Blogging 'cause livejournal seems to be down.
I think I'm more insane than most.
Insane in the 'obsessed' sense, not insane at the 'I bark at strangers I meet on the streets' sense.
A disclaimer first. I have this strange idea. I believe that fantasy novels, movies, etc., are in fact meant to inspire us, not just entertain us. And by 'inspire', I don't mean just to write more stories or draw pictures--although that's lovely, and gets more people inspired, nothing actually happens, except that people are entertained. Which is great. But I believe that there are more important things than entertainment. Based on the paychecks for modern careers, that's not a view held by many, but hey. I've never been one to go with the majority. Here's my wacky idea: when we see things we like in a fantasy novel, rather than saying 'gee, I wish the world was like that,' I say, 'now, how can I make my world like that?' End disclaimer.
My sisters and I are real big on ElfQuest. The wolfriders in particular. You know, we've got that whole tribe mentality thing going to begin with, and the woods and all. And we, being the wacky elf girls we are, figured, hey, wouldn't it be great to get a tribe together and just live like that? All the time?
Now, our original plan was to find a small, unoccupied island and lay claim to it. You know, like that whole Principality of Sealand thing, only not a floating fortress. Something with lots of trees, preferably. Unfortunately, most of the currently unoccupied islands seem to be mostly volcanic rock. Not really a lot of trees there, you know?
Plan B. Purchase some land right here in the USA (being as we're already citizens and all. New Zealand and Ireland were considered). It was also decided that it could be a place for travelers to stop at, free of charge as long as they cleaned up after themselves and told a story or helped out or the like--mostly travelers on their way to ren faires and the like, we're figuring, just 'cause of the way the place was designed.
Somewhere along the way, it kind of... morphed. Through several different stages: an artist's commune, a ren village (as in ren faire, only, you know, constant...), a village based off various fantasy novels (Rivendell, Solace, and K'treva Vale came to mind. In fact, I'm still referring to this place as 'Rivendell', just to have something to call it. It's a good name).
Currently, it seems to be a combo of all the above.
This is my project now--being as I seem to be the one of us who plans things all the time anyway, and I've come up with most of the changes since 'let's find an island.' ...come to think of it, I was the one who came up with the island idea, too.
Anyway. A lot of this is based off of pieces of fantasy novels and the like--but this is NOT some big fandom thing. We'd love to see fans of the various books come join us, but we want this to be a constant, thriving thing in the real world, a way of improving the real world, rather than making escapism into a way of life.
We're figuring to implement this sometime after we graduate college. Not immediately after; we'll want a few years to do our own things. Meanwhile, we're planning. And recruiting, hopefully--we'll need a lot of people to make this work. Anybody want to join up?
At the moment, the basic structure seems to be a combination of an artist's commune and a retreat. There are those who actually live there, full time, and those who are staying there temporarily.
We'll have a dormitory-style building for the visitors--small rooms, main lounge area. You're given a room free of charge, just make sure to clean up after yourself when you leave. We don't have maids here, you know. Clean up any junk if you're only there for a few days; if you're there for a few years and have painted the walls and installed your own furniture, take your furniture with you (unless you want us to lay claim to it, which we will) and re-paint the walls back to their original color, patch up any holes you've made and so on. For those who actually live in Rivendell, full time, we'll have several individual houses, sized to fit various numbers of occupants. We're rather shaky on the actual layout of these houses at the moment. (Personally, I really, really want to try for the whole Mercedes Lackey's Tayledras ekele, Dragonlance's Solace, Tolkien's Lothlorien feel... with houses in trees, rope bridges between and ladders down, a sort of pulley to raise/lower furniture and the like... however, I do not know a great deal about construction, and this would require very large, very sturdy trees. I doubt any one house built in this style would be able to hold more than two people... But this is something I really want to do, so I'm going to look into it). The current plan is, we describe the houses WE want to live in, and so do all the other founding members (not all of whom have been chosen yet. Recruiting! Yay!). Then we figure out how much it'll cost us to build them/have them built (and whether it is in fact physically possible). Make adjustments if necessary, try again. I want to get some people in construction on the commune so we don't have to do outside contracting for everything. So, we build these style houses, and a few that will be empty for any new people to move in. When it becomes necessary to build more houses to contain everyone, we repeat the process--those who are unsatisfied with their current houses describe what they want, etc.
