Journals17
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On Startups and Roleplaying Games
3 min read
A new summer, a new journal. I'm sure this one will also stay up for a year, so I will make it something of a retrospective.
In the past year, I have primarily done two things:
The first is to work at 121nexus, a Providence web startup. Although I began as the design team, over the course of this year I drifted more and more towards the coding side of things, and now I am solidly a developer; when we hired two interns to work on design this summer, it became truly apparent to me that I much prefer back-end coding to front-end web design. At any rate, I suppose this makes me an engineer now. As far as nine to five jobs go, mine isn't a bad one; I have flexible hours, I don't hate the work, and so far my company hasn't done anything evil.
The second is to play in a tabletop / google + hangouts roleplay colloquially known as CNTRP with four other friends from college (and occasional cameos). The story is a rich urban fantasy set in an unmasked world (the supernatural exists openly), and the characters are the four agents composing the field team of the Bureau of Nonhuman Affairs, a federal agency which deals with supernatural crimes. It has been running for very close to a year now, and I will readily admit that, as the copious fanart and twenty-plus screenplay-style writeups of our adventures will attest, I am more than a little obsessed. It's astonishingly character-driven for a tabletop, and the characters fascinate me - all four have their own goals, mysteries, secrets, issues, relationships, and distinct voices, and the interactions they have with each other and the NPCs are often extremely fun. Also, there are loads of throwaway details that don't necessarily impact the plot but make the setting sparkle, like 'by the way, global warming is partially caused by the waning power of the Winter Court of Faerie, which has been on the decline since a group of Allied witches dropped a bomb on the Ever Frozen Spires during World War Two' or 'ghosts are considered citizens, but only because the director of the BNA died and came back as a ghost, and the public liked her so much that the necessary legislation was pushed through to allow her to keep her job.'
Virtually all of my creative efforts since this started have been pointed in the direction of the CNTRP-verse, so although I did get some novel writing done this year (I've nearly finished the first draft of Pens and Swords, the story I began last August), the vast majority of my word output has been CNTRP screenplays. Which I have stashed in a DropBox folder if anyone wants to read them and hasn't already had them made available (*cough shoved in their faces cough*).
And that, dear readers, along with frequent weekend travels and some surprisingly successful adventures in crossdressing, is my life in a nutshell. I don't anticipate much change in the year to come, but should it occur, I will probably write a journal discussing it around this time next summer.
~Taidine
In the past year, I have primarily done two things:
The first is to work at 121nexus, a Providence web startup. Although I began as the design team, over the course of this year I drifted more and more towards the coding side of things, and now I am solidly a developer; when we hired two interns to work on design this summer, it became truly apparent to me that I much prefer back-end coding to front-end web design. At any rate, I suppose this makes me an engineer now. As far as nine to five jobs go, mine isn't a bad one; I have flexible hours, I don't hate the work, and so far my company hasn't done anything evil.
The second is to play in a tabletop / google + hangouts roleplay colloquially known as CNTRP with four other friends from college (and occasional cameos). The story is a rich urban fantasy set in an unmasked world (the supernatural exists openly), and the characters are the four agents composing the field team of the Bureau of Nonhuman Affairs, a federal agency which deals with supernatural crimes. It has been running for very close to a year now, and I will readily admit that, as the copious fanart and twenty-plus screenplay-style writeups of our adventures will attest, I am more than a little obsessed. It's astonishingly character-driven for a tabletop, and the characters fascinate me - all four have their own goals, mysteries, secrets, issues, relationships, and distinct voices, and the interactions they have with each other and the NPCs are often extremely fun. Also, there are loads of throwaway details that don't necessarily impact the plot but make the setting sparkle, like 'by the way, global warming is partially caused by the waning power of the Winter Court of Faerie, which has been on the decline since a group of Allied witches dropped a bomb on the Ever Frozen Spires during World War Two' or 'ghosts are considered citizens, but only because the director of the BNA died and came back as a ghost, and the public liked her so much that the necessary legislation was pushed through to allow her to keep her job.'
