Jesiryu's Posterous

Jul 7 / 10:09pm

Death by Monkeys

This is not the post you were expecting.

I read a philosophical theory once (and this was back in sophomore year of college, so you’ll have to forgive me for not remembering any other details) that states something along the lines of: all reason is based off of the attempt to justify or qualify a base emotional reaction. That is to say, not all reason is emotional, nor is it impossible to rise above emotional reactions, but rather that since they are the base of reason, reason must be appreciated with that fact in mind.

You’ve no doubt heard the adage, “Truth hurts.” So do lies, but what does more damage depends on how they are presented. I often find that “truth” is one tiny, shred of fact wrapped in layers of perspective. Perspective is entirely subjective, which means truth is subjective, and that’s why “one man’s truth is another man’s lies.”

Why does it hurt, even if it is a lie? That really depends on what manner of “truth” is being thrown at you. If it’s something you know is true, and are ashamed of, it’s going to hurt no matter what. Sometimes those “truths” serve as learning experiences that we can take with us to avoid repeating the past. The more unflattering a “truth” is, the more you tend to react to it when you see it spoken aloud. Odds are, all of us have at least one “truth” to put on a list like that; something we’ve done, or said, that we look back on and wonder, “What the hell was I smoking? (Because it was either way too much or way too little.)” But it’s not our job to justify ourselves to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes along and wants to throw “truth” around like monkey poo. You know exactly how you got to where you are (even if you don’t really or wish you didn’t have to admit it) and some of the time it’s not the most shining, brilliant path your life could have taken.

What you have to remember, when you see poo flying through the air, is that whoever is throwing the poo, is touching poo. If the poo doesn’t impact, only the thrower has shit on their hands.

Sadly, there’s no real way to get them to stop throwing it.

*flying poo*
Response: {dismissive} “Get a life.”
Counter Response: {unapologetic} “Truth hurts.”

*flying poo*
Response: {hurt} “That’s a personal matter.”
Counter Response: {arrogant} “Everyone knows, they just won’t say it to your face.”

*flying poo*
Response: {annoyed} “Why don’t you just go away?”
Counter Response: {smug} “If you don’t like it, don’t read it.”

*flying poo*
Response: {...} (ignoring / blocking)
Counter Response: {provoking} “Not going to stand up for yourselves?”

*flying poo*
Response: {direct/defensive} “You’re wrong.”
Counter Response: {deflecting} “I’m not the only one who thinks that even if I’m the only one saying it.”

You can mix’n’match any of those, really. The poo often takes various forms of belittling, such as, “you’re a follower”, “you’re a drama whore”, “I’m better than you”, etc. Also, insert copious amounts of curse words and other demeaning terms like “pathetic”.

It’s really not rocket science. Nor is it original.
Counter Response: {rightous} “I think it’s about time I spoke my mind.”

Soapboxing works great, too, (“No one else was stepping up, so I’m doing you all a favor and saying what no one else has the balls to say.”) since that gives you a better platform to see where you’re flinging the shit you’re throwing.

{sarcasm} “Thank you, oh great wise one, for showing us the error of our ways. Of course we should all think for ourselves and speak our minds so we can say the most petty, horrible, insulting, and/or childish things about people we do not know. Of course anyone who accuses us of doing that is just a baby who needs a thicker skin, or a follower who has been lured to the ‘light-side’ since “good is dumb”. Of course we’re always right, always loyal, always see the truth of things. If anyone wrongs us, they should be condemned, and if they are not condemned, the community as a whole has wronged us for not condemning them. If the members of the community all thought for themselves, they would all think the exact same thing and see how wrong other people were and how right we are, and if they don’t then they are stupid. If people confront us, they are being bullies. If they block us, they are being cowards. And if they disagree with us, they are wrong, because everyone has to think exactly what we do so they can be right and exempt themselves from being told what is right. If someone accuses us of being immature, we say we are doing what needs to be done. If someone accuses us of being vindictive, we say that we are doing what needs to be done. If someone accuses us of being petty, we say that we are doing what needs to be done. If someone accused us of being fat/lazy/a slob/a negligent mother/ a negligent spouse/sad/horrible/bitchy/an asshole, we brush it aside and turn it around against them.”

What it boils down to is this: If someone genuinely believes they are right, or have a right to do what they are doing, nothing presented to them as a response will stop them from continuing. It’s sort of like watching a monkey with diarrhea smearing his poo into a pile of straw, and throwing the straw-covered poo.Since they eat with those hands, the diarrhea won’t stop. You can hope for the straw to run out, but usually someone ends up giving them more straw even if you wish they wouldn’t.

I will grant this much “truth”: Having a year to put things in perspective is a good thing. And there’s nothing like drama to tell you who your friends are.

To all our friends: We’re buying everyone umbrellas so they don’t have to worry about the poo. Next step is figuring out how to get those noise-reducing headphones for everyone so they can’t hear the poop hitting the umbrella, either.

Predicted Counter Response1: “You’re just pissed because I was right a year ago.”
Me: “You were?”

Predicted Counter Response2: “Nothing you say matters because you just don’t like me.”
Me: “Glad we agree.”

Predicted Counter Response3: “You’ve got just as much poo on your hands as I do.”
or
Predicted Counter Response4: “That makes no sense. Monkey poo? You’re stupid.”
Me: “Ha, you said monkey poo.” ROARING LAUGHTER

Oh, and any and all insults/demeaning/attempts to find fault with me or my loved ones will be ignored since it won’t change any of the facts stated above.

Have a nice day!

Apr 15 / 1:12am

Change of Pace

It's been a long, interesting year of twitter role play. Some people have even been reading this blog for that long. Back when this used to be a small, well known playground, I loved the impromptu and interactive role play. It was fun, exciting, and a challenge to be able to handle all the situations that used to crop up. Things have changed, though. The community is growing, both in terms of cannon characters and the OCs playing in their backyard. Along with the increasing population has also been the increasing challenge of balancing the inherent social aspects of twitter and the role play itself.

One of the benefits to twitter is being able to role play in front of such a large audience, and better yet to get their feedback on what you're doing. However, it can quickly become difficult for people following you to sort out what is a (potential) storyline, or at least interaction between you and your role play partner(s), and what is merely social banter. This isn't necessarily true for anyone who is watching a conversation as it happens, if they happen to be at their computer, or have watching the players from the beginning of their foray onto twitter. But for most people it is something akin to walking in mid conversation and having no way to tell if the two people speaking are long time friends or happen to be chatting to pass the time.

This has led to a lot of difficulty during storylines. There was no good way for people to look back through your tweets to see how you got to where you currently are, and if they take the time to ask you the additional tweets you issue in reply simply compound the problem. All these issues seem to have lent themselves to a lot of focus, sometimes too much, being placed on socializing in the twitter True Blood / Sookieverse fandom. It's something that has always caused me to wonder where the happy medium would be.

I think it's been found.

Recently, at the recommendation of my wonderful partner Jules, I started following a group of Torchwood role players who had made their own home on twitter. For anyone who is a fan of the show, this is a very noteworthy group of role players who have tried a different approach to finding the balance between storyline centered role play and the interaction with their audience. (You can find them on twitter here - highly recommended both as role players and as fans of the TW / DW universe, especially Jack and Ianto)

The other place you find them is on formspring.

Formspring has been around for a while. I honestly can't remember the first time I saw it popping up on twitter, but it has its good moments and the moments where you want to strangle the admins who are running it. It's by no means a perfect service, with lag and downtime that goes beyond even twitter's on bad days, but I think it is the best tool out there for what the Torchwood RPers are using it for.

They're using it to distinguish between their IC socializing and their IC storylines. Formspring links directly into a twitter feed, but the tweets are all very visually distinct. It's easy to see the format of Q: xxxx A: xxxx and read it through or skip over it as you may on someone's tweet feed. What's great about the way the Torchwood RPers are using it, though, is that whenever you see them out on the tweet stream, if they are @'ing someone, it is always another role player, a fellow member of their team. The only time they interact with their audience is on formspring. And honestly I think it's brilliant.

The visual distinction between the formspring q&a's and a normal tweet is one positive for audience members who are searching back through day-old or even week-old tweets looking for the storylines. I find it very easy to skip over those tweets to focus my attention on the role play interaction. It's also a clear line of separation, which is a second positive, between IC interaction live on twitter and the fan interactive IC responses on formspring. This cuts down on any unwelcome impromptu role play or having to find a way to tactfully tell someone when they've stepped over a line either in regard to your character or to the role play itself because the line is much more distant.

In some cases, a system like that is unnecessary. There are many great role players who manage just fine doing both social interaction and role play on their twitter feed. I hesitate to say that this type of system is best utilized by more "serious" role players, but I think casual role players might find it just makes things more complicated. More accurately, it is a system that works best for those who prefer doing storylines and interacting only with a recognized set of fellow role players. It adds a buffer between your character and the people who want to say hello to them and helps differentiate what is purely IC role play and what is IC socializing (which is important when your character is pulled into a life or death situation and the person talking to you suddenly finds themselves having to wonder if they are "there" as it is happening, or not - I still remember nights like the one that inspired Poet to utter the line "please, for the love of all things holy, somebody tell the mortal audience to stop trying to feed the vampires" [here]).

And because Jules and I will soon be rolling out a new storyline for Peter and Victor and their family of miscreants on twitter, we're going to be switching up how we handle our role play. We love our audience, and we love being able to talk to you all both in character and out. There are going to be a lot of moments where we might itch to go back to using twitter both as a social venue and a role play one, but until that becomes an overbearing concern, we're going to alter our methods of handling twitter. Twitter is now going to only be used for in-character / storyline interaction and each of our main characters now has their own formspring accounts for any in-character socializing that you might want to engage in with us (poeticimmortal, eternalmaestro, vampirerobin, delilahaevum, jmichaeldawes, lydiadawes).

What storyline you might ask?

*grins* Spoilers. But lets just say you should all be watching for the first step in the direction tomorrow at *checks with the script writer aka Jules* 8:00 PM EST?

