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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years ago

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100 Days of Writing: Day Forty

I’m getting really lazy about this lol. Today’s entry: the answers to a few random questions that have spoken to me, from days I skipped.

Project courtesy of @the-wip-project. Tagging fellow participants @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold, @thelittlefanpire, @hopskipaway, @easilydistractedbyfanfic, @dylanobrienisbatman @fontainebleau22.

This got VERY verbose, sorry....!

Day 34: Do you prefer to write fluff or angst?

Funny story. I once had a fic nominated in the Best Angst Category in a fandom fic awards event. The nomination was, of course, flattering, but also really confusing, because I didn’t think the fic was particularly angsty. It wasn’t super fluffy either. It...just was? It was a basic strangers-to-lovers modern AU somewhere in the 7k range, and the main ship was endgame. There was a period where half of the main ship was dating someone else, but that was mostly mentioned in passing during a time skip; most of the actual content was the endgame couple talking/flirting/pining, and, again, they did get together in the end.

The nomination made me reconsider what I think ‘fluff’ and ‘angst’ are and what my relationships are to the genres. I feel like a lot of my work is neither.

Some types of stories are obviously one or the other. MCD and/or illness is angst. Hurt/comfort is angst. Romantic stories where the characters don’t end up together are, generally, angst. Romantic stories where the characters DO end up together but only after considerable obstacles can be angst, also--which might have been the rationale behind nominating the above fic in ‘angst’ although, again, it was only 7k. It’s one thing to have a 300k+ story where the main characters pine for each other, wallow in their feelings, fight, feel jealousy, etc, and the finally kiss in the final chapter--I’ve done that, too. A shorter story is a different beast.

Fluff, to me, is a genre of stories without (significant) conflict. The point is you feel good reading them. Romantic stories with established couples, or first date stories, are fluff. Slice of life or ‘curtain’ fic is fluff. Holiday fic with a found family feel is fluff.

I’ve written some stories that clearly fall into one of these two genres, sometimes because the challenge I’m doing or request I’m fulfilling calls for it, and sometimes because I need a palette cleanser after writing the opposite type of fic.

Another place I’ve thought about genre is with Troped, but I don’t always feel confident in the stories I’ve written there, in terms of theme. The very, very first round had a Fluff theme but I wasn’t sure if my story was fluffy (I’m still not). It had a happy ending and the final scene was decidedly cute, but the characters came from angsty backgrounds, and some of the early scenes had, imo, a melancholy feel. Then one of the 2020 Madness rounds had an Angst theme. I tried to fit my entry into that genre by giving it a general feeling of helplessness and an ambiguous, dreary ending. I think it was angsty, but it wasn’t as... hardcore angsty? as some of the other entries. I also picked the theme “angst” for one of my Choice fics and that one was decidedly angsty, both in the specific-trope sense--it dealt with the aftermath of a major character death--and in the more general ‘mood’ sense. The main relationship wasn’t repaired at the end, and the ending was ambiguous.

I feel like for every fic I’ve written that’s decidedly fluffy or decidedly angsty, and I could give examples of both, I’ve written one or more that isn’t really either. Again, most of the time, unless I have a specific reason to think ‘time to write angst’ or ‘time to write fluff,’ I don’t go into an idea thinking it should be one or the other. I usually have a mood I want, but it might not be simple to categorize.

ALL that said... I think if I had to pick one, it would be angst. I don’t like truly unhappy endings, but I’ve done a decent number of ambiguous endings. It’s also easier for me to think of stories I’ve written that I think are fairly categorized as angst than stories that are clearly fluff. Third, I love writing about pining, and longing, and missing, and needing, and these are not ‘fluffy’ feelings. But most importantly, like I said, I think ‘fluff’ is a type of story that has minimal-to-zero conflict in it and I actually find those VERY hard to write. Maybe We Will is probably the fluffiest thing I’ve written (4k of a first date at a carnival) and my biggest challenge was figuring out: what are these people going to DO?

This isn’t an insult to fluff at all. Fluff writers have a real talent for creating a pleasant narrative, and I like reading outright fluff more than reading outright angst. But for me, there is a lot more flexibility outside of fluff, whether or not the resulting narrative is truly “angsty” or not. It might not have the primary goal of making you feel sad, but it probably doesn’t have the primary goal of making you feel happy either.

Day 37: Post your favorite line of dialogue that you’ve written recently.

Skimmed the Sleeping Beauty AU for this one. As soon as I’m asked to think about dialogue I like, I wonder if I’ve ever written good dialogue in my life! Lol. You think about it too much and it all sounds fake. Here’s an exchange I think is pretty good (perhaps just in comparison to a lot of the Really Rough Writing that surrounds it...).

"That sounded like it went pretty well," she says, as she balances awkwardly against the wall, pulling on her boots. "From what I could hear."

Bellamy shrugs. He's scanning the crowd, glancing over at her impatiently when she stumbles, trying to tie her laces without bothering to kneel. "Roma doesn't ask a lot of questions."

Clarke snorts. "Yes, she does. What you really mean is, she asks a lot of questions, then gets distracted whenever you turn on the charm."

"Yeah, sure. My well-known charm."

Clarke lets her foot fall heavily to the ground again, straightens up and pushes her hair back from her face. "If you weren't flirting and being charming, what were you doing?"

Bellamy hesitates, a light, embarrassed pink spreading across his cheeks, and Clarke rises up on her toes triumphantly, trying to lean into his space. "I should have gotten more ration points," he says, barely more than a grumble, and Clarke laughs and pulls her hat down over her head. Then she picks up the jacket, slips it on, and steps purposefully in front of him.

"How do I look?"

Day 38: What comes first, plot or characters?

Well, I write fanfiction, so I feel like this is a tricky question to define. My current fandom does have a lot of characters though, so it is possible to have a general idea of a plot but not know who to put in it. That’s happened to me on a few occasions I think, but generally speaking... I think the two come simultaneously?

When I’m writing for Troped, it’s easier to start with the plot because certain elements of the challenge suggest (or require) a plot but never the characters to go in it. So sometimes I do work from plot --> characters there. It��s usually pretty seamless in that the plot-idea usually comes with at least some idea of the characters, but sometimes there’s ambiguity--for example, deciding to include Bellamy in Mad Women when he wasn’t initially supposed to be in it, which ended up changing/defining the story quite a bit. Another example is Mountain Lion Mean, where I knew right away what the general plot would be but waffled a bit about precisely which characters would be in it and to what degree.

Other challenges often define the characters first and so then by definition that’s where I start. For example, a Bellarke challenge obviously requires you to write about Bellarke, but depending on the other rules, the plot may come entirely from each individual writer without any additional prompting.

If it’s a wholly original/spontaneous idea.... it either is necessarily about plot and characters at once (ex: AU where X character is in Y place or examination of Z ship in a modern AU) or it comes as nothing but Mood. That mood might have elements of plot and bits of character but the best way I can describe it is that I develop both at once. For example, my Southern Gothic AU came to me as certain elements--a character who does X, a relationship with Y feel, Z ship--and I’m working on combining all of those into a narrative. Or, as another example, I currently have a vague desire to write something with a Slow Summer Vibe but I have no idea what it will be about or who will be in it.

But again, it’s often “I want to write an angsty Jonty AU” or “hmm what about a Bravenlarke fic particularly about being in a poly relationship” or “this song makes me picture Bellarke at the beach; let’s write that”--ideas that essentially capture both character and plot at once.

I don’t know if I’m doing a good job of describing this but I write so much for challenges and events that I don’t have a huge pool of data for ‘spontaneous ideas’ to analyze.

Day 40: How do you start a new story?

I feel like I kind of already answered this in the last question. The very first step is an Idea, obviously. That would either come, in part, from the challenge or event I’m participating in or the request I’m filling, or it arrives by itself from some bit of inspiration: a song, a thought about a certain character or relationship, a mood I’m feeling and want to capture, etc.

But I feel like this question is about what happens with the idea.

Most (though not all) of the time, I start with a process of brainstorming and outlining. I’ve talked about this elsewhere, but I start by just sitting down with a notebook and writing down my thoughts, in a conversational style--basically like these posts. I write down any images I have, any plot points that have already come to me, etc. Everything I know. Then I brainstorm some more elements, filling in all the stuff I don’t know. Then I distill the plot down to discrete plot points: an outline of the whole fic in order. What needs to happen and in what order? The outline is generally organized by scene, though it’s flexible: sometimes scenes can be combined; sometimes they need to be split. Sometimes I need to re-evaluate the outline later, but most stories are simple enough that this initial outline works for the whole writing process.

I always write in order. I cannot write out of order. I need to immerse myself in the narrative and that means that events follow logically from each other. Also, sometimes what I come up with in the moment in scene 1 can change what I want to happen in scene 5--not so drastically that I’m re-writing the outline, but drastically enough that I would have to rewrite scene 5 if it were already done. That’s too complicated for me. I think there are probably advantages, in terms of amount of fun to be had, as well as in capturing ideas before they disappear from your brain, in writing scenes as the spirit moves you rather than in order, but I just can’t do it. That’s not how my mind works.

In order to start a fic, or even a new scene, I need to know HOW it starts and some idea of how I will describe that opening image/event/whatever. I often practice this for days before I actually write. For example, I’m going to write another Sleeping Beauty scene soon and I know it starts with Clarke hearing conversation behind her, so I’ve been practicing what that dialogue might be and how I might describe her listening while looking at something else. When I have a strong sense of the opening and a decent sense of the rest--what needs to happen to move along the plot--I just start writing. I do most of my writing as sprints.

Sometimes I write without an outline, and it’s basically the same process as the last paragraph, except I only have the opening and a vague sense of what’s to come. I don’t do that often anymore. But I started a couple outline-less fics last summer when I was just desperate to break my block and didn’t really feel like planning and stuff. I just wanted to get words on a page. Thus I have a couple WIPs that are about 1,200 words long and then just abruptly reach a cliff’s edge and stop!! I don’t know if I’ll outline or not before I return to them but right now I’m thinking not.

#100 days of writing #100daysofwriting #my 100 days of writing #wowow this was long #i got so verbose #i slept too much and now i'm wired lol #hope to actually write tomorrow but who even knows............

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duhragonball · 5 years ago

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Nanwum IV toolboxkit

I have a love/hate relationship with the word “tool”. On the one hand, tools are awesome. I like holding a big screwdriver and thinking about all the screws I can loosen with it. I ordered a thing at work yesterday and I can’t wait for it to arrive. There’s a rush of power in knowing some object will solve a bunch of problems. Look out, screws.

On the other hand, it annoys me how people use the term “tool” in a more abstract sense, like statistical “tools” or using a flow chart to figure out what to do. I can’t hold any of that crap, so calling it a tool feels like a bait-and-switch. But I can appreciate the power of the term. If you can liken a thing to a power drill, then you have my attention.

Anyway, this weekend is for making preparations for National Novel Writing Month, which starts next Sunday, so I thought it would be useful to go over the stuff that I use to get me through it.

1) The NaNoWriMo website.

Back in 2017, I seriously considered not even bothering with the website, because I figured it had nothing to offer. I’m the one doing all the work, right? But tracking progress is an effective motivator, and I like being able to see a chart that shows how well I’m doing. There’s some bugs in it. For some reason it doesn’t show my Camp Nano April 2018 as being complete, and when I tried to fix it, it doubled the word count instead.

It’s also useful for where I’m at today. Now that I’ve done this thing a few times, I can measure current performance against past years. November 2018 was my personal best, so I’m going to use that as a model for this year. I don’t need to beat 2018-me, but I do need to remind myself that I’ve performed this well in the past.

2) George R. R. Martin motivational desktop wallpaper.

I started doing this as a joke, but looking at this dude sitting at his computer, not writing is a much more powerful motivator than I ever thought possible. The idea is that if I minimize the writing window to do something else, I have to look this dude in the eye before I can look up Robocop clips on YouTube. I’ve had months where I was struggling to meet the goal, and then I went “Oh, yeah, I forgot to change my desktop pic, and it pushes me over the finish line. It’s like Popeye eating spinach.

Now the Tone Police will take issue with something like this, and call it arrogant. “How dare you put down a highly successful fantasy author just to make yourself feel confident,” they’ll say as they wag their finger. “Don’t you care that you might be making procrastinators feel bad?” To that I say: fuck’em.

