Claude shouts "The panel on worldbuilding and character creation techniques starts in under 10 minutes at the park of the day!" (Public-shout) SHOUT: 30 folks heard that. GreenKai steps off of the floating disk that carried her up. GreenKai has arrived. You say, "Hello!" Garrison steps off of the floating disk that carried him up. Garrison has arrived. GreenKai norns Claude. GreenKai says, "Hi!" Garrison pounces you! Claude eee! Garrison says, "We find out how to build kitties?"" Lady Jean wanders in from outside. Lady Jean has arrived. You say, "That's an idea." Garrison cools! Lady-Jean says, "Oh, here you are." Jaxen steps off of the floating disk that carried her up. Jaxen has arrived. Claude paw-waves! Jaxen waves hello. Carl steps off of the floating disk that carried him up. Carl has arrived. You say, "Welcome. See, I arrived in time today." Carl says, "Greetings!" Carl says, "Salutations, also, and assorted other pieces of greeting-type aural phenomena as required!" Micajah steps off of the floating disk that carried him up. Micajah has arrived. You say, "Hi!" Micajah grunts, nods. You say, "Soo... think anyone else will drop by?" Austin steps off of the floating disk that carried him up. Austin has arrived. Austin says, "Morning evening, all." You say, "O hai, Austin." Austin says, "Hi, Claude." GreenKai tail-waves. You say, "I was just wondering how much time to give stragglers." Lady Jean sits herself down. Austin says, "Well, give it another shout or two and let folks have a couple minutes." Claude shouts "For anyone who just logged in: we're gathering at the park of the day for a panel on worldbuilding and character creation." (Public-shout) SHOUT: 31 folks heard that. [OOC] Carl is probably going to be mostly OOC. That is, I won't try to play my character's sometimes-somewhat-difficult-to-play-in-a-way-that-engages-the-player-or-suggests-an-action-or-response personality. (Hyphen overload! ...sorry) [OOC] Lady Jean says, "Ow?" You say, "That's all right, I think today will be OOC a lot." Micajah lights a cigarette. "Only we want to play Gods bickering over a lump of clay, it would be hard to do so otherwise." [OOC] Carl says, "Have some apostrophes, they're very soothing. :P" [OOC] Micajah says, "*Unless we" Claude giggles at the goat. Kona steps off of the floating disk that carried hir up. Kona has arrived. Lady Jean sneezes! Carl says, "Welcome!" Austin says, "Hiya, Kona." ( 'It needs more oceans.' 'We did oceans last time. You always get the oceans, Neptune. I say we need mountains this time around.' 'And two moons.' 'Guys, what about the back of a turt--' 'SHUT UP about the turtles already.' ) You say, "Hello!" In a page-pose to you, Treiss waves. Carl once pondered an idea for a roleplay involving handing the characters absolute power to create and destroy in a void, or maybe on/in a gigantic stone block floating in space or something... and just kind of seeing what happened. :P Treiss pages, "How long will it last?" to you. Carl says, "Although I suspect you'd have to have SOME limits." You page, "As long as you want to stay." to Treiss. Carl says, "Possibly depending on the players." ( Let's make the people wander East this time. Or better yet, South! ) You say, "Funny..." Claude noses Carl. Treiss steps off of the floating disk that carried her up. Treiss has arrived. Carl says, "Welcome!" Treiss waves. Treiss pets you! Treiss says, "Hi." You say, "Hello!" Micajah blows out smoke (and a bit of hot air), "Think I told you this one, Carl, but are you familiar with the explanation for why the human mind jumps so readily to conspiracy theories? How our most basic ideas about governance, justice, and how people should treat one other are so obvious to us, as individuals, that the human mind cannot conceive of how they might be not so clear to others? If everyone just got together and talked, we would--obviously--arrive at the same ideas. That's how it feels to people at least." Micajah says, "And so rather than accept that no, no we really do have different ideas about economic justice, the unborn, and the like, it's easier to think that while the masses are in line and generally kind, good people, a small cabal of oligarchs, shadowy with their hands on their levers of power, stand in the way of it. The conspiracy." You say, "When what happens is that people instinctively fall back on the social structure of apes." You say, "Yeah." Micajah rotates the cigarette in a circle. "But it's absurd, of course. Small groups can agree, large groups can only vote, imperfectly at best. One thing I wanted to run once was reverse the relationship: A world where the masses are even more squabbling, selfish, and self-delusion than in real life. And the players are part of a benevolent conspiracy, trying to mitigate disasters without