Print this articleusually happens right before I wake up, and the dreaming is lucid so I often remember it in detail. of course, its a somatic response to physical stimuli that in turn causes my brain to formulate a trancey sort of association for what the stimuli must feel like, through a fumbly mass of details that eventually in waking reflects a credible series of events. I don't believe dreams are portentious or revelatory of anything more than my brain's ability to file away the overload of images and information that I process in a day. they don't tell the future. they do reveal something of the way your brain works, yeah. but mostly, they're entertaining is all. but this dreaming is hard to explain.
example is this morning. dreamed that I was sitting in some grassy field and writing a letter in my best handwriting ever on the whitest sheet of paper. I was focused so diligently on my penmanship that the back of my neck was burning from the sunshine. long I toiled over this letter. nearby in a mulberry tree some thrushes flapped and fought over the berries. I heard a birdlike whisper and looked up and a thrush had landed on my shoulder. he looked at me sideways with one eye and flapped his wings against my shoulder. I went back to my letter. the bird trilled again and flapped against my shoulder. I reached down for a mulberry and fed the thrush, who beat his wings against my shoulder again. I dream that this happened several times over until I stood up and he flew away.
then I woke up to twinkie 2 gently patting my upper arm -- "wake up, its time to get up." her hand on my arm felt just like a little bird's wings fluttering. "how long have you been tapping my arm sweetie?" I asked. "oh just this time, I patted you maybe twice in all," she said.
I don't in any way believe I was dreaming about a bird flapping on my shoulder and then poof! there is somebody patting me on the arm in real life. I think my brain dreams backwards at the speed of light, from the minute I get that physical sensation it concocts some prosaic explanation of what poetic theory might explain the tactile promp. and then I think it plaits itself up in reverse to make the incongruously plucked association fit into some context that might be relevant and plausible.
whole dreams I've had like this that parts of which in remembrance explain something happening in the woken world. it would make sense to me that its just like every other kind of dreaming, only the dreams are long, detailed and much more complex than could happen in the brief moment that I feel or sense something. either my brain is very adept at fictionalizing substantive circumstances within the span of seconds, or maybe I'm just riduculously ego chuffed thinking I'm the only one to whom this has happened. I'm sure other people do it. its funny though how the entire dream unfolds at the moment I wake up.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
oh_really_now in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
geekparents.halloween is a big deal around here. a big, big deal. we start around now posing the question about "what do you want to be this halloween?" to the minihorde and usually go through many weeks of contemplation and deep thought from the outright pointless (I wanna be a hotdog!) to the very creative (I want to be a flower in a flower pot, with a bee and a ladybug and a praying mantis on me) to the media-fueled easy-cause-I-can-buy-the-costume-at-Wallyworld (Spiderman, FTW mom!).
so I see the above post and realize oh HELL YEAH. why hell yeah? cause boy wonder is all up in the mario, and the twinkies would make the perfect peach and daisy.....
now to have him practice - "Itsa ME, Mario!"
"beanball wars" was an apt phrase. in a heated back and forth of one thing leading to another, the cumulative ire of the chinese team erupted in one particularly memorable play. for those of you who don't speak baseball-ese, a u.s. runner bowled over the chinese catcher in one particular play. the affront was duly vindicated by the pitcher in the next inning when he eyed the runner methodically, and then promptly threw a speedball right between the shoulder blades of the now-batting player who had tumbled the catcher.
John says in his dryest wit, "you know this is the first year china's had a baseball team, but it didn't take long for them to learn chin music*. altho in china, I'm sure chin music has a totally different meaning."
took me about 3 seconds before I exploded in uncontrollable laughter. for those of you who don't get the reference --
*chin music (from wiki):
In baseball slang, it means a pitch that comes near the batter's face. The pitcher's intent may be to cause the batter to move "back" such that it is more difficult to hit a future outside pitch, to frighten the batter into a poorer batting approach, to intimidate opposing batters, or to actually hit the batter with the pitch. If the umpire suspects the pitcher of either of the latter two intentions, he may eject the pitcher immediately or warn both teams that any similar pitch will result in automatic ejection. The pitcher's manager may also be ejected or warned if the umpire believes the manager ordered the beanball.
In the late 1800s, at baseball's inception, the phrase "chin music" was used to describe razzing or heckling from the fans. It began being used as a synonym for a brushback pitch around World War II.
I hope someday I get to know just how wonderful by seeing your little face and hearing your laugh. until then I'll just have to listen to your uncle tell me how shiny and amazing you are, and how he worried about holding your fragile little butterfly body in his large, steady hands. give him that hushed moment of promise, where everything is hopeful and overpoweringly uncomplicated in your delicate tininess. you're here among us but not so long ago you were made out of nothing more than mystery and dreams and miracles. as ordinary as life is for the rest of us you remind us that its a gift worth living, if only to see that you get a chance to experience it.
happy birthday little darlin!
Hey, its my results from The Mythological Goddess Test... (so ty so vm to heatermcca)
Freya
She was quite fond of cats, by the way. In fact, she was said to travel about in a magnificent chariot drawn by her two regal black cats named Bygul and Trjegul (Pronunciation? You're on your own...) that were rumoured to be possessed. After serving Freya for 7 years, the cats were rewarded by being turned into witches, disguised as black cats. Even many of her personal traits seem cat-like. For instance, she always wore a brilliant jewel studded collar symbolizing her authority over the fiery aspect of sexuality.
Besides being the Goddess of love, cats, the moon, magic, and of course sex, Freya was also skilled in a form of magic called "seithr" (meaning "sayer" or "seer") which consisted of putting oneself into a deep meditative trance so that the secrets of the future might be revealed. She also owned a feather coat which she could use to fly between the worlds.
The Fifteen Goddesses
These are the 15 categories of this test. If you score above average in
all or none of the four variables: Neit. Erudite: Minerva. Sensual: Aphrodite. Martial: Artemis. Saturnine: Persephone. Erudite & Sensual: Isis. Erudite & Martial: Sekhmet. Erudite & Saturnine: Nemesis. Sensual & Martial: Hera. Sensual & Saturnine: Bast. Martial & Saturnine: Ilamatecuhtli. Erudite, Sensual & Martial: Maeve. Erudite, Sensual & Saturnine: Freya. Erudite, Martial & Saturnine: Sedna. Sensual, Martial & Saturnine: Macha.
back to AoE: AoK. lovely. really, really lovely. played the living hell out of every campaign and adored every last inch of persia, china and europe. every campaign, every heroic general. every trebuchet and camel and exploding saboteur. it was gaming that made historical combat manipulation of individual units the best of stratego and toy soldiers wrapped up into one lip-smacking feast of gamer gluttony. and, the dollop of whipped cream on the final slice of pie? I never did get to play the AoK expan.
squee indeed.
now, where to find that sliver of time between all the other gaming and life where I can pry this into. it will require a crowbar. or the jaws of life.
I didn't ever play the multiplayer version of NWN, only the single player ver, but my adored & esteemed colleague convinced me it would be EVEN BETTAR in mp. okfine, was game for this in every sense. so we load, pour over the classes and races. its the best kind of smarmy, redolent gamer mutual masturbation as we contemplate just what we'll roll. its been a long time since I rolled in NWN I can't even remember what race/class I played, although I think I rolled a couple chars. oh baby I want to go tiefling soooo badly (images of totally inappropriate yet somehow game-context appropriate and whorishly delectable Anna re: Planescape Torment come to mind), so I roll a lock and she's beautiful, even her armor which is the most fecking bitchin in the entire game. he rolls a planar pali, I think, and we start out acclimatizing ourselves to the movements, mechanics, etc.
