The Thessaliad Redux

Virginia shooter's writing was apparently 'disturbing'."

I am personally waiting for the day that one of these shooter nutballs - high school, uni, postal worker, whatever - is found with any of my fan fiction on their computer hard drives. Thinking about some of the stuff I've written - in a high school setting, no less - I hate to think what would happen.

Seriously, though, while I grant that this was a tragedy, I honestly don't see why people are likening this to Columbine. Yes, it was a student shooting at people. It was a 23-year-old college student. This is not some peer-pressure-driven kid whose parents should have seen some warning signs or indeed paid half a damn bit of attention. This was an adult who obviously had problems, didn't get the help he needed and self-destructed in a messy way. It's unfortunate, but it's more a comment on the mental health care people get these days (not to mention the stigma on mental health problems that prevents people from getting adequate help) than on people's hobbies. But I'm not going to go on about it because I'll likely have a stroke if I try.

Some guy who was on Charleston before my time has apparently decided he can resurrect the board while having no idea why it finally eventually tanked as an online RP group. I'm torn between ignoring it and emailing this guy to say, "You really ought to consider that, given that the staffers left due to being badgered by the players, the players had a bit of a bitch-fight before the third server crash that lost us everything and on the whole, no one could decide what they wanted to do, it's likely that this is a dodo, not a phoenix". I'll probably do the former, though. I don't have the energy to rail at someone right now.

I'm trying to avoid the necessary smokes-and-cola run for a little while (it's raining like buggery out there) so here's the news.

I have until Sunday night to get myself back on a halfway decent sleeping schedule, because I have registration with two agencies on Monday. Oh, and one on Tuesday. Not that I've heard much from the agencies since the initial flurry, but at least they know I exist and I won't be panicking about that for another month anyway. If it's approaching Christmas and I still have not seen work, then I'll panic. I've got enough on my plate as it is, what with the whole being ill thing.

Speaking of, that damn barium meal thing is scheduled for next week. Since they couldn't shove a camera down my throat, they're going to dump me full of pseudo-minty-tasting yick and take pictures from the outside, which of course isn't going to show much in the way of inflammation but what're you gonna do? Well, I suppose what I'm going to do is hope like hell that the barium meal isn't anywhere near as bad as the endoscopy was.

Then there's the CbN thing. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really not sure why I bother checking that site anymore. I keep getting thestral coming up to me and saying, "Hey, we should just RP whatever characters we want and never mind not having a board..." or "So were you thinking of applying to any other boards? Let me know so we can play together" or bitching out the mods or what have you for not taking charge and making immediate decisions or I don't know what all; I tend not to pay attention. I mean, I'd tell him I'm on-again-off-again running some CbN-ish stuff for any of the old players who are remotely interested in keeping their characters running, but I don't really want to tell him that. Actually, I don't want to make a big deal of it at all, as this really is just a small thing and no attempt whatsoever to poach players or make any comment on what the old Mage STs are doing. This is just me not wanting to lose a good dynamic. So anyway, the people who actually know it's running are few and far between. I'm also not telling thestral about the new London board, because not only do I know how he talks about mods who don't behave exactly how he wants them to behind their backs, but I've heard stories about his dealings with mods and some of his previous attempts at characters and, seriously, no. If by some chance I do wind up staffing CbN in its new incarnation (highly doubtful, given that it's been weeks since I offered and have not as yet heard jack), I'll deal with the little toe-rag. But ... well, I have no wish to deal with that my first time as a lead and solo admin. I mean, it may happen anyway, but I don't have to invite it with all due foresight.

Beyond that, not much is new. I really need to get back to work on the NaNo; the problem I'm finding with short stories is that ... well, I care less. Or maybe it's the being ill. My knees are still pain incarnate and I'm exhausted and/or suffering insomnia, sometimes in combination, at the weirdest times. I just want the whole thing to stop now, please.

I had a lovely time at the spa. Lovely treatments, lovely people, and felt quite good at the end of it. Plus I introduced my mother to the wonderful tempura at Zipangu and found that Watkins Esoteric is stocking sandalwood oil again. All told, it was a pretty good day.

Then this guy off CbN came along and wrecked it.

Okay, look. Charleston by Night's been in a bad situation lately. Things have been going awry. Tensions have been running high for various reasons, communication took a nose-dive, and the server crashed, losing months of work - always disheartening. The staffers were trying to solidify some solutions - as far as I could tell, they wanted to come up with some options to present to the waiting players. The players were working out that one of the options for the future had to be disbanding the site entirely, or getting that idea from the rumour mill and then feeding the rumour mill with stupid statements like, "They don't care what the players want - they're not talking to us about it!". No one I knew of was bothering to talk to the staffers about it themselves, and when I did, I got honest answers and some peace of mind. I encouraged others to talk to the staffers, and those others got a worse reception, which frankly means that the problem lies with the player asking, not the staffer being asked.

