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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Bodhi
Member since Jan-19-09
14 posts |
Dec-26-12, 06:08 PM (EST) |
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"Questions"
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I've been hanging around the site again, as I have been wont to to do since that dark time known as college(late nineties to '02 was an interesting time for me), and I have a few questions. In order in which they occurred to me: 1) Has The EPU in general (or Gryphon, in the specifically less general) moved away from the epic two-day-read format of stories in favor of the mini's? 2) Is the story of the recovery of Kei and the punishment of the guilty parties still yet to come? 3) Have we seen the last of CSI:New Avalon? Of the Mythbuster's? Of Kaitlyn, Corwin, Utena, and Miki?I know life gets in the way, and priorities tend to change in the face of time, or health concerns, or just out of a need to put down a pursuit that no longer serves it's purpose. And I know that nothing good can last. The thing is, when the characters are this well-written, multi-dimensional, and engaging, people want to keep hearing of them. Fans, and I am assuredly a fan, want to read the newest adventure and re-reread the older stories to find the details that make the new text work. Fans identify with the characters as having that mix of faults and strengths that that we'd like to see in ourselves. I've this scene in my head where UF-Gryph leads a strike force to recover Kei. A team that includes his kids, (Samurai, Jedi, Viking-God of Being Awesome, Galactic Agent...)his friends, (Logan, Skuld, Depew the HellBringer, maybe Megazone the Chaoswalker, if he can be found) and Kei having just broken free, making her way out of a cell, or a plush cage masquerading as an apartment. Or meeting the assembled team just outside of orbit in a liberated fighter, tired of waiting for rescue and full-military thrust for home. A story that showcases that while time hasn't stood still waiting for Kei, she hasn't been forgotten in the least. Does it play out that way? Anything even close? Or is it better? I'm not asking when. And I am not complaining, in any way, shape, or form. I'm merely inquiring as to if the story has reached a point of, not completion, but having ran the course of the events to be told. The product is excellent and the price cannot be beat. But, I am curious. Thanks for the effort, dedication, and thought it has taken to get this far. - Bodhi |
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Mephron
Charter Member
1512 posts |
Dec-26-12, 06:24 PM (EST) |
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1. "RE: Questions"
In response to message #0
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I can tell you that in general, the answer to your questions is no, yes, no. Things have just been a little disrupted for people (Gryph's SGR Events top of that line). We have some stuff coming together (including movement on a couple of things once seemingly dispatched to the Miskatonic U Antarctic Holding Facility and Penguin Pen), but timing is, as always a tricky thing. We're still here, still planning, and hopefully we'll have something to show you soon. (I actually got some work on in the next H&tASSMF story Monday, so that's something.) -- Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support. "And Remember! Google is your Friend!!" |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
11541 posts |
Dec-26-12, 09:46 PM (EST) |
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3. "RE: Questions"
In response to message #0
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LAST EDITED ON Dec-26-12 AT 10:10 PM (EST) >1) Has The EPU in general (or Gryphon, in the specifically less >general) moved away from the epic two-day-read format of stories in >favor of the mini's? I'd like to think there are places for both formats, though obviously one of them requires a lot more time - not only more sessions, but also (and this is the part that I find gets harder as the years go by) generally longer ones as well. >2) Is the story of the recovery of Kei and the punishment of the >guilty parties still yet to come? That may not actually all be the same story, but in general yes, I'd like to hope so. >3) Have we seen the last of CSI:New Avalon? Of the Mythbuster's? Of >Kaitlyn, Corwin, Utena, and Miki? It's possible that the CSI thing has run its course as a series of separately labeled stories, but the characters and the division of the IPO they work for are established as part of the universe now, so even if that proves to be the case, they're not likely to disappear entirely. They'd still appear as and when appropriate - much like, in fact, the way the UF cast of Mythbusters have historically been used. As for the Symphony 5 cast, Christ, I hope not. They still owe me the last bit of their arc plot, and it's holding up a bunch of stuff that's supposed to happen after it. >Does it play out that way? Not.... as such, no. Look, guys, I'll be honest with you - hm. The problem with phrases like "I'll be honest with you" is, they always make it sound like the speaker's admitting he hasn't been up to that point. Maybe "I'll come right out and say it" would be a better way of phrasing it. Anyway. The thing is, it's not just that I'm working on not one but two degrees at the University of Maine at the advanced age of nearly 40, which is taking up a lot of my time and most of my mental bandwidth; and it's not just that I live at almost precisely the wrong distance from the University, such that I end up having to waste about three hours in the car on any day when I have class; and it's not just that I incidentally spent the summer nearly getting killed by a surgical equipment malfunction while having a cancerous kidney removed and now spend virtually all of my time in a mildly to moderately paranoid froth that something's going to happen to the other one. All of that is in the mix, but there's also other stuff at work that doesn't get talked about as much around here. The fact is, even the stuff that only has my name in the author credits