Just putting characters you've rolled in kudos threads does feel kind of morbid, but hey.
This has been rolling around in my head for awhile, and I've been half-seriously joking about rolling Ester for like a year and a half. I considered trying to do some big sendoff, but I feel like that would've just dragged me right back into the cycle. This doubles as a sort of, "I'm probably done playing Arelith for awhile," thread, too.
To condense this in a couple of sentences; I love Ester, she's a great character, and I had tons of fun roleplay with her, but she's a character with years of baggage and expectations, and that gets to be unfun to keep playing sometimes. I emotionally invested myself into Ester in a way that I'd describe as unhealthy for me, unhealthy for the people I was roleplaying with, and unhealthy for the community as a whole. It's good to get emotionally invested in your characters, just -- not too much, you know? Cutting her loose quickly was about the only way she was going to go out.
Thank you to all of my friends across the isle, especially to the community in Bendir. Ester is a great character, and I am roleplaying her elsewhere right now, but the kinds of stories I want to tell with her no longer fit within Arelith, and that's not a criticism of Arelith or its community, just an acknowledgement that Arelith is no longer the correct medium for the kind of roleplay I want to have with that character.
I'd like to thank the staff, too. I'd point out individual names, but I don't want staff members who have helped me greatly be rewarded by being swamped due to an implicit recommendation. Despite not always being on the right side of the rules, the DM team has always been honest, patient, and forgiving with me. It's incredible to have a staff that you feel like you can talk to, even when you're in the wrong and you know it.
A few of my favorite contributors made Arelith not just a fun roleplay experience, but an incredible mechanical experience as well. You know who you are. I talked your ears off, and probably fought with you a lot, too. I'm going to apologize for the heated conversations we got into. It's easy to turn every community feedback thread into a fantasy of what could be, rather than taking Arelith on its current merits and current design direction.
This is all kind of scatterbrained, but I'm kind of scatterbrained right now anyways, so to finish this little ambiguous kudos off, I'd like to say that I originally started investing time into Arelith as a means of getting away from a community that I had a pretty unhealthy relationship with. When I first really got into Arelith, I was shocked at how different Arelith was from that community. Until the white paint started to fleck away, and I was plunged back into cynicism as I realized the same selfish human behaviors that drove me away from that other community were present in Arelith, too. I was upset about that for awhile, but I just kept on trucking along with Arelith anyways. And through that, it helped me sort of internalize something that I think is easy to preach, but hard to really understand. There are rotten, selfish, foolish people everywhere, and when I got to know those rotten, selfish, foolish people, I realized they weren't really those things at all -- I was just holding onto things a little too tightly to realize it. This realization helped me have healthier relationships with other communities -- including the one I originally used Arelith to get away from. Fancy that.
It's not always the case -- there are some goobers that are truly beyond help on Arelith -- but the next time you find yourself frustrated with a clique or a group because you feel like you're being excluded or bullied by them, why not try to get to know them instead? I made a lot of friends on Arelith that way.
At the end of the day, it's just a game, and we're all here to have fun.
So, I'll see you later, Arelith. Thanks for all the help.
