FeatherWriter fanfic fan club :)

[FeatherWriter]

...Gavin you and those freaking Aeron chairs, I swear to Harmony. *drags GM off-stage with a hook*

 

In the meantime, here! Have an intermission! (Part one, that is, because there will be more to be posted soon!)

[Quiver]

I have been growing increasingly derelict in my duty of reporting and reviewing upon the growing kaiju menace. My bad. Anyway... I'm reading now, so... standard operating procedures are a go.

 

(Also, I'm going off of the Interlude on Ao3, so apologies if some stuff has been added on or posted elsewhere that I'm unaware of. Though a suprirse Scroungers Attack might be fun.)

 

Scene One

Hm. Something interesting I just noticed; I'm not sure what Seiko being dressed casually means.

 

More accurately... I had an idea of what that might have been, but then you guys went to the club, and he surprised me with his fashion choice. It makes me rather curious as to what he was wearing to his meeting with Sylvie, and I don't know if I'm disappointed or not; on the one hand, we don't get any details, so even if it was something 'surprising', the narrative doesn't dwell on it, and it kind of fades into the background. On the other... I'd like to see Seiko outside of work. The closest we've gotten to that so far is him at Zhu's place, and now, and both times he's still with his work 'friends'.

 

By contrast, we've seen Sylvie professionally, publicly and privately. I admit, I'd be kind of curious to see some more interludes of some of the Scroungers without the others around, interacting with NPC's. Might provide an interesting perspective on them...

 

Like the fact that Seiko doesn't conciously need to plan out his kills. I don't know if his casual "This is a sub-optimal killing spot" moment would come up in any circumstance where he wasn't on the job, and getting to see how much of a second-nature it's become to him tells a lot about him. Also... I still have mixed feelings on the guy, at least on a personal level. I think the character works well, is played well, and I enjoy reading him... but I find his actual morals and attitude... sketchy.

It makes it a little uncomfortable when he's completely right, like he is here. Sylvie has been kind of immature, and the entire way through I found myself agreeing with him... and then he said because, if she didn't fix it, he'd fix it. Permanently. And then I remembered that he's responsible for killing a lot of people, and that is so against my moral compass, even though so far the people he's killed have mostly been people who kind of deserved it, and...

 

Yeah. Morally complex characters, yay.

 

(And learning to kill by dancing? Hilarious, awesome, intriguing, etcetera. I want to see one of his dance recitals. I bet he just killed the judges.)

 

Scene Two

 

Okay, I know I'm mostly used to the head-jumping style of Scroungers. Even so...

I kind of found the jump this chapter to be a little bit jarring.

 

The mood change in the first sentance was fine; it worked well, following on from the last one. But... scene one felt like, if it wasn't exclusively in Sylvie's head, it was there 90% of the time. And yes, this chapter still focuses on Sylvie more than the others- at the very least she's the focus of the attention- but reading the two back to back, suddenly dropping into El's head to help with the mats kind of threw me a little.

 

I had a series of jokes for what happened on ring, but I don't know if any of them are reproducible on the forum. I shall simply have to settle for reproaching you guys. What, Seiko can take his shirt off and pin Sylvie, but Sylvie can't to Eleanor? C'mon guys, seriously. So bigoted.

Actually, while it is probably entirely the result of post-drift syndrome... Sylvie noticing Seiko reminds me of what I said waaaaay back when I started doing these reviews, regarding the idea of Sylvie and Seiko as a pairing. The brief conversation about whether or not Mira really's Seiko kind of goes against the idea of Sylvie and him getting together in any form, but...

 

I like drama. And it would certainly cause... drama.

 

And... unexpectedly short online time is unexpectedly short. I'll finish up comments on the last two scenes later, sorry about that.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Quiver

[FeatherWriter]

I'll just kind of lump this all together since it's all kind of about PoV stuff. See, it comes down to writing style and RP style. We've actually talked about some of our differences as a group, and it's interestng to see everyone's ideas on it.

 

I'm a very introspective writer (as is Emmalyn). The way that I write an RP character is very open. Sylvie doesn't keep secrets from the readers and her narration tells you what she's thinking and why she's doing the things she does. I do the same with fiVe and Vee (though sometimes when I'm the only one writing a scene, I'll just pick one of them and do limited view instead.

