Ok, so I took a bit longer than I said. Sue me.

1)
(a) I'm definately around. I'm reading along NeS whenever there's a new post, but in terms of writing, I don't really have any specific ideas to work out, and I've been rather busy lately with real life (go figure) so I haven't had much time to think about it. But I'm keeping my head above water.

(b) I check at least once a day usually. More accurately, I read any new posts as soon as I see them, which is usually not more than 24 hours after they're posted.

2)
(a) At this point, I'm completely at a loss. I do have an idea for the finaly battle of NeSquared, which I've talked to you about on MSN and then posted here, but it's rather unrefined, and I have no idea how to get to that point.

(b) I'd like to develop Sarn and Voodoo's relationship, but of course that's gonna have to wait until the Detective/Hawthorne thing's done. Along those lines, I'd like to consider seeing one of the new female characters being somewhat... flirtatous and have her develop a crush on Sarn (after all, who wouldn't? He's a freakin spanish pimp), then Voodoo get all jealous and there's this nice emo/melodramatic segment. Also, I realized I haven't done much with Sarn's other personalities lately. Perhaps we could expand on that a bit... (Not surprisingly, most of my ideas for characters are for Sarn, or for other characters that relate directly to him.)

3) Don't want them to spoil the surprise, cause I'm very interested in this storyline, but it does feel like it's starting to drag a touch (or did up to the last point I read. I'd like for them to bring it together (with some kind of dramatic, high-tension conclusion) so we can move on.

4) Somehow I think the Heroes need to discover how to disable Evil Geb's ... editing abilities. Not sure how.

5) I've never actually read through the whole thing. I've read most of the parts where Sarn's featured, and all of the last... 5 or 6 pages, roughly... Basically when I started getting back into it.

Can I ask for clarification on Gebohq's and Kirbly's last two posts?

Are they NSP's or are they actually story posts in disguise? How (if at all) should I treat them in terms of finishing up the Detective/Hawthorne stuff (This is actually very important as Mayaal plays a pretty big role in the posts to come).

Raaaaaar. First ISB post.

Shall come back tomorrow.

the Mayaal/Sarn section is basically referring back to eariler in the story when Sarn was carried up to 1337 after battling Bhac.

Mayaal and Thand are discussing afterward Twin Suns upcoming role. I don't see how that can interfere with Detective/Hawthorne.

1)
(a) I'm still lurking around. working, acutally had to work today in the deli, kinda got me thinking about the voodoo character today. goal as writter to sty to not write just for voodoo. twins suns looks sniffty. maybe some emo geb stuff. surgarless.

(b) usually check every day. check for new posts.

2)
(a) do think destruction of potentials issue needs to be tackled more, get evil wedding stuff going.

(b) what? plans? try to develope the romance thing, get voodoo more tied into main plot/arcs. try to develope more depth to character/the forgotten background. (coming from another story, perhaps one that wasn't even written, but was told/sung?) do see some good conflicts comming esp. if you get Voodoo jealous (what is she willing to do to keep Sarn? and her sanity? Bhaac/Mayaal and/or Arking Thand using that issue with voodoo for their goals?

4) Hawthorn, , Dectective, stuff getting much clearer.
Sarn mutliple things motivating his character(s) Voodoo, duty as hero to end evil wedding, Mayaal's hound.
find solution to dealing with eveil gebs powers or not being able to deal with powers. (also seems like a possible ground hog day scenario with the wedding in NeS Shattered, go try to save young get blasted back out in the same spot in the sand with the camel guy over and over. unless evil geb rewrites them somewhere else. Maybe the maintenance dudes could temporally shut something down that would work to the advange of the heroes i dunno.

5) have read parts here and there but not in all the way through. some of the begining and end of NeS and the last so many pages of NeS squared.

West Wind: What Sarn said.

And thanks for all the reponses, peoples! Still hoping to hear from Ante, Sem and sugarless -- I know they're around.

Yes, I would like to officially open an invitation to anyone interested in lynching West Wind for getting us in the middle of his Vision of +5 Awesomeness and then dropping us right in the bloody middle.

I was thinking the lynching would first begin by forcing him to drink a gallon of milk, then tying him to a chair and forcing him to watch many Sci-Fi Channel made for TV movies, afterward we could commence the forced playing of Dungeon Siege (with its sequel and all expansion packs), wherein there will be no bathroom breaks allowed. If somehow he survived the ensuing gurbles, we will then force him to do a full BSD kernel compile on a 266mhz system with 32mb of RAM. If he survives that, we just flay him alive and hang him upside-down from a nearby tall building.

All interested, please sign below.

PS to the Condemned: If you wish to avoid this fate, POST CURSE YOU, POST!

