[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Trident]

Dude.

[Antar]

Goss ^-^ I'm definitely seeing a lot of extra luv imbued in these latest boxies you handed out to people.^-^. And I lurv the cats.

*Now since you rarely get a sign of appreciation back for the hours of hard work *



Why yes, yes it is little kitty. But only for the Glossie Goss. (I'm allergic to kitty kat dander )

*Antar pats on back and bear hugs Goss*

[Gossamer]

. I Am Annoyed. Yes it is serious. I'm on the verge of taking a very big break so I don't scream at everyone daily who frankly acts stupid. Please refrain from the following for a while, people, because I'm seriously at the end of my patience with a few things. 1. Asking for animalistic features like fluffy pointed ears and animal tails as Kelvics. 2. Putting in staff applications where you say you want to help with grading threads. Really? There's so much more to being a storyteller than that. Give us some idea of what you WANT TO DO as a storyteller, not how you'll faithfully and rapidly grade all the threads the rest of the slacker ST's don't. Trust me. We know you'll grade ten faithfully, then go WTF this sucks, and stop doing it after about a week with any rapidness. 3. Asking me for explanations on anything incessantly like I'm some sort of walking dictionary/encyclopedia. If its something you can use, its in the wiki and posted in full in terms of magic and gnosis. If its not in the wiki, you can't use it and don't need to know it. If it is something in development like Static or Dominion, its on a need to know basis, and you don't need to know if you don't know about it already. The people in thread involving it know, and that's it. You have no WAY TO KNOW IC anyhow. Think about it. 4. If you think something in the wiki is incomplete and it looks to have a full writeup about it, it probably is considered COMPLETE. Take your bitches to the HD not to me personally. I don't really care at this point if the article you are reading doesn't have enough information for you to do whatever thing it is you want to do. If you think it needs augmented or you have questions, the HD is the proper place, not my AIM or my PM box which is already overfull on both counts. 5. No I won't run a quest for you. I just won't. I especially won't outside of my official 'Mod' area. If you ask me, I'll probably stall you and tell you later, but the truth is I want folks in my area or in esoteric areas like the Chavi rather than me go to you. If I want to run a quest for you, I'll come to you and ask you. Stop asking me for quests. This is doubly so if you want to be a godling or have some sort of special place in one of the RP storyarchs I have going on like Ulric. No, Ulric isn't a godling. Get over this and stop asking me. He's something else, special true, but not what you think nor something obvious. 6. I want to post for my mod stuff, but I don't have time usually writing all these articles (that you guys demand) and doing all this HD stuff, answering PMS, doing all this other stuff you guys want me too... and still get to play. So I play. I play because that is why Mizahar is here. I'll do mod stuff when I have time. If you ask less questions and do more for yourselves, then you'll get more mod posts out of me. 7. Don't give me a hard time about doing box code instead of posting for ANYONE (mod or pc) because I love art and it keeps me sane. 8. Don't nag me to let someone back on the site who's been banned after their ban date is up. Odds are I will remember and if I don't let them back on right away its because I have no desire to see them around. Is it really that hard to figure out? It takes a lot to get banned. It takes even more to get back on the site once you've been a douche. 9. If I tell you to stop harassing me on AIM with stupid questions or incessant questions, don't follow me to chat after I block you there for being annoying. If you annoy me, odds are you are annoying everyone else and take it for what it is and maybe STOP BEING ANNOYING? I don't like kids. This is what a kid or a social moron does. Don't be one of those. 10. Don't apologize incessantly. If you are a chronic over-apologizer, people can spot it a mile away and most people (myself included) thinks that its not sincere. 11. Don't ask me about my faith. If I want to talk about it, I will, but asking someone 'what is your faith' is like asking a christian what the bible is about and expecting the complete and utter cliff notes in a few lines. I'm pretty sure faithless godless people ask these sorts of questions. Those that have faith understand you can't ask like that and expect to learn anything of any use. I hate this. I really do. Even if the question is specific like "what does a X do instead of Christmas...' its still rude unless they volunteer to tell you. Most of us won't. Why? It's not that important to us for folks to know what we are doing in our real lives. Get it? 12. Storytellers get to ignore most of these. I like them and know they work hard and if they want to ignore any of these eleven things and bug me I won't care because generally they need to know the answers for a good reason and should feel free to anyhow. And I know they won't bug me for quests. They are generally brighter than that. .