I want to love my lock. but something just doesn't rock my world; I'm out of synch with the casting and just can't get my head into it. so I reroll a warrior. yesssss precious. melee class, dual wield and full plate. and she's awesome in every way. and my colleague, he rerolls a wizard cause he misses his casting something awful and he is, as always, stunningly effective in a caster class. we blast through level after level with this pairing combo, when he says to me in a tempting way:
"you know I think you would like the sorcerer class, becasue there is no limit to the spells you can know and you get max cast of every spell per level, and imagine how incredible it would be, two casters smashing through every mob we meet...."
he extolls the virtues of the sorcerer/sorceress until I'm intrigued enough to think, yeah maybe I will try this caster class out just for licks and wiggles. but to save myself the laborious trodgy early levels, I roll a wood elf on the MotB expan. key here is, the first 30 levels are a mulligan of sorts, in that instead of making your way through all the early level quests and areas, you can manually level up to 30 while still playing mp in the core game.
the beauty of this is I don't have to play the game to level (as the first 30 levels are preordained, and really just banked until I manually click "level up"), so I can ride through a level until he has enough xp to level, and then do it manually. considering I rolled this sorcerer when his wizard was lev11, this was easily done. she has her quirks. I would have picked different spells to start with. but over all, she's turned out to be extremely powerful and has some of the best effect aoe's I've seen in any game. who knew I would love a caster class so much? wtf is the world coming to? don't lose your knickers, god knows I guess I'll be rolling pali next.....
as with every NWN/Icewind/Baldur's the story is the driving rhythm. the questing and char dialog provide the impetus to make you want to progress the story and the drama, not just the accomplishment of gold and gear. funny thing though, in the mp ver of the game we're enjoying, unlike the sp ver, I don't feel compelled to either a) develop the influence I could have on the party adds or b) adopt and skill up a profession. both of these aspects lead to a richer sp ver gaming experience, which I realize in the mp version is not as vital to me. this gives me a new respect for the title because it suddenly appears to me more vast and rich for this versatility
I guess we're around level teen-something or other. the mystery of the kalach'cha is seminally progressing, and the combat is rolling along with verve. and the mutual buffing? dead smexy I tell you.
and I have a familiar - a cat. if that didn't make me more appealing, I don't know what would.
and he was so charming and energetic and enthusiastic. for me, new strategy game = not a big deal. that is, if I'm up against the AI and can plod thru the campaigns at a moderate pace so I can absorb as much as possible in preliminary phases. guerilla fighting and flash combat? nah, not my strong point, I get confuddled and have a difficult time micromanaging individual units in the face of pending annihilation, even when the unit cap is a mere 20. but then there's himself who has the perigee of venerable opinion of my capability as a gamer anyway. belle du game, meet high expectation. ok break, and I want a clean fight.
we prattle around in a couple 2v2 matches, one on easy setting that gives me an overinflated sense of whuhtness because in my mind, I can see that his kindly self has already maxed out his caps and upgraded everymotherthing until he's the leetzerleetest, and he's really just waiting for me to get up to speed on my resources so I can crank out another tank or upgrade another squad til we flat out hammer the opponents. glad he's on my team. and we tear it up, as usual, my tan armored marines and his white ones and the dreadnaught brigades in stereo flanking the bestial hell out of chaos et al.
but really, I think I am playing a better game, to slyly and methodically prove to be much more than ever expected of me. to upend even the most complimentary assessment of my latent abilities. all this time absorbing not only the game mechanics and unit purposes, strategic combat maneuvers against specific opponents, but watching him. watching his moves, how he progresses his technology, how he fills out his ranks. the methodology with which he systematically and effortlessly clears the map of both eldar and orks. pacing myself, indulging that gracious leeway he's afforded me because I'm lubed nube to all appearances. (you can see where at this point, the base formulation of why I'm such a damn good assassin is conceived, can't you?)
in our second game, we're not teamed, but in a free-for-all. by his very nature, he is focusing on our mutual enemies, multiplying his HQs for maximum flexibility in unit output, gearing up, tapping his resources. he's dedicated, masterful, managing things so effortlessly.
I ask, with every ounce of ingenue I can ply him with: "uh, what part of the map are you in darlin?"
he says, "in the south. southwesterly. why?"
I say, "oh I just wondered. what are you doing now?
him: "fighting the eldar. why?"
me: "no particular reason."
brilliant. bam. full force on the critical location I see his units standing around, picknicking on cheetos and dr. pepper while his heavy artillery is securing a foothold and waiting for the *other* enemy to regroup and bring up the flank. his surprise is....well, the fervor of my heart thumping at his voice tinged with astonishment and (possible?) concern...that moment when he realized I wasn't just playing the game with him but I'd challenged him and aptly so...
he sputtered with a bit of an incredulous laughter: "hey, are you trying to take my critical location...hheh, what?" and then went suspiciously quiet with concentration while I slammed into his few reserves and forced him to pull up his heavy units to defend against me. my heart couldn't have loved a game more in that moment.
he had to defend. against me. it was.....delicious. all I heard for the next 20 minutes of melee was his measured breathing and the frantic clicking of keyboard and mouse.
oh no, I could have no hope of winning against him at this particular skirmish. he was far too well equipped and numbered, and is a far better combat strategist with a flair for multi-unit manipulation, his forte being unit special maneuver utilization. he pummelled me, tore through my ranks. I rallied and pushed back. nearly a half hour into the fighting, we both pulled back to regroup, rebuild, re-equip.
from that point a new tenor settled upon us. I hedged in my starting point, turtling with turrets and a few units to defend. realizing I'd decimated his forces, I built up my heaviest units and ploding forth with tanks and dreadnaughts found to my delight his main HQ and his primary critical location. the silence between us except for the heavy breathing as we labored to keep up unit production and relocate them to the front, the gutteral waste of unit after unit, the clamoring artillery and the stacks and stacks of bloody bodies left in the snow as testament to our tete-a-tete, every bit of this savored and executed with military finesse.
I dropped unit after unit behind enemy lines, pounding at his production lines, clearing his original critical location, obliterating his HQ. yeah, I did. really. it was...a very poignant victory. but from that point, I knew I was going to be the sole focus of his unyielding goal to wipe the entire map with my bloody corpse.
not so easily it seemed though. a monstrously well-met dodge and parry ensued. but mostly, it was me defending that solitary patch of ground with my comparatively few resources. we defended so tenaciously at one point he yelled in irked aggravation: "stop defending so damn well!" and "where are all your guys coming from? you just never stop producing them!" funny that. I really didn't have that many resources comparatively but I was able to keep cranking out the units. at one point, he even sends in the light combat air artillery and it hits me, he's scraping until he can get better units. I can see my pending demise on the horizon.
four or five waves of attacks. I know I can't keep it up forever. until finally, finally he sends in the heavy guns and the heavy units and they shut down my resources and generators, then slowly beat the hell out of me until the last space marine screams his bloody death and my HQ explodes.
nearly 3 hours of game play. hundreds of units dead. we few, we happy few. we held this ground. we died for the emperor, and we'd do it again. we proved everything.
touche, darlin.
so we have to choose from: paladin, sorceress, amazon, necromancer, barbarian. consider assassin and druid from the expan. add witch doctor. and it *could* be perceived as a musical chairs of select slots for the 5 playable classes but our theorycrafting goes as follows. we compared classes based on defined class as utility, as per WoW. in WoW you have your caster, healer, tanks, assassins, etc. based on unique class capabilities and what skills could be assigned under other class specs, we discuss that they'll likely keep the paladin, barbarian (a given, obviously), witch doctor and sorceress. druid is too soft, skills are kinda all over the place. which leaves a toss up of the fill-out chars, our estimation being the assassin, amazon and the necromancer.
beloved necromancer. <eg>
(yah, I did emote <eg>, as that's SOOOOO 90's and thus contemporaneous with D3. see what I did thar? CONTEXT, PPL!)
