Somarium, I've missed you. And will keep missing you.
I think I'll hold off on reapping Harley to Somarium for now.
It isn't that I don't want to go back to having fun with all the wonderful muns there, or that I don't treasure all the CR I've built up with him. In fact, those are two of the main reasons I was so set on returning, now that I have 'net access and free time again.
I've poured over my app to make sure it's still a good app and all, re-wrote parts, added others... and I was having too much fun going into the personality analysis and psychology writeup stuff. I have a lot of fun writing that kind of thing. Tons of it. In fact, I even went off on a tangent with trying to figure out his boss-battle stats and whatnot. I pulled up Photoshop and screencapped a status screen from DDS2, and had at it, remade it for Harley. And I was all set to write new samples and everything.
And then I paused a moment to think about what to write.
The first time I wrote something for his samples, it was easy. I wrote up the first post I'd do, his intro, the "nightmare" taken from his last moments in DDS1, and waking up in an alley afterwards, confused as all else and still on edge, but at least out of the situation which had snapped him. He'd be able to take a breath and calm down, and not have the Embryon looming over him with nowhere to run. Writing his reactions to seeing them again after that was fun; I greatly enjoyed the threads that his intro spawned.
For the sample I posted in that original app, I went with a goofy little idea I actually did up later on, shortly after his intro, of him encountering rabbits and sheep for the first time. It made me laugh. Confusing the hell out of a dorky, somewhat melodramatic character prone to over-reaction is fun, and that's really all there is to it.
I like confusing him. No-- I love it. I loved having him ask Abel about what escargot was, and where snails were found, and then call him up fifteen minutes later to say they must be one of those acquired tastes. Yeah, there were some in the back yard. There were even snails without shells! Playing around with his ignorance and curiosity will never fail to amuse me greatly. Nor does tormenting him with bits of the past life I made up for him, especially how I'd worked it into his fear of monsters eating him, to help explain why he flipped out to the degree he did in DDS.
I never did get around to posting most of those dreams I'd already written up for him, with all those scenes of past-life stuff. For that, I apologize to everyone. I'm thinking I should finish writing up the last of those, and post them anyway, un-friend-locked, so at least anyone who's still curious can see what I'd had planned.
But I digress. I paused to think about what to write for the samples this time, and I came up with a good few ideas... and looked back at what I'd written for the question about why I was interested in apping, where I'd noted that I was having fun at Som, and had a lot of CR and char development going on there. And I realized, I could write a great sample about him having another "nightmare" about almost waking up back in DDS, to where he was dying on the floor in his command room, only to be relieved beyond relieved to find himself in Som again instead.
And then it hit me, I'd already just posted a nightmare for him for the event thing that was going on. I hadn't intended to post that nightmare when I did; I was going to save it for later, and post something more upbeat and fun once I'd gotten net access again. But nightmares were the theme of the event, and the posts I was wanting to post just wouldn't fit well, wouldn't flow for getting back into the groove in Som, wouldn't... work just then, really. Sadface!
And it got me thinking more. I was having so much fun when I first joined, about a year and a half ago. It was a game that was pretty lighthearted. There were crack, fluff dreams, and freaking out about bunny rabbits was totally the way to go. And there was serious stuff too -- as serious as I wanted to make it, anyway. He got adopted by Abel, and made friends, and ate fried slugs, and made simple plush toys, and took care of a dog. And was able to get it into his head that he turned into a horse, not a monster, and therefore it was okay. And narrowed his definition of "monster" as he figured out just what it was that disturbed him so greatly.
But more and more, Somarium's plots started to get more... plot-y. When I joined, the events were totally ignorable and fun when they did happen, far as I can recall. Or at least, they were somewhat neutral. If we had our own thing going on, and a lot of the time, we did, we could ignore the Som!plots in favor of our own. The events were more like LJ's own writers' block topics that you see on the Welcome To LJ page, those questions people put up for others who aren't sure what to post on their own. Sometimes serious, sometimes goofy, but either way, if you already know what you want to post about, go right ahead, don't let the topic of the day stop you. And that was awesome. That was actually one of the draws. I like having my own plots. I like being able to just do what I will, in a setting with other characters. I like having free reign to figure out my own hijinks and... whatever.