There's housing; now food. We'll have one main lunchroom which will serve meals at regular hours, and a pantry which is open at all hours. I am really, REALLY hoping that we find a chef to be a permanent resident, or at least someone who knows a little about running a kitchen. If we DON'T find a chef--or enough staff to prepare the meals under the chef's direction, for that matter--cooking will be one of the rotating chores performed by everyone (visitor and resident alike, with a few exceptions; I'll get to that later). Serving the meals and cleaning up afterward will definitely be part of the rotating chores. Unlike the lunchroom, the pantry will have no staff; it's available to everyone so you can grab a snack at midnight, or prepare your own meal if you don't like what's being served in the lunchroom that day. We encourage everyone to eat in the lunchroom for main meals as often as possible--this IS supposed to be a community, you know, talking to and knowing and being friendly with your neighbors--but we'll get over it if you decide to eat in your own room, or wherever. ~_^
Chores. These will be on a rotating schedule--everyone will do a bit of everything, but tell us what you're best at; if you're more likely to blow up the kitchen than make toast, you will NOT be spending a lot of time as kitchen staff. Chores include serving meals, cleaning up after meals, cleaning the 'common' buildings/rooms (those that owned by any one person), going into the nearest town to buy and sell for the community, and working in the gardens. Other chores to be added as necessary. Those who have taken on other jobs in the community will be exempt from chores, to greater or lesser degrees--for example, if anyone volunteers to be the full-time cook, or librarian, or a teacher.
On that 'teacher' note--we do want a second generation to grow up in Rivendell, but whether they're homeschooled there or sent into the nearest town for classes is up to the parents. But we DO plan to hold regular classes/workshops, if possible. The nature of this community implies we'll gather a lot of people with unusual skills, and we want those to be shared. Fencing, martial arts, painting techniques, costuming techniques, how to play the harp, how to juggle, fluency in Quenya... anything you can think of. If you think you want to teach a workshop, just volunteer, and we'll see how many people are interested. You won't be required to do as many chores during the time you teach.
I mentioned a librarian, too. Well, there IS a reason I'm still calling this place Rivendell, you know. Like Tolkien's Rivendell, we want the community to be a place of learning as well as art and friendship. Hence the workshops, and hence the library. This will probably start out small, composed mostly of donations from members of the community, but we want to increase it as much as possible. Anyone volunteering to act as librarian will, of course, have their chores decreased accordingly--no chores, if it's full-time. If no one volunteers, then helping out in the library will become one of the rotating chores on the schedule.
We're figuring on having a fairly large section of Rivendell dedicated to gardens (vegetable, herb, and otherwise), this being a main source of income for the community. We'll have a produce stand--currently unsure as to whether this will be based in the nearest town, or in front of the community itself--and sell flowers as well. Anything else the residents create can be sold here as well (like a craft fair).
Anything that the community can't create on its own will have to be bought. We will need a certain amount of money to keep this community running. We're really, really hoping to get donations from visitors, but we're not going to rely on that. So. Permanent residents are generally expected to have some sort of job. We don't care if it's a steady job or not. This is partially intended to be a home for artists. Writers, get your writing published; photographers, open up a gallery. A certain percentage (undetermined at the moment; we are still working out a lot of the details!) of your income will go towards keeping the community running. It's just the same as if you were living alone--a certain percentage of your income would go toward paying the mortgage and buying food. It'll be exactly the same way here. Any permanent resident without any sort of a job will take on more chores accordingly, and generally make themselves useful. A full-time cook or librarian would be in this category--rather like, in exchange for their services they recieve room and board; they're not expected to have another full-time job outside of the community as well. The money for the community will be used to pay for the land we're living on, build new houses when necessary, and pay for any supplies we need. It will be handled by... hmm. Not really a name, yet. Let's call it the tribal elders. At the moment, that means the founding members; basically, the members of the community who've lived there the longest.
