The First Annual Post-Comp-Comp!

You finished your IF Comp entry. You've seen the results. You've read the reviews, refreshed them more times than might be healthy. The thought of a reviewer opening Google Analytics and discovering 10,000 hits from your city makes you break out in a cold sweat. And every time, you think to yourself:

"If I just had one more month, this could be perfect."

Well, now you do.

~*~*~

WHAT: The First Annual Post-Comp-Comp!

WHO: Open to any and all entrants of the 2009 Interactive Fiction Competition, regardless of finish.

WHY: During the judging period, there was some discussion of how authors often don't have much of an incentive to revise, work on or even look at their work after all is said and done and the results are in. As a result, the archives are filled with buggy, flawed pieces that could have been great with just a bit more work.

This is your chance. The Post-Comp Comp is intended to increase the number of post-competition releases and, subsequently, their quality. The entries will be judged on how much and how substantially they've improved since their initial release. Generally speaking, major improvements are better than minor tweaks, although this is subjective.

RULES:

1. In order to enter, you must have submitted a game to the 2009 Interactive Fiction Competition.
2. All other rules of the IF Comp apply, except for the rule against unreleased works (for obvious reasons) and the discussion rule. Authors are free to discuss their game publicly during the judging period; after all, they've probably been doing so for weeks.

DEADLINE: All intents to enter should be submitted to me by January 2, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. Games should be submitted to me by January 31, 2010, at 11:59 p.m., at which point I'll pass them on to the judges. Judging shall last two weeks.

PRIZES: One $50 prize for first place.

JUDGES: To be announced; send me an email (sarahcryst at gmail) if you're interested.

More on AOL's "dumb plan"

Earlier today, on Twitter, I pronounced this article by Farhad Manjoo a must-read for anyone at all interested in online news. I'm going to revise that opinion now; it's a must-read for anyone who has ever used the Internet to find information. Anyone who's complicit, in other words; we all are.

The bulk of the article deals a well-deserved smackdown to Associated Content but in many ways doesn't go far enough. The subhead (yes, I know the writer of news articles doesn't always write headlines, but bear with me) describes it as a "news site." But really, it's not. AC only does news because that's where the money is. Stop laughing, it's true. Google Trends consistently has, if not hard news (more on that later), newsy search terms up top, even if most of them are roundabout attempts to look at pictures of women.

I'll take Manjoo's speculation a step further and venture that the alleged quick fact-checking and editing will not happen. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a crapshoot whether the plagiarism checks will strictly happen. It really doesn't matter, the thinking goes, what words are there, as long as they can fool spiders, algorithms and people who either don't know better or couldn't care less. Why? This is not a site for writing. It's a content site. It's right there in the name! Writing is secondary -- no, scratch that. Writing is an afterthought.

But how, you might ask, is "content" even different from writing? Isn't it just a semantic difference? Not really. Leslie Savan said it best in Slam-Dunks and No-Brainers (another must-read). Content, she argues, is the "eunuchized" version of writing, less about craft than what it can sell. And the following quote gets scarier every time I read it:

"Although the barrier between advertising and editorial gets more permeable every day, that barrier is still tougher to breach than the one between advertising and content. Because content isn't so much advertising or PR as it is just stuff that goes through a computer, the way everything does these days."

Sadly, I'm not optimistic enough to think the "dumb plan" will fail.

November 30, 2009: Music, and how malware restored my morals

First of all, a note of housekeeping: You might have noticed the lack of Monday Music posts lately. It's permanent; I think it's safe to say that this was an experiment that, although wonderful while it lasted, has run its course. It's the end of the year, and I have so much catchup to do in regards to listening if I ever want to craft a decent best-of-the-year list that actively looking for new things isn't the best tactic. I'll still be posting about music, of course, in the future, but on my own time. And that's how it should be. They were starting to become another chore (it doesn't help that Town Council meetings were Monday night). Something forced. And that's not fair to me or the artists.

Besides (yes, in the Evasion-English sense of "besides"). I have to revise Broken Legs and enter the JayIsGames comp, for which I actually have an idea now! And there's the matter of final papers and exams. And Christmas shopping. And work isn't quite over for the year, neither of my sources of work.

~*~*~

Now, for the real meat of the post. How I Spent My Thanksgiving, or How Malware Restored My Morals.

