[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

by **Ricky Maze** on September 15th, 2014, 1:40 am

All that honey makes my mouth just water. :((

Its my one true weakness! I've actually tried eating honey combs once, very odd taste and waxy texture but it was good all the same.

by **Neologism** on September 15th, 2014, 2:17 am

Ya' got some fine lookin' honey, Honey. *clicks her tongue and makes finger-guns*

by **Gossamer** on September 21st, 2014, 4:45 pm

Reflections

Usually around August I do a reflection scrap about how far we've come and what it means to me and then I usually go into where I want to see the site going. I missed this year because this year was a whole different ballgame and this ball player wasn't used to the rules. 2014 kinda reminds me when Little League changed over to Bambino and suddenly no one knew what the rules were even though all the teams were still wearing the same uniforms, standing in the same positions, and batting or fielding accordingly.

I wouldn't say that's a bad thing. No, its really not. I remember 2012 as a hell year in Mizaharland and 2013 finally leveling out. 2014 has been pretty fun overall, but its had its own set of challenges. I wouldn't trade it out for 2012, not in the least. 2012 sucks and for a whole host of reasons starting and ending with The Staff. We went through a few years in our history where we had this desperate need to fill cities with storytellers and be damned if they were any good or not. It was a learning experience for sure. And to that end I've really changed a lot in my thinking on who gains staff positions and what it means to hold one.

Pure and simple, if the players are the blood of the game, the staff are the veins and arteries. If they aren't functioning well, nothing runs smoothly. And way back in 2012, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off cleaning up one mess at a time, doing damage control, booting people off the site, and shaking my head at all the chaos. In that respect, when it was over, it was really over and 2013 was like a big sigh of relief.

We lost staff in those times. I didn't replace staff either. I started saying 'no', which was a hard thing for me to learn. And I started being a whole lot more picky when I did say yes. The pbase swelled. The staff continued to shrink because they were overworked and frankly there was no solutions in sight as to what we could do to help them out.

I thought the Mentor program would do that. So far it hasn't gotten off the ground. We have very few mentors (official ones) and instead most people rely on advice chat offers instead. This is unfortunate because often chat is filled with newbies. Veterans are normally found posting in their limited capacities online. There's an internet tradition that pretty much holds true in my mind. The more you are online, the younger you are and to put it politely the less in the know you are. And if you are older and online constantly, odds are you are in a rough patch in your life meaning you are not working, injured, bored, going through a divorce, in prison (yes... we've had that) or dwelling in your parents basement. So it was my hope the Mentor program would work out. We just need more of them, in a more official capacity, and the program might expand by allowing Mentors to be chat mods as well. That way it gives them some authority they normally wouldn't have. Anyhow, its definitely something to talk about and expand upon.

But I've digressed.

So way back when I thought more time online meant better staff. But time has proven that usually the opposite is true. It's by and large quality over quantity. It's by and large older over younger. There are more factors of course, but the more I list, the more people I'll potentially offend. That doesn't change things. I'll pick age, employed, limited time on the net ANY DAY over the alternative. We've had the alternative, and I'm never going back there.

What does it mean for Mizahar? It means, in a nutshell, that though we technically at this moment have an averaged size staff - we have a FAR BETTER STAFF - than this game has ever seen. Someone said a couple of days ago that we didn't have many staffers. That's not true. This isn't by any means the slump in staffing we've seen before. And honestly, the staff we currently have are some of the hard working most kickass folks I've had the pleasure of working with.

I'm absolutely saying that right now in Mizahar's history, the staff we currently have are the best of the best and the cream of the crop. And that's good news for Mizahar. We aren't at peak activity by far. I suspect in Nov when NaNo comes up, people will really ramp up the word count, but we just hit college back to school and the official end of the summer which is traditionally a slump in activity. It will pick up tremendously as the weather gets colder, folks stop going outside due to wind, rain, snow, etc.

And when that happens, i really honestly think Mizahar is setting up for a perfect storm of plots and moderation this winter due to our current situation.

So while we are always looking for new staff, fresh ideas, and characters that can develop... we are setting better than I think we ever have before. Now, if I can just get all the graders on board. This has been a continuing problem in my mind. While graders have to take a test, read the grading guide, and have a working knowledge of the site, they still have issues and those issues crop up every day.