Virtually all of my creative efforts since this started have been pointed in the direction of the CNTRP-verse, so although I did get some novel writing done this year (I've nearly finished the first draft of Pens and Swords, the story I began last August), the vast majority of my word output has been CNTRP screenplays. Which I have stashed in a DropBox folder if anyone wants to read them and hasn't already had them made available (*cough shoved in their faces cough*).
And that, dear readers, along with frequent weekend travels and some surprisingly successful adventures in crossdressing, is my life in a nutshell. I don't anticipate much change in the year to come, but should it occur, I will probably write a journal discussing it around this time next summer.
~Taidine
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The Startup Lifestyle
3 min read
Apparently I write a new journal yearly now.
It isn't too much of a surprise, I suppose. After my video game design course, I realized that I was not going to be an artists professionally; even if I increased my skills to the point that they were worth marketing, I don't enjoy drawing when I force myself to it - and I'm not very good at drawing when I force myself to it. I don't have the art-centric mentality, the ability to stay focused on one picture for hours at a time. So I decided to get back to writing (which I can do for hours at a time, and which I do still enjoy, even when it's something that wasn't my idea to write, or I'm forcing myself because of a deadline), and consequentially, I've not been spending much time on DeviantArt.
That said, I am spending this summer interning at a startup, where I'm the head and only full member of the design team. Of course, since the company has about 5.5 people working for it, I have a whole lot of stuff to do that isn't producing graphic content. This week I've been cramming code, and worked with two other interns to overhaul the website (the changes should be going live on Monday, and it will look much better than it does now).
The company, incidentally, is called 121nexus (121nexus.com), and focuses on creating personal connections on the web, which probably sounds like a bunch of buzz words. The gist of it is that if people can be convinced to access landing pages on a website using a unique url, and the owner of that website knows something about the person using each unique url, then when that url is used, the person using it gets unique, personalized content.
Which still sounds a little like corporate speak. Right now, we're running a version of it for political campaigns, but pretty soon, we're going to be using it for a dating application. See, you get these cards with urls and QR codes on them, and if you see someone who looks interesting, but you're too shy / in too much of a hurry to talk to them, you can give them a card. It will take them to a landing page with a message board that the card owner and the card distributor can access, so you can strike up a conversation (or not) without having to exchange personal information like phone numbers or e-mail addresses.
As a wallflower who communicates more easily via text, this sounds like a GREAT idea to me. Maybe other, bolder people will denounce it as cowardly. I dunno.
I am going to shut up now and get back to my novel. I'm doing Camp Nanowrimo this month (campnanowrimo.com), so... words, words, words.
~Taidine
PS - Providence is a cool city, and I'm looking forward to visiting Boston one of these weekends, since it's a hop, skip, and a jump (aka a train ride) away!
It isn't too much of a surprise, I suppose. After my video game design course, I realized that I was not going to be an artists professionally; even if I increased my skills to the point that they were worth marketing, I don't enjoy drawing when I force myself to it - and I'm not very good at drawing when I force myself to it. I don't have the art-centric mentality, the ability to stay focused on one picture for hours at a time. So I decided to get back to writing (which I can do for hours at a time, and which I do still enjoy, even when it's something that wasn't my idea to write, or I'm forcing myself because of a deadline), and consequentially, I've not been spending much time on DeviantArt.
That said, I am spending this summer interning at a startup, where I'm the head and only full member of the design team. Of course, since the company has about 5.5 people working for it, I have a whole lot of stuff to do that isn't producing graphic content. This week I've been cramming code, and worked with two other interns to overhaul the website (the changes should be going live on Monday, and it will look much better than it does now).
The company, incidentally, is called 121nexus (121nexus.com), and focuses on creating personal connections on the web, which probably sounds like a bunch of buzz words. The gist of it is that if people can be convinced to access landing pages on a website using a unique url, and the owner of that website knows something about the person using each unique url, then when that url is used, the person using it gets unique, personalized content.
