acessorising, 1 1/2

ohh enough of psychoanalysis and criticism. i'm sorry if all that offended you, when i read it i know some of it's too harsh, i know i'm not saying what i should, or what i really do think, just what goes with my mood at that time, or what's just happened.

in any case. welcome back for (drumroll) ... acessorising episode II!

(superficiality to go with the dischantment, and superficiality to match.)

i've met someone who's totally fashion-conscious. which is rare, 'cos he's happens to be a guy. not that there's anything remotely wrong with that, it's just good to actually have some fashion advice.

anyway. been sworn not to reveal his trade secrets so i'll settle for the eccentric and ecletic, since that's what you got last time, anyway.

hm. come to think of it, not ecletic at all. never mind. when dressing to impress, i wear the princess blouse and skirt. power ammy. skull sceptre. red cape. coloured gloves. how boring. post isn't going quite the way i expected.

lessee. on my skiller, i dress in black. default clothes black. black long-sleved midriff baring top. black pants. black shoes. red cape. works with the red hair. cut into a bob. i'm still bored. can't remember what exactly it was i was planning to say here.

ahwell. there you have it. make it 1 and 1/2. hardly deserves II status.

be nice.

"nice" isn't a good word. it wasn't meant to be, not in shakespeare's time, and i daresay not when it was thought up. neither now, wouldn't be too bad an idea either.

nice is a word you use to describe someone you don't know. it's a word for a stranger that can pass off as an acquaintance. it's a word you write on cards when you don't have any anecdotes to put down. it's a neutral word with positive connotations and a whole different implication underneath. "what's she like?"

"she's a nice girl."

nice what. nice how. nice she can suck up? nice she can act? nice she's so nondescript there isn't any nicer adjective to describe her.

i'm nice, people say.

people mean, i suck.

so most people don't get that meaning. so most people don't think. so most people are inane enough to take niceness as an acceptable (i'm not even saying commendable) exterior.

or maybe it's idealism. don't ask me.

never mind that i'm advocating niceness. "that wasn't very nice..." to initiate peace. "be nice? :)" as an answer to a stupid question.

i want to say to them. niceness isn't an attitude. isn't an action. isn't a mode you switch to just because you want the rewards for it. it's a way of life.

it's not niceness, per se. it's a side effect of goodness, of morality, of just being bloody human. so say my standard of what it is to be human isn't reasonable. to me, that's what it is. a lesser manifestation of all those things.

nice isn't buying an inventory full of newcomer maps, or making iron meds and distributing them. we've got a word for it here. that word's extra. it's called, condemming that person, and every other person who has the misfortune to meet them and dare to have a combat level higher than their own, by instilling in them the value that begging's right.

nice isn't dispensing useless advice to choobs of high-leveled players who aren't going to insult intelligence they think you have by telling you otherwise. read the knowledge base if you don't know anything. google it. what is wrong is your laziness, not anything about the game, not by far.

don't give me that crap called cynicism, because i'm not buying it. being realistic is one thing. faith is another all together. they can co-exist. they do. suck on th at.

finally...

yes! the skull sceptre's finally complete. a fair few months of searching, and there it is.

no! what do i do next?

edit: okay okay. i'll take a cue from the keywords. a skull sceptre just looks nice. stats; nothing much to speak of, the only good thing about it beyond that whole cosmetic bit is the ability to teleport to barbarian village 5 times before it disintegrates. or vapourises. or whatever. haven't even used it to teleport before, don't know of anyone who has...

edit 2: saves a space in your inventory if you're in the wildy, rather than teleport runes, but why anyone should want to bring that thing into the wildy is beyond me...

a return to newbness.

sometimes i forget how entirely restricting it is not to have mage high enough for every f2p teleport, laws, money (i'm talking even just 1k), or friends willing to associate with you and go on during times that coincide with your own.

i don't quite get the phrase n00b. i mean, i know it's insulting, and i take it to mean low-leveled, but i'm told the real meaning's something more than an insult to ability, but leaning more towards one of character. and that, i daresay i can't usually be faulted for ingame any longer. therein lies the justification for the title.

what really gets to me is how easy it is to level skills. i go from 1 mining to 21 in a day. i get smithing up by 15 levels the next. all through it i just gape...

that's the great thing about newbness. on to n00bness.

to put things into perspective, this is what i used to be like. (or, it could be entitled, you knowy you're a n00b when...)