Last night, a forum post went up. The remaining System Admin put up a poll asking the players to vote for their favourite option among four that the staffers had come up with before half of them quit out of frustration or whatever their reason (and I repeat - I don't blame them because this whole situation sucks): we could either have a reset with the new technology discussed, we could just move everything and start completely fresh with new everything, we could keep things as they are or we could let the site die. I voted for the third option and offered to staff Mage. I want to keep it going. I love the game and feel that it can be revived if people are willing to pitch in, and while I haven't got a lot of money to speak of, I can at least put my free time where my mouth is.

However, I decided to keep my commentary private. This seemed like a good idea until a couple of the guys from the site decided to make their commentary public. Needless to say, theirs was rather less generous than mine. They yelled and bitched about how the site had been mismanaged and that the staffers never communicated with them and so on and so forth and how CbN should just die the death to 'leave it with a shred of dignity after the ham-fisted incompetence of the staffers' or something. So, me being me, I piped up with a whole lot of commentary about the sheer ingratitude on display by these two idiots - about how the communication problems were as much to do with the players who wouldn't talk to the staffers as the other way around, about how real life gets in the way and that the staffers can't be blamed for that, and about how if they put half the energy they spend being vociferously ungrateful for the years of free work that the staffers have put in for them over the years into helping pick the site up again, CbN could actually survive.

And then one of these fuckwits talks to me. Keeps bludgeoning me with his viewpoint no matter how many times I inform him that I will never agree with his point. I kind of beat him with the clue-stick, metaphorically speaking. Eventually, I just blocked him. If CbN survives and I do get picked up for Mage staff, I'll unblock him so I can actually deal with a player under my system. Until then, I just don't want to deal with him. I'm not staff yet, so I don't have to put up with his yammering. It gets too much when he justifies himself by saying things like "They refuse my help even though I'm a pretty good admin" (he says; I don't believe a word of it) and "Yeah, maybe I can be a pushy, arrogant, rude bastard; it's just how I am, but it doesn't mean people have problems communicating with me." (Really? Then why don't I even want to talk to you, you arrogant shit?)

Staff shouldn't have to put up with this ignorant, ungrateful bullshit from people for whom they've worked their arses off for years. It makes me want to hurl, and undoes three hours of spa treatment relaxation. Bastards, the pair of 'em.

I got the doctor who knows what he's doing, huzzah huzzah. I leave in an hour. I hope he does something because this just can't go on. I'm going to have to push on this whole "if it is an infection, would antibiotics help?" issue, I think. With luck, this will clear up with antibiotics and I can go back to work on Monday and not piss my boss off any more than I already have. This whole thing blows. Oh well; I will think positive.

Drop approached me last night with the idea that maybe he and I could run the currently-staffless Mortals section of the Charleston by Night board. Which was amusing because I'd already been thinking about a few Mortals ideas - some carry-overs from when I wanted to run nWoD and some just my usual welter of "what-if?" thinking. So he's talked to Kyr and she wants us to come up with a list of plotlines and so forth. I'm thinking the spooky Lovecraftian library, a few nibbles I got inspired by from "Mysterious Places" (most of that stuff carries over extremely well to old WoD if you do it right, as I've seen from personal experience) and possibly something in the vein of Needful Things. Anything else is going to have to wait until I know what kind of character base I'm dealing with.

One of the things we were discussing was whether to include consorts, kin and ghouls under Mortals or leave them in their respective systems. Now, ghouls are difficult in a Mortals setting because of the advantages of sucking down vitae, but kin and consorts really are just mortals with heavy connections, and I know kin in particular feel like they've been getting a bad deal in the Werewolf arena - something about "Too many plots centred on 'The kin are in trouble; let's rescue them' and not enough kin actually doing anything". Now, I know from experience that kinfolk-centric games can be a whole lot of fun, and having them and consorts involved in Mortal plotlines could be advantageous. For one thing, they're liable to know a little bit more about what to look for when things start going Twilight Zone. For another, it's entirely possible that STs from the other systems might look at a Mortals plotline and negotiate expanding it for use in their own system, and having the kin and the consorts involved would open that to at least the Garou and the mages. It's one of the reasons I'm not 100% adamant against ghouls, actually - it'd be nice to use that kind of thing to get the vampires active again. I just worry about them overpowering the system. But we're still in the negotiation stages there. First I must come up with more solid plotlines. Then I will probably have to write up the proposal email to Kyr because ... well, all props to Drop for decent IC-ness and probably good plotlines but, all false modesty aside, in the actual execution of writing something down and getting the point across (and grammar and spelling and stuff), I kick his arse.

