1st June 2012

Post

Workspace

I posted a picture of a new chair to Twitter yesterday.  Alongside the picture, I said:

Replaced ten year old home office chair with Something Fancy. Butt approves. Daytime standing desk doesn’t care.

(I know, riveting social media, right?)

In addition to the new (incredibly comfy, dangerously reclinable) chair, I removed the small “ladder” desk that Kate uses when she brings her laptop in for nerdly together time (not to worry: I replaced it with something considerably more sturdy), and generally did a lot of housecleaning in the workspace, especially in the closet (which got a new shelf unit that ended up mostly empty, thanks to my “throw it out!” style of clean-up).

As a general rule, I adhere as closely as I can to the “It’s all Too Much” school of thought when it comes to my living spaces. When I’m cleaning up I focus what, exactly, I want a space to be for, and basically just remove everything that doesn’t directly support that purpose. That might sound pretty zen, but I assure you it’s anything but new age feng shui.

For example, I want to use my office to:

• Do non-writing computer-related stuff (typically at my desk).
• Write (often not at my desk).
• Edit/revise (back at my desk again).
• Do computery stuff with my wife and/or daughter.
• Read.

In addition, there are a few other things my office needs to be able to do, primarily:

• Host some stuff that Sean can play with
• Remain resistant to permanent Sean-related damage to the stuff Sean can’t play with

To this end, my home office has:

• A new, still-kind-of-fume-laden, super-comfy chair.
• My monstrous, utterly impractical desk.
• My ‘side desk’ for laptops and hardcopies of stuff.
• Kate’s desk.
• My desktop (let’s be honest: gaming) computer.
• My dayjob laptop.
• My contractor job laptop.
• My daughter’s laptop.
• My netbook (on which I do all my first draft writing, pretty much).
• A comfy wingback (where said writing takes place).
• A big closet with spare computer bits, software, and gaming stuff for both myself and smaller persons.
• A small bookshelf with books I really can’t bear to be a whole floor away from, or which I want to read ‘next’.
• A baby-gate ‘cage’ around said bookshelf.

Clearly, the space serves many masters, and in order to fight what might seem inevitable clutter-creep, I have to be really vicious about my “if it doesn’t apply to the purpose of the space, it goes” rule. It doesn’t make the room spartan, by any means, but if you understand everything room has to do, you might concede that at the very least it’s efficient.

I don’t have a picture of the whole room, but this is current picture of the desk area:

The only object I don’t really need on the desk? That would be the stone ‘lawn ornament’ frog that you can see center left, holding my soda glass, and given what I went through to acquire the damned thing, I’m certainly not getting rid of it.

I didn’t set this picture up: that’s just how I left it this morning when I walked out the door.

And where did I walk out the door to?

That would be my dayjob work space which, in contrast, serves only one purpose.

Aside from its purpose (note the sweet, sweet singular), the only other goal I have with this space is to change things up as much as I can from my home space, in terms of physical requirements: I stand rather than sit and use a different style of keyboard and mouse — all told, I probably spend well over 16 hours on a computer every day of the working week, and doing whatever I can to reduce movement repetition is critical to my continued (relative) health and avoidance of RSI.

What about you guys? I have an unhealthy fascination for seeing pictures of where people do their work and play: got any cool setups link to? Share!

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30th May 2012

Post

Going to San Diego Comic Con?

Me too!

Stunted Fools, Scary-Ass Clowns, Enlightened Orangutans and other Devilish Charmers: Humor in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Time: Sunday, 7/15/12, 10:00a.m. - 11:00a.m.

Description: “The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.” And these authors’ pens are…very sharp. But, as The Hitchhiker’s Guide so sagely advises, DON’T PANIC. Humor is everywhere you look in science fiction and fantasy. So, wrap your towel around your head to ward off noxious fumes, and join us for an irreverent hour celebrating sly wit and unholy humor with some of the most devilish quipsters, wisecrackers and satirists writing today. Warning: you will snicker. And you may just laugh out loud.

• Richard Kadrey
• Doyce Testerman
• Bill Hornshaw
• Rob Reid
• Ned Vizzini
• Gini Koch
• Nathan Long
• Moderator: John Scalzi (tentative)

I’ll be doing some other stuff at the Con as well (when I’m not busy having a nerdgasm about being back there), but this is the first verified, we-know-what-time-it’s-happening thing. First, I’m pretty keen on the subject; second, I’m really excited about the potential conversation with that group of authors.

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21st May 2012

Post with 1 note

“Watch out for the Hidden Things…”

I actually started writing a completely different post today (another book review), and then realized that I really, really ought to start talking about some of the stuff going on with my book. (I’m actually fairly bad at the business side of publishing (or bad at business as publishing practices it, which is different). That’s a topic about which I can (and probably will) write a whole series of posts.)

I won’t lie: I’ve been putting this off. I don’t know if it’s nerves or laziness or the bone-deep conviction that something will happen and everything will just go poof and vanish. Even now, as I’m writing this line, I want nothing more than to delete the post and go do something else. Weird.

So here it is:

I have a book coming out in September. It is called Hidden Things.

It’s being published by HarperCollins Voyager, which is a recent… thing (see: not good at pub business lingo)… that brings all of the US/UK/Aus sci-fi/fantasy publishing arms of HarperCollins under the same impenetrable force field.

Now, part of the benefit of working with HarperCollins is (obviously) working with some very smart editors (a quick scan of my inbox tells me they have to pay at least six people competitive wages to control my rampant use of semicolons and argue where punctuation should go in relation to double-quotes¹).

But another benefit is the fact that they have artistic, designer-type people who put together book covers for a living, and are quite good at it.

For example, they did this cover for Hidden Things.

I’m pretty happy with it.

…*plays it cool*…

OH WHO AM I KIDDING I FREAKING LOVE THIS THING!

You know what they say about not judging a book by its cover? Well screw that: you should definitely judge my book by this cover — nothing would make me happier.

