Survival Of The Fittest

heheh "hop" hehehehe

SORRY IT'S A LONG THREAD

I MEANT THIS THREAD BUT MY MISTAKE WAS FUNNY ENOUGH FOR ME NOT TO WANT TO EDIT THE POST

Most of my interesting Meilin threads you were part of so

Have Camilla's nightmare oneshot

oh dude trying to shorten up the workload mad respect hey let's talk about Nikki's post adoption catch-up okay love u bye!

hi hello i need you to judge diego for his bad decisions tyvm

Can you check out Brandon's first post here?

viewtopic.php?p=67681#p67681

Mobile but dis post, if you would?

Alright y'all! Queue is closed! Thank you so much for the reading material!

*cracks knuckles, splits a Swisher*

Time to get to work!

Sunnybunny wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2019 9:46 pm viewtopic.php?p=67681#p67681

Mobile but dis post, if you would?

Alright! I am pretty happy to start this format change in this context because I think exploring the micro-post by post pitfalls and what exactly makes a “good” post is very important.

So, that begs to question: What is a good post?

I have thought about this question for a long time and the answer to it has changed a bit for me throughout the years. At first I figured that the only difference between a good post and a bad post was grammatical, then I shifted to tone and feeling and at other points I have dwelled upon consistency, cohesion and chemistry. The true answer is a mish-mash of all those things and more.

So, that begs the answer: What is a good post? Whatever you need it to be.

This game that we play is a mish-mash of voices, talent levels, goals and characters and even us who are cut from the same cloth spiritually or in terms of personality sometimes don’t match up tonally or creatively. This is okay! I do not believe that every post has to meet a minimum word count or carry with it a particular tone—I think posts are pathways to overarching narratives and bare the weight of carrying the character’s linear narrative as well as serving as both advertisement and advocacy in mission statement and authorial goals (even if that goal is as simple as ‘I want to have fun’ or ‘I want to write really cool action scenes’).

Posts both get us from point A to point B and serve as the point in and of themselves. What separates good posts from bad beyond the basic is subjective and hard to pinpoint: but I think to a certain extent it is the ability to conform to a lineal narrative as well as being able to stand-alone without context. In this, for myself, I like to write with the idea that every post is the audience’s introduction to the character and I put the burden of explaining context to myself. That isn’t to say that I do not use or rely on callbacks, I just do feel very strongly that being able to stand alone with only basic context is important in making a post palatable and accessible to the widest audience as possible. You don’t want to be reiterating old posts or constantly self-summarizing, but providing little bread crumbs isn’t a bad thing! Our member base is both intelligent and busy, give them the benefit of the doubt and they will likely give you the same—it isn’t an indictment on your writing if people have lost track of it and even a throwaway sentence functioning as a ‘Last time on DBZ’ a little can help the readability of an individual post/thread considerably.

I have said it before: if all writing is communication than at our most basic level being understood should be our main goal in writing and posting. This goes beyond just grammatical stuff, but an understanding of themes and goals: you should write with a purpose and point even if the point is that there is no point. What is this accomplishing and does it line up with what I want to say or accomplish? I think those are questions that deserve to be asked before every post.

With that out the way! Let’s look at this post from Sunnybunny in Lately Kiss My Ass Lately!

I find this to be an interesting cross section of what I am talking about: judging a post for its ability to stand alone while also providing context and linking back over the lineal narrative. This is an important post for Sakurako narratively on two fronts: it is an introductory post in a transitional thread and this transitory property is exhibited in the mental as well as the actual physical movement of the character. In the context of Sakurako’s overarching narrative this is a post that serves to introduce her to new characters as well as address her mental state after the death of Cheri.

So we talk about posts as audience advertisement and also the use of callbacks while standing in the same context of the singular post. I enjoyed particularly the beginning lines for several reason, namely that it provided the necessary context whilst trusting the reader’s intelligence.

The Post wrote:Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven and landed on your neck?

That wasn’t really funny.”

Followed by….

Still DaPost wrote:“She’d wanted to talk about…that, but at the same time why the fuck would she ever?”

Even without context of reading Cheri’s death you can establish within the context of those first lines that Miss Jackson is talking about a death from a fall and also a death that she herself is involved in. We talk about posts as advertisement and I feel this functions in that context as well. We have that first line, the joke and the context, followed by the link to the previous thread (where the deed happened). It is both explicit and implicit and both rewards those who have followed Saku’s narrative as well as those just jumping into it and I think that’s very very admirable and important.