Then the Moon Cycles thing was introduced, and that was largely no longer the case. Events were happening in Som which affected everyone, and they started leaning more and more toward the nightmare-type side of things. There was that time everyone got transported to the inescapable and oh so freezing cold warehouse. ....I mostly passed on that one, kinda fudged a bit, shrugged and said sure, he was there, I guess, and picked up on playing again afterwards. It just wasn't for me. There's the constant cycle of things returning to normal, then things getting really weird again, nightmare-ish and orchestrating things toward some bigger, over-reaching plot that the mods cooked up.
I'm not against Somarium having a plot. It's interesting to see where it's headed.
And I like tormenting my characters. But I like to do it myself, more than on someone's prompting.
I like having options. I like to be able to completely ignore the game's own plot if I want to, if I'm busy having fun with whatever my friends and I have planned out and the game plot would interrupt ours. I like being able to say no thank you, I have an idea that'll be more fun for me, and having the freedom to go through with mine. It isn't like my own plots would involve everyone else in the game. In fact, the stuff I came up with tended to only really affect my own character and perhaps two or three others. But the point is, I wanted that freedom to be as lighthearted and silly as I wanted, or as serious, or dark, or whatever as I wanted.
Give me a sand box. I'll be happy. I'll make sand castles and coves and landscapes. I'll sculpt things not normally seen in sandboxes, or at least attempt to.
But when you start directing what I should be making in that sandbox at any given time, I'm likely to simply sit back until I'm allowed to do what I want to do again, and that gets frustrating for me, and I'm sure it gets frustrating for the people I'm playing with too, when I'm simply not there for increasingly significant portions of the game.
And that's not fair to anyone.
(....Like the time Som had that big sand storm, a bit more than a year ago. I'd already plotted with Abel's mun about the next Solar Noise event, about what we could do for further CR and char development. We had plans. I asked when the next Solar Noise might be, only to be told "not yet" -- which was just fine; our plots could wait! -- and given the explanation that such things tended to need a couple weeks' warning beforehand for other players, what with the mess that happened the first time it was done. And then it was what, two weeks later, I was helpfully reminded that if they did a Solar Noise thing, my Harley would be affected too. Yes, I know; I asked about one earlier. And so we had another one, with maybe what, two days' notice? during the sand storm. I'm sure everyone else had fun, but it felt... tacked on, to me. It was one more thing to make the already-crazy storm event even crazier, for a while. The timing for my own hoped-for plots involving it was horrible. The timing for my afk-ness was horrible. The timing for my CRmates' afk-ness was pretty awful too. I opted instead to just quietly pass on it, and there was never a real chance to go through with what we'd wanted to do, after that. The only other time the rest of the cast wanted to do a Solar Noise thing, Abel wasn't in the game, and I wasn't interested at that time, so I passed on it again then too.
I know my castmates didn't intend to cause me problems. I know they were just having fun themselves, and I don't begrudge them that. I just wish things had worked out better. */tangent* )
And I can't help but think that earlier, one of our Yosukes, a certain derpsona (and man I still love that username!) had hit on what I hadn't even realized, but agree with. Som is getting dark, despite the mods' assurances that it wasn't, or isn't, always going to be. It's getting increasingly dark, with regularity, and with less opportunity to take a pass on it. The Somarium I fell in love with and originally joined was happy, kind of goofy, player-driven, and fun.
It's like playing through Persona 4, only for it to slowly devolve into Persona 3. Or watching Charlie the Unicorn, only for it to end up as Chainsaw Maid.
So I'll sit back for now, and see how things go. As much as I miss Somarium, the friends I've made there, the CR, the char development... as much as I need an RP outlet thanks to stress and Real Life in general, I don't know if Som is still what I'm looking for. It might be, and if it is, that's great. But I just don't know any more.
