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Happiness makes me happy!
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Maybe I am a simple man, but pictures of Tohus I like from artists I like make me a happy simple man.
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Dead authors are coming back to life and they are hungry for voters!
Well it only happened once but it could potentially happen again still!
⋮ No. 22823 
>>22821 You're writing a story where things that happen in it aren't always determined by you, the writer, but by the sometimes fickle whims of your audience. Leaving choices up to chance is what you
do every single time you let them vote.
If your readers are divided on a choice, and nobody is willing to change their vote, it's up to you as the writer to work something out. Flip a coin. Hop onto IRC and ask someone to break the tie for you. Do "eeny, meeny, miny, moe". Hell, just
pick whatever choice you like better and go with it. At the end of the day, it's your story, and you can do whatever you damn well please with it. Just do
something, because no matter what your readers may have been voting for to cause the tie in the first place, I guarantee you
none of them want the story to just stop.
⋮ No. 22825 
>>22823 It's not just
my story, it's
our story. My audience puts time into reading, thinking about, and voting on my work. Sure, an individual voter's resulting output is probably not as much as the writer's, but they vote for a reason: they care about the world and characters that have been crafted for them and want to work with the writer to bring the story through an enjoyable journey and to a satisfying conclusion.
Sometimes, an entry ends with something that will have complicated and irreversible effects. When a vote like this ties for a long period of time, leaving me to settle the outcome, I am immobilized. I don't want to remove agency from my audience. Leaving an important decision to a coin toss is silly and it tells my audience that I don't care about the process that goes into making a decision. Asking those outside of my audience to vote for the sake of breaking a tie is just as silly; I want those who have been following the story and are invested in the decision to be making that decision, not a passerby. As for deciding myself, that goes completely against why I write CYOAs in the first place. If I have to pick an option because the votes are tied, I would rather write a linear story without any voting.
I am not an automaton that waits for
x number of votes after
y amount of time and then spits out the appropriate predetermined description of events. I write
with my audience. I take their concerns, feelings, and discussions, and try to build the protagonist's character off of how my audience thinks. I flavour the resulting entry after a vote with the worry or the pride or the joy of my audience as they discuss the events unfolding before them. If my audience is too apathetic to break the tie, I have nothing to work with -- even if I flipped a coin, what could I derive from my audience's motivations if they barely discussed the ramifications of the choice before them and the final decision was not even theirs?
As the writer, it is my job to paint a picture. I paint a world for an audience, but they provide me with the colours. If they don't provide colours, I can't paint anymore. All I ask is that my audience care enough to discuss, vote, and in the case of a tie, foster up a good enough argument to convince the opposite side to vote with them. This is not unreasonable. Even if my audience is mostly apathetic, a single passionate voter could stand up and argue a point, swaying the apathetic into changing their votes. Compared to the amount of effort I put into writing, it is not asking a lot that my audience settle ties amongst themselves.
When a story ties for days at a time, or even weeks, and none of the passive readers bother to vote, and none of the voters bother to discuss, it comes across as apathetic. I don't mind poking anon and reminding them that the tie still needs to be dealt with, but if my story often faces ties that don't move for days or weeks, it does a number on my motivation. If my audience doesn't care to vote, I feel like I shouldn't care to write. Before someone tells me that I should be writing for myself, I would like to emphasize that I wouldn't write if I wasn't writing for myself. It's just that I can't do it alone. My approach to CYOA requires team effort. That's why I love CYOAs and largely prefer writing them than to writing linear fiction.
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>>22825 You're overthinking it. Go with your gut.
⋮ No. 22831 
>>22825 Yes, these stories are collaborations between the writer and audience, but it is not an equal relationship. As the writer, you are the one with the most power over whether your story moves or stops, and you are the one with the most responsibility to get it moving again if it starts to stall, whatever the reason for it may be.
If your readers can't come to a consensus, or don't want to discuss or debate their choices and try to get others to vote one way or another, that's on them, and there is nothing you can really do about that. A deadlock is something you risk getting any time you ask a bunch of people to decide on something when there's no clear “right” or “wrong” answer, and when it does happen,
someone has to be the one to break it things are to continue. If there isn't going to be any action from the readers' end, then it
must come from the writer. That's all there is to it.
So your votes are tied. You have options for resolving this. You may not like them, but they're there, and when you refuse to use any of them,
you are the one choosing to not continue. Flipping a coin as a tie-breaker might remove some agency from your audience, but you would still be giving at least half of your voters something they want, both by virtue of their vote winning and the story continuing. How much agency do you give them when you choose to do nothing, and just let the story lie there? Who is getting anything they want out of this arrangement?
