[Strongly Jaded Gamer] My Top 10 Console Games and Why Their Design Puts Them There

After last week I feel that I should come back with a more positive post and seeing as I need to do this for my application to Riot, I figure might as well.

First and foremost, these are console games I feel have had amazing overall designs. By that I mean the game play, the progression, the feedback…you know, system stuff, the things that made the game fun to play. I’ll admit that a fair number of these games might have story elements that feel dated or cliche’ now, but that’s not what I’m looking at. There may be spoilers, but if you haven’t played some of these games by now, you have no right to complain.

I realize posting this will open me up to all sorts of angst, but here it is:

10. Borderlands

I start out my top ten with a game that, much like me,  doesn’t do any one particular thing well, but instead focuses its disparate aspects into something new and horribly addictive. Borderlands took the fast paced multiplayer lootfest dungeon crawling of Diablo 2 and married it to the run and gun circle strafe mechanics of 90′s shooters. The ceremony was unruly, with outlandish characters in attendance and an attitude that it didn’t care what you thought of it, Borderlands proved you can teach an old dog new tricks. I eagerly await the second installment with its promised more of everything.

9. Blazblue: Continuum Shift

I’m not a very good player at fighting games, but there’s something about Arc System Works’ BalzBlue that makes it easy for me to hold my own. Add in a balanced cast of very different characters, the mind-blowing HD sprite based visuals, an amazing soundtrack by the great Daisuke Ishawatari, and an over the top all out combat mindset and this game comes out head-and-shoulders above others of the genre.

7. Mega Man X

I wish every game did as good a job about teaching you to play the game by showing as the Mega Man series. In just the opening level alone, without saying anything to you, the game conveys all of the important concepts you need to play in a way that lets you learn naturally. It forges new expectations in a way that gives you time to react, it doesn’t use cheep tricks to defeat you. Yes, Mega Man X is hard–I’m not saying it isn’t–but its hard in a way that builds with an expectation that you’ve been paying attention and can now handle the both of the enemies you fought alone just a few seconds ago.

7. Dark Souls

In contrast to Mega Man X and its expectation setting, Dark Souls teaches by punishment and encourages experimentation. Dark Souls goes out of its way to let you know if you’re not a skilled player, you will die. A lot. But from this harsh expectation grows a skill set honed to razor’s edge and coupled with the oppressive atmosphere, you become an island of one. Each new enemy is a chance to test your instincts and skills. Each boss you out play feels like a thrilling accomplishment, each knight you defeat, a worthy foe. Dark Souls might be hard, but it builds character in a way that numbers in a menu can’t.

Ultimately, both games tie because they take two different approaches to the same end. I can’t really pick one to be the better, and they both belong on the list.

6. Resident Evil 4

I’m a sucker for survival horror and really this could just as easily be Silent Hill 2, but the sheer amount of time I’ve spent playing RE4 gives it the slot. While the story was a bit campy, the gameplay was outstanding and rewarded players who got good at the system. While I knew much of the back story for the series, I didn’t feel like the plot relied heavily on the source material which, along with the control redesign, made the game a great place to pick up the series.

5. Metroid Prime

Retro’s first contribution to the Metroid Franchise on the Gamecube was a stunning example of platforming and exploration working in a 3D environment. On top of the solid gameplay, the environment and atmosphere made the world of Talon IV come alive and really conveyed the feeling of a once might civilization being over taken by nature gone wrong.

4. Phantasy Star Online

I’m likely committing a sin by saying this, but all things considered I prefer PSO over Diablo 2. Yes, the story was weaker and the gameplay could be frustrating, but I still prefer the space age dungeon crawling loot fest over the dark fantasy one. There were just so many little nuanced things, like being able to consistently land the chain attacks or animation canceling to throw spells faster, that rewarded learning the game.

3. Legend Of Zelda: Link to the Past

Many point to Ocarina of Time as the ultimate Zelda, but Link to the Past will always be my number one. Ocarina is, at a design level, just a much more cinematic 3D Link to the Past. All of the things that come to mind when people think Zelda were at their best in Link to the Past. The game’s scale, the dungeon design, the boss fights, and the hoard of items were nearly flawless and still stand up to modern day scrutiny.

