Dearest Memories

Fresh Wave

Hoppin'

A New Direction for Blogging

This blog hasn't been daily, and I haven't RPed as Ioh for quite some time.  I have wanted to, but haven't been really sure what I want to do.  Part of me has considered returning back to Midian, but I'm not as sure if that's really where I want to go with Ioh again.  However, that is assuming that Midian is the same as it was.  Not sure that such an assumption is fair, considering that Daey has been the owner of Midian City for some time now, and has recently moved the city to a new sim.  A lot of new things are happening that completely change certain aspects, which could be for the better or for the worse.  At the moment, I'm too indifferent to really say which way is good, bad, ugly, or otherwise about these changes.

I remember the reboot a while back, and thought it could have been good.   However, there was likely still some gnawing by a good many people about old drama, including for me.  That was roughly 2 years ago.  Now? I just don't know.  For a while I wasn't too happy with the Catwalkers for very personal reasons.  These reasons went beyond the RP.  Let too much drama hit me, and probably trusted too many people and my feelings for them too much to think clearly.  Could the issues have been resolved differently?  It's possible, but such possibilities are pointless to dwell on now.  What happened in 2009 is over and done with.  Went on to RP in other places, which were fun for as long as they lasted, and for as long as I kept out of the drama.  By this 'drama', I mean the OOC nonsense that happens in just about every RP where people try to play power games outside the RP and try to push people to do one thing or another based less on the RP and on the way others want to control it.  There's a certain godmodding to in on one hand. Yet, on the other hand, people do seek to play with people that have similar interests and goals.  This is very simple nature that you hear about among religion, philosophy, political science, essentially your general all around human studies.  People whined a lot about 'cliquish behavior' in Midian back in the days of the old Midian Forums, particularly around 2008.  So much argument and whining over things, rather than actually going out and RPing.  Particularly found it an irony that those who whined the most about such things were cliquish themselves.  Or, they had a particular way of RPing that had to accept certain niche ways to play a character.  And such is fine, not only if you enjoy RPing that way, but also if you don't complain about not getting RP, and practically demanding RP to happen because you are there and waiting for something to happen, because that is how you choose to play.  If you just want to wait for someone to RP with you, then continue to wait, if that's what you do.  But don't complain when people don't RP with you, especially if you take little to no initiative to strike it up in some manner, say, writing a post about walking down the street, looking around at the people your eyes happen to meet, and maybe, just maybe, give a simple wave or say 'Hi!' in some manner to greet.  If it works, great! If it doesn't, move on and don't get so irate!

I guess I needed to do a little bit of a Midian tangent, since it's been so long. <.<

*Ahem*

But anyways, moving on....

So, to be honest, I would like to say that I see some promise with Daey. I must say, as a former CW, and one that continues to have an affinity for nekos, this particular picture of her in a sexy catsuit had given me promise for maybe a true good and new generation of Catwalkers:

However, what seems unfortunate in some of the current things I've looked over is how nekos look to have been watered down quite a bit.  Much of the race information I read isn't new to treatment of nekos on other sims, where they are considered weaker, or inferior to humans, as if to set them up to be merely slaves or pets with little to no room to breath.  If this is truly how Midian is to be changed, then I don't see the point.  Ioh was meant to be relatively strong.  Leopards generally are, even the wild 4-legged types. To say that this would be degenerated in a feline hybrid doesn't make sense at all to me. Part of the reason I liked Midian was that it didn't attempt to degenerate hybrids, in so much that a person's RP character themselves wasn't intending to be a degenerate, anyways.  That freeform was, well, a free form to play out your character and develop that character any way you wanted to, that was the draw of Midian for me.  Never much cared for dice systems, and the growth and challenge that RP text combat had was far more interesting than using a meter.  I much preferred the 'within reason' element that allowed for much greater dynamics and less restraints.  And yet, if you wanted to play a restrained character, you had that choice and ability to.  The key there was in the choice, rather than being forced to have to play a certain way.

Not to say there weren't abuses, but, there was much intriguing RP that, despite all the whiny fussy people, became near legend to people willing and able to remember.  People not only enjoyed the potential of their characters, but the actuation of them in a real time streaming story.  For that was the strength of Midian at its heart, the stories that were made and had continued on in Flickr pages, blogs, and otherwise generating a lot of metacontent that kept people curious and wanting to come back, even after being all butt hurt about some nanite infused moron that thought RP was all about head shots, purely personal BDSM porn harem, and doping out of virtual drugs.  Ok... so maybe a good much of that went on, but still!  People had particular visions of Midian and would shout "This is Midian!" like some bronze statuesque god-like Trojan warrior crying out "This is Sparta!"  And there was a damn good bit of fun in all that.

