I wish I could say I'm better at RPing now than I was 'back then' (there are a few 'back then's for me), but I think my personal journey has been more of a rollercoaster than a continuous uphill climb towards being a "good RPer", whatever that means.

Right when I FIRST first started, I had no idea what I was doing. I was writing because I liked writing and I wanted to retain my fluency in English, and I was writing my own personality with a different name because I knew it would be easiest.

Rachel (middle name Danielle, so maybe not a wholly different name) was my learning curve. We started out with short, single paragraph posts. Very short sentences. Very "typical" reactions. When she hit fourth/fifth year, my posts swelled in size. I even remember this one RP in the library where my posts were so long you had to scroll for a bit to get to the end. I thought I'd reached peak RPing, that I was the best I could ever be. She became separate from the "what would I do in this situation", it was more "this is what Danielle would do, but Rachel's different here, Rachel would do ___". I flourished! The sky was the limit!

Then I left, and I came back, and there was twitter and multiple characters and more SS friends and a whole new world of RPing and SS and everything I thought I knew, I didn't. My posts condensed, my writing became less 'psuedo flowery' and I realised that I preferred it that way. Limiting myself made me consider each word more, each turn of phrase. There were physically less words in my posts, but I still got everything I wanted across. It made me understand why I was always so starstruck by Touz, because her posts were never long but they were ALWAYS filled to the brim with personality and clear intent and were a joy to read.

So I think that my post lengths and learning curves are more accordion-like than anything else, but my own understanding of how I RP, what I like to RP, how I get my point across, how I manage to pull forward my characters' personalities and quirks, that has been a slow but steady climb in the eleven years I've been playing around in this world.

Also, I'm still here to make sure I don't lose my fluency in English, so not much has changed in terms of general life goals ^___^