It's expected that the 'tribal elders' will act as mediators and make the majority of any major final decisions, if necessary; mostly, the commune will all work together, but the elders have seniority and will settle any disputes that involve the community.
...mmm. I'm getting sleepy; it's taken a while to write this all out.
I'm still considering whether or not we should get our own generator or not; need to check into that. I want our use of electricity to be fairly limited. There might be a rule against keeping computers in private rooms. This is a community, we want to promote community here, that means being around other people. People tend to get sucked into computers, for some reason. I want to discourage electronics as a major form of entertainment. We want to have storytelling and the like; people being around people. So, we'll have computers available in the library, and... a sort of writing center. Still haven't decided whether this will be one large room with many computers in it, or several small (dormitory style again?) rooms with a computer in each room. If it's one main room, it'll have to be quiet so writers don't get distracted--but that doesn't always work. From personal experience, I like to write with music, and I can't wear headphones; I'm deaf in one ear, and headphones have the most irritating habit of switching which side they play on. In the individual-compartment style writing center, we'd let writers do whatever they wanted to get inspired; play music, bring a pillow, put pictures up on the walls, whatever. If necessary, we could even let writers keep whatever stuff they need to get inspired there, in cabinets in the front room. These computers will have internet access, of course, and anyone who wants to use a computer for any reason is welcome to do so in either the writing center or the library, whether or not they're doing writing or research. My feelings on TV are similar to computers; we'll probably have several lounge-type areas where TVs are set up, rather than encouraging people to bring them into their own rooms.
What else, what else... oh, right, I want to create a hot springs, if possible. ^.^ Tayledras-inspired. And I want to hold a mid-winter festival and a mid-summer festival, with songs and stories and games and feasting and dancing--more so than usual, I mean. Because stories and dancing should be the usual. I want us to do a lot of things just for fun, because this is an artist's commune/ren village/fantasy-novel-based retreat type place; what's the point if we're going to be practical all the time? I expect to see people walking around in garb and playing lutes in the garden and speaking Sindarin and painting murals on the walls and wearing faerie wings and pointed ears and doing whatever it is that they want to do, because this is just that sort of place! That's why we're making it! I want fantasy fanatics, starving artists, otherkin, nature enthusiasts, SCA-dians, roleplayers... all the unusual people who've looked at a place like Tolkien's Rivendell or Mercedes Lackey's k'treva Vale and thought, 'man, I want to live THERE!'
Ahem. Back to the practical side of things for one last moment... location. We're thinking Vermont, right now, although I'd rather it be somewhere warmer in winter. Still, Vermont is great; much trees and mountains. If possible, I want to have a few different locations; feel free to suggest one! The primary location, though, must, must, MUST have many, many trees! We want to be a village in the middle of a forest. Because... that just feels right. And being the crazy people we are, we do what just feels right.
Now. To get back to the original point of this.
This community won't exist for a while yet, but we're working on it, and it WILL exist in some shape or form, even if we don't come up with the numbers to make it the way I described. It'll probably start out as whatever crazy fantasy-loving artist-type people we gather during our college years, living together in a big house. The major project I described will take years--decades, more likely, if that--to create. But I WILL do my best to make it real. And it was inspired by people like Wendy and Richard Pini, Mercedes Lackey, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, and all the other fantastic authors and otherwise creative people out there. Because I think, if they went to all the trouble of creating these worlds that we love so much, the least we can do is bring a little of their worlds here, in our world. No one else seems to take things like that so seriously. I think I'm crazier than most.
I like this kind of crazy. Crazy people can change the world. And doesn't everyone want to change the world?
