FW: Coming up with backstories...

So I'm the DM (Dungeon Master) of a game I play with six of my friends. It's a lot of fun to come up with a backstory and try to run them through a game. They're very good at being creative, and it's hard to deal with creative players when there are specific things you want them to do. You want to give them choices without forcing them into railroad tracks, but at the same time you don't want to spend over twenty hours planning the campaign, so you want them to go in a certain direction. It's hard.
However, another hard part is that you have to figure out how to make all their backstories mesh with the plot you've come up with. You'd think this would be easy, but I don't have any control over what kind of character they choose, what they look like, how they act, or where they come from. Well, that's a lie. I can tell them "no" to outrageous, stupid things, like traumatizing pasts no one should live through or warn them away from personalities that would get them killed.

This last week I came up with a backstory to incorporate my monk/Fortune's Friend into our campaign, and it is recorded thusly (it is not well written and is only a rough draft):

So. there was this monk named Dayton, and...during his travels in the world, he met an elf named Nahele. Actually, her name was a lot longer, but that's what he called her. She was a priestess of Ehlonna

they fell in love and wanted to spend their life together, blah blah blah.

However, dayton also felt a very strong tie to the monastery that raised him. He was one of the few monk/priests there and was one of the strongest, if not the strongest monk they had produced in decades. He felt it would be remiss in his duties if he did not go back to the monastery to teach the little ones.

This wouldn’t be a problem, except that Nahele was still completing her priestess training and couldn’t leave her forest yet. She was very obviously favored by her goddess and the high priestess of Ehlonna predicted many adventures and great things to be accomplished by Nahele's hands. However, the young elf maiden, very full of love...decided to follow her monk...at least for a little while. But it would be five years before they would meet again, and at that time, she would come and live at the monastery for maybe a few years. After that he would serve as her personal bodyguard while she accomplished her tasks.

During those five years, Dayton became an incredible warrior and an exceptional healer. He was an example to all those he taught. Nahele learned quickly in the ways of the forest and of healing.

After five years was up, Nahele made ready to go see the love of her life. However, the day before she was supposed to leave she became suddenly ill. Something that none of the priests/priestesses could cure

Instead of Nahele showing up at his doorstep, Dayton received a letter detailing how sick she was. However, he was not a very good scholar in elven and took the letter to mean she was dead, or at least close enough to it that it wouldn't matter. Barely a week into when she should have been at the monastery, an epidemic broke out at one of the local villages. It was a strange one, one that resisted much divine healing and drained an unusually high amount of energy from the healer for very little result. Dayton, overwrought with grief and determined to help in anyway possible, went to the village and tried to heal those that he could. Had this been a normal plague, he could have saved many. But it was a cursed thing, and it drained him of much energy. Even then, since he was so strong, he could have survived, but in his grief and desire to meet his love again, he overtaxed himself to the point of death.

(if you so desire to make this apply to your story, he could have noticed her at the last still alive and untainted and he set up wards and such to keep her untainted and so other monks could find her, and that was his last act before he died)

However, Nahele was not dead. In fact, she made a splendid recovery about three weeks later. It was, unfortunately, too late to save her love. She controlled her grief, however, and became a splendid tool for her goddess

FW: Knowledge is stress

I read the Sunday's Dilbert strip...and Ratbert declares in it that "knowledge is stress" and I'm inclined to agree with him. What's even more stressful is the knowledge that you should have a lot of knowledge, and yet you don't...like it's all slipped away. And that's what has stressed me out all weekend.
Let's see, I think today I'll rant about being social. I was social yesterday. I was out with friends from 10am to 1am the next day. However, instead of being socially rejuvenated, I was instead in one of the worst moods I've been in since school started this year. This could be because the majority of the time was spent with people I only partially like and it culminated with going to a Halloween party just in time to help clean up and be one of the last ones to leave without so much as dancing once. It also included seeing the guy I like flirting with other girls. And being called a...I believe it was a "lazy whore" by some random guy on the street while we walked home.

...This is why I stay at home on the weekends. Because even if I play video games, if they find out I'm a girl, I'm not a slut, but a goddess practically. And this is much healthier for my self-esteem. And then I don't have to parade around in a costume and wear high heels that hurt my feet.
I also would have gotten at least some of my homework done. As it stands, I'm so behind now that I've past the turbulent rapids of panic and am now in the calm waters of apathy. Woo.

