Thursday (10/21/04) 3:37pm - ... wherein Peter lists 'Five RPBlogs That Would Eat His Life.'
Five RP Blogs that Would Eat My Life
Several of my friends have recommended It's Good to Be in DC to me. This is one of those 'role-playing blogs,' where folks carry on a running discussion in the guise of various characters around some particular theme. In the case of It's Good to Be in DC, they're all political figures --
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hangingfire, for example, portrays Senator Tom DeLay to hilarious effect.I've wandered over to it a few times, and had a good laugh. But, politics being of no engrossing interest to me, I wandered off again, leaving Bush, Kerry, God, the Founding Father Zombie Squad, and Henry the Eighth to sort things out among themselves. Meanwhile
shadyglenn got sucked into the blog, never to return. :)This got me to thinking -- what sort of RP blog would be fascinating and fun enough to be very, very dangerous to my sanity & well-being?
Here are my speculations -- I list five RP blogs that would eat my life, each with a short description as well as what sort of character I would play in the RP.
Lost Ripoff:
Lost is the latest TV Show from J. J. Abrams (of Alias fame). I haven't seen the show, but the concept interests me: a plane crashes on a deserted island with 48 survivors.
So, let's just imagine that the island is equipped with an internet (sadly it is not hooked up to The Internet), wherein the castaways can discuss important details like food, lodging, the fashioning of distress calls, and who should get eaten in times of emergency.
Character I Would Play:
Brad Astley, an overweight, nebbish, myopic librarian. Keeps making Lord of the Flies jokes that absolutely nobody understands. Salvaged only one book from the wreckage -- to his infinite dismay, it's an old Danielle Steele potboiler.
Musical Demimonde '65:
I half-remember some story, probably apocryphal, that after Sgt. Pepper's was recorded, on a chilly morning in April of 1967, the Boys propped up some speakers in the windows of the studio and put on their acetate of the album. And if it didn't happen like that, well, it should have.
The sounds played out over the rooftops, to be heard by children and bemused housewives. But not by any musicians, though -- they'd been gigging the night before and were fast asleep at that ungodly hour. Now, I'm not talking about the famous musicians -- not the Beatles or the Stones or the Byrds -- but artists like the Outstanding Waves, Sir Giles Crumpet, Big Shiny Grapefruit, and Ralph Egglesby & the Ralph-Oh-Naughts -- the ones that, alas, never did exist, and even if they did, would only live on today as mouldering vinyl in the back of our parents' old record collections. Maybe the Quarrels opened for the Chocolate Watchband in LA one time in '67. Maybe the bassist of Whirled Elysium once met Pete Best. But generally, these were the musicians on the fringes, making music that is now, sadly, forgotten.
But a few of the more technically-inclined studio engineers cobbled together this 'groovy telephone net-work' (which would eventually get 'borrowed' by the U. S. government & become ARPANet), and used it to post discussions and the occasional demo. :)
Character I Would Play:
Billy Jericho, eccentric-but-legendary-in-small-circles record producer, known for _Walls of Jericho,_ _Walls of Jericho II,_ and the cryptic-but-triumphant _Walls of Jericho III._ Attempts at working with established bands usually ended in harsh words & creative differences. Always wearing sunglasses, owing to 'his eye condition.' Spent several years as a recluse, jury-rigging odd recording contraptions. Self-released a set of truly befuddling recordings (consisting of white noise, distorted speech in some Slavic language, and telephone-switchboard noises) before going missing in '66. Presumed dead... or is he? <dramatic chords>
The Shakespeare Green Room:
'cos, if we've learned one thing from Tom Stoppard and Jasper Fforde, it's that Shakespearean characters have to keep themselves occupied *somehow* when they're not in their respective plays.
As it turns out, most of them hang out in the Shakespearean Green Room, trading sporadically-iambic commentary about what they find on 'this moft ftrange "hinter nette."' There are occasional guest appearances from Jonsonian and Marlovian creations, as well as (for no good reason whatsoever) Steve Gutenberg.
Character I Would Play:
Laertes -- or rather 'LaertesTheOneManFlameWar' after a casual insult 'inspires' Puck to hack into the blog server and rewrite Laertes' display name and personal info.
Divine Tech Support:
Yes, God hears all prayers, but with a skyrocketing population, a human tendency towards misinterpretation, and fewer personal appearances as time goes by, the 'prayer' system just isn't well-suited to current circumstances. Instead of sending down another Only Begotten Son to sort things out, He's decided to use the popular business method of 'outsourcing.'
So, with Holy Internet Call Centers in Ann Arbor, Dusseldorf, and Bangladesh, Divine Tech Support receives all sorts of requests and complaints about life, the universe, and/or everything. They respond in the timely, helpful way that tech-support call centers are renowned for.
Character I Would Play:
'Forrest' (real name: 'Sean'), a slacker whose response to any problem is some varation on "Did you try rebooting it?" ("Dude: first, switch the cat off and unplug it.") Always asking if it's lunchtime yet.
Black Hats & White Hats:
Who loves Cloudmakers? Everybody loves Cloudmakers. You love Cloudmakers, too, even if you haven't heard of it. It originated as an online game associated with the film A. I. -- a trailer for the film included a reference to "Jeanine Salla," and googling that name led curious web-mavens to a whole network of sites associated with the late-21st-century murder of one Evan Chan. More and more amateur investigators started exploring the sites, the puzzles, and the intricate backstory, forming the 'Cloudmakers' group to coordinate their efforts.
But now all that is over. A. I. came and went, Evan Chan's murder has been sorted out, and creating magnificent, Beast-ly online puzzles has not become the comme il faut means of advertising new movies.
It occurs to me is that, yes, the people behind the Evan Chan puzzle (the so-called "Puppet Masters") put in insane amounts of time starting and sustaining the massive puzzle. But in terms of man-hours, the Cloudmakers must have spent several times that.
So my thought is to take a community of interested parties, and split it into Black Hats and White Hats. The Black Hats create the puzzles and backstory of the current case, scattering a trails of clues -- either across the web, or maybe they limit their pages to the blog server. The White Hats try to solve it. Naturally, particularly adept White Hats get lured over to the dark side to help invent puzzles (and hobble the White Hats' efforts by ganking their best solvers :) ).
Think about it. A neverending Cloudmakers. This would eat my life once and for all.
Character I Would Play:
K-20, a chatbot interface to the Amenities Management Computer (handles A/C, heating, robotic cleaning systems, and cable TV routing) for the Happy Meadows Nuclear Power Facility in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Reputed to be a shaky AI at the best of times, it pretty much always returns "ERR 6075-B" whenever anybody tries to communicate with it. At a critical juncture, the White Hats realize that the machine only speaks German. [1]
Well, that was a fun game -- this could be a pleasant little meme. :)
[1] Note: would require learning to read/write fluent German. :)
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