(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role play 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.
I'm my faith, a major festival just passed this weekend. Witches celebrate four major astrological events (the solstices and equinoxes) and then four major harvest festivals. The first harvest festival of the year just passed. Gaelics of the celtic variety call it Lughnasadh (Lew-nasa) while more eastern europeans call it Lammas. It's basically the celebration of the first major harvest of the summer and a remembrance of Lugh who was a famous person in our tradition. As a harvest god, Lugh is more openly celebrated as a patron of Blacksmiths, artisans and craftsman. We gather to feast, to lift our voices in song, and to dance.
My best friend arranged for a very famous pagan singer to come do a private concert at her house just down the road from me and let me tell you it was fantastic. We did not have a large turnout. Part of the issue was that other local covens were also holding Lughnasadh celebrations, but still a couple dozen snuck away to enjoy the event. Next year we'll get things arranged so there's no conflicts. I helped set up, planned, and then did my share of entertaining as well as manning the grill for the feast. Everyone brought fresh baked bread (me too!), fruit, salads, all fresh from the garden. We had a small talk about why we were there, and then SJ Tucker and Betsy Tinney started to sing and dance.
SJ opened with a song called Rootless that my friends had requested for me. They knew I'd been kinda down lately and while Rootless isn't my favorite SJ Tucker song, they always claimed it was the song that reflected me the best. And while SJ was singing it, all these friends hugged me or smiled at me. I ended up bawling like a baby. I swear... it was one of the most healing embarrassing happy things in my life. It really touched me because it was so unexpected, so heartfelt and such a gift from them. My best friend held my hand and let me cry on her shoulder and told me that she loved me best of everyone in the world and that we were tribal sisters and always would be. And that there was no better medicine than witnessing me mounted up on my draft horse riding with my heart wide open and my joy trailing behind me like a comets tail.
We are all warriors. And SJ told me afterwards that the dragonfly necklace I was wearing called to her because one of her guitars is called Dragonfly and when she saw me start to cry she knew that the entire concert was going to be beautiful because in big crowds she can't get personal like she can in these sorts of venues.
And no one judged me for the tears. Instead I got smiles and hugs and the most blessed overwhelming love from my coven and even the strangers that arrived. There were other people there equally touched. One of our good friends and fellow green witch was roaming around feeding everyone all day - fresh tomatoes, cukes, beautiful salads. Madrona got a song sun just for her as well. Beetz in My Salad... a kind of pagan rap thats so damn funny we were all rolling and singing along and clapping. If you are a vegetarian that loves songs about foot, this one is for you.
SJ even sang a song called One Billion Rising... which is a movement in the world started by a small group of women. In countries around the world where women have no rights, individuals are going out in public at set times and dancing to make a statement. We all got up and danced, even the guys, while pelting out the lyrics 'rise and dance'. It was sooo beautiful and so much fun.. such a sense of circle, of tribe, of community. The version I found to post here is a lot more mellower than the version she played for us. We were so joyful.
And finally lets talk briefly about Betsy Tinney who was A-MAZING. She had a device called a looper so she'd play with her cello and then tap a device and play back what she just played and add too it and then play back that more and more and more until her looper was going crazy and she sounded like an army of cellos. Cellos are beautiful deep throated mournful instruments that make me sing inside. I could listen to one all day long and not grow tired of it. I walked away with all the music she had with her for sale since its not easy to get ahold of Betsy Tinney stuff online. But here you can listen to some of her stuff for free. I recommend gentle storm, which was one she played at the concert.
If we are friends on FB, I have a ton more pictures and a video of my request Hymn to Herne. Don't mind the imp in the middle of it that interrupted the video and made us all laugh. Anyhow... with this being done, my life should get back to order. I should have time to post and get caught up after the shoer comes tomorrow after work for a few hours to trim hooves and Gillar gets emergency oral surgery to remove his wisdom teeth weds. It's getting better though! Even though, this is my typical august craziness.
I just wanted to share how badass I feel figuring out this linear gradient glowing floating box style code.
Yea.
BADASS.
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Projects Always Projects... The Cat's Meow Project
So at the concert a few weeks ago, we did a benefit for an organization that has a no-kill shelter here in my county. I absolutely adored the woman who was in charge of the shelter and was very fascinated that she was dedicating her life to these feral cats and getting them under control. She was even working on trapping and fixing and then re-releasing feral cats so they didnt' add to the problem. Its phenomenal work but its also tireless and thankless at times.
