Quincunx

Which laws are these, Whynotsin, at which level of government? Have you been personally touched by a loss of freedom? Do you remember what it was like before, in the halcyon days. . .when were the halcyon days? Right now your opinion quivers like jello, without backbone. Reinforce it. If it still lacks backbone, aim more deliberately for the emotions of the reader, you will still not satisfy me thus but at least the opintion will have a chance of being useful. I will not stand up without knowing why. Canid, I LOVE the juxtaposition of hairspray and ignorance (ok, it's a bit more tilted at the ozone layer, but still ears shellac'd shut in both cases). "Righteous liar" does not mesh with the second stanza's message of greed, it evokes politicians not corporations; the full stop noun there is good but it could perhaps be tweaked. I'm puzzled by the mention of your mother as a filter for the news in the third stanza. Was there a full stop after "excuse", or did it get swallowed by the overlong and clumsy line following? The final four lines of stanza three are wonderfully balanced. The stanza that begins "Barbaric and primal" (fifth?) is only odd with the placement of the second line stop and the capitalization of Class--I know what you mean there through long acquaitance with you, but a passing reader would be confused. Maybe shuffle the sixth stanza, with its reference back to politics, into a different place, but do not alter it in any way.

I had to take the test four times over before I got a result to repeat. . .so I (Tzimfemme) am, without certainty: I know I should be telling you that I'm A rubai - but perhaps some other time. It sounds like work, and anyway, it's late - Unless I sleep, I'll be too tired to rhyme. Besides, there's plates to clear and cups to clink, And when that's done I have to sit and think, Since then it won't be long before I need To sleep again and eat again and drink. What Poetry Form Are You? Alternately, free verse (Rydia, also). Minta was a lai, Rosemary a triolet.

(Tzimfemme follows the arc of Ethic's re-entry with her special recording/magnifying/cross-referencing/self-speculating binoculars.) Another fine product of Ogg and Yog Siege Good!, I see. . . (Holding the binoculars up still, letting them record the collision, she glances around quickly for stray Rogs. None, sadly. . .)

Shellfish make me ill, although I love the taste of clam chowder; chicken noodle soup defaults to a win.

Brrrr. . .I read coldness, distance into this, perhaps from the descriptive phrases that paint absolutely no visual of the whole, and leave a little void of speculation. I'm very much left guessing as to who is the most insensitive cad--she, the addressee, or the poet. Nicely done.

A bit more introspection-- I wasn't correct. Pearl isn't Minta. Pearl is how Tzimfemme sees Minta. That being said, it's probably more true that Tzimfemme follows Hester Prynne. . .

My first drafts are very nearly final ones, and as such I hated writing them out--what was the point of rewriting when there was so little reason to rewrite? When I gained access to word processing programs I swore by them (the electronic keyboard's capacity to hold a single line before printing didn't even emcompass one of my average sentences). My honey, on the other hand, must have his yellow legal pad in order to create, crossings-out and carets and what I assume are letters littering the page.

Is there any character or book or poem for which you feel empathy? Tonight I reread The Scarlet Letter, and find myself reading about Pearl and seeing Minta. . .

After a month, I find the conclusion to my thoughts-- Depression wears down the endurance both physical and psychic, working to shorten time, as time works to extend patience and endurance. . .yet it works slowly enough to be recorded and resonated from person to person, to escape being codified solely in brain tissues that might not continue. Suicide is for the impatient!

I think I need to add a new poem to the Cabaret Room list of most meaningful works. . .

*gasp*gasp*pant* Wait a minute, Brain! I think I'm finally getting somewhere! *lopes blissfully along in the exercise wheel as Brain glowers* Leave it to Animaniacs to tint a splendid poem of loss of control with a groaner of a joke.

Cerulean's "Arabia", found in the Library: the most evocative free verse I have ever read. A set of quatrains archived in the Library here; A tercet from Ager Guilded's Banquet Hall; A villanelle in the Banquet Hall here; A prophecy proven true-- Words which have made the nameless fifth quail. Searching through my selfpublished sorts tonight for more to post.

Extend a psuedopod onto the button labeled 'snooze' Postpone evolution. My single worry is that I can't formulate full sentences after first waking up, and would break up the first line to reflect that. Otherwise it flows perfectly. A good salute to the bad moment of the day!

