I just splatter those cultural gender signifiers around like I’m making a Rorschach blot…or splattering blood on a crime scene 
Hahaha, I kid, I kid. I’m still working out how to write murder mysteries. 
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Okay, sold. I have no idea what it’s about, but I can’t resist that title.
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Most of me loves this title. Although, having spent most of my life in Southern California, there’s a part of me that’s like “Yeah, whatever, when isn’t it a time of earthquakes?” (Kidding - it’s a really distinctive title that makes me even more excited to read it.)
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@AletheiaKnights and @LiliArch That’s the kind of reaction me and my editor were hoping for! Thank you 
Here’s the WIP thread if you like.
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I should be writing…
… and so should many of you, probably.
So here is your encouragement to write, write, write!
(Edit: excuse the overly-excited-ness. This is probably the most socializing I’ve done in weeks.)
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I do that kind of stuff even when I’m not flustered, so I think the impact of that scene would be lost on me.
In the medium where wordcount is the biggest predictor of success, that’s actually a fair point. Not sure about anywhere else.
I’m not sure why you’d be concerned, or why you think I’m concerned about “particular type of story” rather than the specific story I took issue with. But if you really want to hear my thoughts on the subject of writing gender-variable characters, you can DM me. I think this thread deserves moving on to other stuff.
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In text, yeah, one might expect it to have some importance if it’s mentioned (although it could just be to give the reader a visual of the location, especially if it’s the kind of stuff that’s mentioned in every time a new location is described). Less so in a visual media, but I’m assuming we were talking about text here.
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Thanks, I try sharing as much as possible.
Today draw a draft but feeling bit down due to A/C of the workplace 
, hope to share tomorrow with coloring it a bit.
Congrats on your Chapter 7 and re-christening your project ^^ .
(The name pops Vezuv volcano and Pompeii in my mind, sounds interesting 
)
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I always found the whole blue curtains argument, and the people who are so upset at being expected to analyze texts, a bit silly.
Sure, there’s a lot of merit in the discussion of to which degree author intent or actual presentation matters the most.
But it doesn’t really matter in those kind of lessons whether the author intended to include symbols and deeper meanings, or not. The lessons are not really about teaching that specific text and what it means, it’s about teaching media literacy in general, and the ability see past the obvious layer of meaning, to what is hidden deeper. And for that, you need to analyze the meaning of the details of the text, whether it was intended by the author or not.
Considering that those are some really important life-skills, I really don’t like the easy dismissal of the topic from some people.
Though I understand that not all teachers are good at their job, or able to teach in ways that work for all students, so it makes sense that it has been a very frustrating experience for some.
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I’m not really talking about literal curtains here, and neither does the meme Niki is referencing. It’s something that people say, or at least used to say, to complain about those stupid English teachers seeing meaning where there’s obviously none, or people overanalyzing stories in general. Curtains are just an example of such an obviously irrelevant detail.
I don’t like that meme partially because the example is poor and colors frequently have hidden meaning, but mostly because it goes against my experience with literature. In retrospect, my teachers usually simplified the meaning of whatever book my class was discussing and only focused on the surface-level stuff us kids would actually understand. Sometimes to the point of distorting the story—it took me quite a few years to realize that The Paul Street Boys wasn’t actually telling me to die for some random grund. I’m sure some people out there really were expected to over-analyze something in school, but I’m still skeptical whenever I hear such complaints.
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On curtains and such, it would be rather a shame if details like that were consigned to having no purpose other than wordcount padding. When padding happens like that, it’s to the detriment of tone and a description that could be evocative becomes a less-meaningful overload to wade through.
Even if an author “only” liked the colour - and even if they said as much - it’s still legitimate to do literary criticism on texts because there’s loads of interesting things that can be drawn from it.
And also co-signing what @The_Lady_Luck and @Omeg say in the above two posts 
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Okay. That’s such a foreign concept for me that I’m not sure my literature classes ever included any kind of literary analysis in any meaningful manner, but I may also be misremembering.
(Also kinda want to make a detective story where the curtains are a clue.)