How I spent my Thanksgiving: Huddled over Susan -- my sickly, virus-infested laptop, named long ago -- and nursing it back to health.

That's right. After Thanksgiving, after the eating far too much (against all odds and all mathematics, though, I didn't gain any weight), after the food coma, I stumbled onto my laptop to find that when I clicked on Google search results, it redirected them to sketchy sites. And there is no shortage of sketchy sites, of course. It's the Internet's seedy underbelly. There are the usual cracks and pornographic sites, of course, but there's also the scrapers, the splogs, the Google Trends bandwagoners, the article directories that I've seen people attempt to cite in research papers. (In fact, I had a whole post ready to go about how people need to recalibrate their idea of untrustworthy sites. I'm not an academic, but I'd trust Wikipedia any day over the average likely-computer-generated "article" you can find.) ((Of course, my having that post ready to fly means the irony gods got me.))

First it happened in IE, which I still used for certain sites, mainly out of tradition. So I figured I'd just give IE the weak-ox-in-quicksand treatment, and went to Chrome. And Chrome started doing it too. Since one of the main draws of Chrome is the address bar/Google search bar, this is a problem. And then Firefox started too. I was out of browsers. Needless to say, I panicked. Panicked even more so when none of the anti-malware utilities I owned came up with anything out of the ordinary, or if it did, didn't fix it. As time went by, it got worse -- opening up random Chrome tabs with junk; starting invisible IE processes that played audio ads.

It was Thanksgiving. ITS was closed, and I didn't want to bother them anyway. So I did the only thing I knew how to do: went to one of the many online tech support forums, and cried uncle. 72 hours later, after umpteen scans and a few trips into the computer's inner labyrinths, guided by a very patient helper, Susan was back to normal. She's still back to normal. Irony might strike me down right after I post this, but for now, she's blissfully functional.

So how did any of this restore my morals? It certainly didn't to begin with. Who would do something like this? It's all for money, yes. But if you take the amount of frustration you're causing to thousands -- millions? -- of strangers, it is reprehensible, and there is no amount of curses sufficient to cover how much of a morally bankrupt jackass you are.

But then, I didn't -- don't? -- have any business moralizing. If you ask, I would have told you that to be a good person is a public service and a private duty. But for the past few weeks, I wasn't a good person, not in the slightest, not by any definition of morality. Aiming to cause others as little distress as possible, and actively trying to make others' lives better? No; I was callous, unpleasant to be around and ashamed of it.

And a stranger was willing to take 72 hours of his time, unpaid, uncompensated, for this. One laptop, one person. He could have easily just told me to wipe the thing and been done with it, or that it's Thanksgiving and he has football to watch, or Black Friday shopping to do. None of that. And perhaps, I think, the best way to combat all the forces of crap in the world is to make yourself into a force of good and help crowd them out.

I'm not perfect. I'm far from it. But maybe this is a bit of a wake-up call.

~*~*~

This year, I've finally put together a public Amazon wish list. I've had an unwieldy shopping list for quite some time, but it's mainly a reminder. And every year, I grow more and more uncomfortable with the idea of gift cards -- a relic of my Luddite side. If I'm feeling contrary, I'd argue that gifts should be hand-crafted from twigs and given in a snow-surrounded cottage with a fireplace. It's as good a life goal as any, right?

Anyway, after said shopping list snowballed once more after a truly epic recommendations trawl, and after I balefully muttered "um... an Amazon gift card" (and it isn't even physical, so it's even more weirdly asking for money), I bit the bullet. Public wish list. It's what you'd expect: books, CDs and DVDs. Mostly new. The Guild is on there, of course; my MMORPG days are over, but I still watch this religiously and often at weird hours. The season 3 finale is still maddening and perfect and renews my faith in my own poor decision-making abilities. (As opposed to Cyd's. Not Felicia's.) The Children's Book is on there, as is The Year of the Flood. A few assorted CDs, a few assorted fantasy books.

But the real surprise is how spot-on my recommendations have gotten. It never fails to make me grin; it's like window shopping for the 21st century. And when you count the UK site, I have two sets!