Ahem.

Right. Sorry about that; got a little excited. If you need a bit more info, here’s a close approximation of the jacket blurb:

“Watch out for the Hidden Things…”

That’s the last thing Calliope Jenkins’ best friend and former lover says to her before ending a 2 A.M. phone call from Iowa, where he’s investigating a case she knows little about. Five hours later, she gets another call, this time from the police. Josh has been found dead; foul play is suspected. Calliope is stunned.

Especially when Josh leaves a message on her phone a few hours later.

Spurred by grief and suspicion, she heads to Iowa herself, accompanied by a road-weary stranger who claims to know something about what happened to Josh and who can — maybe — help Calli get him back.

The road is not quite the straight shot she imagined. Josh was involved in something a lot more complicated than a teenage runaway or deadbeat day, and Calliope find herself on a surreal road tip into — and behind — America’s heartland, hounded by once-magical creatures twisted by living too long just out of sight and the bogeymen in Calliope’s own troubled past.

See, what finally pushed me to the tipping point in terms of talking about all this stuff is the fact that I received a box full of advance reader copies last week, and I finally got to actually touch a hardcopy version of the story — to pick it up and feel the heft of it — and that helped me stop thinking that the whole thing was going to go ‘poof’.

It also reminded me that — more than anything — I want people to read this thing.

And that of course means I need to get the word out.

Which, you may recall, is the part of the stuff I’m bad at. Still, I’m going to give it my best shot. Here’s everything going on right now:

Hidden Things has its own special page on this site, right here, so that if I (or, should I be so lucky, you) tell someone about the book, there’s a handy link for more info. The Hidden Things sub-site isn’t totally done — I still need to finish up the Reading Guide page, but I’m taking a lot of allergy meds this week (stupid cottonwoods) and my brain is too dumb to come up with good questions — most of the pertinent stuff is there, and there are placeholders for the other stuff that I will fill in as we get closer to the date-of.

I bit the bullet, went back onto Facebook, and made up an Author Page… thing… It is here. Please don’t do anything crazy like making up a Facebook account just so you can see the page, but if you already have such a thing, well, you’ll be far more at home on that page than I am.

Finally, there are going to be some CONTESTS that will result in people winning ARCs of the book. As a matter of fact, there are already two contests going on right now, and there will be more soon.

Contest the First: A Simple Click It doesn’t get much simpler than this. All you have to do is:

• Go over to that Facebook page I mentioned and “Like” something therein. Like the page. Like the picture of the cover I posted yesterday. I don’t really care what you choose; there are little blue thumbs all over the bloody place — click one of em. Or, if you are not written in the Book which is Face…
• Tweet something on twitter about this blog post, and put a #hiddenthings hashtag on it, so I’ll see it. Or…
• If you’re on Google Plus, go +1 this post, as it appears over there. OR…
• Go to my Tumblr page and like or reblog this post.

Next Monday, I’ll gather up the names of everyone who did any of those things, put em in a hat, and pull a name out: that person wins a copy of the book. Simple.

Contest the Second: A Not-So Simple Click
This one is pure Facebook, since it’s not something I cooked up. William Morrow is currently giving away a bunch of themed prize packs of books. Hidden Things is included in the “Mystery/Thriller” package, because (I can only assume) someone at WM has a sense of humor. Go here, click the things that ask to be clicked, and you’ll be entered to win Fabulous Prizes.

Contest the Third and Fourth and So On: Which Haven’t Happened Yet.
In a few weeks, I’m going to ask for a bit more creativity in these contests: one of you will win an ARC for writing awesome twitter-length microfiction; a few others will win stuff (not just Hidden Things, but other stuff) for being all artistic and designery — that one will happen around the same time the San Diego Comic Con, where I’ll be signing stuff and sitting on panels and other things I didn’t do the last time I went. More on that when the time comes — I’d like to do all these things right now, but I’m told I should pace myself and start simple, which I have (I hope).

Now What Did I Forget?

Actually, I think that’s it. So…

Let’s have another look at that book cover, shall we?

*sigh*

She’s a pretty one, isn’t she?

¹ - That actually ended up being a debate I won. Who knew I could hold my breath that long?

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18th May 2012

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Book Review: Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig

I’m a sucker for amnesia stories.

You know the kind I’m talking about: Our hero wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of who he is or how he got there. There’s a pounding on the door, the landlord’s hollering that this week’s rent is due, the nameless protag opens the door, and the cops burst in, pinning him to the bed and reciting Miranda for the murder of so and so and OH MY GOD WHAT’S GOING ON?!? Dark City’s a good recent example, but it’s something I’ve loved since Corwin woke up in a hospital bed in Nine Princes in Amber.

There are any number of acceptable and equally fun variations on this basic idea, a lot of them circling around the idea that the protagonist is investigating some blank spot in their recent history, trying to learn what happened and how they were involved — bonus points if it starts look like they themselves are the killer/criminal/victim they’re trying to find. I ran into a fun twist on this not too long ago in Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, a sci-fi detective story where the main character’s memory is fine, but his new body (not-so-gently used, one previous owner) has a number of dark secrets; it’s was a really good way for me to scratch that itch.

Chuck Wendig’s come up with another one.

Let me introduce you to Miriam Black. She’s got a hell of a party trick: give her a little skin-to-skin contact (fingertips, lips, elbows on the subway, whatever), and she gets an instant, full-color, down-to-the-second replay (preplay? foreplay?) of your death. Pretty cool. Pretty dark. Pretty bad ass. That’s Miriam Black.

At least that’s what she wants to world to think.

Truth is, if you watch Miriam for a little while… if you listen to her talk (she loves to talk) and notice how she goes out of her way to alienate anyone and everyone with whom she comes in contact (emitting a stream of viscous, vicious, venomous dialog that fills a defensive moat only the brave or stupid would try to cross), you realize that that Miriam hurts. She blames herself for every death she’s ‘witnessed’; dies a little bit every every time a soul she’s touched shuffles off this mortal coil (no matter how much of a human stain they happen to be). She’s damaged goods, brother, and she’s getting worse, not better.

