Sycophants and Ass-Clowns

First of all, if you're hitting this blog via the front page, please allow me to apologize for that Star Wars music that just auto-played. I hate that shit, too, but I didn't realize, two posts ago, that video was an auto-play when I embedded it. My bad. Just take a moment, scroll down, and pause it.

I'll wait.

Okay, so before I begin this tirade, I want to point you to a really good blog.

If you like this blog, but find yourself longing for something that's written much more coherently, and caters much more specifically to those that are interested in the craft of writing, and has fewer run-on sentences, and is less of a shambolic shithole, please allow me to introduce you to Fists & Angels, Christs & Angels. It's written by one of my good buddies, Bucho. We used to be super-tight, but then he turned into a better writer than I am, so fuck him.

Also, fake beer can really hit the spot on a Friday night when buried in your creative mental space. Yes, I'm THAT guy, now.

The title of this post ... it came from a conversation that I was having with some friends at work ... I vent a considerable amount lately, and for good reason. I vent for good reasons that I'm not going to get into here, but if you know me, you know what the deal is. The short version is that I plopped down in the chair next to Captain Butthurt's cubicle and muttered, 'I am so sick of dealing with sycophants and ass-clowns.' Yeah, there's some shit going down that I'm part of, but I'll survive it one way or another.

ANYWAY, the Captain said I had to use 'Sycophants and Ass-Clowns' as this weekend's post title. Since I do what I'm told, I did.

Truth
I sometimes fantasize about the inevitable future. Right now, the world is controlled by money, but eventually, all of us SysAdmins are going to rise up and grab them by the surprisingly undersized balls and demand a change.

You see, we control the world.

You don't necessarily know it right now, but your computer was able to be manufactured because several sysadmins allowed it to happen via networking and server administration. Your internet connection is maintained by an army of sysadmins. Your power stays on because sysadmins allow it by making sure that the right servers can talk to the right systems, in addition to maintaining the networking that goes into that.

We control the lights. We control the TV. We control the internet. We control the phones. We control the traffic lights. We control the porn. We control Justin Bieber. We control the world.

One day, reality TV will go away, or I will rally the troops and bring this world to its fucking knees.

Just think about it.

Network Programming
I want to talk about Alphas and Falling Skies for a moment.

It's rare that a major network doesn't fall upon its own sword to avoid producing a good science fiction series. Somehow, Falling Skies managed to become quite good after 2-3 episodes.

What it did well was follow the Walking Dead roadmap. It treated the aliens as a device, rather than as a focus, and shifted the emphasis to the people, and how they re-learn to live their lives.

While it's not nearly as good as The Walking Dead, it definitely filled a niche this summer.

If it wants to reach The Walking Dead status, it needs to make the characters more interesting, and stop just relying on conflict to achieve that. Conflict can be a good way to engage the viewer, but it gets tiresome if that's all that's going on.

They did seem to catch onto this a bit as the eight-episode season went on, but the show hasn't truly blossomed yet.

As for Alphas, this is my new SyFy show. This one has been solid from the pilot on. The characters are engaging and sympathetic, and the plots have been fun. It really is Heroes + X-Files.

If I had to recommend one new show for the summer, it would be Alphas.

That Phone App
The Windows Phone app is proceeding apace. I've been looking at approaches to the game logic, as well as incubating the 'story' in my head. I use quotes because it's not one linear story. If a story is a thread, this is a tapestry.

The logic part is challenging because this can really be approached a number of different ways. I could have a left-to-right branching series that starts skinny on the left, gets fat in the middle, then gets skinny again on the right, then gets fat again going further right, then gets skinny again, etc. I could also use an Enum, as suggested by Captain Butthurt, to tick a set of events, that once fulfilled, opens the next section, then repeats a few times. Additionally, I could also plant a few key decisions in a branching series that then set the path to one of several middle points, which then each open up to their own sets of branches, wash, rinse, repeat.

So, I've got some planning to do, then some writing, then some coding, and then a cigarette.

That Science Fiction Novel
This coming along well, if in a somewhat halted fashion. This is the first novel I've ever written in which I get self-conscious. It's very unlike me, but I'm really pushing things in a VERY adult direction, a la Battlestar Galactica or The Walking Dead, but with a dash of Firefly. I think part of my discomfort comes from the fact that I'm working in the holiest of genres for the first time, so I'm having to relearn my approach somewhat.

Also, this is the first book I've ever written while not totally shitfaced most of the time, so I'm having to rebuild my process somewhat. A writer gives him or herself permission to do a lot more when they're 'altered' while writing, and that can be a very potent thing, and I've handcuffed myself somewhat in terms of the creative process.

