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Samedi (Worm Altpower)

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The baseline level of weirdness around here is high enough that an author secretly roleplaying a schizoid voodoo personification of death and rum didn't register as unusual to me.
 
Just read through this. I'm going to be honest, I disliked it. Let me preface my criticisms by saying that I applaud the author for trying something new and different. I really do appreciate the sentiment.

It starts off mildly amusing. All the meta-ness in the author interactions quickly fell into lame gimmick territory for me. The first 'twist' seemed like a 2/10 troll. The second 'twist' managed to beat that by adding the pretension that it was an experiment in narrative technique. In the end, it came across as cargo-cult avant-gardism - ultimately masturbatory.
 
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Pax_Empyrean said:
The baseline level of weirdness around here is high enough that an author secretly roleplaying a schizoid voodoo personification of death and rum didn't register as unusual to me.
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That is, of course, assuming that the author isn't actually a schizoid voodoo personification of death and rum. I admit that this isn't remotely likely, but I have seen some weird shit when attending Voodoo ceremonies, so I won't rule it out.
 
The first couple of chapters made me laugh out loud. Any story that can do that is worth reading, IMO.

I kind of didn't get the meta stuff until it was explained to me, but while I've done meta, I tend to be a fairly straightforward writer. And even not getting the meta stuff, I am really enjoying the story, a lot.
 
I like the story, and for me, if he had kept up the meta narrative for too long I'd have stopped reading the discussion, generally I wind up skipping the discussion in stories once it passes the 30-50 page mark depending on how interesting I find it, so I'd have completely not gotten it instead of only mostly not gotten it.
 
SquirrelZombie said:
Oh, here's some more hidden stuff that's been going on just out of sight behind the scenes. Most of you should have figured out by now that Taylor has some sort of master power associated with her eyes, or vision, or locking gaze with someone, right?

Well, what's happening here is that her connection to the Baron is opening her victim up to the knowledge of ultimate reality. It's an existential crisis power. Then that victim's attitude towards her changes based on the character's attitude toward death. Since she represents death, their feelings about their own inevitable demise get transferred to her.

Sophia is ultimately a coward. Her power lets her run away. She triggered after being made into a victim, which is why she has the predator/prey thing. But she's never actually fixed the problems in her psyche, just plastered over them with bullshit. Taylor ripped off the plaster, and Sophia had nothing left to fight with. That's why she just froze.

Piggot gets angry at death. She becomes enraged, disgusted, contemptuous. This is why she thinks of Taylor as an S-class threat without a good reason.

Danny shuts down. He becomes depressed and listless and unable to function. This is why he is silent and just goes along with shit for the first part of the story. Things don't start to change for him until he triggers.

I've planned out a bunch of similar reactions for most of the other characters in the fic, but I'm not going to explain them all.

Leave me some few mysteries at least.
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Honestly, that stuff I'm totally cool with you not explaining (I actually would not have minded you keeping the master power a surprise at this point, for example).

Amusingly, the comment I saw someone make last night, which crystallized my own thoughts on the matter, has either been edited, or I'm just blind right now. xD In any case, and to reiterate what I could've sworn someone else said yesterday, I'd frankly most prefer if you either threadmarked or made (possibly invisitext) reference to the meta-role-play stuff in the threadmarked posts. What you have described actually sounds really entertaining to me; but I've been conditioned over time to skip non-story posts in story threads I've not caught up to, because I almost invariably come across an argument/debate that I want to throw in my own input on, except can't, because doing so after all parties involved have moved on is rude.

What had me most concerned initially, and why I was so confused, is that I had not been aware of a secondary narrative (I just thought that those threadmarked bits were goofy omake about an entity I know nothing about); so the way that the A/N (with invisitext) followed by the interlude by another poster (that kicked off by killing either Lisa or Dinah, I wasn't clear which, and Taylor) came off to me was that the fic was being adopted (and possibly tonally/stylistically shifted). Your subsequent A/N, therefore, was such a non-sequitur that I wasn't sure what it meant for the narrative. :p

EDIT: Just as an example, when I first read your A/N, I initially thought your comment about picking fights was some sort of reference to the not-fights Taylor had had in the Street in-fic. xD

SquirrelZombie said:
I wouldn't worry about it too much. The only people who were really catching on were the ones who were directly interacting with me a fair amount. There were a bunch of pretty big thematic hints that I dropped in the middle of pretty low rated comments. I'm pretty sure I know the exact comment that clued in Dancingrage.

