(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role playing forum. Why don't you register today? This message is not shown when you are logged in. Come roleplay with us, it's fun!)
The player scrapbooks forum is literally a place for writers to warm-up, brainstorm, keep little scraps of notes, or just post things to encourage themselves and each other. Each player can feel free to create their own thread - one per account - and use them accordingly.
DATE ___________________________________________________________________________________________
I'm mostly posting this for posterity. Maybe someday I'll gain some shred of contentment.
If I, the writer of this post, were a Mizahar race, I'd be Ethaefal. It's not easy to explain, but I will try.
It's not that I don't belong... It's that I know I should be elsewhere. When my depression is at its worst, you can hear me screaming or crying "I want to go home" or "put me back." They're the closest description to the melancholy I feel live.
I feel like I belong somewhere that doesn't exist.
I feel like I'm looking for something that's not there.
I feel like I have a purpose that can not be completed.
When I'm with friends or family....I feel like I'm sitting outside a pool, watching people play. I am unable to draw near to the pool or get in.
I feel like everything is wrapped in plastic. When I touch my hair, my face, my dog....I don't feel it. The only things I feel fully are misery, melancholy, and hatred. How is that fair?
When I look in the mirror, I feel no connection to my appearance. I know it is me, but it is not.
I feel like I live a half life.
I used to be happy. That's why I know something is wrong.
Existence is over rated. There are no moments in my life where I'm amazed or floored by what I experience. I feel the occasional flame of excitement when I see a storm coming, but the feeling is so short lived... It can't justify the rest of my misery's existence.
I used to hate God, but now I just don't care.
When your "normal" is miserable, you lose a lot. I've lost the ability to care that I'm unhappy. Things like death or breakups or loss or goodbyes ... The solution in my mind is "you'll be unhappy, then it'll get better, then you'll be unhappy again. Why worry?"
I am underwhelmed at what life can offer in terms of happiness. Eating fine food, watching a movie... It's all so small...mundane.... short lived... I'm left feeling like "this is it?" in retrospect.
I feel like if there were a "cure" for this situation, I wouldn't take it. I've seen the underside of life and I don't ever want to be lied to again.
While thought of killing myself crosses my mind every day, it's not what I want. What I want is... to never have existed in the first place. I wish I could just snap my fingers and -----------------
I feel like there's a woman over my shoulder. She's trying to pull from my back like a snake shedding its skin. You arent supposed to know she is there. Her face is beautiful. She is made of beautiful pastel mist. Her hair is made of clouds of stars and galaxies. She doesnt speak. She doesnt exist. I think I am her.
I just want to go home... .
Last edited by Shausha on July 7th, 2013, 4:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Honestly Shausha, I have never felt this way so I do want to offer words of comfort that I am not sure will help or be worth much. All I can say is that I think sometimes we just need to search for that thing that makes us happy or we go crazy, we cannot survive on the mundane happiness alone, we need to find that which makes us ecstatic! Even thinking about my own PCs I'm sure if they didn't have some goal or something that they wanted to find to attain what they needed, they would feel the same and so would I as a writer because I would feel directionless, lost, and my PC would feel alone.
I suppose I just mean to say, what is it you need to be happy? If you have a purpose just reach for it. Maybe it won't be completed but that doesn't mean you didn't try your damned hardest to get there!
I also sent you a PM because I don't post and tell
I was thinking that it might be a good Idea to dedicate a Poem to you, my friend.
The Home We Long For:
My wings are burdened with the chains of society My heart imposed by the darkness of life I wish to walk on my own two feet But I am held back by my inner strife
Why do they hold me back and keep me from moving? What have I done to be chained? Why don't they understand my words, The pleas and cries of those detained?
Maybe if I lose myself and embrace the darkness I could escape these black and tainted shackles Disappear in the embrace of death And be taken to a place I finally belong
A place someone can hear me and embrace me wholly A place where I can say "I'm Home" A place where everything is right and free A place that I have always longed for
You Are My Home:
I'll cut your chains down and set you free I'll embrace you for who you are I'll take you to my favorite tree We'll watch from there the pretty stars
I shall break all of the rules Just to see your pretty smile I will provide you with all of your tools Clearing your road of all of its trials
I'll follow you to the end of the world Illuminating your road and path with light Even if you fall into the depths of hell I will forever hold you to me tight
Even If you lose your way and your path is dark My heart will guide you back For you can always find your home in me And I shall always be here to wait for you to come back
PS. I hope this helps ^w^ I've been in your predicament before, and still fall back into it occasionally. Remember, there are others in the same situation as you (like me ^w^). You just have to find them.