See, I’m a world-class procrastinator in my own right. I have to get hyped for this stuff every year, because that’s the only way I can build up enough momentum to see it through. Like all Sith Lords, I have to call upon all of my emotions -- fear, anger, pride, fernweh -- to fuel the creative monster. I don’t make a dime on this, so if I can’t take some bloody satisfaction out of it then what’s the point?

I’m pretty sure George doesn’t even know I do this, but in case he’s reading this, let me address him specifically: George, I’ve cranked out three of these Nanwums and you still haven’t finished Winds of Winter, which is well on its way to becoming the Duke Nukem Forever of modern fantasy. I don’t know if you got soft, like Rocky in Rocky IV, or maybe you’ve lost your confidence like Rocky in Rocky III, but you have to kindle a fire under your ass, even if it’s a silly fire, like fear of dying before the book goes to print, or getting it done just to spite assholes like me. But find something and use it.

3) Kenny Omega vs. Sonny Kiss, AEW Dynamite 10/21/2020

youtube

This was a first-round match in a tournament for the right to challenge for the AEW World title, and it was Kenny’s big return to singles action, so I guess the idea here was to make him look strong by having him crush Sonny Kiss in under 15 seconds. I’ve seen blowouts in wrestling before, but this one speaks to me on a different level, and I’m sorely tempted to swap out my GRRM image with this shot of in-the-zone Kenny Omega.

Because I feel this right now. This isn’t like last year or the year before, where I got behind working on stuff in October so I wasn’t fully prepared. I got all caught up a few weeks ago, and I have eight days to get ready. I haven’t written a thing in weeks, and I’m itching to get back to it. I want a big Day One total to start the month off, and seeing this match makes me want to aim even higher than 7000 words. Can I hit 10,000 in one day? The Cleaner sure thinks so. Clapclap-clap clap clap.

4) Focus Writer

You can check it out for yourself at https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/

The main selling point for Focus Writer is that it can be used for “distraction free” writing, in that it’s default setting makes it tricky to minimize the window to do other stuff. But I turned that off a while back. For my purposes, I just need the word counter.

One thing I learned while editing work instead of writing from scratch is that you can just set the word count goal to 100 words. That way, the percentage displayed at the bottom of the screen will keep track of how many words you’ve written in that session. So if you write 1275 new words, the counter will say 1275%.

I used to set actual goals, like 3500 words for the day or whatever, but I found myself constantly trying to calculate what 53% of that is, and that ended up being a huge distraction in itself. So now I just stick to the 100 word “goal” and use it to track my actual progress, rather than setting lofty goals that I may not need to actually hit. The Nano website does that for me anyway.

5) The Adventures of Dumplin

I’m essentially adapting the events of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 1 into this story, so I could break out my PS3 and play it through again to remind me of all the stuff I wanted to use from 2015, but it’s a lot easier to just watch someone else play it instead. Team FourStar’s playthrough of the Xenoverse games is some of their best material, as far as I’m concerned, and knowing this is one of my go-to references is going to make this November pretty awesome.

I’m not sure I could, or should, work Dumplin into my fic. If I did, he couldn’t be the same guy who saved the day in this LP series, because I’m having Luffa do all that. Early on, I envisioned a scene where she wakes up one morning after a night of heavy drinking and finds Dumplin in bed with her, but that seemed a little too goofy to use. But I want you to have that mental picture anyway, so I’m writing about it here.

6) Diet Pepsi

Straight Edge, Hard Core. Stephen King’s a wuss for using cocaine to help him write.

#nanwum iv #i'm gonna fuck this november up proper

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aforgottenballad · 5 years ago

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Feelings on Sally Face Episode 5

Under a read more for obvious reasons, includes heavy spoilers and potentially triggering subjects.

Disclaimer: I might miss-remember some parts of the story or have missed a piece of lore that would settle minor complaints. I am however disappointed in the ending as a whole and in some of the very harmful tropes included in it. But I’m also just some dude online with an opinion, and you can stop reading at any time.

Rant under cut.

Alright ya’ll. I’ve had a couple days to digest the ending to Sally Face. While playing, I genuinely enjoyed some elements of the game. The chapter started on a dark but nearly hopeful note. Neil and Ash were still working to bring the cult down. It seemed likely Sal would be resurrected. Todd had apparently escaped the hospital, and that had potential to be either a very very good or very very bad thing. Maple was possessed by whatever fucked up the souls of the other apartment tenants, but hey! At least her and Neil weren’t in on the cult like so many fans predicted. Unfortunately, this series has a way of getting darker and darker as it progresses. First thing that bugged me was the lore drop about how the cult was founded. A Native American tribe. Right. Because why wouldn’t Indigenous peoples be in a story without being part of some mystical occult backstory, portrayed as mysterious historical props who worshiped something dark and evil instead of being portrayed as human beings.

But I continued. I really enjoyed playing as Ashley and getting some insight into her character. I enjoyed the task of planting the C4 in the temple... catacomb... thing. We get to see Travis again! I was excited that a lot of us were right about him being indoctrinated but also working to fight the cult from the inside. We knew he had some good in him after all.

When Ash tries to resurrect Sal, we get even more insight into her character, and unfortunately a lot of it is “Grieving, distraught, and full of self-blame”. I want to hug her. Sal’s spirit is apparently revived by those pyramids, and he can dimension warp. We meet Jim, or what’s left of him, and he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore but agrees to help Sal anyway. This is, narratively speaking, weird as hell. His entire character arc for four episodes was “Loved his family so much he sacrificed himself to save them”, and suddenly he’s just some glowy dude attached to Magic Spirit Tubes who doesn’t give half a shit. I guess it makes sense as a way to wrap up why he’s been able to drift between worlds but... if he doesn’t care about any of that anymore why help Sal? And what about Rosenberg? Is she like Jim, or do we just have to assume she’s magical because her family helped found the cult? (Explained in an easter egg later on, because this game doesn’t just drop its lore. Not even the CRUCIAL lore. You have to achievement hunt for it.) Sal can enter various doors in the House In The Void to step into alternate realities, and this was my favorite aspect of the game. Each door has a different art style, and I really liked seeing these alternate realities. Steve probably worked the hardest and longest on drawing out and coding these scenes. I genuinely applaud the man for the work put into this endeavor I’m assuming all by himself.

Meanwhile, Ash tries to unbind Larry’s soul from the tree house he died in, which doesn’t work. Did we ever find out why his body was never found? No? Ok that seems important.

After each puzzle, Sal’s body is restored a little bit at a time, but even after turning on all the pyramids and solving the mysteries behind all three doors, he can’t make it back to the “real” world. So Ashley kills herself. Or tries to. Because apparently that’s the only way to complete the ritual, and also because she feels really bad about not unbinding Larry’s soul and about not fixing Sal. Again, I want to hug her, but I have to watch her hurt herself instead, cause Steve doesn’t let us have nice things.

Okay, so this is a gorey game. We know. But one of the BIGGEST no-nos suicide prevention networks will tell you when consulting them about mental illness and suicide in media is NOT to show a graphic suicide in progress. Steve is aware a lot of his fans are A) Young teens to young adults B) Struggling with mental illness.

His main character suffers from depression and anxiety and this fact has resonated with hundreds of fans. It’s irresponsible to purposefully include a graphic suicide attempt, but he did it last chapter, showing a gunshot suicide’s aftermath, then he did it again with Ashley. Call me a wiener if you like, point out the graphic scenes from earlier in the game and call me a hypocrite for not being upset by that, but you have to admit the Spongebob-close-up-shot look to those scenes have a totally different feel. Speaking as someone who actually has a pretty thick skin, but is concerned about the fans who might be in a worse place or who could be as young as 12, that was fucked up.

Anyway, Ash’s attempt doesn’t take, because she’s struck by magic lightning, which infuses Sal’s soul into her. Now her arm is one of those stretchy sticky hands, but with bio luminescence and the ability to kick cultist ass. I actually thought this part was really cool, and was super ready to go on a cultist smacking spree. But again, we can’t have nice things and before we get to do anything badass we have to look at gruesome imagery again.

You get to see Void Larry, who is now old and a wizard or something, but first...

Surprise! Maple and Neil are dead! Not just dead, but hung up from hooks covered in blood! And naked!

Hey?? Hey Steve????? You know how they’re both POC?? And that lynching imagery is EXTREMELY NOT GOOD?!!????

“Two white people are hung up with them” YEAH? WELL WE’VE NEVER SEEN THOSE CHARACTERS BEFORE. THEY’RE JUST RANDOM PEOPLE.

I’ve seen people arguing “The white characters go through terrible things too” but it’s still really fucked up that by the end of the game, every. Single. Person of color. In the game. Has died. Gruesomely. It’s a gorey, dark, bleak game, and white characters die as well, gruesomely; but not all of them. None of them that are named are shown strung up, naked. That’s fucked up. That isn’t okay.

There are also a total of three gay characters in this game. One is Todd, who goes through the standard “bad bad stuff” the game is used to, is the white one, and he survives. One is Neil, one of the aforementioned people of color who died horribly and who only really existed to be Todd’s boyfriend and therefore a source of angst for Todd when he dies. The third is Travis, another man of color, and an abuse victim, who dies to fulfill his character arc as an abuse victim, which is also really shitty to see over and over again as an abuse survivor.

Look, I know Steve pulled a lot of inspiration from old TV shows and horror series that probably weren’t all “politically correct”. I know it’s always been kind of an edgy and dark game. I know Steve probably didn’t think about the repercussions of all his narrative choices. But I also know he actively ignored some people offering to educate him on issues he has no experience with. I know he worked hard on this game, by himself, but we as fans have paid him and waited for years and it isn’t selfish or ungrateful to be hurt and disappointed. He knows his audience is diverse, he knows a lot of us were attracted to the game because of a gender nonconforming main character, a main character who struggles with mental illness, a cast that isn’t 100% white and conventionally attractive. Of course he didn’t need to change the plot for us! It’s his game, his vision, but the least he could have done is research how to not actively hurt and alienate a good portion of us. I don’t think anyone is bad or racist for still finding solace in the characters and in what the story was before this, I’m not attacking you personally, whoever is reading this. I, personally, still have loads of Sally Face art in my queue, I still have active role plays going on, my Sal wig is sitting like 8 feet away waiting for the next time my friends want to take cosplay pictures. I still enjoyed playing the game for the most part. Without this game I wouldn’t even know most of my current friends. It’s just really shitty how it ended like this, and a lot of people I talk to daily either feel too sick to even talk about the game anymore after seeing people like them treated like trash by the narrative or try to focus on the good things they got out of just being part of the fandom but don’t feel comfortable supporting the developer anymore.

Even if there wasn’t all these hurtful tropes packed into the game, and yes, even after unlocking the epilogue, the game just feels cold. It feels rushed, probably because of how much time went into the alternate dimension gimmick. I wish Steve had at least consulted people over the script. It felt like not only did he pour all his work into experimenting with the mixed media, he also just took whatever expectations the fans had and went somewhere completely different just to have his story be “unpredictable”. That isn’t always a good thing. Plot twists, downer endings, dark and scary imagery, all of these things can be done beautifully, but in this case it felt like he just wanted the series to end. The game didn’t subvert expectations, it fed into the harmful stereotypes and tropes all the fans were so hopeful it wouldn’t.

...On top of not making any sense unless you’re able to 100% all the puzzles. And even when you do, it feels like all the bad stuff happened for no reason. The ending doesn’t conclude anything. Even when you unlock the epilogue, all it tells you is that a third of the world has died and that the main cast haven’t accomplished much besides “Trying to help”. Sal and Todd have powers now, but that isn’t elaborated on much. Larry’s spirit is missing, if he even exists in any plane at all anymore. It doesn’t even mention what’s going on with Ash. It just feels like nothing mattered.

#sally face #long post #analysis #sally face spoilers #chapter 5 spoilers

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jeremy-ken-anderson · 5 years ago

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FFXV First Impressions

Impressions So Far (something like 2 hours in):

That opening scene of pushing the car was Actually Clever. It was trying to be clever, but if you succeed and ARE clever “trying to be clever” is allowed!

Running across open ground is a little boring. Definite “Open World-itis” there. They tried to mitigate by including fast travel back to your car. It...sort of mitigates it? But if you’re willing to shrink player perception of the space by including fast travel, then you should show less space and have more space implied.

Night is legit scary. One of the characters mentioned you needed to get in by dark because demons come out and I’m like, “Sure, but I’m an adventurer. Isn’t fighting demons my thing?” That night: I’m running around looking for a hunt target and the asphalt on the road in front of me starts boiling and then up pop a pair of red eyes (literally that’s all you can see of this thing if you’re not standing within 10′ of it). It’s an Iron Giant, and it is level thirty. At this point I am level three. I run. I run immediately and two of my friends still nearly die. I love how they handled night.

