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-------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A .
singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora
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OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 159--8/11/97
<-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 13  ||  ------->
(Cup OWis159, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999)

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OsoaWeek Book Thirteen 3 "OsoaWeek159"
by Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana, Tarb 6667 (8/11/97), copyright 1997



OBLIVIANA REGISTRY

NEW REVOLVERS
None

NEW CUPLINES
None

NEW CUPS
None

*OW*



LORD OF OBLIVIANA

Mon 8/4/97 * 11:28 PM

After work I took the 1-train up to Times Square, took a piss in XS, which is all its good for, and then walked down 42nd St. toward the Port Authority. Up ahead I see a construction zone, with blowtorch sparks. As I pass by, a bunch of workers are on a movie marquee, destroying it! They're were blowtorching it and part of the damn thing came crashing down. And then a little bulldozer started bashing it all up.

XS, by the way, is one of those virtual-reality family entertainment centers that have been replacing real arcades. It totally, totally, totally, totally sucks. And just this second, I think I realize why.

Recently I realized that the classic video game experience is a SOLITARY, ANONYMOUS experience. At this XS place, everything is out in the open, everything is geared toward having a "shared" experience. They even have giant video screens showing people playing the games!

Yup. I think I've just put my finger on something quite important. People LIKE to be fucking depressed and go into an arcade and play a game and spend some quality time with THEMSELF. I mean "fucking depressed" is a somewhat figurative sense, by the way.

Video games are best when they act as symbols for things buried deep in our minds. Video games were VERY important to me when I was growing up. "Who am I? I'm playing video games." (Again, this is a little figurative.)

It seems like the digital superworld is leading us all like cattle to a horrible land of interacting with other people. Fuck interaction! I wanna be alone and anonymous and thinking and exploring my own mind and spirit.

These are observations. But they are deeper observations than the likes of "people enjoy video games because they challenge hand-eye coordination" or "men enjoy video games because they are violent by nature and love blowing things up".

Dark and noisy and cool. That is what an arcade should be. You go in and play and that's it. And you don't have the disctractions of home, or of people you know. Clear, cool, simple, understandable. Like staring at a candle and meditating.

Make no mistake--the direction the digital superworld is going in is indeed DISASTROUS. People BELIEVE that "interaction" is this totally great thing, in a digital context. BUT OTHER PEOPLE SUCK! Just go on AOL and go into a chat room and see what kind of assholes are there!

Okay, I know I'm being a little harsh here, but I'm trying to make a point. Plus, I'm smoking a shitty little cigar and I'm feeling pugnacious.

Anyway, what will be the result of this big push for interaction? I think that a lot people people will get into it and be a lot more shallow than they would otherwise be. But there will be many who will rebel in a big way. And I want to be there, as an alternative.

Like being a "loser" in high school. NOT interacting with people, but focusing on youself. Painful, confusing, but you're gonna come out of the experience being a lot cooler.

This is a philosophy that I have only begun to embrace very recently. But I feel it is a VITAL philosophy in Obliviana. Loners, losers, nerds, weirdoes, whatever. It's hard enough dealing with the moving target of yourself, without having to worry about hundreds and thousands of other moving targets in other people.

And again, I want to emphasize that I am delineating this philosophy in broad strokes. Of course you gotta have human contact, of course you have to share your ideas with other people. But I believe that intense self-discovery, though painful and confusing, is just BETTER than the somewhat pointless and draining activity of interacting with other people.

Here's an E-mail I got today from Frank Panucci. (My responses are in the triple parentheses):

***********

7/30/97 Wednesday evening

Hey.

This doesn't have anything to do with anything but there were three consecutive days of VIOLENT thunderstormns here, I mean the scary explosion kind, and my power was out for 14 hours Monday, and the weather just calmed down yesterday, and it still feels weird.