[Cheshire]

I totally get what you are saying here. I am all for people IMing me or coming up to me in chat and saying something like "Hey Chesh, this and this has me a little confused, can you help?" I am always open to help. What gets me a little urked is when people ask, don't like the answer, and then want to know if they can be the only exception to the rule or concept. I seriously had a guy try to explain to me in chat (I don't even think I was chatting as Cheshire at the time) that he could and should be able to escape detainment by Icewatch, cause a prison break, then take said prisoners and LEAVE Avanthal to go join someone else's group. He had 0 persuasion, low weapons, low unarmed, pretty much starting skills except for one grade, and wanted to stage a full out prison break. I think you can see right off the bat why this would not work. The prisoners would kill him (since they are in detainment for a reason), if the prisoners didn't kill him, the wild animals would kill him, if the wild animals didn't kill him, the terrain and weather would, and so on. I gave him a flat out no. At one point I even said that there was no point in discussing it because it was not going to happen. He had chosen to be detained by Icewatch. I had even given him a moderator intervention telling him "You need to change your post or you are going to be locked up" (or something like that, I'm paraphrasing). He wanted to get locked up so I gave him what he wanted. He kept battling me on how he should be able to stage a prison break and he should be able to do this because it was featured thread material. I try to be really easy going with people and nice but when someone comes up to me in chat while I am not even under my moderator name and starts battling me on how to mod my city, yeah I start to get a little catty (no pun intended). I understand a little "Can we try to work this out?" but when the mod adamantly says no, it's time to listen. I don't just turn down plots because it is fun. I do it because they don't work.

[Gossamer]

Funny thing is, most of the Featured Thread material is heavy on personal development, not big on huge staged events like prison breaks. That scenario just tells me he has no idea what hes talking about.

[Gossamer]

. The Wild Horses of Abaco. This is worth watching if you are a horse lover. I know I am. .

[Paragon]

They are beautiful... it's sad to think there are only a few left. Near where I live in South West England, there's a place called the New Forest which you can drive or walk through. There are wild ponies there, and they walk right up to you and are happy to be touched. They even wander into the towns and villages nearby - which is fun if you're driving through the narrow roads. People pull up on the side of the road to go and see them, and when I was younger we used to go for picnics in the forest. They're very beautiful. I think you'd love it there Jen.

[Siiri]

Do you realize your SB is probably the single most viewed thread in the forum? And that I don't know why I pointed that out?

So, uhh...when can you mod me a thread where I get the Sword of Plus Infinity +1...?

*runs*

[Verilian]

Darn you, Jen, why are you not on AIM!? I have something stupid and amusing (mostly to me) to say!

[Gossamer]

