Eve Hermit wrote about Winning Eve. Not the normal bitter post where people stop playing and 'win' at Eve because they have decided to compare themselves and the game to the movie War Games. I broke down his question to mean that when one no longer plays Eve will you look back at what you did and feel good about the time that you spent?
As someone who has fond members and a firm foundation on the internet from their first online game, one that I played obsessively for a good six years of my life, my answer was yes. I have enjoyed my time in Eve. I plan to continue to enjoy my time in Eve.
But in the comments, Behnid Arcani asks:
As someone who writes about my day to day and my thoughts in Eve I could see how one could consider my blogging to be deeply connected to my gameplay. It is not.
I've been writing a blog or journal for the last fourteen years. I've wandered across subject matter and thought. It started as a project related to my mud where we all had personal journals that we could read and keep up with each other's day. As we left college this continued. I wrote a lot about my life as a waitress and my financial struggles and goals. Most of my blogging was daily life until I switched to something a bit more hobby focused in the early 2000s. I also used to spend an insane amount of time on forums related to my life consuming hobby at the time.
This is my first blog directly related to a game. Writing for me is a drive and a passion. I'd write about something else if I did not write about Eve. I enjoy writing about Eve and having an audience has improved me as a writer. I am not a trained writer. I have never taken a class beyond my basic english classes on writing. To top it off I struggle with dyslexia. I often go to google to get help deciphering words I cannot put together and I wish I had had it available to me when I was failing school. Lacking sense, I never let it stop me from trying to write despite all of the testing saying I should be illiterate as they kept placing me in special education classes to help me with my problems.
Writing for me is an itch that I scratch every day. I started my Eve blog because I read a few Eve blogs when I started but I could not find one that documented being new. There was plenty of advice but I wanted to read about people who spent two hours learning that you could double click in space to fly. I wanted the simple joys of finishing the newbie missions because they were hard and frustrating for me and I wanted to see if it was just me or if everyone had the same thing happen to them.
This blog started as a way for me to document the frustrating things about being new in Eve. It evolved to me documenting my day to day in Eve. It spread from there to my thoughts about Eve. I wanted to talk about my interpretation of the game world. That is not exactly an exciting topic. Around me there were blogs that constantly had great battles and technical fittings and guides and great game shaking events while I'd just want to talk about the perception of players to people with negative security status and the odd double world effect it gave me.
I've added silly things, fiction, songs, poetry, drawing, images, and whatever I wanted to. I've never, ever attempted to be a journalist or a news site. I'll write about my bad days as well as my good. I've written about having my feelings hurt and feeling as if people important to me have kicked me in the gut. I've violated every rule I've read about blogging and I violate them daily. I write and post, I rarely write drafts, I babble, I wander, I have no proper writing style or technique, I often have no goal but to comment on something that caught my attention, I don't try to control my audience's perception, I share mistakes and failures, I get emotional, I give people all sorts of information that I'm supposed to hide because this is Eve, and in general I rampage about enjoying myself here as much as I do in the game.
I'd play Eve without the blog. But, I enjoy the blog. It tickles me into the prismatic spectrum that other people enjoy the blog along with me. But I don't write about Eve to be read for writing about Eve. I write about Eve because I enjoy it. If no one read my blog I'd still write it. But for those who do read and those who have come to know me and take what I share about my game, I appreciate it. The blog has evolved with time and so have I as a person, a writer, and a player and that is in thanks to my readership.
While I would play without it I am glad that I started this blog. Without it, I do not think I'd have come this far. Without my readers, I know that I would not. Thank you for the time that you visit this place. You all have help me become a better person.
As someone who has fond members and a firm foundation on the internet from their first online game, one that I played obsessively for a good six years of my life, my answer was yes. I have enjoyed my time in Eve. I plan to continue to enjoy my time in Eve.
But in the comments, Behnid Arcani asks:
"Would you still play Eve if you couldn’t write a blog post about it afterwards?"The answer is "Yes."
