Kaymyth

There, um, also may be a fiendish plot to go filk-caroling around the Exhibit Hall on Monday.

Meet at the 17th Shard booth at 6pm Monday if you want in on these shenanigans.

1 hour ago, Silver Phantom said:

 

When and where, I will be their.

Are you on the Discord? The information (and the ability to RSVP so the organizers know how many people are going) is in the pins in the #events-and-streams channel.

On 11/8/2023 at 7:36 AM, Omnicrola said:

Has anyone organized a 17s meetup during the con? Was surprised there was no mention of one in this thread.

I know there's a meetup planned for Sunday prior to con, but it's mostly been discussed on Discord.

Oh, hey, look, a thing that I belong to!

I started learning the flute when I was in 6th grade, so 11 years old. Thats, um...35 years ago. xD

And yes, I can still play, though I do have a stronger proficiency on the oboe.

On 1/28/2023 at 9:14 PM, Shining Silhouette said:

*imposer invades*

Anyone here play jazz flute

Like Spain by Chick Corea?

Ooh, ooh! I did this! I played bass keyboard in high school jazz band, but my senior year, I managed to convince my director to let me do a solo on the flute. Got myself an Outstanding Soloist award at contest that year.

On 8/24/2023 at 2:03 AM, Robin Sedai said:

I wonder if the mods have a way of telling who has made the most reports. I think I'd have a shot at top place tbh

Not really, unfortunately. Even if there were a way to pull the data, we have a general policy of deleting spambot reports once they've been handled. This keeps the report screen from being cluttered so we can focus in on real member issues that might need to be resolved.

And a general PSA for everyone:

You only need to report one post per spambot. Our special sparkly nuke button bans the account and deletes all of their content in one fell swoop (and we are very, very careful about how we use it, because the content deletion is irreversible).

One report to nuke them all, and in the darkness smite them!

18 minutes ago, Munazir said:

I’m about to start that. I thought Allomander Jak was a story and not a real life event in Scadrial

It is, and most of it is abject nonsense (though the Handerwym footnotes are deliciously funny). However, the koloss lore we get from it is accurate, according to Brandon.

Quote

I don't think it was explained in books at all. It relies on your knowledge of HoA and Koloss named Human. Some Koloss were in Kandra's Homeland when Sazed Ascened. Below I explain it a bit more in a spoiler box, but I really think it wasn't said in anywhere books at all: 

You can pick up details of this from "Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania" which is included in the Alloy of Law supplement to the Mistborn Adventure Game, and was then reprinted in Arcanum Unbounded.

On 8/13/2023 at 1:38 PM, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

Now, I am genuinely interested to ask this question. Respectfully, @Kaymyth, with your beliefs, how do you view books like the Kane Chronicles which deal with the ancient Egyptian gods in a fantasy outlook?

I haven't read the Kane Chronicles themselves, but in general I look at it all with a dollop of humor. Some people do their research and others...don't.

(Cut to memories of me choking with laughter while watching Moon Knight with all of the avatars and even the gods themselves using the Greek version of their names, instead of anything resembling what we think the ancient Egyptians called them. I keep waiting for my spouse to stuff a lump of chocolate into my mouth when I go off on TV-watching rants, but he seems to enjoy my pedantry.)

I will say that I absolutely adore the Brenden Frasier/Rachel Weisz Mummy movies (all 2 of them, the 3rd doesn't count), and while they do wander off into the ridiculous, they at least make a good effort. The whole "Anubis is a dark, scary entity!" bit makes me roll my eyes every time (I've always had an impression of him being very gentle), when characters speak in any form of Kemetic, they do properly call him "Anpu".

On 7/28/2023 at 5:20 PM, Aeoliae said:

Also, has anyone noticed the accounts for obvious business reasons that just have no posts?

Sometimes they just failed to get past the requirements to make their first post because bots are dumb.

