Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part V (House Arrests)

This is now my fifth post in the Dissecting a Disaster series. Follow the link for the beginning.

In Ten-Sided there were two people that were either under house arrest or some kind of half-way house for loony people.

The first is a blog, aptly named, My House Arrest. In the first couple posts, the writer claims he doesn't know where his "house" is.

I live alone. And the state (or wherever it is I am)

Normally I don't think about where my house is. I'm under house arrest, so the outside, my municipality, nation-state, whatever is of little concern to me.

Let me ask all of you something. If you're writing as a character that 9 other people are supposed to relate... why would you make it a mystery as to where you live? This would just further hamper meeting and interacting with the other characters. Eventually, we get a hint as to why he might be under house arrest

Well I can't tell you the whole story. That wouldn't end well for either of us. But it did begin with killing cats. I was damn good at it. And people admired that. And that's how I came to love her, the girl that led to my house arrest. I met her at the municipal pool. We spent so much time in the water that I couldn't avoid the topic any longer. I told I could kill a cat quicker than any man she knew. She said she wanted me to teach her. So, I did, and she learned well. I liked that about her

He also talks about women visiting him. I'm pretty sure that all of them, except "Lucy" are either imaginary or dolls he thinks are alive.(there we go again with the dolls...)

Today the women arrived, and a few minutes later, another woman showed up. But she was different, I could tell from the looks on their faces, the faces that visit me every day. They’re all sent to me by the State, or whatever authority I’m living under at present. But this woman came to visit me on her own.

I asked my visitors to please excuse us. One of them began to disrobe, from the bottom up. I held up my hand. Would you please excuse us? They all left, in an orderly line. But I could see they weren’t happy about it. They knew that this new woman, this interloper, might discuss dangerous matters. Particularly, the customizable nature of transistor radios and their frequencies.

The woman’s name is Lucy and she’s still here. She knows little about transistors, but I do think she understands harmonies and their liberating powers.

In April, the guy meets "Aliss". In May things just get crazier. Lucy and Aliss start "sending" radio signals to the psycho doll maker. The softest person did acknowledge receiving them sometimes. The rest of may things just keep getting weirder... He finds his twin brother's shoe, (That's right, half way through the story we find out he has a twin.) He escapes his house arrest, and is being followed by a guerilla film crew. (apparently relating to a reality tv show mentioned by another blogger)

At the end, in June, mixed in with some mindless insanity we find out he meets up with the doll maker. It's not clear what happens after that.

Now, let's look at "between moments"(link is unaccessible, you can only view it's republished feed at the Ten-Sided homepage). For the entire month of March, Leo does nothing but rant, nearly incomprehensibly about his twin Lucy.

About half way through April, the author quits ranting and takes the 'daring' move of writing some actual facts and background about the character and what he's doing. It becomes obvious that he's staying in the same place as Old Uncle Charles from My House arrest. He mentions Lucy and Aliss \ Alicia

By May, it seems like you can almost make sense of the blog. If you look at it as, Leo is Uncle Charles' split personality(or vice versa), it makes sense. Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to stick with that and instead launches into lengthy explanations of Picar. (that's the name of the "Lost" Island)

By June, It's back to madness. His penultimate post might be the closest we'll ever get to knowing exactly what the hell is going on in Picar.

I was born of a clear cold night on an island that doesn’t exist, to a man with no woman and a woman with no man, and before I was born my mind split in two and Lucy took the other half.

I was raised in the moonlight on the edge of the tide on an island that doesn’t exist, and everything I ever needed was ripped away from me. My other half was gone.

But she doesn’t exist and neither do I.

She’s a fucking doll, Tristan.

And so am I.

And so is Aliss, who yes, clearly, was always Alicia. Alicia trying to give me a second chance. Alicia kicking tango with dear Lucy, fencing nearly fearless with my soul.

And you, old Tristan, are also a fucking doll. Made of stuffing and sawdust and buttons and rope. Not that it matters; we could be marrow and flesh and hair and we’d still be what we are.

But you wanted to be a fucking Pinocchio, Tristan. You wanted it more than any of the rest of us. Cut the strings, cut the strings, cut the strings.

There are no fucking strings, Tristan!