I just got OSOAWEEK 144-157 and all the available SEVERE REPAIRS H-CUPS. Let'ssee...

re 5/2/97's QUITE PAINFUL ESSAY:You say:>>"People live much of their lives in hope of a better future. Espousing a bright vision of the future and sharing it with others brings happiness to people's lives, and more importantly, it helps MAKE the future become a better place."

What happened to the pointless defiance and cheerful nihilism of the early OBLIVIANA?

(((The keyword here is DEFIANCE. Nihilsm is so MAINSTREAM and prevalent now, that being positive and expressing ideas about a bright future are TOTALLY defiant and rebellious and contrary.)))

>>"Y'know, I realize that the kind of creative works I produce will appeal to an audience that is mostly liberal. So by talking my mind here, I might be alienating most of my audience. But you know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna speak my mind, even it it means that I'll never succeed in realizing my dreams."

If I enjoy a piece of work, I don't give a shit about the creator's viewpoints. Leni Rosenthal made some pretty cool documentaries, no matter who she worked for.

(((What are you sayin' man, that I'm like Hitler? Just kidding.)))

>>"Well, there it is. And look at me. In trying to FIGHT negativity, I have become very negative myself."

So embrace negativity and cheer up!

(((I'm still pretty negative. But to be negative toward negativity makes you POSITIVE in a negative sort of way, eh?)))

re 5/21/97:

>>" Apparently I have a rather interesting condition: a stone in my salivary gland"

You could get the doctor to let you keep it, and make it the basis of one of your FRICTION CANASTAs or something.

(((Not a bad idea, but that whole idiotic medical episode was apparently just a tool Reality used to get me into the "Birth of Octagon" transcendent experience, which you comment on below.)))

>>"You're supposed to have at least seven pipes if you smoke every day, one for each day of the week, so they don't get overused. I got seven now, but a few of 'em are crap"

Wow, your apartment must smell like an uncle.

>>"So, like, do people just plain suck?"

Yes.

>>"In reviewing my notes from last year on the Little World of Raceways, I see a lot of focus on fighting. But now, I am thinking more along the lines of NOT having fighting."

Whatever. I find the little racetracks very appealing. It should be a computer arcade game, and you drive these REALLY TINY little cars around for no apparent purpose, smashing into stuff and knocking some of it over. Head-on collisions would be discouraged, but it would be okay to fishtail around corners and sideswipe other cars into trees and giant toys and big alphabet blocks. There would be no scoring system and the game would never end. You would just stop when you get tired.

>>"THE BIRTH OF THE OCTAGON EVENTS OF MAY 22, 1997"

I really like reading this stuff. I have had many seemingly transcendant experiences like that, yet they seem so mundane when written.

>>"I'm getting married in less than six months, and there's a whole lot of stuff going on relating to it."

Corngramulations. How does Denise regard OBLIVIANA?

(((She's the one woman in the universe who can support me in my baffling pursuit of Obliviana.)))

>>""Sun 6/8/97 * 9:30 AMI had a dream just now which was like a Little Rascals episode"

This is hilarious. It reminds me of my own dreams.

-end 150-

Waitin for more.

FP

*******************

Okay, so there's a letter. See, people really ARE reading OsoaWeek. Or at least, one person.

Tue 8/5/97 * 12:23 AM

12: 39 AM

A little TV and video watching in that interim there.

Anyway, I have to get back to the most important subject in my personal miasma of subjects--the gameplay in LWOR.

Last issue, I established a lot of really awesome foundational stuff. So I wanna keep the momentum a little and get back to it now.

I want to get specific about the mechanics of the system.

The whole thing starts with Stormjaunts. These are recorded on Stormjaunt Scrolls, which are little pieces of paper. These Stormjaunt Scrolls are kept together in a box by the player. The contents of that box equals the contents of the Stormjaunt Cups which are the the beginning of the transformation cycle in LWOR.

Objects in the LWOR system are stored as data. Eventually, I want an automated central database, but for now, players will have to maintain their own data. Maintaining your own data is good for others reasons as well, such as having control and security.

You can maintain this data with a word processor, database program, or spreadsheet program.