And also, sometimes we've already banned them. If you're finding them via the daily birthdays, you'll see a lot of older bots floating around. Regular users can't see if a particular account has been banned.

On 7/30/2023 at 6:27 PM, Scars of Hathsin said:

AND WHO GIVES A BOT REP.!!!!!

Other bots. One spammer will create a set and try and have them cross-upvote themselves in an attempt to get clicks. Pity for them it doesn't work around here.

 

We appreciate y'alls diligence in hitting the Report button on these things. Several of us try and catch them pre-emptively when we can, but the internet is dark and full of spammers. We see you, and we come at your calls.

(Now, what's really funny is when the bots go and report their own posts. Someone out there wrote some janky bot code, and we mods get the occasional giggle out of it.)

When you go to create a post or reply, you'll see that it opens up a text box with a bunch of tools across the front.

The eyeball is the spoiler tool.

 

On 6/28/2023 at 4:39 PM, Argenti said:

Please try not to post in threads from more than like 6 months ago, unless you have something really good to add to the conversation; it's technically against shard policy. It's mostly for organizational purposes (I think?).  If you want to show your appreciation, you can just give some rep, but yes it is a very cool drawing...

I'm going to contradict this, at least to an extent, as I really don't have a problem with this thread being replied to. Creative types are, IME, rarely ones to take offense to praise, even if it's on old work.

Now, the fact that the replies look like they might be from bots, that's another story. But that's what the Report button is for.

3 hours ago, Argenti said:

... What does this have to do with anything?

The spambot has been appropriately sniped. Please return to your regularly scheduled Sanderson discussion.

Mmmmm, spaghetti.

7 minutes ago, AonEne said:

 we are indeed just regular people none of us are kandra in disguise. not a single one. certainly not all of us in a grand conspiracy,

Of course we're not kandra. Our spikes give us mod powers, not shapeshifting abilities. We're like the forum/Discord version of Steel Inquisitors!

3 hours ago, Shining Silhouette said:

Hey @Argent, @Kaymyth, @Windrunner, @WeiryWriter, I loved seeing you all at the Shardcast recording! Thanks for all you do for the community and this site and helping everyone figure out the incredible puzzle that is the cosmere! It was a highlight of my day.

Thank you so much! We had a blast doing it!

I am indeed Pagan - Kemetic, specifically. (For those who aren't familiar with the term, it is the religious tradition associated with the gods of ancient Egypt.)

I've talked about it pretty openly, both in my AMA thread and the Shard's original Religion thread. Yep, we had one. And it stayed respectful then, too.

I am shamelessly abusing my moderator powers and double-posting (but hey, it's been a year-and-a-half since my last post, so I don't feel too bad).

Guess what I finished?

And guess what is now posted up on AO3? Yep, that's right: Clear and Present Discord. Finally, the full story behind how Twilight Sparkle read George R.R. Martin's books!

Please note a content warning for some mild innuendo, though I do think it'll go straight over the heads of the most innocent.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36792862?view_full_work=true

2 hours ago, AonEne said:

*cracks neck* HI. 

Hi!

2 hours ago, AonEne said:

I just read through all of the thread (fight me, you're interesting and a good writer) and from what I remember of the Kane Chronicles, Anubis/Anpu was actually portrayed as being a good person? Don't remember details, but I know he ended up nice. Hopefully in a way he's okay with. (Set was definitely a villain for some of the series, though.)

You're gonna make me blush.

And that's pretty nice. I bet Anpu appreciates that. And Set seems to think it's hilarious the literary villainy he gets cast in, so I'm sure he's fine there, too.

3 hours ago, AonEne said:

Your epic death scene that I'm sure you remember writing after six years also made me think of a question: Will you forgive me for not having read Swift as Steel even though you sent it to me mooooonths ago? I always mean to and then I go off and read something else. Whoops.

Where are you at in terms of progress there? I've seen you talking about Eva in #writing but I don't know if you're editing now, or working on a sequel, or what. 