It isn't that I don't want to go back to having fun with all the wonderful muns there, or that I don't treasure all the CR I've built up with him. In fact, those are two of the main reasons I was so set on returning, now that I have 'net access and free time again.
I've poured over my app to make sure it's still a good app and all, re-wrote parts, added others... and I was having too much fun going into the personality analysis and psychology writeup stuff. I have a lot of fun writing that kind of thing. Tons of it. In fact, I even went off on a tangent with trying to figure out his boss-battle stats and whatnot. I pulled up Photoshop and screencapped a status screen from DDS2, and had at it, remade it for Harley. And I was all set to write new samples and everything.
And then I paused a moment to think about what to write.
The first time I wrote something for his samples, it was easy. I wrote up the first post I'd do, his intro, the "nightmare" taken from his last moments in DDS1, and waking up in an alley afterwards, confused as all else and still on edge, but at least out of the situation which had snapped him. He'd be able to take a breath and calm down, and not have the Embryon looming over him with nowhere to run. Writing his reactions to seeing them again after that was fun; I greatly enjoyed the threads that his intro spawned.
For the sample I posted in that original app, I went with a goofy little idea I actually did up later on, shortly after his intro, of him encountering rabbits and sheep for the first time. It made me laugh. Confusing the hell out of a dorky, somewhat melodramatic character prone to over-reaction is fun, and that's really all there is to it.
I like confusing him. No-- I love it. I loved having him ask Abel about what escargot was, and where snails were found, and then call him up fifteen minutes later to say they must be one of those acquired tastes. Yeah, there were some in the back yard. There were even snails without shells! Playing around with his ignorance and curiosity will never fail to amuse me greatly. Nor does tormenting him with bits of the past life I made up for him, especially how I'd worked it into his fear of monsters eating him, to help explain why he flipped out to the degree he did in DDS.
I never did get around to posting most of those dreams I'd already written up for him, with all those scenes of past-life stuff. For that, I apologize to everyone. I'm thinking I should finish writing up the last of those, and post them anyway, un-friend-locked, so at least anyone who's still curious can see what I'd had planned.
But I digress. I paused to think about what to write for the samples this time, and I came up with a good few ideas... and looked back at what I'd written for the question about why I was interested in apping, where I'd noted that I was having fun at Som, and had a lot of CR and char development going on there. And I realized, I could write a great sample about him having another "nightmare" about almost waking up back in DDS, to where he was dying on the floor in his command room, only to be relieved beyond relieved to find himself in Som again instead.
And then it hit me, I'd already just posted a nightmare for him for the event thing that was going on. I hadn't intended to post that nightmare when I did; I was going to save it for later, and post something more upbeat and fun once I'd gotten net access again. But nightmares were the theme of the event, and the posts I was wanting to post just wouldn't fit well, wouldn't flow for getting back into the groove in Som, wouldn't... work just then, really. Sadface!
And it got me thinking more. I was having so much fun when I first joined, about a year and a half ago. It was a game that was pretty lighthearted. There were crack, fluff dreams, and freaking out about bunny rabbits was totally the way to go. And there was serious stuff too -- as serious as I wanted to make it, anyway. He got adopted by Abel, and made friends, and ate fried slugs, and made simple plush toys, and took care of a dog. And was able to get it into his head that he turned into a horse, not a monster, and therefore it was okay. And narrowed his definition of "monster" as he figured out just what it was that disturbed him so greatly.
But more and more, Somarium's plots started to get more... plot-y. When I joined, the events were totally ignorable and fun when they did happen, far as I can recall. Or at least, they were somewhat neutral. If we had our own thing going on, and a lot of the time, we did, we could ignore the Som!plots in favor of our own. The events were more like LJ's own writers' block topics that you see on the Welcome To LJ page, those questions people put up for others who aren't sure what to post on their own. Sometimes serious, sometimes goofy, but either way, if you already know what you want to post about, go right ahead, don't let the topic of the day stop you. And that was awesome. That was actually one of the draws. I like having my own plots. I like being able to just do what I will, in a setting with other characters. I like having free reign to figure out my own hijinks and... whatever.