First you'll start with Stormjaunt Cups. Then you transform these into Octagons by "discharging" the Stormjaunt Cups. Now you have a set of Octagons as data. This transformation is done according to strict rules set forth by Obliviana.

At all times, it will be good to "register" your data with Obliviana. There are several reasons for this, such as "prooving" that your records are accurate, and also making sure you are keeping your data properly.

Now, the "registering" process will eventually be taken care of automatically. I foresee a Java application which allows for entry and reviewing of data. Before that, there could be a form-based server database system. And before THAT, it would have to be E-mail-based. This would involve either manual entry into a database, or simply maintaining the E-mail text for future reference.

The latter example would help keep order in the system and limit cheating. Say, for example, that an Octagon is available for three weeks, and subsequently becomes very desireable. You cannot lie about having gotten that Octagon while it was available if Obliviana has a record of your "moves" from that time period.

Stormjaunt Cups --> Octagons --> Means --> Challenges --> Rewards.

Tue 8/5/97 * 8:43 PM

Okay. First, I want to relate to you the events of this past Friday, August 1, 1997. I had my Jukewand with me, which I haven't been carrying with me much lately. So I did a little "Neverbeen" Stormjaunt during lunch, and went to the store "Condomania" on Bleecker St. as my Neverbeen.

Later on, around 7:00 PM, I barely touched this shelf full of software boxes at work with the cover to a scanner and the whole thing came down! Damn if all three shelves didn't just totally collapse!

Then I went to Blowout Video in Times Square and as I checked my bag this woman was asking about a movie called "Glass Bottom Boat". Then when I went looking for the Little Rascals movie "General Spanky", what's the first video to catch my eye, but "Glass Bottom Boat". I see "General Spanky", but decide to buy it after I'm done buying the Cabin Fever series. Then the next video to catch my eye is "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone", which just the night before I ran across twice and noted in the cable guide!

NOW, I can describe what happened this evening since 6:00 PM.

Okay. Even though I should have stayed till about 7:00, I decided to leave work at 6:00, with the idea of going to get a cigar at OK Cigars on West Broadway, and then walking down to the World Financial Center and the park nearby.

So I leave, and a big thunderstorm is just getting going. As I get to the street, it's really coming down. I go to the junk store next door and they're out of umbrellas. So I hang out there for a few minutes, then I go to another store and say "Umbrella?" and I get what seemed to be the last one for $4.

So I walked in the pouring rain to the cigar store, got a Padron Delicioso, lit it, and continued on my way.

Soon, the sun came out, even though it was still raining hard. I saw a very nice rainbow on Canal St. Then it stopped raining and the lighting was awesome, bright to the west, very dark to the east.

I headed for the park, and the sky and the lighting was incredible. Sunlight breaking through the clouds over Jersey City... Amazing...

I went to a bathroom in the park, and it's the same one I went to on my amazing Stormjaunt of September 1995. In fact, I had similarly been smoking a cigar and walking from work then too.

I decided to take the ferry to Hoboken, and then take the PATH to 34th St., and then walk up to the Port Authority on 42nd.

The ferry ride was awesome. The weather was nice on the river, but all around I saw several awesome forks of lightning. Very cool.

When I arrived at Hoboken, I had the idea of taking the train to Clifton, the town where I live. Now, Clifton is pretty big and I'm not very familiar with it, and I didn't know where the train station was or anything. But I got a ticket and got on the 7:35 train. It was a slow and somewhat ominous ride, heading into the dark clouds and lightning. And I was a little apprehensive, not knowing what the hell I was gonna do once I got to the station.

As we neared Clifton, it started raining hard, and I sought familiar landmarks, to no avail.

Finally, we got to Clifton at about 8:05.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, but the train number was "1119". And if you know about Obliviana, you know that's a REALLY good number (11 x 19 = 209!)

Anyway, I got to the dark and rainy Clifton Station, and I had no idea where I was. So I called information and got the number of Clifton Taxi. I called up, the guy said it'd be about 15 minutes, and about fifteen minutes later, the taxi was there.