being discovered. Hand every player power about equal to a city the size of Chicago. Treiss looks at Claude. "Apes?" Micajah says, "See what they would do with it." Carl says, "That would be interesting." You say, "Well... if the people in question are human at least." Micajah says, "And whether they think such roles are justifiable at all." Carl says, "Good idea, in my opinion." You say, "But that's not entirely on-topic, Treiss. How did that work out, Micajah? It's an interesting idea." Carl thinks everyone must have things they've daydreamed about running, but not actually tried. :) You say, "Oh yes..." Micajah says, "Thank you. But I've gotten ahead of things, Claude. I never executed it. It's like Carl says. You need to have a group of players interested, don't you, and some trust either way." You say, "Absolutely." Treiss waves to Kona. You say, "Let me make one last call and we can start." Carl says, "Doing it with just whoever happened to sign up MIGHT be an interesting experiment..." Claude shouts "Last call for the panel on worldbuilding and character creation. Type 'park', because we're starting!" (Public-shout) SHOUT: 29 folks heard that. Micajah says, "Quite. And it might even work out--if you're prepared to have them take things in directions other than what you had in mind, counter even to what you wanted." Lady-Jean says, "Hm." Ronnie steps off of the floating disk that carried him up. Ronnie has arrived. Claude grins at Carl. "I'd run something more generic for whoever shows up." Somewhere on the muck, Morticon has disconnected. You say, "Anyway, shall we?" Carl says, "I bet I could actually try my idea that way... it's a bit more generic/'simple'. And, sure." You say, "But yes, Micajah, I always do." Austin says, "Hiya, Ronnie." Claude coughs and adjust an imaginary mic. You say, "Hello, everyone, and welcome. Last time, some of our residents shared their backstories with us and how those backstories developed. Today, we're going to see how that process can be made to happen." You say, "Now, if anyone wants to talk, we'll have the usual process of first come, first served. I have a discussion seed prepared in any event." Lady-Jean says, "I have a couple things in mind depending on where it starts out." You say, "All right. Want to go first then?" Carl ehs, bouncing a bit. "Haven't made too many characters recently... the most recent one is a fairy involved in the SED, which I use for (relatively) Serious Roleplay. And I created her... quite the time ago. Might be better off with someone else starting." Lady-Jean says, "Okay Claude." You say, "Shoot, then. Unless you want to let me make my introduction while you prepare." Carl ohs, he did hear something interesting from someone else on how they created characters... 'I get something that was said, and then figure out who said it', to paraphrase in a possibly lacklustre fashion. Lady-Jean says, "That would be better." You say, "Sounds familiar, Carl. But anyway..." You say, "In my experience, there are two major approaches to the process of storybuilding. One is the Tolkien way: first build a world, with a geography, history, languages, ecosystems... and then think of what kinds of characters can live there and what stories they may live. The other is the exact opposite: you decide that you want to tell a story about X, then make up the characters you need and just the bit of world that's absolutely required." You say, "Needless to say, I've discovered that neither approach works well." Micajah says, "You've expressed dissatisfaction, Carl, with your current character and how it fits into casual engagement. You could enunciate thoughts on making characters for socialization versus characters for roleplaying plots. And any pitfalls to avoid." You say, "An excellent idea!" Kona fluffs Treiss! You say, "And in my experience, the major trap is that if you start from an extreme, you fall into the trap of genericity." Carl hehs, "Since I'm suffering from character problems myself... might not be the best person to ask, hehe. But... Part of the problem with Carl could be that he never had an originating idea with much character: originally, he was a somewhat whacky "MAD SCIENCE!" owl. Then one day Tyrian dragged him into Heck (in a handbasket, literally) and he got involved in a plot by Azure and another player. Which is, theoretically, still possibly going to happen, sometime in the future. But I never had much of an idea of *who* I want him to be, so he ended up being very solemn. About everything." Carl says, "And I've never really made a character specifically for socialization, though I've been contemplating it." You say, "My own ideas formed in time, Carl, after I arrived." Carl says, "Anyway, he was so solemn that there wasn't much to him. Or something like that, I