Which still sounds a little like corporate speak. Right now, we're running a version of it for political campaigns, but pretty soon, we're going to be using it for a dating application. See, you get these cards with urls and QR codes on them, and if you see someone who looks interesting, but you're too shy / in too much of a hurry to talk to them, you can give them a card. It will take them to a landing page with a message board that the card owner and the card distributor can access, so you can strike up a conversation (or not) without having to exchange personal information like phone numbers or e-mail addresses.
As a wallflower who communicates more easily via text, this sounds like a GREAT idea to me. Maybe other, bolder people will denounce it as cowardly. I dunno.
I am going to shut up now and get back to my novel. I'm doing Camp Nanowrimo this month (campnanowrimo.com), so... words, words, words.
~Taidine
PS - Providence is a cool city, and I'm looking forward to visiting Boston one of these weekends, since it's a hop, skip, and a jump (aka a train ride) away!
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Anime Review
4 min read
I should update this more often.
Sigh.
Well, school's back; art is a little bit more slow, but not very. I don't think I'm particularly taking commissions any more. I'll try again next summer.
Today I shall be talking about some of the animus I'm watching / just finished watching, because that seems like the sort of thing that someone else might find useful.
In no particular order:
Tiger & Bunny : Despite the name, a superhero show. Corporate sponsored superheros. Actually, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone who reads this might not have already seen or at least heard of T&B. It's a pretty solid show; a little on the silly / lighthearted / unsophisticated side, and I didn't find any plot point particularly surprising, but I also didn't find any of the characters annoying, I enjoyed the friendship between the two leads immensely (and not solely for the shipping potential), and I was basically satisfied by the conclusion. It maintains approximately the same quality throughout, although I would recommend watching at least through episode four or five (when the metaplot suddenly shows up) before passing judgment on it. It's on Hulu.
No. 6 : Oh, no. 6. I was so excited about this show when I first started watching it. Dystopian future, cute characters, some bizarre plot involving evil bees... it had so many elements I wanted from a show. And it looked like it might be legit shounen-ai rather than just fan-baiting!
Well, it is fairly legit shounen-ai. But, alas, once again it is proven shounen-ai and plot cannot exist in the same anime. Although I enjoyed it, the plot was neglected in favor of the main characters being cute at each other, and the ending made me sad - not in a tear-jerking way, in a disappointed way. It may have done better with more than eleven episodes. I will have to read the light novels at some point and see if the ending is a little less deus ex machina - tastic. In the meanwhile... um... it's quite good and well-plotted for a shounen-ai. It's on Crunchyroll.
Shiki : Not a new anime, but my club was showing it and I wound up so drawn in that I watched ahead on my own. It is the single best vampire anime I have ever watched. It actually gets the western concept of vampires - and by that I mean pre-Anne-Rice, uncanny, Gothic vampires. The animation is shojo proportions taken to the edge of grotesquery, so everything is a little bizarre in a pretty way. The vampires strike the perfect balance between evil murdering monsters that need to be destroyed and sympathetic characters. The music is awesome. I highly recommend it. It's on Hulu.
Mawaru Penguindrum : I was told it was like Utena. It's a bit like Utena, I guess. With the fairytale memes removed and the sketchiness scaled up to our modern era. And with many more penguins. I am a little ambivalent about it as a show, but... I'm still watching. Or rather, will be done watching as soon as I see the latest episode, I think.
Those are the major ones. Other things I watched over the summer include Blue Exorcist (I stopped after episode ten or so because I found it bland), Sacred Seven (stopped after episode five or so because it is terrible), and Toriko (okay, Toriko is pretty fun, in an over the top shounen adventure way, although I stopped watching because a story arc ended and school began). Also, Princess Tutu.
