What Price Pt. II

Looking at Lily as a character, there is consistency. Even the randomness in Lily is consistent. She is, as they say, consistent in her inconsistency. She is a compass that points true North. I have put considerable thought and design into her as a character.

As her player, this has required me to often put aside what I think I might think or feel about some other character or situation, and look at it as Lily looks at it. This is, as you may imagine, no small endeavor, but fortunately Lily does not determine what is right, wrong, good, or bad.

She "knows" these things only as she has learned by pattern. Her beliefs are basically algorithms. As a player, you cannot change those beliefs of hers, but your *character* can. Thus, she can be manipulated to a point, but there is a certain point where her programming will kick in and she will function as she was designed.

Lily is a mimic. A parrot. Everything you've seen her do - ever - is something someone else has said, or done - either in front of her, or on the "News", i.e. the non-stop droning on movies, broadcasts and commercials that have come over the Cortex into the bar at the old bar, Fooks. If you see something that is not a mimiced or learned behaviour, then you see her 'nature'.

Thus, when you see her slice up eleven Alliance soldiers using only claws, you are seeing what she was programmed to do. However, that is not the most important part of her programming. She was designed for a purpose. The purpose is pretty clearly outlined through the past chapters of the blog, and I won't go into them now. However, players who have tried to change her nature would be well reminded of the old story that ends "It is my nature".

Lily is a character. Characters don't always live forever. Even Wash ended. This is not to say Lily has become a true leaf on the wind. She is simply shut down by her own....dare I say....will.

What price freedom?

I as a sim admin and player have tried to provide for anyone who wanted to partake of it, a place for creativity to flourish - in and out of character. Sometimes this meant boundaries were pushed a bit far to one side or another, and other times it meant saying "sorry, no" when I felt like saying ''yes, sure''. The point here is that while we are a not for profit sim, currently purposed to provide for research about collaboration and creativity in virtual space, there MUST be some guidelines in place or things devolve into chaos. While that may be desired, or the point of some spaces, it is not the point of what is happening on sim formerly known as Hale's Moon.

Secondarily, while donations have helped tremendously, the majority of the sim costs are paid for by me. If you don't know how much it costs to run a sim, you might look it up. Just to get it placed is 1500 dollars. The monthly cost is 300 dollars a month for a class five private island sim. That means over the course of two years, my own personal cost for this is well approaching 10 thousand REAL dollars, so its probably only reasonable that I would exercise some amount of control over what is allowed and not allowed. Our academic discount has reduced this cost in the past, but LL does not allow those any more. We have received funding for various little projects, but it does not cover the costs. No one has a right to do what they want there, any more than they have the right to go into your house and act in ways that are not allowed in your house. And no one has any entitlement to accuse any sim owner of ''destroying their home'' when a sim is changed.

The point here is that you can be free to do things, but that does not make you entitled to them. Nack Barnes has run Fireflys bar for long long time. As a player, Nack is incredible. As a character, when he plays, he's also incredible. When he gave up his sim, Blackburne, it hurt IC and OOC.
But no one had any right to talk about how Nack had destroyed their home. Nack had provided it for a long long time. Many of us played there. But none of us was entitled to it. I was not there the day Blackburne failed, as a player. I had to restage it as Lily fighting off Reavers to allow my story to continue with any sort of integrity. So I did.

Which leads me to ask why anyone playing on what is now Dragon's Egg would take issue with the fact I decided to change it. I asked people's opinions. I got some, mostly positive, some not liking it, some hating it. And, I decided.

And that is the price of creativity, and of freedom. At the end of the day, creativity and freedom to create are not free - especially in virtual worlds. They cost money. They cost resources. They cost time. Not everyone contributes all of those things, and that is fine - not everyone can. In fact some of the most valuable contributions to the sim have been those of time and creativity. I appreciate those greatly. But even those do not entitle anyone to anything.

The highest cost of creativity and freedom is usually not paid by the person seeking it. When it is, it is really wonderful - but requires only the expectation of entitlement to become absolute hell. Hale's Moon had become absolute hell.

Aeon Voom's player had a dream. I wonder at times if it would not have been better to have let it end when he walked away. Perhaps it would have. I cannot travel back in time. Only forward.

Thus, Dragons Egg. I will write more about the dragons egg vision next time. Until then, stay safe, and keep each other good company.