no words can paint the picture of the Queen of all Argyll

Grace, over at the Etherial Musings blog takes on Inception as a film, and as an exercise in moving science fiction. I think she's right on all counts. (Warning: there are spoilers, though they're minimal.)

There's newness (of a sort) announced over on the Lady Disdain blog. More of that click-and-win angle, but I'm having fun with it. At the least, it's allowing me the option of going through old designs and deciding what's good, and what's abysmal. (There are a few I'm setting off to one side in the Needs work, but it's a good idea pile.)

There's a hunt coming up, and, rather than necessarily wanting to run the hunt--though there's interest--I'm rather more intrigued by the concept of being part of the hunt. At the least, this particular hunt? Will give me much more exposure to stores that, at least tenuously, consider themselves part of the RP community.

The down side (and there is one) comes in this neat little description from the hunt's organizer:

Theme: Roleplay. This can be clothing, furniture, vehicles, weapons, etc. It can be from Fantasy to Sci-fi, Gorean to Medieval.

Seriously?

So...clothing, furniture, vehicles, weapons, props, whatever--that could potentially be used in settings as diverse as:

* Trayus Academy? (I'm assuming they're not encouraging branded Star Wars RP props, but then, Star Wars RP remains large on SL.)
* the Shipyard? (General SF roleplay, but according to all sources, fairly well-done.)
* the Dark Den? (I've never been able to get a handle on exactly what it is, as it seems to comprise modern and Gorean themes fairly interchangeably, plus a lot of Goreans I know are in the Dark Den RP group. Maybe that's just their interpretation of island style?)
* Doomed? (One of the oldest SF/horror RPs on the grid; it's an sf RP, so they can always use gadgets and gear.)
* Legacies? (I'm not sure how "no holds barred" applies to Victorian horror, but then, I've never gone to look, either.)
* Midian? (I love how Midian City is this dark, oppressive, toxic, burnt landscape of urban decay, but she sounds so chirpy and upbeat about it...)
* Toxia? (I was around when Toxia first launched, so I still call it that, not Toxian City. But it's prime dark urban madness RP.)
* Necronom VI? (The other widely-known sf RP on the grid; highly detailed, larger space, and a space station, not a ship...but with something of the same problem. That problem being invasive, alien, and tentacled.)
* Gor? (There's SO MUCH, and so much variance, to the Gor lands; I just liked this story of an escaped kajira who became a Panther. It's rather well done.)

Is that what they're telling me? I mean, look, in one sense, roleplay is the props; without the props, some of us can't really buy the mindset, and flail a bit, trying to figure things out. In that sense, anything that adds to the end user experience would be a good thing, right?

On the other hand, though, there's a wide wide spectrum for RP in Second Life. Just in the quick examples I tracked down, you've got futuristic cities, decayed wastelands, Victorian horror, savage fantasy, Star Wars, tentacle sex, government conspiracies...and that's without going far from the beaten path on SL RP.

So who knows? I have some ideas, and it might be a fun hunt to join. At the least I can apply, and see if I'm accepted.

(In something nonrelated, while finding background links off the grid for those particular RP mentions, I tracked down this article which boldly states that MySpace, Second Life and Twitter are all going to spontaneously implode under the weight of their own hype.

(Now, don't mistake me, I'm one of the most virulent critics Linden Labs has, for good or ill--but, like the changes or loathe them, they are still here, three years later. So is MySpace. So is Twitter.

(In fact, Twitter's multiplicity of tweets are now being archived, by the Library of Congress, no less--so even if Twitter does implode, bright and early the first January day in 2011--those tweets will still remain.

(And, me personally, I think Twitter's a diverse enough community that it's going to last a while. Will it last out the decade? Yes. Will it last another decade, until 2020? Who knows? Personally, I think Second Life's on the way out, or at least, on the way down, if they don't check the jagged slide downhill, in terms of service interruption, grid stability, and consistent userbase; but even SL, I don't think is going to be gone by 2011.

(MySpace? MySpace hit the music boom. And, while more people are setting up their own websites, or moving to FaceBook, MySpace is still there. And what people care about the service doesn't even touch on the look of it--they want a MySpace account because it's got easy embeds for streaming music; it's got a link system that can dole out website/FaceBook/MySpace/Twitter/whatever other form of net media that's desired, all at once. In the right hands, all a designer has to do is put up a background that doesn't suck, choose a constrasting color for the print, and MySpace literally does the rest.)