This whole scenario makes me think of someone driving their friends or family around town to get something to eat, except they haven't actually gotten anywhere because nobody can agree on where to go. The driver can hope that everyone might agree on something eventually, if only he just waited long enough, but at the end of the night he's still the one behind the wheel. If he decides to park somewhere and wait for a consensus to be reached, then he bears a chunk of the blame if everyone winds up going home hungry, especially when all he had to do was step up and tell everyone “fuck it, shut up, we're all going to Cracker Barrel,
deal with it.” And then he flips them the bird or something. I dunno.
Is it an ideal solution? Of course not, but it's hardly an ideal situation to begin with, and it's not going to get any better unless someone does something about it.
>If my audience doesn't care to vote, I feel like I shouldn't care to write. I understand this feeling, I really do, but surely you can see where that line of thought leads? Your audience doesn't care to vote, so you don't care to write. But if you don't care to write, why should they care to vote? They can blame their apathy on you just as easily as you pin yours on theirs, and where does that leave everyone? Bouncing blame back and forth like a ping-pong ball for a situation that nobody involved wants to be in, but nobody is willing to act to get themselves out of? Is this really better than the solutions that have been proposed?
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>>22831 I really hate to put it like this, but writer/voter relationship is not unlike a relationship between a couple. If a writer is shit or if there's a problem with a story people tend to go away. On the other hand, if it's good, people stay and vote. Stories with less freedom (more control from a writer) tend to be a lot better because they have direction, which gives characters motivation and agency independent of player's - potentially creating complicated situations where a voter is forced to consider how interactions between TWO (sets of) characters (players and NPC's) may go instead of attempting to blindly adapt. CYOAs (or quests, I suppose) are all about forcing complicated, difficult and fun situations on your players. This would be impossible without a sizable degree of control in your story, a thing that so many people on this site are very afraid to do (It's hard to pull it off.) On the other hand, if you railroad too much, you might as well be on fanfiction.net, or if you're good (>THP >good) you could just write a fucking book instead.
What it comes down to, I mean, is that a writer has to write. If there's a tie in the way and you cannot resolve it, you're not writing when you could have. You're not getting better when you could have. If the decision is REALLY that important, mention that it is and give people a day to resolve a tie. If it's not swung in one direction by then, flip a coin and write - just like people quit relationships when their partner stops caring, if you stall too much there's not gonna be as much voters. Keep getting better. I say that because to have a 10/10 CYOA you'd need a good setting, wordsmithing skills, planning, quick wit AND the ability to put that wit into action when you need to put them through FUN situations, decent character development pace, good characters themselves, a natural sense of FUN, a degree of knowing what the voters want (AND need) and a pace that's not "post once every two months". You need all that (sometimes, though, if your CYOA is funposting general you get a pass on about half of those things, but it will become increasingly difficult to keep the pace up). If you just get better at juicy and beautiful descriptions it's not enough.
tl;dr gut fucking git and write you scruuub
⋮ No. 22865 >>22863 >Writer Oh, great, then we can—
>good Well shit.
But if you really do need a proofreader/editor/idea-bouncer-offer, then I'm here. Feel free to message me on IRC or Steam or whatever.
⋮ No. 22867 >>22823 Hard to tell as it seems some people LOVE to make ties.
>>22825 See above. You're fretting too much about something that amounts to "SHIT HAPPENS"
If you have a decent number of voters in general it's something to take joy in.
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Happy New Year, TH-P. X more years.
When-ever will I quit you?
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>>22938 Oh man, I know your pain! I added one of my favorite writers to OW but then I realized that I suck so I started practicing and then I broke my fucking shoulder because NYC doesn't realize that wet metal is the slipperiest substance in the universe so now I suck again and I'm quietly dreading the day where he realizes he has one stranger on his list and deletes me.
Holy fuck, I'm a fucking fanboy. Kill me, please.
⋮ No. 23076 
>>23075 At least you have artistic skill going for you. Hard to make unique character designs when you're terrible at it. Even harder when you can't find a style you quite like, leading to flopping about like a loose firehose of creative juices.
Although, it's also absolutely fantastic motivation to learn, as I've improved well beyond what I expected to.
Anywho, I can't wait to see how your story goes! I'm a sucker for a good alternate design.
⋮ No. 23083 >>23082 Quite sure it will be /forest/. If not, /shrine/. Both work.
