Mmmm turkey!

Good evening, strangers. I finally wandered in here after weeks of pleading from my boyfriend, 6billionghosts, and because I am dissatisfied with the website where I have been roleplaying recently. I am hoping that this place will help me develop a more consistent writing routine and provide me with an outlet for all of these ideas swimming around inside my head, like brilliantly bioluminescent neurotransmitter fishes!

So, a little about me: I am a 26-year-old psychology student in Washington, D.C. whose passion is for the care and comfort of those struggling with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. I have volunteered and worked with the elderly in various capacities since the age of twelve, and my mother is a geriatric nurse, so this passion sort of runs in the family. Other jobs I have held include bookseller and cataloger of dead birds (at the Natural History Museum in Dublin, Ireland). I lived overseas for six years.

La la la.

I'm from Chicago originally, and I started writing at the age of six. It has remained my one consistent creative passion, and it saddens me that I have had to give it less time in order to work and study and do all of those other myriad things grown-ups are supposed to do in order to survive.

Well, that's all for now. I look forward to reading and writing here.

Oh, and by the way...

YO WHASSUP.

Well, hello there!



Umm, I mean...



YEAH!!

Shouldn't you be ???

Oh, forget it.

I must not give into the smileys!!!

The smilies are your friends.

The smilies are your friends.

The smilies are your friends.

The smilies are your friends.

The smilies are your friends.

The smilies are your friends.

Welcome to FoG, Gnossienne ((how is that pronounced, btw?))

I'm glad that 6billionghosts begged you for weeks to come here! We're always happy to see new faces. I'm sure you'll be a wonderful addition to the site.

My grandma used to work in nursing homes, and the last few years of her career, she was an activities director for the hall that housed the patients who were mentally ill, had dementia or Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, and one blind man who was mentally sound, but when they tried to change his room, they screwed him all up with the different layout, so he was happy to go back to his original room. She always told great stories about the things people would do on that hall, and I was even able to meet and encounter some of them on my own. Sadly, I really didn't like being there because the smell gave me migraines... My head is really sensitive to a lot of things. =\

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your time here. ^^_^^

Welcome to the site, Gnossienne (I'm never going to memorize that spelling...).

I, too, have been writing for about as long as I can remember. It is quite hilarious going back and reading the stories that I used to write: basically just an enormous run-on sentence/structure/plot line My problem is that I haven't been giving the available time I have outside of work and school to writing recently (pre-November), so my writing lately has been...non-existent. FOG certainly helped me get back into the swing of things, so hopefully it can help you as well

Enjoy your stay!

Kathryn, gnossienne is pronounced NO-see-enn. It is a word the French composer Erik Satie made up to describe several of his pieces.

I'm sorry your grandmother's facility had such a strong odor. There are all kinds of new-fangled ways of combating that these days. Amongst other things, my facility had this crazy system in the ceiling that would suck odors up through a vent and burn them. It was incredibly effective, and visitors were constantly remarking on the lack of odor compared to other places.

My interactions and observations of the people in my care have strongly influenced my writing. Dementia is a strange and fascinating world.

Silvone, my old stories are pretty amusing too. Lots of chimpanzees and time travel.

Welcome to FoG! If you like to write you should fit in well here. I know we just had a writing contest and that was a lot of fun and I think there should be another one coming soon. Hopefully anyway. If not there are plenty of quality RPs going on. I hope you enjoy your stay.

On a side note I took a psychology class once and I have to admit it is very fascinating what the human mind is can do. My favorite part was the different perspectives for viewing why the mind acts like it does. Like the behaviorist perspective and all the others.

On another side note I visited Ireland last summer and was actually curious as to what part of Ireland you stayed at. Was it towards the north?

Ah. I kind of like that word now. It makes me feel spiffy to pronounce it, and I thought it was appealing to the eye before I even knew the proper way to say it. Made up words are fun. Shakespeare was great with it, expanding the English language the way he did.

The nursing home at which she worked didn't have a lot of money. There's no way they could have afforded something like that to keep the odor of old people and bodily wastes and cleaning supplies at bay. Hell, when she worked there, if people waited until later in the day to cash their paychecks, they would bounce. It was that bad. They went under shortly after my grandma had to retire because of her heart condition at the time.

I can completely understand how the people for whom you care would influence your writing. They've influenced a lot of what my grandma has done, too. Our environments help to shape who we are, and if just reading a book can change my writing style momentarily, then being around real people who are quirky and out of the ordinary should definitely influence a person's writing.

Hm... The furthest back I remember writing was when I was in fourth grade. I mean, I know I wrote before that, but the story from the furthest back I can recall was when I was in that grade. We were supposed to write something quirky and nonsensical. The only part I remember was that Bill Clinton locked me in kindergarten. It's so much fun to read the things we've written so long ago.

