- Seifer and the prison guards' dialogue clearly showed that they were enjoying being sadistic.

- Personally I would consider the change from mystery to horror to be a downgrade, not an upgrade. I do not like horror, I do not understand why other people like it (although they are welcome to it if that's their cup of tea), I would never want to write it.

- Since hermaphroditic characters (for example) are already considered 'forbidden' in most player's minds, I have to present them as real people to counteract that conditioning. Xenallure is not about fetishes such as wanting to have sex with someone just because they have both tits and a dick, it is about understanding that things which initially strike you as freaky or at least odd will appear normal and even alluring (in a loveable way, not a fetishistic way) if you look at them from a different perspective. Open-mindedness is about understanding that many opinions are culturally relative; by taking a human protagonist from our culture and putting them in a world where this culture doesn't exist anymore but there are three other new cultures they could possibly live within, and also by presenting the characters as attractive to each other even if the player doesn't attempt to court them, we invite the player to examine his/her own criteria for what makes a desireable mate and think about whether any of them are simply culturally conditioned preconceptions that the player doesn't really feel.

Quote: Of course you 'created' all of the characters, because you reject all of the rest. Remember the character 5min created since the beginning? Remember those techno characters created afterwards? Why weren't they in the design? Why weren't they even discussed? This argument is not new. I had already said it several times during the project.

I did not reject any characters, I repeatedly invited the people who proposed these characters to develop them further. I practically begged for people to create and develop characters because I wanted to have a variety of tastes represented in the cast, but no one except you (Estok) responded. I certainly didn't reject Frequency, I spent a lot of time helping you develop her just like you spent time helping me develop Skew. How conveniently you forget whatever doesn't support your need to argue. And how interesting that subterfuge was what you were being criticized for by Avatar God and I toward the end of the collaborative thread, and now you are being criticized for the same thing by different people in a different situation. But of course we must all be wrong and you must be right because everything Estok does is 'bulletproof'.

Quote: On the verge of adopting that new design method, you used the seeming difference in story objective to avoid a group voting. Before the voting could take place, you broke off from the project

Bullshit. At that point the continuous argument and lack of progress had driven away all the members, there was no group left to vote. Your holy grail design method is not the only design method, and when I challenged you to develop a 'structured, objective-oriented procedure' for it you couldn't lay out any step-by-step procedure. That's real logical, expecting me to be able to use a method you can't even explain to me.

Quote: The idea of seeing a the main purpose of a story is to deliver a story is probably quite new. It was based on the argument over whether we should have a central idea before deciding on the characters and worldbuilding. I think she is still in the process of subconsciously adopting the view that the message of the story can be something beyond the characters and relations between the characters.

Quote: So that even though she doesn't accept in overty, the effect can still be etched in her subconscious.

I encountered the idea that a story's function is to convey a premise, or central idea, in 2003 in Chris Crawford's writings about story and mimetics, and again in Dramatica's theory, both before the dreambell thread. You are the only one who insists that the central idea must be the first step in the story creation process; others believe pulling a premise out of thin air is not how human creativity works (especially in groups) and that it is much more functional to begin designing or even write the first draft of the story first, then analyze what you've generated to discover what premise your subconscious has already put in the story, then rework what you have to strengthen the premise. I believe I explained this to you fairly on in the collaborative thread, but since you don't agree you have dismissed the idea, and since I don't buy into your particular permutation of the story I must not have learned the lesson yet. It is incredible how full of yourself you are, Estok, always presenting your opinions ("Xenallure is an ugly Frankenstein") and theories (Only the TDM can "adaquetly justify the design choices without the scale being tipped.") as if they are inarguable fact. There is clearly no room in your worldview for anybody to disagree with you or have different taste than you.

Perhaps one reason you think Xenallure is ugly is that you don't want to learn the lessons about open-mindedness and diverse opinions in peaceful coexistence that it has to teach.

