pyraxis | Meeting grounds, open mikes, and a little boy

Apparently an "open mike" is when people take turns going to the front of a room and talking about themselves.

I found that out in a space called Hatrack. That's the other place that inspired this corner of the dreaming. It's for storytellers to come and talk about their stories. Just a few months ago, Earth time, they made a new space there, a place for the people in the stories to come and meet people from other stories. They're calling it an open mike. It's for everyone to get to know everyone else better.

I went there, 'cause I knew nobody from Karn or Ua would be able to find me there, and stood up and told them about me and the Grehti, and about Sha and UaLin.

And now I've made this little portal, they might figure out how to come here and find me, and go there, and hear all the heretic things I said. But you know what? I don't care anymore. Let them come here. This is the dreaming. I'll just jump up into the air and fly away, or go run up a tree and then make the trunk disappear so they can't climb up after me, or just open a door to nowhere and walk through it. Once you've made it to the dreaming once, you're free. Nobody from your world can ever get you again.

And meanwhile, I've got Sha to play with. I met another little boy at Hatrack, five and a half years old. His name was Caleb. Where are you, Sha? He says hi. But he can't come here, or maybe he doesn't want to, I'm not sure. Anyway, I thought the whole place was pretty awesome. We're not the only ones out there who go world-hopping.

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Cool. I'd be interested in that. Don't worry about scaring me.

I'll admit I'm fairly ignorant about multiplicity. I've wondered about it a bit- where the line is between fictional characters and multiple personalities. I'm not thinking they're the same thing, but wondering if there's sort of a spectrum or some grey areas in the middle there. Personally, I think of my characters as fictional- I can edit what they do, their main purpose is for entertainment and to create a story, but at the same time there is something going on there- They've done things that I don't expect, the stronger ones tend to really write themselves, and they cross the fourth wall like crazy and do stuff like watch movies with me. My characters have always been a huge part of my life and it feels great to be able to let them out to interact with people in places like this.

At the same time, I'm definitely interested in getting critiques, having people be able to say whether or not my characters have individual voices that come across or not, and a potential problem that immediately came to mind is that if we get somebody who is a multiple, or not in whatever the heck the fictional/multiple middle ground is, I doubt they would like to be critiqued. To solve this, we could have the critique post be voluntary- basically have a post for critiques where people can start comment threads asking for critiques on their own characters, instead of letting people just go ahead and critique whoever they want. Although I'm sure that could lead to some pretty interesting debates if a character/person/jiko/whatever didn't want to be critiqued and had to stand up to defend themselves. Or we could let the fictional people critique the real people as well and let it get REALLY weird! :D

I'm also not so sure if non-fictional multiple people would be so comfortable putting themselves in the same category as fictional people. I imagine that could be a sore point for some of them. But if we're setting up the place as "It doesn't matter if you're real, fictional, multiple, whatever- you can come out and chat here", then if they're not okay with that, they shouldn't be there anyway. Same with any not-multiple-or-fictional people who want to stop by.

About Dekan- I think it's a good idea. My biggest problem with that is since it's from your story, instead of a blank canvas place, it makes me feel a little limited in what I can do there. Like I'm still trying to figure out the rules. And I don't think many of my characters could do well there, since I'm definitely more in the non-magical science fiction thing. I'm looking forward to getting to explore the place a bit, but I don't think even Jim is going to want to stay long.

But I do like the idea of being able to get fictional places involved in this as well. And not just in the way the pizza party happened, with the whole blank space ending up full of psychedelic trees, although that was awesome. Maybe we could let people start posts describing their place, and then let them sort of be the game master in the comment threads for whoever wants to show up and explore or hang out there.

I guess my ideas aren't so good for if you're wanting to do this in a way that's more focused on promoting your book. Your Dekan community would be fine for that as is, and I'll definitely be reading it and interacting there any way I can. I just think a blank-space-in-the-dreaming could bring in a more varied group of people, and while it might be less focused, being a creator/moderator/participant would probably get some attention, and you could promote Dekan there and do both.

Anyway, wow I'm rambling. Just sort of throwing out ideas. Let me know what you think.

I suck at coming up with names, so I probably won't be much help there.

Fuck promoting the book. A hard sell, at least with me at the controls, isn't going to get anybody anywhere. When I worked as a caricature artist, I earned the most of any of the artists at the company, but I almost never called out to the people walking by or tried to engage them in conversation. I just sat there, made sure my work samples were highly visible, and tried to look friendly and inviting.

Anyway, that is to say I totally agree about making it a blank space in the dreaming. Wide variety of people is good. We should totally do it.

Shashigai promised me a name by tonight - he's very good at them. So I think we can get a place started ASAP.

Meeting grounds, open mikes, and a little boy

Re: YES

Re: YES