And if you haven't read them yet, you should catch up on the prose leading into our storyline (in order):

Another Child - Penned by Victor Mason
The Making of a Seer - by jmichaeldawes

(a side story: Training - written by Lydia Dawes)

Escape from the Order Pt 1 - by jmichaeldawes

Escape from the Order Pt 2 - by jmichaeldawes

Escape from the Order Pt 3 - by jmichaeldawes

As always, thanks for reading

~Jesi

-Victor

Apr 5 / 9:34pm

Pointed Philosophy

Questionable Content : Latest Comic

It has been an interesting weekend and I'm actually very glad that I was visiting with family somewhere Nick and I refer to as "Pennsyltucky" - no internet access and only roaming cell phone range. I missed out on a few things that would have had me ranting in a much more vitriolic sense, though I intend to still be rather pointed. So, today, I'm including several of my favorite quotes and conversations from two very different universes that are a bit philosophic in nature. The one universe, Star Wars, I'm sure everyone has heard of. Boba Fett is my favorite character, outside the main cast, and I'm just stating for the record that I've erased episodes one through three from my memory banks so Boba Fett is not a clone and never will be. After that is a few bits from the book series by Orson Scott Card known as the Ender Saga, or the Ender Quartet since there are four books sequenced together. It's futuristic, two other alien species known to date, and I borrowed some of their conversations with one another since they were relevant to the point I'd like to make.

Actually, there are several points. The subtle one is covered by the philosophy bits.

But the main point that isn't covered by philosophy is this: Never put yourself on a pedestal, acting superior to others, unless you're prepared for people to shake the column beneath your feet. When someone insults a writer for the choices they make for their character without any actual subjective analyzing, empathy, or even basic understanding of the character themselves and where the writer is coming from, you are asking for someone to turn their sights and do the same to you.

Who is this about? I'll give you one word just to keep this moderately civil and not have people jump in who don't know the situation. "Prozac"

Also, pardon my crudeness but the ether tweeting shit is really old. The last time someone pulled that on me, and my account wasn't blocked from responding, I called them out on it. If you can't handle confrontation like a rational human being and instead have to hurl insults indirectly because you can't bother putting words together into sentences to actually discuss whatever it is you might disagree with and have some inane urge to make the disagreement public, keep it to yourself. It's childish. Really. Shame on you.

And shame on anyone who defended it. Differing opinions between writers are simply that. It shouldn't get brought out in public.

The real issue boils down to this, folks: Your character is your own and no one will ever know them better than you. If someone on the team of people you play with disagrees with you on something you choose to have your character do, that's perfectly fine. But that means the people having the disagreement should sit down as writers to discuss how to work through the problem rationally. If the issue down neither side being able to budge the other side's opinion, the simplest solution is to just start treating it as fact and find ways to deal with it both in character and out. The people you play with will sometimes do things you disagree with, but if you enjoy writing with them and want to keep them around then you find ways to move forward. A neutral opinion can sometimes be useful in cases like that, if the writers can't disconnect themselves enough from the disagreement, or defer to whomever might be the authority for the team. If anyone is disappointed with how things turn out then you have some more decisions to make, but no one should ever fault someone else for standing firm, even if you don't necessarily agree with them on the what or why.

Here's some food for thought: There are always multiple versions of your characters, different ways people look at you. Thinking outside the box, seeing things from another viewpoint; I'm good at that. There's the version of your character that you want others to see, and then there are the flaws that require some suspension of disbelief. Without any of the dressing regarding a character's personality or any of the things that they are and do that make you want to overlook the flaws and just accept things as fact, you can easily find fault with another's role-play in an academic, unsympathetic sense.

If a character is going through the loss of their own husband, floundering, having to move forward on her own with emotional turmoil, self-doubt, and possibly making irrational decisions, those responses that should be easy to empathize with because it's basic psychology. If you disagree with what their writer is having them do under emotional duress, then that is where you should step in and have a rational discussion. But even if you can't, if there is an honest to goodness opinion head-butt, then at least you can both keep your dignity and keep it between yourselves, and figure out what to do in private to move forward or move on.

Stories within stories. What do people see and what do you want them to see? It can change merely with a twist of thought. Does it make any version less true? Absolutely. But people can choose not to see it your way. Academic and completely unsympathetic, finding flaws in the design. I'm good at that, too.

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Someone might throw a stone back.

It's all just a matter of perception and opinion.

Enjoy the excerpts.

From: The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett

by Daniel Keys Moran (published in the short story collection Tales of the Bounty Hunters)

The last statement of the Journeyman Protector Jaster Mereel, known later as the Hunter Boba Fett, before exile from the world of Concord Dawn:

Everyone dies.

It's the final and only lasting Justice. Evil exists; it is intelligence in the service of entropy. When the side of a mountain slides down to kill a village, this is not evil, for evil requires intent. Should a sentient being cause that landslide, there is evil; and requires Justice as a consequence, so that civilization can exist.

There is no greater good than Justice; and only if law serves Justice is it good law. It is said correctly that law exists not for the Just but for the unjust, for the Just carry the law in their hearts, and do not need to call it from afar.

I bow to no one and I give service only for cause.

From: Xenocide - conversations between a fathertree named Human and the Hive Queen

by Orson Scott Card

{{The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce.}}

{{Of course you feel that way. Your mates are nothing but mindless drones, extensions of yourself, without their own identity.}}

{{We know our lovers with perfect understanding. Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed.}}

{{That is the tragedy of language, my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.}}

{{And some of their strength, I think. Your people and each for our own evolutionary reasons, mate with vastly unequal partners. Our mates are always, hopelessly, our intellectual inferiors. Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremacy. They have conflict between mates not because their communication is inferior to ours, but because they commune with each other at all.}}

{{The most unpleasant thing about human beings is that they don't metamorphose. Your people and mine are born as grubs, but we transform ourselves into a higher form before we reproduce. Human beings remain grubs all their lives.}}

{{Human beings do metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered.}}

{{Such changes are superficial. The nature of the organism remains the same. Humans are very proud of their changes, but every imagined transformation turns out to be a new set of excuses for behaving exactly as the individual has always behaved.}}

{{You are too similar to humans for you ever to be able to see them clearly.}}

{{I've been talking to Ender and his sister, Valentine. She's a historian.}}

{{She searches through the books to find out the stories of humans, then writes stories about what she finds and gives them to all the other humans.}}

{{If the stories are already written down, why does she write them again?}}

{{Because they aren't well understood. She helps people understand them.}}

{{If the people closer to that time didn't understand them, how can she, coming later, understand them better?}}

{{I've asked this myself, and Valentine said that she doesn't always understand them better. But the old writers understood what the stories meant to the people of their time, and she understands what the stories mean to the people of her time.}}

{[Yes.}}

And yet each time they still think of the story as a true memory?}}

{{Valentine explained something about some stories being true and others being truthful. I didn't understand any of it.}}

{{Why don't they just remember their stories accurately in the first place? Then they wouldn't have to keep lying to each other.}}

{{And we can talk directly into his mind. But he insists on coming. He doesn't feel like he's talking to us unless he sees us. He has a harder time distinguishing between his own thoughts and the ones we put in his mind, when we converse from a distance. So he's coming.}}

{{He wants us to tell him answers and we don't know any answers.}}

{{You know everything that the humans know. You got into space, didn't you?}}

{{They're so hungry for answers, these humans. They have so many questions.}}

{{They want to know why, why, why. Or how. Everything all tied up into a nice neat bundle like a cocoon. The only time we do this is when we're metamorphosing a queen.}}

{{Yes, you'd like to think you're just like the humans, wouldn't you? But you're not like Ender. Not like the humans. He has to know the cause of everything, he has to make a story about everything and we don't know any stories. We know memories. We know things that happen. But we don't know why they happen, not the way he wants us to.}}

{{We don't even care why, the way these humans do. We find out as much as we need to know to accomplish something, but they always want to know more than they need to know. After they get something to work, they're still hungry to know why it works and why the cause of its working works.}}

{{Maybe you will be, when the descolada stops interfering with you.}}

{{If you are, you won't care. They're all very happy. It's intelligence that makes you unhappy. The workers are either hungry or not hungry. In pain or not in pain. They're never curious or disappointed or anguished or ashamed. And when it comes to things like that, these humans make you and me look like workers.}}

{{We've been inside your head and we've been inside Ender's head and we've been inside our own heads for a thousand generations and these humans make us look like we're asleep. Even when they're asleep they're not asleep. Earthborn animals do this thing, inside their brains - a sort of mad firing-off of synapses, controlled insanity. The part of their brain that records sight or sound, it's firing off every hour or two. While they sleep; even when all the sights and sounds are complete random nonsense, their brains keep on trying to assemble it into something sensible. They try to make stories out of it. It's complete random nonsense with no possible correlation to the real world, and yet they turn it into these crazy stories. And then they forget them. All that work, coming up with these stories, and when they wake up they forget almost all of them. But when they do remember, then they try to make stories about those crazy stories, trying to fit them into their real lives.}}

{{Why would we want to? As you say, it's meaningless. Random firings of the synapses of the neurons in their brains.}}

{{They're practicing. They're doing it all the time. Coming up with stories. Making connections. Making sense out of nonsense.}}

{{That's just it. They have a hunger we know nothing about. The hunger for answers. The hunger for making sense. The hunger for stories.}}

{{You remember deeds. They make up deeds. They change what their stories mean. They transform things so that the same memory can mean a thousand different things. Even from their dreams, sometimes they make up out of that randomness something that illuminates everything. Not one human being has anything like the kind of mind you have. The kind we have. Nothing as powerful. And their lives are so short, they die so fast. But in their century or so they come up with ten thousand meanings fro every one that we discover.}}

{{Even if the vast majority of them are wrong, even if ninety-nine of every hundred is stupid and wrong, out of then thousand ideas that still leaves them with a hundred good ones. That's how they make up for being so stupid and having such short lives and small memories.}}

{{You can't say that you never think of stories. What you've just been telling me is a story.}}

{{Don't you understand? I got even this story from Ender's mind. It's his. And he got the seed of something else, something he read, and combined it with things he thought of until it made sense to him. It's all there in his head. While we are like you. We have a clear view of the world. I have no trouble finding my way through your mind. everything orderly and sensible and clear. You'd be as much at ease in mine. What's in your head is reality, more or less, as best you understand it. But in Ender's mind, madness. Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense at all because they can't all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they're needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every new problem he faces. As if he conceives of a new universe to live in, every hour a new one, often hopelessly wrong and he ends up making mistakes and bad judgments, but sometimes so perfectly right that it opens things up like a miracle and I look through his eyes and see the world his new way and it changes everything. Madness, and then illumination. We knew everything there was to know before we met these humans, before we built our connection with Ender's mind. Now we discover that there are so many ways of knowing the same things that we'll never find them all.}}

{[Unless the humans teach you.}}

{{They are planning to blow you up, you remember. There's so much possibility in their minds, but they are still, after all, individually stupid and small-minded and half-blind and half-mad. There's still ninety-nine percent of their stories that are hideously wrong and lead them to terrible errors. Sometimes we wish we could tame them, like the workers. We tried to, you know, with Ender. But we couldn't do it. Couldn't make a worker of him.}}

{{Too stupid. Can't pay attention long enough. Human minds lack focus. They get bored and wander off. We had to build a bridge outside him, using the computer that he was most closely bonded with. Computers, now - those things can pay attention. And their memory is neat, orderly, everything organized and findable.}}

From: Children of the Mind - The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

by Orson Scott Card

When I follow the path of the gods through the wood,

My eyes take every twisting turn of the grain,

But my body moves straight along the planking,

So those who watch me see that the path of the gods is straight,

While I dwell in a world with no straightness in it.

