by Phoenix | Feb 22, 2022 | Books, FV, LGT, Pinned, Praedia, Site, Space Engineers, WoWs
P.R. is back up and running again. Things were down a lot longer than I planned, but now’s as good a time as any to dive back in. With that there are some things to cover.
February Goals
I spent way too much time overhauling layouts, moving things around, and just generally trying to get the site up to a good working standard. While February won’t be a complete bust goal-wise, I’m still well behind where I wanted to be on most fronts.
Lydia’s Golden Treasury
There hasn’t been any new writing done for LGT so far; I’m disappointed in myself for that one, but it’s not all bad news (or unusual). Part of the reason there hasn’t been any new writing is because I pulled the trigger on something important in the story’s chronology.
In short, I was missing a chapter.
LGT was always planned as a seven chapter story, and that’s not changing, but there are two problems I need to address to tie things together more neatly and put the Emancipating Blade further up the timeline like I wanted. First, there’s a missing chapter between Chapter 1 (The Armor of the Unburdened) and Chapter 3 (now The Atoning Mirror). That chapter needs to be written soon, preferably before Chapter 7 (Eisenwolf).
So eight chapters? No, The Golden Ticket and The Class Array were the second problem I needed to address, and now I have. The Golden Ticket and The Class Array need to function as an A and B plot together in the same chapter. That’s what I didn’t realize sooner. The Golden Ticket’s opening scenes are the inciting incident for The Class Array, but Enya’s involvement in the original outline is too small. Since the Class Array doesn’t even feature the usual artifact, it’s better to roll them in together and bridge the gap between Enya’s introduction in Chapter 1 and the Item Exhibit in Chapter 3.
So that’s the plan.
Incidentally, if I felt like cheating a little, I could count the 1st draft of Chapter 5 as finished since The Chronicles of Proxima got bumped up a spot. I don’t think I will, but it’s a fun thought.
Fleeing Victory
I’m closing in on the series of events I want to write about for Chapter Two. I wish it hadn’t taken two thirds of the whole month, but I’ve had a lot on my plate. Anyway, since this is one of the goals I still have time for before March, I plan to at least get this done. It may or may not be in multiple parts; I’m not sure of the overall length of this chapter or the chapters going forward.
The Virtues of War
This goal is coming along fine even though I started about eight days into February. I’m about 3/5 of the way through the book, so I should finish on time. Steven Pressfield’s style of writing is interesting, though definitely odd and just a smidge anachronistic in places. The quirks are charming enough and his take on Alexander the Great is pretty compelling.
I’ve heard Gates of Fire is his best work, and while I do plan on reading that one this year, it’s not going to be March’s read. I don’t want to read the same author back to back unless it’s a series.
Space Engineers
The Prinz Heinrich is going to need another month at least before she’s ready for the workshop, but the Cosmo Messer is nearly finished. I’m basically at a point where I’m deciding which improvements need to be made now and which ones should be saved for future models. A thorough conveyor and printing test in a survival game and the ‘BfC 109E’ model should be ready for prime time.
I’m still sad I can’t get wheeled landing gears on this thing without mods, but it is what it is.
I should also point out that a new drone hit the Steam Workshop recently, the XB-2 Combat Drone. I’ve been testing this with the Admiral Hipper. While my awful attempt at integrating it is indeed awful, I’m hoping to get to a point where I understand the program enough to make drone variants of the Cosmo Messer. That would just be divine~
Updates on all of this as they come.
World of Warships
There were some major developments earlier this month that I should probably mention here.
I was part of a clan called Special_Circumstances (S_C) until just recently. Our leadership had been in talks with Wolf Pack Alpha about a possible merger of sorts. The whole thing was horrifically mishandled on S_C’s end, and while the Wolf Pack is full of friendly and welcoming commanders, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to walk regardless.
I wasn’t actually with S_C long enough to be miffed over becoming a sub-clan, but I have been around long enough to know ‘careful maneuvering’ when I see it. The opinions of anyone who might have possibly objected to this never mattered to begin with. Being asked for input on ‘A’ with no knowledge of ‘B’ and then asked about ‘C’ with no knowledge of ‘D’ is worse than just being blindsided.
Joining up with Wolf Pack Alpha isn’t a bad idea in and of itself, but we were deliberately mislead just to keep potential objectors quiet long enough to get it done. I’m not even one of the objectors, I just hate that kind of chicanery on principle. The overall situation doesn’t leave me excited for Clan Battles, and that’s after our best season, too.