The conversation engine needed more time. It’s neat, and a lot of it is good, but it’s not good enough and like human face art it’s gotta be really great to fool humans because we’re used to focusing on it. Two hours in I’ve already hit two or three uncanny-valley type moments where people repeated lines - not just barks but whole conversations. When it’s barks it’s a person having a catch phrase. When it’s a conversation you’re suddenly watching Groundhog Day.

There are parts of this that remind me of the hashtags in KH3 - this weird and too-visible desire of the designers to incorporate some aspect of modern society and its relationship with media but it’s fallen apart because the media isn’t old enough (or the designer not prescient/deep enough) for the designer to conceive of how it really plays out, what it really means in a fantasy space. The mix of having digital GPS yet needing to get rumors about where stuff is on your local map from the local diners is...a weird choice.

When i realized you could mix any ol’ piece of junk you found lying around with your magic to make better magic? Yeah, that’s pretty hot. I wish the system had a faster cooldown for spells (As it is, spells are basically grenades you have to construct yourself before battle, using resources you only find in a couple locations - magic mining nodes, basically - plus whatever physical stuff you wanna combine with them. The magic nodes recharge daily, but you can only make 3 spell-grenades per grenade-slot and only get 4 grenade-slots as far as I can tell). Noctis, your main character, has MP, which should be WP because it’s used exclusively for Warping, at least so far in the game. Personally I think having to spend longer crafting a spell and then being able to use MP to cast it would be rockin’. Like, I would sit there farming up every possible combination of items and spell energy to fill out my spellbook. You could have crazy spells that use 3/4 of your mp gauge, and then you have to duck behind a rock to recover like a proper black mage would have to do and just...I don’t know, I had a similar response of “This was almost as awesome as the magic system I came up with just now that I haven’t tested” back when FFVIII came out. Who knows if my idea for a magic system would actually be any good in practice. It certainly feels good in my head, and frankly I appreciate how close this one came to awesome because this feeling of speculating about the one change to fix everything is really fulfilling for me.

I like the fact that there’s treasure points on your map, and food points on the map, and mining points on the map, but then every now and then you find something valuable that isn’t on the map. It makes wandering around feel just a little more rewarding - It’s better than the fast-travel system at making the open world feel like an okay decision.

I like how wide the range of survivability is! I ran from that level thirty Iron Giant, but I did a level ELEVEN hunt while I was still level THREE. Playing the fights well clearly matters.

I also really like the system for wounds! Basically you have a third score. Normal games have Max HP and Current HP. This game adds in “Current Max HP” which can be between the two. If you get knocked to 0 Current HP your character’s seriously injured and you’re literally limping around hoping for one of your buddies to heal you or trying to get out of immediate danger so you can drink a potion (or trying to limp and drink both at once). While this is happening your Current Max is bleeding out. Let’s say you had 100 max hp and you bleed down to 90 while you pull a potion out. A potion heals you by 50% of your actual Max (so, to 50) and if you can catch a breather out of immediate harm’s way you’ll quickly recover to 90, your Current Max HP. But you won’t recover to 100. Outside of combat, your Current Max rises by 1 every 3-4 seconds until it hits your actual Max HP. This makes it possible to get attacked again when you haven’t really recovered from the last fight, which...isn’t a feeling you get in a lot of these games, especially ones that have regenerating health systems as robust as this one. Just two hours in I’ve already had some really tense encounters where things started going really wrong for me and I pulled out of it but it built that sense of being winded, of being really rattled by the fight, in a way that doesn’t tend to happen.

I think Youtube videos about the game have already said this but I really like that you make your own photo album as you play. By the end of the game you’ve literally got the 200 most meaningful moments to you in that album, or at least your favorite pics. It’s just brilliant, in terms of making a retrospective of stuff that made the game great for you, personally, as the person who played this playthrough of their game.

The food looks delicious, and I’m precisely as disturbed by how much I want to eat it as various people are by how sexy they find cat versions of people in the new Cats movie. There’s one part of my brain that is telling me that it is cartoon food and not real (and that some of it, like the mystery lunchmeat “sushi,” would likely be Super Gross if you could smell it) and it is correct but is also incapable of shutting up the part of my brain that finds the same fake food appetizing.

The collector in me is starting by buying all the skills that grant AP. I have doubts as to whether the game is long enough that I’ll recoup the investment. Like, the one that makes it so Big Catches grant AP costs 99 AP. I think it makes them give 2 AP. Am I actually going to fish up 50 Big Catches in the fishing minigame? (It might even only increase the AP gains by 1, so I’d have to fish up a hundred to profit.) Well fuck it, I know I’m gonna buy every damn skill on every grid anyway so I might as well start with the ones that speed up that process, no matter by how small a degree. The camping and food ones, at the least, were no-brainers.

I have trouble telling the main characters’ voices apart. Say what you will about how dumb Donald sounds in Kingdom Hearts 3, but if Sora, Goofy, Donald, Kairi, King Mickey, Yen Sid, Axel, and Riku were all having a conversation there is no point where you’d be confused about who was talking even if your eyes were closed the whole time. The voices and speech patterns are as recognizable as the silhouettes, in the KH series. Not so much, in FFXV.

I love the way Prompto moves in combat. He is literally always tripping and scrambling to get back up. Seriously, if you have the game play the training session so you can see his move cycle in detail. He spends like half of it with at least one hand on the ground, and I just love it. It’s so dynamic, so expressive, so goofy, so immediately endearing. And then you think, “Wait, we armed our derpiest party member with a gun? What is wrong with us?”

#FFXV #review

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makeste · 6 years ago

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I 100% agree with your assessment on the Overhaul arc in bnha. Started series when that was the most recent arc and completely lost interest in the series halfway through. Trying to get started again, though. What would you change about the arc as a whole?

first off, anon, I hope I haven’t inadvertently spoiled anything! you said you’re trying to get back into it now, so just a heads up that this post is also going to contain spoilers for the end of the arc, though that’s probably obvious lol.

also, now that I’m a dozen chapters past it, I’m very happy to say things are moving along smoothly again and it reminds me of the “old” BnHA. all of the little things I missed so much are back. so it does get better! I’m really pushing to get fully caught up with the manga myself now.

so now! regarding this question, there are really two ways I could answer. because truthfully, the most honest answer I could give to “what would you change about this arc?” is “I wouldn’t have had it in the first place” lol. but that’s just me. even if I took out all of the stuff that annoyed me, even if it was more cleanly executed, this arc was just never going to be one of my favorites. it explores some themes that are important, but aren’t really connected to the things I enjoy the most about the series. the focus is too narrow at the expense of a lot of my faves who got excluded. and the tone is just too dark. which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy angst or when Shit Gets Real, but, how to put this… it has more of a DC vibe than a Marvel one to me. it’s more Dark Knight than Infinity War. and that’s just not quite my taste. so yeah, if we’re talking full control over the manga, I would probably have gutted the entire thing and chucked it completely and done something else. not sure what, but it would have been really different.

but since that answer is kind of a cop-out, here are some of the things I would change if I had to leave the main framework of the arc in place, but was allowed to make smaller changes here and there.

speed up/condense some of the stuff that happens after they encounter Eri and prior to the rescue op. it felt like it took way too long to get to the action. we met Eri in chapter 129 and they didn’t commence the rescue until 9 chapters later. some of the stuff that happens in between is important – especially the All Might stuff and the reveal about Nighteye’s premonition – but Kiri’s fight went on longer than necessary, and then there was no need for them all to meet up, start to plan Eri’s rescue, break off to gather more information, meet up again a few days later, and then finally start the raid. that was too much

I would put Kiri’s flashback in his first fight (the one against knifey stabby man). despite me having just said that the fight went on for too long, lol. but this would be a good way to break it up to make it more interesting. and then I could…

put Ochako and Tsuyu back in the arc and give one of them (or both of them – tag team) Kiri’s second fight instead. if their quirks don’t match up as well against Shield Monk and Chance the Rappa then just change those later two’s quirks to something more interesting. their original quirks were pretty boring anyway

put Ryuukyuu in the arc too bc obviously the girls should be accompanied by a grown-up just like the boys were. that part made sense

speed up Tamaki’s fight (like, don’t even bother trying to make it a challenge. just let Tamaki have his time to shine and kick their asses with no trouble), and have Fat Gum stay with him (just toss in an extra bad guy for him to fight) and speed up the Hot Gum reveal. and then just have the two of them get cut off from the others afterward

and I’m not sure what, but have Aizawa actually do something. as opposed to nothing. which is what he pretty much ended up doing

(ETA: I forgot to account for Kirishima during the raid! so now what I’m thinking is that he ends up making it to the final battle along with Aizawa, Nighteye, and Deku, but ends up being plot abducted along with Aizawa. because that’s a very interesting combination to me, and having to look out for his student might be a good way to nerf Aizawa a bit while still letting him actually fight. then maybe Kirishima gets injured much like what happened with him and Fat Gum. and then Aizawa steps back in to beat whoever it is they’re fighting. because it’s probably someone with a more cinematic quirk than Chrono tbh. anyway. so yeah, bonus Dadzawa feels. eventually he will come to realize that all of his kids are, in fact, problem children.)

actually, you know what, since most of my changes would just be little tweaks to the way things play out once the raid starts, I’ll just write up my version of a chapter-by-chapter outline instead

delete most of chapter 138 and have them get to the basement by the end of that chapter

139, Tamaki and FG stay behind to fight. Tamaki has his flashback and kicks some ass

140, we finish up the fight, with FG’s part of it. but the two of them find their forward progress blocked off by Irinaka. the chapter then ends with the ladies staring down another group of villains

141, a quick flashback shows how Irinaka separated Tsu, Ocha, and Ryuukyuu from the rest. Ryuu takes on the stronger villain (dragon time bitches) while the girls tag team a second bad guy. I have no idea how this would go, and it would take more time and effort and planning on my part than I currently am willing to devote since it’s a hypothetical scenario. but I have no doubt it could be very badass. we’ll give this fight two chapters, maybe, so we can have flashbacks and some more in-depth action. so that’s 141 and 142

143, we get League of Villains antics and flashbacks

144, the conclusion of that, and they take down Irinaka

145 and 146, Mirio vs Overhaul, with the others catching up at the end of 146

147, Aizawa (ETA: and Kirishima) get plot abducted and have their own little fight scene. Nighteye gets impaled trying to help the others escape. make that a bigger moment and show a bit more of his fighting beforehand, and make that the cliffhanger. since I’ve now added Kirishima to the mix, this may possibly take up an extra chapter

148, Deku turns back, activates 20% OFA, and fights Overhaul for a little bit but doesn’t do too well. Eri comes back and offers herself in exchange for the others’ safety. the ladies come barging in to turn the tide, having smashed their way through the labyrinth

149, Deku and Eri vs Overhaul part 1. first half of Overhaul’s flashback. establish his backstory and his plan and the boss’s objections. end with 100% OFA

150, Deku and Eri vs Overhaul part 2. second half of Overhaul’s flashback. show him using his quirk to fuck up the boss. (or at least, show enough to make it clear beyond a doubt that that’s what happened. you had no problem showing what happened to Eri and making that abundantly clear beyond what was necessary.) show him afterwards talking about the boss’s sudden decline in health, and how he’ll be taking charge until he’s healthy. show him monologuing about how this is all for the good of the family and one day the boss will be able to understand that too. “I’m grateful to you, old man. so until then, just sleep.” Deku and Eri take him out; chapter ends with the KO punch

151, the aftermath. basically what we got in 159

152, grand theft auto

153, Nighteye feels

bam. end of arc

so that’s more or less it. if we also speed up the pre-rescue stuff, I think this arc could easily be at least 10 chapters shorter. they can cut most of the villain flashbacks, too, since we don’t really need those. we got along just fine without villain flashbacks for the most part before this arc; only Tomura and Stain had them, and we managed perfectly well. also, give them more interesting designs, seriously. having them all try to stick to a theme/uniform with only slight variations was really dull, and there were moments when I genuinely lost track of who was who. none of the heroes look alike even though they’re all on the same team. it’s fine lol

anyways, so that’s my answer, I guess! thank you for the ask!

#bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #anon asks

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shoushatohaisha · 7 years ago

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review: hajimari no kyojin (osaka 6/1)

so. hello. i usually write up my butai thoughts as, um, 100+ tweet threads in the immediate wake of whatever i just saw, but this time around i thought i'd work them out into a proper report, of a sort. if you, too, have seen this show already and want to talk about it... please. any time. always.

about reviewing: this is my very favorite 2.5D franchise, ever. but this is also a review, not a cheerleading exercise, so not every single thing i have to say is unrelentingly positive. having said that, i respect kinoshita, wada, suga-zachou, and the staff at large more than just about any creative team in this corner of japanese theater fandom so like. i'm not here to drag, lol.

about spoilers: i talk about the plot elements covered but try to avoid spoiling any of the fun production surprises. :) happy to do a more spoilery play-by-play later if folks are curious.

about length: i just checked and it's 2400 words im so sorry.

without further ado...

first of all, i admit that based on the preview clips i doubted, and i was swiftly taken to task for doubting. IM SORRY WORRY-SAN i trust u implicitly and i should have known better. after the major changes in shinka no natsu, i was concerned that bringing back the revolving stage and the original opening theme would feel stale/regressive. it did not. while they did bring back the revolving element they also extended the stage backward and added a second level behind a full stage height projection screen – the second level was used to do some neat staging for flashbacks/parallels and the screen was used to, how shall we say this, up their projection game in a major way, which i frankly did not think was possible. i will not spoil the details but it was pretty great, on a purely technical level.

i also realized that a lot of the repetition – opening with the bike scene, bringing back the original opening credits music, the staging, etc – is the "look back" over the last couple years that i'd expected to come this fall. they are very obviously already preparing for the end – you could think of this as part one of their last show, with the fall as part two. the show opens with a restaging of sixth grader hinata seeing the little giant on tv for the first time – then the current karasuno team take the place of the tv and hinata joins them for a team jog. "karasuno, fight!" "oh!" "fight!" "oh!" only then each character calls out their signature line from the show so far. "uchi no renchuu wa chanto tsuyoi" / "mou tobenai karasu nante yobasenai" / "murabito b mo tatakaemasu!"

and haha. let me tell you. BOY, DID I FEEL THINGS. a lot of things. i think yachi got me the worst but they were all real bad. (i have so many feelings about yachi's story and what a beautiful job saitou ami did with her character on stage. god. ;_;)

the theme of this play was the role of captain – what makes a good captain, what a captain does for the team, and how to step into those shoes when the captain is gone. the johzenji match is fun, but here, in a sense, it exists more or less to set up the wakutani match – (re)establishing daichi's importance so that his absence feels like the gut punch it is. and fully settling the weight of that responsibility on ennoshita's shoulders, as both daichi's substitute on the court and the captain-in-waiting.

with that in mind, the rival schools: imo it wasn't strictly necessary to cast full teams for each school – each match got its own dedicated act, and unlike, for example, nekoma/datekou in karasuno fukkatsu (which had a similar story structure), there aren't really any individual characters on these rival schools who have a role as such other than terushima and takeru. (you know, the captains. see above. XD) so in theory one could get this done with, like, one actor for each captain and then an ensemble cast playing the rest of the team across both matches. HOWEVER, having all those bodies allows them to do super cool stuff visually, and why force yourself to create the illusion of a full team if you don't have to? i.e., /i/ sure am not complaining, isn't it nice to have $$$ to achieve the max vision of your choreographer. XD

i also have no doubt that the kids playing these other characters are doing whatever they can to create a character within the ensemble, and i suspect there's plenty for repeat viewers to pick up on, esp during say the johzenji match (see below). however for the first time viewer following the main flow of the story it's more or less a very large ensemble cast.

the johzenji chaos was well expressed, haha, there was so damn much going on all the time that i hardly knew where to look. (i've also seen opinions on j-twitter that that diluted the impact and i can see that too – it worked for me as a "funny" match that didn't cross the line into comic relief, but ymmv.) i thought the final scene with misaki would pack more of a punch, but i fully expect them to cry at daisenshuuraku so that might fill in the last 10% that's missing rn.

wakutani are another Good Dance Team. one did get a sense, stylistically, of fukurodani- and nekoma-lite with johzenji and wakunan, respectively – i assume that was intentional. mirroring the cats vs owls match, as it were. yanagihara rin's takeru was like… scary?? i had to rewatch those episodes this weekend to see if i'd just forgotten something, but no, stage takeru is not so much reliable middle brother as scowly quiet tough guy. he looked like a kyoutani tbh, and looking at the kid actually cast for kyoutani, one wonders if someone in casting mixed up some paperwork or something. having said that, yanagihara was great at being the character he was, i enjoyed what he did on stage. i'm just not sure that character was takeru. XD (edit: ok having just rewatched, i have to revise this somewhat, i think a big part of my impression was due to being too far back to properly see his expressions the first time around -- up close he was much smilier, and bc i was thinking about it i noticed some nice details like him going over for a family hug afterward.) otoh big post-match scene – all of wakutani, actually – was really good. v effective, i heard sniffles around me.

during this match, johzenji reappeared dressed as takeru's family: FUCKING HILARIOUS omg, everyone involved has clearly learned how to do this right wrt blocking, the very fine line between comic relief and intrusion, etc, after the, er, shaky shousha to haisha experiment of kuroken doubling as oikawa's fangirls. seichou shita na, errone.

also, some great wire work for hinata and takeru – you could tell kenta is really comfortable up there these days. the first time the wires came into play one of the women behind me went "UWO!" which, when a japanese theatergoer makes a noise out loud, that's a true sign something's impressive. XD

nekoma vs fukurodani: Yeah, That Happened. it is a testament to how well done karasuno vs wakunan was that i didn't just spend the entire time screeching BRING BACK CATS VS OWLS because fjkdajfkdlsfjd KYAA. another good staging moment – they used mirrors to create the effect of two full teams playing at a crowded gymnasium, it was brill. i won't spoil some of the fun details but vvjakdlfjdf. and tbh i think the best performance of the four was probably shouri's?? not that this is news but istg idk how someone so soft offstage does THAT on stage. is it this "acting" thing you speak of.

new bokuaka: i mean it was clear some of this material was meant for yoshimoto kouki and i did kinda miss him – i appreciate higashi-san's pinch hitting and he did a solid job. but. ah well. HAVING SAID THAT. fucking "michi wo tsukurimasu yo" i mean we should all be grateful it wasn't kouki and yuuki or it would have just been a fucking fanfic on stage. it was still bad and i don't even go here. XD

and last but not least, arita ushiwaka kenji: not exactly the world's most natural line delivery but that's fine because, i mean, he's ushiwaka. and his physical presence was perfect. which was about all he was called on to do in this particular show, ahaha.

now, for karasuno. and specifically, for my son, kawahara kazuma. remember what i said approximately a thousand words ago, about captains and captains in waiting and stepping up to the plate? (or onto the court, as it were.) ennoshita's story was the heart of the wakutani match and kazuma carried the second act. he was. so. good. he had good material to work with, of course, but he made it even better. i was saying to a friend that in retrospect i think this is one of the very very few parts of the series that actually played better and more emotionally affecting on stage than in the source material (as opposed to differently good/differently affecting). in the manga/anime, you can only see what the paneling or the frame shows you, and those initial paneling/framing choices are focused on the drama of CAPTAIN DOWN. but on the stage, daichi goes down… and off to the side you see ennoshita freeze. and from that moment on, for kazuma, it's go time. he doesn't let up until the end of post-match scene in (here) the locker room – which, jesus, that scene. it packs ten times the punch it does in the anime. because of kazuma.

sorry if i sound like a crazy person here ahaha. but like. like, imagine you have been acting since childhood, you've studied dance with famous choreographers and innovators, you had a main role in The Franchise That Changed 2.5D as a teenager, you've done a solo album, you have a serious history in performing arts... and you get cast in what was initially the smallest role of the entire karasuno team. and you take it! and pull your weight! kazuma was a team player for three years and he deserved this chance to let his actual skills shine so much. ;_; because i don't necessarily think he would have been better in any of the other roles than his actual teammates – but i do think he is a much better actor than several of his actual teammates. and he finally got the opportunity to show that.

anyway, when it came time for curtain calls, the applause swelled noticeably for kazuma – a louder ovation than anyone except kagechan and kenta. and one of those people clapping her hands off, say in row 20, just a random row choice, was definitely tearing up at the same time.

IN OTHER KARASANEWS. kt-san. LIVE IN PERSON KT-SAN BACK IN THE ROLE HE WAS MEANT FOR cries into my hands i love him daichi-saaaaaaaaaan. very occasionally his delivery reminded me he's a model not an actor, if you know what i mean, but like, for the vast part it didn't matter because he is naturally such a perfect fit. have i mentioned i love him.

new suga: mmmmm. he looked and moved fine but his line delivery did not convince me. tbf it's not like suga has a huge role to play in these matches so 1) it's not a huge deal 2) he didn't get much chance to get into the character. either he'll get better or he won't, and if he doesn't it's not going to sink the next play or anything. he seems like a nice enough kid, i wish him well!

kageyama tatsuya: still can't yell and enunciate at the same time. loved that they brought back the archer analogy from shinka no natsu though!! it was one of my favorite things about his kageyama, and it's nice that it's something he "owns" instead of imitating/inheriting from tatsunari.

tsukishima & yamaguchi: miura kairi continues to get even better, i'm so pleased. <3 also, i love love love that they still use the musical motif from shousha to haisha for yamaguchi's jump float serve. it was the same in shinka no natsu, it's the same here. THE TSUKKIYAMA WAS REAL CUTE, great detail work before and after the serve as well as after tsukki's block(s). as for tsukishima, much as they brought back kageyama's archer imagery, they brought back tsukki's fancy katana kill block. (they didn't waste kondou shouri, either, i'll leave it at that.)

last but not least, MY ACTUAL SON AND FEELINGS TWIN, SUGA KENTA: ok like. to set the scene here. i have mad respect for this kid and also love him to death as a human. i think he puts more thought into this production than anyone else in the cast – he is practically worry-san's AD. and he clearly has a lot of real deep thoughts and feelings about the source material. so deep in fact that it took a while for me to come around to his hinata because while, for example, tatsunari's kageyama could have walked straight off my television screen, kenta went down to the manga and built hinata up from there. he didn't have a choice – he's nothing like murase ayumu's voice. all too often we, and i include myself here, think of the two dimensions in 2.5D as anime, rather than manga... but just as there's a big gap between the two dimensions of animation and the three dimensions of live theater, there's as big a gap again between static black-and-white drawing, and movement and color and sound. and when i looked at kenta's hinata as something created solely from furudate's art style, it all slotted into place for me. (naturally, ymmv.)

it also took kenta longer than some of the others, i think, to portray all of what he wanted to. shoen hinata was pretty yelly, and pretty single-register yelly. hinata is a yelly character, of course, but the balance between that hinata and Serious Match Hinata was out of whack at first. this got better and better with every show. and then—

his encounter with ushiwaka here. was IT. it was what i was looking for all this time. his delivery of hinata's big line there was like – i think maybe i clapped my hands over my mouth, unclear, bc it was like the final missing piece and i was so happy. kentaaaaa. ;____;

part of me wonders if this is what kenta's always had in his head but maybe couldn't get his face/voice to express the way he wanted it? OR, IT'S KENTA, SO MAYBE IT WAS ON PURPOSE and his previous Serious Hinata was meant to be like, just a feral hunger child whereas this is the kid who experienced the heartbreak of losing to seijou. i would love to ask him tbh. XD

anyway, my son, after five plays continues to grow in his portrayal of this character. kenta is the heart of gekidan haikyuu in so many ways, and i will be at their graduation show if it kills me.

(breathes out) i think that's. everything. a best setter award to anyone who read this far, and feel free to ask if there's anything specific you want to know about? i will be seeing it again this weekend for daisenshuuraku and will be sure to report back on who cried, etc. all hail volleyball stage the end. 🏐

#review #engeki haikyuu #hajimari no kyojin #im sorry i have so many feelings #AND THIS IS THE EDITED VERSION #i spared you my intensive theories on how kazuma ended up in this role in the first place #i just #look #i love this production so much

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beatrice-otter · 7 years ago

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An Open Letter to AO3 Regarding Fandom Tagging Changes

ETA: Checking the archive this morning, I found that the Wonder Woman (2017) tag no longer redirects to DCEU, but takes you directly to Wonder Woman (2017). Also, someone said that even last night, you could (from the DCEU page) click on the "Fandoms" list on the sidebar and filter to just Wonder Woman (2017), but I don't know if that worked last night when the tags were merged, because in my poking around in disbelief, I forgot the 'filter by fandom' option on the sidebar. I am writing another message to support thanking them for fixing the issue.