Princess Tutu was frikking amazing. It looks like a generic magical girl story at first glance, but it turns out to be a story about stories. It heavily references fairy tales and classic plays / operas, so there's a definite appeal for people who are smug about being well-read (...yes, like me); and it takes story tropes and breaks them, in a rather Utena-esque way (this is the flip side of Penguindrum - all of the fairy tale memes, none of the sketchiness). Also, despite the apparently unsophisticated animation, I thought the dance scenes were beautiful. Oh, and Fakir is a bamf.
That's all for this evening! Now this journal can stay up here on my front page for a few months!
~Taidine
Sigh.
Well, school's back; art is a little bit more slow, but not very. I don't think I'm particularly taking commissions any more. I'll try again next summer.
Today I shall be talking about some of the animus I'm watching / just finished watching, because that seems like the sort of thing that someone else might find useful.
In no particular order:
Tiger & Bunny : Despite the name, a superhero show. Corporate sponsored superheros. Actually, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone who reads this might not have already seen or at least heard of T&B. It's a pretty solid show; a little on the silly / lighthearted / unsophisticated side, and I didn't find any plot point particularly surprising, but I also didn't find any of the characters annoying, I enjoyed the friendship between the two leads immensely (and not solely for the shipping potential), and I was basically satisfied by the conclusion. It maintains approximately the same quality throughout, although I would recommend watching at least through episode four or five (when the metaplot suddenly shows up) before passing judgment on it. It's on Hulu.
No. 6 : Oh, no. 6. I was so excited about this show when I first started watching it. Dystopian future, cute characters, some bizarre plot involving evil bees... it had so many elements I wanted from a show. And it looked like it might be legit shounen-ai rather than just fan-baiting!
Well, it is fairly legit shounen-ai. But, alas, once again it is proven shounen-ai and plot cannot exist in the same anime. Although I enjoyed it, the plot was neglected in favor of the main characters being cute at each other, and the ending made me sad - not in a tear-jerking way, in a disappointed way. It may have done better with more than eleven episodes. I will have to read the light novels at some point and see if the ending is a little less deus ex machina - tastic. In the meanwhile... um... it's quite good and well-plotted for a shounen-ai. It's on Crunchyroll.
Shiki : Not a new anime, but my club was showing it and I wound up so drawn in that I watched ahead on my own. It is the single best vampire anime I have ever watched. It actually gets the western concept of vampires - and by that I mean pre-Anne-Rice, uncanny, Gothic vampires. The animation is shojo proportions taken to the edge of grotesquery, so everything is a little bizarre in a pretty way. The vampires strike the perfect balance between evil murdering monsters that need to be destroyed and sympathetic characters. The music is awesome. I highly recommend it. It's on Hulu.
Mawaru Penguindrum : I was told it was like Utena. It's a bit like Utena, I guess. With the fairytale memes removed and the sketchiness scaled up to our modern era. And with many more penguins. I am a little ambivalent about it as a show, but... I'm still watching. Or rather, will be done watching as soon as I see the latest episode, I think.
Those are the major ones. Other things I watched over the summer include Blue Exorcist (I stopped after episode ten or so because I found it bland), Sacred Seven (stopped after episode five or so because it is terrible), and Toriko (okay, Toriko is pretty fun, in an over the top shounen adventure way, although I stopped watching because a story arc ended and school began). Also, Princess Tutu.
Princess Tutu was frikking amazing. It looks like a generic magical girl story at first glance, but it turns out to be a story about stories. It heavily references fairy tales and classic plays / operas, so there's a definite appeal for people who are smug about being well-read (...yes, like me); and it takes story tropes and breaks them, in a rather Utena-esque way (this is the flip side of Penguindrum - all of the fairy tale memes, none of the sketchiness). Also, despite the apparently unsophisticated animation, I thought the dance scenes were beautiful. Oh, and Fakir is a bamf.
That's all for this evening! Now this journal can stay up here on my front page for a few months!