Miriam Black knows when you’re going to die… and she will do anything to convince herself she doesn’t care.

“Sounds interesting,” you might say, “but where in all that is your little amnesia fetish getting sated?”

Well see that’s the interesting bit.

Miriam, road-weary and cynical, has a chance encounter with someone… nice. Someone she likes almost immediately. Someone she might even become friends with; a granite block of a human being who’s maybe tough enough to withstand the wear and tear of the shit storm that is Miriam’s life.

Inevitably, she reaches out for a bit of human contact, and sees her new friend’s death.

Murder. Violent and nasty. In a month.

And, somehow, Miriam is involved. Somehow, she’s there when it happens, and does nothing.

That’s when Blackbirds got me.

I don’t know how to tell you what this book is — a paranormal sci-fi conspiracy horror murder-mystery roadtrip? Maybe. It isn’t even an amnesia story, not really, because you can’t really have missing memory of something that hasn’t happened yet.

Except… Miriam can.

How can I sum this up? How can I give you the one-line morsel that will send you off to find the rest of the meal?

If Phillip K. Dick had lived Charles Bukowski’s life, he might have written Blackbirds.

Might have, I say, because I doubt he (or certainly Bukowski) could have given half as much depth to Miriam as Wendig shares, and it’s Miriam that makes Blackbirds work. The gritty asphalt fantasy that makes up the plot? Don’t get me wrong: that’s great stuff, but it’s poor, damaged, desperate Miriam that brings the whole thing back to where we live.

You may not like her (she’ll be happier if you don’t), but you’ll care.

Just see if you don’t.

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4th May 2012

Post

Clarity

So this is my kid. Click for increased sugar intake.

Sean is pretty great. Born in late January, by November and early December of last year he was already picking up works like “ball” and “milk” and was a few days away (I felt) from the big ones like Mommy and Daddy.

Christmas came around and, with it, a whole lot of traveling. It seemed almost inevitable that at least one of us would wrap up the holiday season sick, and in this case it turned out to be pretty much all of us, in different ways. Sean’s particular ailment was an ear infection, his first. This was something I’d been dreading for awhile because ear infections plagued my childhood, cost me the hearing in one of my ears (a particularly nasty infection that lead to a fever of about 104 and some pretty vivid hallucinations), and remain a perennial problem even today. Kaylee dodged this bullet (she got her mother’s mouth and sinus structure, I guess, which means no ear infections but a lot of time at the dentist), but Sean… not so much. By the time he turned a year old, he’d been to the doctor three times for ear infections, all of which seemed to get progressively more difficult to treat, and ever since then it’s been a constant struggle — he’s pretty much been taking some kind of medicine for the last 3 months, non-stop, with very brief windows where he’s totally okay. It’s screwed with his eating, his (and our) sleep schedule… it’s just been exhausting.

Also, he’s pretty much stopped talking. He rocks sign language (which the daycare teaches all the kids), but while he’s got no problem making lots of sounds, he’s not making words — in fact, he’s pretty much lost the few he had.

The last time we had him into the doctor (we’ve been there so often that the nearby pharmacy staff recognize us all on sight and ask after Sean by name), he suggested that we bring him in the next time he was feeling well, so he could get a look at his ears when they were clear. Kate did that on Wednesday.

But his ears weren’t clear.

No infection, but there was still a lot of fluid. His eardrums basically weren’t moving at all, because of the fluid pressure, and the doc told us to get in to see a specialist, which (wonder of wonders) we were able to do the very next day (yesterday).

Long story short: Sean basically hasn’t been able to to hear us clearly since Christmas. Obviously, this would be a problem for any kid, but in our house — where songs and sound are such a big part of pretty much every moment of the day; the primary way we interact with him — it feels like we just found out he can’t see us.

(Related story: When I was in high school, someone asked me which sense — sight or hearing — I would choose to lose, if I had to choose one or the other. Without hesitation, I said I’d rather be blind than deaf, because to me sound just seemed so much more important. Ironic, given the condition of my ears today.)

The good news is, he can hear perfectly, if the fluid isn’t a factor — the normal hearing tests indicated hearing reduction on the far side of “moderate”, but when they put a bone-conductive ‘headphone’ speaker on him, his reaction to the sound was like seeing someone flip on a light switch.

So they’re going to drain that fluid with a procedure, put some temporary millimeter-wide tubes in to keep the ears clear, and also do some work on his adenoids, since they seem to be causing the whole problem. It’s a little scary, obviously, because it’s a medical procedure on your little guy.

But at the same time I’m excited.

Sean is a happy kid; you can look at the picture at the beginning of this post — a type of picture that is in no way unusual for our son — and see that. When he’s not sick, he’s a delight, and even when he is he’s still pretty damn great.

But to be able to fix this? It’s going to be — I think — like getting him back. All the way back.

I want him to hear our voices. I want him to know our names.

I want to hear him sing.

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30th March 2012

Post

The Tyranny of Style Guides: Let Us Not Be Slaves to Fashion

I want to be clear about something: I was (and am) a pretty poor student of grammar. I mean, yes: I understand it, and more importantly I understand its purpose. By and large I get it right in practice, but that’s as far as it goes; I can’t (for example) glibly define an independent clause, except to say this is one and you should be able to figure out the rest yourself.

Yet somehow, I manage to avoid profound embarrassment when expressing myself via the written word.

Mostly, this can be attributed to the fact that I’ve always been a big reader, and I (generally) read authors who were pretty good at slinging words around, then basically just did things the same way they did (consciously or otherwise). When, years later, I actually took the time to leaf through a copy of The Everyday Writer, the only big surprise was realizing some of these things I did had names.