The ride home it was raining very hard with several very explosive pink lightnings in the sky.

I got back to my Jeep, drove home, and here I am now.

What an totally 209 experience! I totally thrilled to have had such a Wonderful, spontaneous Stormjaunt!

10:51 PM

More to tell...

This past Saturday, me and Denice went through all my clothes, and we threw out two big "steel-sak" garbage bags full! (One went to Salvation Army). Then I washed ALL THE CLOTHES! Nine loads in all. I was using all eight industrial washers at the apartment laundry here!

This event was an example, I believe, of a wave of ORDER washing over me. More on this later.

Also, during my Wonderful trek earlier, a guy commented on my cigar while I was walking, saying it smelled good or something. Also, I was just entering that park, by a school and the Tribeca footbridge and stuff, and I was looking at this woman and she was looking at me, and it was weird, it was just like we were gonna talk to each other or something but we like totally weren't. It's weird. And people were looking at me with my cigar and umbrella and everything, and I felt like I was "beaming", all revelling in the experience and feeling like it showed.

Whew!

Now, I have another thing to talk about.

A long time ago in OsoaWeek, I talked about an idea called "Contemporary Terrain", which stated basically that strip mall and parking lots and convenience stores and all that are really a part of nature, being that beehives and stuff are certainly art of nature. Whatever, that was the gist of it.

So, looking at and regarding the environment around you has always been a part of Stormjaunting. Today, I had a very interesting idea. The idea is that the structure of the world around us... buildings, roads, fields, parking lots... is actually a reflection or shadow of the REAL WORLD of WONDER. So by looking at the world around you, you can "look through it" into Wonder. Just like if you were examining individual letter of a printed page, and then suddenly realized that you could read those letters and get information from them.

Wed 8/6/97 * 12:40 AM

Wow, my brother AND my sister called me tonight. And my mother called me earlier today.

I want to get into an somewhat disturbing issue now, and that is the issue of Obliviana and its potential to be a cult or be cultlike.

It seems to me that most people believe that there is more to the world than meets the eye. That is, beyond what we can gain from our senses, it is pretty apparent that there is other stuff going on. It's also pretty apparent that people can embrace an explanation of unknown stuff with total conviction. That is, there is an emotional, religious kind of thought where belief is total, even though such a belief cannot be verified by the senses. And different people believe with all their hearts many contradictory idea ideas about what's going on "out there".

I myself used to believe TOTALLY in the scientific theories of outer space, whereas now I TOTALLY disbelieve those theories. So I have TOTALLY believed two ideas which are in complete contradiction to each other.

This TOTAL belief, with a strong emotional component, is a thing that is plainly apparent. It seems that explanations about what's "out there" can grow into ideas that people utterly embrace. And even if these ideas are stupid, or riddled with contradiction, or whatever, people still believe.

I'll call this phenomenon "religious emotion" for now. I myself have religious emotion for my own explanations for what's "out there". The problem with religious emotion is that it very strongly affects an individual's ability to reason.

I think that cults get started when one person has strong religious emotions about his own ideas, and then passes that religious emotion on to other people. And I don't want to let that happen with Obliviana, because such a muddying and blurring of the intellect is just plain bad.

I do have a number of supernatural ideas that I HAVE to introduce in Obliviana. But I want to do this in a way that does not invoke religious emotion.

One difficult area here is that Obliviana Theory is based on the idea of Creation. Personally, I am 100% Creationist, and I view the concept of evolution as the origin of life with total contempt.

I realize, however, that Creationism is view with total contempt by most people these days, becuase they have strong religious emotion in the biggest cult out there, science.

And see, even now I am allowing myself to succumb to religious emotion, in my strong criticism of science.

But anyway, I just want to make the point that evolution as the origin of life is a completely atheistic idea. To believe that life formed on this planet through a series of chemical reactions, with no intelligent motivating force, is an idea that BY DEFINITION implies that there is no God.