~Taidine
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Some Stories
3 min read
COMMISSIONS
I'm still taking commissions, for either points or real dollars: taidine.deviantart.com/journal…
As long as I'm here, I guess I'll plug for some other people I know who are selling stuff.
doopawoopa has like five slots open; her stuff is pricier than mine, but, well, she's also a better artist... heh...
Hanyou-no-miko is selling some cool crafts, specifically masks and etched glassware, from various fandoms.
---
A few days ago, I read this XKCD comic: xkcd.com/923/
The only logical result of this was my wondering whether there actually was any Strunk/White erotic fanfiction on the internet.
The answer is 'not before that XKCD comic came out'. Which means it is written by XKCD fans, not fans of proper writing style.
However, I happened to have a copy of 'The Elements of Style' lying around close at hand shortly after I completed this fruitless search, so I decided to see precisely whom one would be writing about, should they choose to write in this questionable genre. According to the Afterword, "We have no way of knowing whether Professor Strunk took particular notice of Elwyn Brooks White, a student of his at Cornell University in 1919."
0.0
So...
It wouldn't just be slash fiction.
It would be student-teacher slash fiction, set at Cornell University in the Roaring Twenties.
Good heavens.
Why does this NOT exist?
---
Speaking of slash fiction (or in this case slash reality) in the Roaring Twenties, I encountered an interesting story about the artist JC Leyendecker recently, in the course of my work at my school's Fine Arts Library. He was an American illustrator, one of the earliest artists known primarily for his commercial work. He painted New York Post covers. I quite like his art style, incidentally, but that's besides the point.
One of his most noted achievements was the creation of the 'Arrow Collar Man,' an iconic figure used in advertisements for Arrow Collars & Shirts - possibly the first case of 'branding' a company / product. The idea was to have this attractive paragon of manliness who wore arrow collars, and the campaign was successful enough that Leyendecker's images did a lot to inform the American concept of the ideal man.
Right. Well, the model for the Arrow Collar Man was Charles Beach. He was Leyendecker's lover.
Congratulations, America in the 1920s. I believe that is what they call 'irony.'
Everyone on DeviantArt probably knows this story already because they all took art history, but, well, I didn't and I found it amusing so there!
---
That's all for interesting anecdotes today. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some more in a week or two! I would like it if people actually enjoyed reading my journal, and it wasn't all just self-involved and irrelevant rambling all the time.
Sincerely,
~Taidine
I'm still taking commissions, for either points or real dollars: taidine.deviantart.com/journal…
As long as I'm here, I guess I'll plug for some other people I know who are selling stuff.
doopawoopa has like five slots open; her stuff is pricier than mine, but, well, she's also a better artist... heh...
Hanyou-no-miko is selling some cool crafts, specifically masks and etched glassware, from various fandoms.
---
A few days ago, I read this XKCD comic: xkcd.com/923/
The only logical result of this was my wondering whether there actually was any Strunk/White erotic fanfiction on the internet.
The answer is 'not before that XKCD comic came out'. Which means it is written by XKCD fans, not fans of proper writing style.
However, I happened to have a copy of 'The Elements of Style' lying around close at hand shortly after I completed this fruitless search, so I decided to see precisely whom one would be writing about, should they choose to write in this questionable genre. According to the Afterword, "We have no way of knowing whether Professor Strunk took particular notice of Elwyn Brooks White, a student of his at Cornell University in 1919."
0.0
So...
It wouldn't just be slash fiction.
It would be student-teacher slash fiction, set at Cornell University in the Roaring Twenties.
Good heavens.
Why does this NOT exist?
---
Speaking of slash fiction (or in this case slash reality) in the Roaring Twenties, I encountered an interesting story about the artist JC Leyendecker recently, in the course of my work at my school's Fine Arts Library. He was an American illustrator, one of the earliest artists known primarily for his commercial work. He painted New York Post covers. I quite like his art style, incidentally, but that's besides the point.