I think they'll keep the necromancer, altho the sorceress basically fills the mage-type class, necromancer is ALL what its about in Diablo. I mean, you're raising the undead, cursing hapless mobs left and right and bringing down the wrath of the zombie lord himself on all manner of witless meatbags. it is a wholly unique class that doesn't even come close to the warlock-type class in WoW. I can't believe they'd just dump that. I wanna believe they'll keep the necromancer. my adored & esteemed colleague proposes they will keep the assassin or the amazon, and that the necromancer will be forsaken. he thinks the assassin in the rogue-type role could hold more power with versatility of weapon usage, stealth and assassination skill. valid points, all. and the amazon, whom I enjoyed playing so much in D2, what a great class based on skill tree alone and not necessarily utility. ranged weapons, an avatar that makes her almost valkyrie, hand combat with javelins. what a darling. but...who will they shave off the roster as a playable class? we're in a quandry.
but here's the cinchy clincher folks, as only I can bring it to the tabula rasa (I mean that in the original Latin, not in game name reference here folks): D3's added novelty will be that you can play all classes as either male or female. male or female barbarian, male or female paladin. its such a new-millenium concept right?
except, you cannot play a male amazon as I mention so insightfully to my adored & esteemed colleague.
>.<
so, my staunch position is that the amazon will be dropped from the lineup, and her skills (primarily thrown or ranged) likely allocated to either the assassin or between the assassin and the barbarian. *sigh* we're going on and on about this like total game geeks, but realize in the end, they may keep all the classes and just divide them up between the core release and the expan. lulz on us.
enough of the permutable class options. my adored & esteemed colleague and I natter on about what improvements we'd like to see, among the highlights being crap actually worth spending the shiteloads of gold you accumulate ingame or adjusting the loot drop so you aren't a damn millionaire before lut gholein for instance, with nothing but dead harem girls to spend it on. we talk about having vendors with access to items like gems or unique items. we mention it would be nice to see mobs in other venues than jungle/desert/etc.: what kind of mob or stage hasn't been explored yet that would coincide with game lore? hell we could go on about this for days.
point is, we rolled some chars to run thru a battle.net game for old time's sake. originally, I rolled an amazon, cause I just love her and as said previously, I believe her days are numbered due to her gender exclusivity. but then...but then...this one time? at the rogue camp? .....
I had to roll a necromancer because my adored & esteemed colleague convinced me that dual necro would just blow everything out of the fucking kiddie pool. and damn if he wasn't right. trolling the jungle with our respective skeletal armies (his 6 and my 6, plus golems for both) made for a maddeningly sweet steamrolling experience. maddeningly insane. the skeletal mages are plowing through mobs, the golems are tearing flesh into pretty muti-colored confetti, the skeletal warriors are hacking left and right through those fucking little midgets and we are just standing back cursing the living hell out of shit and looting the bodies like tiptoeing through the tulips. I rawr'd.
in fact, it was almost too epic. we should have rolled on a harder level. like nightmare. yeah, we're that good that we gore and spit-roast it til its nearly falling off the bone, and then bring it on a platter with an apple in its mouth and a sprig of parsley on the side. eat that, baal.
we're in the car driving to get chicken for dinner. twinkie 1 is singing to herself while twinkie 2 and boy wonder are horsing around, tickling each other, poking each other and giggling up a storm. there is a particularly riotious episode of laughter when twinkie 2 squeals in disgust:
"EEEEEEWWWWWW, YOU SPIT RIGHT IN MY MOUTH!"
to which boy wonder replied with the most perfectly executed undead warlock laugh, "heh heh heh! now you have Boy DoTs."
and he pronounced it "dots" too.
I'm so freakin' proud....
cleaning the kitchen scrupulously, disinfecting the counters. this is a process that requires a high level of sanitation for the best quality product. last thing you want to do is poison your family after all this frickin' work.
yesterday was the first batch of jam day. I realize why in amish communities and throughout history the domestic work of women was bolstered by camraderie and teamwork, as I do every year undertaking this kind of crap. many hands make short work of tedious tasks. scrubbing, boiling, blanching, slicing, measuring, tending to the cooking. you stand a lot. you get very sticky. humorous company during this labor would have been welcomed. happily ~ total win here~ I avoided either stabbing, slicing, burning, scalding or otherwise injuring myself during the first process. the fates smile upon me for once.
now, you might think what precious, antiquated simulacrum of self-serving pioneerism compells me to do all this with the windfall of peaches? or how I'll do it again in september when my arbor is burgeoningly begging me for clipping clusters of concord grapes for grape jam and grappa, and the 50 year old rhubarb plant requires culling and slicing and freezing for coffee cakes and muffins. or in october when I'll pick the apples off the two trees and slice them for the freezer. truly, I'm not the kind of woman who starry-eyed reads self-sufficiency books about how you can grow your own food easily and cheaply. that my darlings, is total bullshit. there is no easily or cheaply about this.
I think it just boils down to my perturbance at letting anything good go to waste. this frugality will be the death of me. its nice to be able to give the few tolerable neighbors I have a jar of sparkly, unrefined and fully natural tasting homemade something or other. it surprises them, coming from miz technogeekgirl who spends most of her time gaming. if they only knew the fascinating scientific appeal of the brute chemistry involved in making jam, the'd realize I'm not just a domestic goddess playing dress up in t-shirts with "d20 ftw!" pasted across the front.
first batch of jam comes out serenely divine, jars sealed up nicely, jam set spectacularly. I could not stop licking my fingers it was so succulent. despite the fact we should have waited about 12 hrs to access the first jar it was impossible. half a loaf of bread and one empty jelly jar later, we're all content that the picking, fuzz-scratchy and sweating was worth every agonizingly delicious bite.
back to my simple syrups, blanching and hot packing.
my clingstone peach tree suffered a terrible tragedy, resulting in a premature harvest and an abundance of potential peachy goodness for all.
which in part led to a dilemma. big storms through the area, heavy winds. this past wednesday I looked out to see that two of the three main branches, one of them the leader of the trunk, sheared straight off. the two most peach-burdened limbs lay on the rain-soaked ground. my heart just cried! all those lovely peaches and my tree coddled through two years snapped in half. the trunk was nearly four inches around where the shear occurred.
unfortunately, the fruit once sampled revealed that the sugars were nowhere near developed enough to pick despite the purply peachy skins. they could have used another month on the tree to sweeten up. most were still smallish. I decided to leave the limbs where they were and let the fruit hang until it started to drop, so that it would get as ripe as possible before being forced to pick them.
yesterday morning they started to drop so we sawed the branches off and laid the cut portions on the trampoline. armed the minihorde with bags and baskets and set them to work plucking the fruit. sweaty and peach-fuzz scratching, the twinkies pulled and collected all the ruby blushed fruit they could. boy wonder picked up all the dropped fruit around the perimeter. when we were done, the poor maimed tree looked insufficiently limbed to even survive this. fully a quarter of the fruit is still on the living limbs with hopes they'll continue to grow/ripen.