None of this should be that surprising — observation of peers and mentors is the most primal method of learning in our little tribe of talking monkeys. I manage to dress myself every morning (underwear on the inside and everything), and while I might never make the cover of GQ (because, I presume, their editors have eyes), neither will I get arrested or kicked out of Starbucks. Again, I credit this daily victory not to hours spent memorizing twelve different ways to tie a tie, but a lifetime surrounded by people who look better when fully clothed, and know it.

So, let this be my disclaimer: I am no more an expert on prepositional phrases than I am on men’s hats, nor do I pretend to be. I know enough editors to know that their understanding of Chicago Style is encyclopedic, and that I would not want to do their jobs for any appreciable length of time — I can only assume (based entirely on watching The Devil Wears Prada) the same would be true in sartorial circles.

[caption id=”attachment_3236” align=”aligncenter” width=”473” caption=”Fashion Things I will Never Manage: Rocking Seneca Crane’s beard.”][/caption]

Put another way: I love my editors, and don’t intend to dismiss or make light of the work they do.

However.

Over the course of the last few days, I’ve found myself caught in conversations about grammar — specifically, punctuation — and how it’s being either used or misused in my own creative work. This hasn’t been Happy Fun Times for me, both because it puts me on the opposite side of the net from people I respect, and because it turns out that I have some pretty strong feelings about the way my words go down on the page. The conversation goes something like this:

“This line should be punctuated like so.”

“That’s inconsistent and potentially confusing. Half of the time, it’s supposed to be punctuated like that, and half the time it’s supposed to be punctuated like this. I’ve settled on one of those ways, and use it in all instances, because I think it’s better and clearer.”

“I myself struggle with that exact thing and LOGICALLY, you’re right in this sitation, but we need to do it as indicated. See the Chicago Manual of Style, here…”

Part of my frustration stems from the slavish way in which something like, say, a style guide is held up as the Final Word in these discussions.

First, if we were talking about a news piece, or an academic paper, or some other kind of work of non-fiction, then fine: that’s all relevant; but we’re not talking about any of those things — we’re talking about a creative work, and when you’re talking about that, you’re talking about something which — often as not — is going to break a rule or two when judged by the same guidelines you follow for your sophomore Biology paper. We don’t go to an art show to see how precisely a painter can reproduce a photograph; we go see someone do new and interesting things with the medium, and maybe open our eyes a little bit. Likewise, I’m not picking up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to bask in way the author’s footnotes adhere to APA Citation Guidelines.

Second, I think it’s important when talking about a style guide to read the cover before you read the contents. When you do, two words kind of leap out at you:

Style. Guide.

Let’s talk about Style first.

style:

2a : a distinctive manner of expression (as in writing or speech)
2b : a distinctive manner or custom of behaving or conducting oneself
2c : a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created, or performed
4a : distinctive quality, form, or type of something (a new dress style)
5a : the state of being popular

Something that’s hard for anyone to remember from day to day is the fact that our language — especially our spoken language, but certainly the written form as well — is constantly evolving. I mentioned before that I learned reasonably good habits from the writers that have come before me, but it would be a bad idea to emulate any of those authors exactly, because in the time since they wrote whatever it is I’m reading, the style has changed. What would have perhaps been perfectly legitimate at the time comes off today as stilted, archaic, confusing, contradictory, or (in the case of word choice) even insulting; certainly not the intent of the author, but the world has moved on.

The mutability of the language — of style — is something worth remembering, even if it’s difficult. Otherwise, you end up arguing about the “official” way in which commas and quotation marks need to interact, which is a bit like arguing with your kid about the perfect place to build a sandcastle while ignoring the fact high tide comes up in about three more hours.

The fact is, there is no official way; we’re referencing a style guide, not a rule book, and even if we want to treat it like one, we still need to acknowledge that any manual we pick up is merely one of a dozen of such guides out there, because even people who attach huge importance to such things can’t agree with each other on who’s right.

Partly because the people using the language keep changing it.

Because it’s Style. Mutable. Shifting.

Also? Kind of ridiculous, especially the more seriously you take it.

Not this:

… but this:

[caption id=”attachment_3256” align=”aligncenter” width=”425” caption=”I spent way too much time working on this image.”][/caption]

So that’s style. Let’s talk about Guide.

A guide is something or someone who shows the way. If you’re talking about a person, maybe they’re acting as a sort of role model, but let’s just focus on the idea of Inanimate Object as Guide — something that’s pretty much limited to providing directions or advice.

Don’t get me wrong: directions and advice are good things. Newcomers to any activity need a good guide, because they don’t know what they’re doing. There’s a tired trope in fantasy literature where some wizened old man says “Do thou go this way, and do not stray from the path, because you are all idiots and will get in a pile of trouble.” The easiest example of this (for me) involves Gandalf, thirteen dwarves, a hobbit, and Mirkwood — of course, Gandalf is right, and the Company doesn’t listen, and they have a much more difficult time crossing Mirkwood as a result. They don’t know enough to stay out of trouble; Gandalf is right to talk to them like bumbling idiots, because in this context that’s exactly what they are.

But Gandalf wouldn’t say such things to Radagast, would he? Radagast is a peer — it would be insulting. Similarly, though for different reasons, he wouldn’t say it to Strider, because while the Ranger isn’t, strictly speaking, a peer, he’s skilled enough, and Gandalf would (rightly) assume that he knows what he’s doing if he does decide to leave the path.

That’s not to say ol’ Strider is going to have an easy time of it. Maybe he stumbles. Maybe he runs afoul of some spiders. Maybe, crouched around a pale and flickering fire, he finds himself muttering “goddamn but I which I’d stayed on that path,” and spends the next three days backtracking to where everything first went wrong. Fine. Learning experience for Strider — good for him.

That’s what makes Strider a better writer. Ranger. Whatever. The first time he tries, maybe it doesn’t go that well, but he keeps trying his own thing, and eventually he’s fighting off nazgul with an improvised torch.