In hindsight I should have known the joke would fall relatively flat. It was only going to be funny to the handful of people who were paying close attention already anyway. I should never have threadmarked it. It would have flown under the radar to most, but been caught by those who would have gotten it.

Those of you who enjoyed it, I'm glad. Those of you who didn't, I'm sorry. And that's going to be my final word on the matter for the time being.
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Eh, I'm just going to echo Vyrexuviel: this was a first attempt, and it was a pretty good first try.

Seriously, what you were attempting is probably — at least in the medium of message boards — really damn difficult. Some awkwardness and confusion on the first try is to be expected. Especially if one of your inspirations was Kaufman. :lol
 
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Ack said:
None of them.

It happened in Amelia by @TanaNari but I've never actually written a TaylorxAmy SFW pairing.
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Note that this wasn't a jab at ack--I love Recoil! His threads just have the most active discussion of any story I could think of at 1 am.
 
SquirrelZombie said:
Okay, here it is. I don't have any reason to hide what was going on any more.

The story of Bourbon Street is about Taylor becoming possessed by Baron Samedi, who, while being the Loa of death and resurrection, also represents a threat to the established order, and the breakdown of social structure. He's a figure of fun and partying and being irresponsible. He's the part of the human psyche that looks at death and says, ok, nothing I can do about it, let's have a party.

In the story, Taylor gets crazier and crazier. Her power is fucking with her head. She is having a hard time keeping herself sane.

In the story that's surrounding the story, the character of me, the author of the thread, is obviously playing a little game with everyone where he's pretending to speak as the baron. What's going on behind the scenes, but still in character, is that he's slowly losing it. He's becoming obsessed by the story he's writing, being taken over more and more by the Baron, until he gives in and throws in the towel.

Then, because the Baron is not satisfied with the Bourbon Street story ending where it did, he hops bodies. Because one of the things that loa do is possess willing people. They get some benefits, such as better luck or health or inspiration, and the loa get to live it up in their physical bodies, and enjoy the physical world. That's part of why Samedi loves to drink and smoke and fuck and swear. Because a lot of the time, he can't.

This dichotomy is represented in the lower level story by Taylor's popping back and forth to the street. In the street, she's Taylor, she's herself, but everything is muted. Colors, tastes, everything.

So, when the Baron gets fed up with me being unable or unwilling to continue the story, he pops on over to Seylerius and continues it anyway.

Oh, another important thing is that Baron Samedi is a psychopomp- that is, a god specializing in helping ferry mortals around from one plane of existence to another. He's all about breaking barriers, smashing through taboos. If any god could jump between fiction and reality, it'd be a god like the Baron.

I hope that helps.
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While I admire your ambition, as the saying goes, if you have to explain the joke, you're not telling it right. This sort of super-metafiction is something John Scalzi does really well (see Redshirts), and even he makes it more obvious than what you were doing.

I think part of the issue was that you were trying to carry on the story through the AN. I read ANs maybe only half the time, so I missed it entirely. While it was quite clear that a personality other than Taylor's was in play, the idea that Samedi was breaking into our world as well needed to be made clearer in-story.
 
Ack said:
@TanaNari
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Speak not his name, lest he... oh, wait...

Hotdog Vendor said:
I suppose. Now I know what it's like to have a joke explained to me after completely missing its existence.
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Well, you've been on the other side of that experience a few times. I still remember your attempt at pretending to be the worst fanfic writer the world's ever known.