guess. Possibly echoing what Claude said." You say, "Which leads to my first piece of advice: always be flexible. Allow for going back and adding detail." Carl . o O ( actually, he wasn't much of a 'mad science' owl when he ended up in that plot... mostly just an OOC mouthpiece. ) Carl says, "Good advice, I think." You say, "Ah... I just play myself when I don't have a better idea. Chaotic Good is the perfect personality for adventuring, you know." Lady-Jean says, "The approach I used for my world, I decided to take something mundane, change a few basic things, and then see what would need to be done for it to still be close enough. Two were, humans evolved somewhere besides africa, and there's more than just the one species." Claude nods to Lady Jean. fluffy steps off of the floating disk that carried it up. fluffy has arrived. Carl says, "Greetings, fluffy!" You say, "That's a valid appproach as well. O hai, fluffy!" fluffy says, "Heya." Austin says, "Hiya, fluffy." Lady Jean hugs fluffy and then tugs the critter into her lap. Kona is glommed down and swept away by a plastic hippopotamus mouth. Kona has left. fluffy meep! You say, "We're just starting here." Carl says, "I could quote you what's been said so far, if you like..." You say, "I'm logging anyway. A backup would be welcome." fluffy says, "If you like. Personally I like building worlds with spackle and putty." You say, "Heehee!" You say, "I would like to hear how you came up with Unity, after Lady Jean finishes." Carl offers fluffy the quote, I /think/ you said yes to it but I'm not totally sure so. You say, "Anyway, more recently, I've been starting from a vignette. One character, in a particular situation, in a fragment of a world. Just a fragment but vividly rendered. Then I start thinking how they ended up there, what kind of world would have led to that point... which in turn suggests the story." Carl oohs, "I had one of those recently!" You say, "Do tell, Carl!" Lady-Jean says, "There are some things humans are infamous for: The walking commute; permanent dwellings; warfare; &c. But what if each one of these things were given to a different group? So, one who can walk any distance but doesn't bother with building shelters, one who designs and builds shelters but still lives in trees?" Carl says, "Oh, well... I was walking around and I came up with this dramatic scene in which this one fellow winds up killing himself in order to bring an end to the Extremely Powerful Evil Character because of some... originally they were brothers thing or some other magical notion. Dramatic dialogue, the works. I was going to write it out at some point but I... didn't end up doing it, I could still probably." Carl says, "It was just dialog, starting with a 'I summon you!' or something, at first." Carl anyway, stops interrupting. [OOC] Carl enjoyed muttering it to himself while pacing about on a hill, so it served some purpose, at least. :P You say, "Heehee!" Ronnie yawns. You say, "And it's all right I think." fluffy says, "Text's an asynchronous medium." You say, "Yep!" Claude noses Ronnie. Ronnie erfs. Claude giggles. You say, "Anyway, that's interesting, Lady-Jean. How did that work out?" Treiss has disconnected. Garrison has disconnected. You say, "I did rescue a world from a failed setting created in my teenage years. Kept the geography, rewrote the history, names and everything else, apart from some bits of culture that received new explanations. But I only did that when I realized it would have been a great fit for the story I was about to tell, and... well... I do love revisiting the same settings again and again." Lady-Jean says, "And lastly, something needs to be eerily close to the Reader's reality. In this particular case it was supposed to have been the language, but I really haven't done that much with it." You say, "Besides, doesn't the translation convention kind of force you to keep the language... less than alien?" You say, "Otherwise you end up with reams of poetry in Elvish throughout the text. :P" You say, "And bore most of your readers halfway to death." Lady-Jean says, "Passingly similar, yes. The Reader has to be able to read it after all. And that's probably why." Austin hehs. fluffy says, "And that's why the ability to read Hiero is not necessary for being able to read my comics." You say, "Good point, fluffy." Carl says, "Well, y'could tweak the grammar/speaking-style for a certain race (I remember encountering some kind of Indian-ish grammar, or drop in snippets of a foreign tongue (ie shouted orders, a sentence here and there or whatever.)" fluffy says, "Any time that Hiero text is necessary for understanding, it's translated for the reader in some way, either via someone's internal monolog or just plain by subtitles." You say, "I like how anime settings