Me, a staffer. Who'd have thunk?

So bored.

Amusing conversations with the CbN group - well, specifically Drop - about upcoming whatsis with the game. I mean, it would appear that we're going to be continuing on with the game as it was prior to the crash - at least, one of the STs has posted something that shows 'business as usual', so I assume the rest of us are following suit. So I have a few ideas in terms of character development or possibly redevelopment. I mean, various bits and pieces involving the in-game boyfriend are in various stages of plotting, and I've been contemplating some development for the whole magical-life arena. It could be something rather intense if played right. At least the plotting keeps my brain busy.

In the meantime, it's back to Buffy and a general malaise. Eating still hurts, being too active still hurts ... at least I got some sleep yesterday, so that helped, though I'm still tired, oddly enough. It's back to the doctor tomorrow. I just wish my blood test results were back. Early next week, I suppose. This whole thing sucks.

Anyway, I'm trying not to think about it because it just makes me stressed. Instead, I am contemplating ways to keep myself busy the rest of the day. Buffy helps. FFXI? Possibly; I'm out of seeds for my mog house garden and on my last plant. So it'll have to be back to Tahrongi and kill Strolling Saplings and generally build up my seed supplies again. Also up my XP again. At least there's stuff to do.

To get it out of the way:

"Arrr! Avast, me hearties! This here be the updatin' of the good ship Thessaliad! Now harken ye to my tale or I'll make ye walk the plank, ye scurvy dogs! Arr!"

Right. That's International Talk Like A Pirate Day over and done with.

There is still gut-wrenching pain. I hate the gut-wrenching pain you have no idea. I seem okay for a little bit (if a bit wasted because my sleep and eating patterns have been disrupted right to hell) and then wrench. Ow. I've tried some of my own herbal stuff to at least dull the symptoms, because I've done some reading and it seems that this stuff doesn't do a damn thing for the symptoms themselves. Hopefully this will help. But I'm beginning to wonder if this is less a prevention of NSAID-related ulcers than the treatment of one. In which case, I'm fucked. On the one hand, I don't want to go back to the doctor too soon but on the other hand ... I'm fed up with this. I want to go back to work, even if I don't like my job overmuch. It's been two weeks now; this is ridiculous. I'm giving it one more day and then if I'm not better, I'm going back to the doctor and I will try to find out how long it's likely to take to get on an even keel digestion-wise again because this whole thing is a recipe for disaster.

In other news, the death gnome has now reached level 16. I'm trying to learn a new weapon skill so instead of hitting things with a staff, I am hitting things with a club. Damage isn't as good, but the delay is a little shorter so on the whole, I think I'm getting a fairly good deal. Plus I still have spells. Spells are good. I'm considering at some point trying to up White Mage so I can do a decent job when I take it as a subjob (if I take it as a subjob) but I logged off in Tahrongi Canyon, where the XP is flowing huzzah huzzah. Plus my little garden is growing quite nicely and I am now back in the money thanks to the sale of a couple of stacks of earth crystals over at the auction house. This will help me replace the Tarutaru fishing rod which broke two days ago. That sucked.

And in Charleston news (haven't talked about that in awhile, have I?), my novice Dreamspeaker is no longer an unperson, at least in the eyes of the sleepers. The ID she now has in her possession (thank you again, courtcat) lists her as Jessica Wakefield, a name apparently chosen out of thin air but is also coincidentally the name of the shallow, fashion-obsessed Sweet Valley twin. It means nothing to the Dreamspeaker in question (she was more into fantasy than any of that sort of crap) and it really only amuses me. So now things are relatively quiet. I do not expect this to last. Unlike my stomach problems.

Oh good gods, I wish Michael'd check the cards before printing out these lists... I'm still checking through these lists he printed out and over half of them are "re-refereed, re-refereed, rejected last week, re-refereed, waiting for stats, rejected last week..." It's frustrating and time-consuming. And honestly, if he has a list of ones where the e-card hasn't been updated but it's already gone in for publishing, wouldn't it be easier to just type in a few numbers and fill it in himself, seeing as he's got the card right up on the screen in front of him? Oi.