My father once told me

that there are no gods,

only the cruel manipulations

of evil people

who pretended that their power was good

and their exploitation was love.

My father often told me,

We have servants and machines

in order that our will may be carried out beyond the reach of our own arms.

Machines are more powerful than servants

and more obedient and less rebellious,

but machines have no judgement

and will not remonstrate with us

when our will is foolish,

and will not disobey us

when our will is evil.

In times and places where people despise the gods,

those most in need of servants have machines,

or choose servants who will behave like machines.

I believe this will continue

until the gods stop laughing.

Mar 15 / 8:17pm

In Defense of Your Jungle

I'm working on a new blog post about "The Physics of Role-Play" but in the meantime I just wanted to reach out on a different topic:

Cyberbullying.

It's really weird to think that I still run into instances of bullying when I graduated High School back in 2002. There's a few reasons why this sort of thing happens in the wonderful world of the internet, but it does not ever constitute an excuse.

Cyberbullying is an epidemic even with adults because you never have to look the person you're bullying in the eye. Their response as words on a screen simply can't convey what you would see in their expression, so it is more difficult to sympathize with them even when they defend themselves. This isn't to say that anyone who ever voices a disagreement on the web is a bully - there are instances where someone simply needs a thicker skin. But when your asserting your dissenting opinion, you should never cross the line between between exercising your right to think for yourself and harassment.

It can be a fine line. I've had quite a few discussions with people over the internet that have toed it. Here on my blog over the past year, I have named people I've disagreed with by name just as often as I haven't. But while some of the topics I've discussed were definitely motivated by emotions gut reactions to things I've seen or experienced, I've always tried to present my thoughts in a well thought out, concise, logical fashion. If you ever find yourself going out of your way to leave someone nasty messages because "you think they need to be told" whatever it is you have to say, that's called bullying. Again, it can be a fine line - toeing that line can be acceptable when you have a personal stake in a situation, but it's by no means a carte blanche.

People will always disagree with where that line falls when it comes to their friends. I've seen a lot of instances where people rally to the defense of a friend who supposedly was the victim of a bully or had been generally disrespected and most of the time, that's a good thing. Requests to be left alone, stating clearly why you don't appreciate whatever was done, and generally having a mature, level-headed response are all the right ways to go about defending yourself or a friend from a bully. But if your "conversations" descend into the realm of school-yard snark along the lines of "I know you are but what am I?" that's when you need to pack up your bags and block-remove-ignore whatever it is someone else is saying.

Convincing people that you were "right" and they were "wrong" very frequently becomes banal and will result in making yourself look just as immature as the person attacking you / your friend.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because I just recently reconnected with a few fanfic writers that I used to interact with on a regular basis. I haven't been a contributing member to the fanfic communities in over a year because I've been busy writing Victor, but I've still spent quite a few hours here and there keeping up with the authors that I enjoyed reading. Right now, they're dealing with a headache of a situation involving a group of people who have a dissenting opinion about some of the fanfics on FF.net, and knowing that some of my favorite authors have landed themselves on a list that essentially targets them for harassment really just grates my nerves. The group targeting them seems to be taking the moral standing point that they are policing FF.net for the benefit of the community. They have a few valid points - that FF.net does not have an adult-rating for what their authors post, for example - but their method of going about dealing with who they list as "violators" is to flame the authors in comments and reviews, as well as on the forums, and hope that they can line the bridges between the authors and FF.net with enough dynamite that the FF.net admins will pull their writing or ban their accounts all together.

Ends don't justify means when it comes to dissenting opinions. Especially not when your means involve harassing someone. The correct response would be what the authors are being encouraged to do: "Stopping the Literate Union" - go to the admins of the site and get them to enforce their own TOS. Not taking it upon yourself to try and force them out.

It's up to the admins at FF.net to sort out what fictions should stay or go. Bringing violations to their attention is not a bad thing because the admins can't be everywhere. But when your methods include trolling, you need to start questioning your motivations. Are you really doing it for the benefit of the community, or are you just telling yourself that to gloss over the fact that you've become a bully?

To bring this around to twitter, since I've seen it as a problem here as well, my recommendation is this: Block / Unfollow anyone who harasses you. You don't owe them anything, certainly not an explanation and especially not your hurt. Your outrage, maybe, but be cautious you don't cross the line when you defend yourself or you may end up sinking to their level - it doesn't matter if "they started it" because you'll never convince them that they're wrong. Save yourself the headache and just get them off your screen. Let them think whatever they want because in truth, it doesn't matter. And anyone who judges you based on what someone else says without spending any time to get to know you isn't worth your time of day, so do your best not to worry about what they might be saying when you do start ignoring them. In twitter, and other communities where there aren't as well defined rules of netiquette, only you can protect yourself. And the best way to do that is simply to stick to your guns and cut your losses, whether that means leaving the community or sticking around because there are more positives that negatives. It's always your choice, and don't let another person (or group of people) convince you otherwise.

The long and short of it: You'll never make everyone happy. It's only important that you make yourself happy.

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."

Mar 4 / 3:09pm

Serious as the Grave

Questionable Content (most recent comic)

Role-play: serious as the grave, a hobby, a pastime, an idle flirtation, something less or something more? Some people might consider role-play a lifestyle. Others will forever look at it as a geeky indulgence. It can be used for venting frustrations, a creative outlet to any of the things in your life that you wish you could change, and expression who you really feel you are inside, or simply a way to escape in a world more exciting and interesting than your own.

Most of all, role-play should be fun. The word 'play' is a rather key part of the term, after all. But what does constitute fun?

The answer is up to you.

I've been a role-player, off and on, for twelve years. I started out online, in forums, and stayed in various alcoves of that realm of role-play for the better part of four years. In college, I connected with a group of people who were table-top D&D role-players, and so I hung up my online hat in favor of our weekend gaming sessions that wouldn't have been complete without beer and pizza (and during the summer, margaritas). One of the guys in the D&D group also happened to be into MMORPGs known as World of Warcraft (WoW). I joined WoW in August of 2006 and was an active player until March of 2009. March is when I created Victor on twitter.

Each of those types of role-play had different levels of involvement associated with them. My first two online RPs didn't capture my attention, so I lasted with them for perhaps three months combined, with a guesstimated average of 7-12 posts a week of roughly 500 words a pop. Add in the hours spent reading other people's posts and I probably spent around 12 hours on the forums every week. When I moved on from those, since my lack of interest stemmed from not finding an RP that I really meshed with, I started my own and it was enough of a success that I ran the story for the better part of two years. I lived and breathed those forums (and since I was in HS, there really wasn't much else that I needed to juggle my time with aside from school work, my part-time job, and marching band). Roughly guessing, I spent upwards of 20 hours a week glued to my computer writing three different characters and keeping up with at least eight others. We had members come and go, but that was where I met my first two writing partners, one of whom I still keep in contact with (*waves at Doug if he's reading*). Once I got into college, my time for writing got severely cut into, which is part of the reason I gravitated toward other types of RP. D&D was once a week, though when all was said and done each of our sessions ranged from 8-12 hours, sometimes longer if we were able to continue playing through Saturday with all of us there (some terms were better than others, with everyone's schedules - it's the one downside of that type of RP, you need to be able to physically meet in one location at a set time with the rest of your group). WoW was probably when I brushed the closest to having an RP addiction, because I easily spent 30 hours a week connected to the game, partly because you only needed a stable Internet connection to be logged in at the same time as the rest of the people you played with, so you could do so from the comfort of your own home.

If you are a role-player, spend a week logging your hours at the computer and you'll see how quickly the time goes, if you aren't already aware of it. It might paint a picture you somewhat wince at (believe me, I wince at that 30 hour mention) but it's definitely something you should bear in mind when you try to put RP into perspective in your life.

To put that all my experiences in perspective, I was averaging enough hours of RP to qualify as a part-time job. Obviously, unfortunately, you don't get paid to RP. (Though I'm aware that some of the fortunate souls get perks. It's far from typical, but seems to be a growing trend. In WoW, there are arena teams that are sponsored by tech-companies and are sent to tournaments around the world. Here on twitter, there are corporate endorsed players who are able to pass on gear from the big guys to their fans. Still, perks not equal to payment. This is also by far more popular in Europe than it is here in the US.) So since monetary compensation is next to nill, what, exactly do you get out of RP?

Again, that depends entirely on you, but I recommend figuring out what you want to get out of it before you start logging in the hours. RP is fun, and escapist, but as I mentioned last time, RL is always there waiting for you. What makes it worthwhile for you to login, especially on the occasions where you might be ignoring RL in favor of RP?

In my forums, it was partly that I got a rush out of being the DM. All the story-lines for those two years were stories I created, and my three characters (Maru, Relina / Sasori, and Ryuusei) all grew and changed throughout them. (If you are at all curious about the story and my characters there, I do have three chapters of a story written on my fiction-writing blog Darkness's Eclipse | Part 2 | Part 3 . The world is the world of Sailor Moon. - I was 14, you'll have to cut me some slack. To give due credit, Cody was written / created by my writing-partner Ron, and Simon and Kuruso were written / created by Doug. All the other characters, including the villains, are mine.) In D&D, it was the RL friendships that I made, and they are the people that I still keep in contact with post college. (I'll have to dig up the short story I wrote for it in my fiction writing class. Will post it later.) Three of them are still playing together, in a new campaign, and if I lived closer I know I have an open invitation. In WoW, it was the recognition and also the rush I got from clearing content and being part of a raiding guild. I was voted Rogue class leader in my first guild (from a group of twelve other rogues), and my career peaked as an Officer in my third and final guild that ranked in the top 1,000 in the world (keep in mind that WoW has close over 11 million players).

It amounts to little in the real world, sadly, but I have memories from each and every RP that I wouldn't trade for anything.