is usually not the product of me working in a vacuum. On the rare occasions when I do go it completely alone from start to finish on a project, it tends to end up being something disastrous and ill-advised, like the early Exile material or the deleted-and-disavowed first version of The Vulcan Heart. Which, well, fair enough, and I make an effort to give collaborator credit where it's due, but what you can't see from that side of the board is that even when they're not working on the material directly, the rest of the crew is a support structure that keeps things moving. I don't often address the flip side of that, because I don't want to come across like I'm trying to lay a guilt trip on people for having other stuff to do, but, well, frankly, those people all have other stuff to do, and as time goes on they develop more things to do and I... well... sort of don't. So I often find myself, at the end of 2012, looking around and thinking, Well. It's got quiet in here, hasn't it. And this is not an indictment of anybody, it honestly isn't. I'm not stamping my foot and getting angry because my work and I aren't the center of other people's universes - but the fact is that people's interests get regularly reprioritized as part of the normal course of life, and what I'm up to over here often tends to slip down the list when that happens. People get married or stop being married or have kids or change jobs or move to distant time zones or all of the above - all of which is perfectly legitimately more important than this - and I presumably didn't help the situation any, 10 years ago, by moving back to this town, which is not just remote but dull and unwelcoming to outsiders, for an indefinite period. So yeah. Uh. It's slow going these days, because my posse is far away and has its own shit to do, and the miracles of the Internet can only make up for so much of that. Online collaborators have always been part of the EPU picture, but it remains true that I did my most prolific work when I lived practically within arm's reach of a handful of people whose names appeared regularly in the credits, and nowadays I don't live within arm's reach of anybody. (And those people don't live within easy gathering range of each other any more, either, so it's not just that I moved to the woods. See previous paragraph.) Couple that to the stuff I listed at the start, and add the simple fact that I occasionally do stop and just wonder what the hell I'm even doing, still courting lawsuits, 21 years on; and you get a situation in which I still have a raft of ideas, but they get put into finished form at what I fully agree is an unsatisfactory pace. I haven't stopped, though. Considered it, while I'm being confessional, but never decided to do it. Because I just never know. I didn't know Weapon of Choice was going to happen last February until, well, it suddenly did. I have the key events of half a dozen pieces outlined, either in scratch files or my head; they're just waiting for whatever weird alchemy happens in there that leads to them finally getting fleshed out. That doesn't happen as often as it used to, for the reasons I've semicoherently laid out above, but it does still happen, and that - that's why I haven't given up. And like I told the other fella recently, if and when I do decide to pack it in altogether at some point, I'm not going to be coy about it. You won't have to infer it from posted song lyrics or try to find the subtext in some snarky remark I've made in response to someone asking about a delay. It'll get its own post, and probably a red box on the site's front page too. But don't fret. That probably won't happen until someone from the UMaine Career Center emails me to say, "I googled you as part of our résumé improvement counseling service, and let me tell you, if you ever want a real grown-up job, you'll do everything in your power to distance yourself from genre fandom, mate. That'll sink you professionally faster than that nude photo of you on Facebook, face-down on the card table with a lit candle in your ass.*" TL;DR I write slow now 'cause I'm old and busy and stuff. Everyone is far away. --G. * no such photo exists... of me, anyway -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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mdg1
Member since Aug-25-04
703 posts |
Dec-26-12, 10:02 PM (EST) |
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4. "RE: Questions"
In response to message #3
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LAST EDITED ON Dec-26-12 AT 10:08 PM (EST) by Gryphon (admin) [Just fixing a text encoding thing. Some clients don't seem to get that the Forum's in Unicode now, and I'm not sure why they think an ellipsis warrants a special character anyway, but there it is. --G.]>Which, well, fair enough, and I make an effort to give collaborator >credit where it's due, but what you can't see from that side of the >board is that even when they're not working on the material directly, >the rest of the crew is a support structure that keeps things moving. >I don't often address the flip side of that, because I don't want to >come across like I'm trying to lay a guilt trip on people for having >other stuff to do, but, well, frankly, those people all have other >stuff to do, and as time goes on they develop more things >to do and I... well... sort of don't. (...) >So yeah. Uh. It's slow going these days, because my posse is far >away and has its own shit to do, and the miracles of the Internet can >only make up for so much of that. Online collaborators have always >been part of the EPU picture, but it remains true that I did my most >prolific work when I lived practically within arm's reach of a handful >of people whose names appeared regularly in the credits, and nowadays >I don't live within arm's reach of anybody. (And those people >don't live within easy gathering range of each other any more, either, >so it's not just that I moved to the woods. See previous >paragraph.) I just wanted to chime in that having a support network is really important. I lost mine when I left URI (and the OR crew), and my productivity dropped to a trickle... which eventually dried up completely.
