8/13/98-10/2/98 | 5/4/99-5/7/99 | 5/10/99-5/12/99 | 5/13/99-5/14/99 | 5/21/99-6/9/99 | 6/11/99-6/28/99 | 6/29/99-7/2/99 | NOW

Rant Archive Four, 5/13/99 to 5/14/99

5/14/99 (later) - YEEEEEHAAAAAW hate mail! C. Dalton sent me some really bizarre but grammatically correct flames over my page, the UO RP writing guide, thinking murder is bad, and I suppose my whole damned existence.  This whole page is getting kind of long, so I moved all of his foaming to it's own section.  Enter the C. Dalton Zone!

5/14/99 - More feedback from the Writing Guide.  I should have plugged it more heavily when it was written.  Actually, I hardly ever plug the site.  Must be why I can't get advertisers.  Well, I never try to get ads either.  I'm just a slacker.

Ahem... I sent Ra of AMT Comics a little email thanking him for the plug and telling him the story about looted house #3.  Here's the reply... I hope he says it's OK to print it, as I just asked him for permission now.  8P

Ah so that was YOUR house? You know what is scary? Spite was asking Tifric for the money of "his" fieldstone house just a few months ago, after he had quitted but happened to remember about it, and told Tif to reimburse his successor, who......... happened to be...... Ra, and *I* got sucked into all this, and they got into a huge debate of course. Well Tif didnt pay him in the end because he said the house belong to someone else, which is YOU.  Gosh this is like all coming together all of a sudden. Btw Spite has returned to UO just recently after trying EQ and hating it.

You have a cool page btw, I loved reading it and I laughed so hard.  Let me know when you update it again so I can come read more funny stuff :)  Later.

Mystery solved, Shaggy!  Now back to more Scooby Doo.  (Delusion seemed to think it was a good idea...)

5/13/99 - Almost 2 months after it was written in a feverish scotch haze, the RP Story Guide has apparently been read by no fewer than three people!  I make this astonishing claim based on the fact that I have received 2 emails about it, and it was recently given a modest link on Another Mad Tower, a hand-drawn comic about the guys who almost demolished Atlantic Mu's 3rd house by accident.  My wonderful neighbor, the Dread Lord Spite, had sold them his 2-story so they could place a tower in the spot, and told them that he owned my house as well.  Luckily, I spotted a few of them outside and, after finding out they weren't there to kill me (as most people are), they agreed to get me another house deed.  I actually asked for a 2-story, but that's just my greed.  It all worked out well, especially since Kagero had already lost the keys to that house as well and it had been thoroughly looted.  Story of my life.

J. told me that he had forwarded the address of the writing guide to OSI's own Lady MOI (DSM to Lum's readers), and that she had made a few comments about it.  Eagerly, I waited for some sort of email regarding my modest work from this representative of my favorite software company in the world (after Blizzard, id, and those geniuses who programmed Catfight).  Sadly, no word came.  On May 4, heartbroken and anxious for material to rip off, I followed a link on Lum's page to the mailbox of this mysterious patron saint of public relations and damage control...

Hiya.  I heard from J. that you had some ambiguous comments regarding my "Guide to Writing UO RP Stories", about a month ago or so.  Since I don't believe anyone else has ever read this manifesto, I cannot sleep until I find out whether or not you thought it was any good.  Please tell me?

Oh and:

That crackhead Lum is saying nasty things about you again! Now that I told you, will you be my friend...

Mu

3 days is a long time to wait to someone who checks his forum every 30 seconds to see if any more flames have appeared, but on the 7th, I was rewarded...

Okay, here's some feedback for you.

First off, you obviously know how to put a sentence together.  You have a personal writing style that is easy to read.  You are able to capture the essence of the cliche'd roleplaying stories.  That's a non-trivial task.  :)

As far as satire goes, it's a nice piece of work.

If you are trying to help people break away from the mold, you aren't succeeding.  Mocking other's creative work without any suggestion for how to improve only stifles further creativity.  If you don't care about that, then no wucks. :)  However, if you'd like to see people improve on the genre, why not add a section that gives some instruction for writing truly good roleplaying stories.  I bet you would have some great suggestions for it. :)

What do you think?
Carly

I know how to put a sentence together!  Fully satisfied, I now announce my retirement from the world of UO writing and begin my personal voyage to enlightenment through perfecting the Protoss build order in Starcraft.

My reply is typical of my writing... rambling, pointless, and boring.

Ahh, I was really hoping for a lot of unmitigated slobbering praise.  8P

As far as breaking the mold goes, I tried that on my normal story page http://www.ranter.net/uo/mustories.html with varying success.  I hate to admit that I actually fall into Template Two a lot, or even Template Three on other shards.  I can't really say if I'm any better than anyone else at writing, but I've gotten a lot of good feedback.  Then again, I think just about everyone with a UO website that's not misspelled gets good feedback.   Or anyone who writes a boring story on a message board.  These thoughts keep my ego from swelling too much.  8P

The guide was really meant to be read by someone who had been following the Mu stories, and I'm sure that out of the four or five who do, you are not one.  By itself I still think it's funny, but it does lose some of its scope without the root work.