Stylistically in terms of posts as advertisement, I also feel that this is a good picture of Sakurako’s mindset and the decision to lead with humor is also a risky one but one that pays off. Having a character with a comedic bend is a stylistic risk as it can feel hokey or tonally dissonant—comedy is also subjective and spoilers, you gotta be actually funny to write a funny character. Sakurako in general is funny in a very grounded and down to earth way (even when she is trapped in a bear trap, totally random example) and I think this earnestness does a good job in making her sympathetic and the audience in turn empathetic towards and invested in her journey.

This is a basic post in both outline and execution, we’re not reinventing the wheel here or hitting the audience with intense artistry: but the consistency is there and the idea that there is both a goal in the post itself and a clarity in that the author wants to say something is incredibly valuable and lends itself to credibility to the writing itself. This post is Sakurako’s introduction to the thread and so practically it introduces her to the other characters within it via blocking and dialogue while also serving as a context provider and story hook to the audience itself: it invites you both to look backwards in Saku’s narrative while also setting up the steps to move forward.

Which makes this, as a stand alone post, about as solid as you could get! Very nice work!

On to the next one!

BlizzardeyeWonder wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2019 9:27 am Most of my interesting Meilin threads you were part of so

Have Camilla's nightmare oneshot

So we started off this format switch by discussing what makes a “good” post and now we can move on to what makes a “good” thread—kinda. Before we move into threads with multiple people, it is only fitting that we make a pit stop in One Shot alley. One Shots are threads made up of singulars posts and often featuring (by design) a singular writer and character.

Seems a little antithetical to our whole party huh? If you wanna write by yourself, write a novel! Gosh!

I understand this criticism and I think I prescribed to it a little bit when looking at older characters in older versions. In participating in v7 and reading a lot of One Shots I now have warmed up to them significantly and just like with individual posts I believe that when written with a focus and a goal, One Shots can be great tools for transition and for characterization.

And that about sums it up, doesn’t it? One Shots have the narrative burden that threads carry along with the advertisement quality good posts should have. They should invite the reader to look backwards while moving the character forward in either a physical circumstance, a mental circumstance or even a lapse of time. I think the focus upon characterization and transition are important ones for making One Shots feel like more than just mental masturbation or just spinning of the wheels and you tend to see a difference in one shots with thought behind them and one shots written to avoid inactivity or simply just cuz. I think One Shots can be an incredible tool but also be a little self-indulgent if used the wrong way.

So with that out the way—let’s talk Cam Dreams in The Sweet Smell of Blood on a Summer Breeze.

I think when somebody in real life talks to me about their dreams, I instinctively put whatever they’re saying in the “I don’t give a fuck” pile in my brain. I ain’t talking about like life dreams but like night dreams like we have Cam experiencing. This is one of those things that is true in real life but the opposite in fiction as I think dreams are a great narrative tool to put subtext to the forefront and to utilize imagery and sort of fantastical stream of consciousness elements without the burden of remaining grounded or stuck within the linear narrative of a character. Dreams are often so esoteric and open to interpretation within our own mind that putting those elements to the forefront of a characters own does a good job of being both creative while maintaining an audience’s suspension of disbelief and ability to place themselves in the character’s shoes.

One of the things that I like about this thread is that I spoke on the need for one shots to focus on both transition and characterization and this one does a good job of both. This can be seen by both the nature of the dreams themselves and Cam’s constant tossing and turning throughout them. It’s a little bit of a blocking and pacing tool but it makes sort of the raised stakes and different elements of the dreams come through. It is very clear from the beginning of each dream that she is dreaming and I think that’s a good decision. From a formatting perspective though, I wonder—were the line breaks needed? I think the sort of disorientated and scared nature of the nightmares and the blending and bending between the real world and the dream world would’ve come through stronger if not for the line breaks. I think at some points they made the whole work feel disjointed and at other points that disjointedness helped and at some points it hurt. The line breaks served to also break my reading up and that was good for making the post digestible but I think overall your mission comes through without the need for them and if I was writing the thread it'd probably be my goal to make them less intrusive visually or to remove them entirely, but like, totally just my opinion.

