July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Cayenne on July 1st, 2011, 9:25 pm

July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

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Please join me in giving Alice, the long-time moderator of lovely Mura, a round of congratulations for being July's Featured Contributor! Below is her interview.


Cayenne: How does Mura reflect you? You have had the challenge of working with a city that already had a very defined setting attitude, and content. Do you feel Mura reflects you?

Alice: Yes, I definitely feel there are parallels between Mura and me. Just like a person, a city also has its personality. Mura is a very peaceful place and everyone strives for harmony and empathy. Konti want to and can understand one another on a deeper level than humans which is a trait I kind of admire. Understanding is a key part of developing a relationship with another person, I believe. It seems like the Konti stereotype is just that: How do we live together with as little misunderstandings, prejudice and fighting as possible? Of course, that’s a really hard concept to play with, but even Mura is not perfect. It might look like utopia at first sight and dystopia at a second glance, but it’s neither. What it really is... I don’t know. I believe there’s a lot of potential to further develop the city. I haven’t had the chance or time to play out several locations and concepts, but they’re sitting in a word document at my PC and waiting for the right moment.

I probably digress. Just like Mura, I love understanding other people, helping them with their problems and sharing opinions. Broadening one’s horizon is important. However, I also love traveling and learning new things and I feel some Konti would be afraid of that because Mura is so peaceful and lazy.

Cayenne: How do you envision the dynamic of the Kontis? How does the all-female cast (with very few males) change things when you’re writing?

Alice:It doesn’t make it harder to write posts and develop things. The all-female race coupled with a connection to Riverfall is just another aspect of the place and people, like the existence of vision water for example. It might also have little impact on me in terms of envisioning a lack of males since I myself have always had more girl friends than boys. As a result, I feel that the Konti are constantly longing for males to come along and make love with them, but also try to create alternatives. And in fact that’s what happens when Blythe and Satu are stuck inside with nothing to do at a rainy night...

The topic of love is more interesting to me than sexuality. I have a little theory that love can be universal and that anyone can love anyone. Probably not in the sense of wanting a physical relationship with that person. But we can certainly love in more and richer ways than that. We love friends, love beauty, love nature, love animals... Well, that’s getting a little philosophic, but the bottom line is that the Konti can crave for male partners and occupy themselves with alternatives at the same time. It makes Mura’s community even more close-knit.


Cayenne: If you could hand-pick a dream cast for a quest, what would they be and why?


Alice:One thing I’ve always loved about quests is that they can change a PC so much. Look at characters like Satu or Jilitse who got an awesome mod for one or more of their threads and experienced a lot of character development. They have changed and gotten more focused and that’s what is so awesome about a quest.

Now, if I had to pick types of PCs, I’d take the kind of characters who are focused on the physical side of things, fighters, mercenaries, even thieves, and throw them into the environment of Mura. What happens? Will they let the gentle Konti and their goals of perfect harmony influence them? Will they realize that things such as vision water or knowledge or words can have a greater impact than their sword? That’s the kind of stuff I can imagine would be fun to find out for a PC. I’d also love to play out how vision water transforms a person over a long period of time. Nobody who isn’t Konti has stayed on the isle long enough to be visually affected by it, but Serrif might be the first if he sticks around...

Also, I love psychological challenges and inner conflict, so I never get enough of quests that are heavy character development. In general, every well-rounded and three-dimensional character is fun to play around with. For a storyteller, weaknesses are probably the most important traits a PC can have. If there are weaknesses somewhere in the CS, the storyteller has enough of a fundament to work with!


Cayenne: When moderating, some of us have a favourite NPC that we come back to again and again. Do you? Who is it? Why?


Alice:I certainly do! There is a really cool political NPC who has only appeared in one or two posts so far. She has a somewhat revolutionary opinion on Konti and outsider relations... and her sister (who is a prominent figure around town) constantly tries to keep her at bay and prevent her from covering Mura in confusion and chaos. There are no details yet, but the two have a lot of potential. Then there’s Lym, a philterer and healer of the Opal Order who is a bit weird and very passionate and ambitious about her experiments. Her antics are quite amusing. She might get a decent backstory one day too. And Kariha Balrani of the Suvai Pavilion already has a backstory that I got shortly after developing the storyteller assignment quest and look forward to RPing out. Although she appears calm and collected, she actually has a lot of strong emotions boiling under the surface and is fighting a lost battle. She is the kind of tragic character I love.