The strings are inside us, wound around our little rubber hearts, threaded through our arteries. Web of subcutaneous fiberglass fat that rides beneath our cotton skins.

You can’t make those strings shrivel up and die by flooding the system with poison, Tristan. Biker Joe, A.P. – you’re not going to get anywhere with that. They don’t know what you think they know, and even if they did they would die before they told you.

They would die, Tristan, before they told you. Because their little doll hearts beat blacker than yours, and each and every one of them wants to be the man in the pink jumpsuit.

(I know what your next question is, and no, I don't know who Tristan is or what his role here is)

I think the lesson here might be, "Don't have crazy people writing your blog fiction".
I know what you're going to say. Hortan's Folly does it. Yes, Yes it does. The difference there is that it's one author who planned out some of the madness. It's not 2 different people *who aren't allowed to coordinate* trying to improvise crazy people.

I think another lesson can be gleamed from "between moments". The author didn't start strong. It took him quite a few posts to get to something interesting. First he's ranting about his twin. Then he's just crazy. Then he seemed to be going for playing the alter ego of Uncle Charles. Then he went back to just being freaking crazy. The point I'm trying to make is that the author just seemed unsure of himself and it showed through. If you're going to be writing blog fiction, especially with other people, you need to get an idea in your head and stick with it.

rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Sorry about going AWOL. I'm fine and so is the site. Life can sometimes get to one. I'm sure many of you know how that goes. I still plan on blogging here.

On top of the normal pressures of life, there were two reason for not posting in a while. First, writing about ten-sided has been the toughest thing I've ever written. I don't enjoy criticizing, no matter how much it's called for.

The second reason is that I've relapsed in my mmorpg addiction. I've written about it before. I started playing Shaiya a couple weeks ago and it slowly started taking up more and more of my time. I really thought I could manage it this time. I figured, "surely if it's free to play I won't feel obligated to play it my every waking moment". As it turns out, I was very very wrong and ended up playing video games instead of reading or blogging. Personally, I blame Tom Evans for giving me hope that I could do it. ;)

Part 5 of my Ten-Sided series should be my next post. Assuming I can pull myself away from Shaiya for more than 5 minutes.

Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part IV (Dolls, Dolls, and more Dolls!)

This is now my fourth post in the Dissecting a Disaster series. Follow the link for the beginning.

The Softest Person, On the Lake by the Snacks, and Brims Assemblage I grouped together because they follow a similar pattern. The characters remain relatively isolated from each other for much of the story. Then, around the end of May, the suddenly skew into each other and meet in bizzaro world the village of doll people.

The Softest Person, in a nutshell, is about a doll maker slowly descending into madness. At the last minute it's implied that he ends up on the "Lost" island amongst the doll village. Throughout the story he describes many of the crazy dolls he makes. After he makes reference to "Alicia things get really crazy for him. Eventually, somehow, at the end he's in a "doll house". That pretty much is it.

On the Lake by the Snacks starts out as a story about a man who lost his daughter, "Aliss". I'm fairly certain that Aliss is the "Alicia" that is torturing the doll maker. The whole thing is fairly mundane when all of a sudden there is a post that, after reading, just makes me go WTF?! After that, I don't know how, but essentially, this guy is now on the "Lost" island. I believe that he is the former husband of Jemima. She's the person who runs the B&B that A.P. stays at. This is based on the fact that he's using her computer(more on that in the future post). By that point however, the story and character relationships have gotten so convoluted that I can't be certain.

Then there's Brim. His character doesn't have a lot of arc. It is instead through comments and allusions that he interacts with the other characters. I think his impact on the overall narrative is felt more through the comments he leaves on other people's blogs than in the posts on his own blog. His character doesn't have anything extraordinary happen to him until he goes scuba diving and ends up on the "Lost" island and follows Pal to the doll village.

Now, if you're thoroughly confused, join the crowd. I think what happened with all 3 of these blogs is that the authors had something in mind that they wanted to do. Then, all of a sudden, the end date for the experiment was coming to a close so they suddenly viewed off in an unexpected direction. I think that's where the lesson is. Just like other fiction, whatever you want to do with your story, do it quickly and as close to the beginning as possible. Otherwise, you risk your blog fiction just being a character blog - and probably a boring one at that.

