Odd, very odd

[mugglechump]

I'm running late for work anyway, so it seemed like a great idea to go through the mail I haven't looked at in a few days. (Known as 'Eff it, I don't want to go to work anyway' logic.) I notice a bright yellow envelope and assume that one of my nifty friends has sent me a card, as they are wont to do from time to time simply because they are nifty. But no. It is not a card from one of my nifty friends.

It's a Mother's Day card -- from my brother, Chris.

I have never, in my entire 35 years of life, received mail from Chris. Ever. Until now.

Chris and I get along fine, but we're just not in touch unless I'm in Florida visiting or he's up here visiting. That's just the way our relationship is. It's not a matter of being estranged, we just communicate better in person, I guess.

This is very strange. Don't get me wrong, it's a pleasant surprise, but it's just SO weird.

Comments

[dragonsangel68.livejournal.com]

How sweet of him. Actually, I understand your relationship with your brother. My brother and I have a very similar relationship and we live in the same town.

[empressvesica.livejournal.com]

Huh. Very nice!

[cliodnahpfan.livejournal.com]

I miss you. As in, terribly, terribly miss you. :( I was thinking about how the new Sookie book comes out next week, and it made me think of you. I hope you are well ♥

[mugglechump.livejournal.com]

I miss you, too! I've been such a lax friend for the last few months. General malaise and rpgs have taken up most of my time. I have several CDs I need to send you that have been sitting around here forever. I think I still have your Christmas present to send, too. Eep. My slacking has gotten entirely out of hand. *embarrassed*

Hurray for new a Sookie book! Yet another thing I haven't been keeping up with is reading actual books. I've got The Sweet Far Thing and City of Ashes still waiting for me to crack them open. Now I'll have Sookie. *sigh*

Do you rp? caliga_rpg has several characters that are looking for new writers, and si_muove_rpg is just starting up. I have 4 Caliga characters and 3 Muove characters. *dies* Yes, yes I am a glutton for punishment. It's a lot of fun, though.

[cliodnahpfan.livejournal.com]

You'll have to explain rpg's to me... I see that some of my flist does them, and I am totally clueless!

P.S....I have a Mother's Day gift for you - probably won't be mailed out until next week, but I wanted to let you know that I was thinking of you ♥ :D

[mugglechump.livejournal.com]

Ok, RPGs...

Basically it's like writing fic with a whole group of people - a written soap opera, essentially. There's 'game canon', which describes the universe you're writing in. For example, Caliga Ortus is set 5 years after Voldemort's defeat and there is a new faction of pureblood elitists subtly taking power. Not all the scenes deal directly with that, but that's the 'world' we write in. Different people play different characters. In Caliga, I'm Susan Bones, Romilda Vane, Miles Bletchley, and Samantha Fawcett. Each character has his/her own LJ that they use as a personal journal (Susan's is susan_caliga) and to post scenes in the rpg community. As an example, Susan is friends with Lavender Brown, who's played by Vicky. Recently they got together for a bit of girl talk. Vicky and I wrote the scene in Google docs, which lets us both access and edit the document at the same time. I write a bit for Susan, then tag Vicky, and she continues a bit from Lav's POV, then tags back. Then one of us posts the scene in the rpg community on whatever day/time we've agreed on. Here's the home page for Caliga, which explains things a lot better than I am: http://www.dracoandginny.com/caliga/

Caliga is only accepting auditions for the characters that have been left open by players who've left at the moment, which means whoever takes them over would need to keep them relatively true to the character as it's been written so far.

Si Muove is just starting. It's still in set-up phase, so it would be picking a character and starting from scratch with him/her. The home page is still being set up, but you can get a little more information at si_muove_ooc, which is the Out of Character journal where we discuss potential plot and post character bios, etc... Most of the posts are flocked, but information on joining isn't. In Muove, I'm Susan Bones, Romilda Wood (formerly Vane), and Emma Dobbs.

I'll leave it at that for now. If you're interested in joining either of the communities and have questions, I'm just an email or a call away. :D It's fun, although time consuming at times, and there is the occasional bit of drama like anything else in life. Generally speaking, so long as you don't do anything that would affect another player's character without getting their buy-in first, things run pretty smoothly.

I'll admit to hoping you're tempted into joining. :D

[cliodnahpfan.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm looking at si Muove, and I see a huge char list of ppl already taken... who would I take? And how often do you rpg? And when does it start? I guess I'm a little worried that I'd be good at it... how do you manage to keep so many chars? And do you have to create an LJ username for each one, then?

Sorry so many questions - I'm a bit dull today :D

[mugglechump.livejournal.com]

Hee! Any character in the Lexicon who is alive is available for the taking. For Si Muove, they've decided that any character who died in HP canon is dead in Muove-verse, with the exception of Severus Snape.

Si Muove is set to start on 5/15. There isn't a set minimum for scening, but you'd be expected to be an active participant. I try to scene mine an average of once a week, I guess. Although some weeks I've been much busier and sometimes I've had a character go a couple weeks without doing anything. It depends on the plots you get involved in.

And yes, you keep a separate journal for each character so that they can post scenes. So, yeah, I've got 7 current rpg journals. There's a naming convention for journals. If you were to take, say, Marcus Flint as a character, you'd create a journal for him and the username would be marcus_muove.

Everybody worries about being good at it when they start. The first RPG I was ever involved in I played Lucius. I was horrible at it. That RP did scenes via IM, which made it hard. Googledocs makes things really easy because even if you can't always connect with a person online to finish the whole scene, you can tag in the document and keep things moving. Erin, who plays Oliver Wood among others, lives in Japan, so obviously her availability isn't always optimal for scening with someone in the Eastern timezone, but we're able to manage very well despite that. Anyway, I wouldn't worry about quality. You're a good writer and this is really just interactive fic. It takes a while to learn your character's personality and quirks, but you get a feel for them after awhile and you'll play with other people and see how your characters interact, who gets on well with whom and whatnot, and things run smoothly. (Seriously, they start talking to you in your head eventually.)

As for how I keep so many... Well, I'm insane and I have no life. Four hasn't been terribly difficult to manage because they aren't all super active at the same time. Adding three more? That's going to be a challenge, but I'm excited about playing them so it'll work out. Si Muove has a 3 character limit, so I'm done adding anyone unless I decide I need more Caliga folks, which I don't envision. Four is plenty to keep up with in one place.

:D