As to helping other people break out of the mold... I'm not sure it's a worthwhile effort.  Some people naturally do it (Magnus, Dundee, Elowan, Janey, Warik), and some people don't.  Some people even think that template writing is a high form of art.  I just think back to the pulp Elric books I thought were cool when I was 12 and shudder a bit.  Besides, a "Guide to Breaking Out of the Mold" isn't really much more than an oxymoron... I would be showing them some different mold to emulate, which would be pointless as the template mentality is not really the cause of bad writing, it's symptomatic of bad writers (if that makes any sense).

In any case, I wasn't out to do any great works, it really was just a mean spirited satire piece designed to be funny for the 2 or 3 writers who actually read my stuff. If I had to come up with some lame way that I was trying to help people write better, it would have to be at the Mu chronicle page.  Writing stories in a manner I find entertaining, but not presuming to tell everyone else to write that way.  I've gotten mail from people saying that they would never dare to write a story after going there (is this good or bad?  I don't know) and some who say they improved their own writing by reading the page.  Odd eh?  I'd like to think it was doing more good than evil for writers, but in all honesty I just wanted to have some fun and entertain a few people, so I'm not overly concerned with presuming to be a mentor for aspiring authors.

So, in conclusion, I'll take your response as gushing praise for my fantastic web site.  No.  Well, whether it made you laugh or pissed you off, I'd be happy.  Please check out http://www.ranter.net/uo/mustories.html when you get insanely
bored if you wish.  And sorry for the rambling... I'm writing this in telnet. 8P

*goes to sleep happy*

Mu

So basically, I have enumerated my position... I am a jerk who looks down on people whose stories I dislike, and really do want to squash the tiny spark of creativity inside them, because as much as it gives them hope and a sense of purpose, their stories annoy me.

Actually, I have been thinking about it, and have written up a short treatise on how you too can improve your UO writing.  For real.  If I have hurt anyone out there who wants to write and share your experiences with the UO community, it was all in jest.  I hope you will accept this little bit of information which can help you become a more readable, more enjoyable author.  I know it has helped me.

Guide to Improving Your UO Writing Style

And today, I received this review...

Your piece, "How to Write Crappy UO Stories Like Mu" is truly inspired.  To recognize the true nature of most UO stories as "Nothing Happens" indicates two things: one good, one bad.  The good thing is that you've blown the cover off the whole gig.  The bad thing is that it proves you've actually read some of the bad ones just to revel in their awfulness, which is kind of like watching Scooby Doo reruns on the Cartoon Network.

The UOVault comes to mind, too.  I have some rules for when I read UOV.   Anything over one page gets skipped.  Anything in-character that includes the phrases "put on my boots", "sharpening my sword", "raised an eyebrow" and the like gets skipped.  Anything to do with shards other than Atlantic gets skipped.  The only exceptions are ones that I see my friends making fun of in IRC, in which case I'll go back and check them out.

I've been tempted for a while to write a similar farce aimed at "role-playing evil" for a while now.  The only thing that stays my hand is the fact that the only thing worse than people role-playing evil badly is people who role-play evil badly writing me lots of long-winded e-mail.  Good and evil in UO, as of late, is so cartoony it's disgusting.  "To hell with complex character motivation, I think I'll just name myself Lady Death and start an 'evil city' with a kewl name."  The mere notion of an evil city is so out-of-context it makes me laugh with glee.  Except when it happens on Chesapeake or Atlantic, then it gives me indigestion.  "When we're not being evil and emoting *Laughs darkly*, saying 'muahahaha', or Corp Poring people, we like to build community and plan festivals."

Of course, if you point out to people that 'evils' don't form cities and advertise their 'evilness', then of course you either "just don't get it", or you're a "whiner".  You couldn't possibly have a point.  Evils live in the fringes of existing society, under the cover of darkness, they generally don't have Evil Awareness Rallys at City Hall...

Evil is the hardest to role-play, and the most attractive to those least able to.  Hard to find balance when everyone wants to play the badass.

Anyway, when I got to this tidbit in your essay, I was laughing hard:

It is unlikely that a UO author will ever have as much ability to make people do stupid things as a UO comics creator, but you can still get away with certain things.

Having a UO comic is a license to leverage your audience.  I figure some day I'll start a "Delusion, err Moervan needs 4 million gold pieces" fund, convince one of my supporters to donate an existing tower to "support the local role-playing community", get it Seer/IGM sponsored and decorated, then advertise the account as "Tower and 4 million gold pieces with famous character for sale on Atlantic" on e-bay and be $5,000 richer or something.

In all seriousness, I wouldn't do that, but it's kinda scary to think that it might actually be possible.

Applause (nt)

Delusion
Killed on Sight

i knew taht dman meorvan wuz a rp lamr

Actually, I've always liked Killed on Sight.  It's the reason I carried ridiculous bardiches around on Atlantic Mu instead of the more numbercrunched, yet totally generic, halberds.  Everyone go there now.  If we get enough hits for him, he may update again!  Well that's not too likely... B0N3D00D and pLaTeDeWd have been getting about 10,000 hits a day from me alone and haven't been updated in over a year.