 

My original concept of the omniscient viewpoint was that the readers would know what was going on with each of the five player characers and that you would understand what each of them were doing and why they were doing it. I saw it as the job of the GM to pull narrative reveals and plot twists and keep secrets from players. It was kind of an idea of "us against Gavin" the way that lots of RP campaigns work.

 

However, Ellie and Emma and Heather have a somewhat different philosophy. See, they like having secrets of their own, and Seiko, Miranda, and Katie all keep secrets from both the audience and the other players. We don't see inside of their heads very often. Their players write them a lot more externally than I do. They've got all kinds of sneaky things going on behind the scenes that they choose not to let us be privy to. They've got plot twists that they want to be the ones to reveal. To both the players and our readers that follow along.

 

Which, that's their choice and that's the way they like to play. Though it does make things interesting and kind of strange when these kinds of different writing styles collide.

 

Take this scene between Sylvie and Seiko. Because I write Sylvie interally and Ellie writes Seiko externally, it reads like it's just from Sylvie's point of view. We don't hear Seiko's inner monologue here at all. In talking to Ellie, I've been told that Seiko brought a backup assassination plan to this little meeting and there were three times where he got fed up with Sylvie and almost used it. But, because Ellie didn't write that in, the audience doesn't know it.

 

So, my idea of full-disclosure omniscience for the five PCs isn't... quite a thing, unfortunately, which makes for some narrative strangeness, but I can't ask for other people to change the way that they like to play and write just for the sake of narrative consistency. It does mean that Scroungers has become a lot more Sylvie POV than it was originally intended to be, but well... that's also just because I'm obsessed and I write lots of scenes for her. It's at least not a limited POV. We still get to know what the other characters are doing sometimes, even when Sylvie's not around to see.

[Quiver]

Scene Three

HARMONY damnation IT SYLVIE.

Alright, I admit; I found the rickroll kind of hilarious, since it is such an over-the-top prank to pull. It then actually made me feel kind of bad whenever Mira brought up the fact that it also affected Vee, was sharing confidential information, and the fact that she was left mortified. So... as I've said before, the fact that you guys are able to, on a dime, turn the tone of something on it's head is pretty awesome...

And then Sylvie tries blackmailing her.

That... annoyed me. Not on a craftperson level- I admit I'd like to see the conversation between fiVe and Sylvie, but the rest of the chapter shows they aren't there yet- but just... treating Sylvie Mansen as a real person, her attempt at blackmailing and emotionally guilting fiVe into getting fixed was ...urgh.

I hope Vee makes Sylvie feel bad, because she deserves to feel bad for that. Her response to a fairly harmless prank being "Hey, let me screw with your insides!" is...

Anyway.

I have to admit, the idea of... what exactly Sylvie saw is a tad confusing to me. I remember the piece of art you posted a while ago, showing the two Vees anthropomorphised, but I just assumed that was for representation purposes; whenever you've mentioned their antics, you tend to phrase it in terms of computer codes or algorithms rather than what two bodies would be doing. When fiVe says she rigged the video, did she populate it with avatars based on that fan art?

It's just mildly confusing because, later, Mira talks about how fiVe's decision should be made on her own time because it was her body.

I liked the subtext of the conversation; with the mention of how it will affect fiVe's body and identity, it sounds (to me) as if Sylvie "fixing" fiVe is related to a transidentity- though that might just be something that's been on my mind lately.

And, honestly, I think I need to do a refresher in the earlier chapters of this. Emotionally, I can kind of relate Miranda to Reika, but I can't quite recall any other way that the two are similar enough for fiVe to make a connection between them.

Scene Four

Eh...

Okay, let me get this out of the way; I don't think this should be a separate scene.

I can fully admit that that's my own biases at play, and it's entirely because of the time stamping. The previous three scenes all had a short 'break' between them, which gave the opening lines a bit of a kick; we were starting in media res, and there was action we missed and we had to be filled in and put it together.

This one doesn't fit that model, since it's more like an epilogue to the last scene. I admit, I only skimmed over the time stamps (so the problem is my own), but whenever Miranda mentioned trouble earlier in the day, I expected that to be our missing time; the fact that it wasn't, and that nothing was gone at all, kind of... threw me a little.