2. Final Fantasy 8

A controversial favorite, I love Eight over all other Final Fantasies because of how well the game worked—though that’s not to dismiss the cast or the story, but the system was what made the game for me. Everything about it was integrated, each part feeding into another and rewarding the player for taking on all the game had to offer. I feel it gets knocked by many because the level system was counter intuitive, but it rewarded intelligent play and fueled the integration that the game thrived on. Card enemies and don’t get experience, play the card game to get more cards, convert cards into items, use items to learn magic or power up GFs, be better equipped than monsters and bosses win the game. Even so, the game does its best to compete, even with an optimal run, the bosses are challenging and the game holds its own. Sure you could’ve just powered through the game using GF’s to kill everything, but there is so much more there just under the surface.

1. Secret of Mana

My favorite game from Square and personally the best game I’ve ever played. The combat was tight and intuitive, hitting monsters felt good, fighting bosses felt challenging and rewarding, the story was phenomenal, and the art was stunning. The dungeons were long and challenging. The monster types worked to complement each other and the weapon system let you pick a play style you felt comfortable with. On top of that was the three, yes three, player co-op. Everything that I’ve ever wanted in a game was in Secret of Mana, making it a something of a de facto measuring stick. I feel that today’s Action RPGs, from Skyrim to Tales of Graces, all fall short of what this SNES gem did in ’93.

Honorable Mentions:

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and of course, Psychonauts

[Wednesday Rambling] A proposal for LoL

So Lyte put up a thread yesterday, and I gave some input. Not surprisingly it wasn’t responded to, the thread was already over twenty pages when I posted and is now nearing 70 pages.  So instead of trying to get attention that way, I’ll write a blog post where I can flesh out my ideas more.

First off, the question: 1) If you could add one feature into the game that addresses player behavior, what would it be?

My answer: Information on the players you are playing with in the champ select lobby and by extension a method to populate that information.

For the population part, what I was thinking was being able to up/down vote players at the end game screen. An upvote would give them One karma on that champion specifically and One karma in the role that champion was playing. Downvoting a player would do the inverse, lowering both role karma and champion karma.

As for the information, how would it be displayed? Well, in champ select currently, things look like this:

Current Champ Select Lobby for LoL

As you can see, there’s a place to click on Leona for info about her, but nothing about the summoner who is going to pick her. So I’ve got a proposed addition to the UI:

This player’s stats and karma

There are of course a few hang ups with this. One being that some champions, like Kayle for instance, get played in a number of roles which could complicate the display, but I feel the end game voting would help handle this and its just a question of what the “roles” should be without being defined by the meta. To me, the roles would be:

A Rough UI for Voting

• AP Carry
• AD Carry
• Brusier (Tanky Melee)
• Assassin (Burst Melee)
• Tanky Support
• Tanky Jungle
• Caster Support
• Caster Jungle

Aside from a few outlier champions this about covers the main archetypes–it might even have some overlap, but I feel denoting jungler specifically gives a better level of feedback than just Tanky DPS, its just something you can’t get away from, even you wanted to avoid meta.  The drop down however does allow for any champ to play one of the eight roles, so I feel that counters the establishment of a strong meta leaning.

I feel this also con tributes to the idea of rewarding good players. If you’re positive at the end of the week or have improved your reputation in a role, maybe you can get an IP reward. For those with concerns about abuse, I would say that the fear of abuse is always greater than the actual amount. Yes, people will down vote players that stomped them, yes players will down vote teammates that flamed them, but the inverse will happen just as much. For every rager, there will be four who upvote; for every disgruntled team mate there will be three who felt someone did well. If your reputation gets inflated by friends, there will be solo q players who don’t think you’re the best AP Carry–and that’s assuming your friend actually think you’re good.

Anyway, thoughts? Suggestions?

[Strongly Jaded Gamer] Diablo 3, A Second Look

Some of you might remember that I did a post a couple weeks back about how I wasn’t impressed with Diablo 3. A few said I was rushing to judge a game based on the Beta. So I took a second look at the game.

Taking a look at the game after its launch, I’ll admit a few of my nit-picks were the Beta’s fault and they seem to have been addressed, but my chief problems are still present. See, my issue with Diablo 3 isn’t the casual difficulty or the art direction. I understand Blizzard isn’t an underground success story any more, they are compelled by their recent track record to take the mainstream into account. So I’m fine with the game being pants on head easy and overly hand holdy at the start, really I am. I don’t mind that the game feels like a 3/4 WoW in terms of graphics. I mean, realistically, artistic representations are easier to render and less strain on systems than faux realism. It’s lost a little of the Dark Fantasy feeling, but that happens when a franchise stops living in the shadows.