He’s become a pretty good guide in his own right.

Does he still have doubts, and ask for advice? Sure. But then he makes his own decisions, and eventually, people find themselves following his example, and it’s the Fourth Age, and the world has moved on.

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I stopped using quotation marks to denote dialogue, because fuck quotation marks.”

— not Cormac McCarthy

So that’s my take on Style Guides: not so very immutable as you might believe.

Invaluable, yes. Important, yes.

But, it must be remembered, merely a reflection of their time, and a thing that we need to know when to ignore, if we’re ever going to find our own way.

(Some of you may find the fact that I’m resisting changes to nitpicky stuff like punctuation amusing, in light of the recent posts I’ve made about Bioware and why I think the players should have a voice in the game’s story and ending. Let me assure you that my own journey to publication is a perfect example of the work’s creator taking input from other people and making changes, and leave it at that.)

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27th March 2012

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Mass Effect, Creative License, and the Rights of the Player in a Story/Game #me3

This post is (thankfully) going to be shorter than yesterday’s. I wasn’t going to write another one on this topic at all, but there was a really good comment on yesterday’s post that led to a really long reply on my part — so long that I figured it would be better served as a post of its own.

The reason it’s interesting to me is because it has to do with the weird line between the traditional cultural definitions of “story” and “game” that a product like Mass Effect walks.

So, yesterday, Kaelri wrote (in part):

Frankly, I do believe that art is inviolate – that is to say, I don’t believe an artist has some sort of moral obligation to address the grievances of audience members who don’t happen to like what they came up with. If I’m a fan of a thing, it’s because I found the product and liked it; and if I choose to support it, as an advocate or a consumer or both, they still don’t owe me nothin’. Maybe they “should” pay attention to me for the sake of their business model, but that’s different from saying they “should” listen to me as though my fandom makes me a shareholder in the creative process.

First off, I get exactly where you’re coming from. I would even agree with you — when it comes to traditional media, a writer or really any creative person of any kind is not obliged to make fan-demanded changes to their work, unless they’re trying to make a more saleable product, or they just want to because their work would be better that way.

They can refuse, as I said in my original post — it might mean they never get published or that they never reach a wider audience, but that’s entirely their choice… when it comes to traditional media.

But, as I said yesterday, Mass Effect is something other than traditional media, which is why I’m going to disagree with you when it comes to this particular artistic work, and others like it:

I believe that we — the participants in the Mass Effect games — are co-creators.

Now, that’s a big statement, so let me dig into it a bit. This certainly isn’t true of every game out there — no one is complaining that they didn’t get enough creative input into the ending of Braid, because that isn’t what Braid is about — it’s not that kind of game.

Mass Effect, however, is that kind of game. It’s a conscious and (as I said in my made-up LotR example) difficult thing to do, but it is undeniably a can of worms Bioware chose to open, and once it’s open, they’re pretty much stuck with the consequences. The players have control of a lot of stuff that happens in the game series, if only with a binary yes/no level of input, and having extended them that authorship power you have, to a greater or lesser degree, given them access to the canvas and the right to call foul if they disagree with what you’re painting.

Again, this is not the case in every game out there (and it is not true of any traditional media of which I’m aware), but it is the case with Mass Effect. I can (with studious and somewhat questionable effort) entirely remove even someone like Garrus from all but a few scenes in the entire game series (the equivalent of having Samwise in one scene in Fellowship, no scenes at all in Two Towers, and writing him in as a bit-part escort for the last couple chapters of Return of the King). I decide whether many if not all of the character’s live and die and, with ME3, my influence is extended to the point where I can effectively wipe out two whole species.

It’s fair to say that Bioware is steering the A-plot, but when it comes to dictating the very tapestry against which that plot plays out, I am being dealt a lot of cards, and the hand that I play is a strong one. Certainly, my control over the personal stories in all three games is ironclad, and would be argued by many to be the most important and interesting bits.

So am I, at some level, a co-creator?

In indie tabletop RPG design, there’s an idea that some call “The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.” It refers to the classic, old-school RPG notion that “The GM is the author of the story and the players direct the actions of the protagonists.”

The term was coined to illustrate the fact that story is made of the actions and choices of the protagonists, so claiming to control one but not the other is senseless. If you have influence on the story at all, you exert influence on the protagonists, and if you truly control the actions of the protagonists, you have real and concrete influence on the story.

Or you should.

And, to be fair, Bioware did a fantastic job throughout ME1 and ME2 with giving players that kind of control and influence. (They’re not as good about it in ME3, but they’ve (sadly) compensated by becoming very skilled at disguising a lack of choice with something that feels like you’re making a decision.)

I would say that one of the biggest problems with the end of ME3 — or at least the part that causes the loudest initial outcry — is that it very baldly revokes that player-authorship at the point in the story where the players want it most.

To say that the players — while certainly not equal partners in the process, but creative contributors nonetheless — should have no say in the conclusion of the story they helped create is unfair, and to defend it by hiding behind “artistic expression”, as Bioware has done, is an insult to the players’ input throughout the series and a rather crude misrepresentation of what Mass Effect has been to both the creators and the players for the last five years.

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26th March 2012

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Mass Effect, Tolkien, and Your Bullshit Artistic Process

It may seem a bit odd that I’m posting this here rather than on my gaming-related blog, since it is about the Mass Effect game series and other related geekery. I debated where I should post it, but ultimately this is about writing as much or more than it’s about gaming, so here it is. Everything that follows is my opinion and, further, is infested with spoilers for both the Mass Effect series and, I suppose, The Lord of the Rings. Reader beware.

In late February, I said (on twitter) that I thought the Mass Effect universe was probably the most important science fiction of a generation.

Since then, the executive producer for Mass Effect 3 has been working tirelessly to get me to retract that statement.