ETA 2: @melannen checked with the DCEU taggers and confirmed that redirecting the Wonder Woman (2017) tag was a mistake and not part of an overarching plan for DCEU or any other megafandom. Somebody clicked the wrong button, I guess, and they fixed it as soon as they figured out it had happened. Thank you to all the people working hard at tag wrangling and support to keep the archive going, and fix problems like this.

My original letter is below the read-more.

This is what I just sent off to AO3's Support. Hi! First, before I get started, I want you to know that I have loved AO3 since its beginning. I know how huge an endeavor it is, and how much work goes on behind the scenes (all of it on a volunteer basis), and I am grateful for it. I also understand that there are situations where there is no good answer to a problem because of either technical issues behind the scenes or conflicting needs/wants of users, and I actively try to be charitable in how I interpret the decisions the archive makes, for the reasons stated above. I know that large fandom trees were straining your servers, and you needed to find a solution. The flexibility of the tagging structure on AO3 is about 90% of the reason I love the archive. And by that I mean, the ability to use tags to find EXACTLY what I want to read, instead of slogging through hundreds (or thousands, in some fandoms) of fics I am not interested, is THE MAJOR THING AO3 has always (until now) done better than any other fic archive or website. My main frustrations with the archive have been when tags aren't granular enough--when I want them to be more specific than they are. For example, when I wish that character tags were filtered by whether someone was a major or minor character in the story, or when I'm trying to find fic specifically about X-Men: Days of Future Past and get redirected to all XMFC fic. And I don't think I'm alone in this. So any change to make them less granular, even when it might make the back end run smoother, is a big problem for me. In particular, your that solution to current tagging woes (merging sub-fandom tags into one over-arching fandom tag) has broken the archive for me in some of my fandoms, and (if it is rolled out across other fandoms in the same way) will break all of those fandoms for me, rendering the archive virtually useless for doing anything other than reading fic I have already bookmarked. As a first step, merging the individual movies of the Star Wars Original Trilogy together into one tag is a pretty good decision, and I was actually surprised that it hadn't been done already. It works because the three movies of that trilogy tell one unified story with pretty much the same characters. There may be people who love one movie in it and hate the others, but I've never met any; and the fandom has not historically split along intra-trilogy lines. There are very few people who, when they click on "Return of the Jedi" and get all OT fics, are going to be seriously upset or discommoded by it (and many who would actually PREFER to get all fics in that trilogy). So when I saw the tumblr post saying you were going to do that, I went, "oh, yeah, good idea, that makes sense," and went about my day. I assumed that other instances of merging things would be similarly merging things that were already a unified fannish category with little individual distinction and went on about my business. Then I found out that all of the DCEU movies have been merged together into one fandom. That, my friends, is WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL OF WAX. Unlike the three movies of the OT, there are NO characters that are shared between all DCEU movies. There are no overarching plot threads between them all. There are MAJOR differences in plot, characters, theme, and many other points, between these movies. It is quite possible to love one movie, and hate, loathe, and despise another. There are LARGE swathes of the fandom that don't overlap. There are many people, like me, who love one movie, like another, and actively try to avoid other movies in that megafandom. This is quite common for megafandoms. Every megafandom I'm familiar with--Star Wars, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, MCU, Stargate, DCEU, Star Trek--is too varied for people to like all of it equally; you end up with a handful of people who genuinely like the whole thing and most people who focus on parts of it. Except now, there's no way to separate out the stuff you ACTUALLY want to see from all the OTHER mass of stuff in the megafandom. And while that's not that big a deal in a small fandom where there isn't much fic to sort through anyway, it's a pretty BIG problem in a megafandom with is, you know, MEGA, with lots of fic. For example, I LOVE Wonder Woman (2017), am only occasionally interested in in the DCEU Superman and Justice League movies, and am only willing to read Suicide Squad fic if it's a Harley Quinn story that's mostly comics canon with a few Suicide Squad details. With the old way the archive was organized, this was not a problem. I could regularly look through the Wonder Woman (2017) tag for new fic, dip into Superman and Justice League on the rare occasions that I was in the mood for Batfleck and Cavilman, and pretty much never have to deal with anything Suicide Squad. Now, I click on Wonder Woman (2017), and instead of getting pages of exactly what I want, I get the entire DCEU. On that first page of 20 fics, there are currently only four that I would even be interested in considering reading. Your tag change has dropped my rate of finding interesting things from 100% to 20%. That is an 80% reduction in my ease of finding fic. An 80% reduction in how useful your tagging system is. Let me repeat that: your new tagging system has decreased the usefulness of this archive by 80%. We're not talking, "oh, a small reduction in user satisfaction for a HUGE gain in back-end functionality." I don't know how much easier this makes things on the back-end for you, but it is a FRICKING HUGE reduction in foundational ease-of-use for the entire site. This is not a minor change. This makes the most basic function of the site--finding fic to read--80% harder. The only scenario in which I would view this as a workable solution--not a good solution, mind you, but one that I could accept--is if it was literally a choice between this and closing the archive. Let's talk about what my use of the archive would have to look like going forward if this change is maintained and expanded, so you can see what I mean. Up until this change, if I wanted Wonder Woman fic, I clicked on the tag and got it! Now I can't do that. So my options are: 1) slogging through the entire DCEU, 80% of which I don't want. This is the only way to be sure I see every Wonder Woman fic I actually want. Problem: it will take me at least 80% longer to find stuff I ACTUALLY want. So, I would be less likely to look for new fic, and more likely to just go re-read old favorites, because it's so much quicker to do. As a reader and a writer, this is a problem for me, because I do want to read new fic, and I want other people to be able to find MY new fic. 2) putting together a long string of boolean search terms, probably based on characters. So, for example, I couldn't just search for "Diana (Wonder Woman)" because she appears in too much Justice League and Batman Vs. Superman fic (which I very seldom want to read). Searching for her would be better than just DCEU, because I wouldn't get Suicide Squad, but it would still be a ton of slogging through fics I don't want. I could search for "Diana (Wonder Woman)" and use the "Search within results" box to exclude Justice League and Batman and Superman. But that would miss any fics about Etta Candy or Steve Trevor or Hippolyta or any other Amazon in which Diana didn't appear. So, then, maybe use boolean search terms for Diana OR Steve OR Etta OR Hippolyta, and eliminating Justice League and Batman and Superman. Except that would still miss any fic that is, say, general worldbuilding for Themyscira, that doesn't have Diana or Hippolyta in it. And I love worldbuilding, but not everybody tags for it. Do I have to build up a boolean search string for EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE in the hopes of catching everything? How many boolean terms can I use at once? Or do I need to run several separate searches, which would mean sorting through a lot of these fics multiple times, as they would pop up under multiple search strings? I would STILL probably end up missing things that I would be interested in, and it would take A SHIT-TON of extra effort on my part. Far more effort, for less reward. And, again, as both a reader who wants to find new fic and as a writer who wants other people to be able to find MY fic when I write it, everything about this is terrible. 3. Use AO3 Savior to do some of the filtering for me. I don't know, blacklisting some tags would probably cut down on the number of boolean terms to rack up, but then I would have to go in and un-blacklist things on the rare occasions I actually wanted to read Batfleck fic. But this would become of less and less utility as people stopped tagging for individual movies and just tagged everything with the current canonical metatag for DCEU. Also: there is only one site I know if in which browser extensions are required to make the site useable, and that is tumblr which is a shambling hellscape of a site. Is that AO3's new goal? To become as user-hating as tumblr? Because while I appreciate how hard you guys work, that's what this change feels like. Now, I know you may be reading all this and going, "well, yeah, Wonder Woman fic is a problem, but you won't even notice the changes in most fandoms!" Let me present to you a list of the fandoms I have read the most of over the last year: Star Wars (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) Star Trek (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) MCU (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) Wonder Woman (but not the rest of the DCEU) DC Comics (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) Rivers of London And much as I love Rivers of London, I've spent a LOT more time reading fic in those other fandoms, because there's simply so much more of it, even when you only count the small pieces of each megafandom I'm interested in. What this means is that if you keep this tagging change and roll it out to other megafandoms, you will SERIOUSLY AND FUNDAMENTALLY BREAK how I use the archive. And given a) how many other people on this archive are in megafandoms and b) how large a percentage of the people in megafandoms only read fic in one corner of that megafandom ... you are seriously and fundamentally breaking the websites functionality for a very large percentage of your userbase. At one fell swoop, you turn AO3 from an archive I love and support (including financially) to an archive I hope is replaced (soon) with something better, because it's a pain in the ass pretty much every time I try to use it. Please, please, please, find some other way to fix the problem. If you need money for more servers, or to hire a professional coder to do some serious backend changes to make things workable with the old tagging structure, I'd be fine with that and I would contribute to any fundraiser you did. Your current choice is not a solution, it's a nightmare.

comments Comment? http://ift.tt/2EUYkRw

#archive of our own #ao3 #wonder woman #fanfic #fanfiction

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pebblysand · 4 years ago

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Author Interview Tag

Author Interview Game

Thank you sooooo much for the tag @tessiete this has actually made my day! I fucking love writing about writing (bit self-indulgent, I know) and reading other people’s writing about writing and oh, god, I’m so excited!!

Name: pebblysand

Fandoms: from beginning to end - Without A Trace, House, Spooks/MI:5, The Good Wife, Silk, Harry Potter (although, technically, that was probably the first one - my mum’s best friend said she had to read HP because from age 6 to age 10 it was all I ever consented to talk about).

Where you post: AO3 and FF.

Behind the cut cause this post is loooong.

Most popular multichap:

(Full disclosure, I’ve only ever written two multichaps, both happen to be listed here)

AO3: Children (Silk)

My baby. My love. On and off, between writing, first posting, then editing and reposting - 2.5 years of work. It is a ridiculously niche fandom but sure look, I’m so proud of it. I’d always thought I was a one-shot kind of girl, that I was incapable of writing and framing a long-form story, and yet, here I am. I am madly proud of this.

FF: Castles (Harry Potter)

Sheer force of numbers, here, to be honest. It’s only two chapters in, and already two kudos short of overpowering Children on AO3, which I’m guessing will make it most popular across the board, just because the fandom itself is so large.

I will say this: I’ve had this story in my head for years and I think part of the reason why I’m only writing it now is that after years of writing in nice, niche fandoms where you could easily read all the fics available in a few days and make friends with readers because everyone kind of knew each other, I finally have the backbone to face the Potter fandom. Because fuck, as much as I love the books and have gotten absolutely lovely, thoughtful comments on this throughout the past few weeks, God can that fandom be brutal.

And, don’t get me wrong: I’ve had constructive criticism on a number of my fics in the past, including very niche ones. Even if it does sometimes hurt a bit, it’s always helped me better my writing. I remember for instance one chapter of Children where someone wrote in that they were confused and couldn’t follow the narrative. I was a bit annoyed at first but in the end, it made me rethink the chapter and rewrite it, and they were 100% correct. That’s the whole point of constructive criticism/debates in comments.

The Potter fandom has that, no doubt. I’ve had super interesting discussions in comments and overall the response and feedback has been incredible, like I’ve never even dreamt of before. This being said, I’ve also gotten more shit than I’ve had in any other fandom. For instance: the story picks up after the war (starts in May 1998). The summary reads: “To him, the spring of '98 is about sex and funerals.” - which is a line taken from the fic itself. When you labour over something for hours on end and the first comment you get is: “first learn when spring season starts and ends before writing a story about it. what a joke.” it’s a bit disheartening, to say the least.

And, I know. First of all, yes, that person is an idiot and clearly doesn’t know when spring ends and summer starts themselves because summer only technically starts on the 21st of June. Secondly, even if I’d gotten it wrong, I didn’t write a story about the seasons, you idiot. It’s clearly a line taken from the story. Lastly, learn how to punctuate and spell. Now, I’m 27. I know that. I can disregard that. But even then it still feels like shit. If I’d gotten that kind of trolling when I was younger, I’m not sure I’d still be writing today. I really admire younger writers who start out on Potter - I was very afraid until now, tbh.

Favorite story you’ve written:

This, I really don’t know. I was trying to pick one but I think my favourite one is almost always the one I’ve either just written or am writing now. For a long time, I really loved Once. I also really liked Daisies and Dreams. I obviously love Children although I think I’ve spent so much time writing and editing it that it’ll take a bit of time for me to really appreciate it without also self-editing in my head, if that makes sense.