Now, why I’m still not impressed. My problems with the UI and the MMO focus on the End Game Content remain–the second of which will probably never change. Granted, I’ve seen some pretty cool dungeons while watching some people stream but, to me at least, the way that the game progresses makes the journey to Act III seem like any other typical MMO and less like the dungeon crawler I fell in love with. Part of that is the aforementioned hand holding, but much of it is how D3 does skills. If every Monk gets the same skills at the same points, there doesn’t seem–to me at least–to be much of an encouragement to play two Monks.

Perhaps I should explain where I’m coming from and maybe my angst over this point will make more sense. If I’m honest, I hardly ever get to the end of a dungeon crawler more than once, much less an MMO, unless I’m playing with a party. After the first campaign, I usually just boot it up and play through the first act or so until the itch has been scratched. Sometimes I get super far, even to the end, other times I don’t even finish Act 2. This applies to PSO, Ragnarok, or even Secret of Mana just a much as Diablo 2. Playing this way has two advantages. First, I never get to the point where the game starts to be a chore, its always fun. Second, I know what build I want to play going in. I don’t need to think about skill choices or stat allocations. I’m just mowing things down and enjoying myself.

And maybe this just my arcade roots showing, but the start of a game is, to me, one of the most exciting parts of a dungeon crawler or RPG. When you first start out its full of surprises, full of new things, full of apprehension and tension. You aren’t the unkillable badass you’ll be in twenty levels. And when you play again later, on another character just starting out, you really feel how much you’ve improved as a player at the game, you’re confident, a veteran, but you still know the game is dangerous. It’s a different quality of confidence than end game, the kind that lets you try doing dangerous things, that lets you really adventure.

Which is why I’m personally at odds with the way D3 is handling skills. On a second character I can’t do what I want,  I still have to follow the rails and I don’t feel like I’m adventuring. Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that I can’t start a new Mage and just go Warmth and Frozen Armor until Frost Nova, bothers me. I do not like that have to pick up every skill between. Yes, I suppose I don’t need to use them, but that’s just the thing. Instead of getting to decide to pick up the next rune for Frozen Armor, I get handed a spell I won’t use. Instead of being able to go right into Shiver Armor at level 12, I have to wait until I hit the level that game unlocks it at.

Again, at the far end of the game, it’s not a big deal–but that’s only enforcing the point I’m making. The game feels like it doesn’t care about the levels up to 30 or even 20, its doesn’t feel like it wants you to go back and play the first act with another of the same character–it wants you to get to Act 3 and all the juicy end game content. Maybe that’s why its so hand holdy, so that someone who plays like me can drop back into Act 3 after not playing for a week and forgetting everything that was going on.

The other thing that bothers me about skills is the UI for setting them. In a game like Diablo, you need to be flexible because who knows what’s around the next corner. So when I have to stop interacting with the game and fiddle with a menu to swap my skills, it’s a deal breaker for me. Again, this might just be a problem that’s limited to be and how I play. I’m fairly certain not many swapped their skills as often as I did in Diablo 2, and maybe much of that was just having two skill slots and now with the seven that might be less of an issue, it still doesn’t excuse a menu that breaks immersion. Everything else for D3 is on a half screen menu, so why did skills have to be a box in the middle of my screen?

I guess ultimately my issues with Diablo 3 are just mine and they might as well come down to “It isn’t Diablo 2.”  Likely I’ll give the game a solid session at some point and maybe I’ll like it more. Not sure right now.

[Wednesday Rambling] Stonecoast Rising

I am now less than two months out from my second residency at Stonecoast. Something about that statement, that realization, has been an immense jump start to my writing. Knowing that I’m going back, that it wasn’t just a fever dream, is starting to dispel my funk.

