scottbateman

• 15:08 @Randazzoj @timhutton: The Uniball Vision Elite is the One True Pen. #
• 15:51 @timhutton @Randazzoj .5 mm on that Uniball Vision Elite, of course. #
• 19:13 Tuesday afternoon sketchbook item: twitpic.com/tog87 #

robin_d_laws

Clifford Irving’s attempt to sell a faked Howard Hughes autobiography while the man was still alive was the kind of improbably nutso move you couldn’t credibly pull off in a work of fiction. In the movie account of the incident, even with the real-life angle to justify it, the script spends its entire first act setting up the decision. It carefully lays out the series of pressures that lead Irving to attempt his colossally risky scheme. This follows a basic storytelling principle—the more an action strains credibility, the harder you have to work to make it seem likely and relatable.

Roleplaying characters tend more than their counterparts in other narrative media to make choices that seem abrupt, arbitrary, or just plain crazy. Part of this can be chalked up to the fun of playing unhinged or impulsive characters. They shake things up, make things happen, and in general appeal to the player type referred to in the 4E DMG as the instigator.

That said, the extreme actions of otherwise sane or justified characters often come off as jarring in a roleplaying context due to a lack of adequate groundwork. GMs find it easier to lay pipe for coming events than players do. It’s hard for players to find opportunities to execute the slowly escalating stages of a dramatic character turn.

A GM might encourage this by allowing players to incorporate character transformations into the game. The player tells the GM how the character might slowly evolve over the course of many sessions, laying out the chain of motivating events required to get her there. Depending on where the dials are set on the game’s balance of narrative power between players and GMs, the GM might facilitate this as written, or attempt to surprise the player by getting her character where she wants to go in an unexpected way.

It might help when creating a character to first imagine her as she’ll seem after the turn. Then work backwards to introduce her in a previous state. A PC envisioned as a hardened killer might begin play as an idealistic pacifist. The next three to five sessions might each include a scene intended to slowly nudge her into her final state. Thus the arc that might normally be consigned to a backstory description (“Chandra stopped being a pacifist the day the Lupine Order razed her village”) is realized onstage, during play.

scottbateman

• 00:14 @Randazzoj How have you never seen @reggiewatts perform live before? How is that possible? #
• 11:11 Monday morning sketchbook: twitpic.com/thz68 #
• 19:56 Invited to submit Atom Age Vampire to the Detroit Indie Film Fest today. A ploy by bears who've moved into back into the city to eat me? #

http://www.dorktower.com/2009/12/14/technical-difficulties/

http://www.dorktower.com/?p=4217

OK, a couple big things happened last week, not least of which was a hard drive crash on my laptop.

Between that and the blizzard that hit the midwest, it essentially wiped out another work week.

Fortunately, it seems (fingers crossed) as if all of my data was backed up. But getting everything back on the machine’s new hard drive has been a bit – shall we say “entertaining.” Not least because the new hard drive came loaded with a new operating system, and many of my old discs re still in boxes somewhere from the move.

I *hope* to have new strips up and running by this coming Friday, Dec. 18, Monday, December 21 at the latest.

On the plus side, there’ll be some news about something that’ll soon make sure DorkTower.com web site problems, etc., etc., are – if not a thing of the past – at least far more infrequent. There’ll be other big news as well. I’ll probably pst that this coming Thursday.

For the moment, it’s been incredibly frustrating, and I’d like to apologize for the ups and downs (mostly downs) of the web site this month. In 2010, I hope that the thrice-weekly schedule of comic strips will be hit, and hit regularly and well.

On the other hand, I’m not a kid in Darfur, so I really can’t complain too much about anything…

Also at the start of the year, some more big news, about what’s going on with everything: the Dork Tower comic strips; Dr. Blink comics and more; the Dork Tower comic books; My Little Cthulhu; Mythos Buddies; Munchkin; Out of the Box Games; the Dork Tower puppet project; where my mind’s at; and so on. Kind of a State of the Cartoonist address. I’m working that up now to post New Year’s Day. It ma need to be broken into a few parts.