A type of character I’d like to write about is a child. Konti children grow up fast and are very mature, yet they’re treated with respect and are very precious to Konti society. It’d be interesting to develop a personality for a Konti child, I imagine, and letting her act as if she was really important and doing serious stuff when in fact... she’s not.


Cayenne: Who is your favourite deity? Is there another you’d really love to play? Who? Why?


Alice:This is hard. I love Tanroa because She has a personal connection with my PC and Her Antechamber is a really interesting concept (kudos to Colombina), but I wouldn’t dare to play Her, haha. Avalis is a deity I’ve already RPed several times. She is the mother of the Konti which gives her a very intimate relationship with them and I love playing out the mother aspect, soothing and helping them. I also love how she knows the future, but at the same time I imagine even Avalis doesn’t know everything, but is just extremely good at interpreting the Chavena and foreseeing tendencies that will manifest in the future.

Another deity that fascinates me is Nysel. Ever since reading the Dreamwalking wiki and the thread in which Liminal plays a dreamwalker NPC I’ve wanted one of my PCs to attract His attention and explore the Chavena. As a storyteller, however, I’m somewhat hesitant with RPing deities. You never know if you stay true to the original concept, especially with such complicated stuff as Dreamwalking or Tanroa. Also, I don’t want to hurl deity encounters and gnosis marks at PCs because such events are supposed to be hard to get to. A PC might probably provide me with the opportunity to play around with Nysel in the future, and then I’d be truly happy to. But since my creativity is limited, I make an effort to respond to the wishes and ideas of Mura’s PCs first and foremost.


Cayenne: What is your creative process? How do you get started? A word? An image? An idea? A combination of all of them or something else entirely?


Alice:This is a hard question. I get inspiration from all sorts of things in daily life. Reading a beautiful writing style, seeing a pretty picture, listening to music, sketching my PCs and NPCs... I can get inspired from all kinds of sources. There are the standard random situations like lying in bed and getting ideas that prevent you from sleeping or having a dream that kind of belongs to the fantasy genre, and sometimes I get inspired from those as well.

For example, lately I’ve been listening to a lot of classical music and I find that piano music such as Chopin and Liszt fits Mura very well. It’s flowing and peaceful music, like water, but it can also get chaotic and dangerous. And organ music is perfect for epic or dramatic scenes. Sometimes I can close my eyes and see images and scenes unfolding in my mind (although that has mostly happened for my novel projects so far). I also love ballet music and Tchaikovsky and imagine it would fit the Konti as well because it’s dramatic, soft and poetic.

Another source of inspiration I frequently use is... literature. Well, mostly stories from the internet and writers who invent stories for fun and are not published. Sometimes they provide the reader with a sense of originality that published authors have lost. I love to read stuff from people like you and me – especially stream of consciousness-type stories with a poetic and lyrical writing style! My favorites! These types of stories often motivate me to create something equally beautiful and breathtaking for my Mura PCs. I also believe that I have learned enough to avoid trying to force a style that’s not my own, so I can safely take ideas from their stuff and incorporate them in my stuff.

Cayenne: Do you have a favourite thread, completed or in progress?

Alice:I take it you mean threads I moderated... First of all, I’d like to mention Shadows in the Mirror, the quest I designed for the latest storyteller assignment, and am currently writing with Serrif. His character has a lot of potential and I want to tug at his memories and hurl some epic character development at him that also affects Mura as a whole. Of course, it’s still at the beginning and I won’t reveal too much here, but I’m extremely excited about it. Stay tuned!

If I had to take a thread that has progressed more, I’d take Whispered Words. This one is the product of an idea Blythe approached me with. She wanted someone to trick her into doing something and find out that she had been fooled at the end. During the first few posts I decided to use her pain of having lost a child which caused it to turn into a really intense story for Blythe personally. I also really like her writing in this one!

There are other threads I enjoyed because the PCs were great writers, but the above two really present my favorite stories, I think.


Cayenne: What is your favourite article in the Lore? Is it one you wrote? What makes it so special to you?