"I encountered the idea that a story's function is to convey a premise, or central idea, in 2003 in Chris Crawford's writings about story and mimetics, and again in Dramatica's theory, both before the dreambell thread. You are the only one who insists that the central idea must be the first step in the story creation process; others believe pulling a premise out of thin air is not how human creativity works (especially in groups) and that it is much more functional to begin designing or even write the first draft of the story first, then analyze what you've generated to discover what premise your subconscious has already put in the story, then rework what you have to strengthen the premise." - Sunanadshadow

Sure, you could use this method...and you do. But lets take a look at what you get from it shall we? First I see on your personal page that you have written 7 short stories, 5 of them containing bisexuality, homosexuality, BDSM, animal traits and so forth and so on all in differing quantities. Now we look at your pictures, 10 of your 11 dressed characters are wearing clothing associated with BDSM. We look at your method again...using whats in your subconsious to form stories makes stories about whats in your subconscious; is that fair to say?

Now we take a look at what me and Estok are saying, basic things, nothing too complicated; "your overuse of certain elements makes your story design poor". In the end I think that this is the troubling part: yes you used a different method for story design and it produced the same work with the same elements over and over again. I wont speak for Estok when I say that it is frusterating to see you argue a story design method when it is clearly a poor method. Estok is not arguing that his metod is the only one out there, you are making bad generalizations based on nothing he has said. His point is not that his is the best but that, when used for more than 'niche' writting, especially in the arena of intelligent videogame/novel design his method is far supperior. It may have its flaws, but it helps to create new content driven by a central purpose which is NOT relegated to a relationship or feeling but can raise several points throughout whilst remaining a cohesive, coherent whole.

Estok; It is not worth arguing. She is the moderator, that will not change until she wants it to. Even if she wasn't the moderator she would still be free and welcome to give others advice, no matter how limited or ill suited you might think that advice is for beginners. We should just thank her for keeping the forum clean (her real job) and using her own time to do it.

"Also, it's nice to go from criticising SnS for being a bad writer to suddenly 'liking' her writing - all in the space of two posts. Did your conscience get to you? You may claim you never called her a bad writer in the first place, but you've twice said that her story design skills were poor." - Vaevictis_A

Vaevictis_A; your posts are very bothersome. You read what you want to and forget what you dont. I reply, and say, somethings in a manner that suggests assumed association. Since you dont seem to understand I would suggest you stear clear of my posts because your replies to them are mistaken. As for the quote above I shall explain myself only once, so read carefully so as not to become upset over something you didn't fully understand. I LIKE SaS's writting, her style and voice are well practiced and developed. I have always said that. I do not however agree with the manner in which she designs her stories, this is a seperate matter, honestly. I do not ever change position because of my 'conscience', I am not a person who decides how they feel based around how others are feeling. SaS is a logical person which is why I felt I could make that comment. You on the other hand are not and you must learn to stay away from discussions that you are not understanding, there is nothing more annoying in the world then an uninformed person with good intentions; these people seem to flock to the internet. I suspect you to be one.

Quote: Original post by slowpid
"I encountered the idea that a story's function is to convey a premise, or central idea, in 2003 in Chris Crawford's writings about story and mimetics, and again in Dramatica's theory, both before the dreambell thread. You are the only one who insists that the central idea must be the first step in the story creation process; others believe pulling a premise out of thin air is not how human creativity works (especially in groups) and that it is much more functional to begin designing or even write the first draft of the story first, then analyze what you've generated to discover what premise your subconscious has already put in the story, then rework what you have to strengthen the premise." - Sunanadshadow

Sure, you could use this method...and you do. But lets take a look at what you get from it shall we? First I see on your personal page that you have written 7 short stories, 5 of them containing bisexuality, homosexuality, BDSM, animal traits and so forth and so on all in differing quantities. Now we look at your pictures, 10 of your 11 dressed characters are wearing clothing associated with BDSM. We look at your method again...using whats in your subconsious to form stories makes stories about whats in your subconscious; is that fair to say?

Now we take a look at what me and Estok are saying, basic things, nothing too complicated; "your overuse of certain elements makes your story design poor". In the end I think that this is the troubling part: yes you used a different method for story design and it produced the same work with the same elements over and over again.

I already carefully explained this on p.2 of this thread:

Quote: That my stories may be repetitive and boring when taken as a group, I understand - I am working toward publishing a novel with themes of gender and transformation, and my stories are various small attempts to practice handling these themes, and certain character archetypes and dynamics, from slightly different angles. Basically I don't consider myself to have officially 'used' anything until it's published, so until then I have no qualms about re-using any of it if doing so helps my learning process.