One of his most noted achievements was the creation of the 'Arrow Collar Man,' an iconic figure used in advertisements for Arrow Collars & Shirts - possibly the first case of 'branding' a company / product. The idea was to have this attractive paragon of manliness who wore arrow collars, and the campaign was successful enough that Leyendecker's images did a lot to inform the American concept of the ideal man.
Right. Well, the model for the Arrow Collar Man was Charles Beach. He was Leyendecker's lover.
Congratulations, America in the 1920s. I believe that is what they call 'irony.'
Everyone on DeviantArt probably knows this story already because they all took art history, but, well, I didn't and I found it amusing so there!
---
That's all for interesting anecdotes today. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some more in a week or two! I would like it if people actually enjoyed reading my journal, and it wasn't all just self-involved and irrelevant rambling all the time.
Sincerely,
~Taidine
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Points Commissions?
2 min read
Hm, I haven't posted anything in a while, have I?
My friends and I, aka the Mike Collective, are trying to get our act together and actually offer some stuff for sale on the internet via DevArt, etc. I was thinking a DevArt account offering adorable crocheted hats, commissions, maybe some plushies and stained glass, and various other things for sale might possibly be more appealing if it had a subscription (and thus more layout options), so I'm going to go ahead and offer some points commissions and see if that goes anywhere.
Obviously, I will also accept (and indeed welcome) equivalent real-money values.
I have very low expectations, but I'm certainly more likely to get takers if I actually post prices.
So, stuff you can get.
70 points (~ $1.00) - pencil sketch, minimal shading, one character.
ex: fav.me/d3kh54i ; full body would also be in this price range, although I don't have samples of that...
200 points ($2.50) - shiny CG headshot in full color or shiny marker headshot in black and white. One character.
ex: fav.me/d3gbh7v (CG) , fav.me/d3mzdpm (marker)
320 points ($4.00) - 3.5" x 5" or thereabouts greyscale marker drawing, possibly even a background. One character, waist up or so.
ex: fav.me/d3gbg5w , fav.me/d3fr8l6
For other stuff, negotiations are open. Actually, negotiations are open for all of these; I can probably be bartered down, especially if I like the subject of the drawing.
My points conversions are based of $5.00 buying you 400.
Note me to commission, I'll start with five slots.
Art pays so much less than minimum wage XP . Although this is for practice as much as profit, I admit.
---
Overly optimistic slots and things!
1. EHyde - complete fav.me/d40hn7n
2.
3.
4.
5.
---
~Taidine
My friends and I, aka the Mike Collective, are trying to get our act together and actually offer some stuff for sale on the internet via DevArt, etc. I was thinking a DevArt account offering adorable crocheted hats, commissions, maybe some plushies and stained glass, and various other things for sale might possibly be more appealing if it had a subscription (and thus more layout options), so I'm going to go ahead and offer some points commissions and see if that goes anywhere.
Obviously, I will also accept (and indeed welcome) equivalent real-money values.
I have very low expectations, but I'm certainly more likely to get takers if I actually post prices.
So, stuff you can get.
70 points (~ $1.00) - pencil sketch, minimal shading, one character.
ex: fav.me/d3kh54i ; full body would also be in this price range, although I don't have samples of that...
200 points ($2.50) - shiny CG headshot in full color or shiny marker headshot in black and white. One character.
ex: fav.me/d3gbh7v (CG) , fav.me/d3mzdpm (marker)
320 points ($4.00) - 3.5" x 5" or thereabouts greyscale marker drawing, possibly even a background. One character, waist up or so.
ex: fav.me/d3gbg5w , fav.me/d3fr8l6
For other stuff, negotiations are open. Actually, negotiations are open for all of these; I can probably be bartered down, especially if I like the subject of the drawing.
My points conversions are based of $5.00 buying you 400.
Note me to commission, I'll start with five slots.
Art pays so much less than minimum wage XP . Although this is for practice as much as profit, I admit.
---
Overly optimistic slots and things!
1. EHyde - complete fav.me/d40hn7n
2.
3.
4.
5.
---
~Taidine
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