Just saying hi!

[Sighter Tnailog]

Hello friends,

Just stopping in to say hello. Was in the neighborhood for a few reasons and I thought I'd just see how old friends here were doing.

Don't plan on starting up roleplaying again, my life is just too hectic, and Althanas just too addictively fun, for me to really get hooked on it like I used to be. I'd just start up a thread and never finish it and make a bunch of people miffed that it didn't get off the ground, so I'll avoid that.

Just wanted to see if any oldbies were still around and find out the current news! Any hot gossip dying to be told?

Sighter, or Madison if you want.

[SirArtemis]

No clue who you are but it's nice to have you thinking of us ^^

[Atzar]

Always good to see you around. How's everything going for you?

[Sighter Tnailog]

It is going well. I am finishing up my final year of studies at the University of Chicago, and should have my Master's by the end of August. After that, who knows what is next, I would love to find a job somewhere in the Chicagoland area and work on my next project, whatever it may be, probably something to do with making enough money to keep a tidy house and cook excellent meals on occasion and read excellent things with frequency and write here and there when I have the time to do so, especially long love letters and intimate hymns of thanksgiving. In short, pursuing happiness, and hopefully finding that it's easier to create it with the man I love than to pursue it somewhere outside of myself.

Oh, and Sir Artemis, I'm an oldbie. Was here near the beginning, and left for good about three years ago. Used to write for Raiaera, administer the continents, then the staff, and generally stir up trouble wherever I went.

[Rayse Valentino]

A Master's in what? GAYOLOGY? Just kidding, hi.

[Sighter Tnailog]

Divinity, actually. When I'm done they tell me I'll be able to control the weather by sacrificing goats on altars or something like that.

[Tainted Bushido]

Oh is THAT all?

[Sighter Tnailog]

Maybe not, but it's enough.

[SirArtemis]

If you plan to write, you should resubmit your character profile for 3.0 ROG approval, or at least PM letho to see if anything he sees needs changing. ^^ Either way, welcome back. Congrats on the masters.

[Duffy]

Welcome back Sighter, you elven dog you!

Stay a while this time, we have paths to cross and songs to sing :).

[Tainted Bushido]

Heh, no offense Arti, but I find you telling Finny about rules and regulations funny. Call it the masochist in me. So are you really going to be not coming back? Did we finally hook back Findlefin? Is Tainted Bushido ever going to grow some respect? Find out this and more on "As the Website Refreshes!"

[Margaret]

Heh, no offense Arti, but I find you telling Finny about rules and regulations funny. Call it the masochist in me. So are you really going to be not coming back? Did we finally hook back Findlefin? Is Tainted Bushido ever going to grow some respect? Find out this and more on "As the Website Refreshes!"
I'm glad I'm not the only one whom found that amusing.
Welcome back-esque, Sighter. Glad to see another old face peeking about, even if it's just that; a peek.

[Sighter Tnailog]

I may work on a few things here and there. Althanas really isn't the forum for the kind of writing I've become interested in, in some ways. I just posted something in Salvar but may not keep up with it, I have to think about it. And, like I said, I'm very busy. It's entirely possible I disappear again. But I'll hang out and have some fun while it lasts.

It's funny to me too, Bushido. Especially because, looking around here, there are a lot of rules "copy writing" still percolating around the forums that have my fingerprints all over it, even if it does appear my name is no longer on anything. Thank goodness for that, too, most of my rules writing was terrible.

And thanks, Artemis, I'll check with Letho. I honestly will have to do some digging just to FIND my pre-3.0 profile. And some of it will have to be redone, anyway, just because there are a number of skills I think need to be degraded -- especially my skills connected to having a wide web of informants and contacts, none of that should be true anymore from an IC perspective.

Edit: Margaret, can you enlighten me as to who you are with a nickname or handle I might remember?

[Tainted Bushido]

I may work on a few things here and there. Althanas really isn't the forum for the kind of writing I've become interested in, in some ways. I just posted something in Salvar but may not keep up with it, I have to think about it. And, like I said, I'm very busy. It's entirely possible I disappear again. But I'll hang out and have some fun while it lasts.

It's funny to me too, Bushido. Especially because, looking around here, there are a lot of rules "copy writing" still percolating around the forums that have my fingerprints all over it, even if it does appear my name is no longer on anything. Thank goodness for that, too, most of my rules writing was terrible.

And thanks, Artemis, I'll check with Letho. I honestly will have to do some digging just to FIND my pre-3.0 profile. And some of it will have to be redone, anyway, just because there are a number of skills I think need to be degraded -- especially my skills connected to having a wide web of informants and contacts, none of that should be true anymore from an IC perspective.

Edit: Margaret, can you enlighten me as to who you are with a nickname or handle I might remember?

Eh, I'll let Margret introduce himself. The joy of ruining alts is lost on me tonight, must be too tired.

What sort of writing are you into then Finny? We talking a style or just non-fiction to fiction? You're here, might as well pull up a seat right?

[Sighter Tnailog]

Well, I've been engaging with Erich Auerbach's excellent work on literary portrayals of reality in the West, Mimesis. It basically tracks the development of Western lit. from Homer to Virginia Woolf, attempting to articulate how changes in the style of a work from the predominant controlling styles of the past -- namely, changes which "blend" two styles that were previously considered distinct, like comedy and tragedy -- represent moments in Western literature when writers found their old stylistic horizons insufficient for developing an accurate portrayal of reality.