(Dedicated to Oogally Daboogallywoogally. To the tune of "The Addams Family":) There's lotsa cootiefroggies, They're jumping through the boggies, Their poison skins are soggy, The froggyloks invade! Da da da dum splish splash Da da da dum splish splash Da da da dum, da da da dum, da da da dum . . . But all did not go wellie-- With sword an' spell an' skellie, An' most of all their smellie-- They met the troll brigade! Da da da dum splish splash Da da da dum splish splash Da da da dum, da da da dum, da da da dum . . . With wooden pin for clotheses They tried to block their noses, But those fell, an' they chose, yes, For stink with steel repay. . . Da da da dum splish splash Da da da dum splish splash Da da da dum, da da da dum, da da da dum . . . (trollie fart noise)

Tzimfemme puttered around the mold-makers, her hands poking another layer of descriptive paper into place inside the pliant mold material while her eyes never left the chocolate vats. Those had been left in Rydia's care and she was constantly swatting Tzimfemme away from one burbling pot or another, or removing Minta's sticky fingers from the caramel tub. "How long before those molds are ready?," sighed Rydia, as she snatched the pot of white chocolate off of a flame just before it boiled over. "Hard to tell, I have plenty of liners for most of 'em but for some of them, all I have is a name, and you know I don't work with names." Tzimfemme sneered at a nasty memory, then continued, "Not that I mind having a few dozen false runs to be, errr, 'lost' in the kitchen because they were too blurry. . ." Rydia flattened her pointed ears just a bit. "You can NOT make bad copies just to hoard them for yourself!" "I know I know I know. . .a girl can dream can't she? Nonetheless," and Tzimfemme impressed a description of flat cheekbones and confident stance into the current mold before dropping it into a bucket of ice water to harden, "when we were making the AoA series, the few who didn't have descriptions, we could have Dr. Tzimfemmestien chase them down--once she worked out the kinks of the cloning tanks, of course--and scan a copy for us. Now we can't. Damned cloning tanks have gone feral--you remember that crop circle in the leafmeat fields? Aliens might have spilled the cloning fluid, but I'm quite sure they don't scatter DNA snippets of all the previous clones!" Out in said field, Orlan pulled a broad leaf off of a denuded stalk of silver-edged leafmeat. "Mmm. . .Tzimfemme flavored."

Roleplaying systems give your group a setting and standards of behavior around which to create. The dice are there to hold disruptive idiosyncrasies in check ("I'll go up and lick the giant frog!". . ."Roll something or another to see if you have the common sense to not do that."). For pencil-and-paper, I have played: Little Fears, a very loosely structured system for the roleplaying of children; Legend of the Five Rings, a far Eastern medieval setting with sorcery and strict moral consequences; Planescape, an extension of the D&D ruleset, a nexus of planes where anything is possible (they got to meet Minta ); Seventh Sea, a swashbuckling game with more rewards for overwhelming hordes and very little magic; and most recently Exalted (trying to port Tzimfemme, after a fashion), which all my friends describe as overbearing power in the anime style, but I have had only one session yet and can't comment. I've played Vampire: the Masquerade and Vampire: the Dark Ages (the origin of Rosemary) in live action--even trickier, that. No rolls to determine your wit, and even if you use your stats to recover a flub, people still remember it. On the other hand, if you're glib, you can dispense with challenges and dominate a game full of older, more powerful characters without risking your neck. Impress your opponent so profoundly they don't feel the will to challenge--if they still do, you've found a ruleslawyer and will have to subvert him in ways statistics won't defend against--be creative.

The thread has taken a turn I didn't anticipate when people differentiated why their characters are unique as compared to their realities--but that is interesting of itself! Now, to those who have read this thread and don't feel they had a unique trait to confess--make one up on the spot (fairly broad in scope--something that only becomes relevant on Tuesdays, or when you wish it, won't collide with many others) and hold yourself to it! It's astonishing how quickly the irritations of one immutable point will form the seed-pearl of a persona. Many of us have appellations, short phrases that define us as easily as names, much like the custom title field; an appellation gives the readers a correct snapshot of you. Your uniqueness will form itself into an unshakeable appellation; since appellations are formed from readers' expectations, you cannot give yourself one*. Imagine having a permanent phrase, how much solidity it will give a persona. --Tzimfemme, the naked mage *Rather, if you have the strength of will and/or personality to appellate yourself, you already HAVE a unique aspect, and don't need to follow this guide.

