[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

by **Gossamer** on June 28th, 2015, 1:14 am

We all need a little of this in our lives.

by **Gossamer** on July 3rd, 2015, 4:22 am

I just wanted to let everyone know I'm SUPER behind on my PMs. I have no idea how so many of you sent me pms in the last few days that some of them have scrolled. I'll play catchup tomorrow if its not like it was today (108 outside!!!!!) where my brain can actually function. It's HOT over here and the state is burning up.

So if you don't hear back from me by about Saturday, please resend your PM with a nudge. The same goes for the HD. I'll have it caught up tomorrow too hopefully.

That's also why this month's FEATURES aren't in. I have all the interviews but Contributor, and I sent that out VERY VERY late for the same reasons. I'll have them up if at all possible tomorrow. Sorry for the delays folks.

Jen

by **Gossamer** on July 9th, 2015, 6:28 am

Just A Couple Of Things

First I want to say I really appreciate the people that have stepped up to help in various cities throughout Mizahar. I think with this round of Storytellers we've gotten an amazing bunch of really talented writers and that's going to be the saving grace of a lot of the cities. I'm glad they are in action and I really think with this group we can see the daily grind of the game disappear and some epic plots that might stretch the length and width of Mizahar take shape.

Babysteps first though. I don't want to push too much onto people before they are ready. And I want our staff fleshed out quite a bit better than what it has been before we move to the next level. So if you are thinking of applying, you should give it a shot. We aren't taking everyone, but if you are a decent writer with a good attitude, you have a really good chance of gaining a staff position during this exciting time.

More are coming. I know there's been the promise of three or four more going to apply after this week. And there's several apps in the HD right now that are stalled. I think at least two of those are waiting on me. Sometimes when things are more difficult to deal with and I don't want to say the wrong thing without sounding crass or unfeeling, I take a step back and make sure the timing is right. I don't want to snark at anyone because I'm hot or tired or grumpy irl. So be patient.

My IRL right now is extremely challenging. I'm working long hours in extreme heat. It's been in the 90's - 100's and I function outside, without AC, and often without shade where I am located over the top of a very hot engine on an expanse of blacktop that makes those temps even higher... usually by about ten to fifteen degrees. This has been going on for weeks and weeks with no relief in site. It was well over a hundred on the forth of July. I did virtually nothing. You can't think well in those conditions. You just basically sit around by a fan sipping sweet tea and complaining about the heat.

I just had one more thing to say. Sometimes people use the phrase 'clean slate' when they leave Mizahar and return. That's fine. But let me tell you plainly that's clearly only in your mind. I have a long memory. I hear things. I see things. I am the one that has ALWAYS had to clean up the messes unfeeling, selfish people have left behind. And when that happens with no apology, no remorse, and no admission of how someone behaved badly in the past, there is absolutely no clean slate in my mind. So if you've ever left a mess here, return, and expect to be treated fairly by me as if nothing has EVER happened.... I'm going to dispel you of that notion right away. I've heard the trash talking. I've seen the stolen gaming system taken directly from here and placed on other sites without remorse. I've heard all the rumors. Did I give them credence? Sure. Why? Past experiences. Just because you went away and maybe changed and maybe think you grew the fuck up doesn't mean we see that about you. I only see what I have experienced. And lipservice does nothing to change that. I won't let you take an inch. Why? Because I know to you an inch means a mile. Some things never change.

Now, if you came back, tested the waters, made nice, and apologized and in doing so owned all the shit you pulled way back then I have zero issue with you existing in this world and playing under our noses. I don't even have issues with you rejoining the staff. I think there's several people right now that can attest to that.

But if that's not happened, trust will NEVER happen.

This isn't just with Mizahar people. This is with life. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. I don't think people change. Not really. Not ever. I think sometimes they are skewed by drugs, alcohol, stress, shitty family situations and all that. But deep down you either like them or you don't... you either think they are good people or they've showed you the dark side. You can forgive people and love the all you want. Just don't trust them... not ever... unless they've proven that trust over and over. Why? Statistics and life will show you time and time again that people take care of number one first.