These two (rather rusty) poems are dedicated to my dear friend ShauShau
With lot's of hearts and plenty of stars, ~Lira
In the darkness, Light grows stronger. Will you allow it to grow or will you succumb to despair?
something that I am tentative to believe because it may bring peace to my narrative view on life __________________________________________________________________________________
"Direct experience is an evasion, or a hiding place, for those without any imagination. Reading about the risks incurred by a man who hunts tigers, I felt all the risks worth feeling, save the actual physical risk, which wasn't really worth feeling, for it vanished without a trace. Men of action are the involuntary slaves of the men of reason. The worth of things depends on their interpretation. Certain men make things which other men invest with meaning, bringing them to life. To narrate is to create, while to live is merely to be lived." - Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet
Understanding Shausha and the zith mentality, morality and culture __________________________________________________________________________________
This is sort of written in a spastic conjunction of my CS and musings upon those entries. Things that are in my CS are aligned to the right. Musings are left!
**Please remember, this is not lore or fact! This is just my impression of Shausha and her people!
.
What separates a human from an animal? Moreover, what advantage do humans have over a beast in the wild? Sentience? Now, what if an animal were given sentience? What advantage would the human then have?
The only thing keeping Shausha (and all zith, really) from being the perfect race is her inability to balance feral nature and human nature. Ideally, she would be able to blend the two OR be able to be in control of when her human or feral side switched on and off. Currently, she is too immature to understand this and thus her reaction (whether human or animal) depends on the environment she is in.
This sort of gets into the zith's reputation. They're known as monsters because they are soooo efficient as predators. Using their human smarts and feral strength, they are able to capture, enslave and consume many, many people.
It would probably be impossible to change even the most civilized zith city's culture in terms of recognizing that humans (for whatever reason) above being treated like prey/animals because... well... changing a culture anywhere is nigh impossible. There's also the fact that zith have an innate lust for blood. Asking hundreds of blood-thirsty animals to refrain from utilizing their most ready source of food would also be close to impossible.
Shausha is NOT evil. I'd like to say she's outside of morality in most cases. Surely, you would not accuse a lion of murder after it killed a zebra.
Animals do not 'sin'. (Sin implying the crossing of moral borders) However, because Shausha does have a human side, she is capable of sinning. You could say her plight IS the fine line between murder and killing;
she fluctuates between being ruled by the laws of nature (eat or be eaten) and the laws of man (right and wrong).
You could probably convince any zith of the existence of moral "rights" and "wrongs" if they were in their human mind enough and if you talked with them apart from any other zith. (I have the suspicion that mob mentality has a lot to do with the way decisions are made in zith communities) But as I said, changing an entire culture, changing an entire people's mentality... what an undertaking that would be
Thank you for all the threads, guys, but I think I'm going to have to put my Mizahar account to rest. It was really fun learning how to flesh out a character, act them out, and develop my writing skills.
I think I'm also tired of writing things I don't enjoy, like training threads, to get experience. And even when I do spend hours writing something I dont like, the payout is so small, it doesn't really justify the effort in my mind. I'd prefer to write using things like sexual tension, humor, or plot interlacing, but such passive techniques aren't really rewarded. If I spend ages on making sure my grammar is correct or all my sentences show variation in pattern or I space out "shausha" and "she" or I learn a vocabulary word or my spelling improves --- I'd get the same rewards/treatment as if I had barfed up my rough draft and sent that in for review. Well, that's just how I see it; You, or other people, may find value in different places... which is fine! We're all different, right?
There was the excitement of being a part of a new world, of creating and personalizing my own character (to seemingly no end), but I guess it didn't follow through for me.
Like I said, I learned a lot. As my first RP/collab ST website, it served its purpose. You all have such creative minds; it's really a blast watching our characters interact, and that's what I'll miss the most.
Well __________________________________________________________________________________
Meh, I'll dump this here. Do not read it if you do not have a strong sense of giving people the benefit of the doubt! This is in no way polished to political-correctness perfection at all! Please, please, please don't get offended.
When I joined Mizahar, I had visions! This place is a hidden gold mine! To me, website success is a very specific formula, and here were my suggestions.
Secret :
I really thought this place had potential, and was really confused when I saw how few members it had after such a long time in spite of being a really interesting place. When I started playing, different things raised red flags.
I really thought I had something to offer the site. 11,000 memberships in 6 years is bad. Like. Really bad.
