a trend I’ve noticed in characters is a general dislike of violence

It’s not universal but it’s but it’s been growing

Samata is an academic with minimal combat skills, Kohaku ended up having HELLA hang ups about hurting people

Lin always tried diplomacy first

Iren I created SPECIFICALLY to not be interested in cool fight scenes

Most of my tabletop characters have a distinct goal beyond “get stronger”

“Find worthy opponents to test my blade on” describes the goal of none of them

It’s not universal

Sabra is a murderous gremlin

And I was disappointed Kaito never got to have a cool duel with Eliath

I think I was just struck at some point by how many RP characters fill their free time with sparring and training

Because a disproportionate number of characters come from action series

But endlessly preparing yourself for the next fight struck me as a particularly miserable way to live

Meti knew what the fuck was up

To train with the sword, first master sweeping. When you have mastered sweeping, you must master the way of drawing water. Once you have learned how to draw water, you must split wood. Once you have split wood, you must learn the arts of finding the fine herbs in the forest, the arts of writing, the arts of paper making, and poetry writing.

You must become familiar with the awl and the pen in equal measure. When you have mastered all these things you must master building a house. Once your house is built, you have no further need for a sword, since it is an ugly piece of metal and its adherents idiots.

(Which is literally what Iren did)

(She made a house and then was like “alright I’m just gonna live comfortably now”)