Besides that though, I did think it was an effective epilogue... but, as I say, it does make me question fiVe a bit. Yeah, she's been a bit aggressive throughout the entire series (albeit it, getting better about it), but her attacking Sylvie's ankles before and forcing her to show her the editing codes seems... worse somehow.

Which is silly; she pointed a gun at Sylvie's head, it's hard to get much worse than that. But still... despite the fact that Sylvie is going to change them, I can't help but worry that fiVe is/was going to use those codes to scramble with Vee in some way.

Plus... I'm trying to think what the difference is between what she does here and what Sylvie does before, and I'm not totally sure there is one.

Granted, Sylvie's blackmail would have resulted in a permanent change, whereas fiVe's is a temporary one; it's arguably more noble, even if it is self-serving. But, possibly because of Sylvie's warning about what the editing codes could be used for... I can't help but feel uncomfortable about fiVe taking advantage of Sylvie's guilt to get them.

The last point I really have to make? The Letter. Again, maybe it's just me, but... that letter seems to circle the whole thing back to what Seiko said at the beginning of the Interlude. Yes, it's apologetic... but it's also a little self-pitying, the demands to be shouted at sounds rather self-flagellating, and I can't help but think there's a bit of a tone of passive-aggression.

Sylvie Mansen is complex, I guess?

I'll just kind of lump this all together since it's all kind of about PoV stuff. See, it comes down to writing style and RP style. We've actually talked about some of our differences as a group, and it's interestng to see everyone's ideas on it.

I'm a very introspective writer (as is Emmalyn). The way that I write an RP character is very open. Sylvie doesn't keep secrets from the readers and her narration tells you what she's thinking and why she's doing the things she does. I do the same with fiVe and Vee (though sometimes when I'm the only one writing a scene, I'll just pick one of them and do limited view instead.

My original concept of the omniscient viewpoint was that the readers would know what was going on with each of the five player characers and that you would understand what each of them were doing and why they were doing it. I saw it as the job of the GM to pull narrative reveals and plot twists and keep secrets from players. It was kind of an idea of "us against Gavin" the way that lots of RP campaigns work.

However, Ellie and Emma and Heather have a somewhat different philosophy. See, they like having secrets of their own, and Seiko, Miranda, and Katie all keep secrets from both the audience and the other players. We don't see inside of their heads very often. Their players write them a lot more externally than I do. They've got all kinds of sneaky things going on behind the scenes that they choose not to let us be privy to. They've got plot twists that they want to be the ones to reveal. To both the players and our readers that follow along.

Which, that's their choice and that's the way they like to play. Though it does make things interesting and kind of strange when these kinds of different writing styles collide.

Take this scene between Sylvie and Seiko. Because I write Sylvie interally and Ellie writes Seiko externally, it reads like it's just from Sylvie's point of view. We don't hear Seiko's inner monologue here at all. In talking to Ellie, I've been told that Seiko brought a backup assassination plan to this little meeting and there were three times where he got fed up with Sylvie and almost used it. But, because Ellie didn't write that in, the audience doesn't know it.

So, my idea of full-disclosure omniscience for the five PCs isn't... quite a thing, unfortunately, which makes for some narrative strangeness, but I can't ask for other people to change the way that they like to play and write just for the sake of narrative consistency. It does mean that Scroungers has become a lot more Sylvie POV than it was originally intended to be, but well... that's also just because I'm obsessed and I write lots of scenes for her. It's at least not a limited POV. We still get to know what the other characters are doing sometimes, even when Sylvie's not around to see.

Firstly... to you, and the other Scroungers; apologies if I tend to focus a bit much of Sylvie analysis to the detriment of the others.

Second... thanks for that. I've said it in the past and I'll say it in the future; I love reading about different ways people write, so I'd be more than happy to hear more about that sort of thing if you guys would be open to it; 17th Shard Sydney Scroungers Q&A, maybe?

I... kind of figure I ought to say something else, but I can't think of anything appropriately insightful to say, so I'll... leave this as is. Albeit with the usual compliments; I'm enjoying the campaign you guys are running. You might have different writing styles, and I'll admit there are times when I might wish for more time inside, say, Katie's head or something, but I do think it comes together really well.