In the meantime, thank you SO much for your patience these last few weeks. Please check back in lter in the week, when I hope things will be starting to run a bit more smoothly. I’m working on making everything sharper, smoother, faster and better at DorkTower.com.

John

PS – please excuse any typos. I’ve got to run off for a plane, and don’t have time to proof this in my usual haphazard way…

John

robin_d_laws

As profound students of medieval history, I’m sure you all know that today is Roonemas. Since at least the fourteenth century, the eleventh day before Christmas has been celebrated as a time to make Andy Rooney-esque complaints. So while I wouldn’t do this any other day of the year, the spirit of the holidays compels me to share this observation saved from my recent trip to London.

Okay, so since when did standing still in a weird costume become a busking monoculture? Down by the Southbank Centre there had to be a dozen different street performers trying to cadge coins from sightseers, and pretty much every single one of them counted being stationary as his main talent. Granted, the two guys in the anole costumes riding bikes were more mobile than the others. But with the competition on display consisting of immobile Shakespeare, immobile French dude, immobile silver statue, etc., you'd think a juggler or classical guitarist would move in to easily conquer their malnourished entertainment ecosystem. I can't decide who was worse, lumpy immobile Superman or disturbingly off-brand immobile Mickey Mouse. Or is this all part of some art project to discourage tourists from clogging London, by ensuring that its street diversions remain consistently cheesy?

Happy Roonemas, everyone!

scottbateman

• 10:28 Dream: Had 10 seconds to pitch a movie to Adam Sandler. Watch for "Uh Um Er..." at a theater near you Summer 2011. #

scottbateman

• 22:05 Via @colleenaf, a wonderful French music video in 3 versions: 1) bit.ly/6JFBmx 2) bit.ly/4L6Kms 3) bit.ly/7epYQB #
• 10:31 Friday morning sketchbook thing: twitpic.com/t258c #
• 16:01 You guys, I can't even watch Jersey Shore ironically. It's just bad. #
• 16:30 Xmas animation with special guest vocals by Mary Jo Pehl (Mystery Science Theater)is done, but Vimeo is taking its sweet time processing it. #

robin_d_laws

View series to date here. Updated archive soon.

http://www.dorktower.com/2009/12/10/an-open-letter-to-abc-from-my-friend-leon/

http://www.dorktower.com/?p=4201

Did you watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” last Tuesday night, and think it seemed a bit…shorter than usual? Well, it was. And my friend Leon puts this into word far better than I could have. Please pass on, share, and enjoy.

TO: ABC
FROM: Leon Lynn
RE: Desecration of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”
12/8/09

Dear ABC,

How could you?

For years and years I have awaited the network broadcast of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” as the true herald of the holiday season. I brought my kids up with the same tradition — one which has been made no less special for us by the fact that they happen to be Jewish.

Tonight we sat in horror and watched what you have done to the single greatest cartoon ever made.

How many minutes did you cut out of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” so you could run more commercials?

Gone was Sally’s materialistic letter to Santa, which finally sends Charlie screaming from the room when she says she will settle for 10s and 20s.

Gone was Schroeder’s miraculous multiple renditions of “Jingle Bells” from a toy piano, including the one that sounds distinctly like a church organ.

Gone was Linus using his blanket as an improvised slingshot to knock a can off the fence no one else can hit, complete with ricochet sound effect.

Gone were the kids catching snowflakes on their tongues and commenting on their flavor.

Gone even was poor Shermy’s only line. He thought he had it bad because he was always tasked to play a shepherd. He had no idea.

And why were all these classic scenes cut? To plug more ads into the show, of course. To sell burgers and greeting cards — and to relentlessly plug the insipid-looking new Disney “soon to be a classic” show immediately following. (I didn’t watch the new show, by the way. I was laid far too low by what had just happened.)

Cramming all of these ads into the 30-minute broadcast of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” required major edits to a cartoon that has spent 44 years now trying to remind us that Christmas is supposed to transcend crass commercialism.

Do you have no sense of irony?

A couple of weeks ago I noted that you can now buy a plastic replica of the pathetic little real-wood Christmas tree Charlie Brown brings home from the tree lot otherwise monopolized by shiny fake trees. I thought we had sunk as low as we could.