There seems to be a bit of drama on Charleston by Night just now. As I am out of the gossip loop for the most part, I have no idea what's going on, but as happens, I have snippets from here and there. Mostly what I have is Whit completely spazzing out after a perfectly innocent (if apparently not what he had in mind) IC comment from a character who has several fairly good reasons to be a little antagonistic. I personally don't think the total spaz was necessary in context, but I don't have subtext so all I can really say is that I'm pretty well glad it wasn't anything to do with me. At least, I don't think it was anything to do with me. I don't know anymore; I'll just be glad when things have settled down for people. Cutting people a little slack would also help.

Of course, I've got my own things to deal with on that board, mainly that my application for Arete 2 has been rejected. Something about how a change in Nature from Visionary to Martyr could be argued to be a big step backwards, Enlightenment-wise. Ha. Fucking. Ha. Fine, if it was suffering for suffering's sake. But that's Masochist, not Martyr. If nothing else, the vast majority of her paradigm centres around sacrifice - she will be offering her body as a horse for strange spirits and causing herself pain when she generates the Quintessence to pay for it - and martyrdom is all about sacrifice for the greater good. I've written a whole miniature essay about this, which I will be sending to kai when she's a bit more settled from her interstate move tomorrow.

On the whole, I just want to go home.

The Deathgome is now at level 14, after discovering the Horutoto Ruins. The Horutoto Ruins, as far as I can tell, are three rooms (one large antechamber with two smaller rooms branched off to either side) full of bats and goblins. Goblins everywhere; mostly Thugs with just enough Weavers to piss me off. Of course, given that I've now got a Fire spell that does an average of 60 points of damage at close range, I only occasionally get XP from Goblins anymore, but they do drop a wide variety of wonderous objects for me to sell and I get gil, which is rather necessary when you've just levelled up to 14 and are still wearing level 8 armour. So it's been a long slog through Horutoto Ruins and Giddeus, randomly killing things and praying I get XP out of the deal, mainly. I can one-shot the weaker Yagudo now, but of course I don't get XP for those. It's a pain in the arse, being a mid-level BLM trying to solo. At some point, I'm going to have to try Tahrongi Canyon again, just for some XP.

Still, I now have the highest level robe I can actually wear, slops to match and a pair of decent clogs. I just need to replace the mitts now, and get more headgear. (I had good headgear, but had to sell it off when I upped to a level 8 tunic and discovered that I couldn't wear it and the headgear at the same time. Maybe I should've kept it, but it would've taken longer to get the slops, and Taru HP being what it is, I figured I should get as well-equipped as I could as soon as I could on the DEF scale.) And again, level 14. My new favourite spell is Fire, obviously, but another really good one I got hold of by giving wild onions to a bunch of NPCs is "Blaze Spikes". Basically, you cast it on yourself and when anyone hits you, you do take damage but so does the enemy - up to 7 points of it. It probably made all the difference in the world when I was battling against three Goblins at once in the Ruins.

In other news, I've put in my XP expenditure request at Charleston. It's about damn time I got Arete 2, I think, and I've put in for a Stealth increase (character stalked and killed somebody) and a Secondary Ability - Aromatherapy (it's one of her foci, after all). I've got 3 XP left to me if all of those go through okay, but I'm saving those for when I can negotiate getting Nina some workable fake ID so she can get a damn job (apparently you can buy Resources if you need to; Drop had to do that after Revel so now I guess it's my turn). So fingers crossed I get those. I'm just not sure if I went about it the right way, as I could not for the life of me find a single piece of info on the site on requested format for XP expenditure requests. Still, I gave all the info I could in as consise a fashion as possible, so I think I should be okay.

And now I'm going to go up my RL cooking skill by making dinner - burgers with bacon and Cajun curly fries. Yay. It's been my day to cook - I tried French toast but that bastard deep pan we mainly keep for the party pork chops is miserable at shallow frying because of the rather noticeable dent in the middle and so I set off the smoke alarm twice due to dry, burning bread matter stuck to the dent. *grumble* Really spoiled my appreciation for the whole thing, though dodgyhoodoo was okay. Well, never mind. The burgers will work out better. And hopefully I will not, in my distraction and annoyance, spatter hot oil on my foot. Again. (Ow...)

The universe at large can bite me.

Typical morning; get off the bus, going to go raid my bank account for smokes-n-lunch money. I enter my PIN, I ask for cash ... it tells me I am not authorised to use my bank card, eats my card and basically tells me to fuck off and die. Needless to say, I am not very impressed with this, given that the branch of my bank I was next to at the time was shut for another half-hour or so and there was no way I was going to get to speak to someone until ... oh, I'm gonna say lunchtime.