Things that turn people away from sites are all over Mizahar. Things like accessibility, ease of use, layout, design, consistency -- they all could be improved.
The forum site template isn't really built for a world like this. Too many pages are just repeats of themselves in other forms. While the lore/wiki pages are useful references, they shouldn't be the first go-to level of information. It's no secret that the lore and starting out is really confusing, and I'd like to say it's because there is no hierarchy of knowledge... its just like.. LEARN THIS. All of it!
When someone first joins, the rules should be presented first, then the premise, then how Miz works, then so on, and so forth, leaving highly detailed wiki pages last.
When someone joins, a custom site should take care of CS making so the employees don't have to waste time telling people that they've calculated their birthday wrong. A custom site could keep track of ledgers and thread lists. Moderators could have the authority to reach into someone's CS and remove an item if the person broke it in a thread (or award an item that that person bought). A custom site could keep track of XP gains, lore awards, and really, anything you do by hand right now.
Custom sites cost a lot of money, but you have to put money into a site to get money out of it. A store that doesn't buy clothes racks to save money, won't sell anything because they've decided to pile their products on the empty floor. Mizahar has a good foundation. People. Like. This. Place. It's not a question of "will this site stay afloat if we spend XXXX money on a website?" Creating a better website would encourage more people to join. More people is more money. More people is a better site.
I can sort of hear someone's voice in the distance saying "But the complexity of the site already wards away lazy or non-dedicated people." There are plenty of people who are creative, smart and valuable who do not want to dig through a half-baked site. In the same metaphor, there are plenty of people with money who do not want to shop at a store that keeps their clothes on the floor no matter how nice the clothes may be.
It's about presenting yourself to the customer in a sophisticated way.
Now I'd like to talk about the inherent problems with running a site that evaluates subjective material. A lot of people spend time and effort on perfecting a post. No grammar or spelling errors, and they even work in creative and profound plots. None of these things can be rewarded directly from IC experience, but if you don't reward them at all, it leaves the hard-worker wanting. A custom site could award "seals" or a stacking reward that shows their effort. (It would be something like the medals/awards that appear under one's avatar on this site currently.) Error-free posts could be rewarded with little shields that say "One perfect post!" and it could be replaced with "Five perfect posts!", "Ten!" and so on, and so forth. People. Want. Rewards. People want acknowledgment and praise for a job well done, and hard work. Writing is no exception. When people can see the fruits of their efforts, you're fulfilling their need for acceptance -- and that is invaluable. That is the key to creating a loyal, long-term player base.
Kudos to the 6 founders for making an involved world, but if they are going to open it to the general public, they should be ready to make some changes. If they don't want to make changes and present their world as-is, then there's a way they can do that... It's called writing a book. I'm taking about creating a website FOR the users, not making a website where the strong of heart can wade through seemingly infinite pages.
Cities that are posted in once a month should be put on hiatus until the user base grows. Closing empty cities would encourage even activity across all open cities. It would avoid the occasional newbie starting somewhere like Eloab where they look around and say "Ok... where are all the people?" And then you've lost a potential member who potentially has friends with the same interests. These cities in stasis would make great expansions -- new content for old users keeps them coming back.
The Akvatari aren't chosen because people want characters that they have control over. When you list a personality trait WITH a race, that severely limits how you can roleplay that race no matter how cool they are. And melancholy, well, it's not the most popular choice. It's already iffy enough correlating them so strongly with the arts.
Skills divided into the 25-25-25-25 layout don't really reflect how skills work in reality. Something like 15-30-40-15 would make more sense for three reasons. 1, IRL, it's really not that hard to leave the "beginner" stage of knowing about something. Plus, people only enjoy writing about how much they suck for so long. By all means, keep the entry level, but don't forget the accessibility! 2, It would be easier to graduate out of the beginner stage and give the user more of a chance to have fun in a higher level of ability. They would be there for longer, but we wouln't want to make it too easy --would we? 3, A lot of people don't max skills because as soon as you hit "76" in the current skill scale, you get all the benefits of maxing it... at least on paper.
It's not a sense of entitlement that people SHOULD have easy access to higher skill levels; It's appealing to your customer. There's still 100 points to be gained.
