UPCOMING THERE THEME WEEKS

by Rick_Slick

So this week, because I have clearly earned the respect and credibility of a real journalist by now, Geea has entrusted me with yet another special assignment.  You've seen Cowboy Week or whatever that was, and then there was like Fish Week where Francis_7 made that big aquarium thing, and then we had Super Hero Week.   As the August ThereGames are wrapping up, there are four Official Theme Weeks left in There this year.  Admittedly, I'm a little bitter about all of my Theme Week ideas like "Adult Film Week", "All About RavenTresses Week", and "Griefer Week" getting rejected, but I wanted to give my millions of loyal readers a taste of what's to come. 

September 10-24, 2005 - Sci-Fi Geek Weeks

Next up on the agenda, we'll be celebrating all sorts of Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, and Battlestar Galactica stuff for all of the 30-year-old virgins who still live in their parents' basement and get aroused whenever they see William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy do a Priceline.com commercial together.  Inevitably, with the new hoverboat templates, expect to see all sorts of starship Enterprises and Cylon Raiders, and I'm surprised someone hasn't taken that huge rotating Earth globe and made a Death Star yet.  Let's go, all y'all slacking developers!

Other things I'd like to see happen for this theme week is the model for paintguns changed temporarily into light sabers, with the appropriate animations when you press the mouse button, so we can all run around hacking and slashing at each other like Darth Vader.  Which reminds me, someone needs to make a Darth Vader statue right quick and the dog model should be changed into those face-hugger creatures from the Alien movies. 

Many industrious avatars will get in on the action, hosting science fiction trivia events, creating new science fiction content, gathering people for interesting and riveting debates such as "Who Is Better:  Kirk or Picard?" and "Would Star Wars or Star Trek Win in a War?", and if that massive alien invasion ever happens that I keep talking about, I would suspect it would happen during this timeframe because it would be easy for them to infiltrate our society while we're all busy dressing up like Buck Rogers and whatnot.  I recently stalked Francis_7 and asked him what he had in store for this Theme Week

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Hi Francis, sorry to bother you in the shower like this, but I was wondering if you could tell me what you had in the works for the upcoming Sci-Fi theme week! 

Francis_7, the Steven Spielberg of There:  What the 'vash are you doing in my shower?  Don't you paparazzi ever knock?  What do you work for the Sun or something?  Uh... we MAY be doing a movie quest for the themed event.  We have sets built for two different quests of them ready to shoot right now.  The tentative titles are "Lost in There" and "Land of There Lost II: Sleestack Boogaloo".

Also, Miracle Pictures and the Other Theater will be putting on yet another live stage play for ThereCon!  This will be our biggest live production ever!  It will be a science fiction-related play about the crew of a space cruiser exploring uncharted new worlds and encountering alien life.  There have been several elaborate sets constructed, a lot of bad jokes written, and there will even be a live musical number!  How the heck did you get in my shower anyhow?

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Soooooooooo... when is the new expected release date for Mission: Slightly Difficult? 

Francis_7, the Steven Spielberg of There:  Well, most of the delay was from accidentally misplacing the 5,647 floppy diskettes I stored the movie footage on because my hard drive is full of... uh.. 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Full of what?

Francis_7, the Steven Spielberg of There:  Screenshots of oli, actually.  I am still hoping to get editing done on MSD very soon and hope for an early fall release date.  The goal is to have an advance screening of the movie for a live audience at the There Real Life Gathering in September.  Now get the 'vash out of my shower! 

RavenTresses, Who is Very Pretty:  Can I be in the interview?  Me?  Me? 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  No honey, sorry, we're done. 

RavenTresses, Who is Very Pretty:  But I want to be in the interview. :( 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Okay, okay, I'll put you in the interview. 

October 15-November 3, 2005 - Halloween Weeks
After all of the Lost in Space fans get their jollies, Halloween will be right around the corner.  Last year, some clever pixel-manipulatin' people made all sorts of skeletons, animated bleeding walls, ghostly avatars, and a huge jack-o-lantern to sit inside.  Starting this October, designers and modelers will come up with brand new ideas to help keep our pants wet with fear, and I will re-list my women's knife victim Halloween costume top in auctions that everyone in the Official Forums keeps bringing up when someone gets all uppity about violent themes in There and RAKE IN THE DOUGH!! 

This year, if I got the right impression from the Sneak Peek that The Voice recently gave us a look at, it looks like CarCus is designing a haunted mansion of some sort, which I'm sure will spawn all sorts of creepy haunted house design contests.  Not to be outdone, Meret will probably recreate a haunted graveyard with ghosts wandering around and skeletons popping up out of the ground.  To complete the developer "arms race", Yoshitoshi will probably beat both of them out with a replica of the entire set of the Thriller video complete with animated dancing zombies.  Anyway, that's what I'd like to see.  Meanwhile, I'll still be working on my super-scary "line connected to another line" beginner project in 3DMax.

It'd also be cool for the There staff to get on board with the theme and create new emotes where all y'all can type 'zombie and for about thirty seconds, you walk around with your arms outstretched like a zombie.  Also, on October 31st, they should change all the areas to night-time with some creepy fog effect, and replace the blue water texture with a red blood texture, as well as change the doggie-treat bag model to paper bags for us to collect candy with as we go trick-or-treating!

November 6-27, 2005 - Hippie Weeks
In August 1969, 450,000 hippies hung out in a pasture in Bethel, New York for four days listening to music, smoking dope, and practicing free love at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.  The festival shut down the New York State Thruway with one of the worst traffic jams in the country.  As no one expected quite so many people to show up to the largest concert in history, sanitation facilities were sparse and there was a lack of food -- but nevertheless, artists such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix kept the music flowing.  I got all that information from www.woodstock69.com because I don't know too much about this time period.  I was pretty much still a fetus when all this nonsense went on, but apparently some people weren't too stoned out of their gourd to remember Woodstock and tye-dye everything and mushrooms and whatever else hippies were doing back in the olden days -- and here we are 36 years later reminiscing about this in There.

