Writing Meme

This is gonna be a post where I stop trying not to punctuate things with smileys. X3 Somewhat NSFW due to me being candid. Tagged by Kura! List by Camille!

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

TCAST, because it got finished. XD

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

I don't think I've ever been able to live without people in my head. XD;; I prefer people who violate the gender-binary. ;3

3. How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

Announcing "Love and Keggers"!

Finally, I have a game that I'm promoting from Voldemort Visual Novel status!

So, story time: You guys remember when TCAST won the Visual Novel festival? Well, a lot of talented artists donated a commission as a prize for that. And because I had so many commissions, I thought, I could ask for TCAST fanart... or I could ask for something more AWESOME than TCAST fanart.

Which would be, a whole new game.

"Love and Keggers" will be a pretty short game made up of three shorter stories about college students who wake up after a frat boy party and their dealing with the aftermath of the party.

Visual Novels Now 2011 Best Ofs and TCAST Sequel Status

Good news first!
Carosene (that's me 8D) won the category "Rookie of 2011" for Visual Novels Now! Woo! (Though I would like to shout out to Super63, who was in that category and, despite being a rookie or whatever, put out a freakin' commercial dating sim and drew all her own stuff. I was rooting for you, Super63!) Thank you so much! TCAST also got nominated both for "Visual Novel of the Year" and Autumn got nominated for "Best Character." Thanks so much to JP and the readers of Visual Novels Now for considering TCAST, it's an honor.

Oh, and there's a sweet review of TCAST at Visual Novel Reviews 4.

And while we're talking about sweet TCAST things other people have done, AmaraInsevi made a gorgeous fanart called Never Forget!

And my homie Kura wrote up a couple of awesome TCAST fanfic kink drabbles in hir blog. X3 "Ageplay" "Punishment" There's some other drabbles in there too, some of which are NSFW, so tread carefully.

Of course, the question is, what the hell am I going to do this upcoming year? And that takes us to mildly depressing news about the TCAST sequel.

"Gynoid" vs "Android"?

Oh, semantics. Why you so lovely and so pain-inducing.

I like sci-fi, but sci-fi is not one of my fields of expertise. (Fields of expertise: Dissociative Identity Disorder, Adam Lambert, the works of John Green, Batwoman.) So after TCAST came out, I talked to quite a few sci-fi devotees about how TCAST fit into the awesome universe of sci-fi tropes.

One thing I started noticing was the term "gynoid." Gynoid means a robot that is built to resemble a female. You're supposed to use it instead of "android," since the "andr" root of the word refers to men. The word is supposed to be less sexist.

But somehow it kind of rubs me the wrong way.

White Writing Black?

Totally about to kiss.

Finally, my sequel post to my African American Vernacular English post that may actually have to do with visual novels! Or at least writing.


So, when white writers sit down and want to write a black characters, they'll often... do it wrong.

For example, they might write something like "Only wif my magic recipe can you turn out dese tender, 'licious, jiffy-quick pancakes dat makes yo' family happy."

This writer is being pretty condescending to black people. While you can see they're imitating certain parts of AAVE, it sounds more like they're trying to be slangy for the sake of being slangy. Like "'licious"? "jiffy-quick?" Does anyone really say "jiffy" besides my very white father? Fortunately, stuff like that never gets published.

Wait, what? That was in a national ad campaign?

Leaving Darlings Lost

Depressing post ahead! >.<

As I've written in a couple of places, Darlings Lost is entering a hiatus that will probably be permanent.

African American Vernacular English: A Language History Lesson

Controversial statement: African American Vernacular English (also known as "Ebonics") is grammatically correct.

Sentences like "She be at home," "He been married," and "Ain't nobody there" are all grammatically correct.

Here's another example of a grammatically correct English sentence: "Gewát ðá néosian syþðan niht becóm héän húses· hú hit Hring-Dene æfter béorþege gebún hæfdon·"

What the hell does that mean, right?