I’ve gotten used to seeing W-P-O next to my name ingame now, but I’ve definitely got mixed feelings about it. Strange as it sounds I almost want to join W-P-A directly despite being an aspiring competitive player (which is what W-P-O was ostensibly for), just to get a comfortable distance from ground zero.
I’d like to think there’s a way to throw something positive into the mix, maybe a compromise of sorts, but I haven’t really had time to think about this in detail or talk with anyone from the Wolf Pack about it. Maybe that will change in the coming weeks.
For now I’m just going to give them my best this coming season and see if I’m a good fit for the group as a whole. They’ve been nothing but good to us so far, so I want to at least give them and myself a chance to make this more than just a clumsy merger.
The Site
The updates and redesign were rough and the latter isn’t quite finished yet, but even with the setbacks I think it’s worth it. I’m definitely going to be repeating that one to myself throughout March while I struggle to get editing sessions going and 1st drafts written up again.
With this update I was looking for a more long term, uniform look that’s easy for longer stretches of reading. Dark theming isn’t as straight forward as it looks. I learned some very useful things putting it all together, so future changes won’t be nearly as time guzzling.
There are a few more things I’d like to try and some visual bugs I need to work out in some areas, but this is the overall look I’m going for, or at least what I settled on when trying to bring down the site’s loading times. There might be a few more plugins to look at. We’ll see.
Closing
That’s all for now. Like always, I plan to post daily (at least on days when the site isn’t on extended maintenance). Either today or tomorrow I’ll try to get some more info about the Cosmo Messer up. FV2 should also be coming soon, either in parts or one big piece.
by Phoenix | Feb 1, 2022 | Blog, FV, LGT, MASS Builder, Pinned, Space Engineers, WoWs
First, a quick review of January.
January Goals
- Lydia’s Golden Treasury: Chapter 5 1st Draft (Rolled over)
- Fleeing Victory #16-17
- Read 1 novel
- 2 Blog Articles for the site
- Upgrade the Prinz Heinrich (Revised and Finished)
Could be worse, but I’m surprised more by what did work out than what didn’t. Onto February.
February Goals
- Lydia’s Golden Treasury Chapter 5 and 6 1st Draft
- Lydia’s Golden Treasury Editing Sessions: Chapter 2
- Fleeing Victory: FV2
- Read 1 novel
For this month I’m lightening up in some areas and increasing the load in others. LGT’s my top priority, so I want to get things moving on all fronts, not just the chapter write ups. Also, I think going back and making those edits will help keep me in the right headspace. The new chapters should come out better for it.
Next, there’s the extension I gave myself for Chapter 5 to address. February 3rd was a reasonable deadline for finishing a 1st draft, but the quality would have been abysmal with that kind of last minute chronology correction I pulled on myself. I’m not turning this into an editor to clean things up for me–I’m my editor. I’d just wind up rewriting the whole thing anyway, so I’m just taking the L for January. 1st drafts for both Chapter 5 and 6 are now due by the end of February.
The editing sessions I used to do were one session per scene with an extra one for that chapter’s song. Sticking to that format, meeting the goal for this month should take six sessions. I thought about shrinking that number and doing multiple scenes, but some are really long and I don’t want these to get too bulky.
So far I like the style and pacing I used with FV1, so I’ll try to keep that going in FV2. It should be a two part chapter like the first, but I’m not making that a rule or anything. Sometimes three is going to make more sense, so I’ll do whatever feels right.
I haven’t chosen a novel for February yet. I’ve got a few days so I’ll check around.
Extras
Some things I plan to work on in February but left out of the goals list (to keep my priorities straight) include that FnF article I was working on, a Space Engineers Workshop upload, a M.A.S.S. Builder related project, at least one WoWs Clip video, and some ‘art’ related things. I’ll have more details on those later this month.
by Phoenix | Feb 1, 2022 | Blog, FnF, FV, LGT, Pinned, Space Engineers, WoWs, Youtube
The blog, the stories, long term projects, addressing myself and old wounds, even writing this. All of it is one big struggle in my transition from one life to the next.
The Site
Starting with the base of operations, I like the way the site looks, but there have been some issues that are too big to ignore. Using Divi has been extremely helpful overall, but there’s always an opportunity cost. If I’d gotten back into my html5 and CSS studies, I might have been able to get a similar result. As a bonus, I would have had plenty of content written up about the whole process.
I’m still considering the idea and seeing if I can’t turn my studies and research into a handy resource for the site. I’m also interested in other programming languages and learning them. The problem is I don’t need them for anything in particular. Most of what I learn how to do serves a purpose. The extra stuff fades away like it was never there. As much as I like to branch out, it won’t help much right now.