Edited May 20, 2014 by Quiver

[FeatherWriter]

So for the longest time the chat window that we ran that one in was called "Sylvie does dumb things" just because it amused me. I can try to explain. So like Sylvie says, she already sees everything that fiVe and Vee do in the Drift, but normally it feels more like just raw, simple memory streams. To Sylvie, it'd be like watching a security camera feed - expecting a steady, linear stream of information and experience, and instead you get a jumpy edited video with music of the same stuff instead. Which, seeing that inside her head unexpectedly was shocking and nearly threw her into a seirzure (she says, but she probably wasn't actually in any danger, as fiVe knew.) It wasn't so much an actual video as an edited sequence of memories and experiences that Sylvie got dumped on her all at once.

 

And Sylvie is not good with "new" experiences while Drifting. That's kind of her whole thing.

 

As for Vee and fiVe's little scenes, you're right in that they don't have bodies or even really avatars. They're programs, and what it usually consists of is fiVe making edits and corruptions to Vee's programming, slightly simulating her own corruption and damage on Vee - with Vee's consent, of course. Despite the fact that it isn't actually "sexual" (obviously because they don't actually have anatomy with which to do that kind of stuff) it is an intimate experience. Vee letting someone else edit her code, even if they put her back together afterward, is a really strange experience for Sylvie. Sylvie puts up with it, because it's Vee's choice and it is getting fiVe to well, not hate them both, so it's working. But she does know everything that they're doing together because she and Vee are Drift partners and you really can't hide anything in the Drift.

 

Regarding the structure, yeaaaaah, this one's a little weird getting tacked on the end. However, I tend to be a little bit laxer with these Intermission scenes. They're not full sessions, just kind of whatever we need wherever we need it, so I don't really fret about timing and what not.

 

IDK if you're still avoiding tumblr, but if you're not, the Scrounger Ask Blog was kinda set up specifically for that purpose, and we'd love to get questions from you. You don't just have to ask questions to the characters, you're allowed to ask us as players about things as well. If there's anyone you'd like to ask about writing styles or why they do certain things with their characters, we'd love to talk with you!

[Quiver]

Have some time (and a computer) to kill, so I thought I should comment on some of your stuff. I'll edit this post with them (obviously, as usual), but in the meantime... I can't seem to send a message to your Ask Scroungers blog. (Or rather, I can, but it wants my email address, which I don't feel like giving out) so... here it is, repeated on 17!

 

General question for you guys; obviously, there are no such thing as Jaegers (yet). While the Shatterdome might be a mix of various real-world militaries, it's also something wholley it's own. Same with the Drift; it's an experience which doesn't exist in the real world.

Some of this, obviously, comes from movie; but how much has the movie influenced your depictions of the characters and the worlds, and how much (and what) research did you have to do on your own?

Edited June 13, 2014 by Quiver

[Quiver]

...Except for some reason this browser won't let me edit past the quote. Great. Where is the nose-pinching emote when you need it? If a mod or someone could merge this reply into the above, I'd appreciate it...

 

Anyway, as a random comment on a  random post before I start... I saw someone mentioned Sanderson music. Why don't we have more of that? We're totally a legit fandom, we should have a lot more music.

 

First up...  the short scene. I admit, I do find a bit of dark humour in that a piece written to cheer you up (according to the intro) is all about making Sherman unhappy.

 

Actually, the piece itself is kind of funny in a general (and, literally, disgusting) way, with the asides reminding us that the only reason he doesn't find his job and situation disgusting anymore is because he's been doing it for so long. I like the juxtaposition at the begining, between calling him the 'second-in-command' and wearing a janitors hat... and, while I don't know how much this will pay off later, I can only hope it will do so in spades.

 

As I've said, I find Sherman to be, quite possibly, the most interesting NPC (I discount Zhu because she's that much of a bad chull mother stormer and I kind of consider her the "Sixth Ranger" GM character at this point). And the Yegerov family dynamics could be kind of interesting. On a social level, the Prettier helps balance any criticism you guys might be recieving, since she shows "Hey, look, non-hetero characters can be jerks too"; in game, I can't help but be intrigued that the woman running some kind of a mafia is related to a guy who got into the most important military program on the planet. There sounds like there must be one hell of a story there, and I really hope you guys come back to it.