Alice: Another hard question... I’ll pick the Dreamwalking gnosis for this one. The Chavena is almost a whole new world inside the world of Mizahar. Playing around with people’s minds and memories must be very interesting. Back when Stitch was still active, his player and I used to talk a lot about his plans and what he wanted to do with Dreamwalking. I didn’t even realize how cruel and exciting it would be if a PC erased their own memories because they were too painful for them! Tragedy, again. Basically, I love the opportunities and also the surreal beauty. Needless to mention, getting the Dreamscapes as a playable location felt like Christmas for me!

But there are a lot of articles in the wiki that are exciting. Tarot’s magic articles manage to explain the mechanics and inspire at the same time, and a lot of NPC and location lores are just thrilling. A few examples would be Sahova and its crazy mage NPCs, Taloba and the Myrians, Akvatar, Wind Reach... and I also love the recent development that’s going on for the Suvan Sea and the Svefra.


Cayenne: You’ve been a staff member for quite a long time – does Mizahar’s progression surprise you at all?


Alice:Yes and no... Mizahar is the most original and dynamic fantasy game I’ve come across so far, so it’s only natural for it to grow and expand through the combined effort of the group and the hard work the Founders put in it to release new goodies and challenges to play around with. Although it probably wasn’t intended, I think it’s a good strategy to add new races to the pool after the game has already started and further flesh out old locations, attract players so they get more activity. It’s also amazing what Tarot managed to do in the layout and design department and how many ways we have to prettify our posts.

Anyway, I’m not surprised because Mizahar is awesome (do I exaggerate?), but at the same time every change and improvement surprises me enough to appreciate it. Mizahar constantly grows and that’s the best thing that can happen to a game. It also means that it adjusts to the needs of its players who also grow as writers during their stay. I really believe that the progression we experience here is amazing.


Cayenne: How do you handle moderating with your character(s) and real life?


Alice:Oh, well, sometimes I can’t handle it at all. But the times I do, I usually have enough free time to divide it between reading, music, going out, watching movies and (anime) series and writing. There’s a precious balance between filling the pool of creativity and taking ideas away from it to use for Mizahar (or my own writings). When I listen to what I want to do, I can usually prevent the pool from drying out... I believe it’s really important to get as much new ideas as you use in your writing. After all, ideas can’t be recycled, haha.

Also, for about a month I’ve been on summer vacation and without any serious occupations to keep me from doing what I want all day long, and I’m currently trying to improve my productivity when it comes to writing. We’ll see how my situation changes in autumn when I take up studying... But in general, time management is the key. I’ve learned it the hard way through juggling school, recovering from school and producing enough posts to keep my threads going for the past year. Setting priorities is also important, and obviously Mizahar has a high priority for me, so I put it above more or less everything else I do in my free time... except one thing (writing for myself).


Cayenne: Thanks so much, and once again, congratulations!
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Elhaym on July 1st, 2011, 9:52 pm

You deserve this alice. You've been a constant inspiration to me throughout my entire stay in Mizahar, and an excellent mod as well as RPer. Yay!
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Colombina on July 1st, 2011, 10:57 pm

What lovely and thoughtful answers, Alice! Congratulations on your award :)
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Caelum on July 2nd, 2011, 3:01 pm

I loved reading this interview. Well deserved, Alice!
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Cheshire on July 2nd, 2011, 5:41 pm

Kudos to you girl. You totally deserve this medal. I really want Kendall to go visit Mura now. He just needs to get over his fear of Konti.
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Aspen on July 2nd, 2011, 5:44 pm

Congratulations Alice!
I'm totally bringing my Konti there in the future!
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Kamalia Timandre on July 2nd, 2011, 6:37 pm

Congratulations, my little sister. ;) I'm very proud of you and what you've done for Mura.

This is a very well-deserved award!
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Liel on July 2nd, 2011, 10:18 pm

go alice!! <3
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Sorian on July 2nd, 2011, 11:38 pm

Well deserved... To say the LEAST.

You're awesome. Thank you for the hard work and hardcore RPing you've lavished on this site, and congratulations from the bottom of my lazy soul. <3
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July's Featured Contributor: Alice!

Postby Gossamer on July 3rd, 2011, 12:46 am

Congratulations Alice!
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