“Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of endless longing—a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the passions, do we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits.”

So were the words of E.T.A. Hoffman, a year and a half after the premiere performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 — which was part of a program that was over 4 hours long, which by the end exhausted both audience and performers, and the big B had to stop and restart the music. Yet this particular symphony is perhaps one of the most well-known pieces of European classical music, and although first performed in Beethoven’s later years, in his impending physical deafness, it is immortal in its own way: its triplet-half note motif repeated throughout the eras from disco to rock and roll to Morse code letter V for victory - dot-dot-dot-dash. Here’s Beethoven’s Symphony No 5, as performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra:

Ina Centaur Radio: http://music.inacentaur.com/bsn5

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The latest revised version of the script is here: http://inacentaur.com/SLSCMousetrapDraft3.pdf

And as you can see we’re going with a somewhat creative approach here, as well as accounting for SL’s lack of facial expressions on avatars… People in the foreground are generally not facing the audience… And although Hamlet has his back to the main view, there will be people sitting in side galleries who do see his face. So, in this way, it’s more democratic with respect to the audience sitting in the round and the various directions people are facing.

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http://www.laqroki.com/blog/

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So SL’s 12+ hours of downtime gave me a lot of time to browse old links. I actually filled out a virgle app o.O virgleapplication.pdf

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 A long while ago, back when this blog was new, I posted a very flip and light-hearted post that has been interpreted in lesser (or greater?) ways. While I question the seriousness of those who have read my entry negatively, I should take the time to clarify the entry. I want to state for the record that I hold no animosity towards the directors for the “swan lake” comment. I also don’t mean “fail” in a fatal way — perhaps the whole thing would have been better had it been a vLog where I actually sound flip – think Sailor Moon or Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The post was done back when I was experimenting with “toning” my blog to sound like a teenager, more or less, for entertainment purposes, based loosely on SL events I had time to write about – for those who work in the fiction market, think of it as an extended exercise for a character decomposition.

But I also want to clarify on the post I never made regarding V-day.org’s retroactive cancellation of the production of The Vagina Monologues (TVM) on Second Life. For those who are new to the issue, I want to state that the “SL VDay” team ended up writing their own play and performing it. They are supposedly donating all of their proceeds to V-Day.org, as they had originally announced.  I commend their efforts to continue.

Many have attributed the cancellation of TVM to be due to me. Why people would think such a thing I wouldn’t know. The assumption infers that I am somehow super powerful. Then again, perhaps that might have been due to me not tending to the role I had originally self-assigned myself – which, incidentally, no one seems to remember.

Back in November 2007 or so, I mentioned in the start that I really wanted TVM to happen, but unlike virtually all of my projects, I would not have time to be the “team of one girl” to make it happen. I thus encouraged the people whom I once thought were my friends to help an to recruit others. I mentioned that I would have the time to check email and vspot (vday’s web portal) correspondence (since checking email and clicking on websites is basically something I do anyway — even during cram time), basically I would act as the administrative interface between the main V-Day and the SL production.

I had signed up for a V-spot account stating clearly that we wanted to do a Second Life production. I also sent several emails that (I thought) killed two birds with one stone: writs that both hyped our prospective SL event and also double checked that they were aware that we differ from your typical community production. The main V-Day staff seemed excited and supportive and aware of Second Life as a platform.

I had tried to get people interested in both works of (non-contemporary) women writers and V-Day, so the original meeting series were held on Tuesday evenings — in conjunction with the “WoWA: Works of Women Authors” series. I think the whole issue started when I suggested that we go for as large a team as possible, so that everyone would not have to strain their other life and other matters as volunteers. I suggested having a director per scene, and also multiple producers — as the two who had agreed to be producers could not do a show in March. 

I was very adament about the big team issue, and also, about the publicity issue. I had tried to get people to cover each of a number of groups to send notices to… but I was disregarded in both elements. I’m not really sure what happened. But, after a while, they started having meetings without me… First, picking times when I was conveniently not online. And then moving their meetings to a sim where I was banned.

Perhaps the whole team ended up receiving the cognitive dissonance from two (or three or four) members whom I had earlier “rubbed the wrong way” — so to speak. I also want to state that I underestand how when someone has a negative emotional stigma against you, their whole perception would be distorted around that singularity, as would the way they propagate their perception of you — whether “unknowingly” telling others either warped versions of the truth or assumptions or even lies.