god knows I couldn't have picked all the fruit so I'm glad for this last part. as it is, I have three bushels worth of peaches in my kitchen right now.
sad, spindly tree. I hope she'll recover. then the conundrum: how to find a use for all these peaches.
triple_g in gamers:and seriously echoed here with wtfness?
http://www.massively.com/2008/07/11/mark-jacobs-announces-major-features-cut-from-warhammer-online/
(sadly, I know a very dear someone in particular who is going to be a weepy mess over this little tidbit of total gaming ballbusting)
gleckia. like I told her, the younguns don't believe me when I tell them of this fateful time in history. they just chalk it up to one more of my "episodes."the weather here is particularly pleasant, and I'm loving all the rain and the damp loveliness of the very heavily forested mountains. all that moist, humidly pleasant, body-caressing wetness just hanging in the air. I wish I could describe it to you more; since you've grown up and lived somewhere else your whole life, in my impression it might be hard to imagine just how muggy but actually enjoyably so it is.
and the smell of everything is overwhelmingly nostalgic for me. we drove into town from the state route that I used to take when I lived in college and drove to see my grandparents once every month or so. the road is incredibly winding, with hairpin turns and the kind of curves that make you feel you're driving in one of the craziest road rage games. seriously sick, somebody should map out the road for some insane track for *any* racing game, its just blisteringly tough to drive.
driving in this way, which was about a 40 min drive, I had to put all the windows down and let the whole humid, resplendent air wash over me. it untames my hair into whipped silver threads caught between my lips, and turns my skin to this dewey pinkness that makes my eyes shine green as new magnolia pods. that smell, the combination of freshly washed pine trees and gently decaying pine needles, mimosa trees in their garish flouncyness and creek beds sponged thick with runoff. everything wet and blooming and new.
that's what sprung my heart. to see this place that changes and never changes, smell the same things that as a child reminded me I was coming home. that wild little mountain girl came back to me, pulling me by the hand up the hill where I ran barefooted wearing clover blossom crowns and whistled crabgrass between my thumbs. I'm back to the time where the people who knew me most love me still. in the place where I rolled down hills and caught junebugs and watched fireworks and ate every delicious concoction my venerable aunts and uncle blessed us with - delicacies I can't find anywhere but here. all that sweet tea and apple butter and banana pudding, green beans and new potatoes and roasting ears of corn, fried pies, tomatoes and peaches that dripped down my chin and made me grin.
something about here is what I needed, only for a few days. maybe I need more. it grounds me, bolsters me. when I got here I fought against being here; I want to leave, to get back to the necessary but how badly I needed this place I'm only just realizing again. I want to hear all over the gentle cadence of speech here, peppered with the pronunciation of words that confound anyone outside appalachia: twiced, warsh, git, thar, hailf, hunny, darlin. the soft and sedentary ways of those who despite being highly intelligent and educated are content to rest and sit and rock on the porch in the firefly blinking dusk while the whippoorwills twee at each other and the glittering eyes of creatures at the edge of the woods watch us. I'm alien to them all, prodigal, with my burnished brown children, my too-long-gone-from-home ways and my tastes that reach far beyond the ridge behind the house, and the next ridge, and the next. they love me nonetheless. they make me belong somewhere. rootless, unowned me, homeless, the one who belongs nowhere in particular, she needs that.
love
me
then tomorrow I'll be travelling out of town for what most would consider vacation. however, for the one who does all the laundry and plans out what will be worn by whom on what day, packs said assortment of clothing and accessories for multiple people, plans the agenda and the driving routes, fills the gas tank and tops oft the reserves as well as evens out the tire pressure, prepares and packs snacks and drinks, cleans out the car, gathers the accoutrements necessary for travel and an extended stay, sets out a schedule of when stops will be made and meals will be acquired, secures adequate in-pocket cash and lets the bank know that the cards will be used out of state, then makes sure all the bills are paid ahead of time and deliveries made/postponed until after the return, *AND* prepares so that the one not going has enough food, finances and instructions regarding pets, etc., so that he will not shrivel up and die.....
well now, that's not a vacation for one person in particular, is it?
I'll be back on or around 8 July.
previously mentioned, here is the latest grief with the leetest griefer evar, the IRS by way of the Franklin County Children's Services' ultimate back door breaking and entering without courtesy of a reach-around.
prior to adopting the Boy Wonder we were aware of a grant through the county children's social services for non-recurring adoption expenses. we applied for and received this grant from the county for the Twinkies' adoption in 2000. the stipulation of the $2,000 grant was that we had to apply for it prior to finalizing the adoption of a child. because Boy Wonder was born in the Philippines and the Inter Country Adoption Board of the Philippines required a custodial placement and six months of post placement visitations, we knew we would not finalize his adoption until 6 months after our return to the states in June of 2003. we applied for the grant upon our return from the Philippines. months later, with no reply received, we finished up our post-placement visitations and reports and received our consent to finalize. but we could not finalize until we received the approval that the grant would be....well, granted.
the county balked at giving us the grant. they told us they needed one form, then another. then somebody left the position and it went unfilled for while. then the county service workers went on strike. a year later, we still had not received the grant (this was 6 months after our consent to adopt was granted).
just to clarify this issue about the grant, this is money allocated by the Federal government to offset adoption expenses in placing a child for adoption with US citizens, whether the child is adopted domestically or internationally. the money is allocated by the government on the state level, who then administers it on the county level.
coincidentally, just so you know, the laws concerning naturalization of children adopted by American citizens changed significantly right before we adopted Boy, in that a child automatically becomes a citizen upon finalization of adoption whether it happens in the country of the child's birth or in the US (as would be our case with him).
so, according to the federal and state law and stipulations, we met every requirement, provided every document we received and copies of our homestudies, etc. there really should have been no problem with this issue. however, because we were waiting on the grant to be approved, we could not finalize his adoption. which meant the following:
- we could not get a US birth certificate
- we could not get a social security number because we did not have a birth certificate
- we could not acquire a passport as proof of identity without the social security number, and
- we could not file our federal income tax returns as we would not get credit for him as a dependant or qualify for the EIC for him.
in retrospect, we could have filed our taxes and then filed amended returns. but how the hell were we to have known it would take five years to get this child's grant approved? we kept thinking, "it should only take one more month, one more document, one more phone call." other issues really to complex to get into here are the fact that as an internationally born immigrant who was eligible for adoption he was not eligible to get a temporary SSN (we could not claim him as a depend. with that), and the fact that the certificate of citizenship issued by the BCIS was estimated to take approximately 24 to 36 months to be received after application. the muck just gets deeper and deeper.
since we get a refund every year (due to the amortization of the federal adoption credit for the Twinkies still running concurrently every year), we filed an extension and began a long and arduous battle with the county in which we live for what boiled down to a fight to whether Boy Wonder qualified as both a) a lawfully relinquished child and b) a candidate for US citizenship.
I'm talking phone calls, extensive phone calls. visits to the county children's services office. calls to our congressional representative, every lawmaker we could find, attorneys, our adoption agencies, social workers, advocates, the representatives in the Philippines and eventually an attorney in Manila and the Ambassador to the Philippines.
when finally I camped out at the children's services offices and refused to leave unless they gave me the reason why they were balking, I was gonna lie right down and let the police carry me out while I called the local tv station on my cell, I literally had the temporary director of this program say to me:
"well, we really don't like to give this grant to foreign born children. we prefer to give it to children who are adopted within the county."
.......