Right now, though, I love Castles. I think it’s the best piece of writing I’ve ever written. When the next one comes around, I hope that’s the best piece of writing I’ve ever written. That means progress.

Fic you were nervous to post:

Castles for reasons explained above. I love HP but I don’t think big fandoms in general are my thing. I like decent-sized fandoms. Like, TGW-size, back in the day, was perfect. Even as a reader, it’s also fucking hard to find good fic due to the sheer mass of stuff out there. Where do you even start?

How you choose your titles:

Castles, Children, Daisies, Truth, Mistakes, Dreams, Before, Once, Cannonballs - hello, do you detect a pattern here :D?

Jokes aside, yeah, I like one-word titles. Believe it or not, though, it hadn’t occurred to me that I always seemed to gravitate towards them until @orbythesea on AO3 pointed it out to me. To be honest, even the fics that don’t materially have one-word titles have one-word titles in my head. Like, Horses Made of Sticks is actually just Horses, in my head. I should probably have called it Horses.

How do I choose? Depends. Sometimes, they come from songs (Castles, Children, Daisies). Sometimes, it’s quotes, concepts from the show/book, or sometimes it just fits. Like, Once, Dreams and Truth couldn’t really have been called anything else, they’re just what the fics are about.

Do you outline?

Yes, always. For one-shots, I usually have an outline on my phone or part of the word file I’m writing the fic in itself, just a list of scenes or quotes that come to me at random points during the day that I will forget if I don’t write them down. I am very forgetful of my own brilliance hahaha.

For longer stuff, I usually have the general plot in my head from beginning to end before I start writing. Then, chapter by chapter, I plan with a blank A4 sheet of papers that I fill with post-its describing different scenes, a little bit like a paper version of those boards they have in writers’ rooms. It helps me physically see where scenes fall, where holes are. I do the same thing for original fiction.

For reference, one for Children (chapter 9) would have looked like that. They’re definitely not set in stone, though. Lots of times I’ll change stuff on the spot, big or small. Scenes that pop up randomly or get deleted because they worked in my head but not on paper, sometimes moved (sometimes moved to other chapters even). Here, “Alice” later became “Charlotte” and that “eye-fucking” (LOL) scene never happened.

Complete:

I think they’re all complete? I never completed that alphabet-based collection of House one-shots but it was a collection and they were shite anyways. They’re not missed, lol.

Of course, Castles is incomplete, but that’s just my current WIP.

In progress:

As I said, Castles. Also a piece of original fiction that I’m not sure where to post. Like, what do people do with short stories? Where do you post that shit online? Can anyone help?

Coming soon/not yet started:

No idea. I’m a one-project-at-a-time kind of gal.

Prompts:

I love prompts. Send me all the prompts. Especially three-sentence-story prompts. God, I miss those.

Upcoming Work You’re Most Excited About:

I mean, again, Castles.

No pressure tags: I have no one to tag because I’m not really in fandom anymore but if anyone sees this and wants to do this, please be my guest. Again, I love reading about other people’s writing and writing processes because we’re all different and it’s fascinating.

Also, if anybody’s got theories about ff v. AO3 tastes and readership, hit me up, I could speculate for hours.

And thanks again @tessiete for tagging me

#writing #fanfiction #the good wife #Harry Potter #Harry Potter fic #ao3 #ffnet #theories #writing about writing #stuff #very long pointless posts

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everyonesomething · 8 years ago

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Session Fifteen

Sydney Gaydos is 100% ready to get her nom on, no time for tables or pacing herself.

Pepper is just eating whatever doesn't get snatched away first.

Edith Runekill pours herself a glass of wine spritzer. It Begins.

Malkas pokes at the frog leg as big as a turkey drumstick.

Grim doesn't know what half this shit is but she'll eat it regardless

Grim eats melon rind, it's fine

In this session, we get to know each other better.

The set-up: A light RP session before we dive back into mortal danger.

The Game: We've got some down time before we have to get to Candlekeep, so why not eat our body weight in free hotel food?

I did mention each room had a piano, right?

Sydney Gaydos is eyeing that piano something fierce, might as well try to play a bit.

Sydney Gaydos: rolling 1d20+2

(1)+2= 3

Sydney Gaydos apparently plays pretty badly.

Pepper is watching Sydney pummel the keys mercilessly.

Pepper: "That's not exactly how it works, chum."

Edith Runekill: "What on earth is that racket? Is the hotel being attacked?"

Malkas: "Sounds like Sydney."

Pepper watches the hotel staff wheel Syd's piano away.

Pepper: "Well you can't use mine."

Sydney Gaydos huffs. "The keys were too small."

Well, each room had a piano, anyway.

Pepper has much better luck playing her piano—she did have lessons as a kid, after all. Grim decides to take a wander around the city before remembering they’re holding an entire celebration in our honor and revises her plans to just stay shut up in the hotel until the next day. All our room service is comped anyway, so we take full advantage of the city’s generosity and order a little bit of everything. We even ordered a coconut!

Sydney Gaydos: ((whats a coconut's strength))

rolling 1d20+4

(10)+4= 14

"Hm. Tough little thing."

Edith Runekill: "Oh! Let me try!"

rolling d20

(1)= 1

Pepper winces.

Edith Runekill: "Ow!"

Malkas: "Baaaaabe!"

Sydney Gaydos: "Are you alright?!"

Pepper: "You sure that's just wine you got her?"

Edith Runekill: "I'm fine!! I'm tough."

Inanimate objects that have wrecked Edith so far: a pinball machine and a coconut.

Inanimate objects that have not wrecked Edith so far: tequila shots.

Edith Runekill sets her shotglass down. "I'm feeling better about the kraken already."

Grim throws back her shot, then looks at the bottle like nah

Grim pours herself another whiskey

Edith Runekill shrugs; more tequila for her.

Edith Runekill pours another shot.

Edith Runekill and drinks it.

Edith Runekill goes on like this.

Malkas watches, fascinated.

Pepper: "You know that stuff catches up with you, right?"

Edith Runekill: "Yeah, well, the kraken caught up with us too and we showed him what's hat."

Pepper: "Yeah it blew up."

Malkas: "We did show him what's hat, Edi."

Pepper: "Chunks everywhere, if I remember right."

Edith Runekill giggles, and takes off her hat.

Edith Runekill pretends to examine it closely.

Edith Runekill: "Oh! It's a hat."

"That's what's hat."

Edith Runekill tosses it across the room.

Grim manages to get a word in edgewise as Edith destroys her liver to thank her for trying to talk sense into her on the train. She also seems to forgive her and Mal for picking her up like luggage when she wouldn't listen.

Mal and Edith drunkenly tell us the history of Candlekeep: Not only was it a place where Ba'al's offspring were raised, it's a library of great renown. In fact, the only way to get in was to donate a rare and valuable book to the collection. The building is like a fortress and it's been warded off to keep people away from the most dangerous volumes. Or it had been warded off, at any rate. Grim doesn't see how wise it is to keep all sorts of dangerous things together in one building and doesn't seem impressed by Edith's alcohol-soaked impassioned speech. They try to find common ground by comparing their professions.

Grim: "Don't sound much like bounty hunting to me."

Edith Runekill doesn't actually know anything about bounty hunting

Edith Runekill: "Don't you... like... find people?"

"We find things."

Grim: "Big difference between a person and a thing."

"Things ain't guilty. And they got no life to lose behind bars."

"I'm no courier."

Malkas: "Actually sometimes things are, like ... actually evil. And have like ... evil wants and desires."

"Like th-the Horn Crown."

Edith Runekill: "That's the exception, to be fair. But the Cron of Horns is one of those exceptions."

Malkas: "It like... wants to do evil. Makes you bad when you wear it."

Edith Runekill: "Wouldn't put that one in a museum."

Edith Runekill: "But there it was in Candlekeep, for some reason."

Grim: "That's what I'm saying, Steele. Evil's simple."

"People ain't."

Malkas: "Make a replica, toss the original in a forge."

Edith Runekill: "Or keep it off-site somewhere."

"Securing highly dangerous relics and making priceless tomes available to future generations are conflicting mission statements."

"To preserve and share, to destroy and hide."

"Candlekeep tried to do both, and now that the wards are down it's done neither."

Malkas: "We've got differing opinions on that, Edi."

Edith Runekill: "And it pisses me off."

Grim: "You capture a cult leader, blood of innocents on his hands, connections all over the city. Family none the wiser, kids involved. Claims remorse. What do you do, toss him in a forge?"

Malkas: "What am I, a judge?"

Grim: "You gotta be, sometimes."

Malkas: "That's not up to me."

"Not unless we're in a fight."

Edith Runekill looks thoughtful.

Grim: "The law ain't always what it claims to be, Malkas."

Edith Runekill: "Guess it's not much like bounty-hunting after all."

Grim puts out the end of her cigarette and refreshes her drink

Grim: "This is simple. Evil is real simple."

Edith Runekill: "Well, yeah, our basic goal here is simple. But if we mess up, well, the stakes are real high."

"Y'know?"

Grim: "That's the difference, I guess."

"Stakes are always high where I come from."

Grim: "Maybe not a city at a time, but you let the wrong person go, you take the wrong person in, that's a lineage of blood. And you ain't ever held accountable by anyone but yourself."

Mal, Edith, and Grim bond a bit more over their desire to affect some real change in the world by stopping the lich. Putting an end to evil for the greater good is something they can all agree on and it seems Grim is coming around to respecting the rest of the group.

Well. Most of them. Let's say a solid 75%.

Grim: "Precious few real do-gooders around, I found. Good to meet a couple finally." She looks towards Syd and Pepper too.

Grim: "For the most part."

Malkas laughs a little.

Pepper: "What? I'm doin' good, aren't I? Can't be more to the definition of do-gooder than that."

Grim: "That's the catch with you. Real wordsmith."

Pepper: "A finely woven sentence is worth more than a rich man's silk blouse."

Grim: "And wears thin just as fast."

Edith Runekill snorts

Malkas: "Ahahaha."

Pepper: "And, in the end, doesn't hold much water."

Edith Runekill: "Wow..."

"WOW"

Edith Runekill pours herself another shot.

Syd breaks the awkward tension by finally breaking open a coconut all over the room. It doesn't last for long, though, as Grim proposes the group plays “Never Did I Ever” to get to know each other better.

We go for a few rounds, the questions break down as follows (with the first name being who asked):

Never went to school: Grim

Never jumped out of a moving car: Mal, Pepper, Grim, Syd.

Never jumped off a cliff: Syd, Edith, Pepper

Never hit anything with a gun: Edith

Never totalled a car: Syd and also nobody in the group

Never had a fixed home: Grim

Never peed in the shower/tub: Mal, Grim

Never played this drinking game before: Syd, Edith

Never kissed a girl: Edith, Pepper

Never envied the rich: Pepper, Grim, Syd. Mal and Edith drink but they don't look happy about it, way to kill the mood Pepper.

Never knew their family: Grim. Syd asks for clarification on what that means, but decides it doesn't apply to her.

Never got caught sneaking out: Mal and Syd

Never played strip poker: Syd and nobody in the group, but Edith thinks it sounds fun.

Never gone back home after leaving: Edith, Pepper. Grim asks for clarification but decides it doesn't apply and drinks.

Never had a pet: Pepper, Mal, Grim, Syd

Never wore a dress: Grim, Syd, Mal. At this point in the game, Mal taps out of the drinking, he's had enough.

Never drank so much they forgot the night: Syd, Pepper

Never been east of Plaguewrought: Edith who then passes out with Mal

Pepper "Never. Have I ever. Liked to think about myself this much." and punctuates each statement with a tap of her glass before downing it anyway.

Grim raises her glass to Pepper.

Edith Runekill stumbles to her feet

Grim gets up with some support from the table

Edith Runekill: "Hey, Mal,"

"Mal. Mal Mal Mal."

"Do you..."

Malkas: "Hi Edi."

Edith Runekill: "Remember which room was ours..."

Malkas: "Yeah! Its- the one with my bag in."

Edith Runekill: "Oh."

Malkas: "N your bag."

Edith Runekill: "One step ahead, Mal."

Edith Runekill leans on Mal.

Sydney Gaydos is going to shamble back to her currently PIANO-LESS room.

And that's the game!

Bonus scene:

Grim: "Don't imagine many plead their case to you along the way."

