Wow, so Aeternalae still hold interest?

[Selena Aninikkou]

Yeah, well, the mostly neglected stuff is my fault, largely. By now the new site design and system should have been written, except I'm a lazy slacker with a huge lack of self-confidence, and I can't seem to break out of this and work on ANYTHING...

[Ninian]

With all due respect Nikkou, my plate is kind of full with the Ae race concepts already on the table. Though if you still have the idea once I update the universe as a whole, and you think it'd fit, I wouldn't mind talking with you about it. I just don't want Ae races to be added frivolously. That said, I want to eventually expand the overall Aeternalae universe to be about more than just them.

There is one more Ae race I didn't mention: Animae. Technically humanity ITSELF is an "Ae" race, as the Ae are the spirituality of the human form incarnate ("Man is in God's image"). Thus Animae are humans who have entered the Influence, no more or less. I'll detail more about Animae and Influence in the coming Universe post.

[Mitera Nikkou]

With all due respect Nikkou, my plate is kind of full with the Ae race concepts already on the table.

I was sort of thinking so, or I would have brought it up to you sometime last year. ^_^; I seem to think that everyone is busy or has no time, and on my end I just don't have any motivation. ._. (Which is to say that Selena can barely be faulted for anything.)

I guess I'll wait for what happens next. I make a good satellite. XD

[Sensei Kimiko]

There is one more Ae race I didn't mention: Animae. Technically humanity ITSELF is an "Ae" race, as the Ae are the spirituality of the human form incarnate ("Man is in God's image"). Thus Animae are humans who have entered the Influence, no more or less.

I resemble that remark.

And for good, bad, or the inevitable inbetween you are remebered and not wntirely unkindly. You were a lot of the fire in the early days of MSF and it is no surprise that your legacy still casts a long shadow. Granted you could be a PITA from time to time, but a healty community needs that.

I will admit I should likely be doing a lot more for the site, but there are times where it feels like the majority of membersaren't motivated to do more than follow or complain about having to follow. There is also a degree of fear. I know some people that have attempted to abuse a friendship with one of the admins for thier own ends. If it happens enough, you get gunshy. Perhaps that is a lame excuse, but there it is.

As for universes, or what not, please poke me if I can be of some assitance in getting you set up. I for one would welcome your input.

[P-tan]

1manscienc3team

Was that your e-mail?
If so, we e-mailed each other months ago!

If not, ignore me!

[Selena Aninikkou]

(Which is to say that Selena can barely be faulted for anything.)

Huh? I've been here for four or five years, and done... nothing at all...

[Ninian]

Well, I obviously cooled off a lot since "the early days". Eventually I just stopped giving a crap. It's a brutally effective flame war strategy to simply ignore or write off people who are trying to get your goat, or better yet avoid drama-heavy forums to begin with. That said, I stirred up a lot of drama myself back in the day. Yeah, those were crazy times. I have no interest in starting a big stink now, it's not even worth it anymore.

But here is an old fashioned drama kindle for ya:

I'm surprised that anime-hater troll is still here. Either he's been wisely remembering to STFU if he's in a forum he considers an antithesis to himself (which begs -- why is he here, if not to start trouble?) , or he's really, really in denial. If the latter, someone please smack it out of him. Preferably with a giant ice-cube filled glove so he doesn't bother people who don't have the time to coddle yet another confused hormonal teenager. Kid, either you're in the wrong place or you need to pull your head clear out the sphincter you've buried it in.

There ya go, some old fashioned PITA-kemi action. Be sure to discuss at length in the mod room about how I shouldn't flame people -- even someone claiming to be opposed to everything the site is about -- before deciding to do absolutely nothing.

(If you can't tell, I'm just kidding around here, note the avatar -- I do that more these days, I learned I can't get crap accomplished if I'm so damn serious all the time. The above is meant to be read in a silly/flippant tone of voice, which I obviously can't convey with text).

Okay, now that's out of the way... back to being nice. Thank you everyone, I hope what I share will be good enough for you!

[P-tan]

I simply do not want to start another arguement. So lay off my back, this is America, I can do whatever I want as long as I don't harm other people. Let's leave it at that!

PS: I still hate anime and nothing can change my mind.

[Ninian]

Look, you're a troll and even basically admit to being so. No one calls you out because they don't want to disrupt the harmony of the forum, however I've always preferred a certain degree of chaos that leads to a clearer and greater order than order that results of people polite but passive-aggressive. That sort of thinking is why I was originally recruited on the mod team, since it was different (also why I should have been kicked out long before I quit, since I was abusive of that power -- but that's another story).

In any case, as long as you're a troll, you shouldn't expect to be given the same amount of respect as people who actually go to the forum for a purpose other than showing off their epeen by having a differing opinion. And also, this ISN'T just America, we have people from all over on this forum including Canada, England and even Chili (Miyuki). Even if it WAS just America, it's a privately owned forum and if the owners said everyone HAD (even if by force) to have pink polka dot pajama avatars, you best get ready for a slumber party or leave.