Obviously I was wrong.

Oh, and by the way: The sound was half a second behind the picture: They were not synched properly. I thought this was pretty sloppy for a major TV network, but I was willing to look past it.

What I cannot look past is the chopping to bits of a genuine classic, not just to pump more ads at us, but in direct conflict with the message that has made it a classic.

When I was a kid, the annual broadcast of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a holiday unto itself. It was the only time we ever saw ads for Dolly Madison snack cakes, for one thing. But more importantly, it actually framed the coming holiday for me in a meaningful way.

The shepherds in their fields had no corporate sponsors. Nobody had bought the naming rights for the manger. The infant Jesus did not have an endorsement deal lined up with a particular line of swaddling clothes.

Instead he came, the story goes, to preach universal love, and the abandonment of false ideals like the acquisition of gross material wealth in favor of something far more valuable.

You have not just lost sight of this, or turned your backs on it. You have stomped it into the mud.

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

But I bet you aren’t. I bet you’re way past that.

Count my family out for next year.

Sincerely,

Leon Lynn

robin_d_laws

Whenever you find yourself lf stuck in a place running a continual news-loop with inescapably loud audio, the Esoterrorists put it it there, as an emitter of low-grade cognitive dissonance. They particularly target airports, where their installations play to a captive audience of the already anxious. Their client entities derive particular nourishment from those involuntarily exposed to the stock market segment. The mix of fear—of lost opportunities, of nosediving portfolios—combined with greed is greasy with psychic resonance. Since the economic downturn the yields have grown even stronger. Even those most knowledgeable about the financial world, once inured to this material by familiarity, are now prone to radiate rich waves of subconscious distress.

Airports in general provide a wider a playground for certain discreet entities of the Outer Dark. Old fashioned fear of flying admixes with new-century terrorism dread. Though not as strong as it was earlier in the decade, the latter still exerts a nourishing pull. Xenophobia provides its own heady psychic outflow. In airports people are forced to travel with others whose clothing, speech and appearance marks them as other.

Disguised Outer Dark Entities sometimes board planes, but the limited range of action while on an airliner proves isn't always an ultrademon's cup of tea. They prefer to lurk in the terminals themselves. Some of them mill about as eternal travelers who never depart. Others assume the forms of ticket agents, baggage handlers, and duty-free clerks. Where most airport employees adopt the glassy-eyed affect of the travel-weary patrons they service, ODEs can be recognized by the hunger in their eyes.

They must act with caution, as the Ordo Veritatis uses the international air system to shuttle its agents from case to case. The loosely affiliated bands of supernatural predators haunting the world's airports attend to the security flags that precede the arrival of OV agents. They spread the word, and know where to hide.

princeofcairo

As an example, [Senator Stuart] Symington once formally requested a report from military sources regarding the possible existence of subterranean superhumans, which one of his constituents had become concerned about after reading a fiction book and mistaking it for non-fiction. [Or so THEY say. -- kah] This and Symington's other senatorial correspondence and papers were donated to the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection (on the University of Missouri campus) in 2002 and are now available to the general public.

But Forrestal, not Truman, was the doomed man. His relationship with Symington went from bad to worse. For reasons still unclear, Symington embarked, in the words of one author, "upon a kind of personal guerilla warfare" against the Secretary of Defense. ... Friends commented on [Forrestal's] growing paranoia. He was convinced that "foreign-looking men" were following him, and that Symington was spying on him. ... Forrestal finally left office in a formal ceremony on March 28th, his last public appearance.

What followed after the ceremony remains mysterious. "There is something I would like to talk to you about," Symington told Forrestal, and accompanied him privately during the ride back to the Pentagon. What Symington said is not known, but Forrestal emerged from the ride deeply upset, even traumatized, upon arrival at his office. Friends of Forrestal implied that Symington said something that "shattered Forrestal’s last remaining defenses." When someone entered Forrestal’s office several hours later, the former Secretary of Defense did not notice. Instead, he sat rigidly at his desk, staring at the bare wall, incoherent, repeating the sentence, "you are a loyal fellow," for several hours.