(insert rant here)
at this point, the battle for the grant turned into an ethical and moral sacred cow for me, the ire that spawned in me was venomous and unstoppable. what it really boiled down to was that the county children's services refused to give this grant to my kid because he had the mischance of being born in another country. it didn't matter he was special needs, or met every legal requirement for this grant. they wanted to keep the money, as she SPECIFICALLY told me, "in the system."
(follow up rant here)
.......
ok rant over. at this point it was 2006. three years until they would even give me this answer. to which I blew an almighty gasket as he was QUALIFIED UNDER THE FEDERAL STIPULATION AS AN ADOPTABLE CHILD, VERIFIED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLACED WITH US WITH ALL DUE LEGAL PROCESS AND BY GOD WE WERE FREAKING RESIDENTS OF THIS COUNTY AND HIS ADOPTION *WOULD* TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME STINKING COUNTY."
(assorted colorful and unique swearing to be inserted here).
this is very complex. we could not apply for a certificate of citizenship without either one document or another that we did not have. could not get a passport for the same reason. could not get a birth certificate for the same reason. everything tied up in everything else, all because the county would not allocate a stinking $2K grant to us for a child who under every letter of the law was qualified to receive it. it did not even matter to them that he had been qualified special needs, they just firmly refused to budge.
so for the next year and a half I called every day. I mean every day. every stupid freaking day. begging, nagging...."what more do you want from us? what is it gonna take for you to recognize that the federal and state government already recognize what you will not?"
finally, long time coming. long time. 2007 we finally received their grudging admission that they would allocate the grant to him but this was after we had already spent money in attorney's fees and the expense of having our home study redone, fed ex packets of information and further documentation sent from Manila, zillions of phone calls to everybody in the world asking for intervention. it was a clear financial loss but a moral victory despite the cost.
even though they would not release the grant until they had his adoption finalization documents from the county probate court, we could at least proceed with the legal finalization. this was in June of 2007. four years after he came home. we succeeded in having a wonderful judge and an easy process, thank god, but seriously, this issue was not over so easily.
it took us 18 weeks to get his birth certificate due to a glitch in the system, which delayed getting a passport. once we got his birth certificate and applied for the passport, the passport agent told us we did not need to send X document with the application. we paid the expediting fee, only to find 4 weeks later (2 later than the anticipated expedition receipt) that we did need X document, which we fed ex'd. our passport for him did not arrive for another 10 weeks. so much for expedite fees.
then, we have the birth certificate, the passport, and go to social security. oh please....please don't get me started on that damn rigmarole. in theory, they sent his card. we never received it. had to go back and get another. never received the second. on the third go, I just got the number and said fuck the card.
at this point, we had re-spent almost 2.5x the amount of the grant getting the stupid grant approved, but I felt it had turned into more of a fight for my kid's right to be recognized on the county level for what he was on the federal and international level, a perfectly qualified child who was relinquished legally in his country of birth (with every documentation attesting that fact), who was a child of US citizens, who's sisters had already previously been awarded this grant, and who's adoption would be finalized in the county responsible for recognizing this.
at this point, its January of 2008!!!! wheeeeee! happy new year! and we get our first letter from the IRS. you did not file, and we is gonna charge you $8,000 in back tax for 2003 and a penalty of $900. a week later, the second, for 2004. and...you can guess the pattern from here on out.
we go back, find our docs, restructure our expenses. complete our taxes, mail them certified. they get the 2003 but not the 2004, and then we get the letter for the 2005.
its long, all of this. but the stress of having the IRS breathing down your neck for proposed past-due taxes and non-filing penalties sucks. I'll eventually get the taxes all done, it just takes such a long, long time to sort out what year each expense happened in (and I'm talking adoption expense, as you can only claim it in the year the adoption is finalized). thank god we don't itemize. we will eventually receive a clear record for this, but you can imagine how tense the situation is, because they make it very clear that if you don't respond or reply in a favorable manner, all sorts of liens, penalties and seizures can happen. the fact that I will work my everloving ass off to make sure this does not happen doesn't really diminish the worry and concern that we're defaulting on paper this many years of taxes. and recreating your tax situation in previous years from the accumulation of documents and diaries, well let me tell you its just one more damn thing I have to manage.
the gratitude of all of this is, at least he's done. at least the last hurdle was cleared. now for the financial headache of dealing with the IRS and things should be just fucking peachy.
I don't often go on about how hard it is to be a gamer and do the mom thing, but here's a little bit of gamer happiness that happened despite real life.
I issue the edict to the realm: "you canNOT interrupt me for the duration of this match -- if you have any questions or problems you must go to the padre and let him mediate all conflicts. do not ask me for snacks or tell me somebody called you a booger head or ask if you can bring peanut butter jars of ants into the house. I will be more than happy to accommodate you AFTER the match so please give me 30 minutes of uninterrupted concentration on smearing the pulpy innards of the blasted orks and squishily penetrable imperial guards all over the landscape with my dreadnaughts. Period."
it lasts perhaps 10 minutes. I'm off to a ragingly decent start acquiring my resources and fighting like the living hellcats of satan's own whorehouse when the first inopportune moment happens: "waaaaaaaah! I was doing blah blah and then blah blah and then HE THREW A LOG ON MY FOOT! AAAAAAHHHHHH!" as quickly as possible I triage the damage, hug, toss the injured a cookie and shuffle her off, then try to recoup my position on the map. my machine cult is up and running, I scan through what research updates need making, get all the loser servitors off their asses and repairing damages.
within five more minutes or so somebody's wailing with a bee sting. ingame freneticism while I set my marines in cover and turn the dreadnaughts onto patrol, scrape stinger out, turn over the stung littl'un to the padre for ministration of injuries. then have to deprive a starving child for whom two cowtails, a paper cup of Yan-Yan cookies with frosting and a bowl of shrimp chips was just not enough to stave off hunger. I tell him, whatever you want to eat help yourself only please please please don't interrupt me again or remember how those flayers in WoW get all enraged, blazing red and three times their size when you keep pummelling them? I don't think you're geared to take that on, buddy.
I recover, build up my marines once again. then the third comes in having fallen off the playset, bloodied and wailing. at that point, I realize that although I've attempted to secure the vital center core of the map I am going to lose, lose, lose in very painful and gut-grinding ways. I resign myself to certain death and abandon what I'd started with such high hopes, and literally leave the map, game running, to tend to the necessities of this and that. during the bandaging, I also deal with two arguments, one about somebody eating somebody else's ferreted-away snack, and another one discussing with the padre about Twinkie 2 not turning in her homework again and therefore likely having to miss a zoo trip planned for her class. I answer 13 questions about can we get hula hoops from the attic and when can we go buy sandals and can we take babydoll strollers out into the yard and can we listen to Tom Jones on the stereo and can we have tocino for dinner and I think I hear the ice cream man coming....
I get back a full 20 or 30 minutes later. I've been annihilated, of course. sooooo irked but generally apologetic to my gaming partner. days like this, I don't even know why I try gaming its so full of fail.
and he just laughs and emotes all kinds of smiles at me. tells me he tapped out at around 18 minutes into the match. and then, tells me that I was the last one defeated by the winning computer AI.
.....huh?
I have to go back in and exit the game so I can see the standings. whaddya know. he was dead right. oh my freaky, FREAKY goodness.....
so yeah. despite all the craziness, I'm riding a two day high over this. just imagine what I could accomplish if I *weren't* distracted.
