Kay Ingild

The waves were crashing, pounding against the cliffs-- angry as if demanding the walls to fall into its body, hungry and consuming. Above, staring at those waves, was a figure peering superiorly down upon those waves, perhaps thinking to itself that the cliffs beneath its feet might crumble under the onslaught, but standing right on the edge nonetheless. Dark masses of clouds covered the sky, tossed by the same screaming winds that were whipping the ocean into a frenzy. Lightning shattered the gloom again and again; the constant sound of thunder could barely be heard over the waves. Every few minutes the figure muttered Words that glittered as they fell from its lips, plunged into the waters, rose and tore across the skies, strengthening the storm whenever it threatened to weaken. It didn't last. First a brightness appeared at the horizon, then the waves slowed. Someone else was Speaking. The figure -- now, in the growing light, revealed to be a man in worn, salt-stained clothes -- settled back on his heels and watched his storm blow away, the dark clouds being shredded until daylight shone through. One great wave swept towards him across the calmed ocean. Nestled in its curl, he knew, was a woman, murmuring her own Words to the deep waters. Soon her familiar figure stood in the swirling waters at the base of the cliff, her cloak drenched, a wide-brimmed hat covering the dark tangles of her hair. "Did you see how far it spread?" he called down to her, grinning. "Amazing how little it takes to--" Her voice lashed out at him once again. "A day, a whole day wasted putting your little experiment to rest. Did you realize you nearly swept away an entire town? Don't play with things you don't understand." "How else can I learn?" he shouted, not so much grinning now as baring his teeth. "And would you rather I played with you?" With that, he launched himself over the cliff. His first shout blasted towards her, was swamped by a sparkling curtain of water tossed up by pure reflex. His next pierced through, but her voice rose, a throaty growl, and slapped the power aside. No matter. He'd planned for this. Two Words in quick succession and the air around her thickened, darkened, reached out towards her... She wasn't there. He didn't expect the tug at his feet, the wrenching pull that dragged him down. Choking on salt water, he spat Words as best he could, and barely managed to pull himself to the surface. Fighting with all his strength against the painfully cold deep-ocean current that shouldn't be here, so close to shore, he watched her rise from below the choppy waves and glide away. She paused and looked back over her shoulder, just for a few seconds, before moving on. His chest ached, not just from gasping for breath, as he watched her. Salt water stung his eyes. "Don't play with things you don't understand." That's what she'd said, before. If she said anything now, he couldn't hear it over the slap of frigid water. Would she ever have different words for him?

That's just it; I have no reason for it, other than being tired of seeing "Unusable item" in so many places, and wanting to see some descriptions or suchlike instead. I am the kind of person who enjoys seeing the "random rubbish" that Chewett obviously dislikes I wasn't aware that it would actually get in the way of other more important things, so please consider this closed.

"As to refreshing them, im sure if you contacted someone with clicky editing NICELY" I'm sorry if I came across as not nice in my post above Wasn't intentional. And if simple flavour text gets in the way and is discouraged, then never mind...

Could I ask roughly how many people have such editing rights? And could they be persuaded to "refresh" the items a bit more often? When I was a newly-joined player I tried to explore as much as I could, and discovering these "clickable" bits of the landscape was always exciting, until I realized that most of them were "Unusable". Not even flavour text Seemed like a wasted opportunity.

"As with all clickables, it needs to be resubmitted every 14 days" Is that why so many items all over the MD world are usually "Unusable item - nothing interesting here right now"?

This may be going off on a tangent, but all this talk of red has me thinking of synaesthesia. Red may or may not be objectively the same for everyone, but if some people experience certain letters, numbers, musical sounds, etc. as more "red" than others, while other people don't have the same automatic association, then that suggests to me that human experience can vary a great deal. Veering slightly closer to being on topic… From what little I know of neurons and their connections, experience, association, and context are pretty important. Even if we are talking about the exact same type of chair, I might associate that chair with constantly stubbing my toe, you with a favourite relative who owned a similar piece of furniture. And my concept of "chair" might have been shaped over my lifetime (through exposure to usage of the word in particular contexts, etc) to be closer to "utilitarian object", yours to "a piece of decor that makes a statement about the owner's personality", maybe. This seems to lend weight to language being far more subjective than it would seem on a quick glance through a dictionary. All that being said... We all live in the same world; we all spend a heck of a lot of time dealing with conspecifics to whom we need to communicate a variety of meanings, sometimes with great urgency; under these circumstances we kind of have to be pretty good at wielding language as a blunt instrument, getting our intended meanings across "well enough" to serve our needs. Does it matter if your fundamental experience of certain words or concepts is different from mine? Perhaps, if it leads one of us to make connections or act in a way that the other feels is bizarre, unpredictable, or inappropriate - or during the moment when our conversation hits a snag, when we realize that we're not talking about the same thing, and that we need to "recalibrate" or at the very least figure out where the misunderstanding came from. That is, I think it doesn't matter if our interpretations are different, unless we notice that there's a difference. And then the very fact that we notice such a thing means our understanding of the word shifts slightly; from there we can seek to expand our own understanding to the point where our different interpretations are brought close enough that the difference doesn't functionally/practically matter anymore. (Or, if that's not possible, then we can at least refine our mental model of the other person's understanding through analysis of further mismatches.) If those moments of realization never come, we could be blissfully unaware that we're misunderstanding each other. We could all be doing exactly that, right now. But if you can go an entire lifetime *meaning* something different, interpreting things in your own idiosyncratic way, but it never *matters* enough for anyone to notice… is the difference in interpretation relevant? I'm having trouble thinking of an example where it would be, but you guys seem to be far better read than me on topics such as these… (By the way, hello, I think this is my first post in the forum