I think I'm more insane than most.
Insane in the 'obsessed' sense, not insane at the 'I bark at strangers I meet on the streets' sense.
A disclaimer first. I have this strange idea. I believe that fantasy novels, movies, etc., are in fact meant to inspire us, not just entertain us. And by 'inspire', I don't mean just to write more stories or draw pictures--although that's lovely, and gets more people inspired, nothing actually happens, except that people are entertained. Which is great. But I believe that there are more important things than entertainment. Based on the paychecks for modern careers, that's not a view held by many, but hey. I've never been one to go with the majority. Here's my wacky idea: when we see things we like in a fantasy novel, rather than saying 'gee, I wish the world was like that,' I say, 'now, how can I make my world like that?' End disclaimer.
My sisters and I are real big on ElfQuest. The wolfriders in particular. You know, we've got that whole tribe mentality thing going to begin with, and the woods and all. And we, being the wacky elf girls we are, figured, hey, wouldn't it be great to get a tribe together and just live like that? All the time?
Now, our original plan was to find a small, unoccupied island and lay claim to it. You know, like that whole Principality of Sealand thing, only not a floating fortress. Something with lots of trees, preferably. Unfortunately, most of the currently unoccupied islands seem to be mostly volcanic rock. Not really a lot of trees there, you know?
Plan B. Purchase some land right here in the USA (being as we're already citizens and all. New Zealand and Ireland were considered). It was also decided that it could be a place for travelers to stop at, free of charge as long as they cleaned up after themselves and told a story or helped out or the like--mostly travelers on their way to ren faires and the like, we're figuring, just 'cause of the way the place was designed.
Somewhere along the way, it kind of... morphed. Through several different stages: an artist's commune, a ren village (as in ren faire, only, you know, constant...), a village based off various fantasy novels (Rivendell, Solace, and K'treva Vale came to mind. In fact, I'm still referring to this place as 'Rivendell', just to have something to call it. It's a good name).
Currently, it seems to be a combo of all the above.
This is my project now--being as I seem to be the one of us who plans things all the time anyway, and I've come up with most of the changes since 'let's find an island.' ...come to think of it, I was the one who came up with the island idea, too.
Anyway. A lot of this is based off of pieces of fantasy novels and the like--but this is NOT some big fandom thing. We'd love to see fans of the various books come join us, but we want this to be a constant, thriving thing in the real world, a way of improving the real world, rather than making escapism into a way of life.
We're figuring to implement this sometime after we graduate college. Not immediately after; we'll want a few years to do our own things. Meanwhile, we're planning. And recruiting, hopefully--we'll need a lot of people to make this work. Anybody want to join up?
At the moment, the basic structure seems to be a combination of an artist's commune and a retreat. There are those who actually live there, full time, and those who are staying there temporarily.
We'll have a dormitory-style building for the visitors--small rooms, main lounge area. You're given a room free of charge, just make sure to clean up after yourself when you leave. We don't have maids here, you know. Clean up any junk if you're only there for a few days; if you're there for a few years and have painted the walls and installed your own furniture, take your furniture with you (unless you want us to lay claim to it, which we will) and re-paint the walls back to their original color, patch up any holes you've made and so on. For those who actually live in Rivendell, full time, we'll have several individual houses, sized to fit various numbers of occupants. We're rather shaky on the actual layout of these houses at the moment. (Personally, I really, really want to try for the whole Mercedes Lackey's Tayledras ekele, Dragonlance's Solace, Tolkien's Lothlorien feel... with houses in trees, rope bridges between and ladders down, a sort of pulley to raise/lower furniture and the like... however, I do not know a great deal about construction, and this would require very large, very sturdy trees. I doubt any one house built in this style would be able to hold more than two people... But this is something I really want to do, so I'm going to look into it). The current plan is, we describe the houses WE want to live in, and so do all the other founding members (not all of whom have been chosen yet. Recruiting! Yay!). Then we figure out how much it'll cost us to build them/have them built (and whether it is in fact physically possible). Make adjustments if necessary, try again. I want to get some people in construction on the commune so we don't have to do outside contracting for everything. So, we build these style houses, and a few that will be empty for any new people to move in. When it becomes necessary to build more houses to contain everyone, we repeat the process--those who are unsatisfied with their current houses describe what they want, etc.
