I have to admit that I’m a hedonist for scents. The sense of smell is the sharpest sense for me. Scents are powerfully evocative, bringing back blurry memories with crystal clarity and prompting mood changes.
My new absolute favorite perfume is Bvlgari BLV Notte. Most reviews describe the fragrance as vodka and iris, with notes of acacia, galanga, dark chocolate, and tobacco. (No, I didn’t know what galanga was until I looked it up.)
I don’t get the vodka, although now that I think about this, the vodka note is probably the source of this very faint sharpness that keeps the musk/powder combination from being too sweet.
The packaging is lovely, too. Blue and silver, simple and clean lines. I keep finding Aya playing with the bottle. One of these days, I’m going to come home from work and wonder why all my scents are gone.
Drought. “Red flag weather.” Dry lightning, careless motorists, and downed power lines.
All of these contributed to the fires ringing the valley I live in - which is now essentially a big bowl of smoke. Every surface outside is dusted with ash, and the reek of burnt grass is unavoidable. The light has a strange, dim quality to it, and the shadows at noon are watery things surrounded by orange and gold as the sun tries to filter though the smoke.
It almost looks like we’re having cloudy, overcast days, but it’s more like fog — at times over the last week, visibility dropped down to less than half a mile. Days are darker and cooler, more like late fall than early summer. The air quality is abysmal and breaking records, and because of this, it’s been uncharacteristically quiet outside: when you step outside your door, you can’t breathe. Even people without health issues are struggling.
Yesterday morning, for the first time in more than a week, I went outside and the air didn’t smell like ash as the sun edge up into the sky. I watched a patch of blue sky for a few minutes — then it was swallowed up by smoke again.
But the sunsets have been amazing.
I’ve been playing Everquest again. The nostalgia factor is great, but I’ve abandoned my favored and familiar druid and shadowknight in lieu of trying out a new character class. Based on my experiences with hunters in Lord of the Rings Online, I’m playing a ranger in EQ. It’s great. Dude! It’s so easy to bow kite!
My character is still doing the Baking thing, though, and I find myself wondering how I could ever have forgotten gems* like this:
Rat Sandwich
Usually eaten unintentionally when the little critters find their way into your bread supply. Also known as “I-Should-Have-Bought-Myself-A-Lantern-Sandwich.”
Ingredients: Rat Meat and Bread.
Cooking Instructions: Grab whole rat and shove it firmly into a loaf of bread. Serve.
–Mixxy’s Delicacies, Vol 1, available in Halas
Tasty, no?
*pun intended. Gems > staring at spell book or waiting for old school boat.
I’ve been a Dr. Who fan for almost 30 years. Having just watched Silence in the Library, I agree with those who think it is the best episode ever. The dialogue and suspense were masterful, and there was just the slightest edge of horror as the scenes progressed.
Kudos to Steven Moffat for some absolutely amazing writing.
It was nice seeing David Tennant in handcuffs, too.
Thinking more about Drama Free Roleplay.
My characters aren’t here to act as NPC’s for yours or vice versa.
That is a key point to keep in mind in free form roleplaying, where one of the main precepts is that you choose what happens to only your own character. But it gets sticky when roleplay crosses over into collaborative writing, where it’s often necessary for one player/writer to occasionally use another character as an NPC in order to advance the story. Trust between the players/writers, familiarity with the characters, and understanding of the overall storyline is important there.
There are a few people I trust to use my character as an NPC:
- Lilithiel, who has followed Alysia’s development since the character’s inception and influenced the character’s development. Besides, she’s my twin and tends to think like I do.
- Missy, who is almost like a sister anyway, and we’ve roleplayed with each other for more than a decade.
- Jen, who is also one of my other almost-sisters. Even though we haven’t roleplayed together in years, she was very instrumental in Alysia’s development as a fictional entity and roleplaying character.
- Dean, who has an almost instinctive understanding of Rhilshen and can usually predict Alysia’s reactions without really thinking about it.