The hat is made of semi-liquid amphibian flesh and fat. It's perhaps represented poorly as I only made simple lineart.
That said, sand may be more appropriate given Suwako's position as an earth god. It's a perfectly legitimate interpretation.
I wouldn't recommend using my art as reference unless you fancy anatomy abortions. Learning to draw is a pain in the ass.
I've detoured this thread enough, have some joyful music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrKHu7qxSfQ ⋮ No. 23108 File
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>>23107 Alternative facts in eastern utopia.
⋮ No. 23130 >>23129 Hang around Roppongi or other places where foreigners gather? I mean, I'll be real honest with you, the whole "lol Asian chicks dig Westerners" line is a little overplayed; if you're hideous/obnoxious/whatever in your own country, you'll still be the same in another.
Not getting onto you specifically for that, but it's one of those misconceptions that gets repeated a lot and irks me deeply. If it's not about getting laid, then go see the Shitamachi area (Asakusa being the big, touristy exception). Don't jump between sights: soak up the atmosphere of the different neighbourhoods. Wander around. Poke your head in places. Ride the train around. Explore, in other words. You can't see everything that Tokyo offers in any reasonable span of time, so don't sweat it.
Also, consider going to places outside of Tokyo. Fukuoka's one of my favourites.
⋮ No. 23366 
>>23363 Not so simple, old boy. Not to make an update out of a blog post, here is the short of it. After I had suffered a minor nervous breakdown due to
ominously omitted circumstances, I had put the story in question on an unannounced hiatus. At its end, I was again motived to a degree, but still lacked for that final ignition piece. And thusly,
“Very good, you miserable, gaseous dog,” threw I, right into my shilly-shallying self’s teeth. “The moment anyone bothers you to write, you are going to toss whatever else it is you do, and write.
Post-haste.”
“OK,” meekly I replied, picking up my teeth. “Pinkie promise.”
And so, it was done. However, as time passed (which time is wont to do), no botherings were made in this writer’s address. Bereft of posts, but unable to update due to autistic self-imposition of rules, the writer slowly stopped caring.
And this is how my story ends. Thank you for listening.
⋮ No. 23377 
>>23375 I would be over the Moon if
>>23367 had included my name in his bothering. Or bumped my thread. Or
saged my thread while issuing his botherings. The hiatusing mind knows little difference.
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I would also be overjoyed if someone could resurrect Moral, while you're taking requests.
⋮ No. 23380 >>23366 It's kinda seen as poor form to bump inactive threads, isn't it? People tend to get their teeth pushed in for it if people liked a story. That, mixed with how some stories have a quarterly or bi-annual update cycle, leads to people not really being able to tell when a story is dead, being written, or on hiatus. Such as A Wizard is You, or Luck of 10 and 0. On that note,
If you wrote either of those, go write. Which isn't helped by how few in number those that announce such things are.
Don't make us have to write a list of every author name in recent memory and tell them all to stop being dead.
Also, if you wrote the Yamame thing,
go write. I never got around to reading that because it stopped updating, and I was really sad! I wanted to read that.
⋮ No. 23382 
>>23380 >Don't make us have to write a list of every author name in recent memory and tell them all to stop being dead. This is
precisely what I’d intended for you to do. Me, I may have stopped caring; but who truly knows the rainbow myriad of writers lost, stuck in the aether between updates, waiting but the articulation of their names to motivate their creative engines? I know I would be screaming Moral’s name – if it hadn’t been proven already to do nothing. Or KC’s – if it weren’t risking his identity being revealed on this site.
Whose name would you call?
⋮ No. 23383 
>>23382 Anonymous, Bee, Anonymous, Headwing Consulting, Anonymous, Luminous, Anonymous, Anonymous Writefag Number 1523, Anonymous, Teruyo, Anonymous, Moral, Anonymous, SirRailOfGun, Anonymous, Jerl, Anonymous, D47457341, Anonymous, Jace&, Anonymous, Sights, Anonymous, ANGRY MASKED MARINE, Anonymous, Nobu, Anonymous, Choa, Anonymous, Sage-King, Anonymous, OP, Anonymous, FUCKING Bread of No Consequence, Rape Stove, FRUSTRATED WRITER, Fallguy, ANONYBODY WHY, and DAMMIT SAXTON HALE YOU HAD ONE JOB!
That's everyone worth typing the name of off of the last 3 years of th. All of you assholes, get goddamn writing, or at least stop being colossal faggots who don't say they are stopping!
