It is always fine and even often healthy to take a break from mushing be that break an hour or forever or anything in between.
While we have historically not got along, have clashing personalities, I am confident that many players found your games to be wonderful fun and remember them fondly and don't find your replaceable, far from it.
I am confident that many who played with your on arx or been in your prps would say the same.
Mushing is both just a game and more than a game at the same time.
By that I mean....
In most cases people and events in our real lives are going to matter more than what happens on the game. We are often mushing to have fun moment by moment and the moments can soar by without the same kind of building that might happen in real life. Our virtual friendships might be played for a short time and our virtual babies might never grow up our virtual wars fought and forgotten, fading. We might get fuzzy on some of the scenes we had and some of the people we played with. Games come and go. Worlds rise and fall, ending mostly with whimpers rather than bangs.
On the other hand, real friendships and memories are made in mushing. I absolutely love to talk with people who were around in Arx in 2018 about the stories we told and the rp we had back then. I will smile fondly over old mushing memories and maybe even cried over a few of them too. I cry more than I should or maybe I don't cry as much as I should. or maybe there is no amount of /should or shouldn't/ when it comes to tears.
Virtual scenes can bring tears that are wet as the rain and sometimes real pain is too sharp and dry for even a drop.
I still to this day think fondly on the winter gray forest missions, even though they are now dusty and largely forgotten, little dust mites of near nothingness in the histories of Arx. Are they meaningless as they fade further and further from the relevence? Well what is the meaning of meaning?
They were joyous and sometimes, once in a while, I find someone talking about the winter mission the or attack on Maelstorm or the war of Silence, the dogs who killed Zhayla and Killian, the day Aislinn went missing from the ship and even of the five paladins, now you must remember them and so on and so forth.
And ever once in a while...Reese will tell some unlucky soul, a story of who one of the figurines she has placed around her tower was, going over the stories of the Killian, Esoka, Zhalya, Sparte, Estaban, Aiden, Harald, Copper, Joslyn, Aislinn, Niamh, Rymarr - the people she used to know and rarely just ever so rarely, she alludes to Ainsley.
I try not to bore the poor people too much though with stuff before their time, but I do think of that song, empty chairs at empty tables sometimes when I a playing her.
I have made close friends who with whom my relationships with transcends any games even if we started by just roleplaying, but was it ever /just/ roleplaying. With some, not with all.
You fucked up. I have too We all fucked up, in one way or another, some in lots of ways or another. I am sure I have in lots of ways.
You are memorable. I certainly remember. Much of Reese's interaction with Ainsley, even the tense interactions drove her to become what she has become. I like what she has become.
It threads under the surface, Reese pushed herself so far partly because of a certain scene we had. I won't go into the details as that will derail. But the point is, Ainsley still effects the game and is not forever faded or forgotton.
Walking with those memories and leaving mushing is a valid choice, a very valid choice, but the echoes of the scenes you once had and the worlds you have built will linger in your mind and in the minds of others, maybe the hearts too.
Those you played on Arx are not forgotten. The games you ran are not forgotten. Things would be not be quite the same if your characters were played by anyone else.
But even more so, Cobalt is not forgotten.
for much of the mush community.