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Writing, in general, as well as game writing specifically, is a multi-layered experience.
That is the blessing and curse of writing.
I have already shared my life-experience regarding how writers that I have dealt with are often blindsided by what their audience conclude about presumptions and what was in the author’s mind.
This doesn’t mean critique and analysis shouldn’t be done, only that these should not presume to “know the author’s mind and intent”.
Saying a game is heavy in traditional gender-roll tropes and stereotypes is one thing, but saying the author intended to do something or that the author had something in their mind regarding that subject is another.
If blue curtains help you, as a reader, get a better mental image of the scene’s setting, does it matter if the author intended the color blue to signify that this is a man’s room?
No, I believe that literary critiques and analyses should steer clear of assigning their conclusions to author’s intent, but rather keep the focus on the reviewer/reader themselves.
Time and time again, we learn things about our favorite authors that not only change our view of the author themselves, but also of their work. We as a whole need to keep this in mind whenever we critique or analyze a written work, be that novel, game, or script.
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Huh. That’s pretty much what the majority of our danish lessons consisted of, when we got into the higher grades. A fair amount of the english lessons as well.
And it’s what we had to do for our oral exams.
But the texts we were presented were also specifically chosen for it, and had a lot to work with. And it was usually a few different texts (and pictures) for a specific time period, so knowledge about literary movements and what went on at that time in history, were included as important context.
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I’m sure there was some of it - I remember writing a study on Hamlet, but for the life of me I have no idea what it entailed - and we did read books and wrote something about them, but that was probably more about what we thought of them, or somesuch. Mostly we wrote essays on some random subjects. And studied grammar.
That was before the curriculum overhaul though. I have no idea what they do nowadays, apart from that they actually do have textual analysis (or something) classes now.
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Readers sometimes are so eager of finding some deep meaning that I found hilarious. I participated in a contest a simple funny game.
A month later I found a review talking some trascendental karma whatever about Names and that my protagonist called in game max in reality a man called Venetian when my character was a genderless android.
Put intent into writers mind… most times is not accurate at all
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Still thinking about art - trying to decide if I should use the same style for all stories, or if different settings should have different style.
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That being said, if readers discover clever hidden meanings which you didn’t intend, and you look smarter as the author? I wouldn’t stop them.
On the other hand, I put hidden meanings into almost everything I write, and I don’t think the readers have figured out half of them yet.
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Ahaha, just found this in my notes.
”Isn’t this a dance? Why isn’t anyone dancing?” Derek stared at the string quartet, judging that the quality of the music wasn’t the issue. ”Truly, this is starting to look like the ball of the Legless Count.”
”The what now?” Jaques asked, confusion written all over his face.
”Ah, nevermind that, my friend.”
”You can’t do that, Collins.”
”Do what?” Derek looked at him, eyebrow rised.
”Hint at a story and then refuse to tell it.”
”It is such an agrarian story, I’m afraid, and as such, not a very interesting one for metropolitans like yourselves.” Derek smirked, a smile that rised only one of the corners of his mouth. ”I wouldn’t want to bore you two with my Scottish tales.”
”But - ” Natalya attempted a protest, then decided better against it.
Derek rised up and turned to face her, clapping his boots together and giving a bow. ”May I have this dance, my lady?”
”No one else is dancing”, Natalya protested.
”I know, that’s what I’m trying to fix.”
Jaques waved his hand dismissively. ”Go ahead, my dear. He may not be the most endearing of storytellers, but as far as dancing goes, Collins here is definitely no Legless Count.”
”Yes, especially since I’m no count at all”, Derek sniped back, deadpan.
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I’m getting back into writing after having taken a break for awhile. With that in mind, I’m trying something totally new this month.
Rather than just writing, I’m trying to fully outline and scaffold a new WIP that I’ve had in my head for awhile. It’s a lot of filler text (ie “Clear victory. Write cool battle description here”) but the idea is to get the code functional from beginning to end and then I actually fill it in with narrative text later.
So far it’s been going well, with 3 chapters in the books, so I guess my hope is to have the whole thing mapped out by the end of this month.
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