Latest Blog Fiction Finds

Every month I'm going to dedicate a post to pointing out the latest updates to the list of blog fiction. Here is a list of everything that was added in Febuary.

First up, the newly added:
Renal Failure-Status: Active

A writing experiment full of damnable lies and outright fabrications

Diary of a Killer-Status: Abandoned

a (wrongfully?) accused prisoner seeking revenge.
Quote: My name is Madison and this is my revenge. Some names and locations have been changed for security purposes.

Up and Onward(Confessions of a Super Hero)-Status: Abandoned

A fictional blog from the perspective of a super hero who has to deal with the more mundane aspects of having special powers. Follow along with the trials and tribulations of Exemplar and his friends.

Fictional Blogs of Original Super Heroes. It is a many to many format. Here's the links to each of the 5 blogs. That status of them all is active.
Being super is what I do!
Terra Stone aka Elemental
The Dichotomy of Ean Iago
The Enigma Known As Brice
Mr. E. aka weird Wellington "Edwin" Mallard

The Cranky Product Manager-Status: Active

The Cranky Product Manager is a fictional product management professional at a fictional enterprise software vendor named DysfunctoSoft. These are her fictional stories.

Fate's Acquittal

Did you ever feel inspired by music or lyricism to do something crazy? It happens to me all the time these days, but because of a stupid pact I actually have to do it...

The Writers Stand

The idea behind it is to post blog sized fiction or short stories instead of having a theme. It currently has a couple entries

Also, Horton's Folly has also come back from his break.

I think that's everything. Let me know if I missed anything.

Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part III (Keeping up with A.P.)

I already talked briefly about the characters of Ten-Sided and the plot as a whole. Let's take a look at the some of the individual blogs.

Keeping up with A.P. can be broken in half. In the first month and a half it reads like a business man who is growing weary of traveling for his job. It is realistic to a fault. What I mean is, it really does read like someone's personal blog - boring. Talks about trivial events. Here's some choice excerpts:
March 23

Anyways. Work was busy this week, but good, there are some big things brewing and it's fun and challenging ... after a few years of doing this it feels good to really know my way around, so to speak. Also waiting for Spring, I mean really really waiting for it. I'm getting ready to open the patio up, imagining all the cookouts that Bill and I will be hosting. Even more than last year if I have my way. One thing is, though, we're going to have to setup some policy for the iPod DJ'ing. 50 Asians with iPods + 1 stereo system = the wrong kind of "jockeying". Last year things totally got out of hand.

April 4th

At Stern I had to take a class on business ethics, which at the time I thought was pretty boring. Of course everybody knows right from wrong, so what? I guess that was me a few years ago, when it didn't occur to me that actually if you're unlucky you can fall into a position at work where you're asked to compromise your ethics all the time. I mean, all the time. And you're all hustling to get ahead, right, so it's hard to always make the right decision. This doesn't happen to me, I've made choices to avoid this situation. But I've seen it in action, sometimes it's not pretty. This doesn't happen to me, though.

April 18th

Traveling more, getting on a plane on Friday and I'll be away 'til next week. Not to Las Vegas this time, as if the location even matters at this point. Well, one bright spot is that Bill and I have picked the date for our first spring cookout: Sunday, April 30. Sent out the Evites this morning. If you didn't get one it's 'cause I've decided you're lame. No j/k I just probably forgot to add your email address. Send me an email and I'll add you to the evite.

That's the first half. Then half way through it's finally revealed that this guy works for some kind of intelligence agency. From there, the plot really starts to takes an unexpected turn. On May 10th he stays at a B&B that some of the other characters were staying at. The B&B is, as far as I can tell, on the "Lost" island. He unsuccessfully "recruits" Toni for a mission. By my count there were only 11 posts after the post revealing the character to be a member of an intelligence agency.

In the end, A.P. is somehow poisoned and is dying. Apparently he betrayed who he was working for. What he did, why he did it, and how he was poisoned is not very clear at all.

I think there are 2 lessons to draw here. One lesson of this isn't a blog fiction specific lesson. It applies to most story telling. Don't wait until the book is half over to reveal the interesting part of the plot or characters. The second lesson is don't be realistic to a fault. Nobody wants to spend a month reading about cookouts and plane flights.