As someone who writes about my day to day and my thoughts in Eve I could see how one could consider my blogging to be deeply connected to my gameplay. It is not.
I've been writing a blog or journal for the last fourteen years. I've wandered across subject matter and thought. It started as a project related to my mud where we all had personal journals that we could read and keep up with each other's day. As we left college this continued. I wrote a lot about my life as a waitress and my financial struggles and goals. Most of my blogging was daily life until I switched to something a bit more hobby focused in the early 2000s. I also used to spend an insane amount of time on forums related to my life consuming hobby at the time.
This is my first blog directly related to a game. Writing for me is a drive and a passion. I'd write about something else if I did not write about Eve. I enjoy writing about Eve and having an audience has improved me as a writer. I am not a trained writer. I have never taken a class beyond my basic english classes on writing. To top it off I struggle with dyslexia. I often go to google to get help deciphering words I cannot put together and I wish I had had it available to me when I was failing school. Lacking sense, I never let it stop me from trying to write despite all of the testing saying I should be illiterate as they kept placing me in special education classes to help me with my problems.
Writing for me is an itch that I scratch every day. I started my Eve blog because I read a few Eve blogs when I started but I could not find one that documented being new. There was plenty of advice but I wanted to read about people who spent two hours learning that you could double click in space to fly. I wanted the simple joys of finishing the newbie missions because they were hard and frustrating for me and I wanted to see if it was just me or if everyone had the same thing happen to them.
This blog started as a way for me to document the frustrating things about being new in Eve. It evolved to me documenting my day to day in Eve. It spread from there to my thoughts about Eve. I wanted to talk about my interpretation of the game world. That is not exactly an exciting topic. Around me there were blogs that constantly had great battles and technical fittings and guides and great game shaking events while I'd just want to talk about the perception of players to people with negative security status and the odd double world effect it gave me.
I've added silly things, fiction, songs, poetry, drawing, images, and whatever I wanted to. I've never, ever attempted to be a journalist or a news site. I'll write about my bad days as well as my good. I've written about having my feelings hurt and feeling as if people important to me have kicked me in the gut. I've violated every rule I've read about blogging and I violate them daily. I write and post, I rarely write drafts, I babble, I wander, I have no proper writing style or technique, I often have no goal but to comment on something that caught my attention, I don't try to control my audience's perception, I share mistakes and failures, I get emotional, I give people all sorts of information that I'm supposed to hide because this is Eve, and in general I rampage about enjoying myself here as much as I do in the game.
I'd play Eve without the blog. But, I enjoy the blog. It tickles me into the prismatic spectrum that other people enjoy the blog along with me. But I don't write about Eve to be read for writing about Eve. I write about Eve because I enjoy it. If no one read my blog I'd still write it. But for those who do read and those who have come to know me and take what I share about my game, I appreciate it. The blog has evolved with time and so have I as a person, a writer, and a player and that is in thanks to my readership.
While I would play without it I am glad that I started this blog. Without it, I do not think I'd have come this far. Without my readers, I know that I would not. Thank you for the time that you visit this place. You all have help me become a better person.
You're doing great Sugar and I really enjoy reading your blog. I'm a 1977 tenth grade drop out - not by choice but I went to work to help support my family - that used to struggle with writing. Fortunately I joined the navy and was expected to write correctly. I learned how to write by studying the writing of the officers on board the ship (officers are usually college educated). I challenged myself to write my reports and/or evaluations as correctly as I could and then see if I could get it routed up the chain of command with no corrections. I remember staying up all night reading "How-To write books" - there was no internet in the early 80's. Anyway your post just reminded me of my struggles to write early in life:-). Keep up the good work!!!
ReplyDeleteIlluminating post.
ReplyDelete1) Your blog does read like a journal. The off the cuff style is a central part of what makes reading it such pleasure. You ramble with great skill.