But is that who I am now?  Honestly?  No, not really.  Sure, I want to believe that, push come to shove, Ioh would whip out his sword, Eternal Blue, or maybe a handgun or military grade assault rifle if he happened to acquired such weaponry again, and give some hyper-mech mad man-machine monster thingy a hearty back alley beat em' up brawl.  But is this really how I even picture Ioh any more?  To be honest, beyond the whole Dream Sequence after my fall out from Midian long ago, the attempt at an ending story for Ioh on Mars seems to really point that I've pretty much retired him from RP, if not permanently, then at least from Midian in any meaningful way in the foreseeable future.  If I did return, I'd want to be able to play his particular Feles nature, which keeps him youthful, and able to live nearly a millennium, assuming he doesn't get himself killed in some permanent manner.  Since Ioh's ending sees him dying a natural death, then the likelihood of accepting death is obviously a pretty hard no.  But even beyond that, I've become less trusting of RPers, and don't expect to really be able to do much of what I used to do.  Maybe a part of it is not trusting myself, or maybe becoming conscious about things of my former RP that I simply don't want to go down such paths any more.  For instance, I don't care to do sex RP that much, and not really looking to be tempted into it either.  No longer think picking a fight is much fun, and would be more apt to back away and only fight if put into a corner with no other option than for Ioh to defend himself.  Thus, I don't see much purpose for going back to Midian right now, other than to pay a visit and maybe do a bit of RP with friends I may trust.  Much of my 'serious' RP, or at least that sort of serious attitude, I feel it needs to move to writing books and seeking out ways to be published as an author.  I'm at that age where I really have to consider purpose of things and how they can account to my life work as a whole, and not just the nostalgia of some past play that I was enamored with back in the day.

So it's time to start paving out in that new direction. Maybe this blog with become more of a place for me to explore where I might want to take Ioh in a published story.  For a while, I've been trying to develop the history of the Feles on Mars.  Well, their predecessors in an ancient and long forgotten past.It poses some origin questions that go beyond that generic RP aspect of near future genetics experiments, and somewhat considers a sort of 'ancient aliens' type of concept.  However, not looking to make it about little green men or the world of the UFO sorts.  More or less considering the notion of Egypt and pre-deluge people having had some contact with Martian peoples that came to earth seeking sanctuary.  Not really going into the whole Enoch cycle, though the book and notion of it has intrigued me for some time.  But, pretty much, the particular story I've been mulling around deals with the notion of this last society of Mars being not too different than modern Earth, save for obvious race traits that we'd consider makes them animal-human hybrid humanoids, even though they've considered their appearance as normal and their concept of being naturally humanoid, despite the animal features.  Of course, because they were so different, confusion came and the people from Mars, called Panterreans (all-earth/all-terrain, not anything about 'panthers', despite some being such <.<), were either worshiped as gods or damned as demons by the Earth's early indigenous human population.  Yet, this part of the story is far in advance of the particular story I've been trying to focus on, which takes place on Mars itself.  But, will consider what I'll share on that in other posts.

At any rate, I do hope Midian City success as it grows and matures.  Currently, I have no plans of having Ioh become a resident there of any relevance.  Hopefully there will remain a place for nekos, and hybrids in general, and that they can keep from being watered down from being weaker version of a human that has animal features.  But what is the future of nekos and hybrids in Midian is no longer my fight much any more.  It's sometimes been a thankless fight, all things considered.  And it really isn't my fight any more.  It's for the nekos and hybrids that seek to RP at Midian with some consistency to decide how they want to play.  And if I happen to come along and visit one day, then hurray!  But it's not likely to be today, though it may happen some day.

What We Got Here Is...

...the inspiration of Luke as an RP character. Regardless if more modern or even medieval, whether Luke or Lukas, there's always a bit of Cool Hand Luke in him. ;)

http://www.imdb.com/rg/s/4/title/tt0061512/#lb-vi3823370521

Goodbye Google AdSense!

Was going to just post this on Facebook, but turned into a bit bigger rant than expected. So here's the reason I cancelled my Google AdSense account:

Upon doing a bit of research after getting yet another "Get $100 free ad credit" offer code card from Google Adsense, I decided to cancel my Adsense account and de-monetize my YouTube videos.  Never mind that the catch is that you have to spend $25.00 to use the code on the card, thus rendering the credits actually being $25.00 of real money for $100.00 of ad credit, and thus effectively paying Google for the privilege to spam your website and videos with Adsense ads. Quite simply, after having Adsense for a couple years, it's only generated $0.99, of which even that I couldn't receive because it's below the threshold that they would pay out to a canceled account.  That basically amounted to about 2 or 3 years that Google has gotten who knows how many hundreds of thousands of free ads posted that may have attributed in some way to Google's potential $2.3 billion earned (or $9.7 billion annualized) that amounts to 28% of Google's total revenue through Google AdSense (see the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense).