RA: Ikea lamp ad

So this is another of my favorite ads. Ikea ran this lamp ad awhile back, so it isn't that recent, but it's a different take on the normal ad, I think. There's a great deal of pathos in it that makes it memorable. It has a 'twist ending' so I'm not sure how an enthymeme works for it: does it go with the twist or does it go with the rest of the ad?

WATCO making it obvious that you're manipulating emotion on your target audience and it's ability to remember your ad?
Enthymeme: Making it obvious that you're manipulating emotion will greatly help your audience remember your ad because making the viewer feel sorry for an inanimate object and then laughing at them is out of the ordinary for decor ads.
Implicit assumption: Anything that is out of the ordinary for decor ads will greatly help your audience remember your ad.

Pathos: The whole ad is geared for pathos. It plays really sad music in the background, makes it rain, and generally creates a very depressed mood for almost the entire ad. Within twenty seconds, the average viewer feels absolutely outraged that someone would have the audacity to throw out an old lamp. The memorable part comes in when the guy comes in at the end and points out that a lamp has no feelings and the viewer shouldn’t feel sorry for it.

Ethos: I think it’s an appeal to ethos that they seem so obvious about their manipulation of emotion that the viewer feels this is a very ‘honest’ ad, in a weird way.

FW: Writing Papers and arguments

I feel it appropriate to write my free response about papers since that's what I'm still doing at this moment and will continue doing until it's time to turn the paper in tomorrow. You know what my problem is with papers? I hate my subjects. Even if I like my subject at the beginning, I manage to, in my paper, turn it into this trite, stupid argument that no longer makes any sense for why anyone would want to write about this subject in the first place. And it's really annoying. I don't think my enthymeme even holds up for anyone save a very very very specific audience, and then they aren't really a neutral audience, they're an audience in denial of being the recipients of the lecture. I just hope I don't fail the paper. My rewrite will probably be on a different subject. This is actually the 2.5th paper I've written. I wrote the rough of another one and the outline of yet another subject. I just can't find what I'm looking for, and I'm not even interested in the arguments...I'd like to talk about asians, but there isn't much to persuade out there about them, except that maybe they aren't as smart as people think they are, which isn't much of a standpoint to...well, stand by.

Maybe it stems from the fact that I'm not an interesting person, or that I can't actually argue in real life. I don't think I've ever won an argument that wasn't superficial. I blame my lack of ability to be persuasive on my genes! It's not my fault that I was made this way! Enthymemes can't fix what's wrong with the head! I in fact hate arguments. This class goes against the very core of my being. I should be offended, dangit.

...or maybe I should have taken technical writing, which would have been a lot more boring but would have had enough rules that even a monkey could do it. Well, a monkey well-versed in English and it's technicalities, I suppose.

TA: Pros and Cons

I've been having a lot of trouble with coming up with a subject. My biggest problem is that I come up with subjects that don't seem to have two sides. Originally I wanted to do standardized testing with an emphasis in exit examinations. However, I think I found a new subject. But I thought doing a pros/cons on my original subject would make a good practice, since that's what we're doing in class, sort of.
Pros for standardized exit testing:
1)You could cut down standardized test to a single exit exam in junior high and one in high school.
2) It would theoretically guarantee a minimum standard between all schools in America.
3) It would make a high school diploma much less subjective for each school.
4) You could use these tests to help sort students into magnet schools or into classes that they need.
5) It would be a good standardized test to base a school's academic achievement off of.

Cons for a standardized exit test:
1) Standardized tests can show racial/social discrimination which could adversely affect students.
2) This still leaves the problem of teaching how to take tests instead of studying actual material. It’s the problem of teaching kids what to think instead of how to think.
3) It’s not the exit test that’s important, but the entrance test into college, because no one can do much with a high school diploma anyways, even if it did guarantee certain skills.
4) It would keep back students who didn’t want to go to school, which would create a great deal of dead-weight in the senior classes of high schools.
5) It’s possible a national standardized test would create even more useless bureaucracy in the government that would hinder instead of hurt people.