Some people come up with the cute idea that God created evolution. If you believe this, then you are a Creationist. God created life on Earth in this idea, only through the extremely convulted method of natural selection.

BUT, there are many, many people out there who believe in God and also believe in evolution as the origin of life. This is a TOTAL contradiction. And yet huge numbers of people live in total denial with this contradiction.

It's very strange to be a member of a religion that supports the existence of God, and then also be a member of a religion, science, which rejects the existence of God. It's a fucked-up situation.

Anyway, how the hell am I gonna express a Creationist viewpoint in this current environment?

AN idea just struck me... I can come up with different explanations for different people. I can come up with a supernatural basis for Obliviana, and then also a scientific basis for Obliviana. I've developed ideas along both of these lines. So maybe it's a good idea?

The scientific explanation of Obliviana has to do with the brain and psychology. It is a theory that I do not believe, and which I have utter contempt for. So therefore I would rather not put forth such an idea.

On the other hand, I don't want people to reject Obliviana because they hear the word "Creationist".

But maybe I'm giving people too much credit. Maybe I'm just talking about intellectuals here. Maybe the average person really doesn't care whether or not there's a God, or whether life was created or evolved.

I don't know. Obliviana as an theory will be of interest to intellectuals. But Obliviana as a PRACTICE may very well be interesting to a much wider audience. Because it really is like "do X, Y, and Z, and it'll be cool".

I have to be honest. That's one thing about me--I can't stomach dishonesty. If you think I'm being self-serving, think again. Being as honest as I am can be a problem, especially if you want to start a business, and market an idea.

For example, it really might be good to put forth the "scientific" Obliviana Theory, in terms of marketing, but I won't do it because I cannot come off acting like I respect the idea when I totally laugh at it.

So I have to deal with promoting Obliviana with those ideas that I truly embrace, and these ideas are not the kind that are popular these days.

But I think I'm focusing too much on what I'm expressing, as opposed to what I'm FEELING. That is, I really have to prevent Obliviana from becoming a cult in my own mind. That is, I have to prevent myself from becoming the first member of my own cult.

I am lucky in the Obliviana WORKS without understanding what underlying forces are at work. So I should focus on that which is demonstrable, as opposed to ideas which cannot be demonstrated.

That's it for tonight.

Wed 8/6/97 * 10:42 PM

Good Stormjaunt today. Wound up on Washington St., a weird meat packing district. Very cool.

I want to get back to LWOR.

The idea now is that you have your Fonosta, represented by a character in LWOR. And this character has a vehicle, a sidekick, and a tool/weapon.

Each of these four objects is constant in terms of its identity, but each can transform. For example, you might have a sidekick named Strat who is a little penguin. If you decide to upgrade to a raccoon, say, it will still be Strat, just in the "body" of a raccoon. The same principle goes for Fonosta, Vehicle, and Tool.

By the way, I am favoring the term "Tool" over "Weapon", since I want to stay away from fighting and violence in LWOR. Bashing away at a fortress is not violent in the same way that ripping another character's heart out is.

Fonosta, Vehicle, Sidekick, Tool. I think this evokes quite a powerful image.

Each of these four MEANS has an associated CHALLENGE. As you'll see below, I have changed the Sidekick Challenge a little.

Fonosta --> Maze
Vehicle --> Road
Sidekick --> Hole
Tool --> Fort

I changed the Sidekick Challenge from "Cave" to "Hole". The idea is that there are these mysterious holes you send your Sidekick into. You don't know what happens in these Holes, and your Sidekick may come out a little changed. Sidekicks are conceived of as intelligent but mot able to talk. So, for example, you might send a raccoon Sidekick into a Hole, and when he comes out, he's dressed in Hawaiian beach garb with sunglasses, acting "cool".

The whole thing is that you don't know what the hell happens in the holes.

Now, I have one very big decision here, and it is whether to allow modification of a Means object with a full Means replacement. For example, if your Fonosta is a "Business Grizzly", say, with a set of abilities, can you add to those abilities without shifting the Fonosta into a totally different form?