WoW is where I first heard the terms 'casual' and 'hardcore' in relation to players. The big difference between casual and hardcore players is how seriously they take the game. Think along the lines of a HS or college student, with someone working hard enough to graduate being casual, while someone who works to maintain a 4.0 GPA as hardcore. It's at least close to the general idea, though there are obviously shades of grey. Casuals are people who play the game, for the most part, simply to play. But they might spend just as many hours, or more, logged into the game than the hardcore players. It's the level of intensity that you put into it that differentiates the two.

I've always teetered on the line between casual and hardcore because at certain points there is such a thing as taking the game too seriously. In WoW, this would be when you have a raid leader screaming at you over your voice-chat program because you didn't move your character out of the way of an enemy attack. The classic example in WoW is from a guild running Onyxia (<-- Warning: Link is NSFW: language and some very questionable pixel art). This is an extreme example of a raid leader being a little too (really) high strung. Oddly enough, the guild that my D&D friend belonged to had a raid leader like that, and my ears still bleed remembering listening to Cen's voice while Ino raided through Molten Core (character nick-names, "sen" and "in-O"). Not so oddly, this sort of thing doesn't work as a female raid leader, as I found out quickly when I was tagged to lead our Mount Hyjal raids. Guys just think a woman speaking to them sternly, even when they did something stupid, is sexy. (At least they were listening?)

Still, there are advantages to having someone around to kick your ass into line when you need it. (Because, while I don't agree with the level of verbal abuse from the Ony raid leader in that video, you still shouldn't ever get kicked into the whelps.) In forum RP this would be the forum admins and/or moderators who make it a point to keep everyone on the same page, quell any drama that arises (as always does) and also enforce the standards that everyone agreed to play by when they signed up for the forum. Obviously there is no such thing on twitter, partly because there is no application process to go through. Which is probably part of, if not entirely, the reason I've seen things happen here that would have earned you an instant ban from my forums or a gkick from my guild. This does lose something in translation to twitter, and other purely communal venues, because while the community is important, it tends to confuse issues when it comes to drama. You still need a way to work through those sorts of problems because they will still happen, but there is no built-in functionality in Twitter than allows or attempts to structure for it.

With a guild or a forum, even if the issue wasn't something that would earn someone a ban / kick, you knew who you could contact to get a problem sorted out and resolved. There were occasions where people were just whining about something relatively childish, but even in those cases though, merely getting their thoughts off their chest helped them work through the problem and they felt some sort of closure because they did everything they could do to be certain the issue received attention. On twitter and other wide ranging communities, though, there is no such thing, and it does get frustrating to watch (especially when people who know nothing about the "facts" of a situation suddenly start chiming in with their opinion). It's sort of one of those sad-truths - no matter how much you wish otherwise, there will always be drama. If you intend to role-play in that type of venue, you can save yourself a lot of headache by having an agreed upon (by the core group you write with) system in place to deal with it, because while telling people to work it out on their own does seem to be the most "adult" thing to do, it usually just results in escalation because it's difficult to keep a level head when two people genuinely disagree. They need a moderator, and then to see the resolution being enforced, again amongst the group that they are role-playing with, since there is some level of implied trust by coming together as a group that extends beyond trusting them as writers - you trust them as people too. Again, as I mentioned last week, playing with like-minded individuals that will grant you the best RP experience, and this sort of thing is definitely one of the reasons.

If problems arise between two groups, though, this is where having someone in a leadership position also comes into play, so they can contact the other group and see if there is some way to resolve the issue. This used to happen rather frequently in WoW, when people from different guilds would work together on a 5 or 10 man dungeon. If something happened - usually one of the other players "stealing" a piece of loot - then it should get reported to that person's Guild Leader. This usually resulted in one of two things: either nothing being done by the other Guild Leader as a matter of their own opinion, or the other Leader deciding that that person was giving the Guild a bad reputation and handling the problem in some manner. Keep in mind, reputation of one's guild affected being able to recruit new members and retaining old ones. It was important to weigh your reputation with how you wanted your Guild to be looked at. I really wish there was a similar societal structure for here on twitter.

The other thing bothers me here, though, is that there is no one providing a solid world construct for people to operate in. There are vampires and fairies running amok, and only a few have bothered to explain their origins. Others seem to just be making it up as they go, and it's impossible to interact with people like that because you have to entirely rely on them to fill in relevant details for when you plan stories. (If you don't offer details ahead of time, and instead insist on adding details later, especially in regard to special abilities, it will most likely be seen as God-moding. Big no-no, and very frustrating to deal with. This is why impromptu RP on twitter, in the Sookie Stackhouse / True Blood community has ground nearly to a halt.) It's a challenge to come up with successful story-lines, but this is where role-players should be collaborating with the people they play / write with to do things of higher quality. When I'm role-playing, I'm always working to improve my level of skill whether it be in writing or in my level of mastery of my character in the game, and having someone else giving me constructive criticism or offering ideas I might not have had myself is a bit help. This is why I'm a big fan of the community that revolves around role-play, which is why I was drawn to twitter in the first place. If I can share my passion with people, if they can inspire me to be a better writer or player, or even person, then that's where I want to be. I'm also used to the people I play with operating under a similar mentality, or at least appreciating the mentality that I happen to possess even if they might not ascribe to it.

As I mentioned earlier, my first successful forum RP was based on Sailor Moon. In fact, all the role-plays I've ever been a part of have been based off of a world already established and available to the public, because it gives everyone a common ground to start on and you don't have to spell out all the all the details of how to play a character. Actually, it's one of the frustating things about the Sookie Stackhouse / Charlaine Harris world, because so much is not explained point blank in the books and you have to work on a lot things gleaned from reading between the lines, as well as hunting for the rare lines of definite answers that are nearly hidden in the text. (Love the books for how addictive they were to read, love the show because I'm a big fan of Alan Ball, but looking at the world as a role-player = frustrating. It's part of the reason why there are so many "running amok" characters, too.) But, for all its flaws, it's a very well known world which is why it flourished on Twitter and the community is serving as sort of the "home-base" for many vampire-related RPs. But at least it does seem to be inspiring new RPers. And if any of you newbies are reading this, I hope you're finding it informative. Feel free to ask questions too! Jesiryu's Formspring

To round of the post, I'd like to switch topics to something specific to written role-play.

Last week I discussed characters, and character grokking. With that in mind, characters are the heart of a story but conflict is the pulse. On paper your character might be a well thought out, detailed, balanced, full-fledged creation, but at that precise moment in time where you finally sit back and say, "done", is exactly when the conflict starts. Because after you put the final touches on a character's personality, backstory, abilities, and everything else that distinguishes them not only from other characters but from you as their handler, you will be throwing them out in the great unknown world of role-play. Or fiction writing. Either way, I'm assuming you made the character for some reason. There's a world out there you intend to use them in, whether it be in your own mind or one that you seek out with company. It means that a character is only the first step. The second step is a story, and a story means conflict.

Conflict is important because it is how your character will grow, what makes your readers or watchers or followers connect to them, root for them, what captures the attention of the audience. Through conflict we come to know the character better. It takes them from being a mere construct to an actualized entity, someone who lives and breathes (or not, as in the case of vampires) in another world. Sometimes that world is what provides the conflict, sometimes it's other characters, or sometimes we happen to be meeting the character at an interesting point in their life where they are struggling with something that, at least to them and hopefully to the audience, is meaningful.

Good writers know that there are two types of conflicts your characters can deal with: internal or external. Internal conflicts are best summed up by the expression man vs. self. It's anything emotional or mental where the character is essential both protagonist and antagonist, and they are conflicts that are intensely personal to the character in question. External conflicts can be divided into two groups summed up best as man vs. nature and man vs. man. Man vs. nature might be better appreciated as man vs. the world around him, but vs. nature is the more common way to reference the concept. Man vs. man is simply that, a character versus another character.

The better you know your character, the easier it is to be able to know how they will react to conflict. But beyond knowing your character, when conflict is added to the equation that means you need to know more about the world around them. Without a solid world, your conflicts would always have to revolve around man vs. self and man vs. man. Internal conflict provoked by another character can be interesting, but I'd want to know why there is a conflict. What is your character at odds with the other character over? If you are struggling solely against another character without a solid world to struggle in, that is a type of conflict better known as "character drama". I'm not a fan of character-drama unless there is a specific end-goal in mind for both characters in question.

Character versus character also means you need to trust the handler of the other character, if you're writing this in an impromptu fashion, that any conflict you are writing is not actually a cloak for handler animosity. The one great example I have of this is the night that Peter confronted Victor for, what he thought at the time, was trying to seduce the character he was, then, currently in a relationship into a three-some with another vampiress. (I really wish I could find all the tweets from that. We're going to have to recreate that confrontation when we write the 6th book.) It was off-the-cuff impromptu RP and believe me, was one of the only times on twitter where I really wondered if I'd ticked off someone's handler as well as their character. Jules confesses that she might have been kind of POed behind the scenes initially, in regard to the handler (me) allowing their character do that, but when she put some distance between everything, she was able to treat it just in character. (Evidence in: Victor's Old Blog <-- Comments)

But there is a great example of how conflict should be handled if it's not scripted. And considering Jules and I had no knowledge, at all, of the people who were behind the characters (we both thought the other was a man at that point too), that was the most calm and collected I've ever had to deal with another handler of a character my character had a disagreement with. Because, to be frank, Victor and Peter very nearly came to blows that night since Peter was genuinely aggravated (rightfully so) and Victor didn't take kindly to Peter pointing out that he'd (somewhat) gone against his word in regard to not being interested in Peter's significant other. (Victor defends: "I didn't suggest the three-some. That was Pam. I just happened to be involved in the conversation and didn't discourage it." *smacks Victor for splitting hairs - he rolls his eyes*) In other words, though, that was the closest our characters have ever come to genuinely fighting. (Victor smirks: "I would have won." - *smacks him again* Only if Peter wasn't armed, dumb-ass, and he nearly always has a knife on him... How did you get to be 400 years old? - "Wit, charm, and beauty." - *facepalm*)

Scripted conflict, though, is another matter altogether. Before you plan scripted conflict, you need to really get into your character's head and try to visualize what they will experiencing when the conflict takes place. That way, you can discover any potential problems ahead of time either with explaining the story, or making certain your character's response won't make it seem like they went off the deep end. Sometimes, though, no matter how much thought you put into a story-line ahead of time, you can still run into unexpected problems. This is where having a set end-goal becomes helpful, or at the very least having a list of things in mind that you want to avoid (Whatever conflicts Jules and I introduce into Peter and Victor's world, you can be certain that we won't be taking them away from each other. Both characters have firmly told us that if that happens, they'll walk out into sunlight. Definitely something neither of us want to happen). If there is no end-goal and you're doing this somewhat off-the-cuff, you need to be prepared to sit down and talk to your writing partner(s) the next day and see where everyone is. Again, it's a key point where OOC chatting is very necessary to the progression of the story, so you all know what your characters are thinking / feeling even if the characters themselves wouldn't necessarily confess to it. (Victor is famous for that when it comes to his feelings. He refuses to confess anything aloud that he hasn't filtered through his brain million and one times to make certain it's a certainty - double speak intended.) You do have to trust that your writing partner(s) can separate handler knowledge from character knowledge properly, but it's still my preferred method of dealing with conflict so you can avoid petty arguments both between the characters and the handlers when they make the move to step back OOC and say "wtf?". As an alternative, if you are writing in a group, having at least one other handler "in the loop" to your character can be enough to avoid pettiness, because then you can both work on judging whether everyone else's character responses are starting to border on frustration, or if it's meaningful character interaction.