• you take 2 hours to complete tutorial island.
• you head straight for draynor mansion after you die because of all the great respawns there. bucket, gloves, sheares...
• you think al kharid's a members area when you find out about the 10gp toll payment. and you are therefore
• so pleased with yourself because it seems as though you've gained acess to a members area by paying just 10gp...
• you admire the level 3s dressed in default clothes who don't talk for their high woodcutting level.
• you're so happy with yourself when you figure out there's a way to varrock via lumby and al kharid.
• you think it's so smart of you to make use of the world map.
• the concept of the wildy enthralls you.
• even after you've died.

all true. eh. i'll come up with more later. but you get the idea...

i'll differentiate between that and this, because newbness is just plain restrictive. i want to change people's perceptions. i want to do that through my skiller, and show them that character has nothing to do with combat level. i know i've said that lots of times before. i know i'll say it again.

negativity you don't need.

edit: before you continue reading. i save frustrations like these for my blog. mind you, i wouldn't dare lash out like that ingame. it's too compromising.

ingame,

i'm friggin lonely.

large proportion of my friends who still log on are away. the rest of the players on my friends list are, for the most part, egotistical suck ups i can't rightly stand to have a conversation with. i've had enough of false faces now to concentrate on training my skiller and blogging. (bear in mind, my skiller's only three days old, and has 28 mining, 16 smithing, 7 crafting and counting.)

it's not loneliness born of being ignored. it's the loneliness in logging in and being greeted with heys from three people who aren't even on your friends list, and whom you deleted from there long ago for reasons that you meant to be obvious to the both of you. (of course, the fact that they're only saying hey because that's how you greet people doesn't exactly do wonders either.)

in a particularly foul mood the other day, i simply ignored them. especially the guy who either can't count the appropriate number of exclamation or question marks necessary, or has an entirely too twitchy ring finger. of course i feel bad immediately afterwards, and reply the next i log in. i am just waiting for that person obnoxious enough to call me "friend" after making demands so unreasonable i was about to put him on ignore to ask why i don't respond. i'll reply sweetly "i'm sorry, it was kind of crowded back there, so i had to put my private chat on friends..."

if that isn't heavy-handed enough, i don't know what is.

perhaps the missive i blasted at the guy who happened to get (mistakenly, i'll admit) what was coming to a newer (more deserving too) annoyance might've done a better job. he'd been pestering me to add some guy, cooo[undetermined number of o's]ool xx, apparently a good friend of his. for some reason he refused (or simply lacked the capacity) to understand why i refused to add him. first off, someone with a name like that doesn't sound all too simulating a conversationalist. (not that i told him that much. i'm not that insensitive.) what i did tell him "you do realise even you aren't on my freinds list, i add you as and when you pm me. no offense, but if your friend has any questions, tell him to feel free to pm me, i'll do the same for him."

i cannot stand those people whom i soo feel like asking "do you need anything, or have i just been landed with another pest with a ego so hugely inflated i can't see past it to begin with?"

obvious lonliness isn't nearly so bad as knowing that everyone you're surrounded by has teeth.

about the forums. call THIS my personal rant(s).

no, i haven't magically acquired a membership since last i've blogged. still. the forums are open to whomever it pleases to partake of (for the most part) adolescent inability to use proper english, or contain emotions into comprehensible words. (i'm partial to a lack of capitalisation. most words don't hardly seem to deserve it. and no, not poor grasp of the language. lack of situational awareness. sloth. as you might call said lack of capitalisation. i'm still trying to decide.)


jagex is a company. jagex is liable. jagex can be sued. officially.

officially, they forbid under-13s to play the game. but. regardless. the knowledge base's parent-friendly. the censor's kid-friendly. the whole game's structured, or has been restructured to meet the needs (or demands, if you're that conscious of how you name your spades) of a progressively younger player base.

a younger player base of which a substantial proportion lack the emotional maturity or moral direction to even interact socially without incident. factor in the adults who use this combination to their advantage with that (culturally-induced. i know, alright? my irritations aren't irrational) awfully pragmatic mindset of monetary gain, it gets...faintly sickening.

but enough of that. on to the point of this post.

i do believe jagex tries too hard to keep players cossetted and mollycoddled like some sort of warped online dictatorship of a intended-utopian dystopia.

only threads i frequent are those housed in the rants forum.