Cam has a degree of relatability and earnestness that comes through in your writing always Blizz and I think playing around with horror and more physical and imagery based writing is a good thing. This post serving as sort of a post and a work shop for future concepts and ideas to pop up in the narrative is also a very good thing. I brought up the points about the line breaks and that’s to say that I think while they were a little bit disjointing for me, the writing itself was astonishingly cohesive (I shouldn’t say that because I really wasn’t astonished or surprised) and I think as both a transition of time and a transition of character this post served you exceptionally well. The Declyn scene in particular and in the context of their relationship, it hit very hard and it did a good job of painting Camila’s mindset.

This was very solid all around and I definitely enjoyed it—like I have said before I think a posts job is to move forward while inviting us to look backwards and it is a threads job to contribute to the overarching narrative of a character and One Shots bare the burden of doing both. At a basic and core level I think this One Shot accomplishes both of these missions and on top of that it has some really cool scenes that evoke Cam’s relationships with others both on and off island. Very strong and good showcase for her as a character and leading into her next thread with Justin, a good set up point in retrospect for the terror and unease she feels in the infirmary.

Good job! Really solid work!

Onto the next one!

So this format change is meant for me to sort of write down my thoughts on the RP itself in broad strokes while also focusing on the micro and minutiae of individual posts and threads and characters. I like talking about the meta and methods of play and ways to make our writing both more entertaining and more accessible. I also am looking to learn and absorb techniques that others are using and see what is effective and what would work for me. In the future, I want to talk about threading and sort of the dynamics of play by post stuff between writers, but in the present I do not mind and actually quite enjoy looking at individual posts and one-shots and seeing how individual writers seek to express themselves within scenarios of their own building.

So, with this let’s take a look at Paige’s writing in Cabin Fever!

Cabin Fever is an interesting case study because it hits at a core value I place in one-shots in a very explicit way: it is primarily about transition and its goals in that area are clear and easily achieved. This transitory nature is both in a time sense and in a tone sense but what makes the transition of tone both necessary and difficult is the nature of Nikki’s character and Paige's ownership of her: she’s an adopted. Now, I think there’s a whole segment of lifetime movies about the struggle of being a foster parent and although obviously very different, I can see the pressure in adopting a character on SOTF being not dissimilar (though obviously at a smaller scale). The pressure to raise a child the way you want while also respecting their origins is something that is for certain very difficult and a task that is also very daunting.

I think, in this thread, Paige does a great job in honoring D/N’s style while injecting a lot of that good Paige flavor in there. In terms of a reclamation and remixing project (which I would characterize all adoptions as), you can’t get much better than that!

In specificity the real shining thing in this thread is the tone that Nikki takes. It’s very difficult to write humor as I said in my Saku critique and I think every bad Hollywood comedy makes obvious. Humor is both situational and subjective and that’s a dangerous combination when we’re talking about accessibility and entertainment being a goal as a writer. You do a good job of being both funny and creative though it does require the reader to sort of be willing to buy the ticket and take the ride. I talk about accessibility but accessibility doesn’t necessarily mean dumbing things down or even making people comfortable. I can see how Nikki’s spastic nature, the random capitalization, the entirely excitable and almost stream of consciousness nature of her prose and the sometimes odd formatting choices, well, I could see how it might alienate readers especially in the context of such a long one shot. I enjoyed it though. It was a rather human and humorous display of manic-ness and sensitivity that even the length of it didn’t feel so overwhelming. Even with how loosey-goosey and spastic the narrative was, it did not lack in being articulate or eloquent, that's a tough balance and it's good you achieved it.

I read it once when it was posted, I read it a few times in preparation for this review and each every time I found another line or little quirky thing that I found both at points profound and pathetic, sad and silly. I think that’s a good descriptor of Nikki’s mindset and especially in reference to her perseverance and optimism—that shit is Teflon for better or for worse and knowing how her story ends, that isn’t a bad character trait to put to the forefront. She’s a little goofy, but there’s a method to the madness both in terms of narrative and in terms of her characterization.