In short, Auerbach's notion is that the old phrase that something is "style without substance" is actually inaccurate; rather, style IS substance.

And so the writing I have been trying to work on recently tries to adapt these notions to the task of fantasy, which is something I will admit that I've been having trouble doing outside of writing that lets me really set the tones of setting and location in ways fully within my control as an author. And I'm working on style in ways that I haven't been working on them before, and I will admit that style is something I still have trouble wrapping my mind around. I'm also rather rusty, having spent the better part of three years writing primarily for academic papers and occasional sermons. So who knows where it goes. But basically I'm interested in exploring how the style of writing one pursues says something about their approach to reality and the nature of the world we inhabit; does prose itself, absent any strict "content" to the work, bear most of the lifting in our engagement with the world around us? It's a powerful claim in the literature on literature, and it is one that has occupied my thoughts for a few years.

[Margaret]

Edit: Margaret, can you enlighten me as to who you are with a nickname or handle I might remember?
Lord Anglekos, if that rings a bell. Also Winterhair.
EDIT: Or even Lord Angelface by some.
And I'm also the only level 165 on the site.

[Sighter Tnailog]

That name quite certainly rings a bell. Nice to see you again!

[Tainted Bushido]

So, in short you're trying to mix styles in your writing? Form a sort of dichotomy in your writing that might create a more profound style than you would achieve with a single archetype of writing alone, say comedy and drama together to create a striking effect that throws the reader off balance?

Or am I totally missing the mark here? I will admit my brain isn't completely on right now...

[Margaret]

That name quite certainly rings a bell. Nice to see you again!
You too. It's been a slow return for me.

[Sighter Tnailog]

Tainted, Auerbach is incredibly complicated, and I'll admit that I don't know what he means half the time I read him. Part of the issue, too, is that some of these stylistic horizons have already been breached -- take, for instance, Shakespeare's free mixing of comedic and tragic elements in the same scene, something simply not done in classical drama. On Auerbach's account, this represented a shift in how writers came to conceptualize and describe the reality of the world as they saw it.

For me, it's less that I'm trying to do groundbreaking work, but more that I'm simply stuck in a place where I'm wrestling with style as an independent actor in my prose for the first time in my life. Much of my writing on this site has been by rote...an action in mind, perhaps a character's internal dialogue, but it has been about the character's rough engagement with a superficial level of their connection to the world. I'm interested in delving towards how I can improve my style to say something more, something about the nature of the world we inhabit. And so sometimes I wonder if Althanas is the best place to do that...or, at least, how Althanas can be a forum in which an operation like that can happen.

I actually don't know if I'm good enough in any given style to actually competently mix them, for instance...I don't know how to stylize a comedic work, nor a tragic one. I'm trying to learn how to be such a stylist, I guess is the point, in order to learn how the style I deploy might SAY something more than the words on the page themselves, but rather speak to something that points beyond them to something nebulously real.

[Tainted Bushido]

More philosophical and allegorical than stylistic then? Certainly a worthy cause. I'll just stick to my bad writing and cheap thrills then. Maybe someday I'll pull all these ideas together and make them into something nice. Time will tell and all that Jazz.

Even still, good to at least see you back man.

[Sighter Tnailog]

Allegory can be a part of style, as can imagination and tone and diction and a lot of other things. As to philosophy, I've always believed that reality echoes in any writer's writing, no matter how "cheap" or "bad." The question in my mind is how to discipline my writing to make that reality shine forth, or even to realize what it is well enough to suppress it or promote an alternative reality.

In any case, I didn't mean to get technical about it all. It's just something that's been driving a lot of my thoughts about writing recently, is all.

Also, I just realized that I am now looking at just a few months past ten years I've been on Althanas. I started as a freshman in high school, and I'm about to finish grad school. Shit man I'm feeling nostalgia like all hell.

[Margaret]

Also, I just realized that I am now looking at just a few months past ten years I've been on Althanas. I started as a freshman in high school, and I'm about to finish grad school. Shit man I'm feeling nostalgia like all hell.Crazy, huh? I've been hitting up Althy since middle school myself. Remember fighting some wolf guy as a Sephiroth-clone, practically...good times.

[Morus]

Crazy, huh? I've been hitting up Althy since middle school myself. Remember fighting some wolf guy as a Sephiroth-clone, practically...good times.

I'm pretty sure that could be said about almost anyone who started here.

Welcome back, Madison.

[Silence Sei]

I'm pretty sure that could be said about almost anyone who started here.

Welcome back, Madison.

Fighting the Sephiroth guy included.

Welcome back however temporary the stay is, Maddy.

[Paladin]

Divinity, actually. When I'm done they tell me I'll be able to control the weather by sacrificing goats on altars or something like that.

Wait seriously? Bloody hell why did I major in Computer Science that sounds so much cooler.

Welcome back Findelfin.

[Letho]

And I'm also the only level 165 on the site.No longer. Numbers giveth, Letho taketh away.

[Silence Sei]

Someone was scared that Victor was gonna get his ass kicked by a level 165 in the war...

[Lionheart]

It's nice to meet one of the people who's name keeps popping up in all sorts of random corners of the site, even if it's just a bit of chatter in OOC.

[Sighter Tnailog]

Maybe one day I'll be the most missed oldbie, but probably not, I'm quite an asshole at the end of the day.

[Amber Eyes]

Acually there are two level 165s...

[MetalDrago]

Madison, long time. Missed you, man. Catch me on AIM sometime.