People are far too subjective with their grades, and don't often go by the letter of the grading guide. Grading should be as objective as it can be, leaving opinion and 'my way' behind. I'm starting to feel utterly disappointed at some of the things I've witnessed, mediated, and have had happen to me as a PC first hand at the hands of graders. A grading medal doesn't give you ultimate power. It doesn't make you superior. It makes you a volunteer on the site. It was given and I have taken several of them away. I don't remove them lightly. I give folks all the chance in the world to do the right thing. But for me 99% of it is attitude, and if you have a piss poor one or an entitled one as a volunteer here, then things go bad fast. Discourses should go back and forth nicely. New people should listen to experienced players. There's a methodology to grading and its not a hard one to follow... but it must be followed.

So, while Mizahar isn't perfect, if I can just get most of the graders on board with this philosophy, then it becomes closer and closer and closer to the apex rpg site I want it to be. I know it can be that way. Especially, given the quality of the staff we have currently and the high levels the writers here. I hope it stays on track. I know I'll be around to make sure that it does.

by **Gossamer** on September 23rd, 2014, 9:01 pm

Music IS Special

loud full version :

by **Zandelia** on September 23rd, 2014, 10:09 pm

Indeed it is!

It can cause levitation and a whole host of other effects! I particularly enjoy the state changes between solid and semi-solid. Resonance is quite interesting to me actually and is an understudied aspect in the world given what it can do.

A very nice video, one of many out there on the web I would encourage people to explore!

by **Gossamer** on September 28th, 2014, 4:49 pm

Slaves

This is a topic that comes up a lot. People post the most beautiful images of people in the HD and requests them as a 'slave' for their PC. Now this is a game and there's nothing wrong with having slaves, but there's something you need to understand. Slaves aren't CHEAP. First, they cost money to get. You need to buy them as part of your business plan, in game, etc. You need to maintain them at a living expense that's suitable for their position. If you only maintain them at poor, they aren't hygenic, nice, fit, strong, etc. Even working in a field a slave needs to be fed well to work well. If they work in public as say a pleasure slave or bartender, they need to be in great condition to bring in business. People forget this.

So in that light I'm posting a wiki entry on slaves today and adding slaves to the price list.

by **Gossamer** on September 29th, 2014, 11:37 pm

Feline Fundraiser

The Cat's Meow Fundraiser

I'm shamelessly plugging a local (for me) project that really needs some help. The Cat's Meow of Lewis County is a WONDERFUL project. They take in unwanted cats and kittens, no matter what the age make or model, and give them vet care and then take steps to make sure they can't reproduce anymore. Basically in every city, county, country, etc we have an over population of animals that are feral and often don't lead very good lives. There is a very dedicated woman in my area, Twila, who has given her heart and soul for a project to provide very low cost spay and neuters to cats and kittens that otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to have them. What she does is round up feral cats and have them altered. If they have the capacity to be tamed (young, etc) she will work on getting them tame. If they are dedicated to being feral, she gets them out of bad situations and relocates them in situations that involve country settings with shelter buildings and an abundance of food (mice, etc) along with property owners that don't mind them being there.

I volunteer there on Wednesdays taking photos of her new arrivals and posting them on the internet. She's on FB, Adopt-A-Pet, and has her own local website.

We adopted two brothers from her this year after we lost a couple of our cats and heard she was overwhelmed with kittens. She had 56 when I first met her. This number has gone up and gone down since, but as soon as more move out, usually someone drops some off or she learns of a litter in danger and goes to fetch them.

Our beautiful boys got rescued from a local horrible grease oil and garbage filled truck stop where they were born in a pile of pallets. They were the only two survivors of a group. Ivak is a lovely flame point and Wendel (formally Wendy - something descended if you know what I mean) is a snowshoe lynx siamese. When we took the two boys home they were utterly feral.

Their pictures are further back in my scrap.

Twila sent along a third kitten to help them socialize... one that was overly friendly and needy to help balance their situation. We of course kept her and named her Love though she mostly goes by Lovey now. She's the one that leads the way to new things for the brother's grim as we call them. Here's her picture.

Anyhow, Twila is struggling with funding right now. She has a facility that takes rent, food, upkeep on the animals, vet bills, etc. She's trying to raise enough money to keep afloat the rest of the year. She doesn't take a profit from this. And shes put so much time and effort into it that it looks like she will be loosing her house shortly. But I can't tell you how important this is. She has been established since 2009 and to date here's the stats:

As of February, 2014, The Cat’s Meow Spay, Neuter & Adoption Project has made possible the spaying and neutering of close to 2,300 cats from Southwest Washington. 2,000 of those were done in just the last 33 months!!