/dance
for the past month or so no less than four people on my flist made posts about hair and the arrival or one or two of the colorless strands that cause you pause. so I'm writing about this today and posting several of the most recent pix of mine in . . . . solidarity? with respect to the originally private nature of these pictures, as they were taken expressley for someone, I debated posting them at all. yet because the horse I'm riding is at least 30 hands high when it comes to individuality, I had to give my little pictoral testimonial to the nature of hair. its the hair, its the color, its all mine. and I did not come to love it easily or in all due course.
on the paternal side of my family, premature white. as in like white hair in their twenties but stunningly white. the kind that you see on blood elves and in japanese mystery horror films. on the maternal side also a premature color loss but not very attractive, the kind of half-drenched urban blacktop after a trepidatious August rainstorm kind of color loss. for years my mother, whom I look like genetically and sound identical to, had forlornly admonished me (not in words but by practice) to follow practice and color my hair.
that would be the coloring of the colorless hairs. and in case you were wondering my hair used to be a very deep and flattering auburn. like some of my flist who posted in their LJ, in my 20's I saw the first colorless strands (the red strands lost their color before any of the darkly pigmented ones) and was wholly fascinated at how one strand of hair could frost itself overnight. but to me it was just hair, always mine. I loved the texture and color and feel of it all silky and thick and how it suited me just fine. yet I followed that line that generally people are afraid of bucking perception and try their damndest to prevent the fact that they are indeed aging, all thinking that it was somehow wrong to *not* color my hair and keep it that gorgeous auburn.
and I was all caught up preserving what I thought I loved about my hair in that way women do when they keep the same style for decades or refuse to admit that they are a separate personality from the visual importance and representation of power, sexuality and identity that is affixed to hair. the deeply affecting percetion of hair as an expression of personality and sensuality is something ingrained in us. even when we change our hair as frequently as furnace filters its because we're reinforcing our the whimsical, flexible and adventurous sides of our personas.
and here's what changed all that. without going into detail, I had major surgery (no it was not gender reassignment, just in case you're wondering the worst :P), after which I gave up on a lot of things. I stopped caring about what happened to me, what people thought of me, about goals and dreams and anything more than getting through a very sad time in my life. I felt it necessary to plumb some of the really rock bottomy depths of all the "why nots" in my life. I stopped coloring my hair and welcomed the come-and-be-damned whatever would befall me. and I cut all my hair off. In the end, my hair was this short and even shorter on the sides and back:
and to my surprise with every bit of the color cut out, it was....unexpected and shocking. Beautiful, strange, eye-opening, and wrong, oh so very, very wrong in the best way. I laughed my fool head off in victory. I'd found the perfect expression for how that time in my life made me feel. the hairdresser did not know what to say, except "now that's going to make a lot of people to look twice."
the impact on my family and people who knew me was explosive. everybody had an opinion, and felt it their duty to tell me how I was ripping the very fabric of everybody's status quo to confetti. my aunts, older than me by years, indignant with "how could you" and "you make us all look bad (as they still color their hair);" friends my age told me it made me look old and tired because it was the same color as "old people's hair;" kindergarteners in the twinkies' first school and strangers in the grocery store mistook me for my kids' grandmother -- bwah! oh I'm sure there were lots of 30-something grandmothers, only I wasn't one.
but for those who actually looked at me and why I did it instead of thinking I did it to upset the delicate perceptive order of the world as it related to them, I received a lot of very positive commentary, mostly along the lines of: where did I get such a gorgeous highlighting job, was it as silky as it looked, how unusual it was to see somebody as young as me with the balls to let it shine. a lot of stunned appreciation, murmurred compliments, and a lot of very, very nice attention from poeple (predominantly men) both young and old who on first and second glance realized I was a) not as old as my hair made me seem and b) not as young as my face made me seem.
people assume because of the color and the idea that as it ages our hair brittles that my hair is as steely hard as the color implies. now that its grown out over the years, and is back to its long, silky silvery length, its even more striking. I think I remember telling my wolfie in a conversation that it is a regular occurrence when I'm out shopping or in relaxed social situations I get a lot of questions about my hair, expressly, curious requests to touch it and pleasantly astonished responses when people do as yes, it feels luxuriously textured which I guess is in juxtaposition to the visual impression it gives.
some people say they would take the same path I did, but honestly they fear having to deal with the social pressure to conform, or they do not have the daily will to face the scrutiny, or they don't really want to make a statement about how individual they are. its hard to take this path. I rarely see people my age who have chosen to do the same as I have. maybe that's harsh. maybe they really need a good circumstance like mine to serve as the impetus to jump off into this realm. mostly they make comments about how they are sure their hair would not be attractive this same color, or how they don't want to be considered old before their time. that's fine, all well and good.
I know however, the friends on my flist who are experiencing the moments where the silver is coming through, you are the ones who are aging gracefully, looking at the advent of this moment with curiosity and interest, and looking for the day when it will be an integral part of your life, your personality and appearance. and I'm telling you, its worth it.
so there's my tale. as I explain it, its nice to have hair the color of 23.13% of all RPG characters's hair. the ones who love me know well know how I look but here you go (and yes, I do look a little sleep deprived in one of them, but that's my life) :
I think it can only get better from here.
What follows is purely opinion-driven proposal, so take it as such. Its all suggestive, and not meant to be taken comprehensively: an all-access buffet, feel free to sample whatever you see that you like.
Re-evaluate and/or re-work your mission statement
Seriously. Scrutinize this. Then come up with concrete ways you are meeting that mission, in *effective* and proactive ways. And remember please, its quality, not quantity that achieves this result. Examine how it suits contemporary gaming culture for women, how it supports that. Pick it apart -- are there sections that sound wonderful but are impossible to execute in practice by site administration? Maybe it needs a reworking, either to reflect your changing goals, the changing culture of women in gaming, or the industry standard. Companies do this all the time as a respectible practice that they are keeping pace with the industry. Believe us, we will respect you the morning after. We will. Promise.
Re-assess the goals of your site
If you are going to provide news articles that people want to visit your site to read, they have to be well reported on, well written and concise. This is going to require more than somebody writing a one sentence blurb and posting a link -- take it from me, we can do that in the forum just as easily, and have -- often before the information is posted in the News Forum. If you want gaming news to be a part of this site, you need to find somebody who can write your gaming news for you. Otherwise, your intent to provide gaming news is pointless when we can get this information more informatively from another site. If this is not possible, you need to rethink the time and effort you are putting into gaming news you post on the site.
First rule of retail: if you are going to offer a storefront, it needs to sell things that people want.
Hype your scholarships, your contests and those offered by the industry. Consider become a clearinghouse of relevant information directing users to the kinds of things they want to do (win games, participate in surveys, download free games, find indie games, etc.).
Job sites that offer specifically tailored searches for tech positions are as common as LJ memes. If you're going to feature jobs, you have to make people want to look at that section, especially if you are putting a lot of time and effort into it, otherwise its really not worth your effort.
Unless you are featuring hard to find, little known or indie games, the games playing section is not in any way unique from the hundreds of other sites where these can be found.
If you are going to have editorial content that informs, edifies or supports your site's goals, it needs to be more frequent, more varied by author and more contemporaneous. You do not have to hire anybody to do this, as there are many qualified writers (many of them exist in your membership base) who could provide this service gratis.
Re-structure your content
You need more content, more relevant content, more contemporary content, more insightful and inspiring and interesting content. You need more user-created content. In a sandbox genre gaming world, why can we not create the WomenGamers world we all want to live in?
