Veloci-Rapture

Shit, I've spent less than a year typing out the stuff about my setting, and I still hesitated at giving you the permission to turn it over to someone else on the off chance that I rack up twelve consecutive months of inactivity. 😄

The CAPTCHA wouldn't be so bad if all the answers weren't so freaking hard to spell without going back to look at them. 😄

You have so quickly forgotten the time I had to do the math on your OC's boulder-lifting capabilities, to debunk the idea that he was just "a little stronger than average". I don't agree with Priestess's flouncing-off fuck-you speech, but I'm finding it impossible not to point out that you have a more-than-slightly skewed idea of what "average" is.

I can't tell you how peeved I am that your giant list of @'s isn't alphabetical. 😄

Your "No Mule for You" image is probably the moment that's made me laugh the hardest in all the years I've been on Val. May the site go to the archives with my avatar as a persistent memorial to it.

Supernal IS the Grand Mainframe, confirmed!

I'm planning to make some characters and run in threads made by the beta testers to get some hands-on experience with the system, and ultimately I plan to transfer my floating island of Va Madar to its own region, no longer floating, so I can include the rest of the world around it (the Tangled Woods, the Tree of the Heart, the savannah, the Plains People, the Great River, the ocean, the other continent on the other side of the ocean....). Such ambition and hubris will no doubt be punished by the IRL gods, but what is a man without his goals?

I'm on what I hope is my final full editing pass, depending on what the second round of beta readers comes back with (I expect I'll just be making little tweaks from that feedback, but who tf knows?), and then it'll be ready to query to agents. And sho nuffffffff! I'll be giving it a shot!

I'm still collecting data to figure out how I feel about this (that statement doesn't sound weird to me, but I also think it probably sounds weird to other people ohwell). I do have to hand it to @supernal tho; I know well the feeling of wanting something new, different, and arguably better, while feeling like you're stuck in a circumstance you're not allowed to walk away from because other people will be mad. The strength it took to prep all this and ultimately make this post is a pretty big deal. It's been 15 years, bro; you're allowed to be done. Massive respect. I first came to Val under a different name back in 2013. I was working at a fertilizer plant, and I was in an awful space in my relationship and in my life in general. I had this idea for a character with a story BURNING in my brain thanks to the long nights sitting on a forklift waiting for something to lift, and went to look for a place to throw some of those ideas around. I don't remember exactly how I found Val; I think it was just a simple google search. I know I tried several other roleplay sites before Val, each for just like an hour as I determined that they were absolutely not what I needed. I could only post from the computer in the break room at work (anyone who knows anything about my ex knows why; anyone who doesn't will just have to suck it up because I'm not going into that), and the job was seasonal, so when May came around, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to find a way to come back. I did when I got picked back up for the next season, in winter 2013/2014, only I was on the other side of the plant for that season. If you want an idea of how important Val was to me at that time, here's a glimpse: I had to clock out for my break, climb a 30' ladder, walk through a narrow maintenance tunnel/catwalk probably 90' in the air next to a running conveyor belt (in some places, walking sideways) over the parking lot to the other side of the plant, then climb down another 30' ladder and cross a busy production area (Watch Out For Forklifts!) to get to the one break room in the plant that had an open computer in it. Then read posts (and that was all I had time to do on my 15 minute break), post something I had composed in my mind in the previous hours (on my 45-minute lunch break), and go all the way back to my work area (via the same route). I took that journey twice a day, every weekday. And only now, looking back, does it occur to me that I was perhaps a bit obsessive. I never thought about it; it was just my daily routine. Since then, I always made it a point to be able to come and post on Val. It meant not having to deal with my real life for a while, and therefore was more valuable than gold or drugs. I will never NOT owe Val (and you, Carlos) for that. In more recent times, I've "needed" Val less (since my real life doesn't suck even remotely as much), and especially for the last bit of 2020 and this first bit of 2021, I haven't been around much. I'm in school now, and also working on my own solo creative projects (see signature), and at times participation in Val has felt, for some reason, like it exceeded the threshold of personal energy I had to devote to things. My breaks from Val were becoming more frequent and lasting longer, which I took as a sign that I was growing as a creative writer and "outgrowing" forum RP in general. But if I examine it more closely, I was mostly just tired of always having to dance around other people's ideas of roleplaying. Expectations between different players were often insurmountable, threads frequently devolved into baffling bickering, from "What do you mean you have Soviet fighter jets???" to "What are we even arguing about right now?" I would rather just write my own stories where I didn't have to play around sudden out-of-left-field surprises (of which fighter jets are only the most salient example, if not the most common). I'm excited to try something new, and will definitely be making the migration to PGRP. A new world and a new system will really help me solidify if I've outgrown RP in general, or if I'd just gotten bogged down in the weeds of Val specifically. Here's to new things! Edit: Upon further recollection, the ladders were probably only about 15 feet. There was a rusty metal stairway under them. But I was out of shape and constantly sleep-deprived, so it felt like 30 foot of ladder.

I KNEW OFFTOPIC WAS INVOLVED WITH THE ELECTION THREAD! #CalledIt The "404 Mule Not Found" graphic is still saved in a special place on my hard drive. You were very high on my list of suspects, CSL, but I'll admit I would never in a thousand years have guessed vielle.

I'm still here, I'm working on it. I have a lot of other projects and stuff going that keeps dragging my attention, but I'll have a post up this week, promise.

Vetiver was a dog-walker for Zengi's third cousin's brother-in-law's great-granddaughter's best friend's real estate agent. (Hey supernal, can I make that canon? 😄 )

I would ideally run the IPP for the airship battle, if only so it's not a weird battle where Lilith has all the advantages and is still like "run away!" even though there's only two airships and a kid on a moped rolling up on her. For the capture group, I'd want Vetiver there as an IPP representative, but not necessarily like all the IPP there. Maybe with a couple of redshirt NPCs who may or may not get turned inside out to show how much of a badass Lilith is. Y'all can wrangle "who gets to put the cuffs on her" and "who gets to provide three hots and a cot" amongst y'all; I have no dog in that fight.

Ah, finally! Yes, Vetiver will be in this. I've got a hell of a lot going on, but this is one of those previously-agreed-to obligations that I kept back a little bit of space for. If it can be arranged, I'd like Vetiver to be on the capture team. @supernal: Pending amenities' interest level (which didn't seem super high by the end of the last thread), since you're not into running the IPP's part of this adventure, could I do it?