Lastly, I’m pretty open to feedback about the design of the site, though very little aside from the proportions and module placements is likely to change in the long run. It depends. I have it on good advice that after a website gains its footing, it’s a really bad idea to change the look. So any major changes will probably have to be made in the near future.
Youtube
I’m not aspiring to have a full blown youtube channel or anything like that. I’m really just using the site to save space on P.R. Even though I’m not trying to start anything on youtube, sometimes videos make it into the algorythm and that could bring traffic to P.R. over time. The more videos I upload, the more likely that is, and I definitely plan on doing more. For now, there are just old videos, a couple of World of Warships clips, and a preview of the Prinz Heinrich I made for practice in Premier. I’ll need a lot more before youtube is even remotely helpful to P.R.
M.A.S.S. Builder
I love this game. I love the mecha genre in general, but this is a game that checks a lot of boxes. That’s why I decided to make my support of the game as ‘official’ as possible. I’m not in a position to be promoting anything, but I can cover this game’s development in depth. It will be a while before what I’m working on gets off the ground, but that’s all the more reason to start three months ago now.
Favorites In Fiction
My FnF projects came with two ideas in mind. The first was making sure the blog had more going on than just my ZAP projects and whatever I felt like posting about. Thankfully now that I’ve been at this for a while, I’m getting more ideas I can execute on.
The second idea regarding FnF was showcasing exactly what I like in fiction and help give some insight into the things I write and why. Right now FnF is focused on science fiction and specifically vehicles and mecha. Those are just the easiest things for me to give my thoughts on, but it’s called Favorites In Fiction, not Favorites In Science Fiction and not Favorites In Anime.
It will take some time, but you’ll be able to find a variety of interesting reads for this project in the future.
I’m actually working on another FnF article even as I write this one. I’m hoping to have that finished either today or tomorrow. (Like I said yesterday, sleep was never an option).
If nothing else FnFs will help me separate the things I just like from the things that truly inspire me.
Fleeing Victory
Oh Fleeing Victory, my weird pantser und panzer experiment, where do I start with you?
While the point of this series was to see if I could do a pantser style series well (jury’s still out on that one), I always want to find ways to expand the lore as a whole. There is a lot I can think up and even remember by just pacing around for hours all the time.
I’m not kidding either; I regularly rack up at least ten hours of just walking in pretzels each week.
Speaking of opportunity cost …
Getting away from that tangent and the pain it causes, I can’t rely solely on that method for ironing out ideas. Often times you won’t see the implications of something–good or bad–until you’re right in the thick of things. Sometimes the story, or at least an important event can pivot on those. I try to just let it happen most of the time.
Fleeing Victory has a lot of interconnected plots I’m trying to keep in tact. When every little thing that happens has to count, to mean something in the bigger picture, it’s a challenge. There’s so much rereading just to make sure I haven’t forgotten something or made some element in the story too inconsequential after playing it up. When you’re trying to have the characters pursue their goals with only a little room for intervention on your part, things can quickly fly off the rails, and I’m not even talking about characters potentially dying.
Have you noticed Sable’s supposed crush on Fran Sandoval? Well that wasn’t an idea I started with. This situation with him having to potentially kill her to keep Calig from being implicated in that monster of an explosion was something that came together organically while the characters were scrambling. That’s something I like about this pantser experiment, despite the constant changes. Even now I have some interactions between these two that I think will happen but can’t be sure of. Things could easily play out differently.
The show must go on.
I plan on continuing Fleeing Victory until the story ends, but I may slow my pace down occasionally to double back and make sure things still flow well overall and make sense.
This may be an experiment, but it’s still a part of the Praedia setting and it’s important that it gets my best. That’s why despite how sure I was earlier that I couldn’t wrap up Chapter One in time, I gave it another shot and managed to pull through.
Lydia’s Golden Treasury
I still have a freight train’s worth of editing and tweaking to do, but LGT is turning out better and more tightly themed than I could have ever dreamed of in the conceptual phases. It’s why my monthly chapter goals are both a blessing and a curse. It’s forcing me to make progress whether I feel I’m ready to move forward or not, but it’s also making me more susceptible to simple mistakes. For February I may need to pull back on a few other things and focus on getting previous chapters edited, on top of getting the next chapter written up.
The Golden Ticket and the Class Array
These chapters wound up in the wrong order originally, for reasons I can’t quite explain in hindsight. I wanted the Golden Ticket to be as close to the end of the series as possible, but the Class Array doesn’t naturally precede it, at least not as far as the progression of the characters are concerned.