IMO it is invalid to say that my story design is poor by comparing between these stories, the design of a story can only be flawed if the flaw is within the story. My stories should not be expected to be different from each other since they are, in a sense, all rough drafts of the same novel.

I don't understand why that is troubling, since I am doing it on purpose. I don't understand what is so bad about being a niche writer. I consider practicing writing one thing until I can do so with professional quality a more directed and useful expenditure of my effort than if I wrote stories about themes scattered all over the place. I was forced to do plenty of that in highschool and college, I see no reason to write anything except what I want to write now that I am finally free to pursue my own agenda.

And Estok has definitely stated that his TDM is the only sound story design method, just not in this thread. It's nice of you to defend him if you feel he is being attacked unfairly, but on this particular point there is proof in his other posts that he feels this way. I also wonder what you think Vaevictus_A didn't understand - all he did was point out the rather abrupt change of tone in your tone about my writing from one post to the next, which I also found puzzling. But I chalk it up to the fact that often the writing which we react the most badly to is that which we think had great potential but went badly wrong, which AFAICT seems to be what you think about my writing.

Either way, I will look forward to seeing your critique of my writing when you have time.

Slowpid,

I'll first of all point out what's pretty much obvious: That you're the only one who has not been involved in a story development team with either me, Estok or SnS. Therefore, feel free to flounder around in whatever little bubble you've made for yourself. It's cute, but we can't really use that for our discussion. Try to get involved in anything here - there are a lot of other forums with projects for you to join - get some game development experience, and then come back to this thread (I'm sure it'll still be around). Gamedev.net newbies are a dime a dozen, and I've already helped out a few from the Help Wanted forum this week, but I'll spare a little time for you as well, since you really seem to want to join in on something.

Quote: Sure, you could use this method...and you do. But lets take a look at what you get from it shall we? First I see on your personal page that you have written 7 short stories, 5 of them containing bisexuality, homosexuality, BDSM, animal traits and so forth and so on all in differing quantities. Now we look at your pictures, 10 of your 11 dressed characters are wearing clothing associated with BDSM. We look at your method again...using whats in your subconsious to form stories makes stories about whats in your subconscious; is that fair to say?

And let's take a look at *your* page... oh.. wait, right. It's an unfortunate truth that the world is awash with critics who can't get any writing done for the life of them, so they turn to shredding others' writing instead.

Please, go to the Help Wanted forum, check the 'start here' thread, then join a couple of Pong projects. They'll suit your level of writing nicely.

[Edited by - Vaevictis_A on April 15, 2005 2:27:13 AM]

Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: - Personally I would consider the change from mystery to horror to be a downgrade, not an upgrade. I do not like horror, I do not understand why other people like it (although they are welcome to it if that's their cup of tea), I would never want to write it.

There are different ways you can upgrade a mystery into. Think about it this way: If you downgrade the emotional and psychological impact of a horror story, what do you get?

Quote: - Since hermaphroditic characters (for example) are already considered 'forbidden' in most player's minds, I have to present them as real people to counteract that conditioning. Xenallure is not about fetishes such as wanting to have sex with someone just because they have both tits and a dick, it is about understanding that things which initially strike you as freaky or at least odd will appear normal and even alluring (in a loveable way, not a fetishistic way) if you look at them from a different perspective.

I was talking about costume designs when I said 'ugly', and from that I infered that it would help if you have freaky characters (personality-wise, not sexuality).

Quote: Open-mindedness is about understanding that many opinions are culturally relative; by taking a human protagonist from our culture and putting them in a world where this culture doesn't exist anymore but there are three other new cultures they could possibly live within, and also by presenting the characters as attractive to each other even if the player doesn't attempt to court them, we invite the player to examine his/her own criteria for what makes a desireable mate and think about whether any of them are simply culturally conditioned preconceptions that the player doesn't really feel.

In the description of this model, the player is described to be an outsider, which slightly contradicts your earlier notion that the game isn't targeting outsiders. Think about two responsess when the player first see the box:

"hmm I am looking at the box of Xenallure, the characters all look different and are beautifully drawn, but there are a lot other beautiful things, overall it doesn't stand out. I don't feel compelled to play the game, it doesn't seem that I would miss much without it."

