Viam Anoikis…

~or “Acceptance”

I often wonder at how I ended up so deeply invested in the incredibly deadly space in which I I live and die in EVE. I have never been much of a daredevil or even really a big risk taker. My kid brother was the daredevil and jock of our family… Surfer, dirt biker, skateboarder, a real adrenaline junky…

Oh I surfed in my youth, and I too rode dirt bikes and I still love off-roading in my ’99 Jeep TJ and I love to single hand my '88 Catalina 22, all of which do have some inherent risks, but they are understood and manageable risks for the most part. I have also been a licensed PI and bounty hunter and such… and yes carrying a gun and occasionally having to wear a ballistic vest are kinda risky… but believe me it aint Magnum PI or anything even remotely like TV… not at all.

So when I joined EVE I learned about Hisec, lowsec, nullsec and negsec… I felt I was probably fated to be a hisec guy who occasionally dipped into lowsec for excitement and as a quick way to reduce the number of hulls I owned…  =]

Sugar Kyle‘s post, All Your Base… got me thinking about this once again and as oft happens I discovered a post waiting inside my reply. Sugar has never really been drawn to try out negsec in any depth due to safety, or the absolute lack of safety for her stuff I should say. And I must admit living in Anoikis is never ever going to be considered safe in any respect… but for me, that is just part of its charm and ambiance...  =]

The thing for me with life in Anoikis is manyfold... and a bit Zen...

While I may not be the adrenaline junky my little brother (HA! ‘little’ the kid was 6’5” by the time he was 18…) was, I do enjoy certain thrills… rollercoasters, hunting, surfing and even my PI work did, at times, generate at least some adrenaline buzz… but I am also a realist, as such I am really drawn to Hard SciFi, Science Fiction that is deeply rooted in real science. Now understand I love the Lord of the Rings but as far as I am concerned Fantasy should not be lumped in with SciFi… it is not magic, it is science and as such should deserves a little respect.

Flying in Anoikis with no local and living out of a destructible POS with everything at risk and on the edge is, well, real. It is a helluvalot more the way things might really be like if we ever do get off this one lone rock and venture out there into the Black.

It is a lot like RL in many ways... On Earth your house can burn down from a lightning strike or even a stupid accident like bad wiring… or an earthquake can swallow it, a flood can wash it away... or a war can sweep through leaving a wake of destruction. No place, no ‘thing’, no ‘one’ is actually “safe” in real life… we just have periods of less dangerous times interspersed with periods of more dangerous times.

In EVE however (aside from one or more of the above happening to the CCP server farm) your stuff actually is safe, really and truly safe from ‘acts of the gods’ or other players. In Empire NPC Stations there is no cataclysm, catastrophe or War that can have any effect on your stuff... ever. The only thing that can put your stuff at risk is you.

Unless you choose to live in a POS. The whole “Wait a minute there pubbie, in nullsec we can lose all our stuff with a Sov switch!” and “We can get locked out of our stations losing EVERYTHING!!!” is true enough… but so far Nullsuc Outposts are as indestructible as NPC Stations in the highest of Hisec… right? And I cannot but wonder how many nullsec players have a backup cache (if not their main cache) of ships etc. safely tucked away in a Station in Empire… JIC. Besides, it’s my blog and TBH I care not one whit for Nullsuc so meh...

Anyhoo… So living in Anoikis is a compromise. I actually have about half if not more of all my ships stored in Hisec. So I am at most roughly under 50% at risk for my total of worthwhile assets, my hulls. Implants, PLEX, factions mods, etc., IE all my ‘stuff’ of really high value is also permanently stored in Hisec. The Wallet, IE our bank accounts, are never at any risk, of course, except for human foolishness.

But here is the key to living in Anoikis… Acceptance. Accepting that whatever you bring in, whatever you jump the crazy marble sitting in or hauling with… is already gone. You accept right then and there that it will all never come back out. It’s already on fire, assploded, looted, salvaged and in someone else’s cargo or hangar bay right next to your flash-frozen burnt-up corpse.

This is, strangely a very worry and stress free game actually. Acceptance. Buying the hulls, theory crafting the fits, buying mods, fitting the ships and, The Naming of them all, then that first flight… only to kiss it all bittersweetly goodbye at the command, “Jump! Jump!” Each and every hull and module I have in the POS has already been sacrificed to Bob in my mind and my heart…

Hence I have nothing to lose,
and so I have no worries at all.

This is part of the Viam Anoikis (The Way of Anoikis)… the Tao of Holes… and it is good.

Fly Reckless and See You in the Sky =/|)=