The Golden Ticket is a chapter in which Lydia hosts a local tournament with the express purpose of using up a set of magical keys. That’s not a spoiler or anything; the disposal of those keys is the thrust of the whole chapter from the first scene to the last, though there is a deeper meaning behind what Lydia does here.
The Class Array can’t take place before this tournament because Enya’s goals as one of Lydia’s people finally begins to take proper shape here, which is the direct cause of the events in the Class Array.
Now, back in the conceptual phase of Lydia’s Golden Treasury, the Class Array chapter was called the Training Room, and it had nothing to do with Enya’s motivations (since she didn’t even exist in my head yet), and more to do with some of the characters from Idolus Rising getting familiar with a positively overpowered system created by Haul Lynx to help train Idolus’ military irregulars.
The Training Room itself was just a prototype and like a lot of other originals, Haul gave it to Lydia for safekeeping after he developed a more streamlined and accessible version. The series wasn’t character driven at all originally. More of an unapologetic lore expo for the setting meant to compliment Idolus Rising and a few other stories.
After I actually started writing, I knew the Training Room had to revolve around Enya. That’s the way things were set up, and eventually I realized that there was a more potent modern artifact that could serve the same purpose without being too much of a distraction. The Class Array.
The Class Array is another system meant for helping soldiers, but I’d rather not get into the details here. This chapter’s theme changed from group training to exploring Enya’s personal options for getting stronger, as well as deciding what constitutes a wisely expedited process versus what is simply taking cheap shortcuts. It’s important in her development to address that issue.
In the prior chapter, Lydia expresses her concerns over some of the negative influence she’s had over people in the past, by offering too much power too quickly and sometimes at too low a price. It’s an appropriate flaw for a person embodying ‘Providence’ to have, I think. Lydia’s disposal of those keys informs Enya’s actions in the following chapter, so as much as I liked the idea of the tournament coming just before the grand finale, there’s one more major event that needs to be resolved first.
Hopefully the series as a whole will be better for it.
Remnants
The Remnants ideas are still driving me a little crazy. It’s a setting that practically built itself thanks to it being a Zion story. I haven’t found the time to explain this in detail yet, but the Zion setting can be thought of as an ‘Infinite Earths’ setting, where as Aeon and Praedia focus on single instances of a single world or group of worlds. Zion does have some limits; it’s not a catch all for any idea I have that wouldn’t fit into either of the other two settings in the ZAP project.
Having said that, Zion casts a pretty wide net, and I’m thankful–and a bit addled–that the Remnants world fell into it.
It’s ideas like Remnants that remind me that ‘brainstorming’ isn’t always a voluntary thing.
Sometimes the only choices you get are whether to guide the process and get your thoughts organized, or get carried away with the storm.
I want to get going on at least one story for Remnants as soon as possible, but April is the earliest I can allow myself to get pulled into that. That’s why it’s starting to drive me crazy. It’s exciting. It’s also distracting and overly derivative of projects that are in progress right now. If I finish Lydia’s Golden Treasury first, Remnants will be able to get the amount of attention it needs to really come to life and shine.
Solo Work
I consider solo work equal parts Heaven and Hell. On the one hand, it’s hard to have too many cooks in the kitchen when there’s just the one. There is no drama being stirred up behind the scenes, not for self serving ends or even for its own sake.
On the other hand, there are no second opinions informed by the actual work. Brainstorming sessions are quiet and often directionless grab bags for ideas. Anything and everything from the writing to the media has to come from me: Art, audio, and video. Anything and everything. It’s extremely limiting.
There are other tradeoffs, but these are the ones that stick out in my mind the most.
It’s always been this way, and I’m sure a lot of people who like to work alone or don’t have a choice run into the same thing. The transition is somewhere down the line, though. At some point, the networking starts. At some point, the interest and cooperation rapidly picks up. The solo work ends and it ends more or less for good. I look forward to it and dread it at the same time. It’s one of the things I struggle with the most, and I’ll try to explain why in the next two sections.
My Roleplaying Days
I got into a lot of fun, stupid, and downright uncomfortable situations in RPs over the years. These were forum based ‘play by post’ RPs that could run for years if people kept enough interest. I used to write a lot of random crap on my own long before I ever stumbled into online forums (tales of dragons and airships), but before that phase, it hadn’t really clicked for me, the idea I could make something worthwhile with just words on a page. That was something only a novelist could do and I grew up on movies. I used to write for the sake of giving my future self a reference, a screenplay for making something more visual or audible.
I hadn’t found the love of the written word until this RPing phase.
