#and also more disorganized. i have written at least three versions of every story i really like because my brain wouldn't stop chewing on i

[hylianengineer]

Sometimes I go too long without posting fic and think to myself "wow the stuff I write gets weirder and weirder as time goes by. Will I ever be able to post fic again? This is so embarrassing." And I still don't know the answer.

Yes, kill the part of you that cringes, etc. It's harder than it sounds.

[sweet-star-cookie]

what information do libra's library books contain? who is allowed to read them?

Good question, and I saw your other ask so I'll answer that one here too! Actually I should probably start with the library's appearance, though as usual I don't have much in the way of images yet 🥴 I basically have to drag my motivation kicking and screaming to do background design these days, but I did manage to sketch a part of what the back wall looks like in my head tonight at least:

I picture it as an ornate but practical two-level library with high ceilings, lots of wood and warm lighting. Notably, its design and floor plan are entirely symmetrical, a deliberate reference to Libra's exactness and a more literal take on the idea of balance in general. The door on the bottom floor is where new or returned books are processed and then returned to the shelves, and beyond that is Lupus's private room. The door on the top floor leads down a hallway to Libra's private room where the scales that she's named after also reside.

Here's an old concept for another part of the building that might give you a better idea of the overall vibe and colours (though I need to update this too, this is from like 2019 lol)

As for what it contains, the library functions similarly to other places that seek to preserve the Astral Plane's history. Any books that were remnants of past constellations, be they the author or the subject, are kept here.

For example, the previous incarnation of Lepus was a famous warrior known as The Great Hare, and she documented many of her adventures in her war diaries, of which there are several volumes. I have some side stories planned for what happens to the Chamaeleon Three after the events of the main story, and the current Lepus learns more about who came before him, hoping to maybe become more heroic and confident like she was.

Libra and Lupus spend a lot of time cataloguing all of the information in the library's books, both for archival purposes and especially for any that may provide even a hint at answering some of the more mysterious questions about the Astral Plane. The library has speculative and entirely fictional works as well though, and you can bet that Capricorn and Pegasus have penned written versions of their various plays as well.

The library is open to the public, as both Libra and Lupus strongly believe in the pursuit of knowledge for all, though there are strict rules in place for the patrons' behaviour to avoid any destruction or disorganization. Anyone can read any book, and accommodations needed for language, blindness, deafness, etc. are achieved magically, with the book itself changing in appearance and/or function to be tailored to the reader. While it is encouraged to read the books inside the library itself, they can be checked out like in any other library.

That is, with the exception of any books that can be used as weapons, like magical tomes, which are stored and guarded elsewhere. Libra's balancing magic is often used to ensure that, even if they were stolen, their magic could be negated to reduce their potential harm.

It is possible for books entirely from Earth to appear here though, albeit in specific circumstances and not every book either. How this is possible is a bit of a spoiler, though it's pretty nebulous for the characters anyway!

Because they lack context from their presumed origins on Earth, it can be hard to determine if some of these books are fact or fiction, though they're usually interesting enough regardless, and at least are another indicator of the connection between Earth and the Astral Plane's residents. Pegasus loves anything from other playwrights that she can find there, for instance.

Given Libra's various duties as the keeper of balance and the resident healer after Ophiuchus's disappearance, Lupus does much of the maintenance and running of the library himself, and he does so diligently, with great reverence for it and Libra herself. When on duty, he is very rarely seen standing still, constantly finding something to do. Libra's magic is always there to assist all throughout the library as well though, like her air magic carrying books in and out of high shelves so Lupus doesn't have to climb a ladder every time to get to it. Floating books are a common sight here!

[pixiemage]

5, 17, and 43 for the fic ask game!

[For the Fanfiction Writing Ask Game]

Three questions??? You spoil me! <3 I think I'll need a Read More for this one my friend xD

Hahaha! Ha! Ha.

Many. So, so many.

I have a bad habit of starting projects and not finishing them, so I have a plethora scattered throughout my Google Docs files that are anywhere from multiple pages of unposted fic, all the way down to single-sentence unused prompts. Sometimes I left them behind because I lost motivation, sometimes my hyperfixation shifted and I (sadly) couldn't focus on that fandom anymore.

But let's see...uh....I glanced through my older stuff first just to see. But for now I think I'm just gonna count what I'm either actively working on, or what I wish to continue when my motivation returns...because if you counted all the abandoned WIP's I've gathered over the years, I think the number would be close to 30, and I don't want to list them all up here. (Maybe I'll drop it at the bottom of this post if you're curious***)

For one, I have two IronDad fics I plan on finishing: one that's a shorter Mafia AU that's 2/3 complete, and a much longer (and heftier) multi-chapter fic that has been awaiting a new chapter for over a year I think. A Little Late On The Blood Work my beloved...I'll come back when I get inspiration again 🥺💞 I also have an old Jacksepticeye Egos fic called #SamLives that I've been wanting to continue for ages but haven't, along with a Night at the Museum fic (Jedtavius) that I at least need to finish the current arc for because the comment section is sad.

And MOST recently I've got a bunch for Hermitcraft/Empires/Traffic Life that I'm in the process of actively writing...which I believe add up to a total of six?? I think? THREE are partially posted/being updated (Through a Crack in the Void, Domino Effect, There's Not a Word Yet), and the OTHER three (two Team Rancher, one that's literally Every Ship Under The Sun With Some Found Family On Top) aren't gonna be on my plate until I finish some of the other ones.

17. Do you have a writing routine?

Not really! Usually once I get an idea, I just - jump in. If I get stuck and want to skip something just to keep the writing ball rolling, I'll throw one of these in the middle of the page: ASDJNAKFBEKAJBA ...and just leave it for later. It's bold, red, and easy to spot when I'm scrolling through a long document, which is nice! It helps make sure no blank spots get missed in editing! (I also red-dye words, sentences, or paragraphs I'm feeling shaky on, so I can spot them easily and come back later when I get a better idea to fix it.) And if I decide to completely change a section I'm writing, I'll often copy the original version, paste it at the bottom of the doc in case I decide to change it back, and turn it a pastel color so I don't confuse old versions for the current text.

I also sometimes make calendars on Excel/Sheets if I really wanna keep track of time, and I often have a separate (and somewhat disorganized) doc for Notes on my longer fics. There's also a document where I write down potential lyrics options for There's Not a Word Yet chapter titles, but that's the only time I've done that for a fic.

43. Is there a trope or idea that you’d really like to write but haven’t yet?

I feel like someone asked me this a while back, so I've definitely thought about this! But honestly? A mystery or a time-travel fix-it...which I am well aware are two VASTLY different tropes lmao.

I've always been envious and in awe of well-written mystery/detective stories, because so many little details go into them to make them work. I'd love to build one of my own someday, but I have yet to find the right motivation to do so.