Are too candydots an' I can prove it! Minta sticks out a tongue streaked all the colors of the rainbow from various candydots. They're not quite as neato as pixystix but they make better ammo. . . She loads an empty pixystix wrapper with a dot an' phoooooooooof! dink! the dot is blown out of the paper and hits a pewter mug.

In my efforts to become a more genteel bastard, I propose a thread of information: Make a post to tell us one unique aspect of your Pen persona. If someone's laid claim to a trait you also possess, post that! A thread full of hazy, non-unique replies is neither a fit companion to nor reference for 'The Person Above Me'. Rydia has no _unique_ characteristics, and Minta's are so trivial they may as well not exist. Rosemary has her glossolalia, her utter inability to talk about anything directly. If you asked her about this topic, she'd stare blankly for a few seconds, then mutter "What is there that could be such as I am? None to zero, this turning, but yet to have been contrariwise," and consider the matter settled. (Try being on the receiving end of that in live-action, and understand the boundless patience that is my honey.) Tzimfemme snarls, "So I'm a bastard, am I?. . .hey YOU! Authorchick! How's this for a unique item. . .I DON'T LOVE MY MUSE!"

Who is the leader? for it's not you, not quite. Goads need someone to worry.

Ooooooooooooooo candydots! Minta wraps herself up in used candydot papers to be a mummy!

May 1999: Trying desperately to keep awake the night before my 6:30AM flight, I stumbled upon Archmage via banner leaping. I was irritated that I had just lost my first LiveActionRolePlaying character two nights previous, and tried to input her clan name 'Tzimisce'--taken on Server One. A bit of thought provided the much easier to spell Tzimfemme (#843, Server One reset three). Originally a feminist battle-axe in response to in-game harrassment, time and maturity (and an unfortunate run-in with the fabled Men of Terra and their DEP*) smoothed her out to the naked, double-tongued, and lively bastard of today. Fast-forward to May 2002, cursing at the Everquest login screen as I had deleted a previous Tzimfemme and couldn't recapture the name, I had sufficient identity to slough off the gender tag, and Tzimm was born. As a human cleric of the plague-bringer, I nose at corruption with a passion, and encourage it, and decry it, and generally toy with the idea and that of immortality. August 1999: Wanted to broaden my horizons, and dabbled at Blitz One, and I remembered liking the elegance of the slightly wrongly translated name Rydia from Final Fantasy Four. She was originally roleplayed directly as the game portrayed her, but the Reign of the Lunatics twisted that soon enough into the cheerful and shy lady who didn't bat an eye at insanity. Hyperactivity bled away into another persona--Minta Rose, two random old-fashioned names that sounded pretty together. Rose was the mortal name of Rosemary, who lived in the LARP with periphrastic glossolalia, and who was Minta? She is entirely my own creation, degrading through the ages, becoming more immature and remorseless and immoral--recently she has been fixed as a gnome, and actively hunts elves for their having remarked strangely about her pet undead! Rosemary has done her damage with diablerie**, and hasn't been quite herself since. Dr. Tzimfemmestien was given to me; the character behind the song-named Sossity was also. Eveline fell out of a James Joyce short story and Tanaquil from early histories of Rome. Happy Hentai Wholesale. . .well, that was Ager's Reset of the Perverse, who had anticipated so many questionable names?*** *Prior to Orlan becoming a (sexy, sexy) Man of Terra. DEP is the mystical hair gel of concentrated studliness. **And now that name is gone. ***"Can I bang him now?" "No" "Can I bang him now?" "NO!" My ally gummy (Trojan Man, that reset) begging to drop the atomic bomb on an enemy named Cherry. I _swear_ this was not premeditated.

The person above me is an ex-Ager Guilded moderator, which probably influenced much of his current weirdness --Tzimfemme, posting to invalidate the option "The person above me is nice"

. . .BRILLIANT! The threads of real life chatter that rest only tentatively in the Cabaret Room now go to this. . .shoutbox? (Odd name, still, to me. It's a chalkboard of sorts.) Nonetheless--revival of the olllllllllllld Archmage board style will bring back a few memories. --Tzimfemme, the naked mage >Zakuro (#forgotten) wrote: >Hurray for the shoutbox! >>Deadly Nightshade (#never assigned) wrote: >>Magic...pure magic OUT DAMNED CARROTS! *backspacebackspacebackspace*