Here is a good sampling of what you could use to even make you industry standard among gaming sites:
- podcast created by members
- reviewing or featuring podcasts
- more relevant and frequent interviews
- more editorials with greater breadth of opinion
- more game reviews with a womengamer's perspective
- more tech discussion
- more personal PoV participation events (question of the day, polls, chat sessions or talkshoe live events)
- more access to game related news across the internet
- access to game demos, trailers and video content
Suggestions for growing and keeping membership valuation
Institute a membership representation organization of possibly three members (one long-time, one short-time, one Euro member possibly, or some combination): even credit unions have committees meant to represent the majority members and their interests. Don't give me crap about hurting anybody's feelings through a nomination or election process -- we live in democratic societies. Terms could be short. This group could be a sounding board for concerns, help evaluate and implement content changes, make suggestions for improvements, and generally help to find ways to make the site more exciting, accessible and productive. It saves you having to hear all the complaints, and it prevents you from looking callous when you are unable to respond to every one of those complaints personally.
Consider going beyond the appreciable but dated concept of the forum interview. We need podcast interviews. We need podcasts period. User-created podcasts. User created video. Anything MORE than purely text based information.
Consider implementing a tiered membership system that will aid you in monitoring posted content, personalized icons and sig lines, images posted in threads, etc.. Its done in guilds with access to resources. Additionally, a code of conduct in writing that you can rely on in situations where behavior is called into question could save you a lot of hassle. This is without question a gaping hole in this site for which a code of conduct could pre-emptively prevent enormous amounts of administration by the staff and moderators to be poured into.
Yes, you have your representation here and there on the internet and in person at gaming events. Why not have WomenGamer's affiliates in cities across the country and the world who would be willing to tout the site, their participation, and generally be your walking PR committee + billboard (read: free t-shirts and give-aways) at ANY kind of gaming event or con. On an individual level, like members, given the blessing to wear your gear and talk about your site to anybody they meet at events they attend. I mean, we all go to those, don't we? We all shop in game stores, right? What does this cost you? Really, not much for the amount of exposure and word of mouth that could be generated. We are your best, free advocacy.
Suggestions for increasing membership participation and loyalty
Contests are good (i.e., user icon design contest, sig line contest, new t-shirt design contest, site motto contest, even goofy stuff like a site mascot contest, WomenGamers Game of the Month/Year, random drawings, wtf ever)
Scheduled gaming sessions or user participation - mini tourneys for halo, COD4, TeamFortress, what have you. make your prizes free t-shirts, messenger bags or non-cash compensation (this is another thing your committee could organize for you)
Allow users to write some of the editorials, reviews or news features. Here's the bonus -- it costs you nothing, yet earns you everything. Your readership doubles in that whoever writes for you will likely get their family/friends/contacts reading the content as well.
Schedule a Q&A podcast or chat session with somebody the membership would really like to talk with -- game developer, gaming icon, somebody notable in the industry who'd be willing to participate in an open-chat forum. Allow participants outside the womengamers membership to sit in on this and listen. Require a code of conduct be signed for participation by members, and suspend users who don't abide by it.
Feature game-related merchandise reviews, content and access -- itsy.com has hundreds of artists making things like dice earrings, geekbaby accoutrements, gamergirl clothing, fimo jewelry based on game characters, art, etc.
Bottom line
If your lives are really too busy or detracting from prioritizing what this site needs, please consider all of us willing to help/assist/implement this. Let us help to make this site a place we want to be active participates in. Rely on our skills. Don't shy from implementing change that has the possibility to veer from your perception of a user-owned, monitored and moderated site: this site has the bones, the history, the caring members and the excellent administrative staff to continue reflecting values we all share.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now having posted all this, I'm challenging any other participant on this site to do the following: if you have something to say regarding any of the foregoing, feel free but don't come bitching about crap if you don't have a suggestion for a solution. And not a selfish, personalized one or two things that would make *you* feel better, but things that are actually cost-effective, feasible, manageable and site-supportive. There's nothing productive at this point in venting for venting's sake -- step up and say what you've gotta say in a constructive way or you are more than welcomed to gtfo.
Dear WomenGamers.com:
I've loved you for a long time now, since you were barely a few months old. I've watched you grow and flourish in an age where advocacy for women in gaming was innovative. I read you daily, followed your news, immersed myself in the forums and adored the posts and posters alike. There are those who have been here longer or shorter that I have, with less participation or vastly more than mine. I'm only one of your many admirers. And yet, I find myself remembering what you were like more than enjoying you for what you are anymore. In fact, I don't think I recognize exactly what you're trying to do for me.
You went to all that work to revamp the site, update your image, comb your hair a different way. You look luscious and smart, well-put together. But the more I hang around, the more I realize your substance has not changed. I feel you aren't offering me anything that I can't get somewhere else, somewhere like 1up, Kotaku, gamasutra, gametrailers, magicbox or heaven forbid, IGN. I mean, here's a harsh wake-up call but honestly, you don't even rank with the content I get from LiveJournal's gamer_girls community for godsake.
I don't understand why you want me around, I mean, in the forums or on the portal site side. The site is divided neatly into two halves, the informative side and the forum side and rarely do the two interact or support each other. And I hate to say it but both halves are failing me.
On the one side, we have the portal. I think that's what you mean it to be in the 1990's sense of website design. A place where you can look at jobs, get news blurbs, see the latest reviews, and shop if you like. Only this concept fails me when I can get that information better and faster and with more concise delivery from the news sites you are linking me to follow. Honestly, I can set up an RSS feed on my own blog to siphon that information directly from the incepting sites to my blog or inbox without having to visit the news forum. In eight years I have never purchased anything from the store because there is never anything new there that I would say, "oh I gotta have that!" The job section, well that is a very handy thing if you live on the east or west coast and are looking for gaming industry jobs but for the rest of us in between the coasts, in Canada and Europe, how many of us can say we frequent that section? In the Games section, I can get any number of the games you link or promote through any other site specifically dedicated to offering dowloadable content, with effective downloaders and demos. And while I am a diehard Geek Woman fan, I have to say your editorial/review section is severely, morbidly lacking in *amount* (not in quality, please note). One review every month or so, and not of necessarily contemporaneous games/hardware/tech but of standard industry games we could find reviews of on any other site like Yahoo! Games for instance. With all the excessive information, none of it shines, all of it mumbles together. All that information clammoring at me at the same time, what is it you're trying to say to me? That you are a gaming review site? A jobs portal? A news hub? A cache for great indie or small dev games (i.e., "Play Games at WomenGamers")?
How is this meant to inspire us to keep coming back to the site to see what you have to say? What is it you feel is deserving of the market share attention you are working for? Why do you think you are the same caliber of other sites that have more editorials, more user features, more user contributed content, more active forums, more up-to-date and comprehensive news (comprehensive meaning, "reported on, not just linked to"), more defined intent to provide a specific service to the gaming community and MORE GAME STUFF, PERIOD....? Why are you resting on your laurels, is it because by your mission you "represent?" Because its expensive to keep up with other sites like that? Because its too hard or you're too busy?
Your content is....great when I see it but I don't see it nearly enough to make me feel you are filling the objectives you had in mind when you wrote your mission statement, or that you're fulfilling what it is you want to do most for women gamers by offering a community that ranks with any of the hundreds of other gaming sites and still distinguishes itself from them. Because honestly, there is no community, just a bunch of information that is lumped together without any contemporary edge or deep relevancy to gaming in general.