Here's their services:

Complete List :

Since I've been volunteering there, I know of almost a hundred kittens that have been rehomed through her organization. The Cat's Meow Spay, Neuter & Adoption Project is a 501(c)3, non-profit corporation, and is supported solely by donations.

Here's her actual website: http://www.catsmeowsnap.org/

And when she gets too many kittens, and overfull, she ships them north to a no-kill shelter in the greater Seattle area where they have more people willing to adopt animals than we have here in Lewis County. We are lucky that Twila partners with great folks to get kittens out of the area. I tried to find a pic of the loading dock of her facility on spay or neuter day to show you the endless miles of cat carriers all carefully wrapped and ready to be loaded into her van to be taken to the vet she partner's with up north that does the inexpensive surgeries. It's shocking and happy all at the same time. I couldn't find a good clear one though. Needless to say its incredible.

I know we couldn't adopt our kids before they were all three fixed and ready to come home with complete shots, wormers etc. And then she fixed me up with all sorts of meds and hints to get them through an upper respiratory one developed that I was afraid would spread to my other cats.

So here's what I'd love to see. If you guys could swing it... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE donate to this cause. The link above will get you to the fundraiser. Give up a coffee. Give up a trip to the movies. And throw $5 or more her way. She has a goal of $5,000 and only has raised to date $143 dollars. We do this all the time for horses that are in Kill Pens going to ship to slaughter if we don't 'bail' them out. And I think just this once since we don't ask for money on Miz very often that maybe it would be fine for me to do so here. This is by and far the most devoted organization that IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE to feral cat populations in my area. And if you don't think it pertains to you because you live so far away, etc... think again. If Twila can be this successful in what she does, then she can more than help other organizations get off the ground and up and running by sharing tips, tricks, and ways to save money to get these animals help.

So please help if you can. Even a buck, if given by 50 folks, would help tremendously. If you have a spare $20 or something, donate please! This woman needs some serious help. They've had building issues, and van repairs and a whole host of things that goes with being a charity. And its a tax writeoff. You can get her to pass you a recipe no worries!

Thanks for reading this! And please consider helping. And if you donate, post something about Mizahar in the note to Twila on the crowd funding site. I think it would be really cool if we had a ton of people showing our community spirit towards someone who is all about the community.

by **Gossamer** on October 14th, 2014, 12:25 am

My Own Worst Critic...

I just got done cleaning up the HD tickets (almost 14 posts) and answering PMs that dearly needed attention. And now I'm staring at the grading in RF and am about to cry because I know it needs attention and I just don't have it in me. I'm sorry Riverfall. I'll get that location I promised in tonight, but I think that's all I have in me.

Sometimes life gets too hard. I'm mad as hell about a few things, and they aren't things I can control at all. I've bent over backwards trying to make my AS feel welcome in Riverfall and to get her on track and feeling part of the team. I've held meetings and done everything possible including posting my entire plotnotes for the seasonal thread (which I haven't had time to put up yet) and nothing... I had to hear about her retirement today in her scrap and in the HD where she requested retirement via a single line. I KNOW its not personal, but there's a point where it can't NOT be personal. It's very personal. I keep failing Riverfall in all sorts of ways by not being there for the city because I have too many things going on throughout the rest of the site. I can't even manage to get the grading thread caught up.

I even promised Ialari who's waited over a YEAR to get her dominion threads graded to get them done, and I only have a chance to do one at a time periodically. I feel so guilty.

Maybe I'm just tired. I only got three hours of sleep last night and when I hit the ground running last night at 1am I found out an hour before I was to get off work another guy called in sick (he was out sick all last week too) and that I had to stay for half his shift too. You see.. as of August we switched to 'busy season' hours. Which turns my cushy 3am to Noon shift (or later) on mondays to 1am to 930am... which usually turns into 1am to Noon or 1pm. Who the hell can go to bed at 5pm on warm beautiful days and actually sleep? I can't. That's a long goddamn shift on that amount of sleep. I am soo tired of this. I love my job. I love Miz. But not everything is working as its designed. There are too many people taking from the system and right now I feel there isn't as many giving back.

I want to post for my PCs too. But when you are an ST you feel like you can't take any time for them unless your being selfish. I don't want to be 'that' ST that spends all their time on their PC and none on their ST. I hate those storytellers. But RF needs more time. It needs more mod attention. It's an absolutely incredible city and I'm not doing it justice right now. And I can't seem to find any decent assistants to pick up some of that slack.