Thu 8/7/97 * 12:27 AM

Simplicity is the key. But things are starting to get pretty complicated.

I guess a big question here is what exactly the Octagons contain. Do four of the eight facets correspond to the four Means? Do you buy Means by discharging these facets?

Hmm...

Have I reached another impasse?

No! I'm too close!

So--the problem is that system is starting to get complicated.

Let me look back a little:

STORMJAUNT --> OCTAGON --> MEANS --> CHALLENGES --> REWARDS

Perhaps I could be a little more flexible, and have eight types of Means, and eight types of Challenges? And you can pick and choose from these...

One thing--making your own building was part of my Octagon vision in Metuchen. So a Home can be seen as a Means. This fits in with the picture of Fonosta, Vehicle, Sidekick, and Tool. It makes sense to have a home.

So, three Means to go.

I think that the symbolic aspects of LWOR are very important. That is, your Fonosta represents YOUR life to some extent.

"Clothing" might work as a Means...

"Computer" also...

Y'know... I think I'm gonna keep Building as a Reward...

So I have the four Means. What about the other four facets?

Also, I DO want Octagons to contain Rewards...

Perhaps Octagons ARE Means, as in, each Octagon contains a Means to be "unlocked".

Some kind of construction, as in like clearing a whole area?

I think I HAVE reached an impasse. Let me sleep on it.

Thu 8/7/97 * 10:19 PM

LWOR. The nature of it. Fonosta, Tool, Friend, Vehicle. Rewards awailable for a limited time. Maybe all sorts of available objects available for a limited time. Types of objects.

LWOR roads are established. Forts are put up by Obliviana. Mazes... something not quite complete about the idea of mazes... and holes...

Simplicity. Home on Road, your Fonosta lives with Friend/Sidekick/Pal, Vehicle parked outside, Tool at hand. Device, the graphical sign, emblazoned on all things yours.

Your Swords, stabbed into the ground at various points on LWOR.

Nature of Rewards... Swords, Device Elements, Colors, Substances... how about Billboards?

The idea of objects being available for a limited amount of time. An unlimited supply is available while these objects are "for sale", but as soon as they are "pulled", no more may be obtained till they are put back "on sale".

I like this idea for all levels of LWOR. But the process of buying should be unified. The basis is Cups. Cups have charge. The source of your "wealth" is your Stormjaunt Cups. These are discharged to "buy" Octagons. Each Octagon is a set of eight Cups, all bound together. The idea here is that a number of elements are tied together, as opposed to it all being loose.

Now, each Cup is "filled" with something.

11:11 PM

Stuff from today.

As I approached Minetta St., a pigeon strafed the top of my head as it flew by.

Dream last night: I was a prince in a kingdom that was being seiged by an enemy force. It was in my room of real childhood. We knew the enemies would be there soon, and us royals were in trouble. So my mother the queen tourned me and my sister the princess into jackets and hung us up in the closet. And I FELT what it was like to be a jacket, hanging there on a coat hanger, and I tried to access my own magic powers, but I felt a great emptyness where my heart should have been. I thought I had the power to transform myself back and forth, but I was unsure of it. I wound up turning back human. Oh, but as a jacket I was communicating with my sister, also in jacket form, and looking at all the papers and shit on the floor of the closet, and fearing that the enemies might set everything on fire, and as a clothing, we'd be screwed.

There were a few other parts of the dream, like waiting kind of outside, kind of on a mountain, kind of at the top of some stairs, waiting for the enemy to come. And also, at a mountaintop overlook sort of place, I was there with a dreamfriend and the enemy was going to spare me or something if I helped them.

Okay. Now I know some of you out there are gonna say that the dream means I'm "in the closet" or something. Ha ha ha. Well fuck you. You're just jealous that I have some amazingly awesome dreams and you don't! I mean, have you ever FELT what it was like to be a piece of clothing like that? Come on!

