Hello all! I'm Karkas I'm 32 and I hail from the Midwestern region of the United States, I've been writing in various different capacities basically my whole life, but I first started roleplaying when I was oh I don't know about 14 or 15 or so. I've been roleplaying on and off ever since. I like to write many things, I have a special love for Alternative History, High and Low Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Modern Fantasy (That is, Fantasy Settings designed from the ground up to have an equivocal level of modern technology, not to be confused with Urban Fantasy where we drop the Fae Realm onto L.A.). But if the plot is sufficiently interesting enough I am game to write just about any setting or genre.
My replies are varied though never as scant as a single line and rarely even as small as a single paragraph. I confidently say that my posts tend to vary from between two paragraphs to ten or more depending on the context (usually I do long-form for intros or setting important scenes but tend to go shorter for back and forths of course). My writing schedule varies, I try to reply sooner than later, but I am a single father and also do have other hobbies that sometimes distract me as well, and sometimes the muse just doesn't want to budge. As a general rule I try to reply at a bare minimum of once a week, if not at least once per day.
My tolerance level for gore is very high, I tend to stick to realistic levels of violence, blood, and gore and don't do horror movie cartoonish gore, but violence does not bother me at any level really.
I do enjoy writing smut and sexual content in general, but as most people do I have my caveats. I don't really write stories that are only smut. I don't mind a story that is smut-heavy, but there has to be something else there than just pure smut to keep me interested. As an example I enjoy stories in which one character is a sex-worker, by default these stories tend to have a lot of smut and very quickly from the introduction, but I want it to develop into something else whether it be an unlikely love story, or a story of escape from their situation. For the reasons I mentioned before I don't like putting ratios like 70/30 or whatever on it because every story is different and I prefer to simply go with what feels natural to the story when it comes to the frequency of smut rather than trying to put a hard ratio on it.
As for the particulars of kinks and stuff, I'm into a lot and can be talked into most things if it fits with the story but again, a few caveats. While I don't necessarily strictly play 'good-guys' or 'bad-guys' and like my characters to be complex (even the most Noble and Benevolent of men have flaws) and multi-layered, I am usually not comfortable with my primary characters being the perpetrators of non-consensual acts. I am not opposed to non-con elements in stories as they can provide motivations, development, and other character related things I just do not generally like my main perspective characters to be the culprits of these acts.
But as for kinks and the like that I actively look for? I like everything from sweet vanilla lovemaking scenes to bondage and D/s dynamics. Note that with D/s dynamics while I do enjoy bondage, whips, and chains when it comes to D/s I am primarily interested in psychosocial and psychoemotional aspects of it. Rituals, titles, rewards, punishments, and the praise and admonishments that come with them over the purely sexual aspects. I would say my only real hard limit is like scat stuff but basically everything else is on the table to be discussed between us, if I'm not feeling it I'll tell you and I hope you can do the same.
So I have lots of general pairing or setting ideas, but I don't have the time to list them all now but eventually when I revisit this thread to do a full overhaul and comprehensive request thread I will. But I love arranged marriage plots in fantasy, historical, or alternative history plotlines especially if they are breaking barriers or norms in some way. I also like stories involving the female party being a sex worker, this can also be in any setting but currently I prefer this in the context of a modern setting. As for settings, well I love alternative history, I love worldbuilding and I put a lot of effort into worldbuilding. Whether its alternative history where we reshape and remold historical events to create a world we want to write a story in, or a fantasy setting built from the ground up, or a sci-fi universe with aliens, planets, and ships I love to worldbuild and will put an insane amount of effort into it.
I tend to avoid having overly detailed plots ready to go, I'll have general ideas with some level of specificity but I like to leave enough room to tailor things for my partners interests as well. But as I said earlier I like to do alternative histories and fantasy plots, lately I've been super interested in Gunpowder Fantasy, so fantasy settings that have a technology level equivalent of between the early Colonial Period and the end of the Napoleonic Era. Cannons, snazzy uniforms, period clothing, the vanity of rulers and lords, the industrialization of economies, its fertile grounds for good stories I think even with magic and otherwise mixed up in it.
As with plots, I tend to tailor characters to the story we are telling. Sometimes I'll use character templates for certain sorts of characters, but every character will be personalized to the story that we want to tell together and the scenario we have drafted together.
Now there are a few more things I feel necessary to share about my style of writing and roleplaying. I do like small scale and localized stories sometimes, mostly for more modern settings though I do like the idea of a grand sweeping tale set in our modern world so if that is something that interests you please reach out as it is not something I have often gotten to engage with and I love spreading my wings as a writer and writing in unfamiliar territories often. But again, small scale localized stories are fine in most settings. However my true love with writing will always be large scale plotlines, perhaps even plotlines with multiple and varied sets of characters that we portray. Stories of Kings and Wars often have effects on Commoners and Merchants, and I like to explore perspectives. Often I enjoy a Game of Thrones sort of approach to character perspectives, having different characters in different positions at different places in the world as the overarching plot intensifies and causes downstream effects on all the people living in our world. We can see the world change from the eagle-eyed perspective of Kings, Lords, and Presidents, and then explore how those changes effect the world from the perception of a blacksmith, a businessman, a farmer, a factory worker. But I also understand often with even the grandest of tales, one must mind the small things first. A saying I've enjoyed is "One must mind Frodo and the Shire before you start to worry about Sauron and the War of the Ring."
As for subject matter, I enjoy a large range of plotline themes and subjects. Politics, racial tensions, religious frictions, wars, espionage, love, romance, trying to live through adversity, these are all great subject matters for stories of all kinds and in any setting. Many times these themes tend to weave together but they can also be explored separately depending on your preferences. But it is good for there to be tension in a plot, the issue with a lot of slice-of-life roleplays is they tend to fizzle out pretty quickly due to a lack of intrigue so finding some source of tension even in the most mundane story is important. Furthermore, I think it is good that we have some sort of idea of beginning and end points, we don't need to plan the story out so thoroughly that it is merely a train heading from one station to another, but often I find roleplays fizzle out quickly without some sort of ending to work towards. This doesn't mean that we can't explore sideplots in fact I love exploring B plots almost as much as the A plot. But when the B plot runs out I find sometimes people struggle to figure out where to go from there, having an end point to work towards I feel helps with this. Again the end point doesn't need to be defined in excruciating detail, even just a vague idea of an ending is more than good enough.
Now to the topic of formatting. If you can't tell by this thread, I use a lot of imagery. Images are not meant to necessarily be one-to-one recreations of characters, places, or things, but they do help with my visualization. I will usually pick an image or art to represent my character and use it consistently in posting, and I like when partners do the same but it is not a hard requirement by any means. For fantasy and historical settings I will generally use drawn art, for modern settings I may use either drawn or faceclaim photos to represent my character depending on the story and what I feel best fits. I do my best to avoid AI art, I am not going to pass judgement on those who do but I avoid it as best I can personally. I also tend to use colored text for dialogue especially in stories and scenes with multiple characters speaking, it helps me differentiate at a glance who is speaking and saying what in a given moment. I do not require this of my partners, but it is something that I choose to do.
With all of that said, I think this gives a decent idea of who I am and how I am as a writer and how I approach roleplaying. Please feel free to reach out to me to plot stories but understand that right now it will be slow going for a bit at least to start until I get settled here. I prefer to be approached in private messages for roleplay plotting, but if someone responds here I will reply as best I can. Thank you all!