There are a couple others, too. Lucien’s player is another one I’ve been roleplaying with for years. Joon, who was like my younger brother and totally “got it”. All of them have the courtesy to run major plot twists by me before putting them into play — even though by now, they don’t need “permission” to do so.
Is there anyone you trust to run your characters as an NPC? Who, and why?
You Are 16% Shy
|
You aren’t shy at all, in fact, you’re probably quite outgoing.
You are comfortable in almost any social situation,
no matter how difficult. |
I was terribly shy as a child, blushing under any attention, speaking quietly only when required, burying my nose in books whenever possible. I started to come out of my shell after spending several years in martial arts, but still struggled with painful shyness up until my last year of high school, when I finally got all of my college prep classes out of the way and could focus on electives. While introverts generally suffer in a world where extroversion is rewarded, I learned that introversion was expected and even welcomed in creative endeavors, and writing, music, drama and art chipped away at my bashful mantle.
After I learned to enjoy having an audience, I spent a couple of years making up for lost time by being loud, obnoxious, flirtatious and occasionally outrageous - but those are tales for a different day.
I still perceive myself as someone who is at the core, an introvert. When I look in the mirror, I see someone who is too shy. Despite my Type A arrogance (confidence!), I’m reserved in nature. I still blush when spoken to (damn my fair skin). I’m not as assertive as I should be. I prefer solitude over crowds.
So, the prospect of spending several hours socializing with strangers - particularly strangers I know only from their online personas - should make me pause a bit, if not leave me downright uneasy and anxious. It doesn’t. I no longer feel much trepidation about those kinds of encounters. I actually look forward to new situations now, to meeting strangers and finding out what I have in common with people I know nothing (or very little) about.
Obviously my self-perception is flawed. This realization came as no surprise to my twin, who still sees me as generally loud, obnoxious, and outrageous. Of course, she knows me better than I know myself.
Sympathizing with my current annoyance over RDI drama, a SWG roleplayer saw some similarities to another situation and pointed me to Elijas’ Guide to “Drama” Free Roleplay over on Starsider Galaxy. Elijas distills the requirements for avoiding OOC drama into four points:
IC Actions = IC consequences: “If you kidnap the leader of a roleplay guild you cannot possibly even hope to think that somehow you will be able to convince said guild not to pursue you in some way or another in character. Because you have in essence put the ball in their court to react to your roleplay story and the usual and most reasonable answer will be to pursue you in someway, shape , or form in an attempt to recover their leader.”
God Moding: “This is a major No No! Every player has the right to react and/or decide the fate of their own character how they wish!”
Meta Gaming: “Meta gaming is the practice of taking information a player knows out of character and applying that information as if a character had access to this information when they have no way of knowing it.”
Communication and Consent: “Say for example you want to roleplay kidnapping someone, the easiest way to do this is obviously OOC’ly finding someone willing to be kidnapped by you IC. During said kidnapping RP OOC’ly relaying to any would be “hero’s” that the kidnapping is consented to by the victim. Consent is absolutely needed in most cases like this. Most people don’t want to be randomly kidnapped or somehow forced into some RP you have dreamed up. Ask them to become part of your story before you just throw them into a situation that they have no idea or clue what is happening or why it is happening.”
There was also this telling statement Elijas made: “My characters aren’t here to act as NPC’s for yours or vice versa.”
Unfortunately, Elijas doesn’t offer much advice for getting out of dramabomb situations — just staying out of them in the first place. And I have seen these situations come up time and time again, at every online venue I’ve ever roleplayed in, to every person playing there.
Do you think it’s possible to avoid OOC drama in online roleplaying? Or is this just the nature of the beast?
This is what happens when a six year old geeklet combines her love of Star Wars and teddy bear tea parties.
It was 105 degrees when we left. Too hot.
Half a tank of gas. . . $4.48 / gallon. We got 40 mpg on the trip.
Smuggling weapons in the cargo hold…
GPS/satellite navigation ROCKS.
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