Memory Book/Fractal Confusion (Kevin Breeman)
After you have filled in information in a specific section, be sure to remove the "instructional" text, including this introduction!
Initial Instructions: Please Remove Start by giving some information about your "real" self. This can include your gender, age, occupation, and so on. Remember that any information about your "real self" that is requested on these pages is purely optional. The point of the project is to collect your memories about playing in the group, and doing so does not require personal details. However, if you are comfortable giving them, they will be interesting for the reader.
Response
I believe that I would do well to provide a kind of modus operandi rather than a personal history here. Perhaps I will reserve that information for the "real life information" section.
The Modus Operandi
I have approached this game with several major goals in mind. Broadly these goals include the intellectual and psychological edification of the players involved, exploration of issues as they might evolve in the future (for example, religion and its role in society), and experimentation with literary styles. Let us examine each of these in turn.
Intellectual Edification
I have done my best to create in Breeman a character who produces a rich thought life. In writing his thought life I have tried to give my readers some food for thought (excuse the pun). I've given Breeman a good imagination that serves both him as a computer programmer and me as a writer. I have been able to capitalize on his imagination in creating extended metaphors by which to carry themes through multiple sims. The major example I can think of now is Breeman's 'crying issue' in some recent posts, in which the images of the planet Venus and of supersonic flight were presented as lines of thought accompanying the main storyline.
The smileys have also served me in this capacity. While also providing a readily deployable engineering task force to grant Breeman greater mobility (consider for example, Breeman's electing to join the boarding party aboard the USS Phoenix the USS Independence-A's retaking of that vessel).
Exploration of Issues
I have devoted some posts exclusively to exploring social or philosophical issues. For example, a recent post concerned Jan Droogendyk attending a service at the 'chapel' aboard DS-17. I employed Patri Jia Kom in order to look at neuro-plasticity in greater detail. I had her brain somewhat damaged by the effects of a botched Grendellai attempt at tagging her as a slave.
Characters
Primary
Non-Player Characters
Real Life information
As noted above, this is purely optional. However, feel free to talk about your real self, including what you do for a living, your hobbies, interests, and so-on.
How you came to UFOP: SB118
Talk here, with as much length as you please, about how you found the group and why you applied.
History
Now talk about your memories of the group. Here are some ideas for what to talk about:
- Where were you first placed? What was it like starting to sim on your vessel?
- What have been your greatest challenges in this group?
- What have been your greatest achievements in this group?
- What do you hope to ultimately accomplish?
- Where do you see this group in five years?
- How do you think this group has contributed to Star Trek's legacy? How has the group contributed to the internet community?
Key Simming Strategies
Narrative Voice Injection
This involves making use of the narrative voice to add a bit of effect to a post. For example, consider the following piece of text:
The chair under him lurched a few centimetres but his body felt stationary and motionless. It wasn't that the physics on the bridge were in some way violated so much as that his brain, in conforming with the laws dictating the physics of this region of space, did its feeble best to maintain conscious experience with the disjointed information. Where parts of his sensory system were able to register, small temporal fluctuations in other portions of his brain were causing reality's coherence to diminish a bit. Of course Kevin was not able to recognize this at the time, and so I must clarify the matter as his narrator in order that this narrative might maintain the coherence which its subject lacked in experience.
Here, the narrative voice acts as a meta-character, mentioning that he/she/it must clarify a few things for the reader since Breeman himself is unable to fully recognize what he is experiencing.