The real rule of thumb for conflict though is making certain there is a point to it. Either you want your character to grow in a certain way, or there's something happening in the world that makes the conflict unavoidable, or a change or failing in the world you want to bring out or highlight, potentially with the mindset to build on it in later story-lines. Conflict and drama are not the same thing, and while drama is somewhat entertaining, it's still not my preferred cup of tea, even when it is totally in-character.

One last thought for the day: Conflict is only as good as the story it brings about. When you plan conflict, you have to try to keep the whole world that revolves around your characters in mind. Sometimes things will slip through the cracks, but the more often you write / plan that sort of thing, the more natural it will become. Collaboration and cooperation are invaluable. Having an outsider's perspective can also be a huge help, because it's easy to fall into the bubble of comfort around your characters and miss some of the bigger picture. Fresh views means fresh takes, and while it might not always be something you run with, it will at least get your mind thinking a bit more "outside of the box" and out of the comfort zone.

As always, thanks for reading,

-Victor

~Jesi

Feb 25 / 1:25pm

To Grok or Not To Grok

Penny Arcade

Recently I've found myself looking around this world of twitter and wondering at all the changes that have happened since I first created my account. It's a long and winding path that my mind travels, looking at how I got from January 26th 2009, to here, February 24th 2010. My first blog post was a little over a year ago, and I have to admit, I've been kind of missing them. So without further adieu...

There's a couple different levels of role-play. There's a lot of different venues, too, but in some manner or another they do all manage to relate. For instance, there's table-top role-play. Table-tops are typically associated with dice, character sheets, and mountains of rule books that can all be used to enhance your game experience. Traditionally, for games like Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), the three core books are the Dungeon Master's guide, the Monster Manual, and the Player's Handbook. Of those three, the DM guide and the Monster Manual are mostly for use of the DM, to create scenarios for your players to be able to challenge their characters with. The Player's Handbook is a list of instructions on how to create a well-balanced, ready-to-play character. The mountains of books expand the world and the abilities your character can acquire so that everyone who plays it will always have a different gaming experience even if your DM might run a scenario that was carbon copied from the game book.

But the one thing that no amount of books can ever tell you how to do is actually make a character. They can help you give them stats, armor, abilities, but the best they can do to help you craft a being who truly belongs in another world is offer guidelines. Suggestions on the character sheets, below or alongside the tables and charts, where you fill in your character's class, alignment, race, stats, and equipment, are sections for you to fill in for your character's history, their age, their personality. Filling in that sort of thing is not optional. Details might be sparse, but you do need to generally have some idea where your character came from and how they got to the point in their lives that you're meeting up with them to interact in the world of fantasy.

What the challenge then becomes is character grokking. You have to learn to look at the world around you through the eyes of your character, keeping in mind their manner of speech, their habits, their beliefs, their backstory, and any number of other things that make them who they are. How tall they are. How strong they are. Do they have tails? Extraordinary senses? Magical abilities? Mostly it's their personality and outlook that matters, and the more successful you are at grokking, the easier it is to create a character that is genuinely a character and not just an avatar of you.

Which is really what the challenge is in a nutshell. In most role-play, as I've mentioned before, there is such a thing as a blurred line. Usually that line factors in when you have to make a decision for your character, since you, as the handler, can be held responsible for what your character chooses to do. Within reason. The more successful you grok, the more the character is their own entity, with their own thoughts, feelings, etc. Many writers will admit to a similar phenomena, where once they actualize their characters successfully they find that, on occassion, their characters disagree with them, or won't go through with a set of actions because it isn't something they would actually do. Most of the time, while it certainly can be a headache, you end up with a much stronger character and a much stronger story by extension.

It's the mark of a good writer, a good role-player, who can maintain their characters as separate enough entities that there are gut check moments when you try to get them to do something that they genuinely would not do based on their given personality, history, abilities, etc. My great example is Victor. Victor is a womanizer, he loves his music (and Peter), he's arrogant, he's stubborn, and if doesn't want to do something by golly does he give me a headache. The most annoying thing about him is that damned raised eyebrow and the smirk that goes with it. He's gotten me into a lot of trouble over the past (almost) year since he first sprang into my head. But you have to admit, he can grow on you. Like cancer. (Stop pinching the bridge of your nose, Victor. Yes I know vampires can't suffer from human ailments. No I'm not changing the comparison. Sheesh.)

Anyway. What I've noticed a lot is that there are a lot of role-players out there who are only playing avatars of themselves. The blurred line doesn't exist at all except for the fact that their "character" has horns, fangs, or can poof. It makes me wonder... What's the point of role-playing if you're just playing yourself? Sure, you can give yourself nifty abilities that you don't actually have in RL. But... where's the story? If you grew up in a fantastical place, or in another time, I want to see the mark of it on your character somehow. Either phrases that you might not otherwise use (Victor saying "Master" and "Lady" as terms of address, for example), Mentions of other experiences if they might be relevant to a conversation (Peter discussin that he was an assassin for five years when weapons are being talked about). Things like that. If I look at you, and see you using everyday things just like a normal human (technology, movies, tv shows, music) you had better have a reason why your character is mentioning them. (I love Star Wars. Victor says he's never seen it. This means I can't talk about Star Wars while I'm playing him.)

You need to ask your characters those kinds of questions. What do they like? Why do they like it? Sure, not everything needs a detailed reason (for instance, I didn't realize Victor would have such a penchant for classical music when I created him, but now it's a staple that I'm working into his backstory anachronistically), but you at least need to put the effort in for things that really do matter. If you don't want to put in the effort of thinking that sort of thing through, the answer is simple: don't mention that sort of thing at all. The only exception is that every character should have at least one hobby, something they do to relax or to pass the time. Victor and Peter have one in common, stargazing when they are in a thoughtful mood. Peter does so while on walks. Victor does so while perched up on a roof. It doesn't have to be something unique, just meaningful to the character.

Pet peeve though: I don't care how many languages your character is supposed to speak. If you don't speak it, don't use it. At least not for full sentences. Phrases, terms of endearment, perfect. But the people who use Google Translate to speak in a foreign tongue really need to go pick up a text book. Better yet, use Google Books and find one for free. If you're not going to put the time in to speak it properly, don't speak it at all. Not asking for perfection. Just better than Google Translate. (Victor, for instance, can speak Russian. I'm not really thrilled with the idea of learning cyrillc, so I doubt I will ever actually use it. If I do, it will just be with the easy RP out: *switches to flawless Russian accent and says, in Russian* How does the night find you?).

Which really brings us to the one downside of twitter role-play. There's no Dungeon Master, or forum moderator, to be able to hold you to a set of standards for your character. And that's not entirely a bad thing, since a place like twitter will always have huge variations in the levels of their players skill and experience and there's a lot to be said for a large community. Players should try to find people of a similar skill level and stick together so you can all grow together. But that doesn't mean the more experienced players should look down on the newbies. (note: there is a difference between newbie and n00b. newbie is a genuinely inexperience, new player. n00b is someone who should know better but chooses not to learn from their experiences to better themselves). If the more experienced players aren't willing to try and help them out with constructive criticism - not harrassment, there's a big difference - or interact with them beyond a social level, that's okay, just remember that everyone was a newbie once upon a time and keep it civil. Other people's role-play doesn't reflect your own unless you're interacting with them. And if you are interacting, it means you've got a little bit of weight to make suggestions to them, but never to tell them what to do.

Collaboration is the key for this sort of role-play. Sometimes, what your character might say or do could not be precisely clear to the people you're role-playing with, especially considering on twitter everything had to be be done in 140 character bursts. You can link a few tweets together, but it's still only a marginal improvement. What that means is you need to be able to step back from your character, especially if you sense you're not getting the responses you would expect, to talk to the other people you role-play with in an out of character (OOC) capacity. The other good reason for this is so you can distinguish your character's reactions from your own. It's easy to get frustrated when someone is reacting to your character in a way you don't understand or appreciate. Odds it, it's just a simple misunderstanding and OOC chat will clear the air so that your characters can move forward with whatever reactions they would have with the proper appreciation for the situation they find themselves in. For example, if Peter said to Victor, "Lover, I don't ever want to be without you" (actually, he has said this), odds are it is meant in a romantic fashion. But, if (Victor is saying this wouldn't happen but I'm running with the example) Victor was having a "bad day" - more likely his handler would be the one having the bad day - he could interpret that phrase to be an accusation that he would consider leaving Peter. HUGE difference, and the better you know your fellow role-player and their character the less chance something like that could happen. But I'm sure you can admit that there's an advantage to being able to step OOC and say "hey, wtf?" to the other handler rather than having the characters get into a pointless, petty argument. Now, if Peter did (wouldn't happen) mean it as an accusation, then the character disagreement would probably need to get written out to resolve whatever it was that was going on. But here, again, OOC I would ask Jules, "Alright, what happened between yesterday and today that made Peter think that?" and she would tell me. If the other handler can't tell you, that's a bad sign that the argument is actually an OOC one.

To emphasize that line of thought, NEVER resolve OOC differences IC. It's just bad role-play, and makes me wonder if you've got a few screws loose.

That doesn't mean you have to always have an answer to everything your character is doing, thinking, feeling. For instance, to go back to the pretend argument between Peter and Victor, Jules might honestly tell me, "I have no idea what got into him. I'm fine, but Peter's just off today." As long as I believe Jules is alright, I'd go back IC to have Victor talk to Peter to find out what was wrong. This might sound odd to some people, but if you're grokking your character to the point where they somewhat feel like a separate entity in your head, they can have bad days just like the rest of us. BUT. My recommendation: if your character is having a bad day and you, as their handler / writer / owner, don't know why, don't role-play with anyone else until you have a better idea. There's nothing I hate more than playing guessing games with someone else's character without having somewhere to start from. I don't mind helping Jules figure out what's wrong with Peter, but I have to trust her that we both want to find the source of the problem. I've role-played with people in the past who just play ring-around-the-rosy with character problems and refuse to do any sort of serious OOC talk to get to the bottom of it. If you get to the point where you and your character are both frustrated, that's the point to stop. If the other role-player gets put off by you calling a halt, then odds are, you both need to sit down OOC and determine how you want to handle that sort of problem in the future.