That's true of myself as well. I wasn't thinking of you folks when I threatened to shut Mizahar down. I was thinking of me. Was I thinking of you when I kept the site going all this time through thick and thin? Absolutely. But when it comes down to the YOU OR ME almost everyone in the world would have to admit they will pick themselves every time over people they might consider virtual strangers. Selfish? Sure. But its a raw honest thing too. I'm no different. I value my time and sanity far more than I value indulging people who don't give back.

But I think the last two weeks have really shown that this site is full of givers. People have given in the most astonishing ways - their time, creativity, or just a shoulder for another player to lean on. There's a new sort of atmosphere here at the moment that comforts me. People are helping. They aren't judging and slamming newbies like was going on in the past. Some of the veteran players have started populating chat again. People are plotting on larger scales far past social threads.

The staff is even coming together in unexpected and quietly brilliant ways. So it gives me hope in little joyful was that we can be here another five or ten years... who knows. I don't want it to end. I just can't let it kill me trying to keep it alive. Now, thanks to a lot of the people on staff - new and old - I don't feel like it will. I feel like there's plenty more shoulders to bear the burdens and backs willing to lean down into the task.

Thank you. Thank you for the generosity and wonder you've made me feel.

I should end this here... but I'm not going too. Currently I'm helping several AS's find their feet and their strategic thinking for the coming plots i see forming. I gave them an exercise to do... a little welcome to AShood thinking. I asked them to write a blurb about their cities and what those cities were like if they were living breathing things. What they came up with is amazing. And I'm designing a way to share it with you. Their visions are clear, focused, and something beyond what I could have hoped for.

Together as a site we can help these AS's knowingly translate their visions into reality and create more ongoing threads than we've ever seen before. Hearing about the cities as a large living things thrills me. It yanks my fangirl chain more than anything else ever could. I just hope you realize, as players, how incredibly lucky you've gotten over this group... and in some ways will continue to get lucky s more are approved.

Be kind to them. Don't always put yourself or your PC first. Check your ego at the door. Bring your brains on in. There's so much that all of us can get out of this situation besides just a good tale. It will be good... fantastic even... but don't settle for that. Settle for extraordinary and nurture that within these new people.

You'll only have everything to gain.

by **Gossamer** on July 11th, 2015, 4:34 pm

Thought Of The Day

Some of you might know I'm mentoring a bunch of AS's this time around instead of leaving it to others. It's not actually as hard as I thought it would be because I attribute it to the fact that some of them are a lot smarter than I am and a lot more driven. Be that as it may, I was going to post this thought just to them.... but instead, I thought I'd just post this to everyone.... so...

When an ST before you leaves something unfinished, placed into text but not flushed out, mentioned but not elaborated on etc. You don't go to them to after you move into their old city find out what it was. You use your goddamn brain and fill in the info the way you want it to be simply for the fact that now the city is yours to command and its YOUR job to do it. You don't go asking ex-anythings to finish a job they were booted from or resigned from because they didn't have time.

They aren't obligated and its not your place to do that. That's like moving out of an apartment and then contacting the old residents and asking them to come fill in the nail holes or replace the carpet. It was the way it was when you moved in. You moved in not 'sight unseen' but with the full ability to look around and make a rental decision.

So... unfinished lore? FINISH IT YOURSELF.

by **Gossamer** on July 17th, 2015, 8:52 pm

A Little Heads Up On Wages

I'm trying to get wages paid today and so far I've rejected the first six requests for job payment I've had in my PM. Why? The threads are extremely short. I require at LEAST 2500 words. I tell people that I routinely do 1k posts and make job threads five posts long on my own pc, so if that's what I do personally for job threads, then they can't complain if I expect them to do HALF that.

Seriously. Stop making me a bad guy by having to say "no" so much. I don't want to argue with you. I don't want to withhold your wages. But seriously...2,500 words in THREE MONTHS should be doable. It's about the most reasonable thing we ask of you if you want paid.

So... please don't waste my time or yours requesting wages when you know for darn sure you can't possibly have the 2.5K. And if your job thread looks really short and I have to cut and paste all your text into word to get a word count... that's just wasting my time. It seriosly is. Just please count your words, make sure they are at least 2,500 long and lets get everyone paid. I've even cut slack on people that post 2K in one thread and 3K in another so long as they have a good word count for the total.