• LW holds animosity towards me because I know the truth of something he would not let himself believe. 
  • I told myself that I was either going to spend USD$10,000 on a lawyer or a PI.
  • I then analysed the scenarios:
    • With the first route, I would get Cookie back, as well as its grandfathered tier rate. But, the whole reason of getting a private island is to avoid the lag of mainland and to have just one unified parcel – and both would mean kicking everyone out; the place is now abysmally laggy, with dilation at 0.75 on average, and time worse than mainland’s 22ms+. I would assume TM would not spend more money getting it back or getting a new island; then again, his tendency towards nepotism and giving his “friends” free land even at the cost of destroying something dear and grand, might have made it otherwise. Assuming he’s miserly, getting it back would have meant my necessarily kicking these bunch of his “friends” off, or re-parceling it back to what it was. With the second route, I would get to know exactly what happened with the deal.
    • The PI I hired had access to a number of online facets, including chat logs on various social networking platforms. Probably from earlier cases of drama (perhaps far greater), he had the saavy to ask me whether I wanted parsimony. I asked (paraphrase) whether LW was involved in the screwup and whether he had a conflict of interest. The PI confirmed. The PI kept the details of his conclusions in a file which I haven’t yet open. I’ll open it when I’m ready.
  • Subsequently, I defriended LW stating that it was cruel and betraying of him — what he’d done. In sum, the whole Cookie deal was something he had negotiated with TM. He had confirmed that TM was aware of the status of the project and would keep things as is. What actually happened was that shortly after Cookie was acquired by the so-called sponsor TM, he kicked me out (and asked GM to buy my builds from me — *wth*!)
  • LW ended up getting a chunk of the space that used to be the old sLiterary Events Center. It’s now a sobsister bar that’s used exclusively(?) for his performance. I dunno, TM was cruel enough to kick me out, but not creative enough to seriously reparcel so that the stage would be elsewhere than its original location.
  • Is it a money issue for LM/TM? Maybe. Then again the guy mentioned that he was into the dom issue a whole lot. Perhaps he wanted to gain my absolute trust the whole time just to betray me. Well, he wouldn’t see it as betrayal… if it went “right,” it would have been a perception-rewrite… He seems to have a tendency for inducing cognitive dissonance in others just to gain an edge over them or to make them dislike someone else.
• AR’s animosity towards me is very simple, I think. It also betrays the fact that she’s never worked for a large production; the thing with a large production is that a lot of people do a lot of work, and not much of that actually makes it to the stage… Early on in Hamlet, I tried getting people who were in-tune with the era to do research for clothing, props, etc. I asked AR, and she was interested and joined the team. Because of time and budget reasons, and perhaps because of my audacity for pursuing something so grand I should not start unless I got a grant or something in advance, we could not afford custom designs. I mentioned I’d buy from B@R, posted a screenshot of all clothing items. AR made her choices, which IMHO weren’t B@R’s best — they weren’t shadow-baked etc. I went with my own choices, justifying them based on “cinematic prettiness.” She later complained that they just weren’t right… And later on it turned into a series of complaints that I never read what she writes. I’m not sure how else to negate that other than to say that a lot of what I know about the era came from reading what she wrote… (well, then again, she didn’t actually write most of what she wrote — they were mostly copy/pasted from various websites, as she wouldn’t go out to the local university library downtown).  Ultimately, this neurosis turned into psychosis where she “silently” quit her job at the most inopportune time. We had finally gotten designers interested in helping out, and she wouldn’t supply more details on clothing!
• As for TW, I can only guess. In searching my offline chat logs, I notice that I must have crashed a couple of times when she sent me IM’s, as I don’t recall reading them before. But, I think that is just clearly known, and if people would hate you for inevitably crashing on SL’s wobbly client, then… well, I guess that is the double standard of being a part of SL. The only other reason might be because of my availability and how I didn’t attend several of her “read-aloud” sessions of VW’s Room of One’s Own — although I do work from home, I keep to a busy schedule to catch up and complete freelance and assigned projects. It’s work. 
• As for RB… perhaps I was too vicious in trying to get her to be a producer for Hamlet back when AR was nagging at me daily about getting a producer. (It’s hard getting people to believe in a project that, despite the fact that it was viewed by over 10,000 in 10 days, still has yet to get funding due to how the admin team of one girl has to do a whole lot more than just pursue funding… moreover, I am not actually good at pursuing funding…) I tried to dissuade her from the HBO broadcast of the bunch of SL machinimas in a festival. I mentioned the various dragons and also that there would be rights issues for the better machinimas — they would expect HBO to pay them, and that would probably lessen HBO’s original incentive in a show based on SL… basically a low-funded TV show.