~*~*~

Speaking of which. On my Twitter, I alluded to a DVD (this was a mistake; it's a VHS) that I was eyeing. Here, in all its glory. I can't help it! The Plague Monkeys did the soundtrack! And the synopsis seems good too.

Talking on Broken Legs

So I wrote this thing, you know? This thing called Broken Legs for the 2009 Interactive Fiction Competition. It got 2nd place. That's at least three places better than I was expecting, considering that it's my first full-length work that isn't Speed IF. Since then, it's been featured on JayIsGames (with a decent rating, to boot)! and AV Club. I'm a bit bowled over.

So I thought I'd note a few things. First, and most importantly: I'm working on a release 2. My tentative deadline is the end of the year, but since I'm also planning on entering the JayIsGames comp, as well as next year's IF comp -- and then there's the matter of real-life work, from many sources -- it might be a while after that. It certainly will be sometime in January.

(By the way, expect spoilers after this point! This includes spoilers about the ending. You've been warned.)

~*~*~



- Most people have gotten my inspirations pretty much spot-on. Varicella, definitely. (one of my initial thoughts was "Primo Varicella... AT COLLEGE!") Sting of the Wasp, too, although I only played it when I heard it was similar. And I'd be remiss not to mention Chicago (the musical, not any IF work.) The twist at the end is heavily inspired by it.

- One of the biggest things I've learned is to anticipate a lot of time for bug-fixing. I'd say about 60 percent of my revisions during beta testing were to fix one bug or another. The puzzle with Alexandra's shoes and music, for instance, was completely broken in about six ways and a nightmare to fix. But more than that, the sequence of events is, if not complicated, heavily dependent on a lot of checks. For instance, here's just part of the code where Alexandra goes to audition (without indentation, sadly):

At the time when Alexandra goes to audition:
Alexandra finishes auditioning in nine turns from now;
move Alexandra to Judges' Room;
if the sheet music is switched and the old character shoes are switched:
Kassie puts Alexandra's stuff back in zero turns from now;
move the old character shoes to Alexandra;
move the binder to Alexandra;
now Alexandra is unsuccessful;
if the player is in Waiting Room:

If just one of these lines is in the wrong place, everything goes to hell. If I forgot a check for whether the player is in the Waiting Room, things go to hell during edge cases. I don't mean this in a complaining way -- it's part of the process for any program. But I could definitely have budgeted more time for it, in order to address puzzles. Hoo boy.

- Almost universally, people have mentioned the puzzle design, or lack thereof, and how it could be better. There's a short answer and a long one for this. The short answer is, it's my first go-round and I screwed that part up. Apologies.

The long answer is that, while conceiving this, I wasn't thinking in terms of puzzle design so much as in terms of plot. Take the puzzle with the soundproofing. In retrospect, it's easy to think "Oh, so I put one of my most complicated multi-step puzzles at the beginning. Big mistake!" But at the time, my thought process was more like "OK, so how much soundproofing does it take to really do a good job? Hmmm, OK. Soundproofing for everyone! There's not enough!"

And then there are a few cases of myopia. The biggest: the practice room door. Perhaps this is just my talking from being in a few, but I've always envisioned them looking a bit like this, with a smaller window. But this caused no end of confusion both for my testers and reviewers, and likely those who didn't test or review.

Needless to say, this is definitely something the post-comp release will attempt to address.

- One thing I thought I'd note is that Broken Legs is apparently one of the only comp entries to pass the Bechdel Test. I find that a bit ironic, to be honest, and this is something I wanted to address.

There was a period of about a week -- during beta testing, but still -- where I couldn't even bring myself to look at the source. Reading it made me physically sick, and I kept thinking it would be socially responsible to release such a person into the world at large. Contrary to hopefully-not-popular belief, I don't hate people, and I don't hate women. In fact, I consider myself a feminist. So what gives?

Now, this is where people will talk about the work speaking for itself. If you've seen the ending (right now, not as likely as it probably should be), you know that nothing you just saw was real. Specifically, it's a work of character assassination by a person who has every motive to make her competitors look bad and herself look great. But since the narrator is unreliable, pretty much all of her statements are supposed to fall apart. (Anything involving Grace Tumney, for instance. The WHO IS for that one is particularly anvilicious.)