Help me get you paid. I've spent two hours on this so far today and I'm just done for now.

by **Gossamer** on August 4th, 2015, 3:56 am

Escapism

So sometimes in life I get a little crazy. I can pick up a hobby and then work on it until I have it 'mastered' and then move on to something new. It makes me a sort of jack of all trades and master of none. Currently I have two obsessions.... stained glass and reviewing.

The first - stained glass - I've shown a bit of, but trust me when I say my stained glass disease has grown to epic proportions. But I'll save that for another blog and definitely another show and tell.

Here's a peek:

Sneak Peak :

My next obsession has stolen me away from Mizahar quite a bit and its not what you might think. I needed a distraction. Life was becoming a suck fest and it kept getting worse. Lawyers, banks, inheritance, relatives that are shitfaces.. everything that happens when someone dies who has anything of consequence in the world. So before mom started getting sick, I started reviewing.

At first, I just reviewed everything I'd ever bought on Amazon. I didn't want to write about characters. I didn't want to write about plots or answer questions or develop. I just wanted to stick to the facts. Reviewing was perfect for that. Plus, I was flat broke driving back and forth to my mom's death bed daily.... so getting new things wasn't something that was in the bank account.

And then I discovered Amazon has a dirty little secret. Sales on Amazon are driven basically by how many reviews you have... the more positive ones you have as a seller the better the sales you have. So Sellers cheat. They cheat badly and Amazon completely allows it. How do they cheat? They give out free or hugely discounted items to folks who have a proven track record of writing nice reviews. They give the items out with the understanding you will review it in 'an honest and unbiased manner'. So the more items the sellers give out to reviewers, the more reviews they get, thus the better their search-ability and thus the more sales they get. Tarot would call this 'black hat' techniques.

You see, Amazon scores reviewers. A reviewer is a person that writes a review for everything they buy. Not just one or two words about 'liking or hating it' but a really well written description. So Sellers give products free or highly discounted while Amazon then scores reviewers on their reviews they write (pics and videos count extra) with this super secret way with algorithm and a voting system etc. You get plugged in every few days and once you are spit out, you receive a bright and shiny rank.

Ranks change a lot.

I started out with a rank of #500,000,000 and some change. Today I'm at #5,034. That means in the world, only 5,033 people are better than me according to Amazon. And I'm dropping daily. #1 is a legend. Once you break 10K (the lower the number the better) then you start getting emails from these sellers.

"Can I give you free clothes in exchange for reviews?"
"Need art supplies? We need reviews!"
"Would you be willing to review this item - its a brand new listing on Amazon - in exchange for your honest and unbiased review? We'll send the item to you free and you can keep it."

Yea. Sometimes I wake up with twenty to thirty of these pms in my email. I'm starting to be more picky now. But you'll get offers of electronics, books, music, tvs, and a whole lot of vitamins and supplements. The hierarchy seems to be little things like stickers, free cellphone cases up the wazzu, and then you move on to supplements, vitamins and then you dabble into a bit of electronics. Ear buds maybe... then maybe some cell phone chargers or cables... then makeup, household goods, kitchen gadgets, etc.

Then like I said, you hit 10K, and the emails start pouring in. There are also a TON of Facebook groups that will help you get started by offering you items at serious discounts and then tracking that you review. I'm in several really good ones. One's a bit fun too because it offers risque clothing like corsets, and adult items that the women in there just fight over! Crazy stuff. I seriously have enough clothing to make my own steampunk outfit like twice over.

At this point, I want to get a top 1,000 reviewer score. Its a club you see... top 1,000, top 500, top 50, top 10 an number 1. I'm very close to my goal. I can usually move down nightly from 50-500 points depending on how many reviews I write.

But lets talk about the freebies. My pinnacle best score was a box of home security cameras and a frigging mile of cable to wire them. Yea.. it was a $500 package. What did they want in exchange for it? Me to write three to five small paragraphs about it.

I'm not kidding.

My next kinda big score was when I complained in a group that has frequent sellers watching it about how hot it was in Washington and how none of the stores had fans in stock. A seller overnighted me four fans, one just for my laptop because I had complained in my post my laptop was so hot it was shutting down too. I was delighted and wrote him really good reviews and posted a ton of pictures.