Anyway though, so I was out of sync with SLVday. I was really surprised one weekend morning when TW IM’d me about various issues in early January. Really surprised that they got their acts together. Ecstatic even.

Roughly two or three weeks later, after several attempts to get in on what they were doing… since they weren’t interested in my experience with SL4B and other large events or even my perception on publicity having raised and publicized sLiterary from the ground up, I decided that I would hopefully get to contribute as an actress. Interestingly, they had nearly automatically disqualified me from the auditions… why, I really dunno. It just… 

I should state now that upholding your own personal dislike of someone when you’re in charge of a large group is exactly what gets world wars started. You end up getting everyone you command to fight against this person, and presto, war! It’s stated in a blunt way, but it totally applies here.

Anyway, it got to the point where I felt that I should not stay on the team because I would not be able to do anything - act, yes, but I don’t think I would be able to stand further animosity from the admin though.. Moreover, there were others (a number of No Payment Info On File’s, actually - was it the same people trying to grief me) complaining about how sLiterary should not be associated with a play that uses the words “vagina” and “wet” an “pussy” probably more than a baker’s dozen times.  

I announced my resignation and that of sLiterary’s in a formal professional email.

Subsequently, VDay declined the usage of VM on SL.

I was surprised by the matter, and, as I had stated in another email since I could not unjoin the googlegroup I started wasn’t aware of the current matters. I was only notified by LW, who had started the conversation by calling me evil. It was a pointless accusation so I prompted him for details. He then mentioned that HBO had denied the SL production since it was considered a broadcast.

(This is unverified, pointed by a friend of a friend who has god powers on SL, among other things. Details omitted.) What’s interesting to find is that the whole HBO dispute would not have occurred had it not been for RB…

I really couldn’t afford the time to attend the meeting since I had a major project I had to submit — again, I freelance, but that doesn’t mean I sit around all day and do nothing… I do just as much work as someone with a 9 to 5 job, except it’s often more like 23 to 22 or even 72 hour days. But I attended it just to make sure that the two solutions I had were said - basically, get VDay aware of the situation that this isn’t a broadcast people can’t record so easily etc; and also get the rights directly from Dramatists.

What happened subsequently was interesting. I tried obtaining the rights from Dramatists, but apparently LW and others were involved in some talk with the main VDay. I was on the verge of getting them to understand something when LW basically sends a totally incoherent email stating that I was not involved with them, that they were in accords with VDay, etc., etc. I took the pain on myself and chastised myself for having gotten myself involved in something that I should have quit already… even if it were to try to save it, in my usual tendency to try to revive and propagate what has already been created — in this case it was the work of a lot of volunteers. I withdrew from the email. I then forced myself to completely disengage myself from this. Really, there was no way I could help.

So, they did their play. The producers hated me enough to schedule all of their showtimes during my events — two of them during the last two finale shows of Hamlet, scheduled way back in January. And one of them during the same time as a biweekly author-interview show at sLiterary that had been going on for over 6 months, and actually started way back in February (although with less frequent dates) before most of them even had an account! But, anyway, I would take that to be how they had a large production and could somehow only schedule their show on that exact date and time for everyone’s schedules.

The interesting facet is that by some act of cognitive dissonance, they ended up blaming me for all the ways their plays went wrong. Everything from the lag (they only used a single simulator for the performance) to the fact that Hamlet occurred at the same time (see paragraph above).

It was ridiculous. Anyway, all of a sudden, in mid-March, I receive an email from VDay that seemed conclusive of a financial mishandling. I wasn’t involved in this for a long while, but it was now a money issue, so I immediately forwarded the email to the groups I knew were involved… hoping that someone would tend to it.  

PP later made a big deal about how I should not have sent the message to the groups. I explained the whole matter with money and getting the people involved. Perhaps there was a part of me that held distrust against the producers, and hoped that someone else in the production would get it settled. Still, at the time, I was dead tired and thought the matter had to be forwarded ASAP. I also wanted to make sure that they knew I was out for over 2 months already.

I dunno. AR’s subsequent reply-only to me and then reply-all seemed curious at the time. She really should have replied-all immediately to get *everyone* updated with the matter. I wonder had she kept the knowledge back from the others purposefully to let the chaos simmer so that she could build some sort of case that I hated her(?)

I’m not even sure I’m writing this ATM… it’s gotten to be such a long behemoth of a blog post.     

But, suffice it to say… It’s truly disheartening the lies people would not only propagate to distort the perception of others… but also that of their own.

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