i'm dead serious about this but also it might take me a while to get back to you

[redthedragon]

Reply to this post if you would be willing to read an approximately 20% finished chunk of my capstone project and tell me what you like about it. I'm gonna try something new to motivate myself with, since "write so I don't fail this semester" is NOT cutting it and "write so I can show things to my story advisor" almost is.

In terms of details:
- story is a short horror-mystery; at the end of the day it'll be a game but it's 90% "read someone's notes and figure out what you're doing in a weird place" with a very minor exploration/point and click element so i could fit more stuff into it
- no particular content warnings (nothing graphic at all) but there will be some description of and talking around the concept of death and paranoia, also tempted to flirt with the idea of the main character thinking they might be having a psychotic episode but i'm not sold on that.
- the part i'm working on is meant to be like reading through someone's journal where they wrote about their notes watching two of their friends do some science and didn't really understand much of it; I have more beyond that but i haven't written any of it because [see above].
- at some point it will probably have a handwriting font and background details that look like lined paper but i'm doing away with that for the moment, so it should be easy to read, but if not, let me know and i'll get it fixed

thank you in advance/sorry if it's barely parseable, it's been a difficult past few weeks.

Comments

[autobotscoutriella]

Hi there, I would LOVE to take a look! I'm at work but I can do a less-detailed read now or a more-detailed read in seven hours. Or both. (Or actual scheduled time later in the week/month/etc., I'm flexible.)

[redthedragon]

:D I'll send you what I got when I finish writing for the night! Don't worry about getting back to me any time soon though, like, take your time and read it when you get around to it - I mostly just need to feel like someone wants to see it LOL

Sorry about how long it's been, it's been one of those weeks lol.

[autobotscoutriella]

Sounds good! I am indeed very interested to see it :D

And no worries, it's been one of those weeks for me too. Honestly it will be a welcome break from struggling to get over the bump of Writing My First Fic In A Specific Genre.

[redthedragon]

Alright, here is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/161jDfGGxuKh0l3Lfx30tViOaIHC_0ZDB/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100855855228841821533&rtpof=true&sd=true

let me know if there's anything i can do to make the formatting easier on you :D and of course if you have thoughts, i'd love to hear those too

[autobotscoutriella]

Thoughts! Delivered as I read through it (on the bus and at work so they're a little disjointed)

- my GOD you have captured the experience of being the non-science person in the science lab with pitch-perfect accuracy. This narrator is me every time my coworkers try to explain the "really simple" statistics thing they're doing (right down to the part where they try to explain the basics beforehand, except I don't understand the basics either).

- do I spy a sneaky Transformers reference with the thing about a CGI company melting a computer bank rendering movie footage

- I think the equations are doing Bad Things to the computer and I SO DESPERATELY want to know what their discontinuity is. Did they break reality with math???

(SO excited to have the perfect icon for this.)

[redthedragon]

:D

- Oh I'm really glad to hear that :D I was doing my best but it's rare that I'm in a lab and I don't know at least, like, half the reasoning behind what's happening

- you DO XD I had to leave it in there somewhere

- :3 (Good guess!)

That really IS the perfect icon for this, hats off lol

[autobotscoutriella]

I swear I've had the narrator's EXACT experience, with one of my coworkers drawing Complicated Math Diagrams on the whiteboard and explaining to me that this was the math basics I needed to know to understand what they actually do. It was interesting but I think I came out knowing less about math than I did before they started explaining.

[yvannairie]

You know the answer to "hey Van do you wanna hear about [project]" is "yes" but in this case I am fucking furious I'm never gonna get to see your escape room point and click game in person. Furious even. I want to experience as much of it vicariously as I can.

Also I am the world's best sounding board, as we both know

[redthedragon]

:D i send you what i got as soon as i finish writing for the night <- this is me deadlining myself so i have to have something that exists to show you lol

hell, if there's anyone on this planet i'd like to stand over the shoulder of and watch play through this for the first time, i think it's you. it would be so fun... alas, there is a the ocean and also a distance beyond it making that logistically unfeasible :(

It's true, you are.

[redthedragon]

i come bearing a link :3 https://docs.google.com/document/d/161jDfGGxuKh0l3Lfx30tViOaIHC_0ZDB/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100855855228841821533&rtpof=true&sd=true

lmk if i can reformat this in a way that's easier for you and/or what you think. also if yousee any really weird typos in the last 2k no you don't</3 i managed to squeak out a good two thousand words between midnight and now even though i couldn't come up with more than ten words this entire regular week. incredible, the mind of a writer. unpredictable little beasts i guess

[yvannairie]

I'm leaving this in my inbox and checking back on this, jsyk XD

[redthedragon]

I'll let you know when I update that link, then :D the actual file I'm doing the actual work in lives on my hard drive so the link you've got isn't going to update automatically