Which brings us to my last topic. Let me preface this with an adage that EVERY role-player should ascribe to. "RL trumps RP." Always. This might seem kind of "no-duh" but I've seen it abused before, to varying degrees, and that's why I want to talk about it.

Now there are times where an RP commitment means something, especially to the people you've committed to. If you've promised to be around for an event that takes place at a prescribed time, you would definitely be letting people down if you didn't show up. At the same time, role-players should be understanding if, for instance, you had to take a child to an emergency room visit or even if you were just sick and had been puking for the better part of the day. The people you committed to would say, at least I imagine in most cases, "Bummer that of all the days for you to be pulled away it was today but trust us, we totally understand."

Next would be the people you role-play with on a regular basis or have a storyline going with. Your partner, or the group that you play with, no doubt keep an eye out for you during the day and come to expect you to be around at certain times or that you'll let them know when they can expect to see you. Most off-the-cuff, impromptu role-play groups have policies regarding how much activity you have to maintain in order to keep your spot with the group. And even if there's just one other person that you really write with, you do start having expectations of each other, most notably when your characters are in a relationship. It's normal to expect a certain level of deference to that sort of thing, since you can't do anything with your characters unless your partner or group are all on the same page with you. There might be gaps between when you all write / role-play together, but I'd expect that you mostly keep in contact somehow behind-the-scenes as friends so you can let each other know what's up.

The next trump card I'm going to place on the table is if you're in a RL relationship with the person you role-play with. For example, Poet and I, Jules and I, rather, have been together for six months now. We've both had our crappy days when "RL kicks our ass" and we've always had the posture that "Victor and Peter and their crazy world can wait. Let's get our feet back underneath the handlers first." You sort of figure that if you care about someone, you want them to be in a good place before asking them to grok their character. There's always that line that, depending on the day might be hazy or distinct, you recognize the truth from the fiction and that no matter how many times you set foot in the world of fantasy, Real Life is always there waiting. Usually with dirty dishes.

No matter what anyone's average day home life is, it's reasonable to expect that RL will, on occasion, crop up and drown out even the normally fun, exciting, fantasy world of RP. RP can be a great distraction to RL at times like that, and but sometimes RL still kicks your ass. On the nights where RL is winning, no matter how much you wish it wasn't, you should be able to turn to your RP friends, even if they're expecting / hoping you'll be around, and say "hey, I need a night." And they should understand, because then when RL kicks their ass, then they can turn to you.

If they make a stink about not being able to do anything with their character because you're not there, this is a warning sign, not something you should feel guilty about. Now I'm not saying that there wouldn't ever be a wrong in the opposite direction, because abandoning your RP partner or group for days on end or for even one night because you want to browse the internet for a new background picture for your desktop is just as disrespectful that they're there waiting for you. But, again, there should be clear, no-duh lines of what is / what isn't okay. If ever you're not sure or something like this comes up, talk about it when you both have clear, calm heads.

To emphasize: There should be no exceptions to the rule. And I don't mean when RP trumps RL. I mean when a role-play partner doesn't want you to step away from the computer, harking back to character frustrations and IC / OOC blurring. It's okay to have moments of that sort of sentiment because, hey, even I've done it. When a writing partner has had a crappy day or has something crop up where they have to leave suddenly, sure I get a flicker of disappointment. But no matter how much I might, personally, be disappointed, I still have no problem stepping back to say, "hey, there's always tomorrow. can I do anything to help?"

Normal, cognizant response. "Can I help?" or "Is there anything I can do?" or "Hey, I'm here if you need to talk." Basic friendship stuff.

And that extends to everything from RL emergencies to every-day things like when it's time to go to bed. True, there can be exceptions to the bed thing, since I know I've run into nights where you get wrapped up in a writing session that suddenly you're wondering when two more hours went by. But, at the same time, if I'm writing with Jules and I know she has to wake up at 7:00 am to get her kids off to school, there has to be a cut-off time no matter how good the writing is. She could decide it would be worth staying up, and might choose to keep writing with me, but that's up to her. As her writing-partner / friend / girlfriend I have to be able to keep the RL > RP in mind and respect that if she has to go to bed, it's time to go to bed. Now that doesn't mean I can't be a little disappointed, but I can't hold it against her. No-duh, right?

If you ever login the next day to your writing partner accusing you of giving them the cold-shoulder or outright saying they were annoyed you left, that's a warning sign that you both have a different set of priorities. Spend some time OOC to get back on the same page, then delve back into the IC. Holding grudges for that sort of thing is NOT OK. And yet, I've seen it happen. There's a lot of different ways that sort of thing can manifest, but I'll tell you right now, if you ever role-play with someone who says, "You left me all alone," especially if they try to say it IC despite it being an OOC concern, you should know you're dealing with someone who has severely blurred the line and is abusing it. Don't feel guilty for those people. And if they refuse to talk to you about it OOC, or try to insist it's just IC, tell them to get a life.

So, to sum up. Characters should always be separate from their handlers, and when I see you on the stream, I expect that to be obvious. Maybe not all the time, but most of the time. (If you find yourself doing more than 2 OOC tweets in a single day, make an OOC account. I consider OOC tweets spam when I want to be following a character. Give your followers the choice.) Second, handlers should, most of the time, be able to explain what their character is doing / thinking / feeling without it being their own sentiments. (If Victor is having a bad day, though, odds are I'm not going to have a great day either. Still doesn't mean that I should take my OOC frustrations out IC. Again, it's just bad role-play.) And third, RL trumps RP, always. Make sure your writing partners and you are on the same page in regard to priorities, and that you both stick to the agreement. (If you ever encounter someone abusing it, or making up excuses to get you to linger around, call them on it. Their reaction should be telling.)

Some days are a razor edge between what's the right way to role-play and what isn't. The more you know your character, and the characters you interact with, as well as their handlers, the better off you'll be.

I also realize that not everyone plays their characters this intensely, and that's more than okay. The one golden rule of role-play is that everyone should be having fun. If the fun stops, it's time to get off the ride.

(I think next time I'll be talking about casual vs hard-core role-play to expand on that thought a bit. And I don't mean "hard-core" in a pornographic sense, just the idea that there really are different levels of role-play in more realms than skill and experience.)

As always,

Thanks for reading.

~Jesi

-Victor

Jan 30 / 6:50pm

Coming Attractions

Oh hai thar.

Today's special announcement is brought to you by two very overactive muses and the deluge of ideas that we can't seem to stop from spewing out of them. Not that we're complaining. Much. But when you have four and a half books to edit, and one an a half to write before you can get to your character's current timeline, the voices tend to get... antsy.

And antsy vampires don't have any qualms about threatening their writers. With fangs. And other sharp, pointy objects.

So! In a very exciting turn of events, Jules and I have decided to let some of these ideas out on twitter. We have a a fair outline of events that's going to follow, but it's a basic skeleton based on how we think our characters will be acting in a given situation and we've by no means written any of this beforehand. In other words, what you'll be seeing is still off-the-cuff improvisational role-play, but with a storyline arching overhead.

To give you a proper summary of the things you may want to know beforehand, I'm going to suggest reading the two latest entries on our Crimson Melodies site. The first one, Another Child, is written by Victor. It's about the subject implied in the title, but also is a very detailed overview of how Jules and I have blended Peter and Victor's worlds together. You'll probably be able to notice that most of Victor's vampire quirks are still distinctly from the Harris universe, though I've made a lot of effort in actually defining them with a lot more precision that Ms. Harris has. And made some outright changes. The biggies modifications are the attraction to fae (which has been removed entirely) and the addition of allowing severely injured vampires to enter a state of torpor to heal. Torpor has a secondary use of allowing vampires to willingly go to sleep for decades at a time, but Victor has never used it to do so. (He also resisted entering torpor when he lost his right hand back in the 1860s, but that's another story.)

The second entry you'll want to read is The Making of a Seer, written by Peter's son, John. It picks up where Victor's piece leaves off, and ties in to the little bit of their current timeline that we've already played out on twitter. It ends where the story will be picked up on twitter.

To give you an necessary overview of what's been happening in their world, check out Peter's series of entries called The Eleventh Hour - pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3

As you can see, we've been working on this storyline since back in November. What's important for you to know if you don't really want to read all of that but might still want to watch on twitter? Here's the biggies:

Vampires are not, to quote Charlaine Harris, "out of the coffin". They still operate like they have for centuries, hidden in the darkness.
Victor's bloodline, which you will see referred to as the lamiae possess reflections and thus are able to be recorded both in still pictures and on video cameras. Peter's bloodline, the revenir, have no reflections and are not able to be recorded or photographed.
Of the two bloodlines, the lamiae are physically superior to the revenir, but the revenir have access to dark magic.
There is a society called simply "The Order" that exists solely to fight the revenir when any of them dabble with dark magic. Read 'Another Child' for more details. The three terms that you will see often in reference to the Order are the Elders who make up the High Council, the spell casters that are either sorcerers or sorceresses who can recieve visions from the Fates when there is a revenir in need of killing, and the seers and their watchers who are the teams that actually get sent out to handle the threats detected by the Order. Seers and watchers can also receive their own visions, but not every mission they're given is a direct communication from the Fates.
The Order is not, or is not supposed to be, interested in the lamiae because none of them can use magic. They are, however, aware of the lamiae's existence.
The revenir are more social creatures than the lamiae. They typically live in 'covens' comprised of upwards of twenty immortals and are governed by a vampire elder selected to be Master of the coven, and a second in command referred to simply as a 'second'. Robin and Peter were master and second to a coven in Philadelphia until last year. Multiple covens can be found in highly populated locations, and Philadelphia has quite a few. They typically declare territories so their feeding patterns do not conflict with one another. In case there is ever need, the coven masters will all meet to discuss any problems or business and look to the eldest of them as the reigning leadership. In the case of the covens of Philadelphia, they actually answer to a vampire master named Matthew who currently presides over a coven in Trenton, NJ. You can read a little bit more about it in Allen's posterous.
The lamiae are much more formalized in their leadership. They have three branches of government, if you will, the aristocracy, the royals, and the primael. As you might expect, the aristocracy and the royals function much the same as they do in human society. The highest rank of a royal is a king or queen and the highest rank of a aristocrat is a duke or duchess. The primael exist outside of their chain of command but also within it, something like how in medieval times of war, an aristocrat would have a representative ranking in the military even if they weren't directly part of the fighting forces. There's a lot of complicated protocol that says who outranks who in what situations between the aristocracy, the royals, and the primael, but the system has stood for more than three millennia, possibly longer. The primael are not the military, though, just that was the simplest analogy to their integration in lamiae politics.
Very recently, the lamiae have been dealing with videos of their feeding habits being spread on the Internet through websites and torrents. They have been suppressing such things, on the rare occasions videos or photographs surface, but the recent ones have actually been thwarting their cyber efforts of removal. You can read more about this in the 'Eleventh Hour'.
No one has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the videos, and while no one knows why this might be happening, there is a high level of suspicion that the Order is behind the attempting 'outing' of the lamiae.
The lamiae are only aware of the Order's existence in hazy reports. There have been many recent confrontations in Europe, but since there are rarely survivors all they have are reports of the "green eyed demons" who can kill vampires. Bear in mind that the Order has only existed for a thousand years and is tasked by the Fates to deal solely with the revenir.
The two bloodlines are aware of each other's existence but it is not common knowledge, especially for young immortals. They have been more than content to leave each other to their own devices for the thousand years they've both occupied the earth. The revenir were very sparsely populated in their beginnings, so the growth of both bloodlines in the last thousand years has gradually allowed for the general attitude that currently exists.