She asked me if I'd be willing to adopt at the concert and I told her that though I'd lost a few kitties last year, we still had quite a few and that the only way we'd do so was if she had one that looked like my beloved husbands lost polydactal cat. Vicious was a Lynx Showshoe Simese with tabby tendencies and seven toes on the front, six on the back. The woman laughed and said she had one of every kind at her shelter.. that she was about 42 kittens strong atm. I described my husbands lost cat and she said she had a kitten just like it.
Long story short and two weeks later we came to visit. OMG the kitten was identical. She really was telling the truth about having one just like her. And as a bonus, she had a flame point siamese brother that was absolutely gorgeous too.
We agreed to adopt them but have to wait on them getting their surgeries. Both were super feral kittens brought in and ill. They had upper repository infections that have since cleared up. Now they are healthy enough to be spayed and neutered. Then we get to take them home... NEXT FRIDAY! WHOOT!
Here's some pictures. I'm naming the flame point Ivak. Don't hate me. He knows hes gorgeous and hes temperamental. It's a prefect name.
Wendy - Poly Snowshoe Lynx Siamese Tabby
Ivak
Wendy and Ivak Together
Here Are A Few Of The Others. I asked the owner how I could help and she gave me a list of things that need doing. I volunteered my friends and myself to show up to the shop and photograph all the kittens on Tuesday. It's going to take hours to photograph them, write up the postings, and post them to both petfinder and FB so they can get the word out and be adopted. This should be a really fun project so I'm looking forward to it enormously.
I want Ivak. Just send him to me over the Internet please. He looks like a devilish little cat actually and reminds me of one of the kittens that my aunt took in a few weeks ago. I want all the cats actually. Just send all of them over the Internet and I'll fit them somewhere and be a crazy cat lady. My bout of cat madness aside, it's amazing that you found an identical kitten, especially as it's a polydactyl. I don't think I've ever seen a polydactyl one before so I wonder how often they occur. Talk about lucky!
It's a wonderful project for you to undertake as it's so important for them to get homes. I know it's a no kill centre but that doesn't mean that it's fair for them to be left there. It isn't fair for any pet to not have a proper home. We just got a dog for my grandad from an animal sanctuary today actually because he misses the company of his old dog (and my doggie) who was put down last week. The dog we got ended up in the same sanctuary for the second time because the people who took him from there in the first place couldn't be bothered looking after him. He wasn't allowed to go for walks where he was and he looked like he'd never been brushed it was that matted. The poor things was terrified when he was brought into them but he's already settling in very well, which just goes to show how important a good home environment is for them.
We've been searching for the last week and I've seen that many pictures of different animals in shelters, both cats and dogs, and I just want to find homes for them all. If I lived near you, I'd help spread the word but unfortunately there's a bit of a distance between us. Ireland's not exactly in your area.
I saw your earlier post about your Lughnasadh celebrations. I wasn't aware that you were a witch. It's probably mentioned elsewhere in your scrap but I haven't come across it in my light reading of it. I know a few witches personally so have some understanding of when the celebrations are even if I don't know of the customs associated with them. Of course, they do appear in the Irish language in the months (Bealtaine, Lunasa, Samhain) because Ireland kept some of its paganism even when it became officially Christian. I'm sure there are many little words that we use that have older meanings that we've forgotten. We do have a number of old pagan sites including Newgrange. I don't know if you're familiar with it but it's a passage tomb, a very large and elaborately decorated one. It's very well known for what happens to it on December 21st, something that only a few lucky people get to see each year. When the sun is at a particular angle to it (don't ask me what time, morning I think) light shines through a little box above the door and slowly lights up the passage. It lasts for a certain length of time and then the light recedes. If you haven't been to it before and you happen come to Ireland, it'd be well worth a look in. I believe it's supposed to go back further than the Celts but I think they were very enamoured with it when they came upon it.
Anyway, I think I've rambled enough so I'll end on a good luck with your cat related endeavours.
Oh my goodness these guys are all absolutely precious. I had never heard of that patterning but man both Ivak and Wendy are gorgeous, they are going to be such pretty adult cats.
I was wondering, Goss, if you know the coloring name for Tiny's brother? I refer to it as the Grumpy Cat coloring as thats the only cat I'd ever seen with it before up until my roommate's friend got a kitten with identical coloring, the only difference being he has this perfectly shaped dark brown spot on his chin as well, but both are stunningly adorable. My friends was named Jax after Son's of Anarchy's Jax and I fell in love with him upon the first phone sent images, and this was sealed when upon first meeting him I just picked him up with on hand, flipped him on his back and he was entirely content there flopping back and forth playing for ten or so minutes. Ever since that visit I have put it on my bucket list to get a cat with that kind of patterning. I'm guessing its more common than I realize, I simply am not up on the cat varieties!