If you follow gaming news at all, you’ll already know that there have been great clouds of dust kicked over this particular story — the gist of it is that Mass Effect was brought to a conclusion with the release of Mass Effect 3 (note: not brought to its conclusion, just brought to a conclusion — more on that later), and while 99% of the game was the same top-notch, engaging, tear-inducing stuff that we’ve come to expect, the last five minutes or so is a steaming, Hersey’s Kiss-sized dollop of dog shit that you are forced to ingest at the conclusion of the meal, like a mint, before they let you out the door.

It’s fair to say that it’s soured many players’ impression of the experience as a whole.

Now, I realize that many of the folks reading this may not have played through the Mass Effect series. First of all, that’s really too bad, because it is very, very good both in terms of play (which steadily improves from game to game) and story (barring one steaming exception) and (I think) completely worth the time.

But secondly, I’d like to keep you non-ME people involved in the conversation, so I’m going to draw a comparison that I think most anyone likely to visit here will understand, so that we can all proceed with reasonable understanding of the issues.

Let’s pretend for a moment that The Lord of the Rings was released not as a series of books, but a series of games. More importantly, the company behind the series decided to do something really hard but rewarding with the game — they were going to let you make decisions during play that substantively altered the elements of the story. That means that some of people playing through this Lord of the Rings story would end up with a personal game experience that was pretty much exactly like the one you and I all remember from reading the books, but that story is just sort of the default. Whole forums were filled up by fans of the series comparing notes on their versions of the game, with guides on how to get into a romantic relationship with Arwen (the obvious one), Eowyn (more difficult, as you have to go without any kind of romance option through the whole first game, but considered by many to be far more rewarding), or even Legolas (finally released as DLC for the third game).

And that’s certainly not all of possible permutations. Some players actually managed to save Boromir (though he leaves the party regardless, but gets you a whole extra army in the third game if he’s alive, and makes Denethor much less of a pain in the ass to deal with). Some folks don’t split up the party, and spend most of the game recruiting supporters through the South and North, from Aughaire down to Dol Imren. For some, Gimli dies at Helms Deep; for others only Merry escapes into Fangorn (which makes recruiting the Ents all but impossible). Hell, there are even a few weirdos who chose NOT to recruit Samwise back at the beginning of the story, and actually play through the whole first game without him (though the writers reintroduce him as a non-optional party member once you get ready to leave Lothlorien).

And what about the players who rolled the main character as a female? That changes a LOT of stuff, as you might well imagine. (Though, thankfully, all the dialogue options with Legolas are the same.)

Are you with me so far?

Okay, so you’re playing through this game — you’ve played through parts 1 and 2 several times, in fact, sometimes as a goody-two-shoes, and sometimes as a total bad-ass. You’ve got a version of the game where you’re with Arwen, one with Eowyn, one with Legolas, and one where you focus on Frodo and his subtle hand-holding bromance with Sam. You’re ready for Part Three, is what I’m saying, and out it comes.

And it’s awesome. You finally bring lasting alliance between Rohan and Gondor, you form a fragile-yet-believable peace between elves and dwarves, and even manage to recruit a significant strike-force of old Moria orcs who don’t so much like you as much as they just hate the johnny-come-lately Uruk-hai.

The final chapters open. You face down Saruman (who pretended to fund all your efforts through the second book, but then turned on you at the end of the Two Towers), which was really satisfying. You crawl up to the top of Mount Doom, collapse against a rock, and have a really touching heart to heart with Sam. It’s over. You know you have all your scores high enough to destroy the One Ring with no crisis of conscious and no lame “Gollum bit off my finger and then falls in the lava” ending, like the one you saw on the fanfic forums last year.

And then out comes this glowing figure from behind a rock, and it’s… Tom Bombadil.

And Tom explains your options.

[caption id=”attachment_3181” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”Oh, and you’re totally going to die too. And all the roads and horses throughout all of middle earth vanish. And by the way did you know that Sauron and the Nazgul all actually just work for Bombadil? True story.”][/caption]

Now, let’s just ignore the fact that the company behind this game has been quoted many times as saying that the game will end with no less than sixteen different endings, to honor all the various ways the story could go, and focus on these three options.

None of them have anything to do with destroying the ring, do they?

Has ‘destroying the ring’ (alternately, destroying Sauron) been pretty much THE THING you’ve been working toward the whole game? Yeah, it has. In fact, it mentions “Rings” right there in the title of the series, doesn’t it? Rather seems to make The Ring a bit of a banner item, doesn’t it?

But no, none of these options are about the Ring; they’re about one of the b-plots in the series, and one which you pretty much already laid to rest a few chapters ago.

So… okay, maybe this isn’t the END ending, you think, and you pick one of the options…

And that’s it. A bunch of cut-scenes play, Mount Doom explodes with fiery red light, you die, and the credits roll. The end.

Ohhh-kay. Maybe that was the bad ending. Let’s reload a save and pick option 2…

Same. Exact. Cut scenes. Except Mount Doom’s explosion is green. What?

Alright… umm… let’s check #3…

Nope. Mount Doom’s explosion is Blue. That’s it.

And, absolutely inexplicably, every single one of these cut scenes shows Gandalf, Aragorn, and SAMWISE escaping the explosion on one of the eagles and crash-landing somewhere in Lorien where they all pat themselves on the back and watch the sun set together.

What? But… Sam was with you. Aragorn and Gandalf… did they start running away halfway through the last fight at the Black Gate? Your boys abandoned you?

So, given this example, it’s possible — even for someone who didn’t play Mass Effect — to understand the fan’s reaction. The ending has no real connection to the rest of the story; barring the last scene and one conversation with an unnamed Nazgul in Book 3, it would lift right out with no one even noticing. It completely takes away your choices at the end of a game about making world-altering choices. It effectively destroys the Middle Earth that you were fighting for 100 hours of gameplay to preserve — no magic? Maybe a completely wiped out dwarven race? No one can travel anywhere without painstakingly rebuilding roads for a couple hundred years and replacing horses with something else? Also, no matter what, no matter how much ass you kick, you’re dead? Yeah. No thanks, man.