ignore what i said in that earlier post. the macro problem's beyond ridiculous. and jagex creates a stickie banning rants on that precise thing. although it gets faintly sickening listening (even to an outsider like me) to people repeat the same thing over and over again, the same rants about macros, covering your ears isn't going to help any. it's still there.

catering to a lazier player base lacking in drive isn't the answer either. home teleport my foot. popular rant topic, and not without cause. grating as it is to read though the posts of unreasonable, petty, spoiled ... people, the rants've more than their fair share of gems. well-thought out posts, not so much rants as justifiable questions. and question they should. home teleport nullifies the effect of the mom teleporting bots some place ruddy lousy software can't get those pixels out of. i would've been disgraced, ashamed to have to use home tele to find my way out of a mess. now it's just a matter of convenience my choob shouldn't have.

disproption. not jagex's fault. the compliments forum's full of people professing their love for "mods! forum mods, game mods, jagex mods, dual mods..." there's more than enough of that around, flattery isn't going to get you a thing, not from me, and not from any other self-respecting person mature enough to have been appointed fairly into that position. it just makes people nervours, and annoyed, because it's as if fishing for compliments, and when there's nothing commendable about the flatterer, it's hard to show more sincerity than was received to begin with. i can't quite put my finger on it, but that isn't the face of sincere gratitude. i don't like the idea of false flattery. so sue me.

whereras the rants forum. threads about the ineffectiveness of mods, or the system, simply aren't as well entertained or received. can't elaborate more here, it's just, that. dispropotionate.

and what're the forums without forum mods. to tell the truth, (as a game mod myself) i respect forum mods much more than the typical game mod. it takes so much more courage to act the way you should when all that's immortalised (fine, i'm exaggerating, but you get the picture) in words that remain even when you aren't around to take them back, or explain them. and when you talk, you're speaking to so many more people than can bear imagining at that moment of discourse, and it's so much more difficult to stand firm and defend your opinions, or be able to rightly justify them in an intelligent manner when you're being flamed.

then the life of it's so public. frankly i'm glad there isn't a list of game mods around like there is one on the forum mods. i'd be piss scared of being hacked. worse still, of people pming me ingame or something. it's a life almost less private than zezima's, and that's saying alot, and that's true, because the guy who maxed out the hiscores for a time appeals to the imagination, fufils a need for some sort of larger than life hero. while mods people don't mind so much treating like dirt because it's not like any claim was made of being that much better, if at all. which is also true.

and things suck, as things do. but more's the time i lose sight of how the things that suck don't outnumber (not by far) the things that don't. i haven't, right now. i do suppose that's what rants do.

keep ranting people. we'll all be waiting.

so many.

so many people begging.

attitude shift, perhaps?

it's demeaning. diminishing your sense of self worth.

stop already.

home world.

as in, the server you're partial to, depending mostly on geographical location and lengths of cables and such.

geographically, i do believe australia's the best bet. more often than not i'd be at 107. note use of the apostrophe d.

when i wasn't to familiar with the concept of world select though, i just hopped over to the most crowded world. great personal satisfaction in being surrounded by tons of white dots in varrock i suppose. you could well call that a phrase, it hardly lasted long at all.

mostly i frequent worlds with 1000+ people. it's the social bit that i like, but too much gets ... overwhelming. so axe the 107 idea.

now i mainly go wherever my mouse takes me. if world select had their way on which world was "best" for me, i'd be in the vicinity of 29 and 30.

the idea of servers as worlds is pretty cute.

the idea of home worlds even more so. some kind of loyalty, i guess. then again, to me it's just pixels, so it doesn't matter so much.

apparently it does to lots of people though. i choose worlds by number of players, mainly. other thing that factors in is the world number. world numbers with the number 7, numbers when the years were significant, numbers i just happen to take a fancy to. and on my friends list, all the worlds sound vaguely familiar. 91, 107, 109, 50, 30, 16...

helps me remember who they are, if nothing else.

only worlds i avoid're the dutch servers. can't understand what anyone's saying, and in random pms the person doesn't get me when i say i don't speak that language.

i appreciate the fact that jagex's a britan-based company. appreciate the german servers too, and the dutch, finnish, swedish worlds...

still. it's kind of weird that there aren't any asian servers. not that it's strictly necessary right now, but still...

dug up an old thread on the official forums, something to the effect of 'bring back the singapore servers!' if they did that'd almost definitely be the closest server to me. being the only asian one, after all. then i read the small print ("rule 5, paragraph 40, the asterix at the bottom...") "high cost of bandwidth... members' server..."