Okay.

Now, I want to add a piece of information to my spontaneous Stormjaunt of Tuesday. At the ferry, I used a $20 bill with a 209 in the serial number to buy my ticket.

11:56 PM

Your Fonosta is represented by one Octagon. Cups can contain many sorts of information, including other Cups. So, looking at your Fonosta as a whole, there are eight Facets. Right now, I see them as:

[1] Fonosta (this is confusing, since I am using the term Fonosta at several levels. In this context, I am referring to the humanoid "body" aspect.)
[2] Vehicle
[3] Buddy (I've changed this term again.)
[4] Tool (Club?)
[5] Home
[6] Device
[7] Swords (tough to define, since it is a SET of Swords...)
[8] ???

Now, my idea is that each of these will have several sub-Cups within, such as Color, Substance, etc. I am thinking of a sub-Octagon within each Facet of the Main Octagon, but that would make for 64 sub-Cups.

Maybe just two of these per Facet?

I want this system to strike a balance between simplicity and complexity. I guess the same could be said for a lot of things. But in Obliviana, Stormjaunting is the focus, and LWOR is ultimately a tool that supports Stormjaunting. So I don't want LWOR to become so complex that it outshadows Stormjaunting.

The term "Fonosta" refers to the record of your Stormjaunts. And in this record is also this LWOR aspect. Therefore, Fonosta contains Stormjaunt Cups. Is that the 8th aspect up there?

As you might be able to tell, I'm in pretty stormy waters here. But I am getting through the challenge.

So...

[8] Library (the set of all your Stornjaunt Cups, as represented by a library in your Fonosta's home)

And...

[7] Battery (your set of Swords)

So...

[1] Fonosta
[2] Vehicle
[3] Buddy
[4] Tool
[5] Home
[6] Device
[7] Battery
[8] Library

One observation I have now is that each of the eight Facets has a unique nature, and a system that forces each to conform to a certain number of sub-Cups is too restrictive.

Initial placement:

N--Fonosta
E--Tool
S--Buddy
W--Vehicle
NE--Library
SE--Device
SW--Battery
NW--Home

Fri 8/8/97 * 1:21 AM

[1] Incarnation
[2] Vehicle
[3] Buddy
[4] Smasher (?)
[5] House
[6] Device
[7] Battery
[8] Library

Still, I need to define the Octagons you buy with SJ Cups.

SJ Cups will be defined by the Friction Enhancers used, as well as possible difficulty levels. The definitions of Octagon Transformations here will encourage certain SJ directions, such as variety vs. limitation.

Sat 8/9/97 * 6:20 PM

Dream the other night, in a museum, with a Chinese-American woman, who I knew when I was a teenager (in the dream), and we had some kind of special relationship. She was leading me through the museum which was like a path going up and down and all over... and she yelled for me that she was hearing voices in a room, and then she said that the couch was shaking, so I went inside, and felt a massive magical force, and was about to say, as if I were an expert, that there was definitely something going on in there, but then my view of the room was like ripped in half, and I felt a great coldness in my heart, and thing spun to a silvery photographic image of some guy, maybe on old guy, maybe evil.

Pretty cool, eh? I woke up shaken from this nightmare.

Anyway, back to LWOR (Little World of Racetracks).

[1] You do Stormjaunts (SJs), and each completed Stormjaunt is entered into LWOR as a SJ Cup. Each of these SJ Cups will have a "charge value" based on the nature of the Stormjaunt, especially the Friction Enhancer used, but also time of day, time of year, length of SJ, etc.

[2] From your set of SJ Cups, you form Octagons. You select eight SJ Cups, and arrange eight of them into an Octagon. Each of the eight "Facets" of the Octagon represents a different aspect of your Fonosta in LWOR.

[3] Right now, this is the structure of Octagon:

N--Incarnation
E--Tool
S--Buddy
W--Vehicle
NE--Library
SE--Device
SW--Battery
NW--Home

The idea is that to "buy" something in one of these categories, you must "spend" a certain number and kind of charges. So, being that your SJ Cups will most likely have different Charge Values, you'll decide where to put them in the Octagon according to what LWOR Objects you are seeking to obtain.