As far as time-travel fix-its go...they're just...they're so fun to read, because I love to see how one little change can affect an entire timeline (see also: Domino Effect) but they're also a LOT of work to write because it involved basically retelling a story that's already been written but in your own words and with a twist. Somehow writing something fully original comes easier to me than trying to build my writing around something else that already exists. But god I'd love to have the motivation to write one of 'em anyway! It'd be fun to decide how everything changes all because of one little difference in choice :3

5. How many WIPs do you have?  What fandoms/pairings are they for?

Hahaha! Ha! Ha.

Many. So, so many.

I have a bad habit of starting projects and not finishing them, so I have a plethora scattered throughout my Google Docs files that are anywhere from multiple pages of unposted fic, all the way down to single-sentence unused prompts. Sometimes I left them behind because I lost motivation, though most times my hyperfixation shifted and I (sadly) couldn't focus on that fandom anymore.

But let's see...uh....I glanced through my older stuff first just to check for this hah. But for now I think I'm just gonna count what I'm either actively working on, or what I wish to continue when my motivation returns...because if you counted all the abandoned WIP's I've gathered over the years, I think the number would be close to 30, and I don't want to list them all up here. (But I'll drop it at the bottom of this post if you're curious***)

For one, I have two Marvel/IronDad fics I plan on finishing: one that's a shorter Mafia AU that's 2/3 complete, and a much longer (and heftier) multi-chapter fic that has been awaiting a new chapter for over a year I think. A Little Late On The Blood Work my beloved...I'll come back when I get inspiration again 🥺💞 I also have an old Jacksepticeye Egos fic called #SamLives that I've been wanting to continue for ages but haven't, along with a Night at the Museum fic (Jedtavius) that I at least need to finish the current arc for because the comment section is sad.

And MOST recently I've got a bunch for Hermitcraft/Empires/Traffic Life that I'm in the process of actively writing...which I believe add up to a total of six?? I think? THREE are partially posted/being updated (Through a Crack in the Void, Domino Effect, There's Not a Word Yet), and the OTHER three (two Team Rancher, and one that's literally Every Ship Under The Sun With Some Found Family On Top) aren't gonna be on my plate until I finish some of the other ones.

(One of them is a cute 5+1 one-shot about Tango calling Jimmy "buddy" and Jimmy learning that "buddy" has a lot of different meanings depending on how Tango says it and who he's saying it to. The second one is an extension of a one-shot I already posted called Coming, Coming Home, where S8 HASA!Tango crash-lands in the mesa outside Tumble Town, and like - yeah. Yeah. I'd love to continue that one. And the LAST one is a Double-Life-based Witches/Familiars AU that started as Renchanting Duo and has since extended to every member of the Life series and even some Hermits.)

***ALL THE OLDER FICS I HAVE YET TO COMPLETE: I've got one for Doctor Who, a handful for JSE Egos - #SamLives - one for Night at the Museum, one for Encanto. Six for Marvel/IronDad (including a Mafia fic, a SPN AU, a Peter-gets-shot and Tony-goes-dad-mode hurt/comfort, and A Little Late On the Blood Work which as I said I'm just longing to get inspiration to return to). A witch/familiar Supernatural AU fic and an SPN time travel fix-it that I barely started. There's a TangoTek one-shot I've abandoned featuring his rage moments from both LL and DL. I also have an old fic from high school for a game called Ib that I'd love to revamp someday...and my Original FanFic that started it all, which was for Harry Potter, and I was like 12, and it will never EVER see the light of day. My god. It's...it's rough.

[pixelgrotto]

Ladies and lords of Waterdeep

From April of 2019 to June of 2020, I ran Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for levels 1-5, for two groups - a party of three gals and a party of six guys. This was a tricky undertaking - mostly because as written, Dragon Heist is kind of a mess (more on that in a sec) - but also because I had to balance an adventure for two very different audiences that really only shared the commonality of being filled with D&D newbies. It was a worthwhile endeavor, though, and looking back on the experience reveals some interesting food for thought on how to remix an adventure, as well as how some ladies and gents experience roleplaying games differently. 

First, let me briefly discuss the adventure itself. Dragon Heist is meant to be an urban outing set in the Forgotten Realms metropolis of Waterdeep, which I described to my New York-dwelling players as “pretty much a fantasy version of NYC.” Over the course of five levels, players inherit and possibly renovate an old tavern, catch wind of an ancient heap of gold beneath the city and run into a bunch of important figures from Forgotten Realms history, ranging from Laeral Silverhand to Volothamp Geddarm. All of that’s epic, and the only issue is that the adventure’s laid out in a pretty shoddy way. 

There are four chapters in Dragon Heist, and the first is the only one that can be run with a minimum of hacking on the part of the Dungeon Master. The other three present a so-called “toolbox” of vague ideas for missions with Waterdeep’s various adventuring factions, as well as middling advice for scenes like a rooftop chase and a battle with a chain devil in a crypt, but it’s all highly disorganized with a minimum of connective tissue, requiring heavy lifting on the DM’s part to stitch together. The book is also rife with excessive red herrings for players to stumble upon as they search for the treasure trove, way too many characters with overly long names, and last but not least, there’s a lack of an actual “heist” in the grand finale, which is more scavenger hunt than Ocean’s Eleven. 

With all these criticisms, why did I choose to run this book for not one, but two different groups at the same time? It was largely because I’d just finished playing through Dragon Heist with my own character - a mask-wearing teenage street urchin who fancied herself a swashbuckler. I’d had a more-enjoyable-than-not time with the folks I played with, but the guy who DMed had a habit of sending us on the aforementioned red herrings for multiple sessions at a time, with nary an interesting combat encounter or social challenge in sight. I don’t really blame him for this - especially seeing at how poorly the book was laid out afterwards - but immediately after finishing, I was approached by two friend groups who wanted to try their hand at D&D, and this gave me the excuse to see if I could do a better job. 

Since I already had a clear example of which pitfalls to avoid, the version of Dragon Heist that I ran heavily remixed all of the elements in the book, with an emphasis on streamlining whenever possible and always making it feel like my players were accomplishing something. This is usually my underlying philosophy whenever I run a game, but it’s an essential strategy for newbies who might be driven off of roleplaying games altogether by bad pacing. For instance, as written, there’s an annoying series of fetch quests near the end of the story where players have to find a number of keys in order to open the hidden treasure vault. These keys are random as heck, ranging from semi-sensible McGuffins like a bronze dragon scale to bonkers junk like a ballad played by two dwarven bards and a friggin’ unicorn. This whole exercise in randomness reminded me of the worst of video game filler, and I cut it out entirely by having the son of the man who hid the treasure accompany the characters, with a drop of his blood activating the magic needed to open the vault’s doors. (This also led to an amusing situation where the guys were stuck as they ruminated on how to open the vault...until the dude playing the goliath suddenly shouted, “I GRAB RENAER’S HAND, CUT IT AND SMEAR THE BLOOD ALL OVER THE DOOR!” and I was like, “Okay. It...opens!”)