Which brings me to the other side, where we have the forums. The Women(and Men)Gamers-driven voice of the special interest gaming sector that has for years supported the WG site, encouraged others to come, perpetuated the interest in what's going on here. All I can say is, why are we pouring so much love and admiration into staying here, and perhaps lingering where we're not getting our gaming information needs and desires met? We want to believe what you stand for, we believe it too. We want to be proud not just of what you've accomplished in the past, but what you are doing and continuing to provide the gaming community. Only, in my eyes and my heart I don't feel that I'm getting one ounce of what I really need from you other than the cameraderie of like-minded people who, like me, are starved for content to whet their wit, opinion and participatory membership on. Not only are we starved for content, but we are famished for *user* content as well. Why is it not possible for the users to help build the content of this site that other than posting in a predominantly text based, img-dropping, personalization-lacking bbs style forum?
I know I am not the only one feeling like the love has died, or is at least struggling on life-support. This does not mean I do not appreciate everything you've done, all the work gone into the site revamp. Its very nice how its all reorganized. But like a guy who tells me he's gonna change, I'm finding that really not much has substantively changed: your content is thin, the search engine for the forums is essentially the same as before the revamp (only this time, a huge chunk of archives is inaccessible, as I've mentioned in a previous post in the forums), and there is even less for us to feel a symbiotic relationship with between the membership and the site itself. I miss my friends, Brumm and Beli and Dac and every other single player here, all of whom have an opinion of substance I want to hear and discuss and discourse and laugh with, not just lol over the latest pic in the Kitty Thread. Our conversations in general are reduced to substandard emotes in impotent response to bored posts on topics that come further and further apart.
Please don't make this about how I don't understand how hard you've worked, or your dedication, or the fact that you are people with real lives because I get all that. Don't misunderstand my voiced concern as a LACK of consideration when it is exactly the opposite. And its not all about complaining, because without some suggestions for solutions this post would be worthless.
For months now, I spend my mornings scouring the internet for interesting news, articles, gaming stories, release information, trailers, special interest editorials, *anything* that I could post on your forum to incite your membership to engage and populate any kind of discussion. Only now I see what I've been doing -- trying to pull any interestingly relevant content and plunk it down on your site because its not there to begin with. I can honestly say every thing I've tried in the past nine months has been in an effort to buoy what was once a place I envied being a contributing part of. Even in criticism I've attempted to be plaintive yet productive. I've tried my very damndest to keep the love alive, even pouring my heart out in this post and many others. It would be so easy to bitch about what's wrong and then tail-end it out of here but I just can't. Neither can the rest of us suspended in inactivity who are waiting for something, anything to make us want to stay and keep you alive.
~Belle
Yeah I like it, I love it, I want some more of it. My learning curve is somewhat off and with all due respect to my patron, I will never get up to speed as quickly as he has. Not that I'm incapable of actually getting there darlin, its just that so many things prevent me from immersing myself wholly in the game itself for huge chunks of time; I get easily distracted by the goings on here; I have three other games going simultaneously; my nature is to take it methodically and in regular bites until I master levels, then progess to newer undiscovered territoy; plus you tend to be the best distraction yourself above all other things. And the fact remains that my gaming style, while agressive in versus AI play, entails exploring the depth of the factions, unit structure and strategic play by engaging the other factions in a level playing field. In other words, with most RTSs I can play the scenarios over and over again with losses and still enjoy the gameplay despite infrequent wins.
As I've mentioned, its getting there but its gonna take a while for me to get up to speed. Or at least get to a level where I can hold my own against you in multiplayer. My ignorance of the factions, the specific structure progression, the resource development, and keeping on top of it all while not losing my mind (a key component to staying sharp in RTS), these little detriments are for now going to inhibit my ability to play as aggressively as is necessary to singular victory over the computer gen'd players and you in multiplayer.
The good thing is I do love this game, love it to freaking kibbles and bits. I am constantly reading forums to improve my play, watching the replays, and as always am my harshest yet most constructive critic. For instance, it did give me some confidence that the general opinion is the AI in the multiplayer version virtually requires you to play steamrollingly aggressive from the minute the clock starts or you end up bent over your Chapel Barracks with your squads penetrated by all manner of heavy artillery mech in the most vicious, armor-rupturing ork-banging an underappreciated Space Marine could sustain. Its a tribute to my perseverance that I don't *mind* that kind of thing and that I'll go back again and again for more until one day, I'm gonna flip those mutherfakkers and be the one delivering the magic missle to the rear flank.
Now for me right now in this early stage of getting my bearings and learning about a game I never experienced before, you know most assuredly and I've mentioned this, that its still gonna take me a while until I can hold my own against you in any self-created multiplayer map. In this particular genre you are much more adapted, responsive and knowledgeable about your strategy and tactics with regards to the faction you are playing, plus you have played all the games in the Platinum version. So yeah, I might beat you silly sauce in Puzzle Quest, but you are (for now) always gonna pwn my sweetass in DoW. And you know what? I'm ok with that as you well know. :) I can't be beating you all the time or you'll just become a shadow of the win gamerguy you are. Take my complimentary adoration of your skill in this game and wear it like epic PvP gear 'cause you deserve it hun.
For now I get the biggest kick out of beating asses to butter in the skirmishes and seeing my skills get progressively better and my tactical play win levels. Yeah I still need to go back and finish the campaigns. And then, there are the other factions I want to play so badly. I may never log off Steam, seriously. And someday, just so you know? I am gonna be leveled and skilled enough to take you on and make you eat your Imperial Guards smeared on toast, with honey and a steaming cup of holy-fuck-did-she-just-beat-the-living-shite-out-of-me-or-WHAT.
Yes I love this game, and I love you eternally for giving me this experience, for all your encouragement and your blatant flattery (p.s. don't stop doing that part, cause I likes it so much). It is effing gorgeous to play with you and watch you pwn the AI and me. As you'll well recall I've told you honestly there is something so damn sexy in acceding the day to the victor and having him spare me no quarter. Promise me you'll spare me no quarter, right? Even if I lie down and beg prettily? You *always* make me glad to be pwnd by you....
need to get my EU account re-activated.
I has a bucket of fail.
and I'll call her like every year. and she will be gracious and thank me for wishing her a nice mother's day. but really we both know what a thankless little shite I am.
I get to sleep late. even if it is on the sofa and everybody is whispering around, scuffling, wrapping paper shuffled. I'm awake but pretend I'm not. I smell the coffee and whatever it is they're making with their dad's help.
Come eat breakfast and we made it just for you and will you open my present now and can I get you some coffee? its sweet, so sweet.
breakfast is mini-sausage biscuts, hash browns, pineapple juice, coffee. an enormous apple danish that they eyed like ravenous buzzards until I offered to quarter it and share it with them. :)
a lovely mother's day card with (yayglomps) a renewed GameStop Edge card inside.
a pen that looks like this, that Twinkie 2 made for me at school, because I never have a pen handy that is both functional *and* beautiful. so now, I do:
A picture frame that looks like this that Twinkie 1 made for me in school, except way more personalized with pastel insect stickers and a picture of her in the middle, because I don't have nearly as many things made of popsicle sticks as I wish I did:
and a very fashionable jute and pony bead necklace personal crafted for me by Boy Wonder, that looks a little like this, which I think will go with just about everything I have (only the beads are blue and white. my best colors, of course):
a gorgeous picture of Twinkie 2 with her most recent toothless grin, in a hand-colored pic frame made at girl scouts. a similar frame made by Twinkie 1 without the picture because she was absent on that night, also personalized and colorful.
a hand-made coupon book from Twinkie 1 that informs me she will clean the kitchen 100 times but will clean her room 0 times.
a lovely handmade book from Boy Wonder about how awesome I am.
then, they all absented the house for the next three hours so I could game in silence. it doesn't get any better than this, folks.