Granted, its not a cure all–Work is still draining and a source of endless frustration and the prep for the wedding borders on exasperating–but it’s helping so much. In the last two weeks I’ve had a host of new story ideas and I’ve even gotten the first part of a manuscript into respectable shape. I’m on the fourth draft of the second part of said manuscript now, working on applying what I’ve learned to turn what was a rather limp section in the plot into a more viable start to Act 2. Even so, I feel that I perhaps haven’t capitalized on the the semester. Aside from one piece, everything was something I had worked one prior to coming to Stonecoast. Yet, when I think about that in a more holistic way, that makes sense. I;m trying to gauge where I am and get a feel for where I want to go–and is perhaps a reason that working on Curse feels so good.

Well, Imma get back to work. Thinking about starting up a second weekly segment for gaming, might get that done tonight and up tomorrow.

[Wednesday Ramblings] High Powered Money

Its been a pretty big topic in the mainstream, on the internet recently in particular, about how much some sections of the job market make, but I’m not going to get into the politics about it. I’ve got a more writerly question, one of motivation. Once you’re making multi-millions a year, what do you do with that money and why does one keep on going? As someone who makes about 30k a year, I just can’t grasp why you would need all that money–I can grasp why you would WANT all that money, but the need is another thing–and from the way companies gobble each other up like Oroboros at a eating contest, you’d think it was a need.

I guess really its probably the same as why non-gamers look askance at our achievement points or the even more ancient climb to the coveted first place on the local arcade cabinet. In essence, people at that level use money and companies to keep score and I just don’t understand. Except, its like gamer score is worth anything other than a larger e-peen and its not like me earning achievements makes it impossible for someone else to get it as well. Sorry, getting political.

Even so, I do wonder about motivation, what keeps multi-millionares in the game instead of dropping half their worth into investments and then living off the interest? Isn’t the highest display of business success doing nothing and still getting paid? Do people just get used to a slowly escalating manner of living such that they can’t do anything else but keep swimming, ending up victims of societal pressure just like the rest of us? Or are they addicts, caught up on the chase of higher highs? I just don’t get it and probably never will…

On another note, I’ve got a story idea I’ll probably outline here in a sec.

[Wednesday Rambling] Depression and Creativity

I’m sure many creative types have had to deal with it and I’m not really looking for a pity party kind of post so I’ll focus on how I harness my depression as part of my process–or at least how I try to.

First off, I’d like to say that I’ve not have a new story idea in months, well that’s a lie. I  did write that new Tess story, but it’s not like I’m flowing over with ideas right now. My mind is too occupied being terrible to itself to come up with anything new and exciting. Part of that is that for much of the day my mind only has itself to talk to, so what else can you make conversation about with yourself than the things that makes you upset? I mean talking about things you like ends up making you angry in the end, since you can’t go do them.

But, on the same token, a mind that’s determined to be upset is the best editor you can have. If i can look at my work without the rosy glow of “this is something I’ve done” then I can tear it apart properly. I don’t remember what I meant to say here, so far gone from my mind is the plot that I only have the page to work with. I don’t remember what the protagonist looks like, I’ve long since stopped drawing and visualizing them. Thankfully I wrote so much at one point that I have enough of a back log of things to edit, I might be able to ride out my depression–but I’m not willing to take that chance.

Through the semester, I’ve torn apart two of my favorite stories and I actually got back to writing. Granted it was really just an extension of the editing, I’ve had a very hard time coming up with anything new that’s worthwhile, but as a result I’ve started world building again and that will lead to new material. I’ve started asking questions and finding answers, either in my own writing or in the writing of others. Though on one hand this had made me feel far worse as I’ve realized things about both my own style and the genres in which I write, one of which I might touch on later once I’ve done some research–wouldn’t want to sound like a clod–it has also pushed me to keep going.

Anyway, I guess the take away from this is to harness negative energy and use it to push your sub-par writing up to where you’re happy with it again–and maybe, just maybe, you’ll start to feel happier yourself.

[Wednesday Rambling] The problem of expressing general creativity as a talent

I apologize upfront, this post is going to be very cathartic.

In my hunt for new employment, I’ve been looking around at design and concept jobs, mostly because I figure having ideas is a key requisite for such things, and boy, do I have ideas!

Except, I don’t have any concrete expression of my ideas. Nothing that I can point to and say “See look, I really am a creative individual” I mean yeah, I write and I’m good enough at that to be accepted into an MFA program, but no one in the real world cares about writing unless you’ve been published with a reputable publication or house or your someone famous writing a blog. Every job I’ve looked at wants a portfolio of some kind and I just don’t have one. It’s not like I’ve got anything to show for all my creativity beyond this blog and a couple posting on some forums and galleries–none of which is really anything to be proud of.