So by now you're no doubt wondering who you need to follow to get all of the story. And the answer is: simple.

This twitter list has our full cast of characters. We've decided that, for the sake of simplicity, we would make all our character accounts public so you only need to follow the one list to see all the action, though we certainly encourage you to follow them individually as well.

What that also means is that we need to warn those of you with virgin eyes that you might need to close the list down some nights. Jules and I both are of the mindset that "vampires are vampires" and we're not going to worry about offending delicate sensibilities. Sensibilities, yes. Delicate, no. You guys should know by now that we're both writers at our core, and while we can't garuntee that none of the adult content will merely be gratuitous, we can promise that we still know how to use the twitter shade. *shoots a glare over my shoulder to a certain, well dressed vampire who tends to be an exhibitionist* So like I said, if there's a night where it's too much, you can always close the list out from tweetdeck or seesmic or however you need to handle things from your end. I'm a big believer in, "if you don't like what you're watching, just turn it off or change the channel".

To clarify but not downplay what I just said, though, that sort of thing is not going to be an every night feature. Or even a weekly feature. *considers the libidos in question* Okay, so probably weekly, but with use of the shade. It's about the story, though. And about all our characters being who and what they are, especially the vampires. If there's a night where they want to rip skulls off of humans and use them as blood carafes, they're entitled to do so. If there's an evening where they want to vent some frustration though a very hot-and-heavy round of sex with multiple partners that leaves them all exhausted and littered in bite marks by the time the sun comes up, they're entitled to do so.

But.

Watch us first. I guarantee the story will be worth it, and if ever there is a moment of "too far" you can toss us a dm. We're reasonable human beings on this side of the screen who are more than willing to listen to your concerns, feedback, or constructive criticism. Trust me, it helps us become better writers and role-players, knowing our audience better.

It'd be great to hear when there's stuff you enjoyed watching, too. Be it a twist in the story, or how a character is struggling with or overcoming a problem. Knowing what's working and what's not is invaluable, and I'll thank everyone reading this now if you choose to watch us and ever have a reason or a chance to reach out to us.

In the meantime, *raises my hand and offers you all a two-fingered mock salute* Enjoy. See on you the stream, folks.

~Jesi
-Victor

Jan 10 / 12:52am

Plane of Existence

*brushes the dust off my shoulders* It's been a while.

Most of the posts on this blog are about other people. They're about the stories I've seen, the people I've come to know in this wide world of twitter, or about a topic that somehow struck my interest and seemed relevant to share.

For once, I'm going to talk about me. Why do you ask?

[Coming Clean] <-- That's why.

Don't confuse this with an attempt to justify myself because honestly I don't feel like I owe that to anyone, but it's time to take the curtains down. I'm issuing a confession that may be a bit delayed since the underbelly is the worse than a sex-addict spreading gonorrhea when it comes to rumors. But, for once, I can tell you that it got something right. Well, partly right. Since no one has ever stepped forward to actually talk to me about the precise contents of said rumors masquerading as information, I can only say that I'm admitting to one very precise, particular aspect.

"It is I, the vampire Victor Madden."

April Fools!

Actually, no, I'm completely serious. http://www.formspring.me/Jesiryu You can even ask me whatever you want about it.

I don't have any big, overarching reason as to why I didn't advertise that I was playing Victor aside from the fact that I'm a role player. I don't flip between me and my character except in very select crowds of people I count as close friends. It's not meant as a slight to anyone, but I treat most other role players as colleagues or co-workers of a sort, and I'm sure most of you feel the same way in regard to the other people you interact with on a character level. There's just some walls that take time to come down, if ever. I will confess that in my earliest days of Victor, I went out of my way to convince people I was male and it probably didn't lend me any credit when this particular truth came out. As of this date I've told eight people either directly or by proxy with permission that I play Victor. As of this date, I don't even want to know how many people actually knew that. At least double that number. Probably more.

Why?

I could go into details. I could even do the same thing to the person who did it to me. Only fair, right? Except... wait for it... I'm actually a conscientious role player. And once upon a time, I thought this person was too, which is why I trusted her. I thought there were some universal rules that role players never, ever, broke.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But apparently that makes it all okay, since she never got called out on it.

What's really amusing is that I recently got lied to about my identity being safe. You have no idea how tempted I am to just start on a rant and call a select few people out on their bullshit. "Bend me, break me, shatter me, subject me." Yeah. I wrote that. For a fucking reason. My character, Victor, got flayed open and walked over more times than I am really willing to admit. And on three, very pointed occasions, the person playing him did too.

To those people: Let me hear you deny it one more time. Just for old times sake.

If I sound bitter, I am. Twitter used to be fun for me. I used to be able to login under either my name (well, alias), or my character's, and simply let conversations flow. Now, though, I feel like there's something missing in it all. I never know who knows who I am, and who doesn't, and it makes me question everyone's motives when they interact with me. How can I look you all in the eyes, so to speak, when none of you can seem to look in mine? The underbelly rumors are all I ever hear. And they're STILL being talked about, to this day. Do you know how annoying that is? To know that this is still a topic of conversation and that not one, single, person has grown a pair and stepped up and confronted me about any of it?

Maybe you all thought you were being nice. Maybe you all felt bad for knowing. Maybe it's not a big deal to you.

It's a very big deal to me.

Mostly because I felt like I was being condemned right alongside the people who went out of their way to paint a poor picture of me, if they even got condemned at all. I honestly don't know. I can admit, I trusted one person I shouldn't have. But the fact that no one ever talked to me when you all found out basically seems to say two things: one, "Since one thing we were told was true, it must all be true", and two, "You made your bed, now lie in it." Truthfully, if that second part was everyone's attitude, I don't blame any of you. I'm a big girl, I can take my lumps. But if that wasn't the case, it would have been nice to know. I don't go out of my way looking for validation. I didn't come to any of you with my side of the story to make you feel important and trusted. I didn't try to cut the legs out from under the role-player who broke my trust. Could I have? Sure. Still could. I don't have anything to lose at this point, really. It might be fun.

Maybe I should flip a coin.

Now, to shift topics. You all know about Poet. You all know about me.

Who's gonna ask the million dollar question?

I'm a stay-at-home mother-of-one living with my fiance, father of my child, who I love and am completely devoted to. I'm also in love with Poet, who I visit as often as I can, and who I spend more time talking to on the phone than is probably healthy.

My relationship with Poet, off screen, did not start until the middle of August. And, actually, it's a really funny story that I'd love to share since it involves a forty-eight hour visit and some very cross-wired communication between the two of us.

Everyone in the equation is happy. That's all I really feel the need to say about it.

To address another question that I'm sure has cropped up: When I write Victor's stories, they're just that. Stories. Actually, quite a few of them have been excerpts of chat logs that I worked into prose. Some of them came out better than others, but it's been a lot of fun to write. When I do write for him, though, I look at the world through Victor's eyes. If anyone reading this is a writer, or has read an author's writing where they've asserted something similar, I think you'll understand when I say that the minute I made Victor's twitter account, he took up residence in my head and I haven't been able to kick him out. All I get in response is a very amused grin and a pat on the head, along with a long list of both practical and comedic reasons why I keep him around. He's a flirt. He's arrogant. He's brash. And he's in love with Peter. All of those add up to him now being his own, original character that takes up more real-estate in my mind than I would ever have thought a male character could take up. Considering all that, I get the feeling he's always been there just waiting for me to give him a name. He's more trouble than he's worth. Sometimes.

But. He is him. I am me. Victor had some pretty hard issues to work through. I've mostly just been trying to find reasons to stick around on twitter. We're both getting there.

Poet and I are actually writing together now. After nearly a year of not being able to touch her books about Peter and Flynn, I've been helping her edit them, one chapter at a time, in preparation for actually writing one together. It will be the story of Peter and Victor and the never-boring collection of family and friends that has grown around them. Our muses have basically been conspiring and we've got the beginning, very rough outlines for almost four books worth of stories. We honestly can't write or edit fast enough to keep up with the ideas we bounce back and forth. It's mildly absurd, but definitely not something I will ever complain about.

*takes a deep breath* So, that about covers everything. I'm Jesi. I play Victor. Life is good.

The reason behind this post is mostly just so I can breathe a sigh of relief, so I can start attaching Jesi's name to things that I'm honestly proud of. The big nasty stuff is in the past, and of all of you who might be reading this, I only feel like I owe one person a very abject apology. Everyone else, I'm just glad you took the time to read it. It does mean a lot that I can still be here. None of you ever talked to me about this, but none of you publicly condemned me, either. I'll say thank you for that, since there was at least that level of respect given.

And thank you for keeping my secret even though none of you should have had to, and even if it did spread farther than I would have wanted it to. Poet and I are outing ourselves like this for our own reasons, so we don't have to have those nagging questions in the back of our minds over who knows and who doesn't know the truth. Now everyone can know. And we're okay with that.

It's a brave new world. Catch you on the flip side.

~Jesi

-Victor

Jul 14 / 10:30pm

When in Rome...

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1397#comic

First : HI!