back to sqaure one.

bot names do have style, you know.

before we start, let's clear up that little misconception that all macros are chinese in origin.

so, a large percentage of them are. but some others're just riding on the back of that prejudice.

i can speak chinese. it's the only subject i failed in school, and it's the only subject i ha- eh, dislike with unparalleled intensity. but yes, i can speak the language. and i know for a fact that a fair few of the macro namers don't.

by the way. macros = bots = getting a programme to practice a skill for you = afk training = cheating

yay! so let's start. post-translation, some of the names aren't too creative, some're obscene. some're just cute...

xiao yu. xiao means small, yu means fish. small fish woodcutting...

wc ren. kind of apt, ren means person.

mei hao. mei means beautiful. hao means good. put it together and into a sentence, it's a bit like wishing some one, phrase that comes to mind: mei hao de shen huo. de's a conjunction, so basically, have a good, prosperous life...

jun yi. (bear in mind, all these translations mayn't be strictly accurate. each word (i.e. mei) can have four different sounds (- and / and V and / in the opposite direction). each sound for each word here (i.e. mei with a V above it) can have lots of characters with that pronounciation, with lots of meanings... ) so jun could mean soldier. yi could mean one. yi could mean clothes. soldier person or soldier clothes... a macro's begging for the drill demon??

more entertaining than the random letters at any rate. bbvvv. dfskd.

you don't need to trust me.

this is hope.

and this is what it's like to be humbled.

a guy goes "follow to win 10k", in the usual fashion. a low-leveled player, standing in the middle of lumby. not many pay him any mind, just two obviously inexperienced, and one slightly more savvy player. i tag along, hoping to catch him in the act.

"trade to win" isn't exactly incriminating. i wait. the first guy doesn't understand, he keeps asking questions. by now the third guy's left. he explains "trade. whoever's got the best items wins." after a few long rounds of deciding and stating who's leading, i trade him. i put up a power ammy, an addy pick. stuff i just happened to have in my inventory. apparently, after that, i'm leading...

it goes on. it's incredibly boring. the lure of more money than they've probably ever touched is what keeps them here.

he brushes off the second girl with "it's a tie. between..."

i trade him for the last time, apparently "you have to beat my items to win", which i do, only to decline the trade and talk about how trust games're such awful things.

so he obviously chooses the first guy, with whom i've been having a conversation about the evils of item scamming via pm the whole time. and over pm i get "he's for real."

it's excruciatingly embarrassing, and i do believe i made a larger fool of myself there than any other time in that capacity. still, it's too ever so heartening.

i explain myself, and apologise simply, "i'm sorry." he replies with "np" and i go on to talk about phrasing his alturistic intentions less suspiciously. he's patient, almost condescending in his monosyllabic placating, and i can't say i can blame him at all. either of them, really, the first guy takes a leaf out of his book and responds in pretty much the same manner "np", "same here lol", and after the demise of our awkwardly brief exchange, "you're nice." hey, he even uses "great", and "i can see why..." i apologise to him, too.

i refuse to wonder if he delivered only because i spoke too early. it'd do him no credit, it'll be like, crying sour grapes.

besides, i like to think that he just did it, out of the goodness of his heart.

like i said, that's hope.

routine.

i'm so bored. the nature of my routine:

• i mine say 200 iron, 450 coal, 30 mith and 20 gold.
• i smelt it all in lumby.
• i teleport over to varrock and smith it all into steel plates and mith swords.
• i sell the plates and swords, world hopping once stock reaches 7 and 10, respectively.
• i splurge half of the money on runes.
• i go hunting stronghold of security creatures (graduated from catlepomb things to ankous) or ice giants in fally or moss giants in crandor. that's the only fun part.
• i teleport over to fally and get the pick out again...

it's so boring!

i waste so much time in lumby, purposely talking if only to be swamped by pms. other than the social aspect of it all, there's no fun to the game anymore.

that's why modship's so welcome. it's the only thing that keeps me playing.

it's kind of pathetic.

the dark side...

this is ridiculous.

i go fishing in karamja, and every other player is a bot. i count 11 of them. i don't get why they need to use chinese names. and frankly, i don't know what to do. every rune and every arrow shop i go to on vitually every world has a bot. in varrock, most crowded worlds have a bot, sometimes two, advertising real world trading sites. that's easier to deal with. they get muted. then a day later, they're at it again.