Ha! I think I forgot you were among the people I sent it to. xD I'm almost finished with the de-fanfictioning draft, so if you ever want to see what my book looked like when it was still in the Mistborn world, the window is closing. (Assuming I didn't break all of the links when I moved the draft files into a new folder on Google Drive - I never know what that's going to do.)

I'm currently in the midst of rewriting the climax of the book, which is hard because changing the world and the magic system essentially borked all of my action scenes. The more action-y a sequence, the more intensely the scene has to be retooled. And the ending is even more different, because there are a few key plot points that I fiddled with; all in all, the story itself is much stronger now that I'm no longer twisting my narrative into pretzels to avoid contradicting Mistborn canon.

I have this plotted out as a series of 7 books, and I have at least a general set of events in mind for each book. It gon be gud.

But this week and next, I need to focus in on that Other Project I've been working on (you know the one).

3 hours ago, AonEne said:

What's your favorite candy?

Chocolate. Yum, chocolate.

3 hours ago, AonEne said:

Do you prefer sociology or psychology?

Well, if you're gonna make me choose, I guess I'll have to say psychology. Mostly because my brain is a strange mix of weird genetic oddities and borked-up neurochemistry. I've struggled with ADHD and OCD for my entire life, and learning more about how all of that works has given me a massive sense of empowerment over it all. It's really helped.

3 hours ago, AonEne said:

If a horde of monsters came through your window, what kind of monster would you want them to be? 

Gimmee some angry ghosts. I can take 'em. I'll drop-kick the little jerks into the next multidimensional ZIP code.

I'm sorry, folks, but no. Even setting aside the danger of this going off the rails, this thread runs counter to the type of culture we want to cultivate on the Shard. We appreciate that you meant it in good fun, but it just doesn't work.

Locking the topic.

12 hours ago, Frustration said:

1. Perfection
2. Omnipotence
3. Omniscience

This is, I feel, a very subjective definition.

I'm not sure you realize this, but I'm a Kemetic Pagan. The gods I worship are those of ancient Egypt, and they fit none of these criteria.

But I'll tell you now, I will get very offended if someone starts trying to explain to me how my gods aren't actual gods.

57 minutes ago, Garapheater said:

Cheers for the lovely response it helps a lot, your totally correct about the punctuation part, I failed English in secondary school due to that mostly (I still try my best with it though). The part I have been stuck on for a few week on is a conversation between two characters because I'm not exactly the most outgoing bloke in the world because of my severe anxiety the only people I really speak to are close friends and family. sorry if I'm ranting nonsense now I'm truly grateful for the response <3 

With punctuation, it really comes down to memorizing a bunch of rules. It's annoying and dull, but that's the only way to learn it. Take notes, make a cheat sheet, whatever works for you.

This is one piece where having a writing group can be really useful, but only if you have the right group of people. Ideally, you want folks who all have different strengths and weaknesses, so you each have something to contribute to the others. And y'know, even when you're good at a thing, sometimes you'll make a mistake. In my group, we're constantly fixing each other's grammar/spelling/punctuation all over the place.

I have been told that dialogue in particular is difficult to get right, and that I'm freakishly good at writing it, so I'll share the trick I use to get mine smooth. Even if you don't talk to a lot of people, I assume you watch at least some TV/movies, right? I tend to imagine my characters on the screen. I visualize them, build the scene, and run them through it in my head over and over, working the scene until I have the emotions right, the movements, and the conversation. Once I have it sorted, well, I just write what I've pictured. It works well for me, though as always, your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: So apparently the introduction of the Cultivation bot has been so popular that the sprint messages spammed the heck out of the #writing channel. We have created a new #sprintspam channel (located conveniently directly below #botspam) for all your writing sprint needs.

I shall edit my first post to bring all information up to date.

Also: feel free to use this thread to coordinate and collect sprint groups if you like.