Because my players were nearly all D&D virgins, I also wanted them to get their money’s worth by encountering all four of Dragon Heist’s villains - Xanathar the beholder, the devil-worshipping Cassalanter nobles, Manshoon the cloned wizard and Jarlaxle the drow rogue. As written, Dragon Heist touts itself as highly replayable, since DMs are only supposed to choose one villain for their players to go up against. The problem is that all of the bad guys are teased on the cover, and the beginning chapters dangle most of them into the narrative with the players caught in the middle. This created a lot of confusion when I was a player, as my companions and I kept hearing about Xanathar and Manshoon...only for them to suddenly disappear halfway through as Jarlaxle took center stage as the big bad. And so, in order to circumvent this confusion and make both the boys and the girls feel like they were getting a quintessential experience with a minimum of loose ends, I threw in all the baddies. (I wasn’t the only one to do this - tabletop RPG designer Justin Alexander also recommends this approach on his blog The Alexandrian, where he offers an impressive revision of Dragon Heist that I probably would’ve used if I hadn’t discovered it too late.) 

So, when it came down to actually rolling dice, how’d my two groups interact with the material? I think it’s safe to say that both the girls and the boys hit the same major story beats and had a grand time doing so, but the nuances of their experiences were fascinatingly different. The girls, for instance, dove into the art of roleplaying and devising histories for their characters, and one of them decided to play as an elf from a seafaring clan and gave me a whole backstory involving the ocean that inspired my “final boss” for Dragon Heist, an evil, decaying dragon from the Elemental Plane of Water that isn’t in the book. (Hey, it’s called Dungeons & Dragons, the story’s named Dragon Heist, and since I wasn’t sure if all of my players would stick around for future campaigns, I figured I’d better stick a notable battle with a big scaly lizard in there somewhere.) 

The girls also got way more into some of the social justice subplots that permeated my version of Dragon Heist, pushing hard for Waterdeep to remove the anti-dragon magic bubble that surrounded the city and excluded an entire species from its borders. Their interactions with non-player characters - often progressing along the lines of “well, if you feel like you want us to do this quest for you, then we certainly can” - reflected this sort of empathy, and even though this sounds incredibly stereotypical, by the time the final session wrapped up, all three of the gals had either shipped or flirted with NPCs that they’d encountered during their journey. One of ‘em even ended up hitched with a baby!

The boys, by contrast, were much less likely to devise in-depth character histories beyond “I’M IN THIS CITY TO GET MY MONEY,” and their NPC conversations also frequently waded into “GIMME MY GOLD” territory. I don’t want to make it sound like their characters were just two dimensional mercenaries, though, because definite, organic progression occurred over the course of the campaign - the goliath who couldn’t read gradually worked his way through Volo’s Guide to Monsters and became fluent in Celestial after joining the Order of the Gauntlet, for instance.

Where the boys clearly felt more at home than the girls was in combat, probably because 1) there were six of them as opposed to the three ladies, and 2) they collectively had lots of video game knowledge, and D&D’s influence has kinda trickled down to every video game ever made. It didn’t take long for some of the dudes to begin subconsciously min/maxing their characters, and while there were two major deaths in unpredictable boss fights, the boys did go through a long period where they were just steamrolling everything to come their way and yelling, “LET’S FUCKIN’ GOOOO” as they did so. In contrast, DMing for the girls during combat sequences was occasionally a nail-biting experience where I didn’t know who was going to survive, and since some of this was due to my own slapdash encounter design where I underestimated the abilities of the monsters they were up against, I made sure to give them lots of friendly NPCs who could potentially offer a helping hand, or even resurrection spells if needed. 

Both groups were aware of the other’s existence, and I’d sometimes playfully pit them against one another. (Example: The guys often forgot who was who, and one time one of ‘em looked down at his character sheet and was like, “MY NOTES ARE SUCH SHIT” which made me respond, “Well, y’know the girls take really good notes...”) But at the end of the campaign, when my players asked me which party was more fun to DM for, my answer was that both��groups were great. The girls were bursting with imaginative roleplay, and they gave me real moments of glee as they responded to story twists with the legitimate surprise and wonder that comes from people who aren’t already overexposed to fantasy tropes and gaming culture. The boys gave me that feeling of what some fans affectionately call “beer & pretzels D&D,” where you’re shooting the breeze with your buddies, playfully teasing each other and going for broke in combat encounters. 

I want to stress that the ladies I DMed for were absolutely not representative of how all women might approach D&D, and the exact same thing must be said for the fellas. This was no planned sociology or gender studies experiment that I conducted, in other words - it was merely a thing that I did with two friend groups, and the resulting experiences were two opposite yet totally valid sides of the same RPG coin. And while I doubt that I’ll run the same campaign in the future for two different groups at once (let alone a campaign as wonky as Dragon Heist), I like to think that as someone who tries to advocate for how roleplaying games can be fun, welcoming experiences for all, I played a small role (hah) in bringing swords, sorcery and storytelling to the lives of people who might not have experienced such imaginative forays otherwise. 

Already, both the gals and the guys are whipping up ideas for future characters and checking out stuff like Critical Role...which means that my work here, at least for the moment, is done. 

[themagiciansreccenter]

Author Spotlight: @shmazarov/ lazarov

Every week we interview a writer from The Magicians fandom. If you would like to be interviewed or you want to nominate a writer, get in touch via our ask box.

First things first, tell us a little about yourself.

I'm in my late 20s, Canadian. I've spent more of my life writing fic than not, and tend to flit around from fandom to fandom.

How long have you been writing for? 

The oldest fic on my semi-defunct ff.net account dates back to 2006 - so at least 13 years, although I posted plenty of misguided LiveJournal fanfiction long before that.

What inspired you to start writing for The Magicians?

I was originally a book fan, although when the books were coming out there wasn't much of an online fandom. Truth be told, it took me a long time to warm up to the show - but once I did, I found that the TV versions of the characters inspired a lot of fic ideas.

Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write? What it is about them that makes them your favourite? 

Quentin! Always. I really enjoy the way his jumbled, speedy thought patterns and self-consciousness translate into the way he speaks, and I think it's fascinating to explore the ways in which he subverts the White Male Hero trope by never quite managing to be the hero in his (or anyone's) story. Quentin Coldwater is deeply misunderstood and I would fight a bear for him.

Do you have a preference for a particular season/point in time to write about? 

Not really, except for being fond of the Mosaic timeline (because I am human). Otherwise, I usually write as if canon is an inconvenience.

Are you working on anything right now? Care to give us an idea about it? 

For the Magicians fandom, I am slowly picking away at a multi-part Queliot angst fic that is dear to my heart as well as something new, current-season oriented and (surprisingly) canon-compliant. Who knew I had it in me? For other fandoms, I am perpetually working on a Daredevil fic that is well over 60,000 words and has been ongoing since 2015. It is my white whale. I also, naturally, have not even gotten around to watching the newest season of Daredevil in keeping with my tradition of treating canon as more of a suggestion than an imperative.