And truthfully, I don't know what to do because as is the status quo is that I'm spinning my wheels. I haven't heard much from the other Founders so I don't know if NaNo is going to go on or not this year. And I absolutely don't have time to count words myself. So.... there you have it.

I'm melting down... and I don't see any way to solidify it again.

Goss

by **Vanari** on October 14th, 2014, 3:51 am

Hey there Jen, I know it's normally the other way around, with us needing advice and you giving it, but this scrap made me want to say something...anything, whatever might help.

First and foremost we're here for you! Those who do what they can to help when they can, as few as we may be. If you need grades to get knocked out so you can focus on other things, even if you have any issues with graders that you'd like to address before we tackle Riverfall's request thread, by all means let us know! This is going back a few scraps, but we need some uniformity as graders, for real. I honestly don't think it would hurt to make us more aware of common grading problems. Heck, maybe we should, I dunno, start a thread or something and let everyone throw in input. I for one, as both a PC and grader, think we could all benefit from some light being shed on these things. Not to put more on your already heaping plate of course, but just sayin'. Standards are great.

And while it's perfectly understandable for you to take any delays to heart, I'm positive the players in Riverfall are not nearly as harsh as you are on yourself. Everyone knows you are the busiest bee of us all, and I doubt anyone is going to hold it against you for not being able to complete 23340598 things at once. I would much rather have happy and rested Goss than stressed out and exhausted Goss, regardless of anything else. The latter just makes me feel really bad, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

I guess this is just a long winded way of saying, it's all going to be okay Jen. Even if we can't get our word counts for Nano--or, gods forbid, we don't even do it period--we'll just keep chuggin' right along. Perhaps we could rally together as PCs and count our threads ourselves? Honor system, however well that would work. Or attempt a different sort of site-wide activity. I dunno, point being we'll make things work. And even if they don't work well screw it, we'll move on and worry about things that will work.

Bleh, what do I know eh? Only thing I really wanted to say is we're here for you. We're here for Miz. Let us know how we can help and we'll try our best, even if we aren't terribly large in numbers or rich in free time. I promise personally to do all that I can.

Love,
Everyone who adores this site

by **Timothy Mered** on October 14th, 2014, 11:22 am

I'll just hop in to double what Vanari said. This scrap was the tipping point for me to apply as a grader and I hope to soon be able to help out and blast through some threads in need of grading.

I don't have infinite time either, but I feel I owe it to you and to Miz to do something back for this site and help out.

Take your time Jen, take a little break if you need to, the site won't disappear over night and the people here will always have your back, even if it doesn't always feel like that.

Perhaps the underlying issue is that you're such a fundamental part of this site that a prolonged absence on your behalf would be utterly detrimental to this place. I am not saying that to be rude or anything, but sincerely to try and help out. Let's be honest here, this isn't the first time this has happened to you, is it?

Goss, you made this beautiful place, but you disallow yourself to enjoy it as a PC by giving yourself so many tasks to do. Sure, your staff already has a lot going on and they're probably busy as hell, but maybe there are more tasks you can delegate to your staff.

Again, I know they're probably already extremely busy, but I am just saying that you're doing so much hard work that you're bound to run into this issue again and again unless you manage to trust other people to do some of the work that you do.

I am not saying you're not trusting them enough, I am just saying that as an admin, you may sometimes feel the need to micro manage everything and be in absolute control of everything. Being an admin myself, I can assure you that's not the case. The reason you have staff is so that you can focus on the things that only you can handle. The really important stuff.

Mizahar is your baby, and it's hard to trust other people with your baby, but I feel strongly that you can't keep up this pattern forever. Trust your staff, give yourself a break, allow yourself to enjoy Mizahar as a PC and just see what happens if you cut back on all the administrating you do.

Just to be clear, I am not trying to be rude or disrespectful towards the staff or towards you. If anything, I would urge you to consider changing up who's responsible for what. To put it bluntly: maybe you're doing too much. Maybe if you allow yourself to do less, you'll be able to enjoy Miz and not have to worry about any more HD tickets or ungraded threads.

That would be awesome, right?

EDIT: In hindsight, I may have assumed too much. I obviously don't know the details of your circumstances. So, just to be clear, I hugely respect and admire all the hard work you put into this site and you probably know better how to solve your problems than I do. The whole point is, I am here for you as I'm sure plenty of other people are.

All the best to you, Jen!