6) If it doesn't directly work for the student's interest, then it probably isn't a good policy, and it's hard to make this work for a majority of student's best interest.

FW: Dancing

I used to dance when I was little. Like, when I was between the ages of six and eight. This dancing was ballet, usually around the time of the nutcracker. I was very bad at dancing. In my class, even though they were all my same age, I was at least a head taller than everyone else, I was awkward, and generally did not have the makings of a dancer. So I stopped and played soccer instead, where my innate clumsiness led to the parents making bets on how many times I would fall over myself per game. They used to congratulate me if the number was less than three.
Years past and I finally graduated high school and came to college. And I wanted to dance. I wanted it so bad. So, after spending hours trying to add a dance class, I finally got into social dance. I was abysmal at it. I would go to every practice session every week and that would make me about a "B" student in those classes. I've never gotten above a "B+" in any of the four dance classes I've taken.
It really bothers me that I just don't seem to get it when it comes to dancing. I can practice and barely get the steps, or do minimal practice and do only SLIGHTLY worse. But I never do good. One of my mini-goals for my college career was that I wanted to learn how to dance, and make it look good when I dance. It seems like one of those skills that would make you more comfortable with your own body and it would be nice if I wasn't clumsy for the rest of my life.

RA: Not beer, but its still a vice.

I almost did another beer commercial, but I resisted. I really recommend checking out this commercial. It was an advertisement for XBox that was banned from television, but was very, very widely watched on the internet. That particular upload has more than 900k views for it. There are two things you could ask for this, one about the ad itself, and one about the method in distributing it. Since the latter is more intriguing, that's what this RA will be about.
WATCO placing a commercial online on the memorability and visibility of the ad?
Enthymeme: Placing a commercial online will increase the memorability and visibility of an ad because placing a banned commercial online will put the commercial where the target audience is.
Implicit Assumption: Anything that puts the commercial where the target audience is will increase the memorability and visibility of an ad.
Intended Audience: The intended audience of the ad is geeks, video gamers, and other people that would spend a great deal of time on electronic devices.
The intended audience for this argument would be the stockholders and other inquiring minds in the company when they find out their expensive ad is banned from television.
Logos: Which is all you can really give right now for this argument I’m building. The ad itself is pathos, ethos, and logos, but we’re arguing the idea of putting a banned ad online to get full benefits. And the logos for that is the results they received when this ad went on youtube and other such places. Ethos would have come from the advertising agency itself and pathos doesn’t work in a big business setting.
Sorry, this was a slightly different RA, but I hope it still made sense.

FW: I love my roommates...but....

I really do like my roommates. They're really good girls, they sometimes do their chores, and generally help pay the bills on time. They usually knock before entering my room and only once in awhile do I get blamed for things that aren't my fault.
In the meantime, when they have midterms..or are busy....or have relationship troubles..and forget to do their chores...or whatever...I'll pick up the slack and do them. Because I'm anal retentive and I hate messy floors. And while I don't expect the favor to be returned...it wouldn't hurt if once in awhile they could help me when I'm having trouble. No, I don't want to talk about it. I want someone to pick up what I might forget to do. But no. It doesn't happen. Which is fine, I guess. Such is the way of justice and of life, and I shouldn't expect more. I don't. But it would be nice.

And you know what my current beef is with one of my roommates? It's probably the most dumbest thing I've ever been mad over...but she's my visiting teaching companion. And we were VTing this girl in our ward...and my roommate mentioned that she's just working full time this semester...and how she "takes care of all of us" and that she feels "just like a mother now." And this really upset me. She's never home, she spends most of her time at work or with her boyfriend. I've seen her doing chores once...and she's a great girl, i know she is. And I'm sure when she said that she meant that she has to take responsibility for herself and redecorating the living room is almost like being a mother. But I still resented the comment. Isn't that the dumbest thing? Maybe it's my fault and I just don't know her well enough. And if I got to know her it would indeed turn out that she's this silent, surrogate mother figure for me thats been there all along.
..just like I'm sure that when I cry at night it's really because of PMS and not because of my ex boyfriend.
...and that the guy I like doesn't really hate me...
...and that I'm not really an absolutely pitiful human being with really petty problems. I just never matured past teenagerhood.
Yeah. Right.