What it comes down to is this: On paper, I look very bland and there is no real indication of the creative person behind the resume’. I look like someone who just happened to get through college by luck and sheer force of will. Although I suppose that’s really what happened its also not all of who I am. However, it isn’t like you can put down worked ‘three jobs simultaneously while still going to school full time just to have a roof’ or ‘Didn’t give up when everything was going wrong’ with a straight face. So instead of being able to put down character strengths, my resume’ is pretty much blank. I have no clubs or other academic things, because I didn’t have the time. I tried. I really did, but I had work most nights and classes all day and then I got my current job and pretty much switched to only being on campus at night for classes. In a very real sense, Aug 2009 was when I stopped going to college as a student and started going as a professional.

It doesn’t help that I haven’t really written anything since my rejection from Stonecoast in October. Yes, I did get in not two months later, but I still haven’t really healed from the blow to my creative drive. I sort of feel into this spiral of ‘Well I guess mundane average life is all I’m good for’ and even trying to climb out of it only reinforces it. It probably doesn’t help that I spent much of my day hunkered down over a laptop where chat boxes are my only contact with people. I don’t go to work any more, due to having moved, but it wasn’t like I went to work before either. What started out as a job with a fair number of co-workers became a 10 hour day with no one to talk to and only my thoughts as company. Which is why I’ve been looking for employment, to break the spiral. I just don’t want to end up in another job like this one.

Anyway…without a physical representation of your creativity and ideas, how can you prove to employers that you are indeed a creative individual?

D3 Beta Woes or Why Borderlands Is Now King

So I just got to the end of the open beta portion of the game and I feel like weighing in on why I think Diablo 3 is not the evolution of Hack and Slash Lootfest RPGS that it should, or perhaps could, have been. I’ve got a lot of gripes, some of them are just “this isn’t Diablo 2!!! QQ”, but a few are genuine upsets and why I’m not picking up the game in May.

Foremost of them is that there is no flexibility in builds. Seriously, you learn skills when the game wants you to, in the order the game wants you to. I mean, yeah, there’s some neat customization stuff going on with the runes, but its frustrating that I can’t power up the skills I’m using because the game insists that I need to learn this other skill. I can’t just put points into Spell A and unlock its runes, I have to wait for a revolving level cap to gain each new piece.

Case in point, Wizard pre-level ten has two Left mouse skills. One is essentially fireball, a linear missile that explodes on the first enemy and does damage. It feels good to use and looks cool no matter what weapon you’re using. The other is Charged Bolt, which for those not familiar with D2 was one of the worse active spells in the game. It casts 3-5 balls of electricity in front of you that move out for a few feet in random directions. For those who know what Charged Bolt is, yes those beetles in Act 2 were fugging annoying and having “cast charged bolt on being hit” was a preety good defensive buff, but it wasn’t the best spell to fight things with is all I’m saying.  I’d rather not ever waste a point in charged bolt beyond the one I need to get lightning. But the game was all, “oh hey, you have this other spell now.” “Oh great game, thanks, but I’ll pass. Can I use the skill point for something else?” “No. /trollface” On top of that, you four core stats are automatically decided for you.

Another case in point is that One class is completely dependent on one class of items. Demon hunter ONLY uses bows. “What happens if i equip a sword, game? Do I just melee attack” “No. You just stand there while I complain about your skills not being compatible with the weapon you’re holding /trollface” Even the mage, who can spell cast regardless of what she’s holding, completely ingores the weapon in her hand. It doesn’t buff the Left mouse spell, it doesn’t add on-hit effects like poison or even extra magic–although it does seem to proc spell effects like kills give life and gain hp back for each hit so I’m super confused about that.
Strike One

Next, so far as I can tell the maps aren’t randomly generated. Granted yes, in this day and age of mandatory grinding and farming, random maps are more of a detriment to a game than a benefit, but it ruins much of the replay value. I walked through the same crypts as both Hunter and Wizard. I knew where all the traps were the second time, where all the epic enemies would be. It was…lame. But I’m willing to hang this one up, so Ball I suppose.