So, I'm loving this book so far, even if it makes me a little nuts sometimes. I think I'm lingering too long on certain characters, but it's because I'm so interested in them, and that's what editing's for, dammit.

Where the hell is the next Endless Wars novel?
It'll come. Not soon, though. There are other projects I want to get out the door first, and that's a series that's complicated for me to approach now.

Book Recommendations
I need some good non-licensed works reading. What ya got?

-Blaine

Soundtrack
Red Fang - Prehistoric Dog
Pearl Jam - The Fixer
Eddie Vedder - Can't Keep
Rob Zombie - Werewolf Women of the SS
Tres Mts. - She's My New Song
Rob Zombie - The Man Who Laughs
Tres Mts. - God Told Me
Brad - Luxury Car
Rob Zombie - Sick Bubblegum
Eddie Vedder - Dream a Little Dream With Me
Limp Bizkit - Loser
Avenged Sevenfold - Welcome to the Family
Brad - Runnin' For Cover
Foo Fighters - Dear Rosemary
Slash - We're All Gonna Die
Chris Cornell - Long Gone
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
Them Crooked Vultures - Spinning in Daffodils
Alice in Chains - Your Decision
Korn - Pop a Pill

Commence the Interactive Story Phone App ... NOW!

I talked before about making an interactive story app for Windows Phone. Well, now it's happening.

I finally dove headlong into educating myself more on C# yesterday, and emerged with a functional proof-of-concept. I built a very basic app that allowed me, in my Windows Phone Emulator, to tap a button that took me to another page, both of which had custom content on them.

From there, I did a few more hours of self-education and testing, just to see if I had the right feel for the actual building process, as well as to refine it, and then it was time to start thinking about the story itself, and how best to use the interactive process to tell it.

After that, I had to step outside for a smoke and think for a bit ... I've written novels, screenplays, short stories, poems, essays, love letters, lyrics, and I even dabbled a bit with interactive fiction back in college, in a class that combined .html with interactive fiction. Great class (tip o' the hat to Deb Lewis, who taught the course.)

One of the ideas I had in my head was my favorite part of any Bioware game, which is the dialogue and choices. Both branch, but only a little.

The thing about a branching story, though, is that the author has to reconcile each of those branches.

What I've usually seen done is a very cheesedick approach, in which the branches all reconcile to one or two main stories, or some just result in death (which, actually, if logically implemented, is valid), and ultimately, it's just unsatisfying.

However, the amount of writing it takes for a branching story is a staggering prospect. Just do the math.

And, I haven't even talked about the creative problems with it. Any good novelist can tell you that they have a 'feel' for the best possible thread through their story. Deviations from that thread feel wrong. Now, give the reader control, while remembering that Jersey Shore, Fox News, and Dancing With the Stars all pull down great ratings. There are a lot of stupid fucking people out there, and it's hard to even conceive of writing for them. Writing scripts for the previously mentioned programs has gotta be hell for the soul (and yes, they're scripted. Just look at how well things come together and how there's always a camera where there needs to be one.)

So, I think I'm going to have a 'right' main story that one can follow loosely, with groupings of events, in which that group of events can be completed in any order, with each one slightly varied by the order in which you approach them.

What I really want to do, though, is create a very twisted environment to which the reader will want to return and in which the reader will want to explore. I want to make a lot of dialogues and exploration optional, so that people can customize the experience for themselves. I want to create characters that readers will want to come back and get to know better, not just in this volume, but in future stories that take place in this small, weird, little Missouri town, known as Epitaph.

One of the last things that I did last night was use Visio to create a map of the town, so that I could start creating the lore of the town in my head, and it was the perfect idea, because I realize, as I was laying out the town, that there's a small area of the town in which the roads just stop, and in which no one lives. It used to be there, and now it's not. Also, there seems to be a trail of sorts, in which other roads are damaged, and it seems to lead to the woods just beyond the town ...

I've also got a story that's a combination of familiar folk tales and a friend's bitch of an ex-wife. It's going to be great.

The big thing I'm going for here, though, is environment and characters. Typically, plot and characters always come first for me, but I really wanted to use this as a chance to really build 'storytelling via the environment,' by which I can let the world and the look it looks, smells, and feels tell a lot of the story for me.

Also, as a means of keeping all the branches organized, I'll be using a Visio for that, as well, since it's one of the greatest applications ever for damn near everything.