I have more spices than a world market. I have sewing kits, and a ton of survival gear. Bug out bags? Yea... I've got them. I don't mean to brag here, but I'm trying to show you the scope. Matt has a new (to him) aluminum drift boat we recently got and I mentioned it where sellers could see and now I'm hopefully going to be reviewing dry bags, buoys, and other boat stuff.

I have just about everyessential oil known to man... and infusers to enjoy them. The same can be said of sheet sets, pillows, curtains, bath accessories, etc. If its on Amazon, you can probably bet I've reviewed it or something like it... or want too. I went from 2 reviews at my first rank to 531 reviews currently with a lot more left to write. I have a mountain of free items that have been sent to me that Gillar affectionately calls 'Mt. Amazon'.

It's a never ending job. And its a lot of hard work. But then every day gets to be Christmas.

And today I just unboxed a car vac, a ton of glass vials for my perfuming work, a few electrical outlet timers, garden sheers, rechargeable batteries, chalk markers and labels and a huge wall mural of a black bird against a sunset that is going in my art studio on the wall. I also got wireless ear buds, and just the other day free high end set of headphones with a built in mic that retail for over $40. That's me modeling them above.

I tried to get several folks in here involved in reviewing. So far the only one I think that did anything with it is one of my irl friends Aileen. She's outfitted herself with an entire campsite - tent, sleeping bags, tarps, fire starters, backpack, lantern, portable grill, hammocks and hammock straps, etc - all free. She's having just as much fun as I am doing so. And we both have a lot of the same items so when we go camping our sites will look pretty matchy matchy. We write reviews. A lot of them. And its exciting because we don't know where the next fun stuff is coming from and what kind of money we are going to save.

I'm going on $12,494 dollars in items. Total spent? $140 dollars. Yea, I tracked it. Spreadsheets are our friend. I guess this is the way you deal with grief. Retail therapy without the crunch in your pockets. And I wanted to tell you why I haven't been around much. Its easy to mindlessly write about the pros and cons of an item. It's not so easy to get into the mind of your character and go on adventures. It's also not as fun to run through the HD or log on to Miz to read bullshit PMs full of empty drivel that equate to apologies that were several years overdue.

I hate the drama here sometimes. I know that's what RPG site are all about. But with me, I think there's no reason we can't leave it to IN THREAD situations and not ooc situations.

Products are far more easy to deal with than people. Trust me on this one.

by **Otaia** on August 4th, 2015, 4:12 am

The reviewing seems like a great way to get new stuff.

And the stained glass is absolutely gorgeous!

by **Xira Hezmek** on August 4th, 2015, 9:05 am

Geezuz, I hadn't realized the scope that reviews had on Amazon... maybe I should go through my recent purchases and write some nice reviews. >.>

In regards to that last bit, totally agree. RPG sites are for In character drama, keep it IC. OOC drama just sucks and we can totally do without it.

Also, that meeting with my manager? Nailed it, and I attribute your rooting for me to the success.

by **Rosela** on August 4th, 2015, 12:37 pm

Very, very glad to hear you're getting some solid mental therapy, even better that it's holy-mother-of-god profitable. Things may look bleak now, but eventually the lawyer and the relatives and everyone else will wander back to wherever they came from and you can finally breathe a free breath from it. Things will get better

Interested question on your new life as a master reviewer - is it expected that you'll write positive reviews for everything? What if you get something free that is really just a piece of crap?

And it looks like you cut your hair since...last time I saw a photo/video of you? Looks nice ^_^

by **Firenze** on August 4th, 2015, 2:25 pm

Wow! I never realized that Amazon was like that. I'm really glad that you mentioned your new hobby, it seriously sounds fun.

Me and the boyfriend do a lot of camping, boating and stuff with the farm, if just reviewing items could get us stuff to help us around the farm or improve the camping experience I'd totally be down for it!

I'm interested in how you have your spreadsheet set up for tracking all the information? I try really hard to be organized but sometimes I'm not so great at it and if you have a template established would you possibly be interested in sharing?

I think I'm definitely going to have to go back and review everything that I've bought off of Amazon (which is quite a bit). But if it gets me free stuff? Totally worth it.

Also, with the stained glass, it looks awesome, I love pink

I'm not sure how it works to put it together, did you do your own welds? If so, those are pretty dang good. I've spot welded very rarely and done quite a bit of soldering, is it much different than that?

I say keep up the good work! I'd love to see more of your glasswork!