there is no shortage of great players on the boards. This month, the Founders are proud to announce Shai as the next Featured Character! Please enjoy her interview and feel free to ask more questions.
| Hello Shai! Can you tell us how you found Mizahar and what convinced you to join our community? I wish I could say it was a grandiose adventure through the bowels of the internet to find my way into the Mizaharian paradise. In reality, one day I was bored, googling randomly as many of my miza posting buddies can confirm as a frequent occurrence, and the whim struck me to google for a fantasy roleplay site. If I recall correctly I ended up on one of those sites that just lists other sites, I tossed out the first few; a vampire rp, a werewolf rp, and a zombie rp, before I finally arrived at Miza. What really convinced me to join was actually reading one of the founder modded threads and seeing the high standards of writing so many members of the community held themselves to. Also, I remember the skill system being an enormous part of my decision. It was refreshing to find some boundaries placed on characters so that newbs couldn’t be uber powerful and smash people. Shai is a Symenestra. What drew you to that race for this character? Do you think they are very hard to roleplay convincingly? So I picked Shai with a very ‘Dungeon and Dragons’ frame of mind. I knew I wanted to make a thief but I wanted to make a PC who was believable as a thief. So I read through the races trying to find one that if they were tossed in a middle of a lawless city of strangers would naturally resort to larceny. The reasons for picking Symenestra were numerous but they boiled down to the fact that they’re too fragile to survive in almost any other shady profession, but their racial abilities, namely their ability to climb sheer surfaces, made them excellent for stealth and quick get-aways. On the other hand, Shai really dislikes her profession because it forces her to live off of the ‘inferior’ races. Regarding writing a Symenestra convincingly, for the first month or two I was constantly worried about keeping her inside the spider mind frame. Eventually it developed that she only associated with people she could use. In her mind, they were still beneath her but even animals could be very useful in the right situations. Also, I occasionally have a bit of fun with her dislike of wide open or bright spaces. To this day, I am not positive Shai’s psyche falls in line with the other Symenestra but I genuinely hope so. Do you encounter as much racism playing a spiderette as would be expected of a "dark" race? Do you wish you got more or less of it? Honestly, not at all. In Sunberth I think she only encountered three or four PCs who were wary of her due to her race. When she got to Alvadas this changed slightly, she met with a bit more racism, some to her disadvantage but mostly it was ambiguous. I would greatly like to see some more racism tossed in her direction, and indeed welcome it! Time for character diamonds. Four adjectives please, two positive and two negative, one of which permanent and one situational. Permanent Pro: Calculating Con: Manipulative Situational: Pro: Confidence Con: Bigotry Did Shai undergo any unexpected developments through her Mizaharian career because of other PCs or maybe mods? In general, are you more of a planner or one who goes with the flow? There is one PC that threw Shai a curveball, even in all of her careful considerations she never saw it coming. Honestly, I had intended her to be a loner and so when someone showed up that piqued her curiosity I was a little dumbfounded. At first. Eventually things worked out and Shai considered Antar her partner and not to spoil threads currently in progress but she eventually comes to terms with the idea that he is more than that. Haha, here comes a metaphor! I think of plots like a tree. I never plan more than the skeleton, and the leaves are filled in as the threads and plots progress. Basically, I usually know the biggest plot point going into a thread and from there the chips will fall as they may. What do you do for inspiration, that thing some call muse and others just like to curse when it's not there? I don’t know what randomly inspires me but I do have two ways I break writer’s block; I’ll share those since they seem applicable. The first way is I just sit in chat and when someone demands a specific reply from me I go and do it. It’s simple and for no good reason it works. The second way, and this is the weird one, is that I wake up randomly in the middle of the night. The time has to be from 2 to 4 am and just start writing. I really cannot explain why these two things work for me, but they do often to great success. What's the ideal city/setting for your character and why? Is it some place that brings out Shai's best traits (or the worst?) This is perhaps the most difficult question to answer. All of the cities are so different and Shai would react in unique ways to being in any of them. I think my favorite aspects of her are most applicable in Sunberth, though I have high hopes for when she ventures to Ravok. Alternatively, as a person, she is probably at her best in Kalinor. You are a NaNoWriMo challenge winner. Congrats on that one! How did you manage to churn out all that text in November? Any tricks you want to share? So the first 35k or so words were easy. I just chugged out replies to threads as they came in. But as the crunch started to weigh me down I almost didn’t make it. I got really lucky honestly, some other Mizaharians picked up my defeated tin can and forced me back to the grindstone. I almost gave up again at 45k, but while sitting at work in the last few days I got forced to post nonstop in a thread which finally got me over the mark with two days to spare. From there I stopped posting for three days because whatever inspiration I had was singed on both ends of the wick. So the trick? Friends to help you. If you can get a handful of really solid plots going 50k will come easy, or at least with a bit of nagging. Describe your dream thread, you know, the character-defining one you totally want to have some day. I have been toying with an idea for a long time, almost since Shai’s conception. As a fringe worshiper, Shai considers herself among Viratas’s most devout. The reality is that she’s among the most out-of-line of his worshipers. The dream thread would be the day she discovers that what she’s been doing was completely counter to the God. The only reason I haven’t busted this personality flaw out in a thread already is that this realization has to come from a source she cannot deny. If there’s any lack of credibility, she will rationalize it away and the epiphany won’t really stick. Where do you see yourself with this character in, say, one year? Geographically, Shai will probably be in Syliras or Kalea. Plot wise I hope she will have recovered her son. Speaking of development, I foresee her continuing to progress in her three primary skills; acrobatics, stealth, and larceny. |