I TYPED HALF OF THOSE ANONYMOUSES BEFORE I REALIZED I'D BE HERE A WHILE!
...I feel that this may have been more appropriate in the rage thread, but whatever.
⋮ No. 23384 >>23382 Moral, Flanders, Rifle, Anonymous Writefag Number 1523, Doesntdeserveanamefag, Teruyo, Summerfield, Anonymous, Treia, Anonymask, KN09, Cuban Pete, Anonymous, Maxwell, Barkeep, Rabbit, Anonymous, WayMaker, Nefer Nightbug, Wolfsbane706, Realmhopper, Zan, Glen, Lag, Satzibeli, An Interested Reader (id319), Anonymous, Luminous, Wanderlost, Wander, Jerl, Klaymen, Anonymus, Alice Maestra, moon, Maiden in Black, AnonymousX1, Etcetera, Noner, Forte, Lagrange, Decade, Kahi, Choja Hiragawa, Lion, Hopper, OOO, Kernel, and Anonymous.
There, that's everyone who has ever written anything in /others/ all the way back through page 9. Except for Raftclans, who literally just updated a few hours ago and therefore does not need to be revived from the dead. Also Keymaster, who finished all of his stories in record time and therefore has earned his well deserved rest (although if he wanted to come back and write another story I would love it.)
⋮ No. 23389 
>>23382 Dear !anAL.XVMTc, ANGRY MASKED MARINE/GENERIC MASKED MARINE/SAXTON HALE/Clear Sights/Clear Your Sights, Anonybody, Anonymous Writefag Number 1523, Barkeep/WayMaker, Bee, !Bl4xMArISA/!JmarISa7IU, Bread, Bread of No Consequence, Cuban Pete, D47457341, DirtyThief, Erratic Writer, faggot, Fell, Forest Mix Anonymous, Golden Lark, halffoxmask, Isolex, Jerl, Jura, Hungry Youkai, Kahi, Komeko, krisslanza, Kurodani Yamame Has No Author/Anonymous Sekibanki lover, Luminous, Mask of gold, Mask of the Moon, Masked Imbroglio, Maxwell, Moral, Platemask no Futo/Doesntdeserveanamefag, Quiet Magician, !ttRabBit9s, Raftclans, Revenant One, Rifle, Sage-King, Serial ATA, Stove, Stupid Little Drill Tank, Sulac, Summerfield, Taisa, TheThousandBeanster, Thirty Terawatt Satellite Cannon, Tulip Breaking Virus, V, Wayback/DUMB FOX MASK, YAF, Yata and !ZAL5aj48Pg, plus all the faggots who're so slow I wasn't even around for their last update and the fuckton of people whose names got pushed out of my tiny mind by that motherfucking giant list:
UPDATES FUCKING WHERE.
Not listed: Keymaster and NRFB because they know their shit, and Fallguy because holy mother of fuck he's suffered enough already.
⋮ No. 23407 >>23406 Dude...you're looking at this the wrong way. A strong, emotional response full of vitriol and invective means you did a fantastic job as an author.
>>23405 I agree.
>>23401 You should offer the contest winners a 25$-75$ commission of their choice. Kinda like how video game companies send free stuff to youtube content creators to give to their subscribers. It's a win-win for everyone involved.
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The new touhous have arrived.
One of them might even be Reimu's goddess :^)
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>>23695 No better way to say it.
Happy New Year folks, wish a great 2018 to you and this site!
⋮ No. 23730 >>23729 On the chance this is Fell, I'd like to apologize. I do greatly enjoy your story and I'd like to read and vote, but frankly, one or two updates a month is below critical update speed for me.
At that point, especially in a relatively dense story such as Otherwise, it just becomes a pain to follow along. Even important points escape my memory and I'm forced to go back, reread and rethink every single time. The excitement of looking forward to each update fades, and it becomes a chore that comes up every month instead.
But when it finishes I'll definitely go back, read it, and probably have a blast.
⋮ No. 23782 >>23779 Wait a minute. The front page now tells us when the writefag bumps their own thread. That means everyone will know with 100% certainty whether a thread was bumped with an actual update or just some random anon necrobumping. That means we can now bump old dead threads with a "hey writefag,we miss this story, please come back" post without having to worry about random anons bitching at us for not sageing and getting their hopes up.
This means we can bump old threads guilt free. This means we can freely let the writefags know that we still want to read their story. This means we have a better chance to revive our favorite old dead stories.
Oh joyous day!