2) Dyslexia (which I know nothing about) may help to explain the types of typos that occasionally creep into your text. To be more specific, your typos often read like autocorrect gone awry depositing a similarly spelled but different meaning word from what was intended rather than a mistyped key or common misspelling slipping through. Importantly, I and other fans of your blog have long since accepted that there will be typos since the blog reads exactly like what it is – a first draft journal entry (see 1 above). To be honest, in the deep dark when I’m certain no one is looking, your blog delivers to me a mild touch of envy since you repeatedly toss out wonderful gems at speed while poor souls like me (who’ve taken a few creative writing classes) agonizingly struggle with minor details.
3) If I may ask, is journaling common among dyslexics or are you too merely a fellow masochist like the rest of us dumb ass wanna be writers drawn to script despite our better natures?
DireNecessity
I don't know. I would think that most people tend to shy away from their weaker skills. I should have. Being mocked and ridiculed should have broken me of it but I read very well and my reading has always been my inspiration.
DeleteMy issue is phonetics. I don't process them properly which is why I can't spell and why I cannot see where two words are very similar. I've learned many of those danger words and if I catch them I'll double check since I cannot tell them apart by appearance. It also sounds like an excuse to someone who can see these things and to them I am lazy or careless or whatever. I've learned a certain amount of caution to help myself improve but I cannot self edit to any fine degree.
I make no attempt to create wonderful gems or any particular prose most days. I simply talk, Dire. Welcome to me.
While I'd love to pester you about the specifics of your particular brand of dyslexia (how minds function is facinating stuff), such sniffing around seems a bit far off topic for what's afoot here.
DeleteConcerning typos creeping into your blog (see your response to Gevlon below), generally speaking, if they're not terribly jarring, I say leave them in place. You're crafting a first draft journal/blog. Being a first draft journal/blog one expects typos.
Finally, show some compassion would you . . . "I make no attempt to create wonderful gems" and yet you do!
::grumble:: ::grumble:: ::grumble::
DireNecessity
Your blog should be shown to everyone with dyslexia as an inspiration.
ReplyDeleteI would never guess you have a disability affecting writing. You have some funny mistypes (like "kicked me in the guy" instead of "kicked me in the gut", "y" is next to "t" and spellchecker can't help as "guy" is a word), but it's far from the unreadable crap that forum posters throw at us.
The actual content is great and above all: original. You aren't writing the 189-th opinion about supercap proliferation. You write things that no one else writes. And you do things in EVE that no one else does. I don't think anyone else would dare to start a shop in nullsec or start FC-ing for a bunch of newbies who aren't even in his corp.
I'd say "keep it up", but there is no need. I know that even if everyone would shout "go away", you would keep writing.
Those typos I will catch on a second or third reading pass. I do corrections as I find them and I appreciate when people point them out. I understand that for some, a single typo ruins an entire post.
DeleteYou blog, Gevlon. You know that people will tell you to go away.
I've been told more than once that to blog is only to look for attention. Shrug. I guess I seek.
I love reading your blog, Sugar. I've been in various writing communities over the years, and after wasting a great deal of time listening to debates about who's a "real" writer and who isn't, I've vastly simplified my criteria.
ReplyDeleteA writer is someone who writes regularly and works to improve her skills any chance she gets.
That would be you.
I have to go back and fix typos in my stuff all the time. If I don't pay careful enough attention, my sentence structure gets monotonous as all hell, and there'll be echoed words and phrases everywhere. I ruthlessly cut word count. (My old rule for play-by-post RPG game turns used to be cut by a third before posting.)
Even though I've always been good at spelling and grammar and I'm not dyslexic, I still get stuff wrong all the time and have to fix it. :-)
I have to say you've replaced Jester as the robo-blogger. I dabble in other blogs or news sites but I'm always happy to know I can check your site daily and expect great content.
ReplyDeleteYour history in expansions is what brought me here. Your openess and honesty about your Eve life is what got me to stay
"I have no proper writing style..."
ReplyDelete"Proper" be damned! You've got *your* writing style, like you have your way of thinking about and playing EvE. And it's those things, amongst others, that keep us coming back.
We're here for Sugar, not for some cookie-cutter follow-the-rules zero-mistakes bland pap. And long may you continue being you.