Just wanted to let you all know that I made a thread with pictures about my performances as of late. So go look at it and check it out if you haven't already:

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=43124

Also, I'll try and write up a storypost before I leave for the beach tomorrow.

Made a quick couple plot-addressing posts, nothing terribly funny or dramatic, just... meh.

Sem: I already told you, but your post was FREAKIN' FUNNY. I'm glad you're catching up. Poor TLTE's plans would seem to be crushed now, but hey -- plans are bad, and things should be moving along. All the same, if it's really a problem, I'm sure something can be staged so that Evil Geb rewrites around it. We'll see.

Anyways, I'll be out for the next week-ish, so keep at it, peoples!

Hey, people. I decided to respond what with Geb's roll call. Basically all i have to ad is that i've been out for a long time, and need to cacth up at some point. I have a tab open in opera to the last page i read, so it shouldn't be too long :-p but yeah,k i'm out of it for the moment. as soon as i'm read up and ready to write again, though, i'll let you guys know here. and sorry for not keeping up lately. really don't have en excuse >.<

Is this He/It guy an all new character?

Also: I make my triumphant return to regular NeS postings.

I had this idea that Evil Geb is somehow in trouble with this mysterious dirty man thing who possibly represents some kind of control against characters constantly abusing meta-fictional powers (maybe he's not even a person, just a manifestation of something). On the other hand, it could be a bad idea to have special characters who are exceptions to the "rules" of the story, so I don't know...I thought I'd run it past people.

...aaaand with a post that has literally two lines I've hit a new low.

*Graciously accepts applause*

Oh, and I just noticed your edit to my evil wedding post a few pages back.
ROFL

He's my own normal character - Rick (although I'm still not sure on the gender.) I'm still working on his profile and such. I'm still new to all this so it takes me awhile!

Cool. I was just concerned that he was some old character I'd forgotten about and so I screwed up the continuity somehow.

I took some big liberties with He/It, quesadilla_red. If you were still working out a big backstory and stuff then maybe we could figure it in somehow. Or maybe you could introduce a second new character since you didn't write much for He/It. I'm sorry to just go and hijack your character, but I had an idea which I thought might be good and might tweak people into making some more posts.

Holy crap! Apparently we got a new avatar for NeS...?

Considering the impact something like this might have, I feel the need to geek out and try to give the pertinant information regarding the personification of NeS:

• First mention of NeS personified is around page 21, where NeS is "old enough to buy liquor", gets drunk, and starts preaching about itself to the masses. "Poster" versions of the character/writers come about to spread the word and NeSianity is born.
• Page 41-ish, the "NeS script" is mentioned to be in Kirby's possession, as he is the Hand of NeS.
• Page 49-ish, the script turns into a ring, which Antestarr wears briefly (I think) which then goes into Geb's possession.
• Page 50, early in the "final post" of the original NeS, the ring turns into a figure that Gebohq recognizes as "Erik" but is in fact the Avatar of NeS (the idea being that both NeS and EeP would chose normal-type characters that would go unnoticed but would still be close to the action of the characters). At the end, the avatar "dies" as the NeS falls apart. Link to the post here.
• Between the pages of 50 and page 1 of NeSquared, the NeS acts as Geb's travel agent of sorts, as Geb hops around from other stories and the like. Geb, however, doesn't really remember this, but the NeS would.
• In NeSquared, Evil Geb briefly talks with the NeS in the Dreamstate. As neither the NeS nor the EeP had "chosen a new avatar" the NeS appears to Evil Geb as Erik. See the post here. Since then, Evil Geb is now harboring the EeP, so his title as Protector of the Plotfractal has likely been revoked. And before you all start thinking otherwise, it's likely that the EeP will leave Evil Geb's presence by the end of this storyarc, so Evil Geb shouldn't become the EeP's new avatar.

So um... I'm not really sure what else to say on the matter, so I'll just leave it at this for now. Hopefully TLTE or Ante or Sem or someone will put in their two cents.

Hm. Looks like this is going to get more complicated than I though. Was Evil Geb actually evil when he spoke to NeS? If so, my post will need some editing.

And speaking of my post, way to read it really freaking fast.

I am....completely lost.

?

What do you need clarified?

^By which I mean to say are you confused about the story or are you unhappy with the NeS as a character angle I just took (it's cool if you are)?

Okay, I'll amend that a fourth time just so everyone's on the level: I intended for the He/It dirty guy to be the 'NeS Avatar' and someone who would help regular Geb defeat Evil Geb, or at least give him an idea as to how. I didn't realize that it's been done several times already (the only one I remembered was from the dreamstate bit). Was my post too vague? Or is it too much of a departure from where things seemed to be headed?

Basically, I was trying to set things up for Geb the character to make some headway.

Did this scrap your plans, TLTE? If so, I'm willing to figure things out, or even delete those two posts if that's the consensus. A lot of the stuff I've written lately seems to do more harm than good.