SquirrelZombie said:
Those of you who enjoyed it, I'm glad. Those of you who didn't, I'm sorry. And that's going to be my final word on the matter for the time being.
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For what it's worth, I enjoyed it. As a lover of both comedy *and* performance arts. It works as the former, it works as the latter, and it works well together. Execution could use some work, but the times execution doesn't need work can be counted on one hand.

... I just wish I didn't suck at being funny, or I'd try something like this... instead, my experiments are in the realms of dramatic, life experience, and genre-blending. That's the soil my roots grow best in.

SquirrelZombie said:
I can either accept it, learn from it, and move on, or I can step back where it's safe.

Safety fuckin sucks.
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This, a billion times over. Every artist, without exception, fails far more often than not. The good ones are the ones who fail, fail again, fail some more, and keep going until they've failed so many times that all that remains is success. The great ones are the ones who kept failing even after that point.

Take risks. Get hurt. Grow strong.

Just... know when to step back. Learn from Andy Kaufman.
 
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TanaNari said:
This, a billion times over. Every artist, without exception, fails far more often than not. The good ones are the ones who fail, fail again, fail some more, and keep going until they've failed so many times that all that remains is success. The great ones are the ones who kept failing even after that point.

Take risks. Get hurt. Grow strong.

Just... know when to step back. Learn from Andy Kaufman.
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Thanks. This is really helpful. Most of the people who didn't care for my experiment were real nice about it, but it still hurts to try something that was beautiful in your head and see it fail to live up to your expectations. I was a little rattled last night.

But I wrote a couple thousand more words on other projects, and I'm feeling a lot better now.

I'll be ready to jump back to this project before too long.

In the meantime, check out my other thread, where I'm posting a collection of one-shots as the ideas come to me.

Experiment Three (Worm, One-Shot Anthology)

Love Amelia, by the way. Quite an achievement. Made me feel all kinds of feelings and shit.
 
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Here. A shiny awesome writing tool to help you on the mechanical side of writing.

Hemingway Editor

Ain't gonna make you a great writer, but damn is it great at catching some of the sloppier mistakes even the best of us make.

I'll run off to read your snippet stuff now.
 
Ack said:
The first couple of chapters made me laugh out loud. Any story that can do that is worth reading, IMO.

I kind of didn't get the meta stuff until it was explained to me, but while I've done meta, I tend to be a fairly straightforward writer. And even not getting the meta stuff, I am really enjoying the story, a lot.
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This works great, meta and all. Do please continue.

(and frankly, there's a certain element of SB commenters who exemplify the sort of nerd who obnoxiously demands comforting tropes and is actively hostile to anything outside their comfort zone. Imagining their usernames as XxVoidCowboyxX makes this clearer.)
 
SquirrelZombie said:
Love Amelia, by the way. Quite an achievement. Made me feel all kinds of feelings and shit.
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Just noticed your edit. Thanks! I do original fiction, now!

divabot said:
(and frankly, there's a certain element of SB commenters who exemplify the sort of nerd who obnoxiously demands comforting tropes and is actively hostile to anything outside their comfort zone. Imagining their usernames as XxVoidCowboyxX makes this clearer.)
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God knows I dealt with enough of them. And by "dealt with" I mean "tell to fuck off until they stop throwing their hissy fit and leave". Turns out, if you're stubborn enough, it does work.
 
Seylerius said:
I shut down the ti...

I shut down the time...

I shut do...

Oh fuck me.
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Well, seems we know Coil's weakness. If he dies in one timeline, that timeline already shuts down. Which means he actually DOES split timelines, and it isn't just a Thinker ability. Which means every time he shuts down a timeline that Coil kills himself, now if only he'd kill himself and let it stick. Can't believe I said that.
 
LegionnaireBlaze said:
Well, seems we know Coil's weakness. If he dies in one timeline, that timeline already shuts down. Which means he actually DOES split timelines, and it isn't just a Thinker ability. Which means every time he shuts down a timeline that Coil kills himself, now if only he'd kill himself and let it stick. Can't believe I said that.
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It's been two years dude. Why you gotta get our hopes up?
 
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