usually balance the very familiar and the very alien." Claude nods to fluffy. "The Star Wars approach." Ronnie has disconnected. Lady-Jean says, "Not so much as world-building, but I do like to deliberately mangle idiom." You say, "European sci-fi -- mostly the French, really -- try too hard to make everything completely alien, and that tends to fall flat as well." Carl says, "Of course you don't necessarily get subtitles in traditional written word format." Carl says, "But anyway!" Lady-Jean says, "I'll share one short example." Claude nods to Lady Jean. "Illustrating how each group thinks differently?" fluffy says, "I have a few bits in Unity where different languages lead to odd turns of phrase in mistranslatoins between them." Claude grins at fluffy. "In A Fire Upon the Deep, they have automatic translation... which sometimes has to hop through a maze of available language-X-to-language-Y translations. The results aren't pretty. Lady-Jean says, "The phrase, ' is the bomb', for something that is very good. Change that to 'Baum', and you're saying, this is so good that it chased me up a tree." You say, "Heehee!" Lady Jean sits back, her bit done for the time being. Her hands rest on fluffy's tummy. fluffy wubbles, leans against Lady Jean. Carl says, "Is 'A Fire Upon The Deep' any good, Claude? /offtopic, don't really need to discuss... just curious." You say, "I like it. It's... epic. And crazy. And smart." You say, "Just Lovecraftian." You say, "You get that sinking feeling that everything is pointless and hopeless." Carl says, "Hmm." You say, "Which is par for the course with Vernor Vinge." You say, "But as a reading? I didn't think I'd go through a 900-page novel and NOT start feeling the length." You say, "All right, who wanted to be next? Any questions?" Carl huhs. He heard it recommended by some writing podcast... might try it sometime, maybe. But eh. Claude nods to Carl. "On topic, Vinge gets the characters and stories *very* right. And his worlds are fascinating." You say, "But there's the aforementioned little problem with them." You say, "They're scary worlds. I'll take the real one any day, complete with bombs." Carl nods... eeh... to be taken in small bits, perhaps. Micajah loves Vinge. Carl says, "It's available as an audiobook at the digital library site my library gives access to... a 21 hour audiobook... but I'll stop now so we can go back on topic." You say, "Wow. Well. I told you, it's long. :P And it's all right while nobody else has offered to speak." fluffy says, "I was waiting to be called on after Lady Jean finished." fluffy says, "Since you want to know about Unity." You say, "Go right ahead, fluffy!" Carl grabs a three-inch trumpet, and strikes a pose. "fluffy... thou art called!" *daDOOOOOONN!* Carl :P You say, "Heehee!" fluffy says, "The entire concept of Unity itself came because I was bored in a meeting at work and wondering what it'd be like for someone who had gone neutrois to end up with amnesia." fluffy says, "If nobody around them knew what they'd been before, how would that affect things. And of course that in and of itself doesn't make for an interesting story." Claude nods. "Biggest cliche ever." fluffy says, "But I started drawing it without a plan and very quickly found out that it was set in an interstellar space arc that was built by humans but the humans were long-gone." fluffy says, "And then I wasn't sure if the critters had any continuity with the human reign or whatever, and it all just kind of developed from there." Somewhere on the muck, Casandro has connected. fluffy says, "See, I didn't know that the whole 'wake up with amnesia' plot was a cliche, because I hadn't seen it before in fiction, because I'd only stuck to good fiction I guess." You say, "Sounds a lot like my own process as of late." Carl STILL wants to read-thru fluffy's comics sometime... :p You say, "It automatically earns you zero stars in interactive fiction, fluffy. :P" fluffy says, "Anyway, as things developed I kept making little notes about things I wanted to explore in the world and that led to plot points and I kept on rearranging stuff because things never seemed quite right with them." You say, "Naturally." You say, "Speaking of that, it's an interesting point: how to deal with contradictions." fluffy says, "And then the followon stories were based on ideas I'd had during writing other stories. Like, Planetfall was based on me thinking that even after the colonization stuff was resumed, kayohash and especially Melroses would be discriminated against, and I wrote a very short bit of script where the protagonist was a horrible person that I didn't want to read about. So I decided, hey, let's reverse it." You say, "Heh." fluffy says, "Where the protagonist no longer things it's her birthright, but a means of