Over the years I developed a deep longing to see my ideas and even others’ brought to life. I spent years improving my writing so I could do that and more eventually branch out into other things.
Unfortunately, I kept bashing my head against the same problem: RPs like these live and die by the whims of just a handful of people. It’s not a collaborative writing project with a team, it’s a bunch of people spinning up characters in their heads to puppeteer in a world that initially grabbed their interest. No one’s taking a blood oath to finish a campaign and no one’s getting paid to take the time to write. You can pick it up and put it down almost like a book or a game.
It didn’t matter how well we wrote or how often, when everything comes down to interaction and participation, one or two people quitting can start a domino effect that ends the whole thing. The domino effect isn’t always sudden, either. RPs can die a long, slow death, and trying to fight the tide is withering. You start asking people if they’re really interested in continuing, and you always get a diplomatic answer rivaling any cliffhanger in a story. I’ve only been that guy myself one time, and by that point I knew there wasn’t much else to gain. It was as good a time as any to quit.
The entertainment value was always there, but it’s hard to look back fondly on so many wasted opportunities. Those old RPs made their contribution to what I’m doing now, and while most of it is heightened motivation and a sense of urgency, that’s good enough.
Networking
So that’s part of the reason I do everything by myself for the moment. Another was uncertainty. We tried so many ideas and I managed so little on my own in those days that I wasn’t even sure I could anymore. I’ve tried to get away from the need for others to be around all the time and see and react to what I’m doing, and by this point it’s safe to say I have.
Networking is something I was only avoiding in 2021. I needed to know I can do my work, whether it’s quiet or crowded. As for what I’ll do to get the ball rolling …
I have no idea!
I thought I was going to be spending all of January looking into networking with other people. I figured I’d find a way to get started on that without relying on certain volatile and/or invasive social media platforms. You know, doing everything the hard way. But instead, I was spent the whole month ‘adjusting’ to some changes in my perspective and my workflow. Falling in with people isn’t something I know how to do. It just happens: I find something I like, someone who likes the same thing gets me involved with their group. I have no idea how it applies to something like this.
It’s such a funny problem to have.
“That thing that normally happens on its own? Yeah, how do I do it on purpose?”
Old Wounds
All of that to say I’m an introverted person and reaching out to people for anything is harder than climbing barbed wire. I don’t like using the term ‘introvert’ because it’s starting to have other things tacked onto it, but the basic idea is there. I drain like a cheap battery in social settings and recharge when I’m alone. The only other thing I’ll say about myself and being an introvert is that there’s nothing special or complicated about me or my personality. If you’re paying attention, I’m not going to surprise you all that often.
I wrote very recently about cutting ties with someone I once considered as close as family. They’ve had a major impact on how I’ve reacted to other people over the years. It’s one thing to be slowly petering out in any social setting. It’s another to be fully braced for wild accusations and drama the entire time. Years have passed and I still haven’t been able to turn whatever that is off, to just address issues when they come and enjoy people’s company to the fullest.
With how things are these days, it’s harder to deal with people as individuals, which makes the aforementioned issues even worse. Even in tiny communities, people are viewed mainly through cliques, stances, and political leanings. Labels can be useful, and cliques are just social chemistry in action, but as someone who doesn’t fit anywhere, I focus hard on the individual.
Peace
I’m curious about something. People can have wildly different perspectives and still get along (there are limits to this naturally), but where’s the line or threshold? I don’t think most people live just for the chance to tear other people down, but these days it seems like you’ve got to find common ground fast before you get tossed into a ‘them’ box. I’m mentioning this mainly because I think I’ve seen the worst of it (see Old Wounds). I’ve tried so hard for so long to deal with it in various ways, but it just never worked out in that one instance. Now morbid curiosity is a close companion.
I’ve also had a few instances where someone I’ve known for a long time will raise a banner in the opposite camp and just leave it at that. It’s pleasantly surprising when people have the sense to not push their views when opportunity knocks.
It’s just as well since the only way to spend time with anyone who’s in complete agreement with them is to waste away in front of a mirror. That’s why, for the most part, I’ll settle for peace where I can find it.
Closing
To you the reader, thank you for taking the time. It means a lot to me. This article isn’t trimmed down like it should be (2/21/22: A moderate clean up was done), and not all of my thoughts made it in, but I needed to cover some things for posterity. It wasn’t the first time and it probably won’t be the last.
I plan to add as much value, content, and relevant resources to the site as it can hold, and I’ll do whatever I can to bring in the kind of attention the site needs to grow throughout the year. January is finished, though.
Thank God. I need the rest, and thank you again.