Last year introduced SonBlock's Groovy Bug, and ehendrikd has some Love Bus replica hoverbikes, and a bunch of tye-dyed, groovy clothing.  PineRiver and Virtual Mist Productions created a tribute movie to Therestock, and everyone had a good time re-enacting protests and other activities from that era, while RavenTresses and I had fun running over hippies with buggies while shouting "MAKE LOVE NOT WAR!"  What can the community expect this November from the Therestock revival?  Probably the usual assortment of tye-dye hoverboats, animated tye-dye patterns, tye-dye communal houses, structures made entirely from magic mushrooms and hemp, maybe some goatee facial hair, and a 'peace emote would be cool!
 

December 18-27, 2005 - Christmas and Presents Weeks
 Last year, Meret designed Santa's Workshop, and I'd like to see that come back as one of those permanent member creations that they're talking about setting up for.  Animated falling snow and snowmen dotted the landscape on the new snow islands that There released last year, and someone even made an ice skating rink!  This year, I'm guessing someone will eventually take the hoverboat model and make Santa's sleigh, where the other four passengers end up being the reindeer pulling Santa along.  Be sure to grab and install KittenKat's snow patch for that extra wintery feeling so you can watch all those people running around in lingerie and bikinis freeze their little avatar naughty bits off!  Let's get rid of paintguns in December and animate our little avatars into having snowball fights!

You know it's winter when your peer-to-peer file sharing server starts serving more Christmas music than lewd movie files.  Winter was always a magical time for me when I was growing up, when my dad would take our family for a drive to go point and laugh at all the homeless people suffering in the bitter cold.  Unfortunately for him, he was the only one actually amused by this practice.  Additionally, this is RavenTresses' favorite theme week because she loves presents (more specifically receiving presents) and the smell of cheap cologne trying to cover up the stench of alcohol on Santa's breath while sitting on his lap at the mall.  Expect gift exchanges and Christmas caroling events, as well as snowmobile and ski races.  I would like to see an entire "North Pole" community built around Santa's Workshop, complete with elves, boxes of toys, candy cane structures, gingerbread houses & skyscrapers, giant snow fortresses, blinky Christmas lights, and whatnot.   I wonder if Miracle Pictures will recreate the classic "It's a Wonderful Life", but with a There twist? 

I interviewed Mackie, who from what I understand pretty much runs the whole show at There, and asked her a little bit about the whole Theme Week concept: 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  So how did the idea of "Theme Weeks" in There come up? 

Mackie: G0d clearly whispered in my lil avie ear.  Actually, it came up in one of our Fun and Activities meetings last year. Superbear mentioned wanting to try something like that and we all agreed.  When the time came for Hula to leave and I was hired to take her place, it became clear I was to make this an official theme.  It was a natural progression from a lot of brainstorming.

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  How did this year's theme weeks get determined? 

Mackie:  When Hula, the best enthusiast ever, left this position in December, she had a few notes about themes from the brainstorming her group had done.  I left some and added others, trying to make this year a breakaway from our comfort zone... I wanted us to learn from our themes.  It is a hard decision to come up with ideas the whole community will like.  Having the "Running of the Buggies" was educational, and FUN!  Now, we know Pamplona is NOT the name of a virus. 

I try to focus on fun, while bringing in many cultures and new ideas.  I can’t wait for this year's Halloween faire: "Día de los Muertos."  I had never heard of this holiday, then some artsy-fartsy friends of mine in There explained it to me.  I donned my Google-goggles and researched that along with other ideas thrown my way.  The more I researched, the more I wanted to see us all learn more about other cultures. 2006 will have even more international culture themes.

I thought it was important to allow the members to see all the official themes in January so we could all start planning.  ThereGames alone has been in planning since April!  Everyone is welcome to join in on the planning of the themes.  I have meetings twice every Tuesday at my meeting milieu.  We’d love to have you! 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Wow, that was the longest interview answer anyone has ever taken the time to provide me!  So tell me, why were my theme week ideas rejected? 

Mackie: I must confer with my consultant on this.  He says. “5, 3, 1, 3, 2."
 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Ooooh I HATE dice!!!!!  I have awesome ideas!!  Why does no one at There ever listen to me? 

Mackie:  Voice trainer please? 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Am I too loud? 

Mackie:  WHAT? 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  Is that better? 

Mackie:  Yes.  Now what were you asking about again? 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  I hear you're a lightweight when it comes to drinking... how many can you handle before you're blitzed? 

Mackie:  One Volcano, two Volcano, three Volcano, FLOOR! 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  When will you start coming up with ideas for next year's Theme Weeks, and how can a blathering fool like myself submit suggestions? 

Mackie: Great question!  I have already started writing the ideas down in pencil, toning out details for what month they will occur.  I have been taking notes throughout the year based on what the members want.  For instance, next year we will definitely have a RenFaire and a Wild Wild West, as many members have requested.  I love the idea of having an annual Therestock, and with the excitement ThereGames has caused, I can safely say this will also be annual.  I’m looking to place a Theredance Film Festival in too!  We have such creative members -- I just know we will have a stellar line up for 2006!  Everyone is welcome to help in planning!  Look for Theme Planning Meetings in the weekly There Fun Times Newsletter!

RavenTresses, Who is Very Pretty:  Did all y'all just do another interview without me?!  Oh no you di-int! 

Rick Slick, the Greatest Interviewer Ever:  ruh roh...