escape, and that rather than being a natural successor to Melrose genius and so on, I could instead have her NOT be very good at it and want nothing to do with it." You say, "Fun!" fluffy says, "And Meat came from me latching on to a couple of early throwaway jokes in Unity, and Breeder came from a goofy idea I had for a side-story in Unity... and Invasion was inspired by a thing Azure did on SpinDizzy." You say, "The reluctant hero." Austin mrphs. Sorry, touch laggy here. Claude aw! Hugs Austin. Icelus wanders in from outside. Icelus has arrived. Icelus skitters in and waves. You say, "Hello, Icelus." fluffy says, "He had set up tanks of heavy and hot water in the Freeloader, and I read up on heavy water and its effects, and thought, hey, what if Unity tried colonizing a planet covered in the stuff?" fluffy says, "And I combined that with another story fragment I'd been toying with and didn't know what to do with." You say, "The latter is interesting, fluffy. I made a setting based on SpinDizzy too." Carl says, "Greetings, Icelus." fluffy says, "Like, I had a vague notion of an idea for a story where they colonized a planet where there was already life on it and there was a fundamental incompatibility between the two, but I didn't really know where to take it until Azure gave me that little spark." Austin's interested to hear all these SpinDizzy-inspired settings. When he gets to hear them. fluffy says, "And then Blackout was just something where I wanted to think about what would have caused the societal changes that led to the portrayed world in Breeder and Planetfall." You say, "Yay for creative sparks." fluffy says, "Plus I wanted specifically to explore the nature of Zero's collective consciousness. It had been hinted at somewhat in Meat but I needed to explore it further." You say, "Plus, it was interesting to explore the matter/energy abundance inversion from real life." fluffy says, "But there is a slight visual hint (well, originally a mistake, but now I'm considering it a hint) about Instance Zero not being permanently gone." You say, "Awww!" fluffy says, "Well, not a mistake so much as an inconsistency caused by me not having written Blackout yet when I drew one particular strip that, it turns out, was set well after Blackout." fluffy says, "Anyway, I have a few other story fragments for book 3 which I haven't fleshed out yet but they've been rattling around in my brain for a while nonetheless." You say, "I can't wait." GreenKai wags her tail, "I liked the blackout one, 'cause it had people who were numbers and they were little bug things too." You say, "And it's a good way to come up with future story hooks." Austin's lagging worse than he thought, actually. Please carry on. Claude giggles at GreenKai. fluffy says, "The numbers are just the Zero consciousnesses' naming convention." Carl's been considering trying to do a challenge to himself, to do some kind of ... '30-day comic', where he does a short story at a strip-a-day rate for 30 days that he doesn't mean to continue afterwards. Just to try and create something. But he hasn't latched onto any compelling story-seed, and may simply need to 'just do it'... and see what happens. fluffy says, "Breeder was done to fulfill a similar time constraint." fluffy says, "Well, the short story format in particular was to get away from Ascent's sprawling rambling nature. Breeder was also specifically to tell a tiny capsule story in as short a time as I could handle." You say, "Hmm." fluffy says, "I decided to stick to a very hard constraint so I ended up actually removing a lot of dialog that I couldn't make to fit very well." fluffy says, "I usually do that, actually, although Blackout I spilled over on the limit I set for myself." You say, "Better not to be rigid about it, I think." Carl, onna tangent, tries to think back to the last really /good/ story he read ... gosh. Nothing stands out since quite a time ago, when I was reading Graceling/Bitterblue/Fyre and kind of liked them. ...anyway, I wouldn't have any kind of plot structure for mine at first, I don't think. Discovery-writing in a fixed length format... what's the worst that could happen? :P Icelus chitters, "Your fingers break!" Icelus chitters, "You stab yourself with a pen?" You say, "A story seed for a future, better work, Carl." Carl says, "Oh, no... I've invoked Murphy and Icelus's given him material to work with. I'm doomed." Carl says, "Anyway... maybe! I could probably use a few story seeds." You say, "All my stories are CC-BY-SA, Carl. ;)" You say, "And fluffy's too. :P" fluffy thinks it uses by-nc-sa You say, "Oh, all right." Icelus was trying to be helpful! She's not always very good at it. Carl actually has an image in his head he might be able to start with... we'll see. Perhaps I should actually try this