Also I saw your FB thing about putting charities and linking them to Amazon and I am totally going to do that with these guys, I love me no kill shelters.
You guys know that every time things happen on the site, I have in the past issued a policy that there will be complete and utter transparency. Why? Because it kills rumors faster than anything else, and often I can see the rumors being far worse than the reality of the situation.
So... we have a situation. You may have guessed it by the apologies in two Scrapbooks and a cancellation note on a regional quest. I want to let you guys know what happened in general so you understand what is going on because I can tell you for a fact from the posts that have been made on the situation thus far, there's no clear outline of what went down.
This is from my perspective.
A few of the staff came to me concerned because the two Staffers were involved in a plot that seemed a bit out there to them in terms of stretching the rules of the game. They clearly outlined their concerns and had already talked to the people involved. They felt they weren't getting any resolve doing that so they came to me. I listen to player concerns, and when its staff concerns, that's a double issues in my mind.
This is what happened in a nutshell. Again, via my perspective, not anyone else's.
The whole issue, without going into pages and pages of detail, is that lores were being acquired that a PC shouldn't even know about let alone have access too in a manner that was wholly unsanctioned on this site. The PC wanted them for whatever reason and felt getting them was no big deal. I feel that one staffer in charge of the plot felt the PC (who was also a staffer) involved was an expert in the area and trusted that PC to know what they should or shouldn't be able to acquire and thus assisted the PC in acquiring that info (or attempting too) via threads to work it into a bigger plot not realizing this info was something the PC should have never had with their skillset and in this timeline of the game. Why? They had no skill to use it once they had it IMO.
I don't think this was malicious or a grab for power. I think this was a staffer caught up in her PC's storyline and getting carried away without knowing how it looked to the staff and players of the site who were following the storyline. Their intentions didn't read anything at all in the negative. It was a storyline, in their mind (I feel) that was better for the whole of the game and something that was going to give the players in Falyndar something to really react too.
In this case though, the ends didn't justify the means and the staff folks and PCs who pointed out these issues were in the right bringing it to all our attentions.
I also don't blame the staffer who paved the way for this because putting myself in her shoes, I would have probably done the same thing and ran with it not realizing how powerful the lore was and what it meant for Mizahar. It wasnt' really that clear on what it meant until you sat down and thought about it. I mean... I'm not into certain forms of magic to consider what a result of opening a summoning portal to say the surface of the sun would do to Earth once the direct connection was made. It took Gillar bursting out laughing when I pointed it out and me going 'wha?' to understand what it really means.
What it meant for Mizahar was a potential second Valterrian. We can only handle so much of that shit right?
And to be fair, when I talked to both people about this, they kinda had an 'oh shit' moment and then started beating themselves up pretty hot and heavy about the highhandedness in the plot. That's not the usual reaction. The usual reaction is "Sure I can. You're stupid. My PC can handle that... Screw you... etc etc etc." And then my normal reaction is to toss their ass out off the site for being utterly and completely dumbfoundingly blind.
So I think all parties involved learned a good lesson. The plot has ground to a halt, though I hope it will happen some day (though in a different way than the PC planned and probably with different pcs altogether), so that Zinrah and Taloba can finally have their big showdown that all the players deserve to experience.
Live and let live. We learned a thing or two from this. And I promise you it won't happen again with those individuals. And to those that talked to me about this... please understand I get it. Thank you for the trust. I get how much it takes to step forward and I get how you are playing the odds that no one is immune to the game rules. These were high level staffers. I could have taken the road that I need them more than I need fair and balanced. I do need them. I appreciate them every day they volunteer time here - and its a lot of time and energy for nothing but their own pleasure - but that doesn't mean I won't hold them accountable. They hold me accountable... just like every one of you on the game does.
And while I was going to say something about writing your own lore, I think it will just distract from the message and be utterly useless here. I'll write about that later and get you guys turned on to how powerful your PCs can be in shaping the face of Mizahar if you go about it the right way.
Don't mind the imp in the middle of it that interrupted the video and made us all laugh. Anyhow... with this being done, my life should get back to order. I should have time to post and get caught up after the shoer comes tomorrow after work for a few hours to trim hooves and Gillar gets emergency oral surgery to remove his wisdom teeth weds. It's getting better though! Even though, this is my typical august craziness. 
by Caela Dorin on August 17th, 2014, 7:43 pm 
