character of the Month of September 2018! Sophie is one of our resident Witches. She plays in Syka and has a lovely writing style that has been admired by the staff since she started playing. So, please join us in welcoming him to the elite club of Featured Character! Her interview is below! |
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The Interview
1. You've mentioned that Mizahar is your first real forum RPing experience in about 10 years; what prompted you to come back to it, and why did you choose (and stick with) Mizahar?
A few months ago I sat down and thought about the things that I used to enjoy doing that I no longer did, and writing was one of those things. I remembered I used to do a forum rp way back when (it involved wolves, I cringe about it now!) and I thought something similar would encourage me to write again and keep at it.
After some googling, Mizahar came up among others, and the depth and history here was what drew me in and snagged me! The lore and the whole way that everything has been set up helped in providing me with so much inspiration, and there are a lot of different things I’d like to try - so that I think is what keeps me here. Everything is evolving along with the characters and it’s so exciting to see what’s going on. And I am sure that everyone says this, but also all of you keep me here too! I was so nervous to sign up and then subsequently hop into discord, but you’re all so lovely and it just sealed the deal!
2. Sophia has the Phylonura gnosis mark; what drew you to that mark and Caiyha in particular? What is Sophia's relationship with Caiyha like?
I wasn’t going to go for any kind of magic at all when I started. I actually chose not to give my Svefra Laviku’s Gnosis as a result! However, in one of my evenings flicking through the lore pages I came across Phylonura, and I just really connected with it myself, probably because I work so closely with the environment in my day-to-day life. Sophia is someone who is so interested in the world around her, and in particular the things that grow in various places, that I thought it would be perfect for her.
As for her relationship with Caiyha, I think it still has a way to go. She hasn’t really ever been one for worship and prayer, even to Laviku, and she has never had a particular deity that she felt strongly about. I think possibly the fact that she wasn’t marked by Laviku was the reason for this nonchalance, as she clearly wasn’t important or special enough (in her mind) to receive Oceanus. Moving forward I’d like for her to start to form a deeper connection to Caiyha as her understanding of her mark grows. She’s started to call her Mother Caiyha in response to receiving her mark, as she is starting to see the Goddess as a guiding figure, but this is definitely something I want to explore in the coming seasons.
3. Do you have any long-term goals for your PC? If so, how are you approaching them? If not, how do you find writing with only short term goals?
Sophia started out as a little starry-eyed individual who wanted to discover all the shiny new plants that she could. And that was literally my entire concept for her. As I’ve started to write for her however, she’s developed new ideas and goals. At the moment my long-term goals for her are to further her relationship with the environment and with Caiyha to gain her a further Phylonura mark, and to open and run her own successful herbalism business.
There are a lot of short-term goals that come with that, and I’ve enjoyed coming up with other smaller things to work on each season. I love writing to short-term goals as they can send you off on a tangent you didn’t know you wanted and also give you the satisfaction of achieving something, but I also like knowing that I am also working towards this big over-reaching goal a little at a time.
4. Syka is a rather unique city being a still-developing settlement; what about it made you feel like it would be a good fit for your character?
I spent a little while reading through the forums of the open cities, and out of all of them Syka stuck out to me. Sophia wants to make her own life away from her family, and she wants discovery. Where better than a developing settlement next to a jungle to do those things? It seemed like the perfect place for her because she still has her connection to her family with the sea, and then there’s the jungle where she can explore and discover to her hearts content (when she gets enough ws points anyway!). Syka seemed like a place where she could go and build her new life literally from the ground up and be whoever she wants to be.
As a writer I am excited by the opportunities for stories that Syka has. There is so much to explore and develop there, and I am hoping to get more into that in future seasons.
5. Sophia is a very energetic, upbeat character; what prompted you to make her that way? Did you have any particular inspirations when making her character?
When I created Sophia I wanted to make a character that was un-complicated with a simple story. I didn’t want to try and write someone who I wouldn’t connect with because I didn’t want to make writing feel like a chore. I naturally gravitate towards happy people and have been described as ‘sunny’ myself, so I guess I subconsciously drew on that aspect of my own personality to create her.
As for any particular inspiration, I didn’t have anyone or anything in mind while writing her up but thinking about it now she reminds me of one of my friends who is completely obsessed with plants and nature. She is always going out exploring and is so excited to tell me about all the new plants she’s found or bought. I think took her passion and excitement and gave them to Sophia, and now that I’ve realised that it makes me very happy, and I hope that as a character Sophia is as warm and lovely as my friend is.