How long is your “to do list”? 

Not that long! My to do list is limited strictly to the stuff I'm actively working on right now. I have dozens of little prompts-to-self saved in my Google Docs drive, but I tend to write them and tuck them away, forgetting them until I can rediscover them with fresh eyes. I never think of them as "to dos" so much as "maybe somedays."

What is your favourite fic that you’ve written for The Magicians? Why? 

I love Other People very much.

Many writers have a fic that they are passionate about that doesn’t get the reception from the fandom that they hoped for. Do you have a fic you would like more people to read and appreciate?

It never surprises me when things I write don't get much traction, because I have a tendency to write niche tropes or stuff that I personally want to read! However - I do think One and the Same is good and affecting and has kind of snuck under the radar. I like that one, and I'm going to keep adding to it (because I like it so much and because, as above, I am a sucker for the Mosaic timeline).

What is your writing process like? Do you have any traditions or superstitions that you like to stick to when you’re writing?

My writing process is GARBAGE! It's garbage. I am needy, and lazy, and terrible at self-motivating. I'm disorganized and hard on myself. I almost never have the help of betas, because I feel a silly but overwhelming sense of guilt asking people for help. With that said, I am always extremely proud of myself for Doing the Damn Thing when I do write.

My personal weird thing is writing on my computer, then always doing my edit read-throughs on my phone. Something about the smaller screen and different font focuses my brain and helps me read my own writing more objectively. I also tend to pick a song, or an album, to listen to on repeat every time I work on a fic or a chapter of. It focuses my scattered brain and helps me write toward a specific mood.

Do you write while the seasons are airing or do you prefer to wait for hiatus? How does the ongoing development of the canon influence and inspire your writing process?

I love writing during seasons because it means people are READING. The spike in feedback that happens during seasons is incredible and so gratifying. Plus, I'm desperate for attention at all times and want those comments and kudos like Mardi Gras beads, obviously. Canon, as always, is optional. Especially in this fandom! Who needs fandom when you have timelines?

What has been the most challenging fic for you to write?

In the Magicians fandom, the most recent chapter of Stories We Tell kicked my ass. I am always trying to improve my visualization and descriptive imagery, and that was a real test for me. I'm not great at it yet, but I'm glad I challenged myself with that one and look forward to doing it even more.

Are there any themes or tropes that you like particularly like to explore in your writing?

So much angst. Sorry guys, it's free therapy? I can get self-conscious about the fact that I barely ever write fluff, but I have a really hard time getting inspired by anything other than misery. 

 Somebody's gotta do it.

Are there any writers that inspire your work? Fanfiction or otherwise?

Fanfiction : @greywash, obviously @sashayed and Lady Jaida are like, the pinnacle??? of fic writing, @longnationalnightmare, @afterism, @refusals... there are so many.

What are you currently reading? Fanfiction or otherwise?

I haven't had time to read or keep up with much fic lately, but semi-recent greats include colour all the squares by @afterism and spring sooner than the lark by @greywash!

What is the most valuable piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?

"Your writing is incomprehensible." - a TA who gave me an extremely sub-par mark and made me realize that sometimes people are just going to hate your writing, and that's ok. 

"When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story." - that one is Stephen King, but I would like to pretend it was advice given to me, because I cherish it.

Are there any words or phrases you worry about overusing in your work?

I can't think of any offhand, but I would pay someone to hit me with a rigid stick every time I use a cliche in my writing.

What was the first fanfic that you wrote? Do you still have access to it?

I have vague memories of terrible The 10th Kingdom fanfiction. It doesn't exist anymore, sadly/thankfully - but now I am feeling nostalgic and digging through the old 10th Kingdom Angelfire archive, right this second. Be still my heart.

Rapidfire Round! 

Self-edit or Beta?

Self-edit, because I am too shy and full of shame to ask for help. It's not a virtue.

Comments or Kudos/Reblogs or Likes?

COMMENTS. Comments are the thing that bring me more joy than, well, many other things that probably should give me a lot of joy. Comments keep my heart full.

Smut, Fluff or Angst?

As if it's even a competition -- ANGST. Always angst. Angst always.

Quick & Dirty or Slow Burn?

Slow burn. Particularly involving difficult and meandering conversations and shrouded looks.

Favourite Season? 

Season One

Favourite Epiosde? 

I truly cannot decide.

Favourite Book?

The Magicians Land

Three favourite words?

softly / petrichor / idyllic

Want to be interviewed for our author spotlight? Get in touch here.

[saralynnx]

Sara Speaks - Tips on Running Your Simblr

Okay, so, as some of you may know, this is my second round at simblr. My first one was a disorganized mess, which is why I decided to start over. Overall, I have been a part of the simblr community for almost two years, and I have learned a lot in that time. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to jot down all the things I have learned/am doing differently this time around, mainly for personal reflection but also to potentially help anyone else out there just starting out. One of my dear friends, Katie, has recently started her own simblr, so this also acts as a welcome/shout out to her as well. You can find her at @fragile-sims0106. Without further ado, let’s get started!

1. URL -- Make your URL something sims-related, or include ‘sim’, ‘sims’, ‘simming’, ‘simmer’, etc in it. That way, other simblrs scrolling through tumblr looking for new simblrs to follow can easily see at a glance what you’re all about. This may seem like an obvious tip, but believe it or not, my first URL was not sims-related. I realize that changing URLs is simple and easy--but it can lead to confusion for your followers. It’s better to choose your URL carefully and stick with it.

2. Posts -- Keep your content original and sims-related. It’s okay to throw up a personal post every once and a while, or to occasionally reblog that super cool new cc that you found, but your posts should be 90-95 percent original sims content. Whether it be your story, your gameplay, your OWN cc that you create, edits, lookbooks, sim modeling, etc--people follow you to see what unique things you have to offer to the simblr community. If you find yourself wanting to reblog a lot of cc, it might be best to create a side blog dedicated to your personal cc finds. 

3. The Game -- This is controversial and can really go either way, but in my personal opinion, you should stick to one version of the game on your simblr. Whether it be Sims 2, Sims 3, or Sims 4, pick your favorite version and stick with posting only gameplay/content with that, and if you’re itching to play the other versions, do so on your own time OR create a side blog/separate simblr per version. It makes your blog more cohesive and less confusing. Also, a lot of simmers (such as my self), only like to see one version on their dash. It might turn some people off if you are constantly rotating between games. If you do decide to post more than one version on your simblr, try to be diligent about your tagging and include navigation that makes it easy for simmers to access content from the version of their choice.

4. Gameplay -- Try to stick to no more than two or three saves. And, work hard to see them through. Constantly stopping and starting projects, and/or having many saves going on your blog at once, can confuse and/or deter followers. Again, if you are posting about multiple projects/saves, clearly tag your posts and keep things organized on your main page with easy to access navigation. 