"When I look at the box, I see all these freaky characters, they are so strange but at the same time unexplanably coherent. It makes me really wonder what would happen in the game, how all of it is going to make sense. Because I can't imagine how it is all going to make sense, I couldn't stop looking at it, wanting to buy it so that I can know the story. I want to know the story, because the design is so unbelievably surreal. It attracts me. I guess that is why it is called Xenallure."

Characters in Addams Family are freaky. Do you see the parallel?

Quote: I did not reject any characters, I repeatedly invited the people who proposed these characters to develop them further. I practically begged for people to create and develop characters because I wanted to have a variety of tastes represented in the cast, but no one except you (Estok) responded.

Do you recall why you need to beg us to create charactes? What was our argument while you were begging?

Quote: I certainly didn't reject Frequency, I spent a lot of time helping you develop her just like you spent time helping me develop Skew. How conveniently you forget whatever doesn't support your need to argue.

I did not say you reject Frequency. I already told you that Frequency was not a proposal for the story. I used her to show you the type of integration between central idea, characters, and worldbuilding.

Quote: And how interesting that subterfuge was what you were being criticized for by Avatar God and I toward the end of the collaborative thread, and now you are being criticized for the same thing by different people in a different situation.

What am I being criticized? What was I being criticized?

Quote: But of course we must all be wrong and you must be right because everything Estok does is 'bulletproof'.

I don't see how you make that generalization. The bulletproof analogy came from the description of 'after the designer had already taken out the major flaws, it makes sense that the designer put the design up for further criticism.' In the original context, you made some attacks, and they were not successful. You complained that I shouldn't put up the design if I find no flaws with it. And that was the explanation why I would put it for for discussion.

Quote:

Quote: On the verge of adopting that new design method, you used the seeming difference in story objective to avoid a group voting. Before the voting could take place, you broke off from the project

Bullshit. At that point the continuous argument and lack of progress had driven away all the members, there was no group left to vote. Your holy grail design method is not the only design method, and when I challenged you to develop a 'structured, objective-oriented procedure' for it you couldn't lay out any step-by-step procedure. That's real logical, expecting me to be able to use a method you can't even explain to me.

It is untrue that the lack of progress had driven all the members. 'All the members' died off in the first week. There had always been 3, and then 4, and then 5, and then 4 again. It is true that my design method was not the only method. I even went ahead and compare the different design methods several times. Why did I feel the need to adopt a different method? It was because the way you were making decision does not make sense in a group design environment. Your design method was acceptable in the beginning because I did suspect the content will skew toward a singularity. It was untrue that I did not lay out any step-by-step procedure, therefore you rejected it. We were using it near the end of the project. We were using it to identify the assumptions and Catagory 1 discrepancies that we failed to define and achieve a consensus in the beginning. From my point of view, and according to TDM, the high level decisions needed to be declared and decided before the rest can proceed. You were in the very process of TDM, of first creating a common vision, instead of creating elements that would eventaully prove to be difficult to satisfy any vision except one vision from the member with an unspoken vision. There were several major discrepancies that needed to be straightened out, including the role of mystery. At that moment I was not against your vision. I was trying to get us to share a vision (no matter from whom it comes from), such that the subsequent discussions and arguments can make sense. This is TDM. Creating the higher level visions first, so that the each elements can be judged with rules important to the overall design. We were already using it.


If you recall what happened,
Near the end of the project - You can see that we were indeed making progress by straightening out the high level issues that should have been done very early in the project. Everything was fine until something happened. What happened?
This is the check list question - Before we got into this, we were already in the realm of TDM. After my reply, you immediately broke off. Anyone with a keen eye would suspect that s/s broke off because she was avoiding taking any part in alternate vision. Although my post did not suggest that the result of the vote will be a mix or whatever. The action that s/s took suggested a rejection of collaboration, because this is practically what she expressed in this post: "aha, now I have evidence that our visions are different, so let's break up." Note that while there was evidence that the proposed visions were different, there was no evidence that I would not support the vision of the group. But there is reason to believe that she will not support the vision of the group if it deviates from her vision:

Quote: do whatever you want, but I don't want to try to compromise with you any more because I think that a compromised idea would be worse than either original idea.

Note that at that moment, there was no indication that the result would indeed be a compromise. But it is still not easy to shake off the idea of anti-collaboration.

There was a typo about Cintura Cafe, Cintura Cafe is NOT a strong mystery-based story.