Okay, I have maybe half an author credential crumpled in my back pocket; I've got a short story published and a weekly writing critique group I'm part of, so there's a halfway decent chance I know what I'm talking about. I'm going to take a moment to kick my imposter syndrome to the curb and chime in with opinion in three parts:

1. The kudos: You show a lot of promise as a writer. You've already got a good grasp of narrative flow, and you're demonstrating skill at painting a picture with words. These pieces are huge and, in some ways, the harder things to teach. You're clearly an avid reader, as it shows in your writing. You understand the feel of how writing words. That's invaluable.

2. The harshest truth: Writing is work. Growing as a writer is even more work. The old saying goes, "It takes at least a million words of crap in order to learn how to write well." And it's true. It's going to take time and a lot more words before you're writing at the level you want to be. But know that every single writer out there has done the same, and you have the spark. You can do it, if you've the will.

3. One thing to work on: I want to leave you with some concrete feedback without making you feel like I've picked your selection apart with a red pen, so I'm going to give you an assignment of one single thing you can improve: punctuation. Study up on your comma placement and, particularly, the correct punctuation to use around dialogue. It's an easy thing that you can learn that will give you immediate results. It's a small piece that will have a big impact on the overall look, flow, and polish of your writing.

Good on you for being brave and sharing your work! I know that first time can be hard, and getting any kind of criticism can be crushing for a newbie writer. So I have one final piece of bonus advice for you: keep sharing. Keep putting yourself out there. It's hard, I know, but the only way for any writer to grow is to take the feedback and use it to improve your writing. Because no matter how successful, every writer has been exactly where you are right now. All of us. Every single one. (And, in fact, some of us may well have started a lot further back!)

Even now, Brandon Sanderson himself will sometimes write something that turns out to be broken. He's shelved projects that didn't work. (See: Apocalypse Guard.) Good writers aren't born, they're grown.

Keep growing!

Brandon has done one hell of a job in reaching and supporting new/emergent writers. Reading Alloy of Law cracked my brain open, and activated my Writer Mode. I hadn't asked for it, hadn't been expecting it, but it just happened.

I still don't know whether I happened to hit some kind of "words read" threshold that auto-triggered something or if Brandon hid some kind of secret Konami Code in the book that specifically worked on my brain. What I do know is, now I can't shut it off.

His writing lecture videos made a huge impact, too. I learned an extraordinary amount from watching them.

Hello my fellow writers of the 17th Shard!

 

Do you find accountability helpful for your daily writing productivity? Maybe you find that a little friendly competition spurs you on? Or perhaps you simply enjoy a bit of camaraderie now and then?

 

Well, starting Monday, September 6, Rasaar and I are going to be running regular writing sprints on the Shard Discord! We’ll go Monday-Friday, 2pm-5pm Central Time US.

That is, for reference:

12pm-3pm Pacific Time (US)

3pm-6pm Eastern Time (US)

8pm-11pm London Time (UK)

 

What the heck is a writing sprint?

A writing sprint is a focused, timed period of writing designed to increase word count by dissuading distractions and, with multiple participants, add a little competition. NaNoWriMo calls them Word Wars, but the principle is the same: set a timer, WRITE, then report on your progress! We’ve also added a new bot to the Discord server to facilitate tracking sprints (more on that below).

 

Why are you doing this?

Well, for me specifically, I have ADHD, which comes with it executive dysfunction issues. Experience has taught me that I work best when I am accountable to some other human(s) in order to be at my best. I’ve had good luck with joining others’ writing sprints, but they aren’t always at the most convenient time for me, nor are they as consistent as I would prefer. 

 

As for Rasaar, she has expressed to me a similar desire for some structure with getting into the writing groove. We actually came up with the idea of running Shard writing sprints independently of each other, and by a stroke of luck, our preferred writing times line up very well despite being in wildly different time zones.

 

How exactly are you going to structure three hours of sprinting?

We’re planning to do multiple sprints per session in 30-minute blocks. We’ll probably do something along the lines of 25-minutes of writing to a 5-minute break. We can tweak the details as we figure out what works best.