Okay, sorry, I had to get that rant out.


EDIT: Incidentally, I can't stand most anime either -- more specifically most of what anime passes off as plots. Otherwise I adore it, or I wouldn't write Aeternalae and friends!

[P-tan]

Ok, then why don't you ask some members of their opinion about me. I haven't done anything wrong.

[Ninian]

Anyways, moving on... What has been going on here lately? Anyone care to update me?

[Mitera Nikkou]

What has been going on... Hmmmm.

Well, we have some new people and some old (that are managing to stick around) that keep the community going strong. A good bit of the new people came from MSF's new sister site (and most of their activity is in the Muffin room and Games room). But, in truth, only a few handfuls of people are really all that active.

On the creative side of things, there are a few that have kept the Stories room from staying the barren wasteland that it had been for a while, the Art room is still going and its activity changes all of the time, and Captions is still going strong. Roleplaying has picked up a bit, too; Eirien's study is no longer the sole RP that's large (quite a few have gone over a thousand posts in much, much less time).

Let's see... The Mod room is dead, more or less. Most of the mods are, well, doing stuff. I dunno. I just don't see most of them for ages, and only a few appear somewhat regularly these days, but I'm practically alone in there (half of my posts in there I don't really need to make, but I do so I can see whoever's willing to reply). I have no idea about Eirien... Haven't seen or heard from her in months. Kimiko's got a busy life. So... My undependable but stubborn self is trying to manage most stuff. ._.

IRC seems to be as active as ever, and some of the past problems seemed to have bled away... I don't know what else I can say. I hope that this is what you had meant and that it helped. ^_^;

[Queen Octavia]

I personally might whip out the old story pen again. I'm almost done a shortish novel I wrote that is very dark and awestackular (No TF in it, hence the lack of mention of it), and I've also reached the end of the serieses (Malazan Book of the Fallen & A Song of Ice and Fire) of fantasy novels that I started reading. In short, my free time is being freed up ;p. Provided I don't spend too much time writing love poems for my girlfriend, I may resume one of my stories this weekend, yayzxor!

As for making the main page more linky oriented and removing the need for submissiony approval, that could be a bad idea. Just so long as it doesn't take discussion away from these forums and divide it up among several different user pages. That would irk me and be most inconvienient.

As a newcomer to MSF I wasn't around when all this aeternalae business got started up and largely don't understand it. To be honest the few encounters with it I've had didn't really make it seem very interesting to me. However, seeing as I'm missing any sort of foundation this is not very surprising.

I personally find the MSFs troll rather amusing, he seems harmless enough as far as trolls go. Sort of the type to demand a toll for crossing the bridge but if any old ladies show up he'll help them across ;p.

Anyways, if you do in fact resume expanding your Aeternalae universe in earnest it would probably be a good idea to make it accessable to newcomers like myself. Assume we know nothing - since we don't . Expanding the audience is always a good thing!

*Burrows into his bed*

[Musashi]

Yeah, as for IRC, it's been mainly peaceful... I've heard of a couple things here and there (and encountered some myself), but that's to be expected. Same thing with the boards. Neither are anywhere near how they were in the past with the constant arguments, at least in my opinion.

The captions room has been picking up, so we're not lacking in that kind of content. RPs seem to be doing pretty well. There's some RPing going on through IRC, rather than just on the boards.

So, yeah, all in all I'd say it's been pretty quiet and peaceful here, for the most part. MSF isn't dying, but it's not booming with activity either. Just slow and steady.

[Ninian]

@UberLurker


Totally, I agree. In fact, one of the worst weaknesses of the original Aeternalae stuff is that it wasn't accessible to newcomers. Worst of all, besides having way too many random terms for stuff, it forced certain spiritual views on people that they'd have to at least tolerate to write. Basically, a contrived mess , and it didn't help that writing them forced a certain agreement to their viewpoint (wasn't very open to people who disagreed with their principles) and it didn't allow many stories where the whole thing didn't revolve around them. They basically showed just how much of an amateur I was -- original, but weak. When I finally began outgrowing the Aeternalae and seeing how weaksauce they were, I actually gave up on them.

Kerina, as I said, showed me the light. The way I should have done things. Instead of writing a story about them, I should have let a story happen because of them. Instead of just dumping my butt with universe facts on a confused crowd, I should have shown those facts through a story. To have the patience to slowly write that story. I knew she'd help me when I asked her to give me a hand on the project (before I began feeling it was weaksauce) but I had no idea just how much she would. I'm very grateful to that woman, in ways words cannot convey. As such, when I make the post, I'm probably going to share what details every story would share anyway, point to Kerina's novel as a starting place for newbies to the universe, and keep a lot of the finer details (which I just spilled all over the place before) closer/quieter and shared only with the people who have read the main canon and people who wish to write their own branches.