I know that's a cop-out, believe me. But, in my defense, the male characters are just as bad as the rest of them, and Richard Plum, in particular, might be the second-worst person in the whole story. It's a shame I didn't highlight his part enough (and in the comp release, it's a BIG shame that his code is really buggy), because in the story, it's not Lottie's mother who made her this way. Paula Plum is an okay person, if a bit flaky. Richard Plum's the sociopath.

For what it's worth, both main characters in my current WIP are women (well, girls; they're in fifth grade. One day I'll write about adults) and they're not horrible people at all. And yes, there will be copious Bechdel Test passage.

- Also, I figure I should say this again, disclaimer be damned: Lottie Plum is not me. A handful of reviewers implied this. While there's part of fourteen-year-old-me-at-my-worst in there, it's pretty safe to say that if she says something, I don't agree with it.

Well, it's usually pretty safe to say that. I'm in full agreement, though, that Adam Pascal is a very attractive person.

~*~*~

Once again, thank you to everyone who played, voted, reviewed, commented, etc! I'm still a bit overwhelmed at the response.

Also: I wasn't kidding when I said Lottie Plum was on Facebook. Check it out. Facebook's telling me I need to make her experience better; who am I to say no?

Monday Music #42 (Katy Carr)

This post has been a long time coming. Normally I don't comment on snippets of songs, but this is an exception. Why? Read on.

I mentioned Katy Carr on this very blog, before the days of Monday Music, when I would just find and deliver.

But those were the days when I'd comment on every song. (Ah, the days!) And so it was at least a year that I knew Katy Carr had a new album coming up, but couldn't find information online about it, and thus couldn't post.

Now, this is a somewhat spoiled viewpoint to take. It's Web 2.0 entitlement. Who said you had to hear every song before the actual thing comes out? Who said there needs to be a constant IV of information, snippet upon snippet, until finally there's a whole thing made up of the pieces? It adds something, I think, when you go into something blind. Anticipation, maybe. Surprise, whether for good or for bad. But the previews of Katy Carr's new album "Coquette" were just released, and they're beyond good.

It's a theme album, set in the 1940s, and having a theme is an automatic five or so points with me. But there's still plenty of stylistic variation. "Berliner Ring" and "Army" I've already written about, and they're just as great a year or so later as they were the first time I heard them. On top of that, you have "Kommander's Car," the lead single, with just enough playfulness and swagger in the piano not to sink down into the ground, but enough urgency and solemn underpinnings to belie its subject -- an escape from Auschwitz. "Sparkle" is spooky, a bit restrained; "Butterfly" alternatingly fluttery and pensive. Then there are "Star Song" and "Sleepyhead," lovely and lullaby-like, opening and closing the album.

And these are just from 30 seconds or so; 30 seconds of wonderful ambassadorship for the whole thing. It's staggering how much craft and research has gone into "Coquette." Just one example: she actually went and contacted Kazimierz Piechowski, the subject of "Kommander's Car." That's going above and beyond. That's truly caring. And if there's one thing the world needs, caring would be it. I look forward to hearing it all.

Listen here.

Monday-esque Music #41 (Rebecca Karijord)

Apologies, again, for the extreme and unacceptable lateness of this post. Election Day, you see, and my proto-election-refreshing in 2008 morphed into full-blown obsession in 2009, which might seem backwards. Maybe it is backwards. I don't know. I could probably talk your ear, and someone else's ear, and everyone's ear off until I'm something you really don't want to put around Van Gogh. But I'll save it for now. Instead, I have beauty to proffer.

~*~*~

By now I've written about well over fifty artists and groups here. But I don't write indiscriminately. For everyone who's up here, as I think I said earlier this year, there are about five more who don't. Searching for beautiful things still implies that there's a search process. What are those five like? Well, they vary. They might be people I'll love in a couple months, where the circumstances of my life or the tilt of my ear or a butterfly in Peru align in the right way. They might be people to whom I never gave the chance they deserved, something that might again change in a few months. (I suspect this is the most common case.) They might just be poor artists (granted, this doesn't happen often when I'm out listening.) Or, worse, they might just be indistinct.

Distinctness, see, is a virtue. As long as you're not channeling it into new and distinct ways to do harm, you're going to be noticeable, at least, and quite possibly noteworthy. And, on some wonderful occasions, you might be great.