5. Posting Schedule -- Stay consistent with your posts. Obviously your personal life comes first and if you need to take a break and step back from your simblr for a little while, that’s understandable. But, being haphazard and inconsistent with your posting schedule can deter followers. It’s a good idea to post once a week at the minimum. If life keeps you  busy on a regular basis, it might be best to set up a queue for your blog to keep it active for your followers. However, there can be a caveat with queues, which I will talk about next.

6. Your Queue -- Having a queue is a valuable resource for many simblrs. However, I personally found that having a queue proved more frustrating and overwhelming than it was worth. What happened to me in the past is that my queue would end up weeks -- sometimes even months -- ahead of my gameplay, which in turn made me less motivated to play. OMG, my sim Suzie just aged to a young adult -- I can’t wait for everyone to see what she looks like, her traits, etc! But oh wait -- my queue is so far behind that she is actually still a toddler on my blog. Again, this is all based on your personal habits and needs, but I found it to be much more manageable to post as I play. I know that I can fit in play time at least once a week, so my blog will still be kept active but up to date with my gameplay at the same time, which is a lot less stressful for me.

7. Editing -- It’s good to figure out and stick with a particular editing style for your screenshots that you post. Of course, you don’t have to edit your screenshots, although many people do. If you are going to edit them, do it in your favor. What do I mean by that? Well, instead of using someone else’s Photoshop action or copying a particular style used on another simblr, create your own unique action/editing style for yourself to set your simblr apart from everyone else’s. It will gather more interest to your blog and gain you more followers. Plus, now that I have my own personal action that I created and use, I am much more proud of my work and am that much more excited to play and showcase my screenshots.

8. Reach Out -- Part of what makes having a simblr fun is meeting new people and getting a good follower base going. The best way to do this is to put yourself out there. Follow as many other simblrs as you can. Keep active on your dash and like as many posts as you can. If something really strikes you, reach out to that simmer and leave a comment. Or send that person an ask, preferably off anon. Doing this sort of thing on a regular basis will get your url out there and will attract more followers. Plus, every simmer loves comments and compliments on their work. It makes us smile and helps keep us motivated to post and play. But, be sincere. Don’t spam comment just for the sake of attention. Don’t ask for shout-outs or followers. That will just backfire and turn others off.

9. Have Fun -- Last and most important is to just be yourself and have fun. Ultimately, your simblr is yours to do with as you choose and something you do for yourself and not for everyone else. There is no right or wrong when it comes to running your simblr, and the above are all just tips that have worked for me, but they may not be what’s best for you. Don’t stress yourself out. Simblr is ultimately all about having fun. If you are constantly stressing over your follower count, or playing/posting a save that you have no interest in anymore, it may be best to just take a break and take a step back and re-evaluate your blog and what you are doing. Changing things up is not a bad thing if it helps you get back in the groove again and back to having fun. Don’t worry about disappointing your followers. Again, you’re doing this for your own personal enjoyment, and if you’re not enjoying yourself, it will probably show, and, quite frankly, what’s the point of doing it then?

Those are all the major tips that I have to share. To summarize, what’s most important is to stay organized, be consistent, be yourself/unique, and HAVE FUN. This list is in no way intended to be the end-all, be-all of running a simblr, and what works for you may be completely different from what I have written here, and that’s okay. However, if I do manage to help someone who is struggling, then all the better and I am happy I could give you some inspiration. Take care everyone, and happy simming! :)

[dahlia-coccinea]

What do you think of all the deaths in Wuthering Heights? I think it's interesting how when the main characters that die seem like they want to go or have something to gain from it yet they all die uniquely, so I don't think it has simple symbolism, but means something different to each character. (I think the last part is worded badly, but I think it gets what I mean across)

I’ve been wanting to discuss this for awhile now and literally have written like 4000+ words that are unfortunately completely disorganized. I’ve never seen this topic fully covered by any critic, normally its mentioned only as an aspect to something else - typically about Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship. Part of what makes it such a difficult subject is I feel it's heavily tied to Emily's own beliefs and it could almost be asserted that it was a fixation for her. The theme runs heavily in Wuthering Heights, her poetry, the essays she wrote, and can also be found within other writings by her sisters. There is a letter by Charlotte that I think is key to understanding their views on death - an abridged version can be read here - it was written shortly after Anne’s death, making Charlotte the last one remaining out of the six, and she discusses the deaths of all her siblings. Just a warning its super sad, I can’t read it without tearing up but that's not saying much cause a lot makes me cry hah. Anyway, I may expand on that later, I'll try to stay on topic for once hah.

It is hard to concisely and definitively say what she meant by the use of character death and the discussions the characters have on the topic. Are we meant to agree with some of their utterances? Is it saying something larger about Emily’s own beliefs? Is it an expression of her own mixed feelings as to whether or not she embraces or fears it? Regardless, it’s notable that few characters make it to the end of the novel alive. I agree with you that all characters show a unique relationship with it, but I think there are broader narratives in the story - particularly in how apparent the moralization of Catherine’s death is by Nelly. It’s so forceful and repeated and spurs the actions of much of the second half of the novel. 

Some deaths in the book are kind of glossed over, like with Mrs Earnshaw, Isabella, and Mr and Mrs Linton. The first death that gets a significant mention is Mr Earnshaw, and though mourned over, it does feel the most natural compared to the others. We don’t know how old he is but he’s had at least three children, not sure if Hindley is the eldest or the original Heathcliff is older, but Hindley is 20 at this point so Mr Earnshaw is not terribly young. He peacefully dies in his sleep with his currently reconciled daughter and the adopted son he loves next to him. Easily has the most peaceful death of any of the characters. 

Then we have Frances, Hindley, and Linton, who I would say all die badly; in a struggle (emotionally), and unnaturally young. Frances is interesting because her fear of death is so different from Catherine’s acceptance of it. We know from the beginning when Hindley takes her back to the Heights in time for Mr Earnshaws funeral and we hear in the first descriptions of her:

She was not one that would have disturbed the house much on her own account. Every object she saw, the moment she crossed the threshold, appeared to delight her; and every circumstance that took place about her: except the preparing for the burial, and the presence of the mourners. I thought she was half silly, from her behaviour while that went on: she ran into her chamber, and made me come with her, though I should have been dressing the children: and there she sat shivering and clasping her hands, and asking repeatedly—“Are they gone yet?” Then she began describing with hysterical emotion the effect it produced on her to see black; and started, and trembled, and, at last, fell a-weeping—and when I asked what was the matter, answered, she didn’t know; but she felt so afraid of dying!

This is such a contrast to Catherine’s attitude towards the immaterial. At 15 she expresses her belief in the soul and its existence outside of the body when she tells Nelly, “...surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here?”