Malkas: "Just that one tea kettle."

Edith Runekill: "And in the end we came around to its point of view and left it where we found it."

Malkas: "It was right, if you're dumb enough to drink tea you find in the middle of a collapsing sand fortress, you probably deserve to be transported to another dimension."

Edith Runekill: "See, I just woulda felt bad taking it away from its home."

"It's the only one left who remembers when that fortress was in use."

Malkas: "An' we definitely got enough people dumb enough at the museum to drink tea out of it."

"We shoulda done an interview."

Edith Runekill: "I took notes, but the head curator didn't seem interested."

Pepper extremely Edith voice "And how long have you been a tea kettle?"

Edith Runekill: "'Not your department, Runekill'"

Edith Runekill laughs at Pepper's imitations this time.

Malkas: "She literally did ask that."

Edith Runekill: "And its answer lined right up with the carbon dating, too."

"Fascinatin' stuff."

"Wish more of our finds would just politely describe their provenance and age."

#previously on #summary #neverwinter 1933

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movietvtechgeeks · 8 years ago

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/theo-devaney-supernatural-father-crowley-gavin-macleod/

Theo Devaney on his 'Supernatural' father Crowley and Gavin MacLeod

Theo Devaney first appeared on Supernatural in Season 9, as Gavin MacLeod, Crowley’s son. It’s easy to see why Theo was cast as Gavin – not only does he have the lovely accent, his acting in "King of the Damned" showcased Gavin perfectly – someone who was transported to our current time, completely bewildered by the world he was in. You first appeared in Supernatural as Crowley’s son – Gavin MacLeod – back in 2014. Tell us about your experience then, as compared to your most recent experience. I suppose the first time it was still quite new to me; the whole world was new to me. I had only really watched a couple of seasons of Supernatural just to understand the show when I did it the first time. And then obviously in the intervening years, between 2014 and to the end of 2016 – so 2-1/2 years – I’ve done fan conventions, gotten to know the fans, connected with so many people on Twitter, watched a lot more of the show, became more familiar with the mythology of the different characters and things like that. I suppose it just becomes a part of your life, I think, if you’ve played a role that people enjoy -- you end up becoming sort of quite close with people, talking about it and getting used to conversations around certain things. I mean as an actor, obviously, unless you’re doing the show for a whole season or something and you’re a regular, you’re working on a lot of other things in the interim, but nothing I’ve ever done comes close to having the kind of fan support and engagement that Supernatural has, which is a massive privilege, you know, to have that. In terms of how I approached it this time, I suppose the first episode I did, Gavin is a fish out of water and everything is brand new to him. So there’s a lot of broad kind of horror, shock, surprise, bafflement – so I kind of engaged in a very theatrical way, with that, and brought a quite heightened theatrical performance style. He has to be utterly blown away by everything that’s happening, which in a way kind of refreshes for the audience some of the experience he’s having … a lot of the audience from Supernatural have seen this kind of possession, torture and time travelling and demons fighting each other before, it becomes something that people understand and get used to some degree. Whereas for Gavin, it’s brand new and it’s completely bizarre, and I wanted to communicate that. In the recent episode, Gavin’s been in the modern world for a couple of years and I think is a bit more seasoned. I wanted there to be – based on what’s happening to him – to justify the choice that he makes to return to his own time, even though he knows he’s facing death. A certain amount of resignation, there’s a certain sadness, I think, because he’s spent the last couple of years and he still doesn’t feel like he belongs. I think knowing that in another time, without the intervention of supernatural powers, he’d have been dead. He’d just have been dead. That natural process, I think, he feels has been somehow changed and I don’t think it sits right with him. I think he’s someone who believes in destiny to some degree and I sort of wanted a calmer, more reflective, more still and kind of mournful energy for the character, which I think justifies his position, his decision in the second episode. What have you enjoyed the most about filming for Supernatural? (Both then and now.) I think it’s probably just the relationships that you make with the other members of the cast. Obviously, being an actor, a lot of what filming really is, is mostly to do with connecting with other characters. So your character, how you express your character and how it bounces off other characters. But, there’s another element to that, that is also really enjoyable. Just being on these big sets where there’s these wonderful crew members and technicians and artists of different kinds, who are all working together to make the magic happen. I love working as part of a team, I love everybody committing their energy to the same endeavor, and something being created that is greater than the sum of the parts. When I was younger, I was in my teens and I was looking forward to becoming an actor when I was older, the dream was to be part of a theater company. You show up in a new town, you and your team, your family, I suppose, of artists. You make a piece of work, touch people, hopefully move people, or you interest people, somehow entertain them, and then you leave and you do it again. You’re bringing this magic with you and everybody commits themselves 100 percent to making the show as good as it can be – greater than the sum of its individual parts. Partly, I think, for me it helps me to be better, when other people give me feedback, support me and criticize me in a constructive way as well. I think by being open to a big team, you’re able to give more than if you were just working on your own in isolation. On a set like Supernatural, the family, the team, is so established because they’ve been there for 10, well initially when I went there before it was eight, nine years, now it’s been 12 years that they’ve been together and many of the crew members are still the same. So everyone knows their roles within the family and also there’s this unspoken connection between a lot of people. Stuff gets done efficiently, but then you still have the director, someone who’s not there all the time, they are there for one or two episodes maybe. P.J. Pesce was the director of this one and he directed me, bizarrely by coincidence, in the one 2-1/2 years ago – or perhaps it wasn’t coincidence. We had good rapport, he’s very supportive, a very intelligent and talented, warm man. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the wonderful thing is working with a big team, on a big project, where everyone is so familiar with each other, and so warm with each other. That’s the real gift of it. Last but not least, but of course, a major part of this was working with Ruthie. I worked real closely with Mark in the first episode I was in, and now with Ruthie -- we’d become friends prior to my return to the show anyway -- she’s just a lovely person, a great human being and a brilliant actor so it was lovely for us to have a bit of time together on set and in front of camera, which will always be special. Do you have any behind-the-scenes stories to share? Probably nothing as very interesting as some people who spend longer on the show, but some of the behind the scenes stories … I don’t know, I mean probably the fun thing is enjoying watching people getting made up and getting their hair done – because I think that’s all magic. For some reason, Supernatural tried to make me look as kind of geeky and kind of silly as possible, I think, because Gavin is an incredibly sort of sweet and vulnerable character. He’s sort of like this little lamb … I had some laughs when I saw my double breasted royal blue woolen jacket that I got to wear in this one, where you couldn’t have made the character look more harmless and sort of sweet if you tried. He actually looks like Paddington Bear in the second episode which I found quite amusing. And it sort of helps me to understand how the showrunners and the writers intend the character to be portrayed. I can take a message from that and say, okay, so Gavin hasn’t spent the last two years becoming edgy – or getting drawn into anything even vaguely sort of criminal or sinister. He’s clearly still an innocent, and has been protected as such, one way or another, probably by Crowley. So I was able to play him with this sense of insecurity, which is obviously borne out of the narrative in the second episode. The obvious stuff is Jared and Jensen kind of bouncing off of each other and winding each other up – and winding other people up. I was pretty lucky, normally they target people with pranks but I was – I don’t know what it was about me that made them kind of, you know, be gentle with me – probably because the character, Gavin, is such a gentle character anyway. They just felt like it would be like punching a puppy in the face so they just didn’t. Although, actually, come to think of it – you can ignore what I just said. There was some banter about European actors and how we all take ages over our lines, which is absolutely justified because we did the seated scene, just before Gavin, before they do the ceremony to send Gavin back with Fiona. We sat in this little room before Crowley enters. We have this long scene, it’s a chatty scene, a couple of minutes … I was still getting to grips with the lines to be honest, trying to work my way through them, because you don’t get to rehearse much on TV, the way you would with theater. I tend to use the first rehearsals we do on set, and the blocking rehearsals, to really find the nuances of the scene, which means I do them slowly, so I can figure out what’s happening, and then I speed it up for the performance. I did it particularly slowly, because I had just come back from a few hours on break, and the director comes in and goes okay, we’re going to need to speed this up a bit guys. The boys are just like, yeah, we please, Jesus! We all got into this conversation, this sort of bantery conversation, because obviously in this scene were me, Ruthie and Mark – all of us British actors – Jared was very funny, saying, I’m … a … European … actor! … and … I’m … going … … … to take … my … time! Which is totally fair, because I think European/British actors are a bit more indulgent than Americans. We like to add a bit of theatrical zest to what we do, which means we labor it a little bit. So that was quite funny, we had a good laugh. I was almost crying actually, because I’m very aware of the fact that I can take my time with things. If I don’t have someone behind me, you know, sticking a dagger in my back … [caption id="attachment_44306" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Photo: Natalya Chagrin[/caption] Any current projects you’re working on? I’m working on a few things. Last year, 2016, was a good year in terms of doing variety. I did a couple of commercials, I did some indie films, and some sort of quirky projects. This year, so far, January was quiet. Right now I’m filming a feature that’s going to be on Netflix at the end of the year. We’re in Romania right now. I’ve got a small part in a feature, a British gangster feature that’s coming out, I know the producers so I’m doing a day or two on that next month, which will be a fun little scene, a cameo, in the British gangster feature. I’m waiting to hear back from a few other projects, so yeah, we’ll have to wait and see. I can’t say much about what I’m doing at the moment, but if you keep an eye on social media toward the end of this year, then the film will be released on Netflix, so I’ll be sure to make sure that everybody knows about that when it’s available. Further to that, I’m also producing, I did my short film, Run, for the past few years, with a lot of support from members of the SPN family who are lovely. That’s still in film festivals, but I’m actually planning to try my hand at directing so I have two short films, both dramas, that I’m looking forward to directing this year. That will be an enjoyable challenge, having done some writing, producing, and obviously acting, now I’m looking forward to seeing if I have anything to offer as a director. So that’s going to be a lot of fun. Two very contrasting projects, one is a fairly dramatic psychological piece of work and the other is about, it’s kind of a teenage coming of age story.

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Welcome to the Meganoid(2017) post-mortem. This post-mortem goes into the details on the Meganoid figures and stats. Without context the stats are pretty much silly numbers, so please make sure to read all of this because there is more to the numbers than you might think.

So I'll keep this short, if you want to learn more about who I am, please check out my techblog and website. I've been a full-time (indie) developer since 2004. Mostly known for mobile games, but since 2015 also branching to PC games and even some consoles releases here and there (PS Vita and 3DS). I've never had hit games that made me millions, but I have been doing very decent for many years releasing games that have found a growing fan-base in a niche area. My biggest titles include the Gunslugs and Heroes of Loot series of games and Space Grunts.

The original Meganoid was released in 2010 on Android and iOS and was a very hard platformer with short levels that sometimes had you screaming if you didn't manage to reach the finish. For me it was a turning point in my games as I finally decided to just build games like that since those are the games I love the most. Luckily I found a niche that works for me and an audience that has been growing alongside me and my games. It also managed to reach close to a million downloads since.

Meganoid(2017) is a reboot of the franchise lifts a lot on the designs behind Spelunky, while still maintaining the difficulty of the original Meganoid game. I named it a "love child of Spelunky and Meat-boy in space", which is a very clear description of what the game is. It's not extremely original, but I'll get to that later on!

Oh, the game was also created in "just" two months, but I'll also get back to that if you keep reading..

So before Meganoid I was working on a game called Ashworld, which is a huge project for a one-man development team (which I am) and it's also an open-world game, a genre that I personally have no experience with because I often quit those games within a few hours of play-time. Simply put: Ashworld is a huge challenge for me, and I have been working on it since June 2016.

Seeing as my games are actually my livelihood, money needs to come in on a semi-frequent basis. My business is still running fairly well, I have a huge back-log of games and they are all still bringing in money on a monthly base, but to keep it all running I do have some rules on how long game-projects can take. Ashworld is breaking those rules due to a challenging development phase where I've been learning open-world design and also searching where the actual fun in the game-design is. So the game isn't done, and still needs a few months of work.

Enter the stage: Meganoid.

In January I decided to just do some prototyping with the hopes that I would end up with something playable that could be extended into a game. For this to work, I needed a clear design idea and direction. A game that I could almost create on automatic-mode.

This "automatic-mode" does need some nuance here, I wrote a blog about it a few weeks ago and I think it painted a wrong picture. Some comments and replies I got thrown at me were along the line of "a quick money grab". My bad on writing the article and not being clear about things, so here's to rectifying it:

The game was made in "just 2 months; and 13 years of experience".

