This morning, I have an urge to write a
paean to
E2 Quests.
I'm currently flailing about in the madness of the Copyright Redemption Quest, hoping it gets extended so I can save four more writeups from certain doom. It's given me the opportunity to notice writeups of mine that should have been thrown out or totally rewritten a long time ago, and get them deleted myself before they're trashed with extreme prejudice.
It's also, oddly, spurred me to write metric fucktons more on several old things of mine. It's not odd exactly - I've been trying to refurbish my old writeups for a while now - but it's odd in that I wouldn't have bothered with many of my copyright-infringing nodes if it weren't for the insistence of E2.
Me:
(tripping gaily through the nodegel, scattering daisies)
La la la. What a beautiful day it is, Mister Bluejay. It's far too sunny and nice to be laboring over some stupid song lyrics. I think I'll ask for a few of my writeups to be deleted and sit here watching the animated bunnies dance instead.
Quest:
No! I'll give you lots of XP and blessings and C!s if you fix it up! You shall have many a golden trinket to bring your granny in the woods!
Me:
My what? What are you talking about?
Quest:
Er... nothing. Pay no attention to the granny behind the curtain. Look, why don't you just try it?
Me:
No. Lyrics suck. Judy Fjell sucks. I'm tired of her. I wanna watch animated bunnies.
Quest:
But the animated bunnies are all in your head!
Me:
I can't hear you! La la la.... (skips on to the Enchanted Grotto of Deletion Requests)
WDR Node:
(its rapidly appearing and disappearing writeups glimmering in the wind) Hello there, child! If you seek to clean up your act, verily, post ye here!
Me:
Buh?
WDR Node:
(flippering its scintillating pixels distractedly)
Please consider revising your lyrical writeups to fit in with our policy! You can just use excerpts or talk about the song more!
Me:
No goddamnit! Don't make me get out the rolled newspaper!
WDR Node:
(hangs head and shuffles behind a large cardboard bush)
Me:
Phew.
(dancing my writeup merrily toward the Big Blank Textbox in the Sky)
in10se:
(leaps out from behind a cloud)
Me: AAAAAA!!
in10se:
Please do the Quest! Everyone should do it!
Me:
What is with you people?!
in10se:
You might as well get some free XP instead of losing it to Klaproth!
Me:
B -- Th -- Bu... I... Well, that's a good point... I guess I could just cut out all but the second verse and write something explaining the song in general....
WDR Node:
(bouncing joyously back into the grotto)
That's the spirit!
Quest:
(appearing in a puff of purple smoke)
Hooray!
(Quest, Node, and in10se join hands and do a strange and eerie dance around the land. The End.)
I'm not sure where that came from. You see what this stuff does to me?
That's the beauty of a quest, though, imho. Because of the Copyright Redemption Quest, I've had the opportunity to post so much more than I ever would have. I finally went back to Lawsuit and talked about what their concerts were like and how much the band meant to me when I was growing up. Even more amazingly, I wrote to the mother of several of the band members and told her how much they meant to me - something I'd always wanted to do. And she actually wrote back, and then sent my email on to one of her sons from the band! Every time I look at that, I get sent back ten years, back to the days when I was just a hysterical fifteen-year-old fan worshipping these local musicians who were barely more than kids themselves.
"My mom forwarded me your request about publishing Lawsuit lyrics... and I'm here to say knock yourself out.... As far as sharing the music with the world goes, we're all for it. Have fun, and thanks for the inquiry. If you ever have any questions about anything Lawsuit, I have the answers."
-- Ned Sykes
Gasp! Squeal! Et cetera! I might as well be at a Beatles concert right here and now.
I realized, too, that the story I posted in Fup. Store Cat. was a total copyright violation, and I trudged through adding more explication. But it was worth it, because I asked them for permission too, and got to see that the people behind the famous, neighborly, friendly giant bookstore really are friendly and neighborly themselves. They even specifically forwarded me their chain of emails on the subject so I could see how enthusiastic they were to be included here:
Malia in Marketing: "Very cool. Shall I write a 'hell yes!' response, or would you prefer to?"
Dave Probably Also in Marketing: "Actually, I'd love it if you could do it. But include a 'hell yes' and a thank you from me too."
And as I prepared to nuke Peace Somewhere (bad pun), I realized that I could instead use it as background music in a longer node, and post the story of my experience at the massive "let's shut down the city" anti-war protests in March. (I have this image of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in some cheap activist musical - "Hey gang! Let's shut down the city!")
Fixing that node is a small thing compared to the sense of strength and community that I get from talking to people here about how I can improve or have improved my writeups, or submitting something solid to a quest. I've learned the fun way that quests mean XP and small shiny things and adulation from the folks running it, and those are fun things. On the surface, those are my goals in playing here. Ultimately though, what I like the most is the challenge of learning something new and writing out all the stuff that's inside me.
It's funny. For several years I've wanted to take more creative writing classes, just so that I would have someone standing over me giving me things to write about and deadlines for writing them. Now I'm in a creative writing class, and I just realized that all these quests provide me with exactly that. Without Everything Quests: Hollywood's Golden Age or Everything Quests: The Nobel Prize winners
I would never have met Alva or Alfonso or the two Vance Colvigs. I wouldn't have met the family and band members of my sometime-favorite musical group or be staring at a bunch more non-compliant writeups that are daring me to come up with something creative, relevant, and interesting to say about another person's work. I certainly wouldn't be laboring for weeks over my scratchpad in the delusion that I was going to finish the writeup there before my birthday on Saturday. I would, in fact, be asleep right now.
E2 rules.