. Day Off and Sounding Off I took a day off yesterday, not because I was sick of Mizahar but because some pretty awful and stressful things are happening in my personal life. Gillar always tells me not to worry, that things will work out fine, but in all honesty I feel like if someone doesn't worry about things and take care of problems then there's no way things will work out. Does that make sense? So I'm the worrier. I'm the one that fusses. I'm the one that thinks OMG this is up and coming and what are we going to do about it? People always say that the people that are more laid back have lower blood pressure, better lives and live longer. But actual studies show the worriers and fussers are the ones that get things done, live longer, and have more of a reason to remain in this world. Statistics don't lie right? Anyhow, it seems like parts of what was wrong yesterday are going to be fine today. I just need to get through two more days at work, which I am soloing because its too slow for my underling to be there, and kick back this weekend and maybe it will look a lot better. Yesterday I took care first thing of something that didn't allow me to sleep all night, and as soon as I had that one thing out of my hands, I crashed hard. I slept for three hours straight during the day before work, which is something that I never do. And maybe Gillar is right... things do work out in the end. I'm really stressed about finances right now (two huge emergency vet bills have caused this and that's part of my stress irl right now because I'm HUGELY overbudget for this month due to that) and I'm looking at my husbands truck which is running like absolute garbage. He claims he just needs a tuneup, which might be true, but we can't afford to be down one vehicle. I called around and the lowest quote I could get for a full tune-up on his rig was like $400 bucks in this town. We simply don't have it right now. Not at all. So I was talking to one of my friends about it - about what Gillar's truck was doing and what Gillar things he needs to do about it - and the friend agreed this was most likely the problem. Then when I told him how much a tune-up costs uptown, he just shook his head and laughed. Then said if Gillar got all the parts, which would run us about $80 bucks, he'd swing by Saturday morning after work and walk him through it so he'd never have to take the truck into a shop again for something related to spark plugs, a distributor cap, and various filters. Savings: $320 bucks, total time involved 45 minutes. Win win right? Gillar always says things work out... maybe he's right. It's never 'not' worked out for us. It's been really really hard managing to get things to work out, but once they do, you just kinda go OMG... thank you thank you thank you. Then you move on to the next crisis. When you run a farm, every dime counts and needs to be counted. Gillar and I both have great jobs, but times are tough in the US and all over. The cost of fuel is astonishing. Hay is way up there. Groceries... a small bag will run you easily a hundred bucks at Walmart if you aren't careful. Money isn't worth what it once was. We do fine, so long as things stay within budget. But when our Emergency Fund gets drained, and our savings takes a hit like it has, then we freak. Its understandable. And then you work doubly hard to build it back up and make sure its there when you need it. And until that happens, its stress city. I didn't mean to start out talking about this. My scrapbook was supposed to be about something else entirely. It's funny how you sometimes just have things on your mind that are really bothering you that you can't get off your mind until they spill out unexpectedly. The thing I had on my mind was actually people who don't pm me back and how perceptions of people change over time. Sometimes I have a lot of respect for people initially, then I see them in action, and then I loose the respect I had for them. It seems like the game as a whole and the community never feels this impact and never has this undermining happening in their opinion but its because you don't see the side I do. You guys would be astonished at all the promises and claims people make to me. They say they'll do this, do that, and in the end almost always they disappoint. Oh sure they always have a great excuse 'real life got me!' but what frustrates and aggravates me to begin with is that people MAKE these said statements and claims and then routinely let me down. When storytellers do this it makes me doubly crazy. I hate it when people volunteer to do things, know how much work is involved, then just let it slide without an "I'm sorry..." or anything. I constantly nudge them, pm them, etc and odds are they never ever ever respond to me personally but then waltz around the game with their PC's acting like some sort of celebrity when in truth they've been a big disappointment. That's the worst part. They never respond. Not once after its been clear to both you and them that they aren't going to follow through. You hear nothing then see a long rambling 'poor me' post somewhere that makes you just want to scream or mentally vomit or do both because you weren't shown the courtesy of a 'Hey Jen... I hear you... I acknowledge you. Sorry about that... I failed... I guess I'm not perfect after all..." and yet you do see them continue, usually stronger than ever, on a PC somewhere acting like a sweetheart or the belle of the ball like they weren't just lavishing you with promises and hopes and excuses and then broke every single one of them. Yea. I'm bitter. Its a wonder I ever approve anyone as a ST anymore. Seriously. I've reached an all new pinnacle of cynicism when it comes to our staffers. The ones we have that are great I fiercely protect and nurture. The rest, I'm perfectly comfortable showing the door. And what I mean by that statement 'the rest' is biased, inattentive, or mean individuals. Sometimes you just don't know until they get on staff. Any other traits in any sort of staff situation, can be gently nurtured out of people. I honestly think half-hearted storytelling is worse than no storytelling at all. And maybe this is related to my stress in real life, but the truth of the matter is if you are ignored, lied to, or treated like you don't matter, then you would be probably just as angry as I am. I remember these things. I always have. And asking me for something, anything, after any one of these scenarios is going to be a lot like talking to a brick wall because I deserve responses to pms. I deserve at least that much. If I don't get them, then don't blame me if you are labeled and thrown out in my mind with the trash. People need to be adults. And if they can't, then I have nothing to do with them. .