thing. You say, "But you are, Icelus. In your own way. :P" fluffy says, "Hm, actually, my comic site is tagged just CC-BY." fluffy says, "But the rest of my site is by-nc-sa." Austin says, "Er, pardon. CC-BY and BY-NC-SA?" You say, "Creative Commons, Austin." Carl nods. [OOC] Icelus knows NC is non-commercial and SA is share-alike. fluffy says, "BY just means 'attribution only' - if you use my stuff you gotta credit me." fluffy says, "by-nc-sa means if you use my stuff, you gotta credit me, you can't make money on it, and you gotta release it under by-nc-sa." Austin nods, all right. You say, "Share Alike means anything you base off my work has to be under the same license. Naturally, any clause can be waved in a contract." You say, "Waived, even." fluffy should probably just fix the comic section's tags to be by-nc-sa also. fluffy nods. "The point to CC is to grant an automatic blanket license without requesting permission." fluffy says, "It doesn't prevent someone from getting a different license on a per-request basis." fluffy says, "That distinction seems to be lost on a lot of people though." You say, "No, a lot of them just want exclusivity. :D" Carl attaches clauses to banners with a few stray apostrophes and a needle, and waves them gallantly! fluffy says, "Well, people do a horrible job at abiding by CC licenses, too." fluffy says, "Buzzfeed is pretty notorious about that." fluffy says, "They abide by 'by' but that's about it." You say, "I'm happy with that, fluffy, when it comes to my works." fluffy says, "Also, -sa clauses cause weirdness because you have to release under the *exact same* license. So you can't use by by-sa and by-nc-sa content in a single work without excepting one of them." You say, "One more way in which -NC causes trouble." You say, "But anyway, if anyone else is in line to speak, speak up now please." You say, "Otherwise I'd like to answer Austin his question about basing some stories off SpinDizzy." fluffy says, "Just to clarify, I wouldn't say Invasion was 'based off SpinDizzy,' it's just that interactions on here provided the spark for the story." Claude nodnods. "Of course." You say, "But my own stories are." Carl says, "Eeh... I should probably go to bed soon, but I suppose, if no-one else has anything more worthwhile to say, I could say a word or two about how Tavi (my fairy character earlier mentioned) originated. Otherwise, I might be a interested as to if fluffy's experienced any dichotomy between IC-self interaction and its ooc self... /curious." Austin nods. fluffy says, "I'm IC-flexible." You say, "Sure, Carl. And we can always have another meeting someday." Carl says, "Or, more broadly, about if anyone shifts between being OOC-self and being a much different IC-self, I suppose." fluffy says, "My purely IC self is a lot more naive." Carl nods to Claude, so we can! Perhaps we should do a regular 'meeting of roleplayers/storytellers' or something... eh! fluffy says, "And a bit less... stable, I suppose." You say, "Why not? The writing circle floundered, and it's been missed." Claude takes notes, scribble scribble. Austin says, "I'd be happy to support meetings like that." [OOC] Icelus supposes she's significantly different from her OOC self, which is not a large, insectile creature with semitelepathic capabilities. You say, "Yay, Austin." Claude giggles at Icelus. Carl says, "Anyway... if anyone's interested, Tavi kind of sprang up one Saturday afternoon (I think) as an idea that was just suddenly there: a fairy who'd had her magic forcibly removed from her. These fairies would be/are magical creatures of a sort, so living without magic which is supposed to be a part of a normal, stable fairy would be kind of painful... depressing, difficult to deal with, causes a feeling of acute, incurable emptiness. Which may or may not have been something I got sometimes. Interestingly, I have an image of a doodle I think I was making that day connected with the idea, though it wouldn't be how I'd do her now." You say, "Like any loss of a limb... or a sense, I suppose." Carl nods, "Perhaps a bit more on the spiritual side, but yeah. It does power some of their biological functions, most specifically the wings and flight. Anyways, I talked to MOrticon about it and we decided to try the idea out... not to go into details, but (quite a while ago now) we actually fixed her initial problem. Since then the character's developed I think a fair bit more than it was at first, her theme seems to have shifted to 'self-discovery'/path-choosing or something... also being a lonely character. /blahblah. Carl says, "Or path-discovery or something." You say, "Poor fairy. She can't even fly anymore." Carl says, "Well we fixed that... I guess one interesting thing is that my take on fairies was much less the 'sprite' concept