There's housing; now food. We'll have one main lunchroom which will serve meals at regular hours, and a pantry which is open at all hours. I am really, REALLY hoping that we find a chef to be a permanent resident, or at least someone who knows a little about running a kitchen. If we DON'T find a chef--or enough staff to prepare the meals under the chef's direction, for that matter--cooking will be one of the rotating chores performed by everyone (visitor and resident alike, with a few exceptions; I'll get to that later). Serving the meals and cleaning up afterward will definitely be part of the rotating chores. Unlike the lunchroom, the pantry will have no staff; it's available to everyone so you can grab a snack at midnight, or prepare your own meal if you don't like what's being served in the lunchroom that day. We encourage everyone to eat in the lunchroom for main meals as often as possible--this IS supposed to be a community, you know, talking to and knowing and being friendly with your neighbors--but we'll get over it if you decide to eat in your own room, or wherever. ~_^
Chores. These will be on a rotating schedule--everyone will do a bit of everything, but tell us what you're best at; if you're more likely to blow up the kitchen than make toast, you will NOT be spending a lot of time as kitchen staff. Chores include serving meals, cleaning up after meals, cleaning the 'common' buildings/rooms (those that owned by any one person), going into the nearest town to buy and sell for the community, and working in the gardens. Other chores to be added as necessary. Those who have taken on other jobs in the community will be exempt from chores, to greater or lesser degrees--for example, if anyone volunteers to be the full-time cook, or librarian, or a teacher.
On that 'teacher' note--we do want a second generation to grow up in Rivendell, but whether they're homeschooled there or sent into the nearest town for classes is up to the parents. But we DO plan to hold regular classes/workshops, if possible. The nature of this community implies we'll gather a lot of people with unusual skills, and we want those to be shared. Fencing, martial arts, painting techniques, costuming techniques, how to play the harp, how to juggle, fluency in Quenya... anything you can think of. If you think you want to teach a workshop, just volunteer, and we'll see how many people are interested. You won't be required to do as many chores during the time you teach.
I mentioned a librarian, too. Well, there IS a reason I'm still calling this place Rivendell, you know. Like Tolkien's Rivendell, we want the community to be a place of learning as well as art and friendship. Hence the workshops, and hence the library. This will probably start out small, composed mostly of donations from members of the community, but we want to increase it as much as possible. Anyone volunteering to act as librarian will, of course, have their chores decreased accordingly--no chores, if it's full-time. If no one volunteers, then helping out in the library will become one of the rotating chores on the schedule.
We're figuring on having a fairly large section of Rivendell dedicated to gardens (vegetable, herb, and otherwise), this being a main source of income for the community. We'll have a produce stand--currently unsure as to whether this will be based in the nearest town, or in front of the community itself--and sell flowers as well. Anything else the residents create can be sold here as well (like a craft fair).
Anything that the community can't create on its own will have to be bought. We will need a certain amount of money to keep this community running. We're really, really hoping to get donations from visitors, but we're not going to rely on that. So. Permanent residents are generally expected to have some sort of job. We don't care if it's a steady job or not. This is partially intended to be a home for artists. Writers, get your writing published; photographers, open up a gallery. A certain percentage (undetermined at the moment; we are still working out a lot of the details!) of your income will go towards keeping the community running. It's just the same as if you were living alone--a certain percentage of your income would go toward paying the mortgage and buying food. It'll be exactly the same way here. Any permanent resident without any sort of a job will take on more chores accordingly, and generally make themselves useful. A full-time cook or librarian would be in this category--rather like, in exchange for their services they recieve room and board; they're not expected to have another full-time job outside of the community as well. The money for the community will be used to pay for the land we're living on, build new houses when necessary, and pay for any supplies we need. It will be handled by... hmm. Not really a name, yet. Let's call it the tribal elders. At the moment, that means the founding members; basically, the members of the community who've lived there the longest.
