Special Sidetrack

Second post and I feel a need to diverge from the main purpose of this blog to speak out on a topic from real life. I'm going to do this from time to time, as need arises, and I hope it doesn't arise very often. Regular function of this blog resumes next post, probably tomorrow.

People make stupid choices. That's part of being human. Call me cynical, but one of my mantras in life, to help me deal with people, is "people are stupid."

But part of the amazing thing that makes people worth getting to know is that people can learn from the mistakes they've made and the mistakes they've watched other people make. No one needs to be stupid in the same way more than once.

My cousin is pregnant with her second child. She is unmarried, the father is a borderline abusive deadbeat, and she doesn't have the resources to give her children a good life. She was not even twenty when she conceived her first child, and she'll barely be twenty two when she delivers her second.

Unfortunately, this is a situation that many young women in this country and around the world find themselves in. Far too many. These women often come from backgrounds in which it is normal to start having sex at an early age and to have a child very young. They are part of a cycle, victims of their mothers' pasts, trapped by the previous generations. Trapped in a cycle it is difficult to escape.

My cousin is one such girl. I'm going to call her Jamie from here on out. Our grandmother was married at fifteen and had her first child, my mother, before she had graduated high school. Jamie's mother was not too far behind. Grandmother was divorced from her abusive, alcoholic first husband (story goes he turned nasty after his second tour of duty in 'Nam) before she was thirty and had a string of other husbands.

Jamie's mother, my aunt (who I'm going to call Miriam), went through a string of boys in her teens and followed up by a string of failed marriages of her own. Jamie was her only child - and for most of her formative years Aunt Miriam dumped Jamie with her mother. Jamie continued the cycle, and now has one child and one on the way. My other aunt and her eldest daughter are also victims of this cycle.

My mother broke the cycle, married at twenty and has been married to the same man for twenty three years. That is, I believe, the only reason I am here to type this rather than bouncing a baby on my knee before I'm old enough to even really know who I am.

But I'm not the object lesson. Jamie is. Jamie and the cycle she's trapped in. Jamie and the children she is more than likely condemning to repeating the cycle by her actions. THAT is the reason I'm writing this special blog.

I'm getting off track.

I do not believe that a person born into bad circumstances, who knows nothing else, is entirely at fault for continuing it themselves. I don't believe they are entirely at fault if they cave to the extreme pressure to start having sex while they're still minors if that is the normal thing to do in the society they were born in.

I do believe it is entirely their fault if they foist the cycle onto some innocent child who deserves more than watching mommy come home with man after man, who deserves better than seeing nothing for their entire lives but poverty and promiscuity. Children who will be judged before they ever arrive in a class, who will be judged before they're ever interviewed for a job, and who, should they ever wind up in police custody, will be judged before they're even fingerprinted.

They deserve better, and there is no excuse.

In this day and age, contraception is very easy to obtain. A doctor can prescribe a birth control pill that matches a woman's needs very easily. The pill has been available since 1957 to prevent women who don't want a child or aren't ready to have a child from conceiving, and modern pills work almost a hundred percent of the time when used correctly.

And that's just contraception. A much older form of birth control (used as early as ancient Rome) not only can prevent unwanted pregnancies, it can also protect both partners from disease. In a promiscuous society, the very least BOTH parties can do for their health is have the guy wear a condom. When you don't know who your partner has slept with and what they might have, there's no excuse to not make use of a condom - and girls, if a guy says 'you don't love me if you insist on a condom' - ...yeah. He doesn't love you if he won't.

This post is getting way preachy, and I hate being preached at, so I'm going to end it there. Maybe some of you who eventually read this will think I don't know what I'm talking about, that I'm a prude or worse: someone who wants to take the right of reproduction away from people I might deem "beneath" me. I've had it all said to my face.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, even though I'm watching it happen to members of my family. Even though I've read entire books whose purpose was the study of families a lot like Jamie's. I can't completely deny the prude comment (I'd say more, but my personal life is my business). As to taking away the "right to reproduce" ...I'd like to think of it as "responsible parenting strategies." Doesn't any child deserve a safe, stable environment in which to grow up?

Aside, from the sarcastic part of my brain. Let's call her Vilra: Why is she still talking? She said she was gonna quit two bloody paragraphs ago!