I talk about posts as advertisements and looking back in order to move forward and I think the latter of that concept goes beyond just individual posts or threads. This one-shot was obviously a work shop for you, a way to both pass time, justify absence and get a control and grasp of a new character’s voice: in that I think this is a resounding success. In terms of looking back to move forward and how that is relevant to an adopted character, well, unsurprisingly, I have a hip-hop metaphor. Dr. Dre’s “Let Me Ride” samples a Parliament Funkadelic song “Mothership Connection” which in turn is in reference to the slave spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. This idea of taking from and even directly sampling the past in order to create something new. I think that’s something you do really well from a stylistic point in this post and I think it’s something all future Foster RPers should take into consideration! Taking from and sampling D/N's voice and style while also endeavoring to add your own twist and make the character your own.

Good work and onto the next one!

Don’t call it a comeback! I’ve been here for years!

But, school semester hit me like a ton of bricks and then I was preoccupied with other SOTF writing and holiday shenanigans so much so that I couldn’t give love to my critique thread. Leave it to a thot to leave you hot but also tied in a knot. Eh, there’s a reason I retired from rapping! Anyway, I had placed the queue in a certain order because I wanted themes to sort of lead into one another. This thread Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here is long overdue for me to read and comment on, but I did pick it after the Nikki thead for a reason!

Brandon is an interesting case study because this post is both an intro post, a one shot and he’s an adopted character. More so than that, Brandon lacks a pre-game entirely and is existing before Ohm takes over him as simply a profile (if the wiki is to be believed, which, y’know, curses to me for not doing more research if that aini’t true). This makes Brandon both a blank canvas for Ohm but it also makes him established in ways that exist out of their mind. That’s a difficult task for a writer and when we talk about posts as advertisement and entertainment—a lot of pressure in a singular post. Getting the hang of a new character's voice entirely while also inviting an audience to go on a journey with you and at the beginning with you and you alone.

I talk about posts as advertisement and one shots as tools for transition (either literal or in terms of characterization), this post functioning as an intro post and starting point has the tool for transition and the post as advertisement down pack—a beginning is usually always interesting and exciting. A good beginning should sort of give us an idea and a promise of what is to come--in a sort of ideal world. I think you established that as your goal here and for the most part did so very early. Good sign of an adopted character, you coming at him with a bit of a plan.

I like looking at first lines of first posts because I believe first impressions and stuff are very important.

Da Thread wrote: The beginning of his time here was a blur for Brandon. There might have been tears, there might have been screams, cursing, ranting. Many things could have occured in this time.

He’d like to remember it as him calmly grabbing his bag and walking with a map looking for some houses. Reality was quite different.

I think this is a good start in terms of placing the thesis statement of the character through and at the forefront. Brandon is cast in this one shot and intro post as the observer and while that is sort of a calm and rational viewpoint to take out here on murder island—he is not taking it calmly. That’s a good juxtaposition of character and I think some good characterization, especially when we look at the ending of the post…

Da Ending of Da thread wrote: But for how long? That was a week right? Could he do it? No contact for that long?

Brandon hoped so. It’d be better to be a hermit than crazy like his classmates has turned into.

Groggily he continued his own path through the jungle. There was one he walked past lying on the ground. He couldn’t recognise her in her current state.

Maybe it was better that way.

In rereads of the thread, the sort of clarity in the mindset of Brandon became clearer and I think that’s based on strong narrative ideals from yourself while also having a clear vision of what you wanted to do with Brandon. I think the weaknesses a bit of the post come in the form of expressiveness that comes with breaking in a new character and is a bit doubled by writing one that you didn’t really write yourself. The post itself though does a fair job of acting as advertisement and even though this was a bit of a format change I found myself compelled to read a bit forward in Brandon’s narrative to see if you got into the flow a bit more—or if his plan of mostly going ninja succeeded.

In going to his next thread, it being Tristan’s death I was reminded of two things: how much I enjoyed reading Brandon in it the first time and also how marijuana has obvious effects on short term memory loss. Regardless, I remember at the time reading the scene and being very amused by Brandon hype eyesing throughout and it worked even better with the context of the first thread acting as a tone setter. I feel you got into your groove a bit in that thread while expanding on established things in the intro one—which is all you can ask for really. The expressiveness really helped when you had sorta other people to build off, which, I dunno if hindsight would've been the way to go for the intro. The one shot set out the thesis statement, but the second thread really established the character--if you get me.

Overall this was a solid post/thread that lead me to move forward in Brandon’s narrative and left me a disappointed that he is no longer with us. Solid work all around.