Mario |
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Vorticity
Member since Feb-6-12
21 posts |
Dec-28-12, 01:49 AM (EST) |
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11. "RE: Questions"
In response to message #4
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LAST EDITED ON Dec-28-12 AT 02:07 AM (EST) Gryphon,If you want, you can add this to the config files for the bulletin board to force Unicode: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> It would probably go right before "<!-- ###### TRUSS CODE BEGINS HERE ###### -->" in some template file. (Although... looking at that code, it could probably stand to be replaced with CSS anyway.) ---- While I'm here, I'd just like to say that we're all eager for more stories. But we're all willing to wait for them to be as awesome as possible. I'm a Perl 6 programmer, and they announced 10 years ago that new version of the programming language would be officially released on Christmas Day. They intentionally neglected to include the year of that Christmas, so we're stuck in a sort of perpetual Advent. But in the meantime, the language has really improved and matured, so I feel like the waiting will be worthwhile. As I'm sure the it will be worth the wait for more UF stories. > Couple that to the stuff I listed at the start, and add the simple fact > that I occasionally do stop and just wonder what the hell I'm even doing, > still courting lawsuits, 21 years on; and you get a situation in which I > still have a raft of ideas, but they get put into finished form at what I > fully agree is an unsatisfactory pace. And since I have started writing fanfic myself, I'm struck at how hard writing actually is. I have my own raft of unfinished ideas that are eager to form themselves into stories, if I could only find the time. That said, I really really wanna see more of Symphony 5. |
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zojojojo
Charter Member
542 posts |
Dec-27-12, 05:46 PM (EST) |
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9. "RE: Questions"
In response to message #5
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>>But don't fret. That probably won't happen until someone from the >>UMaine Career Center emails me to say, "I googled you as part of our >>résumé improvement counseling service, and let me tell you, if you >>ever want a real grown-up job, you'll do everything in your power to >>distance yourself from genre fandom, mate. That'll sink you >>professionally faster than that nude photo of you on Facebook, >>face-down on the card table with a lit candle in your ass.*" > >Well, if Mr. Megazone can hold down a steady job (as far as I'm aware, >I don't stalk anyone past these forums) I don't think you have >anything to worry about. i use a different benchmark (having only met a handful of the suspects the one time) .... if fifty shades of gray can make a millionaire, then you've got nothing to worry about -Z --- Remember kids: guns make you stupid, duct tape makes you smart.
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A Vile Gangster
Member since Feb-15-10
296 posts |
Dec-27-12, 09:37 AM (EST) |
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6. "RE: Questions"
In response to message #3
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LAST EDITED ON Dec-27-12 AT 02:53 PM (EST) This seems like a good place to deploy an electronically-delivered group hug to the Chief and his cronies for all the hard work, long hours, and creative energies expended in this hardmoded attempt to (as the man hisself put it)court lawsuits. I came to this place when life was thoroughly making me its bitch(even now a decade and a half on, I can still feel the sore spots where the bit was chafing) and my outlook was blacker than Old Man Vader's backside. Your funny DIY universe helped me generate some healthy outlets, and to survive the tempest. I'll have my associates degree(with honors! Not bad, for a ruffian dropout.) next spring, and I just may manage to make something of myself after all. The big things, it seems, are made possible by the contributions of lots and lots of little things.I'm totally sympathetic to the contents of your gripe sheet there, sir. Know that you guys have a friend in me(and a free beverage, should we ever cross paths), and I'm pulling for each and every one of you. ---- Now Playing: ... < THIS SPACE FOR RENT > |
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version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions,
Unlimited
Benjamin
D. Hutchins
E P U (Colour)
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