The key part being those 13 years experience, factual there are a lot more years of experience, but the 13 years is how long I've been doing this commercially. Meganoid at it's core is a platformer with rogue-like mechanics. I've created close to 60 commercial platform games, and I've been doing rogue-like elements in my last 5-6 games. I know what to expect code-wise, and I know how to program those things without having to think about it.

To put it in some more perspective, my game Heroes of Loot 2 is a huge RPG-adventure/twin-stick shooter, and it was made in little over 4 months. So I normally work really fast and very effective.

Now think what you like about the short-development cycle, I don't plan to change your mind about it, but from a business point of view: this made sense and still delivers a quality game.

To have this game make some profit I needed it to take just a couple of months work so it would be easier to recoup on the costs AND make money on the game.

The development-cycle was pretty short, but since I had some interesting stuff pretty early on I actually showed some screenshots and gifs in the first week of development on twitter,facebook,instagram and a couple of forums. Some of this got picked up pretty early by mobile-game sites, and Toucharcade showed the first couple of video's I released in the weeks after.

I started using reddit a bit more, and finally managed to post something there without it being taken down (actually on second try, the first did get taken down because I didn't disclose that the "pre-order discounts" was on a game I made, which obviously makes a big difference../sarcasm).

The two or so weeks before the launch I already had various mobile sites mailing me for some promocodes, which is the up-side of being "known" in a market. In contrast to that there is the PC scene, where I'm basically unknown and nobody talks about my games.

The launch week I started looking at youtube streamers for the PC version, so I basically searched for big youtubers that covered games like: Spelunky, Meat boy, and a few other more recent pixel-art indie games that fit the same category as Meganoid.

I mailed all of them, close to a 100, which at least one steam-key included (for some group-youtubers I included up to 5 keys) and this all resulted in an awesome 0 streams. I did a follow up email to a large portion of them a week later, and this resulted in 1 Streamer playing it, yay results!

It's still possible some streamers will pick up the game later, having full inboxes, managers that handle emails slowly, or just large backlogs of video's. But I don't hold my breath for any of it. Same goes for PC game-site reviews, so even tho I did everything "right" it basically ended up with fairly little returns on it. The emails were short, to the point, showed a GIF of the game, bullet points, youtube trailer, quick-links and a steam-key included with a link to the website/presskit for more info. All according to the average marketing-advise.

Basically, in my opinion and experience, you need to know people to get things done. But reaching out never hurts and is also the way to get to know more people, so yeah.

Okay, okay! that's what you guys came for, I get it!

Google Play's "Best new seller" list charting

Let me first start with this, Meganoid was so far:

Featured on App-store under "New games we loved" - worldwide

Featured on Google Play "Early Access"

Featured on Google Play "New and Updated"

Top-charted (top 25) in Google Play "Best new sellers" list

Game of the Week - on TouchArcade

"Best games of the week for iOS and Android" - Pocketgamer

Now, back to reality, for those who don't know, making money on games is HARD, on any given day there are 100-500 games released on various platforms. That's EVERY DAY! Standing out from those games is extremely hard, most games you will never see and they get like 5-10 downloads (depending on how many friends the developer has).

With my experience of doing this business for a long time, I set a fairly low but do-able goal for Meganoid: $6500 during the launch-period. I know it's a not a huge game, and it had fairly short marketing-visibility before release due to the fast development cycle.

For me a launch-period is the first month or so after releasing it. My goals is usually to make 80%-100% of the development costs back in this first period. I calculate development costs fairly rough by multiplying each development-month with $2000 and then add any outsourced work costs. Since I do code+design+game graphics that often leaves out-source costs to music and high-res marketing art.

The $2000 is very low-end of what my cost-of-living is each month (in the Netherlands, with mortgage, girlfriend and pets). It doesn't take into account taxes and extra cash-flow for "the future". But we're talking about launch-period here, so a game will live on for a few more years and with future sales and discounts you can often double the money a game made on launch.

So for this game I had 2 months of work, that's $4000 and since there was such a short dev-cycle and I used ambient sounds from my sound-libraries, there was no music cost and just a few hundred dollars for the awesome marketing art. So let's round it to $4500.

Now the point is to get extra cashflow to cover the longer development-cycle of Ashworld and we get to a $6500 minimum revenue that I was aiming for with Meganoid. Again this is all launch-period revenue, because obviously it's a low amount especially if Ashworld development still needs 2 or 3 months time. So I'll get to that in a few paragraphs below.

I released Meganoid on March 30 on iOS, Android and PC (steam/humble/itch, windows/osx/linux) and we're now at three weeks into the release and currently the revenue is just a little shy of the target at $6200. Which is not bad at all!

So let's dig into this $6200 launch-period amount. Where did most of it come from, and why! The biggest bulk of this comes from the iOS version, actually close to 50% of it: $3580. On iOS the game was priced $4.99 with a launch-discount the first week making the game $3.99. Meganoid was made Game of the week at Toucharcade which most certainly helped, one of the weeks best games for iOS and Android on Pocketgamer, but sadly it had no "games we play" feature for the first weekend.

For some reason the game only showed up in the "Games we play" on Monday/Tuesday for the USA App-store, at which point it spiked to slightly below the launch spike so effectively doubling the sales in the 3/4 days it had that front page feature. I'm pretty sure it would have done better if it did have that feature in the first-weekend (during the sale) but those things are pretty much out of my control and I'm glad it eventually did get a feature after-all (something I kind had planned for in setting my revenue targets).

Apple loved it - all over the world!

Second biggest seller was Android, now this was done a little different. I tried some beta stages on Android and this put my game into "Early Access" on Google Play a week before the launch at a $2.99 price. This price was mostly because I believe that the brave people who try out a beta shouldn't pay full price. The game got a nice Google feature in their "Early Access" list, which only has about 20 games listed, so that's a pretty good list to be in.

The possible down-side of this is that a lot of people don't seem to be clear of understanding what "Early access" means on Google Play, so there was a lot more buying going on than I had planned for, and that means I was pushing updates daily to work out some "obviously-beta" features. Early-access users can't leave reviews during that phase, so that might have been a positive thing, the down-side of that is that many people forget to leave a review once the game was released.. so not as many reviews as I normally have during the launch-period. Not sure if I would do that again on Android, but it's been an interesting experiment.

Finally we come to the PC revenue, in total that's $900 which is split over Steam, Itch and Humble. This is also my biggest pain-in-the-butt, obviously my games still don't make much waves amongst PC gamers. Especially since about 50% of that money comes through Itch.io where I ran a pre-order with 20% discount in the two weeks leading up to the launch. So these buyers are mostly people from my own social-circles and mailing-lists, people who in many cases also buy the mobile version and in a lot of cases people who tipped up to $10 (even tho the pre-order price was $3.99!) (THANKS!).

The humble-store sales were about 10% of that, so the rest is up to you to calculate :p

Side note: Besides this launch-period revenue, there is also the added advantage of extra money made on back-log sales. New gamers that see Meganoid will check out my other games and in some cases end up buying a few more of my games. On top of that a lot of subscriptions to my social-circles and mailing list have happened during and after the development of Meganoid, which are all potentially future fans of my next games.

Another important thing to read about, how are the ratings? Because let's face it, making a game in two months isn't interesting if it's a crappy game. On iOS the game has a strong 4/5 star rating from gamers, and on Android it's at 4.8/5 star rating. I'd say those are pretty good ratings (most of my games are around the 4.0 - 4.5 ratings)

On Steam there are only about 4 ratings of which only 2 ratings count since they bought the game on Steam and not through my website/Itch.io or Humble. But I think "all of them" are fairly positive!

Game-site wise, well that's a mixed bag of thingies. As mentioned before, the game was made "game of the week" on Toucharcade, and it was part of the "best games for iOS and Android" that week on Pocketgamer. On the other side Toucharcade's review gave it just a 3.5/5 rating, and Pocketgamer managed to give it a 7/10. So that's the same two websites already making for mixed-reviews. Not sure what to think about it, and it's mostly the reason I focus on the average user-rating on app-stores since those people play the game even after a review.

PC game sites pretty much ignored the game completely, except for a few news-posts on one or two sites. But the whole game-review-site business is something for another topic. In short, those sites only talk about your game if people are already talking about your game, or if there's something controversial to be found, because that brings in readers and thus advertising-money.

Now there's always a part in a post mortem where people go say things that went right or wrong and how things could have gone different. BUT! Meganoid was just as much an experiment as it was a way to earn some extra cash.

For one, the price: $4.99. For a PC game that's a fairly cheap price-point, and it was something I wanted to try out. Normally my newly released PC games go between $7-$10 in the launch period because I honestly think that's what my games are worth for the amount of playtime and enjoyment you get. However, a game like Meganoid is perfect to try out new stuff and I've been wondering if maybe my games would sell better at $4.99. Haven't really compared it yet with my previous games, but my gut-feeling says I sell about as much copies at this price as I do at a more normal price of $7.99.

On mobile the $4.99 is actually on the high-end of things! More experimenting, normally I'm at max at $3.99 and often in the launch week it's at $2.99. I do believe this game could have done better at a $3.99 or $2.99. Possibly sold much more copies with the result being more revenue. Some people hinted I should have lowered the price when I got the iOS feature, but my golden rule is to not punish the instant-buying fans, which I would have done had I suddenly lowered the price within a week of it's release.

In general the gamers liked the game, which is the most important thing. One guy complained that he couldn't get past the first level so it was way to hard, another guy complained that the sound-effects sounded generic (he was a sound-designer offering to do sound effects.. that's business!). One mobile-game reviewer had a lot of problems with the touch-controls, which is ironic for a mobile-game reviewer in my opinion.

I've been pushing regular updates to Meganoid since the release, and I still have one bigger update planned. After that it will mostly complete the work on this game minus any required fixes or OS-updates.

I never create games as a service, all my games receive two or three bigger updates and then I move on. That's my business-model and that's how I stay in business.

As for the game itself, it now becomes a "back-log game". This means I'll be able to do sales and discounts with the game in the next few years. It's also possible to perhaps get it ported and released on consoles or other gadgets, and there are alternate sales-routes the game can take on platforms like Android or PC (different markets, bundles, etc).

On top of that the game engine is fairly straight-forward and easy to repurpose. So it could be possible to re-use the game, create a new game-world and content for it and release like a $1.99 game with it (in fact I already have a funny viking-style game running on the same engine, so who knows).

All those back-log options should be able to at-least double the game's revenue within a year, so let's say the game does $10.000 in total by March 2018. Set against the 2 month development cycle (and 13 years experience!) that's not a bad deal.

For now I got some breathing room again for working on Ashworld, so follow me on Twitter or Facebook if you want to stay updated on that one!

(Grab Meganoid here for Windows,MacOS, Linux, iOS or Android)

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

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Oh, the game was also created in "just" two months, but I'll also get back to that if you keep reading..

Enter the stage: Meganoid.

The game was made in "just 2 months; and 13 years of experience".

To put it in some more perspective, my game Heroes of Loot 2 is a huge RPG-adventure/twin-stick shooter, and it was made in little over 4 months. So I normally work really fast and very effective.

Now think what you like about the short-development cycle, I don't plan to change your mind about it, but from a business point of view: this made sense and still delivers a quality game.

To have this game make some profit I needed it to take just a couple of months work so it would be easier to recoup on the costs AND make money on the game.

Basically, in my opinion and experience, you need to know people to get things done. But reaching out never hurts and is also the way to get to know more people, so yeah.

Okay, okay! that's what you guys came for, I get it!

Google Play's "Best new seller" list charting

Let me first start with this, Meganoid was so far:

Featured on App-store under "New games we loved" - worldwide

Featured on Google Play "Early Access"

Featured on Google Play "New and Updated"

Top-charted (top 25) in Google Play "Best new sellers" list

Game of the Week - on TouchArcade

"Best games of the week for iOS and Android" - Pocketgamer

Apple loved it - all over the world!

The humble-store sales were about 10% of that, so the rest is up to you to calculate :p

On Steam there are only about 4 ratings of which only 2 ratings count since they bought the game on Steam and not through my website/Itch.io or Humble. But I think "all of them" are fairly positive!

I never create games as a service, all my games receive two or three bigger updates and then I move on. That's my business-model and that's how I stay in business.

For now I got some breathing room again for working on Ashworld, so follow me on Twitter or Facebook if you want to stay updated on that one!

(Grab Meganoid here for Windows,MacOS, Linux, iOS or Android)

#IFTTT #Blogger

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