[4] LWOR Objects are elements which your Fonosta "Gets" in the game world. That is, they are things, such as cars, hammers, penguins, unicycles, parrots, crowbars, etc. which you use in your acitivities in LWOR.

[5] LWOR Objects are each made available for limited spans of time. For example, there might be a motorcycle called the "Thundermind", and it might be available for, say, four weeks. I'm not sure yet whether periods of availability will be known or unknown. The problem here is that I want to generate enough impetus to motivate a good level of Stormjaunting, but without encouraging cheating. The term "phimming" comes to mind for mying about Stormjaunts, a word from my "Hollow Earth Files" in Anything But Monday Magazine. Anyway, I want to encourage Stormjaunting without Phimming.

[6] So, in the limited time that an Object is available in LWOR, a certain number will be obtained. Once the object is pulled from availability, no more will be available. A thought that just struck me is that several "copies" of a certain Object will be obtained by Obliviana (ie, me) and hidden throughout LWOR. Yes... this is very interesting...

[7] These "hidden" Objects would represent the ONLY way to obtain such an Object, barring a rerelease, which may or may not be part of the system. If anything, a rerelease will be slighly different. So, the "Thundermind" motorcycle might be obtained by 23 Fonostas before being pulled, with, say, four more hidden in LWOR.

[8] No trading of Objects is allowed in LWOR. The basic philosophy of LWOR is that your Fonosta is fully "sourced" by your Stormjaunts. Therefore, trading based on collectibility would inevitably lead to your Fonosta potentially being "sourced" by other people's Stormjaunts, which is totally against my basic philosophy here.

[9] One question I have to answer is what happens to your current Objects when they are "transformed" into new ones, or in other words, receive new "Incarnations". For example, say you have an "Atlantis Steel" unicycle, and you then obtain a "Thundermind" motorcycle. What happens to the unicycle? The same question goes for all the Object types.

I see several possible systems here. First, the old Object is "gone, but not forgotten", wherein you still "have" the Cup holding the object, but it is "discharged", and no longer usable in the system. Another system would allow you to retain some or all of your Objects, all of them being usable.

Another idea is that there will be a form of "Time Travel", where you can return to a previous "state", or set of Objects. That is, say your Incarnation is as a "Jalky", or furry blue monster, with a "Massivestorm" hammer, a "Thorium Dude" convertible sports car, and a "Misticuff" elf buddy. This would be one SET of Objects. If, in the future, you had moved on to a whole new set of Objects, you could use "Time Travel" to return to this old set of Objects for a period of time. But you CAN'T mix and match Objects from the past.

[10] So, a big idea in LWOR is connected sets of things, as manifested in Octagons and "Time Travel" Object sets.

[11] INTERFACE. This is a big issue. How exactly are you going to interact with LWOR? I see it as mostly in your imagination. That is, all the objects and elements will be primarily IMAGINED. You will interact with LWOR though a series of text-based decisions. Certainly, there will be graphics involved, such as "Your Fonosta Device". And I can imagine nicley renedered images of the various Objects, but static, like paintings.

Sun 8/10/97 * 3:07 PM

Ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas.

I've been working on my ideas for years.

Over three years ago, in OsoaWeek001, I presented my idea of Obliviana. If you go back and look at it, you'll see that it was very similar in many ways to my current set of ideas. At the same time, though, it is a very clumsy, vague, poorly thought out system. But it is the foundation on which I have built, up to the present.

Mon 8/11/97 * 1:08 AM

Time to upload. Y'know, this is what I wanted to do--whatever I had done, just update it once per week. But this week... I don't have much to show on the website. But I HAVE made a whole lot of progress on my ideas, which is ultimately more important than updating a website that nobody is looking at anyway.

See ya next issue!

Get all Obliviana.

*OW*



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