 

This is a great idea, but Crazy Unicorn Lady, these times don’t work for me!

Worry not! The Discord bot we’re using for the sprints will be accessible to everyone, though will be limited to the #sprintspam channel, located near the bottom of the Discord channel list. If there are other times on any day that work for you and a few of your friends, you are more than welcome to hop onto Discord and utilize it! And while you may be familiar with Sprinto, we’ve renamed it to Cultivation to fit in with our snazzy little theme.

 

We’ve also created a new voice channel -- Creative -- for the sake of all writing and arting discussion. You can verbally coordinate sprints there and, if you like, chat during the rest minutes between sprints.

 

I’m in! But I can’t do it every weekday. Is it okay if I only join a couple days a week?

Of course! Join when it works for you. Barring holidays, vacations, and emergencies, we plan to keep a regular schedule so you know when to expect us there. (Having two mods running the event together will help there!)

 

Neat! I’m on the Discord now and I want to run my own sprints. How do I use Cultivation?

Cultivation is a fairly simple bot that has been programmed with basic commands. She can start a sprint, keep track of time, and even track your word count during the sprint! Bear in mind, though, she doesn’t work in every channel. Mostly, we expect member-run sprints to happen in #writing. Moderator-run sprints can occur in #writing or #chat-for-voice. Per the first update comment: all sprints should take place on the #sprintspam channel.

 

Bot Commands:

**Starting the sprint:**

_sprint 20 -- in 1 minute, start a 20-minute sprint

_sprint 20 in 5 -- in 5 minutes, start a 20-minute sprint

_sprint 20 now -- start a 20-minute sprint right now

(The maximum sprint time is 60 minutes.)

**Participating:**

_join -- join the sprint with starting word count of 0

_join 100 -- join the sprint with starting word count of 100

_wc 200 -- set your word count to 200 (the bot will ask you to do this after the sprint ends)

_= -- join the sprint with starting word count equal to the last word count you've given the bot

**Stopping:**

_forget -- you will not be pinged for the next sprint (otherwise, Cultivation will ping you for 3 sprints after the last you participated in)

_cancel -- stops the sprint you started

 

So, say you’ve got some people ready to write and you want to start a sprint. No problem! Simply go to the #writing channel in the 17th Shard Discord and start her up! Say you want to run a 15-minute sprint -- you’ll type “_sprint 15” into the chat, hit enter, and the bot will respond. If you don’t want the sprint to start immediately, that’s fine, too! You can instead type “_sprint 15 in 3” and a 15-minute sprint will begin in 3 minutes.

 

Now, you and everyone else needs to officially join the sprint with your word count. Cultivation makes it easy to track based on your current document count - just tell her where you’re starting at the beginning of the sprint. You’ve already got 1,257 words written in your current Work in Progress, so you’ll type “_join 1257” to set the starting point.

 

When the sprint is over, Cultivation will ping an alert and text marking the end of the sprint will appear on screen! Say now you’re document is up to 1,513 words - you’ll type “_wc 1513” into the chat. The bot will automatically calculate the number of words you’ve written and save the data.

 

Once everyone has input their final word counts, Cultivation will send a message to the chat with a ranking of every participant and their final results.

 

Cultivation’s command list will also be pinned to a message on the channel, so if you forget how to work her, the information will always be at your fingertips.

 

Happy writing, and we hope to see you in writing sprints on the Discord!

2 hours ago, Boomerang Guy said:

Well I'm going to be honest. I don't have a whole lot I can add to this. I am a man of few words. Its hard for me to get my true thoughts and feelings portrayed accurately sometimes. I have pretty bad social-anxiety, and just anxiety in general, as well as sever ADD, and though I was never diagnosed with OCD, I feel like I am with certain things. I

Oh, hai there, ADHD/OCD twin!

(My diagnoses are fresh, but I've been dealing with this crem basically my entire life. OCD is annoying.)