Rant and Important Site Announcement

I hate, I hate, I hate domain name squatters. I'm not talking about cybersquatters which is illegal. I'm talking about the internet bottom feeders who register a domain name with the sole intent to put up domain ads and never do anything constructive with their domain name. These scum-sucking bottom feeders of the internet are littering the internet and provided no service for anyone.

Often, these guys aren't satisfied to just grab good domain names. Often they will try to grab the domain names of existing websites. When the website lapses they dive in and try to buy the domain. This is what happened to blogfic.com. The site once was a gathering place for the blog fiction writers. Some blog fiction writers still link to it. The site is now taken by domain squatters. It looks like many of the domains used for Zombie Lawmen have also been taken by domain squatters.

I really like having my own domain name. The reason I'm ranting about domain squatters is because they have taken the domain names of all of the domains I wanted to register for this blog. blogfiction.com, blogfic.com, fictionalblog.com, fictionalblogs.com, etc... I have recently tried to grab a couple of them, but all unsuccessfully.

As you probably noticed looking at your address bar, I have decided to settle for blogfiction.org(blogfiction.net was taken, but not by a domain squatter). I decided that, before I get too much content, I had better make the changeover now. So, I am now posting this blog under blog.blogfiction.org. I am using the blog subdomain because I have additional plans for blogfiction.org. If you have me blog rolled, you might want to update your link. I promise I won't ever ask you to do it again.

Thanks to the blogger technology, all of the old links will still work. They will just redirect to the new domain. blogfiction.org will temporarily be redirecting to this blog as well. Once I have some other projects up and running, blogfiction.org will serve as a start page that links to this blog and those other projects.

Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part II (Plot)

I already talked briefly about the characters of Ten-Sided. Let's take a look at the plot that developed over the 3 months. The plot of the different characters can be roughly grouped into 3 different sub-plots. Although, even those 3 different stories intertwine somewhat. *Warning, spoilers ahead.

The first, most straightforward plot, is the love story between Jez of J-Meister and Toni from Smooth Blue. This was actually a little fun. They had a little help from brim along the way. Through some weird stuff thrown a them by A.P., they eventually are re-united into a happy ending. They met up eventually on, what I'm calling, the "Lost" island.

The second sub-plot is a little less straightforward. There is one guy under house arrest, apparently for torturing cats in the aptly names, My House Arrest. Based on what he writes I have to assume that either he's in the twilight zone or, more likely, completely psychotic. Helped along with his psychosis is an equally crazy Lucy(Update: Typo) Leo of between moments. (link is unaccessible, you can only view it's republished feed at the Ten-Sided homepage). These house arrests are in houses on the "Lost" Island.

The Third sub-plot is well... about dolls. It started with this guy who makes, what I would describe as, designer dolls from hell. When I first read it, I thought that the reason I couldn't follow the plot was because I needed to know what was happening to the other people to get it. Then after reading the rest of the posts, I still don't get what's going on at the end. On the Lake by the Snacks, by the end is talking about dolls. He and brim from brims assemblage meet and find upon a village of doll like people. This village, as far as I can tell, is also located on the "Lost" Island.

Finally there were 2 blogs that didn't really do much of anything. First, there was Ezra Kire blog. All it is is some poems(perhaps song lyrics) posted. That's it. There might be some kind of concept album at work. Where he goes through depression, suicide, and afterlife, but to be honest, I'm not seeing it. The other blog that didn't do much was the Voidwalker's realm blog. Essentially, this character tried to write scifi. It sounded more like B rate erotica. He went on a date that turned out to be a setup for a reality tv show. Then he got in trouble for threatening someone in an MMORPG and quit posting. One post in the middle of may was his last post. He was supposed to keep going until June. He didn't really interact or relate to any of the characters and there wasn't really any "story" there.

So with that, I hope you'll see why I'm calling this thing a disaster. Looking at the disparate plots and sub-plots I think we have a second lesson. Make sure everyone is working within the same genre and tone. Don't have a couple people working on a romance, another couple writers writing as people descending into psychosis, and some more playing Dr. Livingston style explorers.

Next, I'm going to take some looks at the individual blogs inside Ten-Sided. We'll see what each person did that worked, and didn't work. We'll take a look at their interaction with others ss well as a more detailed plot for that specific character.