--- April 9th, 2007 - Later Evening ---

I never update this damned thing. Part of me wonders if anyone ever even reads it. Particularly the very few people (aka, the same people whose diaries/journals/blogs this diary links to) who were told that it existed in the first place.

In any case, consider this my periodic post to keep the diary from purging completely. Also, possibly a view into the highly tangential nature of the way I think...

I've been looking at fantasy art sites over the past few days. This is not surprising, as I started playing Baldur's Gate II again the other day, and there's nothing like that game to spur my obsessive-compulsive need for NPC pictures. Well, I say NPC pictures (because that's what they'd be if I was making them for one of my White Wolf pages, or was even programming a Neverwinter Nights module or something), but it's more like PC pictures. I've already beaten Baldur's Gate as the "thief with a heart of gold" who romanced Aerie and gave up a chance at godhood for love, a dashing Blade who seduced the Drow Viconia and left her behind as he ascended to the legacy of his dark father, and even as Lynette d'Aquitaine (my House Fiona Sidhe Changeling swordmaiden), who fell in love with the Paladin-in-training Anomen, and helped him succeed in his quest to become a potent force for Good through the power of Love (and if you have to ask if she stayed with him or became a goddess, you don't know Lynette).

I've never played out the Jaheira romance, though. So, it's looking like it's time to start rolling up a Chaotic Neutral Cleric/Mage to sweep her off her feet and change the face of the Realms forever (perhaps even bringing along the two most entertaining NPCs in the game - Minsc and Jan).

But, since I loathe reusing pictures (or names, or personalities), and I detest using the pre-made character pictures (I'm not going to use the picture of, say, Bronwen from BG1 just because she doesn't appear in BGII - that's still Bronwen, not "me"!), that sort of means that, every time I play BGII, I have to go out and find another new picture before I can play. And since I tend to like pictures that are at least somewhat similar to the other NPCs (which means no photo pics, or anime), that seriously narrows the field of what sort of pics will work for me.

So, off to loot pics from fantasy art sites I go. And since fantasy pictures of females are SO much more common than males (and the male pictures I DO find are mostly the "barbarian" archetype, which totally doesn't fit what I'm looking for), I'm visiting a LOT of sites. Which sort of leads us, meanderingly, to the first extreme tangent I went off on while doing this:

Extreme Tangent #1:

After basically giving up on every existing BG potrait site and random Yahoo images searches, I eventually wound up on DeviantART (after first trying, then giving up in disgust on, Elfwood). A few quick searches raised my hopes a bit, but since, at the moment when I'm writing this, I still haven't found the perfect picture yet, DeviantART really hasn't paid off for me, yet.

In any case, while searching, I came across the following picture:

(the original is much, much bigger)

The first thing that struck me is that this HAS to be Lynette d'Aquitaine's father (or grandfather, uncle, etc). Not only does he basically have her damned sword (that's almost exactly how I've always visualized it to look), but he's also got her damned golden dragon (which showed up during her Chrysalis, but was rarely mentioned ever again, though it was always part of her backstory in my mind, and was always slated to show up again eventually).

At one point, it occurred to me to wonder if this might be some sort of alternate reality version of Lynette, in which she was born a male rather than a female (Luke?), but that thought was too horrible to contemplate, so I cast it out of my mind. Besides, Lynette's got too much class and taste to ever grow a moustache like that.

Related Tangents:

1) The picture itself (above) is based on a character from novels by Stephen Brust. That might make it seem like the sheer coincidence of sword/dragon means that the idea was stolen (consciously or unconsciously) from the books, but I've never read the Taltos novels. I have read "To Reign in Hell", though, and he's not a half-bad writer. In any case, the sword/dragon WERE stolen - it's just that the sword was stolen from Roger Zelazny, and the dragon was stolen from Anne McCaffery.

2) Since I found the picture on DeviantART, I feel compelled to mention that the first time I ever went there, was because I was following links which led me to blackeri's art - more specifically, her "Seven Deadly Sins" series. They're very, very good.

3) When thinking about the concept of an alternate-reality male Lynette, part of me secretly (gleefully) wonders how badly an idea like that would screw with Kestrel's head. ~grin~

In any case, while thinking about these things, a question occurred to me - why did Lynette's golden dragon never show up anywhere? The real answer was fairly prosaic - basically, the fascist admins on Charleston by Night had a set limit on the number of points a Fae could have, so it was either keep the sword, or keep the dragon. And since one of the most fascist of all the admins (and certainly the one that always argued that staff should never play characters with more points than the players were allowed) happened to be me, it's not like I could really call in a favor and ask for more points or anything.

At this point, it occurred to me that Jess and Nell might enjoy this story (it also occurred to me that since I'm fairly sure that either Jess, Nell, or both WERE the Changeling admins when Charleston started, they might not take too kindly to my mentioning how the fascist admins on CbN wouldn't let me keep my dragon. ~smirk~). Which, in turn, reminded me of this diary, which is part of the reason that I'm writing this post right now.

It also led me to the second extreme tangent I went off on:

Extreme Tangent #2:

I very nearly wound up roleplaying again a few days ago.

