Cross References
If you have read my story Skewed, then you probably have seen in it that I like to make references, because I'm having a lot of fun writing this story, and all the rules are thrown out the window. I have referenced Final Fantasy 4, Yu-Gi-Oh, Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, the Key products Kanon, Air, and Clannad, among various things, and have plans to reference several more things. I also have references to my own works, characters I created for the AnacondaSoftware titles.
Amusing to me, however, are references that would mean anything only to me. I haven't used any of those in the actual story, because that would be no fun, but in my notes for the story the game's completely different. Most amusing, however, is one I just passed by while adding and reading over my notes for future stories, a very vague reference that I just entered in without even thinking of it when I originally created the card.
The reference is the name of a card in my StoryLines file for Skewed. The card is simply named "Island", and references a scene that takes place in a basement of a building, completely unrelated. The actual reference that
"Island" means, however, was related to a story idea I got in 2005 in a dream while I was in vacation in Colorado. I woke up from the dream, booted up my notebook, typed out how one particular scene played out that was most prominent, and then entered the rest of the details quickly to that file so I could remember them later when I got around to finishing it, then saved the file as simply "Island" because I couldn't think of a name, but the story took place on an island. The conclusion of the scene I typed up completely took place in a similar place to where I was having this card's section of story take place, in a basement of a building, and the situations between the two were almost the same, so I stuck "Island" on there when I made the card so I knew what I was describing for the place. Because I can simply look at that, and know exactly what I want to describe of that place in Skewed.
I never actually did write any more of that story at that time, and as yet I've only written the introduction to that story beyond that. Once PivotX hit's gold I'm going to upgrade to it, and it's new features should make it fairly easy to integrate my writings with this blog seamlessly, so you should see it and other stories in the future.
Tags: anacondasoftware anime skewed travel video_games writing
Subcon
It may just be my body protesting against my training schedule, but I doubt it, because this has been going on much longer than that.
This started after the change over to daylight savings time. From then on, I've had a problem waking up at the time I've wanted. My alarm clock sits on my dresser, at the head of my bed, easily reachable from my bed. The problem I've been having is I'd either hit the snooze button continually until another hour had passed, or, on some occasions, turned off my alarm, set it an hour ahead, and turned it back on. And, mind you, this is all done completely in my sleep, i never have any recollection of it happening.
A couple weeks ago, during my training, I had to unplug my clock. When I plugged it back in, I decided not to set it, to try and get out of that problem. Instead, I set my phone's alarm, and have been using that as my alarm clock. It sits on my desk in the charger, well out of reach so I have to get up from my bed and turn it off. And apparently, my sub-concious doesn't like this.
I had a dream this morning, that I was out somewhere. Near the end of this dream, before I woke up, a friend of mine needed to borrow my phone to make a call. I leant it to him, and he asked me about the indicator on my screen that the alarm was set. My response was, literally, "That's my alarm clock. It's going to go off soon and wake me up. You can turn it off if you want."
Clearly, my subconcious has another plan, and wants to keep me in the dream world.
Tags: anecdote dream
Late Night Relaxing
So, I'm in training at my work again, will be for more or less the next four weeks. So late schedules again, getting me home around midnight or later, and removing my time for doing stuff at night with my regular schedule.
Other than that, I recently finished the third Otherland book, but I won't be starting the final one until I'm back out of training again, because I don't want to haul around my big hardcover book to and from training class every day (I had been just leaving my book sitting on my desk at work, which wasn't a problem because my team has assigned desks).
I really don't have anything else I want to say right now, though.
Tags: novels personal
Communication Failure
I've pretty much gotten to the point where I don't really care about my spelling in Messenger anymore. It has become riddled with mistakes, such as "sining", "secinds", "celan", and "everyting".
This is usually only when I'm tired, though, and don't want to go for the backspace key.
Plus the fact that messenger is rather informal communication, and it simply doesn't mean much if I have something spelled wrong.
And also, oddly enough, Google Toolbar says "sining" is not spelled incorrectly.
In other news, now the blog has been running long enough that there's a lot of entries, so I'm switching the archive display back to the default of monthly.
Tags: internet regularspelling spelling website_design
Something From Nothing
It's been a while since I last updated Skewed. While this should come as no surprise given my promptness on this so far, there have been some factors that have actually contributed to this more than just sheer abject laziness. One has been my acquisition of a XBOX 360 and playing of Dead Rising and unlocking achievements I had been wanting to play on it for some time, in addition to my preparing an XNA project and beginning to write the storyline for it. Another reason, accounting for this week, was of course the Brawl release and my rushing to completely unlock everything for it as soon as possible. The main reason is more my laziness choice, though, because the next section I have to write, while necessary to move the story along and needed for later in this chapter, it in and of itself is an incredibly weak peice of storyline and I haven't really wanted to dredge through it, probably ending up with something similar to the part I've hated the writing on the most, the degeneration monologue filler.
However, there is another, far more pressing issue, that's been sitting at the back of my mind through all of this. At the moment, in StoryLines, I have about 36 cards from the beginning of this current chapter to the end of the Storm arc of the story, and about ten less than that unfiled cards for the third arc. (For reference in the picture in that previous blog entry, I have rearranged that a little since that picture, but at the moment I'm working on the second teal card, sitting in slot five). The problem, though, is that those unfiled cards are just that - unfiled and unplaced. I haven't really had any idea what I want the overall goal to be in this last arc, other than a few things I want to have happen, the ending, and a few flashback scenes to finish up the now-probably-will-never-be-finished Project L that this story spun off from and how several of the Immortals got to be that way. They will be interesting, but without any other real sort of goal it would make for an incredibly weak final arc, with my planned ending likely not lending enough weight to push back in the favor against what the rest of that arc would turn in to.
As I've mentioned before, much of my planning of stories takes place as conversations, because my thought process for storytelling is for a more visual media then straight writing (why I'm a game developer, primarily). Often I'll just have throwaway conversations in my head between characters, dialogues that are merely for my humor and are quickly thrown away later and forgotten. However, occasionally something sparks from these, and I end up with something useful. And, on even fewer occasions, I have a real gem that ends up becoming exactly what was needed. This is what I think I have here, based on just some joking around in a conversation about the Kai season of Higurashi (since I plan on touching back on Hinamizawa once more to retcon the incorrect guesses I had made before Kai aired revealing the rest of the story), and as I just thought more into one of the things said the other fragments I had cards for just fell right into place with it, and it all makes sense.
So, I don't have it all planned out yet, but I do now have an idea of where I'm going. So now I can move forward with confidence, and really rock the ending of the story.
P.S. Can anyone tell me why the Google Toolbar doesn't recognize 'dialogue' and several other words? Or toolbar, for that matter.
EDIT: Actually, looking at it now, I think I had skipped that teal card completely. I am on the Black card in slot 9 now (slot 8 on my current version of the map with some of the other cards moved around).
Tags: personal skewed software video_games writing