Lastly, I wanted to gush a bit about how easy building a Windows Phone 7 App via Visual Studio 2010 is. I am, by no means, the world's most proficient programmer, by any stretch of the imagination, but the tools that Microsoft provides for developing WP7 apps are fantastic, as are the tutorials they provide. If you've never programmed before, this is a great entry point. I've got a year of C, a year of Java, and some Python and C# here and there, and I walked into this and just built an app after a few hours of tutorials and playing with it. I didn't even start at the baby levels of tutorials, either. Those really are built for folks that have NEVER programmed, so get on it! Get a Windows Phone and start making that app that you've always wished existed.

Ultimately, I'm trying to reshape the way stories are told in the modern world. No one's really doing it right anymore, and I'd like to take a shot at it.

What do you think? How would you like to see stories told now? Who does it really well? Who sucks at it the most?

-Blaine

Soundtrack
Chickenfoot - Future is the Past
Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants - Death March
Gregg Allman - Reconsider Baby
Serj Tankian - Beethoven's Cunt (live)
Eddie Vedder - Once in a While
Them Crooked Vultures - New Fang
Eddie Vedder - Sleeping By Myself
Them Crooked Vultures - Bandoliers

Test Drives & Deep Star Wars Thoughts

First, I am testing out the Windows Live Writer blogging tool, to see if it’s something that is more than tolerable. The jury is still out, even after two sentences.

I’m becoming more and more of a ‘Windows guy’ as time goes on, and I’m disturbed at how undisturbed I am by this notion. In many contexts, generic humans cast Microsoft in a light that is more than familiar to Emperor Palpatine, the Borg Queen, and Dubya. I do not dispute this choice, but I will assert that many of the tools that they produce are now very familiar sights in my various creative toolboxes, whether we’re talking sysadmin or author.

Yes, I still use Linux at home for a lot of things, and I will always insist that everyone maintain at least a couple Linux boxes at home, because is just flat-out better for a lot of things.

That being said, I’ve found that Microsoft has really revamped a lot of their approach and have been very smart about making very smart tools, such as Windows Live Writer, which I’m liking more and more as this post goes on.

At work, I’ve fallen in love with using tools like Hyper-V and Service Center Virtual Machine Manager, and look forward to the new releases of each.

On the writing and publishing front, I’ve switched over to Office 2010, Skydrive, and Office 365 for being able to work on my various projects from anywhere, anytime. Hell, I’ve even switched to a Windows Phone, and will probably be developing an interactive story app for it some time this year or next.

Yup, in short, I’m a total sellout and Microsoft whore.

In other news …

My good friend (and mega Linux advocate) John had a very interesting comment recently, regarding the Star Wars: The Old Republic trailers that get trotted at each major gaming show. Before I share his wisdom, let me show you the latest one, for context’s sake …

Purrrty ,,,

While I’m always blown away by them, I’m always a little bothered by the fact that these aren’t really representative of the game. The game looks fantastic, and I try to view these trailers as short films that simply lay the foundation for the fiction of this particular slice of the Star Wars mythology.

John, though, had a very simple take on them. He asserted that LucasFilm should just start making movies like this. He wants new Star Wars films that are crafted using these same tools, and in the same style.

At first, I disputed this, and cited cost and time as obvious restraints. He swatted away my concerns like so many annoying gnats, and the more I think about it, the more I think I agree with him. I mean, if anyone could afford such a venture, wouldn’t it be G-Lu? And, if any CGI feature were going to rake in some mega-bucks, wouldn’t it be Star Wars?

I sarcastically thank him for planting such an unwatered seed in my brain.

What say you?

In closing …

Real work has been real work, so the writing has hit a wall, but I plan to get back on the horse this week. My space opera needs to be shared …

I’ve been absolutely sucking down one Star Wars novel after another lately. I don’t know why I’ve suddenly gone crazy over Star Wars fiction, but I have.

My Star Trek Online mission/mod took a turn for the campy about a month ago, and I stopped. I’m going to blow out my last map and redo it in a fashion more suited for the ‘modern’ era Star Trek.

My plans for a horror collection are still proceeding, but I’m having a hard time deciding on a book length, as well as who makes it in.

I’m going to do an ‘interactive novel’ app for Windows Phone after I’ve cleared my deck a bit. I may make it a prequel to my space opera.

I’m still waiting for the second edition of Endless Wars to hit the major retailers. You can buy it now, though, through Lulu in either paperback or ebook.

I always suck at prioritizing, so please, if you have something you’d like to see first, let me know.

-Blaine