(part two of two) "Should we take Mogmallow?" asked Rydia, scratching under the mane of a plump pegasus. The bobblie-stalk on the pegasus's bridle waved as it flicked its ear happily. Rydia smiled and flicked her own ears in friendship. Rune wandered in and out of the stalls, swooshing her feet through piles of shed pegasi feathers and fur. One pegasus nosed its way into her pockets and snuffed at the chocolate kisses, while another one leaned down and whispered, "You can ride me bareback," and showed her its golden eyes. Decisively she announced, "I pick THAT one!" and bounced up onto its back. The pegasus bolted out of the stables with Rune clinging desperately to its mane, gaining altitude without spreading its wings and outpacing the other pegasi. Rydia's screams faded as she and the other pegasi were left under the clouds. Rune looked down, unafraid, but unhappy. The clouds looked different from up here, more solid, and the pegasus's hooves struck flint-gray sparks as it cantered up and down the cloudbank. "You said I could ride bareback!" she pouted. With a toss of its nose, the pooka was back in natural form. "I did not say the ride was safe." Rune wailed, "Are you gonna DROP me?" "It's not the journey you should fear. Here we are safe, but we are traveling away from safety." The pooka was shifting once more; Rune could feel muscles sliding and growing, throwing her off balance. She bounced along on its right side with her leg over its back, but the pooka rippled silver and slippery--Rune lost her grip! She dropped onto the clouds, bounced, and rolled with the new creature in pursuit. Tzimfemme caught Rune by an ankle. "Watch it, you're close to the edge!" the naked mage snapped, then looked back, then down at herself. "Strange things happen out here. For sure and certain that wasn't part of my personae before," she amended, swinging the demoness up for a piggyback ride. They loped along, sinking between glassy clouds that started to lick upwards in waves, then spouts, then fires. . . Rune gasped. This was a wasteland! Flat gray pans of volcanic glass stretched as far as she could see (craning her neck), no sun, no sound, no wind. . .brilliant white cracks hanging in midair between the frozen spouts, ringed by silver fire. A nearby crack bulged and widened momentarily before the fire consumed it; Rune's eyes rounded and she hid behind Tzimfemme's shoulder. "This is the border between fantasy and reality. This is the hearth of what you call the soul." She spoke, but no sound came out! Rune scribbled spells and they crumbled as soon as they left her fingertips. The dust hung in midair. "Nothing works properly here," continued Tzimfemme, "spells fall apart and physics fails. Nothing but words. If you don't have your words out here. . .Reality shines through, grinds you down to a featureless spirit. It's horrible, but you needed to see what you--pardon, what your other personae are fighting. They say it's not so bad, they say it's inevitable--pah!" In a fury she twitched her fingers like typing, building up a silver aura, and sent the fire through a crack with a jab of the right little finger. On the other side, Rune watched text flicker on a vertical panel, and the reader sigh thoughtfully; beside them in the Fantasy, a woman in white dress and boots and wide-brimmed hat materialized. Tzimfemme nodded to Sossity. "Sometimes I think we're related," she confided to Rune. "Be that as it is, she was born out here, she's one of the ones who keeps things to their proper places--" All of them swiveled, hearing the faint rasp from one widening crack: "--ws sources tel--imminent war--" Sossity plucked Rune safely away as Tzimfemme leaped at the crack, mind ablaze, shouting, "Out out OUT! This is sanctuary! SANCTUARY I said! We could outcreate your destruction in our SLEEP!" Currents raced along the ground from all directions, and Rune scrambled down to put her palms on the ground; these words were magic, this one felt like reverie, and that one was traces of lumpenproletariat, and this one was Yui-chan for sure! The poems and journals and essays clustered around the fissure, knitting the crack in the Pen psyche, smoothing out the stress. Tzimfemme dropped her hands and smiled grimly as the crack faded to near nonexistence. "It's not me, and it's not you, that closed that," she finished. "It's all of us. My role here is to do battle with the bringers of drab reality," and with that she bent and kissed Rune's forehead, "and yours is to maintain the fortress, else we all are swept away in its undertow. Sossity and I are going to stay out here awhile, we'll make the Pen call you home--and be sure to thank all those people whose thoughts you were splashing in, they can feel it." "Sorry," Rune mumbled to the ground. The volcanic glass rippled as Rune found her voice again, picking her up in a gentle hollow and floating her away. . .