Then the Moon Cycles thing was introduced, and that was largely no longer the case. Events were happening in Som which affected everyone, and they started leaning more and more toward the nightmare-type side of things. There was that time everyone got transported to the inescapable and oh so freezing cold warehouse. ....I mostly passed on that one, kinda fudged a bit, shrugged and said sure, he was there, I guess, and picked up on playing again afterwards. It just wasn't for me. There's the constant cycle of things returning to normal, then things getting really weird again, nightmare-ish and orchestrating things toward some bigger, over-reaching plot that the mods cooked up.
I'm not against Somarium having a plot. It's interesting to see where it's headed.
And I like tormenting my characters. But I like to do it myself, more than on someone's prompting.
I like having options. I like to be able to completely ignore the game's own plot if I want to, if I'm busy having fun with whatever my friends and I have planned out and the game plot would interrupt ours. I like being able to say no thank you, I have an idea that'll be more fun for me, and having the freedom to go through with mine. It isn't like my own plots would involve everyone else in the game. In fact, the stuff I came up with tended to only really affect my own character and perhaps two or three others. But the point is, I wanted that freedom to be as lighthearted and silly as I wanted, or as serious, or dark, or whatever as I wanted.
Give me a sand box. I'll be happy. I'll make sand castles and coves and landscapes. I'll sculpt things not normally seen in sandboxes, or at least attempt to.
But when you start directing what I should be making in that sandbox at any given time, I'm likely to simply sit back until I'm allowed to do what I want to do again, and that gets frustrating for me, and I'm sure it gets frustrating for the people I'm playing with too, when I'm simply not there for increasingly significant portions of the game.
And that's not fair to anyone.
(....Like the time Som had that big sand storm, a bit more than a year ago. I'd already plotted with Abel's mun about the next Solar Noise event, about what we could do for further CR and char development. We had plans. I asked when the next Solar Noise might be, only to be told "not yet" -- which was just fine; our plots could wait! -- and given the explanation that such things tended to need a couple weeks' warning beforehand for other players, what with the mess that happened the first time it was done. And then it was what, two weeks later, I was helpfully reminded that if they did a Solar Noise thing, my Harley would be affected too. Yes, I know; I asked about one earlier. And so we had another one, with maybe what, two days' notice? during the sand storm. I'm sure everyone else had fun, but it felt... tacked on, to me. It was one more thing to make the already-crazy storm event even crazier, for a while. The timing for my own hoped-for plots involving it was horrible. The timing for my afk-ness was horrible. The timing for my CRmates' afk-ness was pretty awful too. I opted instead to just quietly pass on it, and there was never a real chance to go through with what we'd wanted to do, after that. The only other time the rest of the cast wanted to do a Solar Noise thing, Abel wasn't in the game, and I wasn't interested at that time, so I passed on it again then too.
I know my castmates didn't intend to cause me problems. I know they were just having fun themselves, and I don't begrudge them that. I just wish things had worked out better. */tangent* )
And I can't help but think that earlier, one of our Yosukes, a certain derpsona (and man I still love that username!) had hit on what I hadn't even realized, but agree with. Som is getting dark, despite the mods' assurances that it wasn't, or isn't, always going to be. It's getting increasingly dark, with regularity, and with less opportunity to take a pass on it. The Somarium I fell in love with and originally joined was happy, kind of goofy, player-driven, and fun.
It's like playing through Persona 4, only for it to slowly devolve into Persona 3. Or watching Charlie the Unicorn, only for it to end up as Chainsaw Maid.
So I'll sit back for now, and see how things go. As much as I miss Somarium, the friends I've made there, the CR, the char development... as much as I need an RP outlet thanks to stress and Real Life in general, I don't know if Som is still what I'm looking for. It might be, and if it is, that's great. But I just don't know any more.