So yep, I'm not going to spam people on my blog or on my YouTube feed with ads in so-called monetization that does very little to actually provide what is promised.  Especially troubling is that there are stories about how Google had disabled Adsense accounts before they had to pay out those accounts that finally made it to $100.00.  Many of these people had waited out months, even years, to generate this amount of money after allowing the spamming of hundreds of thousands of ads on their websites or blogs.  And what it their reward?  To have Google accuse them of fraud, claiming in an email that, after review, these accounts had certain questionable activities, but never specifies exactly what.  Sure, there is a process of appeal, but a good portion of those people that try get stonewalled.  It would seem Google banks on them figuring it too much a bother to take legal action upon Google for this scam. The legal fees alone would cost more than the actual money that would be fought for.  What fairness would there be to support this sort of thing or expect that I would be an exception to the rule?  Therefore, Google can scam its billions of dollars through the program without me.

As for evidence of this scam, you don't have to take my word that it goes on.  Not only can you check the Wiki link provided, but you can, in all irony, Google it!

Tolkien: Where's The Hook In Lord Of The Rings?

I write this partly in argument with regards to the standard formula that many people tell you must be done to write a good book.  In particular, there is always in one writing group I try to get to as often as possible, when the question is always asked, "Where's the hook?"

Depending on what writing school of thought you come from, the narrative hook is among the top things that perceived important to get to in the writing of a book. First or second to that is the initial exposition. Some also seem to confuse or infuse the two.  But the main aspect of the narrative hook is something that sets up the main conflict of a story. It's supposed to be the crucial purpose that gives the reader a legitimate emotional reason to continue reading. This hook can be a paragraph long, or simply a sentence in length.  It is expected to, come some time withing the first chapter, and some debate that it should be the first sentence.

So let's look at Tolkien's first line of chapter 1 of The Fellowship Of The Ring:

"When Mr. Bildo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement  in Hobbiton."

Is this a hook?  No, though it is a bit of exposition in a rather run on sort of sentence.  Some would even call it passive, and it is highly descriptive.  It sets up the scene for what much of the chapter is to be about, which is the party that Bilbo Baggins is about to throw.  But it certainly does not hook a reader into any conflict  per se.  Nor do I know what legitimat emotion reason is had there for continuing to read on other than the curiosity of what this party will be like, and what may happen at it.  

The next paragraph continues in exposition of who Bilbo Baggins is, and what is the nature of his place in the society of the hobbits.  By the fourth paragraph, we are introduced to Frodo and his relation to Bilbo. The fifth paragraph furthers exposition by giving some relevance to Bilbo's age of 111 and Frodo's at 33.  It isn't until the last page and a half that you get to something of a hook. That is, the conversation between Gandalf and Frodo about the ring and Frodo's desire to go off on his own adventure.  This hook isn't neatly packaged in a single sentence or paragraph, but flows out as the events to lead on to what's to come. But a concise hook, it is not.

However, do readers of The Lord Of The Rings even care about this?  No. Why? Because the book isn't driven by the same sort of cookie cutter character progression that more modern writing has made essentially standard.  The idea is not to limit the story to the formula, but to drive it with descriptive scenic writing that give a reader the sense of 'being there' - that is, to be immersive into the world, and not getting so engrossed into the characters and the icon of persona.  Naturally, people will gravitate towards Frodo's main story as the main protagonist, but, there is also intrigue in the other characters, races, and their homes and how they live that go beyond the cult of personality that is so ingrained in our modern authorship.  

Formula should help set up the road, not drive in the roadblocks to a story.  Tolkien is a great example of how you can use formula, but also follow in the instinct of storytelling as well. 

That's not to say that the whole putting of exposition and hook in same first sentence ought never be done and doesn't work.  It has for thousands of years, such as in the Illiad's  first two verses:

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε

Which transliterates:

menin aeide thea Peleiadeo Achileos

oulomenen, he mnoi Achaiois alege etheke

Which translates:

Wrath, chant goddess, of Peleian-son Achilles, 

accursed of countless Achaeans' suffering sown.  

Just remember that you don't have to go straight to action and talking about tragedy, killing, and death to attract the reader's attention.  And sometimes subtleties work better than a direct approach.