6. What do you feel has been your PC's most memorable IC moment so far? What about it makes it memorable to you?
Sophia is still pretty new, and I spent most of Summer settling myself into the site and her into Syka so I haven’t yet tried anything particularly adventurous! However saying that, I do have a moment which has literally just happened at the time of writing this, where she’s exploring the jungle with Okara and they happen across a huge tiger. Okara certainly surprised me with that one! I can see this particular event being pivotal in Sophia’s development in that she remembers how important the connection between all life is, and that she is also very small in the grand scheme of things. So I see it being memorable to me for that turning point in her thoughts, and also because it’s not every day that you accidentally disturb a tiger while looking for plants!
7. What sort of threads do you like writing best, and why? Is there anything in particular that you do to keep threads interesting?
So far I’ve enjoyed the threads where I get to connect with other characters and just have fun. I haven’t written a huge variety of threads yet, but in the ones I have done I’ve enjoyed when my pc can connect with someone else over a shared interest. Honestly though, at the moment I am just having fun writing whatever threads I have as I am thrilled to have found something that I love doing.
To keep things interesting I tend to try and use that shared interest between pc’s to prompt a fun activity and I try not to keep the characters stationary either in environment or the line of conversation. My overall goal for threads is to either learn something and/or have fun, so if I can keep those things throughout a thread then hopefully it will stay interesting for the other participant(s) and any readers!
8. Sophia was born and raised among the Svefra, and yet she has a grassland biome Phylonura and works as an herbalist; those are two rather conflicting aspects of her character. How has this affected the way you play her, and do you have any plans to try and bridge that gap?
To add a layer to my otherwise simple character concept I decided to put my plant-loving girl on the open ocean. All of her life she has possessed this growing interest in the things that grew on the land. Added to that is the lack of Laviku’s mark and there you have Sophia who feels like she doesn’t belong on the sea and so has a desire to go elsewhere and find a place where she can be herself. I also think that being given a land biome with her Phylonura has solidified in her mind that she was always meant to be a land dweller, and so that gap has expanded even before I started writing for her.
I haven’t had a chance to fully explore that part of her yet besides touching on it in her Gnosis story, but I do have some plans. The sea was her home and she appreciates it because of that, but she never felt connected to it. I would like to look into that further in the future, as up to this point I have been mostly playing to her excitement at being on the land. I am hoping to get some flashbacks written where I can go back to that part of her life and really get into how it was for her to feel that way, especially among her family. I haven’t decided how I want to look at it in the present yet, but eventually I would like her to try and reconnect with her roots - not necessarily going back to sea dwelling, but finding as much appreciation for the sea as she currently has for the land.
9. What has been one of your favorite character interactions to date? Why was it your favorite? This could be something you wrote or something you read that someone else wrote.
My favourite interaction that Sophia has had was with Nieve, when Nieve literally dropped out the sky in front of Sophia’s face after trying to eat her Tavan. The mental image I have of that scene always makes me chuckle.
For other characters, I particularly loved the interaction between Rook and Shiress when they bonded. When I first joined Mizahar I went through and read a bunch of threads by different characters, and this was the first one I read from start to finish. The thread as a whole was great, but that one moment in particular really stuck with me because I could practically feel the emotions coming off my screen when I read it. The connection between the two of them is something that I would really love to have between one of my pc’s one day.
10. If you could have Sophia learn, do, or experience absolutely anything within the lore, what would you choose and why? Be honest; would you pick it for IC reasons, or because of an OOC interest?
The one skill I would love for Sophia to learn would be morphing. It would mainly be for myself as it sounds like such a cool thing to be able to do, but I actually think it would tie in really well with Sophia once she connects more with her Gnosis too. I very nearly considered giving it to her from the start but decided against it for the sake of simplicity and the fact that I found magic confusing. At the end of the day though, if she ever gets it, it would totally be because I think it sounds like it could be really fun.
11. Here’s your soap box question! Is there anything you want to talk about in regards to your character and or the game itself? You have an audience so feel free to jump on the soapbox and talk a bit about anything you want!
Well firstly I am incredibly flattered, and this was the last thing I expected! Secondly I would like to say thank you to all of you! I have been endlessly inspired by characters and storytellers alike and reading some of the incredible writing that happens here constantly makes me want to improve and create awesome stories of my own. I was so nervous at first to join up and start posting, but the sense of community here has been so welcoming and it’s wonderful to be a part of. I don’t really have any sage words of wisdom to end with, so I shall sign off here! *scatters cookies in her wake*
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by Luminescence on September 1st, 2018, 6:27 pm 
I look forward to seeing what you get up to in Syka this season!