And that’s not even paying attention to stuff like how (and why) Sam and Gandalf and Strider ran away at the end. I mean… even if you’re going to do a shitty twist ending, don’t be so goddamn lazy about it. Don’t sit there and claim that criticism of the ending is an attack on your artistic product, because frankly that ending is full of holes and needs a rewrite and probably two more chapters to flesh out. (More on that in a bit.)

So… that’s where the Mass Effect franchise was after ME3 came out. A lot of confusion. A lot of rage. Some protests of a very interesting sort, where the gamers against the terrible ending decided to draw attention to the issue by raising something like seventy-thousand bucks for geek-related charities.

Now, let’s go a bit deeper.

Let’s continue with this Lord of the Rings video game analogy. Let’s say that after a bit of digging, people realized that Tolkien actually left the company to work on other projects before the game was complete. He wrote up a detailed outline, though; something that clearly spelled out exactly how the main arc of the story was supposed to play out, in broad strokes, basically laying out what we would expect the ending to be, pretty much.

But Tolkien left. So they get another guy in. Someone else who’s written stuff about some kind of powerful ring…

They get Steven R. Donaldson.

(Those of you who know me and my history with the Thomas Covenant books can guess that this analogy is not going to be a positive one, because seriously: fuck Thomas Covenant.)

So they get this Donaldson guy in to helm the end of the series, and it turns out he’s the guy who comes up with the Tom Bombadil, fuck-the-continuity-of-the-series ending.

Why? Maybe he’s pissed about being the second choice. Maybe he’s not getting paid enough to give a fuck. Maybe he just really wants to do this kind of story, but can’t be arsed to write a series of his own for which it makes sense. Maybe the original ending outlined by Tolkien got leaked on a forum the year before the last game came out, so people decided it had to be changed, even if the alternative makes no sense. I don’t know.

What I do know is the there was a different ending written out for the Mass Effect series, the short version of which is that the Big Reveal in ME3 is that the Mass Effect itself — the magical black-box technology that allows interstellar travel and powers a ton of other things from weapons to expensive toothbrushes — is causing a constant increase in dark energy in the galaxy, and that’s causing all kinds of bad things (like the accelerated death of stars).

The Mass Effect — you know, the thing from which the name of the series is derived — is the secret behind the Big Reveal. Who would have thought?

So, in the end of the game-as-envisioned, you’re given a choice of saving the galaxy by sacrificing the human race (making humanity into a biomechanical, synthetic-life, communal-intelligence “Reaper” that can stop the Dark Energy decay), or telling the Reapers to screw themselves and trying to fix the problem on your own (with a handful of centuries left before the Dark Energy thing snowballs and grows out of control on its own).

Which, in a word, would have been better. Certainly FAR better than some kind of stupid Tom Bombadil/Star Child explanation where we are told that the (synthetic AI) Reapers destroy advanced organic civilizations every 50 thousand years to prevent organic civilizations from… being destroyed by synthetic AIs.

Now we don’t just have some gamer complaints about the terrible ending, we have a demonstrably better ending that was actually supposed to be the one implemented. Complicates things, doesn’t it?

But Why All the Hate?

The simple fact of the matter is that Mass Effect is a story, and it’s a very good story — in my opinion, it’s one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced. People can hem and haw about what constitutes a story — about whether a game can really be a story if people can play it — as though a story is only a story if it’s spoken or written or projected up on a movie screen. That’s like saying a person is only a person if they walk or ride a horse or drive a car… because we all know the vehicle in which the subject is conveyed changes that subject’s inherent nature.

Some people say it’s not a real story because the player’s choices can alter it. I think they’re full of crap, and I say the proof of its power as a story is right there in the story-pudding — it affects me as a story does — and that’s all the criteria met. Walks like duck, quacks like duck, therefore duck.

But the problem (if you’re BioWare) is that human beings understand stories; we know how they’re supposed to work, thanks to thousands of years of cultural training. Mass Effect (until that conclusion) is a nigh-perfect example of how a story is done correctly, thanks in part to the medium, which allows (if you’ll permit me the slaughter of a few sacred cows) a level of of immersion and connection beyond what a book or movie or any other storytelling medium up to this point in our cultural history can match, because of the fact that you can actively take part in that story from the inside. Heresy? Fine, brand me a heretic; that’s how I see it.

And since it’s such a good story, people know how the thing is supposed to proceed, and they know how it should end.

You start out in ME1 trying to stop a bad guy, Saren. He’s the guy who gets us moving (because he’s a bad guy, and that’s what they do — bad guys act, and heroes react to that and move the story along). As we try to stop him, we find out there’s something bigger going on than just a rogue cop on a rampage. The picture keeps getting bigger, the stakes keep getting higher, and we keep getting our motivation and our level of commitment tested. Are we willing to sacrifice our personal life? Yes? Okay, will we sacrifice one of our friends? Yes? Okay, how about the leaders of the current galactic government? Yes? Okay…

It goes on like that. You fucking invest, is what I’m saying, and that’s just in the first game.

In the second game, the fight continues, as we have merely blunted the point of the spear, not stopped the attack. Our choices in ME1 had consequences, and we start to see them play out, for better or worse. Meanwhile, we’re trying to stop Evil Plan #2, in a suicide mission that could literally cost us nearly every single friend we’ve made. In the end, we get the joy of victory mixed with the sadness of the loss of those who didn’t make it, and it’s all good, because it’s a strong, healthy, enjoyable emotional release.

And now it’s ME3, and the stakes are even higher. We’re not recruiting more individual allies — we’re recruiting whole peoples — whole civilizations. Planets are falling. Worlds are being erased.

In the words of Harbinger, this hurts you.

