Monday 14 October 2002

Pic of the day: Dirt nap. Meh.

So zzleeepy

The day was like lost in a haze. My body kept trying to nap. Eventually I regained full consciousness sometime after 9 in the evening, and found myself battling evil undead together with another paladin. Yes, Dark Age of Camelot again. But perhaps, just perhaps, it may still give a clue to who I am and what I think. So a few words about what I did in the game.

We practiced paladin tactics. My fellow Faithful was quite good with his 2-handed sword, but he had not maxed out his chants. I had, and I had also studied the guild's website with its tutorial in chant twisting. Chant twisting is the technique that lets paladins run more than one chant in each pulse, including doing two heals each pulse. Yeah, that's kinda technical, but the short of it is that I can heal twice as effectively and at the same time protect and enhance the whole group. All new paladins need to learn this, if we are to realize our potential.

My online friend was suitably impressed, and did eventually start to do some simple chant twisting. As is usual in younger players, confidence did exceed skill eventually. But unlike real life, DAoC has reliable code for returning from the dead within reasonable time. It does cost, but it still beats "game over". Anyway, this was the only occasion in which we died. He also died once as he got out of range and was attacked by monsters while I was searching for him. But most of the time, we beat impossible odds, again and again. I think he is now very aware of the benefits of having more than one paladin in a group, and a good idea about the benefits of using chants actively. I can only hope that he follows up on this. Personally I am not a very group-oriented person; but when I join a group, I try to be all I can be for them. In return, I hope that they will learn and improve over time.

As in the game, so also in real life I tend to withdraw from groups of people who don't improve over time. When I am together with others, or even just one other, I tend to give them my full attention. I feel no need at all to just "be together" with people. All time is quality time. If people just want company, let them adopt a cat. Or in extreme cases, a dog. It seems to me that lots of people just want to hang out. I don't need or want that at all. I am dedicated and expect a certain minimum of dedication. I try to learn, and expect others to learn. Not as fast as I, obviously; I consider myself genetically superior so I usually hold others to lower standards. But something more than complete standstill.

***

As an example of how much I learn and grow, I wrote (while only half conscious, of course) a post on the MindMistress message board. (I've deleted it later.) It was about Yaoi, Yuri, Shounen-Ai, and hentai & ecchi Japan-inspired art. The really funny thing about this is that I responded to Al's mention this past Sunday when he was disconcerted that there was actually a word for Yaoi ... that enough people were interested in it to warrant a name.

Yaoi is Japanese for literature/art that depicts sexual relationships between men, at least one of which is usually considered straight at the onset of the story, and is normally written by heterosexual women. Accordingly, it is not exactly realistic, according to actual gay men, but it has its own traditions that are being kept. In the classic Yaoi, one of the men is typically bound by honor or circumstances outside his control to take part even though he is originally against it. I'd say that as women's literature it reflects an attempt to treat their own sexual issues from a safe distance, projecting their own needs and fears onto someone that cannot be identified with themselves. But I may be wrong. The corresponding female/female genre is called Yuri.

Now, the funniest thing is not that I, a Christian mystic, has a passable knowledge of Japanese-inspired genres of erotic literature. This is weird in itself, perhaps. But the funny thing is that I learned all this because I followed a link provided by Al Schroeder (the creator of the MindMistress comic, among other things) to the comic Sinfest. Contrary to its name, it is a quite decent comic. However, from there I found links to Keenspot, and further into the online web comic world. And in these communities I made many of my current online friends, and there I learned about those unusual forms of entertainment.

I'm not saying that it is a good thing that women are writing fiction about male homosexuality. I personally think not, though it is their own life. But I believe it is a good thing to learn and grow and understand people who are different from ourselves. And you don't come sleeping to that.