The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Isn't such foul weather just a pleasure to behold

We get to watch as we destroy our own world around us

Perhaps our consumption of this earth isn't the main cause of our problems

Perhaps the planet has just grown weary of it's parasites and is shaking us up a bit

Perhaps this is just one more cycle in the planets vast history of creation and destruction

But what an interesting time nonetheless eh?



To watch oceans rise

See Earthquakes increase in intensity and frequency

To know that at any moment our own fear might surpass us and kill us faster than our planet.



Interesting times

What is happening to our little community?



I find so much aggression and mockery recently as it's leveled towards the new, the different, and those who believe or don't believe the current dogma of the day. This goes in both directions with those who believe calling out those who don't and vise versa.



We have such a delightful mix of goths, emos, metallers, regular folks, old, young, vampires, non-vampires, those who believe in metaphysics, those who are held firmly in place by science, those who like history, fiction, movies, rpgs, trivia, meditation, ritual magic, or any number of things that give us all a sense of variety and scope. Things that make this community more real and true.



Are we so fragile that someone with a different view of the world than us shatters our confidence and we must lash out and hope they leave so we can believe what we want without question? Are our views so dependent upon a vacuum of opinion that to even hear someone question us is to question ourselves? How dreadfully boring that is.



I should note that I too will question something if it appears to be a complete fabrication or belief in novels as historical works but I'll typically reserve that for the most deluded of statements and would never suggest that even the most far fetched ideas or those lifestyles so different from me be grounds for removal or 'banishment'.

I got caught up in the game yesterday. The idea that a number assigned to me or my profile has any bearing on my abilities or attributes is silly. Even sillier when one considers the widely varied motivation for such moves. But I got caught up in it for a day.



Ratings are given as a genuine critique of one's work



Ratings are also given as a means of feeling good about oneself



Ratings are given to feel a sense of power



Ratings are given as a strategy to increase house status and to lower other houses status



Ratings are given as a means of moving friends up and moving others down so that friends may move up



Ratings are given in order to prod someone into interaction



Ratings are given as candy to try and 'score'



Ratings are given as revenge for any of the above ratings or revenge for some other reason entirely



and foremost it seems, Ratings are given to increase the ratings score and move up quickly.



So some of these methods of rating one could consider appropriate and some maybe not...whose to say whether this site should be a game, a genuine artistic critique, a power struggle or a vindictive throwback to highschool. VR is a society and therefore any methods employed here are merely a society acting as it would elsewhere with all the good sides and bad sides to it.



I've been pretty much aware of all this and really took it all in stride. It's been pretty easy to sit back and be ok with it all...maybe requesting a rerate if it was easy enough or if I'd updated. So it surprised me to actually get that visceral reaction when someone decided to rate me poorly without giving me reason. Perhaps it could be looked at as a redistribution of the wealth (or score). You know, give others a chance to be up on the list. But it caught me off guard and I admittedly found myself perturbed. It startled me to find a competitive nature popping up in me when the competition is largely random in both the method and the results of rating.



So I admit that I became part of the game instead of an observer and that felt silly...but reminded me that as humans, we're all prone to falling into it.



:)

It's amazing at times how easily inspiration is affected by suffering. The greatest works of art often done by men and women who struggled with severe bouts of depression or mental illness.



And yet, the suffering best made for art, music, poetry, etc is usually that of immediate and tormenting depression. Love recently lost, physical abuse, the depths of severe drug addiction...



The subtle nagging of gray on the borders of everyday life, leaves little in the way of artistic inspiration. When what bothers you can't (or won't) be explained but simply threads it's way through the undercurrent of one's waking hours, we are left feeling more empty or tired than actually suffering.



So what does that mean? Do artists seek out suffering and cling to a dour impression of life when not brutally tortured by our loves or our brothers in arms? Is sadness or melancholy merely the vessel that usually fills with suffering...now empty of what it knows waiting for the "next shoe to drop?"



I think that there exists a feeling of loss that is unrelated to anyone or anything around you and works it's way across our 'soul' as a means of telling us that our time is near. Perhaps as we grow close to our physical limits in existence, we also grow weary of our day to day surroundings in order to look beyond the precipice and think to oneself...I'm curious what's next.



If anything, there was a current, an outpouring of emotion that existed, that should exist still and yet instead, there is this empty vein, this hollow tube where it used to flow. I'm not unhappy, merely uninspired...and that desaturates the colour of things and lowers the contrast so that it's difficult to be motivated beyond the simple things in life. Who said the simple things in life are all we need. Some accountant with 3.5 children and a station wagon no doubt.



Conflict is what makes us who we are. Suffering gives credence to our desires and lights up a path that we reach for. Even if we can't stay true to the path and even if we leap from the path, our way, our desire, our inspiration is much clearer when contrasted by the pain and suffering of a maligned life.



...Or maybe I'm just hungry.