Earliest writing I ever did was in second grade. I wrote a story about dinosaurs. The Great Velociraptor, Dimetrodon, and T-Rex team up. I actually gave it that name when i was little. I stumbled upon it looking through some of my oldest stuff.

Childhood writing I can remember:

• Something involving dragons
  
• A stick figure and a stuffed penguin go on an adventure to find the fountain that will make them real
  
• A Western with a silly but moralistic story
  
• A guy drives his car off a bridge and gets reincarnated as a beaver making a dam - I remember when my friend found this in my desk at the end of the year as we cleaned up. I denied writing it, even when he pointed out that it was in my handwriting. Hahhaa
  
• My Boy Scout troop had to fight off aliens using radioactive goo
  

I had a very good elementary school teacher who set up collaborative writing projects. When people say that writing is a solitary act, it sort of makes sense to me, but not entirely.

That's one way of writing, but what about the way we told stories as kids? The oral tradition. Maybe there's an implied difference between writing and storytelling.

I don't actually remember writing that far back. I remember reading a lot but no writing. The first writing I did was in middle school. Well the stuff I remember anyway. I remember that it never got finished and was a rather weird story too. Something about a commando raid on a school. I don't remember. Anyway that was the first thing I actually wrote for fun.

Sunwolf: I lived in Dublin for several years, but I also traveled all around the country (and a few other parts of western Europe). If I were to recommend vacation spots to people considering traveling to Ireland, I'd suggest Cork (south) for the incredible scenery and Galway (west) for the arts and the funky people.

Kathryn: When I was in 2nd grade, my teachers had us write stories about Saddam Hussein called "The Wacky Iraqi." Yeah, seriously. In my version of the story he was locked up in the Oval Office with nothing but bugs to eat.

Raptorman: Dinos rule. When I was a kid and Jurassic Park had just come out, my cousins had the most awesome dinosaur toys that made horrifying screech noises and "bit" pieces of flesh out of one another. It was pretty sweet.

6billionghosts: I don't think of writing and storytelling as necessarily one and the same, and I think your interest in collaboration is probably a big part of why you roleplay (why all of us do, really).

Ahh, now see, I was going to say no-see-ENN. NO-see-enn sounds cool, too.
Ooh!! Maybe NO-see-enn is the adjective, and no-see-ENN is the name!
Yes? No?

Ah, well, either way: Welcome to the FOG, Gnossienne! ( I didn't even have to go back and check the spelling. xD ) I like you already. Looking forward to role-playing with you sometime. Right now I'm consumed in the attempt to produce SOMETHING during NaNoWriMo, but as soon as that's over with I'll probably be back into the role-playing mode, at which time, perhaps, I may have the chance to direct you hither or thither to a role-play or two, or else possibly even join one in which you've taken part.

*glance* Hm, that could use some periods and semicolons....
Oh well.

Welcome again, Gnossienne! Enjoy the swirly mists!

Kalon Ordona II wrote:Ooh!! Maybe NO-see-enn is the adjective, and no-see-ENN is the name!
Yes? No?

Sure! It's a made-up word, so anything goes as far as I'm concerned.

Good luck with NaNoWriMo! I don't have the guts to take that on during finals season, and at the time of year when my current job (in a boutique) is busiest. I salute all of those who have greater tolerance for stress than myself.

Please feel free to invite me to a roleplay at any time. I most likely will not be taking the initiative for a little while, since everything is a little chaotic right now, but I do need to stop using excuses for not writing and just get down to it. Having someone prod me along is quite helpful.

When I was in Ireland I was mostly on the east side and in the north. I spent a lot of time right on the boarder between Ireland and the part that is still part of England. I was in Derry for a few days and that was an awesome city to visit. I did spend some time in Crossmaglen (SP?), Dublin and Belfast. Also went to The Giants Causeway and the most northern part of the island. All inall it was an awesome trip. But as it is it seems that we both saw differnet parts of the island.

I also salute the participants of NaNoWriMo. That is way to much work in a single month for me to handle with work and school.

Goodness, Kalon! You have done a thorough job of creating a world, there. I have a lot of reading to do.

Zephiris, who has since disappeared, made a little of the humans, but other than that everything is mine. ^^ We were going to co-host, but I ended up taking over. It's happened a few times before, too, actually. Anyway, just so everybody knows I didn't come up with the ENTIRE thing ALL by myself.

And actually people like Silvone and Stion have since added quite a bit, and helped me nail down a few things. Reffy, too, and Digital_Muse a bit.
I have it set up to where players are free to fill in the gaps in the world. I even kept away from labeling all the cities and towns, just so people could make up the names--and maybe even make a character from one of them, giving it a name and history and stuff.

So yeah. ^^

Oh, and there's even more in the OOC.
That's where all the players' additions are. The first posts in the RP are all me, except for some of the humans and the Zephiris religion. The OOC has been added to mostly by me, but some by other people.
Just so we're clear. ^^

(( ^ is obsessed with giving credit to other people where credit is due ))