Quote: You are the only one who insists that the central idea must be the first step in the story creation process; others believe pulling a premise out of thin air is not how human creativity works (especially in groups) and that it is much more functional to begin designing or even write the first draft of the story first, then analyze what you've generated to discover what premise your subconscious has already put in the story, then rework what you have to strengthen the premise.

This is correct, this is what I believe in general except when someone is pushing their own ideas, and arguing against the other members' ideas based on those ideas. Many times in the project you have argued against someone else's element because they don't fit with yours. And that is wrong. I think the main trigger for TDM was that your designs seemingly missed the meaning of mystery the way the others understood. I understand that central ideas do not come out of thin air. But in the project, you have already suggested some central ideas. In fact, we got a list of them. All we needed to do was to decide on them and share them. But we didn't.

Quote: I believe I explained this to you fairly on in the collaborative thread, but since you don't agree you have dismissed the idea, and since I don't buy into your particular permutation of the story I must not have learned the lesson yet. It is incredible how full of yourself you are, Estok, always presenting your opinions ("Xenallure is an ugly Frankenstein") and theories (Only the TDM can "adaquetly justify the design choices without the scale being tipped.") as if they are inarguable fact. There is clearly no room in your worldview for anybody to disagree with you or have different taste than you.

I disagree.

Quote: Perhaps one reason you think Xenallure is ugly is that you don't want to learn the lessons about open-mindedness and diverse opinions in peaceful coexistence that it has to teach.

Get the noun and adjactives straightened abit: I said the costumes were ugly. I said Xenallure is like a frankenstein. Both opinions have nothing to do with sexuality or the story idea of open-mindedness. I said Xenallure is grotesque because the elements in it do not match (art nouveau architecture with punks with PVC). If you are arguing that this opinion shows a sign of closed-mindedness, I don't think there is much reason to defend against it.

slowpid:

what were you trying to discuss about Cryo?

S/S:
I think you didn't get slowpid's argument. In your post you said that you use a method where you would start writing a first draft, and then from it extract the premises. Slowpid's argument is that because you were already influenced with you create the first draft, it is very likely that you would only end up with the premises that were already in your mind although not verbalized. This by itself is not a flaw. But if you put it in the context of a directed design, there is a problem because the elements you create do not intrinsically follow the goal of the design but your subconscious preferences. This is a waste of design effort, if not also a distracting method. It is different if you have already formed a shared vision as a group, and then proceed with the creation of the elements. The shared vision is what TDM aim for as the first priority. The central idea is part of the shared vision.

The argument about your method is not about how you use it on your own, but its effects on a group design.

On your P.2, you only explained that you write what you and people around you like. But that is not what slowpid's argument is about. It is not about what you do with your scratch works or you being a niche writer. He is saying that the stuffs you create are inflexible in a group setting.

Quote: And Estok has definitely stated that his TDM is the only sound story design method, just not in this thread.

I definitely didn't say this. There was a thread by EricTrickster (?) that summarized the different design methods right after the end of the CWP. In that thread, I clearly said that TDM is not an intuitive design method, because most of the times the subconscious alone is powerful enough. I said that the importance of TDM lies in the context of group design, because it defines a hierarchy for systematic decision making.

Where does your world begin?

To Vaevictis_A; first of all...."I'll first of all point out what's pretty much obvious: That you're the only one who has not been involved in a story development team with either me, Estok or SnS. Therefore, feel free to flounder around in whatever little bubble you've made for yourself. It's cute, but we can't really use that for our discussion. Try to get involved in anything here - there are a lot of other forums with projects for you to join - get some game development experience, and then come back to this thread (I'm sure it'll still be around). Gamedev.net newbies are a dime a dozen, and I've already helped out a few from the Help Wanted forum this week, but I'll spare a little time for you as well, since you really seem to want to join in on something."......what?

I never wanted to be a part of anything. I watched the group project for a while until I saw SaS taking over, like Estok pointed out in his last post, I also did not have much time with school. Will you please tell me why I need experience in this forum to post, I am having a hard time understanding. I dont want to get involoved in anything here because I am involved in my own project. I came here because I want to start writting, do you have something wrong with that? Should I have to have some sort of experience before I am allowed to write for something more than a pong game; are college writting courses, an idea and desire not enough?