Onto the next one!

Alright, so we’re pretty deep into this whole thing and only now are we really getting to threads with multiple people writing in them! The collaborative in collaborative fiction (which is how I describe this whole deal to my family and friends) finally comes into play!

Valediction is an interesting thread to look at because it is both a death thread for Namira’s Bryan and the first kill for Cactus’ Claudeson. Death threads have been spoken about a lot here and a lot about what I’ve gathered from the discourse is that conventional wisdom is as such: It shouldn’t be about the killer or that the victim should be the focus. I think that both Cactus and Namira would agree that this thread subverts that a little bit and I believe in reading it (quite a few times in preparing to write about it and including live when it happened) that it was a smart decision for Namira to play sorta the facilitator or point guard to the thread—the victim is placed in the supporting role, in more ways than one.

Namira’s portrayal of Bryan is a combination of static and sympathetic that lends itself to adding to other’s characters and moments. Inhumanely selfless and willing to toss themselves into harms way for little benefit other than personal justice, Bryan does a solid enough job for using altruism as a means to pushing action.

This thread, from where I stand, is still about Claude though.

In thinking about this kill and Claude in general, I have to confess: I don’t like Claude. As a person I find him sanctimonious and self righteous and as a narrator I don’t find him very funny or very cool. He’s actually not cool at all. But I’m reminded of an old maxim I recently heard in watching the season finale of Silicon Valley: It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I don’t think I’m supposed to like Claude or find him relatable or necessarily sympathetic.

And yet, I find myself compelled to read him, because with Claude Cactus is clearly telling a story and a story with a goal. I dunno if the story is my cup of tea or if I am quite necessarily rooting for Claude (quite the opposite for me a lot of the time), but I’m compelled to read him and he’s very much interesting. Part of that is the nature of investment: I have been reading Claude since pre-game. Bryan doesn’t have a pre-game and when he was killed it was still fairly early for everyone. It was no doubt tough to get him established a bit versus someone like Claude who had months of establishment.

It was smart to subvert the conventional wisdom and place Claude, the killer, in the “main” role, at least in my opinion. It increased audience involvement and emotional investment, because Claude’s story had been leading up to the point where he killed Bryan for quite a long while.

So, because I keep mentioning subverting conventional wisdom, let me talk about subverting expectations and another reason why I love this thread. We talk a lot about writing for the RAT but I think about the live nature of the RP and how the day to day chat conversations shape people’s perceptions of what’s good or not a lot. I can’t help but think about Claude and the discourse around him even going back to Pre-Game: “Claude’s evil” “Claude’s totally going to go player”, etc. I think the last season of Game of Thrones spoke to us about subverting expectations just for the hell of it or to get one over on the audience. I think that option and route is totally something Cactus could’ve gone with and sold to us. I appreciate that he didn’t. The value of Claude finally making the decision to kill weighs heavily with the consistent nature of his voice and the foreshadowing in Cactus’ writing. The long winding way he got to the decision to do so even within the thread itself is benefited by the audiences investment in the story of Claude.

Consistency in narrative is much more important than subverting audiences expectations and your work benefits from both tonal integrity and a sort of goal driven narrative. I think a lot of people knew Claude was going to go killer for a long time—but there was value in finally seeing him doing it and rationalize his reasons for it.

In this, Bryan was a great support character in a greater story and he adds to the scene by serving as it’s climax and he adds to an established character in his death, becoming an integral part of a storyline already with people watching. In the early phase of the game, I think that’s a very noble thing to do. This isn’t to say that characters without pre-game aren’t created equal, just that in the early part of the game, so much of audience emotional investment is shaped by pregame actions. It takes a lot longer for an audience to root for someone they don’t know as opposed to someone they may have known for months.

This was a good thread in serving as an ending for Bryan, the reckless altruist and as a beginning for Claude, the moralizing murderer. You two both fed off one another and while I think the spotlight was placed on Claude’s shoulders, Bryan did a great job of playing a supporting character and building up the overall narrative of the thread as it stands individually.

All the while helping build up and have us move forward with Claude’s story, serving as a dramatic turn within it.

A very solid death, a solid thread and as far as I see it, a solid culmination of months of foreshadowing and writing. What more do we really want?

Onto the next one.