Which I suppose was okay, given that it gave me time to go and check my balance online. Not that it would have made any difference to the eventual talking-to-the-bank outcome, because shit, what happened to 'insufficient funds' messages? But lo and behold, my account contains money! (A rarity.) It does not contain much money, but it does contain some. Which makes me unbelievably glad that I never stopped carrying my chequebook around from the last time I was cardless, so at least I can have cash once I get the time to go to the bloody bank and yell at people. I have also taken the liberty, while I was online, of applying for a Maestro card instead of the Solo card I was given a couple of months back, which is usable in many other locations and may come in handy if I ever want to, y'know, travel or order things online from sources that aren't British and don't accept PayPal.

Have I mentioned that things like this make me want to go on random kill-sprees?

And then there's Chicago. I think the only reason I stick with that damned online WoD RP anymore is that it's the only one that lets me play a Corax and gives me a metric fucktonne of XP for inventively profane run-on sentences. The plots are like something out of Anita Blake, and it's hard playing a no-nonsense character when the entire plot of his or her life is nonsense! I mean, seriously, if I wasn't metagaming to stay in that bloody game, my Corax would basically be going, "Fuck the lot of you; I'm going to Aruba." But noooo, instead she's going Rara Avis and mantling at Hunters. Still, 20 XP for a single session? Pretty damn impressive, if you ask me.

Not the only place from which I have recently achieved XP, though. Charleston by Night doled out XP awards for the recent storyline and I'm ... to be honest, feeling a little let down and underappreciated, though I'm trying not to make an issue of it. Now, in all technicality, that was my storyline. Whoever came up with the idea of offing the Technocrat, it was still my character that did it. I had kind of hoped / expected to get at least a bump-up in the XP awarding on that basis. But no: while I did get the top alloted XP for most storylines (4 pts), that really was the extent of it. I am trying not to let it get me down because at the end of the day, I'm still only 3 XP away from Arete 2 and I still haven't applied for 'regular play XP', which among other things will include the Council stuff, the original stalking of the Technocrat and the insane amount of RP to get my Nina back to something approaching normal this last week and a half. Seriously, it's not like I haven't been having fun or anything - I would not be putting myself through this otherwise. I suppose it's just that there's this little part of me - an attention-whore of somewhat epic proportions, I would assume - going "But I've been working my arse off!" and wishing for, if nothing else, a tasteful public mention on the Positive IC/OOC Feedback forum. But I'm going to ignore that part because, whatever happens, at least Charleston by Night is fun, and makes a certain amount of sense, unlike some of the other online shit I get up to.

Hollow City? We've been on our way to a moot for the last month. Don't ask.

I levelled my death gnome up to 9 and have been working on culinary skills. I cannot even make carrot broth reliably; things break, I lose ingredients, it's a disaster. I'll get better. I'm after deciding that it is worth it to keep playing once my free month has expired. It's something to do, anyway.

There hasn't been much going on lately, unless you count the ongoing CbN clusterfuck. Yes, it's still going. Yes, it just keeps getting worse and worse for my character ... though, admittedly, not as much as it's about to suck for a local Verbena elder...

( Cut in case you find my RP stories boring, which I would understand )

It turns out that endgame happens over the weekend. So there's another few days of this to go. People are trying to be sensitive to the fact that I live in a really screwed up time zone but sometimes, it just doesn't work. Recent group rescue / info dissemination / Roach's mad plan scene went completely fucking pear-shaped because almost no one turned up when they said they would (they have reasons, but it's still irritating), and I'm still trying to get some scenes together to ensure that my character comes out of this somewhat playable. Of course, this is difficult when the shit just keeps on hitting the fan, so it tends to involve tracking the others down, which involves more late nights. Not that I've been sleeping very well lately anyway (I am having what dodgyhoodoo refers to [thanks to Transmet] as 'rampaging gut horror') but I'll still be glad when this SL winds down a little. If nothing else, I want to see how it ends.

Final Fantasy's been a no-go lately because of server maintenance. Or something. Won't let me log into Asura anyway. This is a pain. I'm hoping it'll be back online soon. I'd like to go back to that some. I suppose there's the weekend: dodgyhoodoo is off to his brother's wedding and after some debate, it looks like I'm not going along. The current reason is that I'm still a little worried about Yuki, who seems to be more demanding than ever lately and might wreck the house if left alone all weekend, even with weaselbitch coming in to feed her and stuff. Not to mention the 'having procrastinated on buying something halfway decent to wear' thing and the fact that I just plain don't wanna go 'cos I'll be nervous and uncomfortable and I don't like the idea of going anywhere just because it'll 'look funny' if I don't. Besides, if my stomach hasn't improved by then, it's not going to be any fun at all.

And now it's lunchtime, so I'll stop rambling.