I know this has to be the umpteenth time you’ve heard this, but games like to hold your hand now a days. D3 was no different. That in and of itself wouldn’t be a strike except that every single quest point was not only well documented, but kept on the screen AT ALL TIMES. Whatever happened to “Go to the Den Of Evil and Kill All the Monsters” being in a quest log that you can check when you feel like going along with the plot instead of just wandering around slaughtering zombies? Worse yet, was the fact that it would put markers on the map, even through the fog, to let me know when I was getting close to whatever I was looking for. In a game about finding things. Really.
Strike Two.

Beyond the game holding my hand and making sure I didn’t get lost, I didn’t feel challenged at all. Enemies drop free health along with potions. Your resource to cast spells/use skills regenerates stupid fast. Even when faced with big bruiser bosses, I never got below half health. Either because I had a pile of Potions that I’d picked up on the way there and not used because I stayed at full HP thanks to the free heals or because I had a skill that absorbed attack damage. No I’m not joking. Wizards second defensive spell made me invulnerable for 5 seconds, every 15. By time I was to the end of the beta, I was only level ten and could just wade into waves of enemies and blow them up. Maybe the real game will be harder, I certainly hope so, but I’ll probably never know because I’m out after this lukewarm experience.
Ball Two.

Now we come to my final point. With the focus on skills instead of basic attacks, you’d think switching between them would be easy, right? Well you’d be wrong. Swapping skills is an unnecessary hassle. I couldn’t find any way to map skills to keys so I could swap them. Instead, I had to stop. Open a menu that blocked out the whole screen. Hope that nothing showed up. Pick a skill and then wait for it to load. WTF? No seriously. What. the. Frack? I don’t have a basic attack and I must use skills to do anything, so why the immersion breaking system? What happened to the quick menu on either side? The F-key maps? Even scroll wheeling through skills? To further this frustration, the game doesn’t save the rune you were using to the skill. So each time you reequip it, you have to repick the rune as well. And if you forget? You have to wait for the skill to load. Just to wait for it to load again. Unsufferable and game breaking, this is the worst strike of them all.
Strike Three. I’m no longer interested.

There’s also a litany of other small things that annoyed me. Items were worth nearly nothing. 2GP per is not the way a lootfest works. Chests didn’t feel rewarding because, even though rare, they hardly ever had anything in them worth more than the gold I was tripping over left and right. Your character, regardless of class can cast identify, scroll free. You get Town Portal for almost no reason and casting it sends you back to town instantly instead of acting as a impromptu way point. I guess they felt the game having check points was the same thing. There is no LAN and no single player. The game is always on-line, always connected. Even your own private game is just a closed B.net session. I mean, it’s supposedly F2P, so that’s something, but there are times where I’d like to play the game I paid for when I’m not online.

So instead of picking up the game I’ve been eagerly awaiting for years, I will be picking up Borderlands 2 in September and enjoy my skill trees, my useful feeling gear, my looting, and my local/LAN play.

[Wednesday Ramblings] Tricky Social Media

So I wasn’t sure what to write about today until I opened my email this morning. But sure enough a topic that I could run with presented itself and here I am, typing away.

I’m fairly certain I’m not alone when I say I don’t understand how the whole social media thing works out. Like, I don’t get Twitter. It’s neat, its simple, and I’ve gotten used to how it works, but I can’t tell what it is your supposed to use it for. I think its for those kinds of thoughts you have at random and it certainly makes a good point of contact for other platforms to use—but others seem to have very different ideas about the whole affair. Case in point, I got a few emails this morning about new followers on twitter. Since I’m not rolling in followers, I like check out who’s followed me, as most of the time they’re fairly interesting.

From his tagline, the guy seemed like one of those cases, until I looked at his feed. Every single post was advertising—either for his blog, his books, or his newsletter. In a weeks worth of time, he hadn’t said anything that didn’t look like a spambot could have typed it just the same. There was no personality, only cold marketing. It was tragic and I didn’t follow him back.

But maybe that’s just me, I am pretty bad at the whole social media thing after all. I mean, I’ve got an account on all the usual suspects, but half the time I forget that any of them even exist. To avoid being one of those people with Social Media Diarrhea, I really only speak up when I’ve got something I to say that I feel is worth saying—not that I’m eating or picking my nose or watching that Dimitri Martin special for the fiftieth time. Unfortunately, most of those times is me asking for input on something or to post something like this—making me look just about the same as the first guy whose feed was just hype for things he’s done.