Who are you to tell someone that because they are new they must not know enough to do anything, therefore they should go to a different forum and do something else...is this not a place for help, is this the wrong place to learn how to write for games? Sunandshadow, as the moderator and no matter your personal feelings of me, is it acceptable to you that Vaevictis_A is discourageous of me as a writter just because I am new. Should you be allowing people in YOUR forum to tell beginners that they are not allowed to post...I have never, ever seen that on gamedev on hope that I never will. Finally Vaevictis_A, I do not like your style of argument. Estok and SaS do not agree on things, but together they discussed it without calling each other the names of food or throwing blatant insults at one another. They disagree wildly with each others methods, terminology, style, preferences and end-product. They have the ability to discuss the issues, the difference and the details though. The first time you showed up in the argument you said "When did the good old-fashioned 'YOUR ARGUMENT SUCKS' get outdated?" To me this seems a good summary of how you like to argue, no facts, no explainations, just attacks. I will not defend myself if you try to say that my arguments were lacking in facts or I did not explain myself clearly; I may not have because I did not yet fully understand the situation. I am not going to say that I am always the most mature person because I am not, after your first relpy to my posts the topic suddenly had a personal and emotional charge.

For the sake of civility please learn how to argue so as to keep the argument pertinent, what you and I did was take the argument off track and make it personal, therefore more heated and finally less effective in terms of its ability to make us better writters, people and judges. The forum exists to help, that is what Estok was doing, that is what SaS was doing and that is what yours and my posts began to lack. I take responsibilty for my part, please accept yours and never, ever again tell someone that because they are new they do not belong. If you felt that my post was in the wrong arena, aimed at the wrong thing or to personal address those issues because those were my mistakes. On the other hand the path you chose was to continue the problem I had created and keep the subject on personal issues, yours and my continued detriment to the discussion drove the entire thread downhill and fast. On the topic, http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=311352, this is my previous writing thread. Read it, make comments on it feel free to add your dislike of my writting to that thread, but it doesn't belong in Estok's. It is called 'dancing the edge' and is the intro into my story. I would appreciate your comments and look forward to reading them, whatever you might say will send me back in with some idea on how to better it.

To SaS; I am sorry that my comments were off base. My only problem with you is our difference in subject matter. Going back to read the posts it seems that the problem is in story structure as I have stated before, I prefer the method that Estok hads chosen to use, cohesive overall. Your worldbuilding method is another tool used by many successfull writers and you have the right to use whatever it is you are comfortable with. When I read the post in which you explained why it is all your stories seem similar, the one about exploring subject matter, characters and relations I felt bad for having attacked you on this issue. The problem I have with much of your writting is that it seems, as someone who is studying psychology, your character realtions are skewed. I would have no problem with the homosexual sex or the bdsm if I felt it was properly explained. Meaning that to someone who is looking at those two elements as deviant behavior arising from other personal issue I was looking for an accurate explaination of why exactly the characters turned out the way they did. In fact I think your writting would be very interesting if you included more of the elements of why the characters were attracted to each other. Activly seeking out abuse is something that people do subconsciously, if you could find elements to help describe this then I would suggest to my friends that they read it...however without these elements the writting seems to focused on the actual act and not the events that lead into it. Please note though that there is a big chance I just did not read enough of you writting to get to this point. If these elements are in fact included I am very interested to read them if you would be so kind to point them out to me and tell me exactly where to find them. I know I said it before but I do not appreciate being to told I am too new to discuss matters or make my own posts. I think that this discouragement of members is strikingly offensive, if done to me or someone else.

To Estok; I would like to see the conclusions of the different story as well as documentation of the actual moral decision the player would come into. I know that this is asking alot because those things are not yet finished and this thread is about design and not story, however I feel that the elements you have included will be hard to acculminate in nine different endings. My second comment may be an ignorant one but nonetheless is something I dont understand. When and at what point does the character have enough information to make the decision on what rnpc they will choose? As I understand many of these decisions are made near the beginning, like when you say that if not choosen Frequency will die near the beginning....will the character have encountered enough moral decisions by that point to help lend some credence to the death of frequency, or is it by that point luck on the decisions they made?


Looking forward to your comments Vaevictis_A.

Oh my, civility...