 

Also, I want a gang war between Yegerov and Wulagu. But a huge turf war over which of them gets to kill the Scroungers would be hilarious.

I will not object to the turf war being resolved with a game of strip poke.

 

And... idiocy, thy name is Quiver. Didn't realize the intermission was the same as the one on Ao3 I commented on. My bad.

 

Shasnah in Asgard, huh? Well, I don't really like Crossovers, and Shasnah isn't my preferred pairing, but maybe this could be OH GOD, FEATHER, WHY.

 

Okay, I know you tagged it as being sad, but STILL. I'm caught between hitting myself for not realizing the twist sooner, and hitting YOU for making the twist happen!

I mean, I don';t know if it can be called a twist, if it follows the books plot BUT STILL.

 

WoR Spoilers

First of all... I liked how you presented the relationship between Jasnah and Shallan, as it's actually closer to how I imagine a canon Shasnah would turn out. My take on Jasnah is that she's uninterested in either gender, so the fact that the romance appears to come entirely from Shallan is good to see; it lets me keep my ace!Jasnah headcanon while letting the story do it's own thing.

 

In fact, not seeing Jasnah at all makes the ending sadder, I think, though I'm not entirely sure I can explain why.

 

Though... you keep them all in-character, but can't bring yourself to make Shallan think of Renarin as being weird and creepy, just quiet? I found that amusing.

 

But.. urgh. The twist. I hate you. I really, really hate you.

It's right there, in the first paragraph, about something being off or missing, but because it's buried in the wonder, the awe of the sights of Asgard, I missed it. Even whenever you expressly said that she was not immortal, I still missed it. It might be because of how you tagged the story; since it was Shasnah, and Shallan doesn't appear to realise the depth of her feelings, I expected the 'something missing' to be filed in at the end with her realizing she loved Jasnah, with the not-immortal line serving as an explanation as to how a goddess and a mortal can have a relationship. Maybe it's not a twist, but I didn't expect Jasnah to be dead, and I HATE YOU.

 

Personally, I love narratives where characters say or do one thing, without realizing they mean/want the other, so I really enjoyed your presentation of Asgard. The opening really does establish how great, and gran and awe-inspiring it is, which makes Shallans disappointment in it at the end of the piece more striking.

 

So, yes. I liked it.

You evil tugger of heartstrings, you.

Edited June 13, 2014 by Quiver

[FeatherWriter]

Aaaand this is why I need to follow fewer threads because dangit I totally missed that you had responded to this orz. And I could do my modly duty and combine your two threads, but I want to give you two upvotes and also it's my thread so I don't even care. Bring it, admins. 

 

So, in order, I suppose?

 

Question

I'll probably wait to send your question on to the team since we're still on hiatus and I don't want to bug our people who aren't up for Scroungery things right now. The good news is, we've got an end in sight for that break! There's a very short campaign run by Ellie going on right now (because Gavin wanted to try something different just to get refreshed) and as soon as we're done with that, it sounds like most people are ready to jump back into the game to finish up these last few intermission scenes and head into Act 4!

 

Sherman

The piece actually wasn't written for me, but for Emma (lunarubato / plays Miranda). Gavin wrote it, since ze's the one who controls the NPCs. However, ze submitted it to Emma's blog (lunarubato) and because tumblr is DUMB it doesn't keep the source attribution of the submitter when you reblog it, so it showed up because I got it from her blog. It's canon though, so it needed to be in the tag, right?

 

As the co-GM now, I can definitely say that you will see more from Wulagu certainly. Hopefully the Yegorovs will be back as well...

 

Shasnah in Asgard

*loud cackling* OMH Quiver, that wasn't even supposed to be a twist! You don't even know how hard I'm laughing right now! Yeah, it's pretty bad, but hey, gotta keep up the fandom monster cred, right? Despite the fact that Jasnah doesn't make an appearance, I didn't think I could tag this as anything other than Shasnah, with the way that Shallan's thinking about her. It was definitely written in a "Shallan has a major crush on her mentor, whose feelings in return are unknown" mindset. Which is probably as close to writing actual Shasnah as I will get, because I'm not great at writing for pairings I don't actually ship. 