So to counter this I try and talk with people, but that has it’s own, perhaps more dangerous, pitfalls. On Twitter in particular its tougher, I have a hard time knowing when to respond to someone’s tweet. My drafts box is full of half typed responses that I decided to abandon as I wasn’t sure about the etiquette or don’t want to seem creepy by being that guy who responds to everything someone posts—a hard point when some of the people I follow only post once in a while.

I know this probably reads like “Trevor’s social anxiety makes it difficult for him, please pity him” but that’s not what I trying to say. What I’m trying to figure out is the balance between seeming like a selfish twit and being overtly creepy. I feel it’s a fair question seeing as social media isn’t going away and will likely continue to be a driving force of culture, if only online. Its this kind of stuff that I think about when I can’t sleep at night. I think deep down I’m an anthropologist but wasn’t sure what to do with that interest and focused it into writing.

Anyway, rambling now. So I’ll sign off before I hit the saturation point. See you next week!

EDIT: Is the topic image useful?

[Story - WIP] The Haunting at 29th and Q

Synopsis/Background – Jump to Story

One of my goals for my first semester was to write a short story. Not a novel chapter, not a novella that I’d crammed into a tiny space, but a standalone narrative with a beginning, middle and end. That said, this Tess mystery is still part of something larger—think of it as something like the Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple short stories—but I feel it accomplishes that goal of having a narrative singularity.

As a note, the setting is a bit Sci-Fi/Alternate Reality, with primates not being the sole recipients of the “sapience gene.” Though I’ve not quite hammered down all the details, the history does stay pretty close to our own as most of the exceptions are pre-history and end up ironed out by the natural course of events. Yes, I realize that beast people would have greatly altered the course of history, but I’m fairly confident that the major high points would have still happened thanks to the nature of sapience. There would still be leaders, empires, and wars. Conflicts over religion, race, and everything else would still persist. In essence, the names might be different, but the moves and their effects are fairly inevitable.

Anyway, sticking with the Sherlock context, this is after Tess’ Sign of Four and Study In Scarlet cases and is about halfway through Adventures. The principles have already been established and the groundwork for the their relationships laid. The two mains, Kao and Tess, are roommates in Gilligan Hall at River City University.

Tess is at RCU because it is the premiere university for undergraduate creative writing. She has spider in her ancestry which is shown most prominently by her pointed ears and six extra eyes, two in the center of her forehead, one on either temple, and one on either cheekbone; the irises are red and the sclera is black. She is slender, pensive, and styles her hair to hide most of her eyes. She likes playing MMOs.

Kao on the other hand, is going to RCU on a Track and Field scholarship and is a psychology major. Her parents are from Australia and she carries the accent with pride. Kao has ‘roo in her ancestry and as such has their characteristic feet and ears, along with a tail that comes down to the back of her knees. Kao dresses casually, preferring printed t-shirts and loose pants. She is a hardcore PC gamer and does Maui Thai.

The story starts in February, six months into freshman year. People know that Tess solves mysteries about ghosts and the occult, her blog about the cases gets around a thousand hits a day. Their last case was stopping a cult from stealing the silver plates used by President Jefferson for communion. We open as the pair of them walk through historic Citadel Hill towards one of the city’s recent hauntings.

Story – Jump to Top

Tangora Del’Tessa—just Tess, please—and Kao Folsmith stood on the corner opposite of a mansion whose grounds occupied the entire block of 29th and Q in Citadel Hill. The sky was cloudless and the winter evening was tinged with a subtle chill.

“And you’re sure that place isn’t haunted?” Kao asked in a wavering tone. She was bundled up in a heavy black zipper hoodie that bore the letters RCU and came down to her hips. Her long speckled ears were down and back against her scarf. “I saw the news last night. A woman got attacked by the ghost while walking near here.” Her blue eyes darted around the abandoned intersection, looking for any sign of the specter they had come to disprove.

Tess blew her bangs out of her face and shifted in her patch-covered canvas coat. She stared across the street, taking in the huge house for a moment before responding. “Yeah, that place is totally haunted.”

Kao glanced at her roommate, eyebrow quirked and eyes widening. It was so hard to tell when the spider-girl was being serious with her deadpan tone; even now, after six months of living together.

Tess grinned at the expression, “If bad taste could be counted as a haunting, that is. My room is more haunted than this place.”