The lore pages -- especially for the skill explanations are inconsistent. Some pages have an ungodly amount of information, and some have none at all. To allocate resources (time and effort on behalf of the article's author) wisely, a thorough description of how the skill relates to Mizahar is really all that's needed. If it can be wikipedia'd, why waste time re-inventing the wheel? (Exceptions would be brand new skills, flora, fauna, etc that are unique to Mizahar)
The reason I joined Mizahar is because I have a passion for correcting people creating solid websites. Here, I would list my bachelors, masters and other certifications, but no, that's not what's needed, nor will it change anything.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein
I'd suggest these changes, but I know they'd be punted into the middle of the pacific ocean. So as it stands, all I can do is smile meekly at Mizahar, knowing it could have been so good.
While I was very compelled to write an actual rebuttal, I think I'll err on the side of brevity this time around.
I have roleplayed on various sites since I was fourteen and this one by far has completely overshadowed any others I've tried. This has never been designed as a product for consumers. This is not a highly stylized video game. If you'd like that, feel free to peruse the next installment of the Elder Scrolls series. We're not here, endeavoring to please a large audience. The Founders designed this game for roleplayers like them. Like us. Those who hack it here are the target market. I'm just sorry you're not.
I think the issue is that your complaints of a lack of substantial reward stem from within. Many people here feel fulfilled. I've never been bothered by the idea that I don't receive recognition for a lack of spelling or grammatical errors. I don't care. I gain fulfillment from creating ideas, regardless of how many mistakes I make along the way. That's life. In life, you cannot and should not count on people to reward you for your successes. That comes from inside of your own heart. Yet this site still does that. We have a Featured Character monthly. We award medals to those who meet the criteria. There are plenty of accolades here for those who try. That is far more than most of the free-form sites I've tried.
While I appreciate your suggestions, they have been made before. This community is unique. That is what makes it special. It isn't adhering to the standards others set for it. It sets it's own standards. And the Founders are fixing unworkable systems. It's sad actually, that you choose now to leave.
I don't mean to sound harsh, but if you think there is something better out there, maybe you should go find it. But you'll always be welcome back here. I mean that sincerely. If you don't find what you're looking for out there on the web, this site will still be thriving, waiting here for you.
Custom sites cost a lot of money, but you have to put money into a site to get money out of it. A store that doesn't buy clothes racks to save money, won't sell anything because they've decided to pile their products on the empty floor. Mizahar has a good foundation. People. Like. This. Place. It's not a question of "will this site stay afloat if we spend XXXX money on a website?" Creating a better website would encourage more people to join. More people is more money. More people is a better site.
Since when are we 'in it' for the money, have employees, or customers? I've never taken a dime from this site and in fact have poured hundreds into it to get it up and running. We don't charge players. Where in the world did you get that idea? We take site donations to pay server fees, but those are easily tracked and you can see who's donated what when always (unless the donors chose to remained anonymous). 100% transparency, babe. We aren't getting rich off Mizahar. We have no desire too because everyone who's here working on Mizahar does something else with their life.
This is a HOBBY.
We're just writers having a good time roleplaying with fellow writers. If they don't like our setup or our site flaws, people can either volunteer to help improve them (which is what we prefer) or go find someplace else more to their liking. But I'm always impressed with people that like to tear our site apart. My best and favorite thing to say to them is the same thing I'll say to you.
"If you can do it better, go ahead. No one's stopping you. No one stopped us making Mizahar. No one will stop you making something even better if you can."
It's just like telling people bevel and emboss are crap. It's not true. Its not easy to photoshop or site build or even lore build. We've been copied many many many times and yet we are still here. People who enjoy us, stick around, those that don't move on. Its not rocket science. It's common sense.
PS. Again, isn't posting nonsense like this a little self destructive and damaging?
You're going? ... I guess I suspected it <- Or didn't I ... Who's to say?!
Anyways, I think you've been a valuable member to this site ( a lot more valuable than the average player ), seeing as how you greeted newbies and were always willing to help them (= us).
I understand what you're saying about Miz, and I think that ... well ... I don't think Miz is for casual 'players' - I know my time here is limited as well. Miz is a great site, but it requires a hefty amount of dedication and interest in the thing it offers: a RPing environment.
I remember reading a scrapbook ( I believe Goss's ) in which she said that this is basically THEIR site and we're invited to join them ... this is not OUR site, so we have to abide by the rules, which are often not open for discussion... and this bothers a lot of us, because we're used to being customers, not invitees.
... One small thing directed to Goss, I understand, but telling her that this post is self-destructing and damaging... sounds like a threat, and is basically the point I'm trying to make: we're not customers, we're guests, who can and shall be kicked the hell out of here, if we were to misbehave.
Meh, all things have their end, and some are to end sooner than others...