 

I realized that I never posted a link in here for other people so here you guys go: [[Tumblr]] or [[AO3]]

 

If it makes you feel better, you can imagine that this follows canon and that Jasnah isn't actually dead, Shallan just thinks she is? I said one day that I'd write a happy Asgardian reunion possibly in order to balance this one out, but I haven't gotten around to it.

 

And yes, I had her and Renarin not meet because A. It's supposed to be mid-Words-of-Radiance and they don't really talk at all until the end and B. DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT THE WAY SHE TREATED HIM AT THE END. Renarin baaaaaby. [/spoilers]

 

Also for those following along, I've updated my AO3 account with... pretty much all of my writings, including some of the drabbles I've written for the forum. Some of which I have now titled for the first time, since I don't normally title drabbles. "Otherworldly Intruders" (Thor and Loki on Scadrial), "A Terrible Curse" (Full title redacted for spoilers, Renarin as an antagonist), "Into The Ghostbloods" (Shallan as an antagonist, and "He's Useless" (Renarin has secret powers circa WoK)

 

Upcoming works that I'm still cracking away at are... a post-WoR Shallarin drabble, Renarin in Bridge 4 circa Way of Kings, and a very, very sad piece about Tien for the "Cosmere Fandom Is Still The Worst Fandom" challenge that's going on this month, so I'll keep you guys posted on those.

 

I aaaalso got pulled into a Scadrial RP by some friends on tumblr, which is what I've been working on with most of my spare time recently. Scroungers hiatus has left a gap and I am filling it with this. It's a modern day Scadrial group called "Elendel United" and it is absurdly fun. I'm playing a barista by day, informant by night girl named Eliane Casuana, who suffers from a rather acute fear of allomancers. She's a good person, but she's got to try to navigate the underworld to keep herself safe and push herself through a lot of unpleasantness in the meantime. 

 

I'm not sure how interested people would be in reading something like that, but It's cosmere and it's written by me, so if you think that sounds interesting, I can link you to some fun things. Most of the threads are ongoing, but thre's some really interesting ones that I'm having fun with.

• The Concert Job: Eliane and a Leecher named Jace team up to take down a bad-news Pewterarm.
• Off To The Club: Eliane heads out to one of the nightclubs in the sixth octant with a few friends, but they wonder if she might have ulterior motives in wanting to go.
• Dier Returns: Eliane's coinshot brother has been looking for his little sister these past few years, but now that he's found her, he wonders if she might be useful to him. (Starts with a longer form fic by me of the two of them and then transitions into her running to a friend to help recover.)

[Quiver]

Huh. So...

 

I just realised I never commented on Prepared. My bad.

 

I had a quick glance over it just now- I don't have time to critique it yet, but I'll edit this post with it later when I do. In the meantime, quick question; do you plan on continuing that narrative, or keeping it just as a short, one-off what if situation?

 

Okay, so... it's short, which is what makes me wonder if you're going to continue it; as a starting point for an alternate universe, it's pretty interesting. I liked how you highlighted some of the similarities between Tien and Kaladin (such as the 'fighting to protect' phrase, or Tien also having had some training under Lirin) while still commenting on the differences, like Tien not being 'meant' to hold a spear. 

 

Honestly, the only thing I have to complain about in it -aside from shortness, but then, I always want more from you- is this part:

 

They had said he wouldn’t have to fight. They had said he would be a messenger. Amaram had promised. But when the tides of the battle turned, promises became cheap things indeed. He tried to calm his trembling nerves, but he was terrified. He’d only been out on the field a few minutes with his newly assembled squad, and while they hadn’t had an altercation with the enemy yet, he knew that wasn’t going to last very long.

 

I like most of that paragraph, and the one following it; the hectic denial makes sense for Tien's character and his situation. But that bolded part...

It doesn't quite fit how I see him. It's a nice turn of phrase, but it kind of feels more appropriate for a more.. cynical or a detached character, someone like Kaladin. For Tien, it seems more appropriate to be fixating on the fact that Amaram had promised, that he's nervous, wishing Kaladin was there. That line kind of stands out to me as something which is a nice phrase for an author, or a different narrator, but not appropriate for Tien- at least not here.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Quiver