To satisfy Vilra's growing impatience, I'm going to close with a paraphrase of some wisdom one of my sixth grade science teachers gave her class:

Girls are flowers, guys are trees. Flowers, don't let any tree pluck you until he can take care of you, and trees, don't let any flower tempt you into plucking her if she dances wildly at every sway of the wind.

Happy living!

~*~M'Rigg~*~


Extra Special Healthy Living Tip: Viruses are nasty nasty things. A good natural way to help fight viruses is a blend of Cat's Claw and mint teas. Cat's Claw is an herb native to South America that has potent antiviral powers, and around my house, we say it got its name because it's so bitter it feels like cats are clawing their way down your throat (really, it's because of the plant's thorns). During cold and flu season, we mix equal amounts of strong mint tea and strong cat's claw tea with a good helping of sugar (this is the sugar that helps the medicine go down, folks. Seriously, getting this mix down without the sugar is torture. I've tried it. I know.), and if we get sick, it's a much, much milder form of whatever bug was attacking us.

Opening Post!

Well, I've had it in my head for a while to create a blog designed to help people with the roleplaying aspects of writing and the writing aspects of roleplaying, particularly in regards to play-by-post RP. By no means do I intend to limit myself to addressing the issues of PbP. If this blog takes off at all, I'm going to be covering a wide range of topics relevant to everyone from the casual roleplayer to the serious writer.

I'm probably going to follow this general outline as I create this blog, and any readers and commenters I may get will be vital to its success.

Topics I intend to cover, in rough order:

The Mechanics of the English Language: Basically, what I will be covering in the first several posts in this blog are the things your elementary and middle school teachers taught you in Language Arts. The reason is that I believe without a strong background in whatever language you're working in (in my case, and in the case of most of the people I hope to attract, English), you're pretty much doomed to failure in writing, and condemned to mediocrity at best in roleplaying. I'll devote my next post to why good mechanics are important, and then move on to the actual issues at hand.

The Basic Elements of Writing: Why have writing (the meaty stuff) before roleplaying (presumably the lighter stuff)? I'm going to continue my building metaphor. If grammar and syntax are the foundation from which all else can grow, then the basic elements of writing are the planks and beams that make up the framework. You can't put a roof on a house before it has walls, right? This section will focus on the basics of setting, characterization, and plot.

The Basic Elements of Roleplay: This will actually be a little different than the basic elements of writing. Roleplay is, by its very nature, collaborative, so this section will deal more with the social aspects that you'll encounter while roleplaying online. It will also discuss the differences between PbP and chat-based RP.

After that, I'll probably intermingle different roleplay and writing aspects throughout the blog as we discuss more complex topics, such as in-depth world building, character creation and realization, and plot twists. Included in most posts will be a special tip to help make your writing really pop.


Okay, purpose aside, I'm M'Rigg. I have different handles in various other corners of the internet, which are not terribly important here, so we'll skip them. I am a 21 year old American female who has been writing as long as I can remember. I have two terrorkeets named Darmok and Jalad, and a WGSD named Riker (yes, I AM a long-standing Trekker, how could you tell? O_O).

Other than writing, I like to knit, crochet, and sew a little bit. I enjoy art, history, trivia, and engaging conversation; I don't like watching what could be a rational discussion turn into a flame war. The only reason I can see for the trolls and flamers that inhabit the internet is anonymity. Anonymous has said a lot of great things over the last several thousand years, and all the John and Jane Does that need to be nasty because no one can see them give the name a bad reputation.

Some of my inspiration over the years has come in the form of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, the various Star Wars and Star Trek authors, Michael A. Stackpole, and Dungeons and Dragons. I have a healthy respect for classic literature, and hold no truck with book series that have rabid fans (read: I haven't read the last Harry Potter or seen the latest movies, have never touched Twilight (and will never), and only read one book of the Wheel of Time series). So you can expect to see references to Beowulf and The Illiad, but don't expect horcruxes and sparkly vampires.

And that's running long for a first blog, so I'm going to end it here. Happy writing!

~*~M'Rigg~*~


Extra Special First Writing Tip for Roleplayers: In cases of burnout, try changing your writing venue. If your butt has worn grooves in your chair and you can't write another post or even think for another post in that particular chair, move to another room and see if it isn't easier to write in there!