that seems to pervade. Didn't really think about that, actually. They're three-foot, magical human(oid)s who can fly, and she actually had a fairly dark or at least strife-y world/past. Definitely not all sweetness and light and making flowers bloom and things." Carl notes that the IC information could hopefully stay OOC knowledge. Micajah has disconnected. Claude nodnods. Carl says, "Anyway, I didn't exactly say 'oh, I'm going to come up with a character now,' though I may have been thinking about it a bit. It just... happened." Micajah has connected. You say, "That's how it usually goes, Carl." You say, "Hmm... no questions? Then I'll take the stage now if nobody minds. Let me know if you want to go next." Carl says, "Also my idea of her world (and past) kind of developed over time as well, as I ended up dropping little hints and references in during the course of play, some of them a bit cheesy in retrospect... but yeah. I'll perhaps head out soonish, is late." You say, "That's the best way to do it, Carl, as I've learned from bitter experience." You say, "Organically." You say, "Like the real world grows." [OOC] Icelus thinks it depends on the person. Some people do well planning things out in advance. Not her, though. You say, "Tolkien did. Took him 12 years to write LOTR. :P" Carl considers to think in ideas that he plans to allow to grow and develop, pick one and see where it takes him perhaps. Maybe with a tad more planning, maybe not. I had another idea with a bit more backstory bouncing about my head at one point but never attempted it... You say, "Experimenting is good too. Nature also does that, it's part of evolution." Carl keeps thinking 'I want to experiment a little' but never actually experimenting, haha. Claude coughs. Claude giggles, too. You say, "Do eeet! That's the whole point!" You say, "Ahem." You say, "In my case, it all started with wanting to encourage Casandro to write his story. So I came up with a funny romp with no real point than to illustrate how it might be done. Which of course had to be based on SpinDizzy's wider setting -- the galaxy outside the planetoid. But I wanted to anonymize it, so as not to upset anyone. And of course I had my own vision as to how the entire thing could be made somewhat coherent. Hence for example the idea that we're in the distant future when humans have spread throughout the galaxy, and tech is advanced enough that anyone can be whatever they like -- furs, robots, vehicles... Came out with a unified way to handle magic, and here it is!" You say, "The magic is strongly implied to be just Sufficiently Advanced Technology(TM), but in practice it ends up being literal magic. The characters even call it that, and treat it accordingly." You say, "Murphy's Law being what it is, I ended up writing Casandro's story too. But I had to depart from his vision quite a bit, and he never forgave me for it even though he loved the resulting story." [OOC] Carl says, "New resolution: I shall EXPERIMENT! Bwahahahaaaaa! ...now to actually do it, maybe tomorrow." [OOC] Carl says, "...the deadly maybe." Claude noses Carl towards the nearest mad science lab. fluffy knows where one might find one. You say, "Do you rent it out, fluffy?" Lady Jean smiles. fluffy says, "It's free for anyone to use." You say, "Argh, and the one person who wanted to hear my spiel is lagged." You say, "That's good to hear though." Lady Jean kisses fluffy's cheek, then slips out from under it. "I should be getting off to bed." You say, "Sleep well!" fluffy aws. "Goodnight, human-looking human." GreenKai has disconnected. You say, "Heehee!" GreenKai has connected. Spoof: Your spoof has been recorded in the #recent history: ( Man-Man, who has all the powers of a man-sized man! ) Carl decides to go and find a mad science lab! Perhaps I'll look fluffy's up. ...also, to bed aswell. I'm going to leave my character here to pick up a few last bits of scrollback while I leave. ...until I unplug the wifi. whatever. Goodnight! Lady Jean is glommed down and swept away by a plastic hippopotamus mouth. Lady Jean has left. You say, "Nini, Carl!" Austin grins. "Night, Carl, too." You say, "Oh, there you are, Austin." Austin says, "Certainly." Claude hugs the coati. You say, "So... since nearly everyone is asleep, we should probably declare the event at an end." You say, "And just in time too." Austin says, "It is the hour, at least." You say, "Thank you all for coming. We should do this thing again." [OOC] Icelus says, "It was fun!" fluffy says, "Counterpoint: we should go back in time and prevent it from having happened." Austin says, "I have to get to the nest myself." You say, "In any event, I'm not going anywhere yet so we can go on. I'll just turn off logging." You say, "Good night, Austin!" You say, "And thank you, Icelus."