By: Daiyu Tang – ‘The Girl Behind the Lens’
Welcome to another Month in Review in the ‘wonderful‘ town of Hathian and surrounding areas. As always, the Observer does what we can to shed light into the dark of our town but also, if we can, find playful or joyous moments that might bring a little relief to those needing to feel that not all is oppressive.
Our team is undergoing some changes and we hope to introduce new faces to our line-up of reporters soon. Who knows, we might even get a guy (other than Stanley) to stick around as a reporter for once… But anyway, onto October’s recap…
As you’ll be aware, the ‘Month in Review’ showcases a few of the articles from October that we hope you didn’t miss, but if you did gives you a chance to visit them! For those interested in seeing a digest of some of the top stories, you can checkout our Year in Review for 2023 the January 2024, February 20224, March 2024, April 2024, May 2024, June 2024, July 2024, August 2024 & September 2024 ‘Months in Review’.
We had 35 main articles in September as Spooky season approached and this reflected all kinds of stories, although it has to be said that our ‘Masked in Anonymity’ writer Maja proved pretty popular. Maybe they’ll feature below?
So here are your Editor’s top three for this month as well as honourable mentions!
Honourable Mentions
Where would we be without our sometime contributor, former Dean of CU, and (ex) wife of one of our former journalists Rhys and all round sexpot Carly getting into the paper? Yes, Carly reached twelve articles in her series about sex, this one about ‘dick size‘. Hathian Men, the ad cookies clearly show you went to this article to see if Carly talked about you, but also to see if you were ‘average’ or not…
Breaking news in November is that it’s possible this missing person’s article doesn’t have a happy ending. This is rather unusual in Columtreal, so watch out for our news story on this in the immediate future.
For now, it might be reader (especially if you’re a student) worth reading this article about Sabrina’s disappearance.
And our final mention goes to the racism that some citizens claim to have experienced at the ‘hands’ (and mouths) of the Hathian PD. While strongly refuted in subsequent press releases, the story of our Turkish couple struck a chord and some of you wrote in with your own tales of racist incidents in Hathian. With HGH hiring known racists as evidence that being one is not a barrier to all sorts of lucrative work, it’s a sad fact that in Hathian if you’re of a particular colour, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, someone, somewhere is ready to be an asshole to you about it. Keep reporting them to us and we’ll shame them readers.
Our resident Hathian ‘Mastermind’ Zoey all but admits to kidnapping one of the slightly weirder (in a kinda – scary vibes way) citziens, Vol.
While the Observer would never make unsupported accusations, I feel that Viv has covered the issue fairly.
It appears recently that Vol has resurfaced, posting again on Twitter, but what befell her likely at the hand of Zoey, who knows…
Number 3 – Heckler Almost Goes Boom
It seems suddenly that attacks against the most senior HPD staff are becoming more common (although I am sure HPD brass is working to stop this trend). What with Krystal kidnapped and now the Captain subject to an attempted detonation, it appears gangs and groups opposed to HPD such as HAC continue their vendettas. Heckler survived this attack and I met with him in hospital later to get a statement that almost sounded like a promise of vengeance…
Number 2 – HGH Strike
The Hathian General Hospital under Simon’s leadership decided to go on strike after staff were assaulted by the HPD. Although the details of the incident were subject to a lot of debate (including accusations that someone had tried to poison the recovering Heckler via ice-cream) it does appear that a rather large number of HGH staff went to jail. This impacted care that HGH could give and led to tension across town. As well as the real impact to citizens, Twitter exploded with hash-tags such as #TeamHPD or #TeamHGH, stirred a long a bit by one Shelby… As a bonus our gossip writer Maja had a thing or three to say about Shelby… you can read that HERE.
Number 1 – Thinking Men are Attractive
I enjoy writing more complex things. Yes, Hathian explodes people (or tries) and there’s lots of crime, but sometimes those unlikely conversations happen and you get into something much deeper. Sometimes the thoughts and ideas that one person has can send (at least a reporter!) down the rabbit hole of words, ideas and deeper topics and I’ll be honest, it’s kinda hot! Anyway, this interview led to that kinda piece of work and if you’ve not read it, I’d encourage you to hear from our Hathian ‘Thinking Criminal’ who puts a lot of things into perspective.
Thank you for reading! That was all for October… Although there were a range of other great stories as well. I’ll leave you to drool over the amazing Halloween Costumes from the Hathian Haunt which is sticking around for just one or two more weeks before packing up in Delphine… Make sure to visit before it goes!
As always, catch a reporter in CU, Hathian or Backwaters (we visit as required!) to give us your stories, tips or other information! You can find our profiles here which, as noted in the intro we expect to update with new staff shortly!
((Promotion of the Observer and CD happens off-sim as well, so if you can help out feel free to link to your other SL friends. Spread the word, the active stories and see if we can’t generate new role-players or encourage others to return!))