⋮ No. 23784 
>>23782 >This means we can freely let the writefags know that we still want to read their story. You do realize, I hope, that it was already entirely possible to do that without bumping threads, right? I mean, assuming the writer was using the "Watched Threads" function, they could clearly see that there were new posts in their thread no matter what page it was on. The writer gets your message, and you don't get anyone getting on your ass for making them think a story updated when it didn't. It's win-win!
This is, of course, if the writer is still around. Depending on the reason for them going AWOL, that could be a VERY big "if". If they're not, then it won't really make any difference what or how you post, since they're nor here to see it, anyway. You could change the banner image on every single board with a flashing gif reading "HEY FUCKFACE GET BACK TO WRITING" and it won't make a lick of difference if they're not even here to see it.
Honestly, the only difference I can see this making to necrobumping is taking it from being extremely annoying and highly frowned upon to slightly less annoying but still fairly frowned upon. The stories you dredge up won't be any more likely to resume because you bumped them up now than if you bumped them before, and this thinking of "we have a better chance to revive our favorite old dead stories" just seems like you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
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Happy 10th birthday, THP. Here's to another ten.
⋮ No. 23991 >>23989 >>23975 here, no name fagging this time
>I actually feel kinda guilty about this one. Don't. I don't expect my readers to compensate for my shortcomings. I failed to make the proper connection beforehand, making the vote too vague. You should have to analyze the votes just to figure out what they're for, rather, I'm sure most authors here would like it if the readers invested more time into analyzing the best option among the votes, discussing it in the thread, though not all votes can allow for that.
>Assuming of course that what I have since figured out, without looking at the spoilers, is actually right. Like I almost hinted at above, theories are always welcome. Seeing readers actively engage with our stories is one of the greatest feelings you can get as a writer on this site. Which isn't much, but it's something.
>You'd probably still be mad at yourself for my having to do so I vented. I got drunk. I got my ass kicked in an online game because I'm shit. I slept. Using the remaining anger, I did some aggressive reading to correct the course of my story to work around the other pieces of information I've gotten wrong.
I stopped being angry less than a day after I posted that, since I figured it'd be better to direct that energy into not making the same mistake again instead of just blowing hot air.
>You are amazing and deserve to know it, just for this. I want to contend that. Mostly because I'm highly critical of myself. So I'll just accept the compliment instead.
With that said. Since before I started my current story, I'd decided that all stories I make for this site, from that point onward, is part of the same universe. Meaning all stories have to follow the same rule-set, regarding magic, human-youkai relationships, territory in and outside the village.
A lot of the things I've spent time on will never get used in PoH, like for example the 12 segments fo the village guard force. Or the Qi based magic system. "True Mages" might get an appearances, if I can make it fit naturally.
Or my favorite little detail that's never going to get mentioned in the story.
Back in post 8, the smith you ask for directions. To try and make him feel like more than just a no-face character, I gave him a small backstory. He's a single dad raising a young daughter of 14. The mother died 8 years prior. The dad wants to marry the daughter into a merchant family, so she'll be able to live better, but the daughter wants to become a smith like her dad, which causes them to fight often. In short, I try to be the author I wish to see more of on the site. To write the stories I want to read. THP's motto is "If you want something, make it yourself" after all.
And lastly, if it wasn't obvious from all the small things, like the thread this is posted in, or my comments about reader engagement. Getting any kind of feedback to that rant was unexpected, but highly appreciated.
⋮ No. 23993 >>23991 > Seeing readers actively engage with our stories is one of the greatest feelings you can get as a writer on this site. As a fellow THP writefag, I agree 100%.
But I'm still too lazy and insecure to actually post my theories. Meep.
> Or my favorite little detail that's never going to get mentioned in the story. I'm glad you decided to accept my compliment, because I feel another one coming on.
You rock. And I want to be like you.
> In short, I try to be the author I wish to see more of on the site. That's pretty much exactly what got me writing too. It ain't working worth crap, but tell me something I don't know.
> Getting any kind of feedback to that rant was unexpected, but highly appreciated. Right back at ya. Like most greasy, mouthbreathing, basement-dwelling fanboys, getting a response from someone I respect makes me squeal and run around in circles while flapping my hands like someone half my age and the opposite gender.
In fact, it might even be enough to make me actually update sometime this month.
⋮ No. 24128 >>24101 It's quite a trend for when games jump to consoles they gain more stuff that we'll be lucky to see filter back to the PC originals.
It's quite telling that the western side of things is far better about that.
But in other news, I finished my update and have some hopes of picking up my pace. That ad seeing this site still kicking pretty decently in this age.