When Hareton is born Frances desperately doesn’t want to leave him, and a girl working with Nelly in the field says “she (Frances) talks as if she thought of living to see it (Hareton) grow a man. She’s out of her head for joy, it’s such a beauty! If I were her I’m certain I should not die: I should get better at the bare sight of it.” Very different from Catherine’s indifference towards her pregnancy. 

That being said, Catherine’s death is the most idealized out of any of the characters. Nelly describes it to Heathcliff that she went:

“Quietly as a lamb!” I answered, aloud. “She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep; and five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!”…“Her senses never returned: she recognised nobody from the time you left her,” I said. “She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!”

Catherine completely embraces her death, memorably saying, “the thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart” and declaring that in that glorious world she will be “incomparably beyond and above you all.” 

Nelly repeatedly references Catherine’s beauty, peace, and “untroubled image of Divine rest.” Funnily this is so different from what she tells Lockwood she thought the day before: “She’s fainted, or dead,” I thought: “so much the better. Far better that she should be dead, than lingering a burden and a misery-maker to all about her.”

This is already getting long and I haven’t even mentioned Heathcliff’s or Edgar’s death...I do want to return to this when I have the time to go through what I’ve written so far. There is a lot of interesting connotations from all these scenes, and how exactly they were meant to be understood is difficult; I think in part it’s because our philosophical view today is almost entirely different to what Emily’s would have been in the mid-19th century. Rather than simply expressing ideas consistent with the time, she was often regarded as a natural philosopher, and that she grew up the daughter of a minister makes it easy to assume she’d have a larger and deeper interest in the spiritual and philosophical. Sorry, hopefully I wasn’t too all over the place! 

[2bastardsandabluray]

Suicide Squad is the Worst Film Ever Made

There’s a lot of things you could say about me. I’m tall. I have medium-sized feet. I might be one one hundred twenty-eighth Native American, maybe. These are unshakable character traits that have followed me throughout my life, and will likely continue to do so once I shuffle off this mortal coil and into a cylindrical cardboard urn. Another one of these traits? I despise Suicide Squad.

This film is ass. It reminds me of my ass. When I saw it in theaters, I remember finding it remarkable that someone was able to sneak a camera in my toilet and film my ass for 2 hours and 16 minutes. I had never even been on the toilet that long, unless you count that time in Cleveland wherein I found a bucket of raw goat meat in an alley and resolved to consume all of it in a momentary surrender to pure adrenaline. This resulted in a four-hour shit session in the bathroom of a Church’s Chicken. To reduce the session to a single adjective, I would likely choose “fire hose-esque.”  With this in mind, if Suicide Squad was, indeed, hidden camera footage of my ass on that fateful Christmas Eve, it would have at least had value as pure spectacle. I’m fairly certain I shat out an organ, for instance. The fact that this wasn’t included in the final cut is emblematic of the film’s piss-poor editing decisions. For shame, David Ayer. The studio should have opted for Gaspar Noe.

And indeed, while this omission is unforgivable AT BEST, perhaps even worse is every single other aspect of the film. Let’s start at the most obvious place - Ike Barinholtz’s character of Griggs.

Remember him? For whatever reason, the film saw fit to dedicate what seems like eighty-nine percent of its runtime to him. When we’re first introduced to Will Smith’s Deadshot, for instance, it’s in a scene where Griggs berates him through one of those little prison windows. We leave the scene knowing nothing about Deadshot as a person; only that Griggs is a guard, and he is mean. In the next scene, we’re introduced to Harley Quinn, the character who’s sexy and you wanna fuck with your penis. Griggs walks up to her and says, “Man, you’re hot,” or something. Then he says, “You wanna fuck?” Then Harley swings around on these weird blanket-rope things and goes up to Griggs and says, “Yeah, I love sex and fucking,” and then she licks the prison cell bar because it’s phallic and she’s hot. Then she says, “Oh, Daddy,” or something. Harley is one of the more complex characters in “The Squad,” so it was a good decision to make her really hot and sex-fucky and nothing else. Also great to see Griggs again. Powerhouse scene.

Further down the line, we get another Griggs scene where the Joker ties him to a chair and breathes on him for ten minutes. He goes, “Ooooh-AHHHHHH!” over and over again. Nothing happens in this scene, and it’s thirty-five minutes long. In the next scene, Griggs talks to Harley again and says, “Hey, what’s the Joker gonna do to me?” and she’s like, “Bad stuff! Ha!” and then we don’t see Griggs for the rest of the movie.

Why does this film - 136 minutes of Jared Leto sweating in a Hot Topic - feel the need to build up Griggs so much in its first act, only to forgo him entirely in its second and third? You could literally just have a scene with the Joker salivating in a helicopter somewhere, holding up Griggs’ severed head and smearing the blood on his pecs. That would have completed Griggs’ story arc. It would have had no point, but at least it would have been completed. This film could use at least one completed story arc, and it could have done so with just one severed head. All I want, in the end, is to see Ike Barinholtz’s severed head. Mail it to me, Tumblers. My P.O. Box is 1.

My point, though, is that this film is a disorganized pig orgy in Hell. From what I understand, it underwent countless edits and reshoots, because test audiences never seemed to actually enjoy it. I won’t go into specifics, because I’m a directionless college student writing this in between masturbation sessions, but still. The movie had a rushed, convoluted editing process, and fuck, you can tell. A good example of this is Killer Croc becoming a racist stereotype in the third act for no reason.

“Nah, shawty. I’m beautiful..” Fantastic.

Overall, it just feels like they had, like, three versions of this movie, none of which were good, and then one day, David DC told them they had to edit a new version in one day. Consequently, every single editing decision feels rushed. The intro to each of the characters, for instance, feels like it was written in three minutes, because while we learn the bare essentials of each character, we’re not told enough to give any amount of fuck about any of them. Enchantress, for instance, is an archaeologist who is now a ghost-thing, kind of, and she’s fucking a nondescript white guy who shoots things. I don’t care. 

And let’s talk about the music. There’s something about the use of music in this movie that engenders within me such a visceral hatred for all living things that, while watching this film, I would welcome a nuclear holocaust. It could be because the selection of songs seems to have been done by a DJ for a shitty classic rock station. Another reason, I think, is that I don’t care about anything happening in this movie. The worst use of music in film and TV is always when a song is supposed to accompany an emotion the audience is feeling, and yet the audience is not feeling that emotion. When Seven Nation Army starts playing once The Squad is finally coming together, the movie wants me to think, “Yeah! These badasses are gonna fuck some shit up! Jack White said so!” But I haven’t actually gotten attached to any of them yet, because none of them have had more than three minutes of screen time. As a result, the movie is just playing a hard rock song while people with skin conditions walk and then stand in a circle. That isn’t a combination that should exist.