For whatever reason, I had a moment (be it nostalgia, boredom, or simply masochism) when something or other led me to see if Chicago by Night was still up. It was - though it was a bit more advanced technologically, and a bit more dead activity-wise. Still, noticing that Liz and Damon both seemed to still be STing, and Jess was still playing there, it occurred to me that it might even be worth signing up and maybe making a character, seeing if there was still any creative juices left in the tank. Noticing that the Mage and Vampire games were STILL a pale shadow of the Werewolf game (and my own innate bias against Werewolf still extremely active), I skimmed the two boards, trying to get a feel for who was STing those systems, what the setting was like, and who else was playing. Ultimately, I decided that, in order to really decide which system would be a better fit (or, indeed, if I really wanted to play at all), I'd have to sign up, post a few times in the forums, feel around and make little comments and see how well (or poorly) they were received.

At this point, I decided that I didn't really feel like logging in as "me" - it seemed far more appealing to try and sneak in with a clean slate and no reputation. For a short moment, I pondered using Sigdriva (for reasons which are obvious to the people worthy enough to know what they are), but I eventually came up with an entirely new log-in, and registered.

I never got the confirmation e-mail from the board.

As far as I can tell, the board's code is incredibly stupid, and can't tell the difference between capital and lowercase letters. Thus, it translated the e-mail address that I gave it (which had caps in it) into all lowercase, and when it sent it out, it didn't get to where it was supposed to go. Either that, or it's just completely biased against AOL, and refuses to send to AOL e-mail accounts. In any case, no confirmation, no account, no forum posting, no RP.

Of course, I could sort of pester one of the admin's to maybe resend the authorization, or to just auto-approve me themselves, but by the time I was pretty sure the e-mail was never coming, I was already starting to consider whether or not I really felt like going to that much trouble. Clearly, here's an obvious sign from Fate, telling me that I stopped RPing for a reason, and by God, things would go poorly for me if I dared to defy my own Destiny. Or something.

So, the singular moment of potential RP passes. Anyone who might have been floored by my awesome new vampire or the traditional Hermetic will now have to cry themselves to sleep, knowing they almost got to see me RP again. And they'll even have to suffer without my incredibly long and rambling "philosophical" musings about potential ways the system of choice could be improved...

Related Tangents:

1) While musing over online RP in general, and the eventual failure of Charleston in specific, I started thinking about why the most creative and dedicated players are also the ones who never want to ST (and why it may be inevitable that ST duties will always eventually fall to mediocre and immature players, and thus, the entire system suffers (and possibly collapses) under the weight of its own suckage). The following thought occurred to me, and it sounded so much like something that someone would quote, I felt compelled to write it down somewhere - "The problem with creating something perfect is that you eventually have to turn it over to idiots, who will screw it all up." That's an incredibly depressing thought, but it's also one that means the perfectionists (ie, the ones who'd do the best job) are also the ones least likely to even attempt it, because too many idiots have already soured them on the idea.

2) As far as I could tell, the Camarilla ST on Chicago was considering a total reboot of the system, complete with new Prince/Council, and possibly even new characters. I was already considering starting a discussion about the pluses and minuses of the various ways to run Prince/Primogen in an online game - though it may have felt on deaf ears, since it seems like scenes on Chicago that don't contain Garou or Kinfolk only occur once every 2 months.

3) A few days before checking out Chi-bN, it occurred to me that most online WW games are rampant Masquerade breaks and vulgar magic happening all over the place. Very few sites actually have a system for punishing players for ignoring the very real "hide, dammit!" theme present in every WW system. It also occurred to me that a single system (the Technocracy) could easily deal with this, both for Mage AND the other systems as well. As long as the Technocratic STs were fair and at least slightly lenient, most people probably wouldn't be upset about it. And a clearly outlined and delineated plan of action for Technocratic method would help players know precisely what they can get away with, what they can't, and what's likely to get them killed. I sort of started to reflexively brainstorm after that, and developed an intricate plan for setting up a system that would recruit players themselves into doing most of the work (offering them the chance to play Observers and Operatives, both to hang around and keep an eye out for "Reality Deviants", as well as to kill them, when the time comes). It specifically had built-in safeguards to keep STs from abusing their power, as well as ones to keep players from taking advantage of the role (Technocrats who "cross the line" and break the chain of command are more likely than anyone else to wind up dead, and disobeying orders is a capital crime when you're at war). It also had a hierarchy of sins, which would put minor offenders on a watch-list, but mostly leave them alone, while putting repeat major offenders six feet under. Ironically enough, the same concept mentioned above (that the best people to run any given system are usually the last people you'll ever get to run it) means that I'd never bother trying to run this system on any site, and almost no Mage ST on any site would want to cooperate with me on this anyway. Still, it was an interesting idea...

And that more or less brings us back full-circle. For perspective, I thought of about 90% of the above while cooking something to eat earlier, each thought following in rapid progression as I hung around, somewhat bored, waiting for my food to finish. One last little tangent - somewhere along the way, it occurred to me how easy it would be for me to take all my BGII PCs, put them all on a page somewhere, and write them up as Changeling characters. Which in turn sort of makes me want to RP again...

Damn it.