The reason why I'm not basing my arguments on anything, why I'm not using examples from either SnS's or Estok's stories, why I'm not even discussing anything from the storyteller's point of view like SnS and Estok are doing, is that my gripe has nothing to do with the stories, or whose is better, or whose has a coherent design. My gripe is with

Quote:
I dont like the xenallure project, in fact, I hate it. I think that is ill concieved and based on Sunandshadows poor story design mellowed slightly by the fact there are other, and better writers...

Yup, that's it, that's all. That's my reason for being here. And *that's* my reason for encouraging you to get more experience, whether it might be unfounded or not. I'm of the opinion that a statement like that is completely tactless, and had god damn better well be backed up by some serious skills on your part (not that that would even excuse it, really). I would actually first have considered it a blatant attempt at trolling, but your perseverance here is starting to convince me that you mean it. It's not even your opinion I have a problem with, since you're entitled to have it. It's that your apparent gripe with SnS being a moderator (and the 'weak people' like me who support her) spills over into a post blasting the work that SnS and Avatar God might actually have put some hours into. I haven't seen anyone 'criticising' in this forum in this way before, and I certainly don't hope it's going to be the norm.

Quote: On the topic, http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=311352, this is my previous writing thread. Read it, make comments on it feel free to add your dislike of my writting to that thread,

I will if I find the time, but honestly, how would you feel if my response to it was that 'I hate it, and it displays poor story design skills'?

Quote:
Sunandshadow, as the moderator and no matter your personal feelings of me, is it acceptable to you that Vaevictis_A is discourageous of me as a writter just because I am new.

Bold words from the guy who made the above quote. Sure, you can go ahead and say that the moderator's story design skills are poor, but damned if you don't go crying to her now that someone takes a jab back at you. I think you should choose whether to be tactful and expect tact, or do as you did and expect lack thereof directed back at you.

Quote: The first time you showed up in the argument you said "When did the good old-fashioned 'YOUR ARGUMENT SUCKS' get outdated?"

While it may not have made anyone laugh, that was a humoristic, light-hearted comment. I'll be sure to enclose stuff like that in <light-hearted> </light-hearted> tags from now on.

(Upon reflection, I feel stupid for writing the above three lines - because you *knew* it was light-hearted. I don't believe for a second that you really thought I seriously wanted Estok and SnS to use 'your argument sucks' as arguments.)

[Edited by - Vaevictis_A on April 15, 2005 5:46:03 AM]

"Bold words from the guy who made the above quote. Sure, you can go ahead and say that the moderator's story design skills are poor, but damned if you don't go crying to her now that someone takes a jab back at you. I think you should choose whether to be tactful and expect tact, or do as you did and expect lack thereof directed back at you."

.....I never told her that she should quit writting. I gave her my opinion and told her what I didn't like. I never said, dont come back or degrade her with comments about writting for a pong game.


"Yup, that's it, that's all. That's my reason for being here. And *that's* my reason for encouraging you to get more experience. A statement like that is completely tactless, and had god damn better well be backed up by some serious skills on your part (not that that would even excuse it, really). I would actually first have considered it a blatant attempt at trolling, but your perseverance here is starting to convince me that you mean it. It's not even your opinion I have a problem with, since you're entitled to have it. It's that your apparent gripe with SnS being a moderator (and the 'weak people' like me who support her) spills over into a post blasting the work that SnS and Avatar God might actually have put some hours into. I haven't seen anyone 'criticising' in this forum in this way before, and I certainly don't hope it's going to be the norm."

I never told SaS that she should quit writting, I gave her my opinion of the project and why. I did not degrade her like you continue to do me by telling her her work is best suited for a pong game, I said that her writting style was good and continued to say that her design method was poor. I also never said that she should not be the moderator but agreed with Estok that her narrow and restrictive view can be hurtfull to beginning writers who come here for help. I did have a gripe with that.

I asked for civility by first being civil, what is hard about dropping the issue? I admitted responisibility for not using tact in my first few posts and admitted that the fact is they pushed the conversation off topic and hurt what the argument between the two of them was about, pushing it off track and making it less usefull to anyone. If you cannot admit some responsibility then feel free to not respond to this, however it will only be out of you immaturity. You were also wrong in the way you 'countered' my wrong.

My opinions, however, on SaS, Estok and you or your writting/design styles have not changed. I am just saying sorry and you are making it a pain in the ass to do that.