Second: No, I’m not dead, just been very busy so I do apologize for my lack of posting / tweeting. Thank you all so much for the DMs and messages asking where I’ve crawled off to. I appreciate the thoughts more than I can say.

Third : Yes, I still lurk.

So I read Jessica’s post yesterday. My initial reaction had me wanting to clap for someone stepping up and speaking out about all the open sex on the stream. It seems that there is quite a bit of it going on lately, probably because of the very reason Jessica stated. It seems that most of the population of Bon Temps has managed to pair themselves off and aren’t shy about showing any and all aspects of their relationships. But, after watching all the discussion over this for the past day, I feel the need to speak.

A thought for your consideration…

There seems to be two arguments going on in regards to twitter-sex. One is that it would be tactful for people to use the twitter-shade at opportune moments out of respect to the audience who may not want to watch the nitty-gritty details of the characters getting down to business. Two is that it would be tactful for people to take their cyber-sex out of a public venue.

I respect both of those arguments, but have a bit of a bone to pick.

If you are all characters, interacting in the world of fantasy, then sex is part of the character’s lives. For a vampire especially, and almost doubly so in the Harris / True Blood world, it is an essential part of their existence and has no twitter-shade attached to it. Does this make it proper role-play? In a way, actually, yes it does. But it also shouldn’t give anyone as writer or role-player license to be dry hump every warm and cold body in the states of Louisiana and Texas.

The thing is, I know you all know the vampire nature I’m talking about. Why? Because most of us have read the books, watch the show, or else we wouldn’t be here. So what, really, is going on here? I can make the argument for a vampire character to have sex because of what they are, but where is the difference between what a vampire would do and what an average, everyday human would do? When you watch these people on the tweet stream, are you seeing the twitter-sex as a character having sex with another character or viewing it as public cyber-sex between two people on the other sides of the screens?

I do hate to point this out, but there is no one responsible for your perceptions of things other than you.

That being said, I would like to add this. Sex should not be the sum total of a character’s existence on twitter. Part of the reason why we can all read the books, watch the show, and view the sex without much fuss is because it is more than just a graphic display. Jason’s sexploits are very much part of who he is (*points a finger at the average, everyday human*). Bill and Sookie have an intimate relationship. In these cases, it’s not porn, it’s an extension of the characters shown to deepen the audience’s understanding, and shown as part of a bigger picture.

And it’s not 24/7.

Unless you have DVR.

Kidding.

My next point is this. Speaking out and offering the observation to people that their characters seem to be nothing but bunny-rabbits is one thing. Speaking out and trying to say “this is how things should be” is always going to be open to interpretation. I’m interpreting and adding my own thoughts into the mix but overall I agree with what Jessica has said, albeit for my own reasons.

Here’s the bottom line folks. If the twitter-sex is part of your character’s interaction and relationships with one another on twitter, and as long as you can make the argument that it is shown publically as part of a larger picture, I’m all for it. But it has definitely gotten out of hand lately and that really makes me wonder why people are showing so much of it. Rule of thumb: If you’re getting off on it, take it behind the shades. If you’re writing a scene for your character, by all means, write. Express. Be free with your character’s bodies and any piercings they might have. It’s twitter. There’s no rules.

But that doesn’t excuse you from exercising some common-fucking-sense. (“Puns used to be the highest form of humor.”)

Know your audience. Be aware of the consequences. And for those watching, if anything you see bothers you just hit un-follow and go about your business elsewhere. There’s no need to try and say that the other people are “wrong” for what they do. That’s your opinion. It’s as simple as that. And if you get asked later why you un-followed someone, be polite and honest when you answer. If you're teetering on the line between wanting to watch the story and being a bit irked by all the sex someone is having,you can also try a conscientious approach. Reach out to the player privately and mention the concern, without sounding judgmental if you can manage it. If nothing changes, or if you are not satisfied with the response, it's still YOUR decision to make. So grow a pair, decide, follow or un-follow, and don't moan about it behind the scenes.

To quote from season one, Sookie: “Fortunately for you, nobody’s forcing you to watch.”

One last bit : If you do un-follow someone because of the graphic nature of their tweet content, send them a short, sweet DM about it. Sometimes people gain and lose followers without really noticing, or ever knowing why and a quick "I would like to inform you I will no longer follow your updates due to their overly graphic nature." is not too much to ask. And, people, if you receive a DM like that, don't fly off the handle about it. It's a courtesy thing. If you notice yourself getting a lot of them, then maybe you should consider what you would like to do about them, either change your behavior, or simply decide to stay the course you've plotted and let people know that you won't be changing. That is, again, your decision.

Novel concept isn't it?

Thanks for reading.

*waves*

Jessica's Blog :An Important Notice About the Twitter-shade

Sookie's Blog : Who Said Anything About Sex? *takes off shirt*

Aosoth's Facebook : Twitter-shade and it's Many Uses

AmusingChaos's Blog : A little rant of my own...

May 19 / 11:35am

Fairys and Demons and Vampires, oh my!

So, it's been a while...

I've been incredibly busy IRL for the past few weeks and every time I sat down to do an update there was just too much stuff going on to squeeze it all in at once. I think I started and scrapped at least 4 entries altogether and today I'm just throwing my hands in the air and saying "Oh well! Time to start fresh!"

To wrap up a bit from last time, Sookie obviously got home okay and the FotS / Shield didn't hurt her too much. Actually, they stole a lot of her blood, and did who knows what with it. Maybe it was part of the weird aerosol attack that didn't do much outside her home a few days later. I'm sure it's all gone bad now, so I guess it doesn't matter much.

After that incident, Victor got on Eric's case about Sookie not being protected enough. Neither the Viking nor the telepath were all that thrilled with the idea of having any major upheaval forced on her. Victor acquiesced to something a little less drastic than what he probably had in mind originally, but they seemed to work out just fine in the little test they got put through the other night. Apparently he knew some witches who could enchant three pieces of jewelry with a spell that is basically a personal warning system. I'm not entirely sure what sets it off but it seemed to have something to do with her emotions, namely fear. One of the pieces, a ring, is Eric's while the other was given to Sam in case of an attack during the day. When Sookie was confronted by the pair of wereassassins (yep, they regenerated again) the spell worked perfectly, turning Eric's and Sam's pieces glowy. They both swooped in, Eric literally, and took care of the were's before they put more than scratch on Sookie. She still had to hold them off on her own until the boys got there, but she did alright throwing TruBlood bottles and giving the one of them a punch across the face and a stomp on his foot when he got a little too close.

They weres are dead again, but I'm sure they'll pop back up at some point.

The maenad has shown up in Bon Temps and although I don't think she's killed anyone just yet she's certainly causing a lot of worry about when it's gonna happen. As Sookie has said, it's probably only a matter of time. But, in the meantime, it seems like she's enjoying herself encouraging drunkenness, lust, and general revelry.

Beyond all that, there was a LOT going on. I don't think I could squeeze it all in if I tried to, especially considering all the new characters that have been cropping up.

Which brings me to my next topic. As I already mentioned, half the reason I haven't done an update in a while is because there's just so much going on. This is great, from a lurker stand point, because it's never boring to watch, but it's also a bit daunting in terms of this blog because there's no way I could cram everything in writing it all by myself.

With that in mind, if there's enough of an interest, I would love to turn this little lurker hobby of my updates into something a little more...organized.

When I write my updates I try to keep all the big facts in first, like attacks on Sookie, Eric, Bill, and the other main players, so we can keep track of the plot that revolves around them. But I know there's a lot of other things going on too, from @JessicaHamby's dancing career and torrid love life with @HoytFortenberry to @ManicDistress's ritzy job and her marriage to @DmitriCain to @PoeticImmortal's family and his sticky-sweet love life with @VixenCeleste to @AmusingChaos and @SolaceHart's globe trotting to whatever is going on with @Bloodthorne and all the demons that have shown up to [I think you all get the idea]. Some of it I catch on the stream or on other people's blogs but sometimes (understandably!) things still slip through.

SO what I'm asking, to anyone who's interested, is this : I'd like to have a little bit of help both in terms of tracking some of the sideliner plots that are swirling around as well as a few other important tidbits. If this were a real newspaper of sorts, as has been suggested to me a couple times, we'd have a romance section for all the couples, a real-estate section to keep track of who's moving in and out, an entertainment section for any events going on (like the ladies' night out last week), a features section for any big topics that might crop up, and maybe a few other things I haven't thought of yet (comics??). I've been doing pretty good keeping up with everything on my own until recently, but at this point I think it would be best to start asking for help so the updates with the big view keep coming.

Now, I'm not asking people report in to me with every little detail. On the contrary, I'd really just like a couple lurker volunteers, one or two people, to help me keep up with stuff or to write a couple for a couple of the categories I mentioned. I know we've got some really talented folks out there and I think it would be a fun project to organize. If there's any aspiring artists out there maybe we could do a comic of sorts, even if it's just stick figures with little triangles for fangs.

If there's enough interest I'll probably create a new twitter / posterous /email account for it (something akin to a real newspaper that can accept submissions and news alerts, I'll even take suggestions on the name). This is sort of my tentative "how would everyone feel about this, and who would be willing to help" post, so, please, comment and let me know if it sounds like a good idea or if you'd be willing to help. The more information from this wide twitter-world I have to work with the better - I could try and explain the effort I've put in on this blog, filtering through all story information I manage to catch for the "important stuff" that ends up included in each post, but you'd all probably think I'm crazy.

I've got a pretty established interest in watching what flits over the stream,but there's so much going on now, I hate missing out on some of it simply because it's a heck of a thing to keep track of. I'd love to have one central place to come for information for those curious about what's going on, like my blog has served for a while, but it's definitely past the point where I can try and pull it off on my own.

In the meantime, I'll keep an eye on Sookie, Eric, Bill, Tara, Sam, Jessica, and all our other core BT role-players. Those updates will get back on track starting today, since I'm reaching out and explaining why some stuff is going to be falling through the cracks. I'd hate for anyone to think I'm slighting them, I just honestly have no way to cram it all in.

If this does work out, I'd also LOVE to be able to do some In-Character interviews with people to catch up with them on what's been going on and what they might have planned for the future, especially all the OCs out there (maybe even Honey's demon, though she kind of makes me want to edge out of the room when I spot her *winks*).

Let me know! This twitter-world wouldn't be half as fun as it is without each and every person out there, even the lurkers who only tweet occasionally (like me =P ). Everyone should be proud of their own little contributions because, big plots aside, most of the time it's a simple Aid's Burger or Gran's Pie that brings a smile to my face when I'm watching.

As always, thanks for reading. ~Jesi

PS, I'm working on a character list! Soooo many new people, OMG.

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