I could go on and on about this piss cauldron of a film, but writing is largely an unpleasant process and I can only endure so much. My point, though, is that this is just a very bad movie. I think there may be an extra layer of hatred in my case (and likely in the case of many others), because I was really looking forward to this movie. For one, I genuinely think that the Joker is possibly the greatest villain ever portrayed in fiction, and I was interested to see what Jared Leto would do with the role. As a result, the fact that he was made into a malnourished Marilyn Manson with two minutes of screen time was a really huge shame. For another thing, I’m always interested in movies and TV shows with morally grey protagonists, and a mainstream film starring a literal group of these people definitely piqued my interest. I probably shouldn’t have been expecting much, but I would’ve liked more than what amounted to the bad acid trip of a man with ADHD at a Twenty One Pilots concert.

The one saving grace of this movie, however? Slipknot - the man who can climb anything. It’s honestly no wonder that he took America by storm like he did. 2016 will always be remembered as the year of Slipknot Mania, and rightfully so. Climb on, brother. Climb on.

- Max

[sikoko]

The Stack Overflow Age

Hi, everyone! A lot of stuff has happened since I was writing all those blog posts about Aeron chairs 18 years ago. Some of those blog posts are old enough to go to college.

And, also: Stack Overflow will be ten years old soon! Wow! So I thought it would be cool to get the old band back together for a little reunion tour over the next few weeks. I want to catch you all up on some stuff but mostly I want to tell the story of Stack Overflow in a not-completely-disorganized way. With some perspective, it’s clearer now what we did right and what we messed up, so I’ll try to cover the good and the bad over a series of blog posts.

And, also: we’re just a few weeks away from launching Stack Overflow Teams, the biggest upgrade to Stack Overflow ever, so that’s going to be really cool. I’ll get to that in a future blog post!

Today is chapter one. I want to talk a little bit about what it was like for developers before Stack Overflow, the problem that Stack Overflow tried to solve, and early origins.

In the early days of the Internet, before the Web, there was a system called Usenet which created primitive online discussion forums. When programmers had problems with their code, they could ask a question on a Usenet forum. (They were technically called newsgroups, not forums (even though they had nothing to do with news. (You couldn’t even get news on Usenet.)))

As soon as the world wide web became a thing, Usenet was immediately technically obsolete. We programmers started asking about our problems on various web-based forums, of which there were thousands.

One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. The first version of Experts Exchange was not successful financially. Apparently they went bankrupt in 2001. Eventually new owners bought the assets and resurrected the site with a clever business model: charging money to read answers.

This actually fixed the business, which started making money, but it caused some problems.

The first problem was that programmers with problems would search on Google, not on Experts Exchange. And Google only knows about free, open websites, not websites that you have to pay to access. So EE did a bamboozle: when the Google Robot came by, they showed it the full question and its answers. But when regular people went to the same page, they saw the answers were scrambled, with instructions to pay (I think it was about $250 a year) to see the results. Most programmers couldn’t be bothered.

The second problem was that EE let you get a free membership if you answered a certain number of questions. As it turned out, the people who were most desperate for free memberships were not exactly the best programmers in the world, and they wrote low quality answers to questions just to get those free memberships. And the quality of answers on the site went down.

For a long time (at least five years, I think) programmers would constantly come across EE in the Google search results, try to click on them, discover that it was a pay site, grumble, and just go back to Google and try to find an answer for free.

And I kept thinking, how hard is it to run a discussion forum on the Internet? For fudge sake, I had written one in Visual Basic in a weekend. (Not kidding, actually. Yeah I know that I am always saying “I could do that in a weekend in Visual Basic” when developers tell me some feature is going to take a year. This is why). So I was confident that it was only a matter of time before one of the 9,000,000 smart programmers in the world decided to route around this EE damage and make a free forum.

You know what? Nobody ever did. I kept waiting.

Another thing I wrote in a weekend (well, to be precise: a fortnight (shut up, I’m telling this lie)) was a job listing board for this blog. And in the first month of running that job board I think we sold about $90,000 of job listings. Huzzah! And then I thought, wow, if we smashed these ideas together—replace Experts Exchange with a free site, and pay for it with job listings—we could undo the damage to the internet and let developers get work done again.

I kept thinking “Man, this is so obvious, somebody is going to do it.”

And they never did.

And I went to one of the programmers at Fog Creek, and explained my idea, and he was like “yeah yeah sounds like a great idea, but I really like working on FogBugz.”

And more time went by.

And eventually, early in 2008, a developer/blogger named Jeff Atwood called me up, and said, “Hey Joel, I’m thinking of quitting my day job to be a Pro Blogger; you’re a blogger: what do you think?”

And I said, “Jeff, I’ve got a better idea” and I told him about the idea to combine the job listings with the Q&A site for developers, and, it took more than a weekend, but eventually I convinced him. We started talking about all the ways our Q&A site would be amazing. Jeff started working on the code in April 2008, recruited two other programmers to join him (Geoff and Jarrod, who are still here), and the three of them heroically launched what became Stack Overflow in September 2008.

    And thus began the Stack Overflow Age.

Stack Overflow was better because it was free, but it had a ton of other “innovations” (which I put in quotes because we stole them from other Internet pioneers) which made it a much, much better site for getting answers to programming questions.

We wanted the whole thing to be a fun game, with incentives to answer questions, so we had a reputation system. The more you answer, the more reputation you earn. The reputation idea had been seen before on sites like Slashdot and Reddit.

As you earn reputation, you also earn moderation privileges on the site. So the site actually moderates itself, which is pretty cool.

Instead of putting all the Java programmers in one little forum and all the C++ programmers in another, we dumped everyone together and just let them tag their questions. This idea was stolen from flickr (remember flickr?) who, I think, stole it from del.icio.us (now gone)—who knows, anyway, the point is, tags were the new hotness and made Stack Overflow work great.

Most importantly, we realized that each question is asked by one person but the answers are seen by thousands of people who found it through a search. So we decided to optimize everything to be useful for the thousands, not the individual. We literally have 1000 visitors for every person who asks a question. That’s why we sort the answers by votes. It’s also why we optimize for questions and answers that will be helpful to other people, later.

Interestingly, when Jeff and I started Stack Overflow, we didn’t really care if it was a business and we didn’t need it to be a big profitable success. We created it because the internet sucked for programmers and we needed to make it better. We thought the job listings would pay the bills, and we’d fix the internet, and that was all we cared about and it’s what motivated us to work so hard.

Of course, it turned out a lot bigger than we thought it would. The company today has 250 employees, is profitable, and has made it possible for millions of people to learn how to code and to deal with the new, super-complicated world of APIs and frameworks that we live in. But we just wanted to fix the internet.

I have met a lot of people who started businesses because they wanted to start a business. Paul Graham calls this “Playing House.” And they didn’t really care what the business did; they just wanted to “be entrepreneurs.” Which is weird, because being an entrepreneur really sucks. It’s really hard to get through all the extraordinary difficulty, pain, and stress of starting a company if you’re not super, super motivated to solve a problem for the world.