Norwegian artist Rebekka Karijord's music is pretty great. Why? Talent, of course, and execution, but most of all, distinctness. With the surfeit of undoubtedly good musicians and songwriters out there, it's a necessity. Take "The Collector." A tangential fact: This is the third song I've heard with this title. And they all seem to be, either in the subtext or overtly, about possessiveness, or at least owning a loved one. Or, as the song says, pinning him to the wall like a butterfly, petting him like a dog, the works. Relationship advice? Maybe not, although the song makes it sound pretty good, with its swagger and its grit. It doesn't hurt that there's a very earwormy chorus.

And then there's "Wear It Like A Crown," a nervous breakdown and subsequent determined statement of purpose cast into song form. It starts with the somewhat jumpy, relentless piano, and the drums shuddering underneath. And then the lyrics -- unadorned, stark, and far too prescient. If you haven't thought any of these things before, especially now, you're either enviable or due to think them soon. "I'm becoming the one I'm scared of being," she sings, and I

It's a wonderful way to approach things, and here's why: you'll wear your fear like a crown, but that's not really all you'll wear. You'll wear your humanity like a crown. And when life seems determined to take your humanity, ferment it into a parched pebble, and plant it to rattle around in your brainpan, we could all use such preservation.

So it's about time to make some purchases again, catch up on 2009 a bit. Well, her album came out in October. It's up there on my list.

Listen here.

Some terrible last-minute Halloween costume ideas

Some people plan for Halloween months in advance, buying costume component after costume component and assembling something to put the most dedicated cosplayers to shame. Other people realize that it's 5:00 p.m. on October 31st, all the stores are closed, and they still don't have a costume. What to do? Use your creativity, of course! Be a concept. Be an abstract thought. Be yet another Michael Jackson. But please don't do anything from the below list. Please. Your social standing will hang in the balance. And mind you, it won't hang like an action movie protagonist. It'll hang like a boulder attached to a hair. Good luck.

~*~*~

Undercover Superhero

What You'll Need: Hat and/or fake mustache and/or fake beard and/or sunglasses and/or coat. Choose as few from the list as possible.

Wear your fake disguise. Go out. When people ask you what you are and/or why you're not in costume, say "Good, my disguise is working!" Then rush off to save whatever portion of the world/party/closed-off-street needs saving.

Daylight Saving Time

What You'll Need: A bunch of clocks, watches, or any representation of time; a sack; yellow clothes.

Dress in all yellow. If you want to go all-out, you can give yourself little orange spiky sun rays. Put the clocks/watches/drawings of the above in the sack, and set them one hour ahead. Go around carrying around the sack and handing the clocks out to people. When they ask what you're doing, say "It's Daylight Savings Time! Enjoy the extra hour!"

If you want to be a jerk, you can push them down afterward, saying "FALL BACK!" NOTE: Do not do this unless you know the person and/or aren't opposed to being arrested.

Google Wave

What You'll Need: Red, blue, yellow and green clothes; a free hand.

Dress in red, blue, yellow and green. Wave at people. Simple.

Evony Ad

What You'll Need: Skimpy clothes, paper, markers.

Find some kind of skimpy outfit. It's Halloween, so this shouldn't be at all difficult. If for some reason you can't, or you don't want to support the scanty-nylon-industrial-complex, just substitute something sufficiently negligible from your wardrobe. If your wardrobe doesn't have anything sufficiently negligible, use underwear. Evony doesn't discriminate. Once you've donned your barely-existent apparel, make yourself two signs reading "PLAY NOW, MY LORD" and "FREE FOREVER!" Wear them, go out and watch people squirm as they clearly recognize your costume and fight their shame to admit it.

NOTE: Don't put the game's logo anywhere on your costume, as that would turn things from satire of advertising into actual advertising, which is the last thing the world needs.

Miley Cyrus

What You'll Need: Sneakers, T-shirt, jeans.

Wear the sneakers, T-shirt and jeans, and go out to any area where there will be a high concentration of people dressed to the Halloween nines. Wander around looking poignantly, autotunedly confused. If anybody asks, say "All I see are stilettos... I guess I never got the memo!" Continue this until you hear a song, somewhere, by Britney Spears, at which point you can let out with the most exuberant dancing/jumping/Radio-Disney approved euphoria you've got.