It's expected that the 'tribal elders' will act as mediators and make the majority of any major final decisions, if necessary; mostly, the commune will all work together, but the elders have seniority and will settle any disputes that involve the community.
...mmm. I'm getting sleepy; it's taken a while to write this all out.
I'm still considering whether or not we should get our own generator or not; need to check into that. I want our use of electricity to be fairly limited. There might be a rule against keeping computers in private rooms. This is a community, we want to promote community here, that means being around other people. People tend to get sucked into computers, for some reason. I want to discourage electronics as a major form of entertainment. We want to have storytelling and the like; people being around people. So, we'll have computers available in the library, and... a sort of writing center. Still haven't decided whether this will be one large room with many computers in it, or several small (dormitory style again?) rooms with a computer in each room. If it's one main room, it'll have to be quiet so writers don't get distracted--but that doesn't always work. From personal experience, I like to write with music, and I can't wear headphones; I'm deaf in one ear, and headphones have the most irritating habit of switching which side they play on. In the individual-compartment style writing center, we'd let writers do whatever they wanted to get inspired; play music, bring a pillow, put pictures up on the walls, whatever. If necessary, we could even let writers keep whatever stuff they need to get inspired there, in cabinets in the front room. These computers will have internet access, of course, and anyone who wants to use a computer for any reason is welcome to do so in either the writing center or the library, whether or not they're doing writing or research. My feelings on TV are similar to computers; we'll probably have several lounge-type areas where TVs are set up, rather than encouraging people to bring them into their own rooms.
What else, what else... oh, right, I want to create a hot springs, if possible. ^.^ Tayledras-inspired. And I want to hold a mid-winter festival and a mid-summer festival, with songs and stories and games and feasting and dancing--more so than usual, I mean. Because stories and dancing should be the usual. I want us to do a lot of things just for fun, because this is an artist's commune/ren village/fantasy-novel-based retreat type place; what's the point if we're going to be practical all the time? I expect to see people walking around in garb and playing lutes in the garden and speaking Sindarin and painting murals on the walls and wearing faerie wings and pointed ears and doing whatever it is that they want to do, because this is just that sort of place! That's why we're making it! I want fantasy fanatics, starving artists, otherkin, nature enthusiasts, SCA-dians, roleplayers... all the unusual people who've looked at a place like Tolkien's Rivendell or Mercedes Lackey's k'treva Vale and thought, 'man, I want to live THERE!'
Ahem. Back to the practical side of things for one last moment... location. We're thinking Vermont, right now, although I'd rather it be somewhere warmer in winter. Still, Vermont is great; much trees and mountains. If possible, I want to have a few different locations; feel free to suggest one! The primary location, though, must, must, MUST have many, many trees! We want to be a village in the middle of a forest. Because... that just feels right. And being the crazy people we are, we do what just feels right.
Now. To get back to the original point of this.
This community won't exist for a while yet, but we're working on it, and it WILL exist in some shape or form, even if we don't come up with the numbers to make it the way I described. It'll probably start out as whatever crazy fantasy-loving artist-type people we gather during our college years, living together in a big house. The major project I described will take years--decades, more likely, if that--to create. But I WILL do my best to make it real. And it was inspired by people like Wendy and Richard Pini, Mercedes Lackey, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, and all the other fantastic authors and otherwise creative people out there. Because I think, if they went to all the trouble of creating these worlds that we love so much, the least we can do is bring a little of their worlds here, in our world. No one else seems to take things like that so seriously. I think I'm crazier than most.
I like this kind of crazy. Crazy people can change the world. And doesn't everyone want to change the world?
posted by Kiti at
11:48 PM