The entrepreneurs who succeed do so because it is incredibly important to them a thing exist in the world, and it does not exist, so they work like crazy until it does. When we started Stack Overflow we didn’t expect it to be a big business; we just wanted there to be someplace where developers could get help to daily problems, while showing off how smart they were helping other developers.

Ok, that’s chapter one. I’ve got a lot more to talk about. In the next installment, I’ll talk more about how Stack Overflow’s light dusting of gamification made it really take off.

Source: https://ift.tt/2uPEZRc

[jmtapio]

Hi, everyone! A lot of stuff has happened since I was writing all those blog posts about Aeron chairs 18 years ago. Some of those blog posts are old enough to go to college.

And, also: Stack Overflow will be ten years old soon! Wow! So I thought it would be cool to get the old band back together for a little reunion tour over the next few weeks. I want to catch you all up on some stuff but mostly I want to tell the story of Stack Overflow in a not-completely-disorganized way. With some perspective, it’s clearer now what we did right and what we messed up, so I’ll try to cover the good and the bad over a series of blog posts.

And, also: we’re just a few weeks away from launching Stack Overflow Teams, the biggest upgrade to Stack Overflow ever, so that’s going to be really cool. I’ll get to that in a future blog post!

Today is chapter one. I want to talk a little bit about what it was like for developers before Stack Overflow, the problem that Stack Overflow tried to solve, and early origins.

In the early days of the Internet, before the Web, there was a system called Usenet which created primitive online discussion forums. When programmers had problems with their code, they could ask a question on a Usenet forum. (They were technically called newsgroups, not forums (even though they had nothing to do with news. (You couldn’t even get news on Usenet.)))

As soon as the world wide web became a thing, Usenet was immediately technically obsolete. We programmers started asking about our problems on various web-based forums, of which there were thousands.

One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. The first version of Experts Exchange was not successful financially. Apparently they went bankrupt in 2001. Eventually new owners bought the assets and resurrected the site with a clever business model: charging money to read answers.

This actually fixed the business, which started making money, but it caused some problems.

The first problem was that programmers with problems would search on Google, not on Experts Exchange. And Google only knows about free, open websites, not websites that you have to pay to access. So EE did a bamboozle: when the Google Robot came by, they showed it the full question and its answers. But when regular people went to the same page, they saw the answers were scrambled, with instructions to pay (I think it was about $250 a year) to see the results. Most programmers couldn’t be bothered.

The second problem was that EE let you get a free membership if you answered a certain number of questions. As it turned out, the people who were most desperate for free memberships were not exactly the best programmers in the world, and they wrote low quality answers to questions just to get those free memberships. And the quality of answers on the site went down.

For a long time (at least five years, I think) programmers would constantly come across EE in the Google search results, try to click on them, discover that it was a pay site, grumble, and just go back to Google and try to find an answer for free.

And I kept thinking, how hard is it to run a discussion forum on the Internet? For fudge sake, I had written one in Visual Basic in a weekend. (Not kidding, actually. Yeah I know that I am always saying “I could do that in a weekend in Visual Basic” when developers tell me some feature is going to take a year. This is why). So I was confident that it was only a matter of time before one of the 9,000,000 smart programmers in the world decided to route around this EE damage and make a free forum.

You know what? Nobody ever did. I kept waiting.

Another thing I wrote in a weekend (well, to be precise: a fortnight (shut up, I’m telling this lie)) was a job listing board for this blog. And in the first month of running that job board I think we sold about $90,000 of job listings. Huzzah! And then I thought, wow, if we smashed these ideas together—replace Experts Exchange with a free site, and pay for it with job listings—we could undo the damage to the internet and let developers get work done again.

I kept thinking “Man, this is so obvious, somebody is going to do it.”

And they never did.

And I went to one of the programmers at Fog Creek, and explained my idea, and he was like “yeah yeah sounds like a great idea, but I really like working on FogBugz.”

And more time went by.

And eventually, early in 2008, a developer/blogger named Jeff Atwood called me up, and said, “Hey Joel, I’m thinking of quitting my day job to be a Pro Blogger; you’re a blogger: what do you think?”

And I said, “Jeff, I’ve got a better idea” and I told him about the idea to combine the job listings with the Q&A site for developers, and, it took more than a weekend, but eventually I convinced him. We started talking about all the ways our Q&A site would be amazing. Jeff started working on the code in April 2008, recruited two other programmers to join him (Geoff and Jarrod, who are still here), and the three of them heroically launched what became Stack Overflow in September 2008.

    And thus began the Stack Overflow Age.

Stack Overflow was better because it was free, but it had a ton of other “innovations” (which I put in quotes because we stole them from other Internet pioneers) which made it a much, much better site for getting answers to programming questions.

We wanted the whole thing to be a fun game, with incentives to answer questions, so we had a reputation system. The more you answer, the more reputation you earn. The reputation idea had been seen before on sites like Slashdot and Reddit.

As you earn reputation, you also earn moderation privileges on the site. So the site actually moderates itself, which is pretty cool.

Instead of putting all the Java programmers in one little forum and all the C++ programmers in another, we dumped everyone together and just let them tag their questions. This idea was stolen from flickr (remember flickr?) who, I think, stole it from del.icio.us (now gone)—who knows, anyway, the point is, tags were the new hotness and made Stack Overflow work great.

Most importantly, we realized that each question is asked by one person but the answers are seen by thousands of people who found it through a search. So we decided to optimize everything to be useful for the thousands, not the individual. We literally have 1000 visitors for every person who asks a question. That’s why we sort the answers by votes. It’s also why we optimize for questions and answers that will be helpful to other people, later.

Interestingly, when Jeff and I started Stack Overflow, we didn’t really care if it was a business and we didn’t need it to be a big profitable success. We created it because the internet sucked for programmers and we needed to make it better. We thought the job listings would pay the bills, and we’d fix the internet, and that was all we cared about and it’s what motivated us to work so hard.

Of course, it turned out a lot bigger than we thought it would. The company today has 250 employees, is profitable, and has made it possible for millions of people to learn how to code and to deal with the new, super-complicated world of APIs and frameworks that we live in. But we just wanted to fix the internet.

I have met a lot of people who started businesses because they wanted to start a business. Paul Graham calls this “Playing House.” And they didn’t really care what the business did; they just wanted to “be entrepreneurs.” Which is weird, because being an entrepreneur really sucks. It’s really hard to get through all the extraordinary difficulty, pain, and stress of starting a company if you’re not super, super motivated to solve a problem for the world.

The entrepreneurs who succeed do so because it is incredibly important to them a thing exist in the world, and it does not exist, so they work like crazy until it does. When we started Stack Overflow we didn’t expect it to be a big business; we just wanted there to be someplace where developers could get help to daily problems, while showing off how smart they were helping other developers.

Ok, that’s chapter one. I’ve got a lot more to talk about. In the next installment, I’ll talk more about how Stack Overflow’s light dusting of gamification made it really take off.

via Joel on Software