Why? Because you know these people who are dying. You’ve spent over a hundred hours traveling this setting, meeting people, helping them, learning about each of their little stories; building relationships with, literally, hundreds of individuals. Every one of these planets going up in flames has a face (even if it’s a face behind a breathmask), and no one falls in this final story that wasn’t important in some way to you or someone you know.

(By contrast, the enemy is faceless and (since the reapers harvest your former allies and force them into monstrous templates) largely indistinguishable from one another — as it should be in this kind of story. You do not care about a Husk, though you might mourn the person killed to create the thing.)

In short, you aren’t just playing this game to get the high score. You’re fighting for this galaxy of individuals you’ve grown very, very attached to; to protect it and, as much as you can, preserve it. You’ve spent several hours every day on this, for months. It matters.

[caption id=”attachment_3190” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”“Hard to imagine galaxy. Too many People. Faceless. Statistics. Easy to depersonalize. Good when doing unpleasant work. For this fight, want personal connection. Can’t anthropomorphize galaxy. But can think of favorite nephew. Fighting for him.”“][/caption]

(Best of all, you get to shoot bad guys in the face while you’re doing it, which takes this heavy topic and makes it engaging at that level as well. It’s like soaking up all the gravitas of Schindler’s List while enjoying the BFG-toting action of Castle Wolfenstein at the same time.)

The end comes. We talk to all our friends. Everyone’s wearing their brave face, talking about what they’re going to do afterwards, which beach they’re going to retire on. You start to think that maybe the end is in sight and maybe, just maybe, you might even be able to see some of that ending.

The last big conflict starts. You fight some unkillable things and kill them. You face off against an old nemesis and finally end him.

And then…

And then you’re given three choices, none of which result in anything any different from the others, and none of which have consequences that have any connection to the goals we’ve been working on for the last hundred hours or so.

Those people you were just talking to? They’re gone. Or stranded on an alien world. Or dead. All those planets you helped? They’re gone too — cut off, or starving, or maybe just destroyed in manufactured super-novas. Nothing you did or accomplished in the last three games actually matters — it’s all been wiped out by one of three (red, green, or blue) RESET buttons you pushed, because pushing one of those buttons was the only ‘choice’ given to you at the end.

As a species, trained for thousands of years in the way stories work, we know this is a bad ending. Not “tragic”. Just bad. Poor.

This isn’t about a bunch of priviledged gamers complaining about a sad ending, because there are well-done sad endings that make contextual sense.

This is about a mechanical ending to the game that doesn’t end the story — that provides no emotional release — one so disassociated from the previous 99% of the story that the fans of the series collectively hope it will later be revealed to be a dream (or, in the context of the setting, a final Reaper Indoctrination attempt).

Dear writers: If you create something, and your readers hope that what you just gave them was, in reality, an “it was a dream all along” ending, because that would be better than what you wrote, you seriously. fucked. up.

Is the ending, as an ending (taken out of context with the game we’ve been playing), a bad one? No. It’s an interesting theme that was explored extensively in a B-plot within the series and which could certainly be the central thread of a series of its own.

But it’s not the ending of this story. Our goals — the one we’ve been fighting for — are never addressed. There is no closure, either happy or sad — we want our emotional release as it relates to the game we actually played. Maybe that means tragedy at our own stupid hands — maybe victory wrested from the biomechanical jaws of defeat (and at the cost of a greater looming danger ahead).

The ending we got? It didn’t make me angry or sad or happy. It left me unfulfilled, because it ended the game talking about something I didn’t actually care about, and left me waiting for that emotional release that ME1 or ME2 pulled off so well.

The idea that the player’s should just deal with the ending, because it’s Bioware’s ending and not theirs is one of the interesting points in this debate, simply because it rides this weird line where we don’t really have a cultural context for what the Mass Effect series is: Is it a game? Is it a story? If if it’s a game, then who cares about the story, and if it’s a story, then treat it like a book and stop pretending you get to influence it, stupid consumer.

The answer is more complicated: Is it a game or story? Yes. Moreover, it’s a game that’s welcomed player input into the narrative from the first moment, and as such, should be committed to honoring that input throughout. It’s a story, but it belongs to everyone telling it.

But It’s Art!
There’s a recurring tune being played by Bioware in response to this outcry, and it goes something like this: “We might respond to these complaints, and we might flesh out the ending we presented, but we’re not going to change anything, because this is art — this is the product of artists — and as such it is inviolate and immutable in the face of outside forces.”

Which is, speaking as a working artist, complete and utter horseshit.

If you make a movie, and you put in front of focus groups, and they categorically hate the ending, you change it. If you’re writing a book and your first readers tell you the ending is terrible, you fix it. (Ditto your second readers, your second-draft readers, your agent, your editor, your copy editor.)

Or maybe you don’t — maybe you say “this is art, and it is inviolate and immutable in the face of outside forces”, which is certainly your choice — but don’t expect anyone to help you bring that piece of crap to print.

Anyone can tell a story. You can sit in your special writing nook and turn out page after page of perfectly unaltered, immutable art and be quite happy — you’re welcome to, in fact.

But when you decide you want to make a living off it? Even if you want to just make a little spending money?

Then the rules change. Then it’s work. Then it’s a job. More importantly, then it’s part of a business model, and those golden days of your art being inviolate and immutable blah blah blah are well and truly behind you. Name me a story that saw print, or a movie that saw the Big Screen, and I’ll show you art that changed because of input from someone other than the the original creator — from someone looking at it from the point of view of the consumer.

Bioware is a company. Making their stories into games is their business model. Hiding behind some kind of “but it’s art, so we’re not changing it” defense is insulting, disingenuous, and flat-out stupid. Worse, it perpetuates the idea that the creator’s output is in some stupid way sancrosant and, as art, cannot be “wrong” or “bad”. If you as a creator imagine that to be the case — if you think that kind of argument is going to defend your right to never do a rewrite or a revision or line edits or to ever alter, in any way, your precious Artistic Process — discard that notion.

Or become accustomed to a long life as an “undiscovered talent”.

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