there's a level 3 player, obviously using an autotyper, selling 9k big bones.

why are people like this?

it's just, what's wrong with them?

it's so mercenary. more than that. it's plain selfish.

screw the 'it's only jaded adults' take. people spam the chat screen with "fire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" in cyan:, white:, red: flash:, wave2... they're answered with "selling fire!" in direct propotion. all levels, even 60, routinely beg for food.

and that's karamja, not even lumby.

i've solved the mystery of macros being levels 4 and 5. it's mainly autoretaliate on randoms.

i've seen whole macro families with level 70+ woodcutting.

i don't get it. they boast 1 million membership, but after taking macroers out of the mix...

it's not just the macroing bit. there're soo many throwaway accounts, i wonder at how easy it is to make one.

a guy, standing just outside lumby bank. "i break rules! report me! i account trade and share accounts and encourage others to break rules and [gets cut off by lack of space] report me! [censor kicks in]" that i wasn't too bothered about. then "everyone here has no life! people who play runescape are all [heh. censor strikes again]. wanna [overtly sexual advances and insults]." i pm him. he ignores me. "jagex is [you get the picture]. mods become mods by sleeping with [insert name of founders/staff of choice]."

seriously. all i can say is -.-

well. on the bright side and all. at least that's just an extreme. enough nice players yet to nullify that. or so i'd like to hope.

i mean, it's that kind of hope that keeps me playing.

take offense.

"offensive language" encompasses so much, really. i don't mind the swearing, or the spamming.

i mind the sexual advances.

the slightly misguided only serve to amuse. i've no idea where they get their ideas. "i need arrows."

i'm reeaally don't have time for this, so i go all non-committal. "i see."

player: do you have arrows?
me: no, i prefer to mage.
player: get me some arrows.
me: i'm sorry, i don't quite have the time for that.

*pause*

player: ha! reported.
me: okaay. what for?
player: offensive language.
me: lol?
player: you're not helping me. that's offensive!

me: -.-

then there's racism, against african americans and jews purely because they do to look, what, cool, good, in front of 'friends'. are they that desperate for friends that they'll settle for a lie?

and of course, the epitome of racism translated into action is all they have to provide direction for whatever it is they're trying to pull off. i don't know, most times it just doesn't seem like they mean it. they mean to be racist, but it's just the label on the act that they're looking for, not so much real prejudice behind the discrimination. as in, it's a game to them, and while it is, they think that's all there is too it.

i've seen racisim directed at chinese, not so often at all. and that's one of the few times it's really meant. the difference being that's kind of founded in the company-advocated war against macros. of course that never makes it right, never justifies it. and people usually agree with me when i use the word justify for other things, becuase they'd rather lie to save face in front of a girl, or a mod, than admit to themselves that what they've compromised is something as big as 'justice'.

not like that works any on people flaming. them i can deal with. i don't get angry, but i run out of witty comebacks way too soon for comfort.

and i hear their response, and i guess (since i can't really know, can i) and it's just, so ever so pitiful. it's just so belittling, what they're saying of themselves, how low they're showing themselves to go.

of course, i could hardly be the judge of all this. infact i could be so terribly disillusioned in my understanding of where, exactly, they're all coming from. so terribly disillusioned about everything.

i don't deny that possibility. i don't deny that a world view as limited as my own could make me come across as an idealistic, impressionable, uneducated...person, not deserving of attention, neither worthy of your time.

i don't deny that, really i don't. that's merely the world as i see it, coloured by perception, tainted by ignorance.

to what extent, is for you to say.

i write this in a public domain with some hope in mind. realise it, if you will.

forum (pro)pponents.

it's interesting to see how people argue when either way, they've got everything to lose.

on one hand, the respect of their opponent, and of the wider community.

on another, their own honour, and their ability to live with themselves.

it's interesting because i admire their ability to realise that fact. acknowledging your vulnerability to loss is in itself commendable. factoring that in as part of your argument is in itself a strength.

hiding behind the view of the wider body and their perception of your character to nullify what you judge to be the first threat is, as i see it, cowardience.

how you choose to argue can ultimately be as decisive to your arguement itself.

just as awareness of audience is imperative.

it takes a big person to back down from an argument with dignity, not discarding for that moment views that stand up to closer, and ethical, examination.

then again, most of them from are.

and i respect them for that, among other things.