My biggest concern is that a new writer's character has been hijacked so soon to be made into an previously well-defined character of it's own. It really doesn't give any room for the new writer (who is still around -- I talk with her on IM about it) to do their own thing.

My other major concern is that the story will be knotted up in using this previously-defined character (and not just any character, but the NeS itself) in a rather major way that would make a lot of plotholes. I'm very hesitant to say that the last post should be nixed or the like, as 1) it goes against a founding principle of NeS and interactive story writing in general to do that sort of thing and 2) I've wanted to rid of a similarly-plot-changing post of yours in the past (when the heroes were going to Jupiter) and later found out it created a bunch of awesome story stuff, and the same might happen with this.

As possible suggestions to avoid scrapping altogether, perhaps the new character could simply THINK they're the new NeS avatar? Or perhaps the new character might have some reason to TRICK Geb into thinking they're the new NeS avatar? In any case, I'd feel a lot better if I wasn't the only one to have a say in this matter.

And to answer your questions more specifically, Tracer:

1) Yes, Evil Geb was evil when he talked with the NeS in that post. The only time he wasn't "officially" evil was in the first few posts he was in when he was introduced in NeShattered, and even then, he's pretty evil.

2) Yeah, I look at the ISB a lot. A lot.

3) Your post was not too vague (in my opinion) though the general reason for going with this story idea seems unnecessary. It's something of a departure from what I had in mind, but as it is with interactive stories, nearly anything's[.i] a departure from what we usually had in mind. In any case, there seems to be plenty of other options I can see for Geb being anti-emo and to defeat Evil Geb (some of those options I mentioned in an earlier workshop post above -- the super-long one), and this, as far as I see it, just unnecessarily complicates it.

4) As far as I'm concerned, the fact that you're posting as often as you are means you're doing more good than harm. If the concensus is to delete some of your stuff or whatnot, then maybe we'll do that, but I'd rather encourage frequent writing here than trying to write the "best" writing. The latter has made us slow and difficult to keep the story alive, IMO. And you're a good writer, Tracer -- I don't want to discourage you from writing.

Like I said, I hope other people will put in their opinions first.

Just letting anyone knows that's interested that the NeS now has a myspace group page!

http://groups.myspace.com/plothole

If you have a myspace account, please join!

No, no. Tracer, your stuff was great, as always. Gebohq may be right in saying it has complicated matters, but almost every post on the NeS steps on someone else's conception of "what will happen next". That's just the nature of the beast. Unfortunately, I'm not rolling with it as well as I usually manage to this time. I'll figure something out, don't worry...

And anyways, if worse comes to worst, I can always do some more "editing" via Evil Geb...

...I posted in the wrong thread.

Might I suggest you all go wild. Make another post (or few) that will lead up to "heroes are about to stop evil Geb." Go wild, I say... >_>

Okay...so I've been talking to Geb about the character Rick Johnson and I think I've got the character down mostly. Rick is not the NeS avatar, but is setting it up that way in order to stay close to Geb. Rick is also actually a female disguised as a male and she's not entirely human. (And even though he's a she, her name is still really Rick...her parents always wanted a boy.) She's an assassian sent to kill Geb by someone named Mr. Goodman [not the person's real name.] When Geb told her that there was an Evil Geb, she got confused as to which Geb she's supposed to whack. She's currently thinking she'll just do both. That's what I got so far though. It would be best to keep Rick as a dude for now. She has no reason to reveal that she's not a guy. ...does any of that make sense? That was what I've been thinking about for her character.

NeS Horror Picture Show?

>_>

Please look at this thread, as it talks about adapting NeS for being dramatization on the Massassi radio:

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=43481

Thank you.

I just wanted to clarify that, if you're unhappy with the current situation that NeS is in (plot-wise, stylistically, etc.), you all can change it by, you know, writing what you want. Feel the NeS has become too serious? Make it absurdly funny! Think it takes too much effort to make a storypost, as if you need to make notes and the like? Go improv -- screw the plotholes! Just lost and confused? POST YOUR CONCERNS HERE! My latest psuedo-BUMP is a bit of a stab at the general vibes and the like I've gotten from some people, and I know I have myself to blame for some of it. I know the NeS radio thing has distracted me and likely a number of you too (I know Tracer's working hard to write up stuff for the radio adaptation -- Tracer's the man!) and I don't mean to come off as harsh.

So.... yeah. Whee?

Reminder to self: Re-read NeS, and work on providing a story-arc table of contents to replace the second post of the workshop thread. NOTE TO TRACER AT THE BOTTOM! Example:

The Never-ending Story Thread
Pages: (hyperlinked) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50.

(hyperlinked)The Battle of the Century of the Week (pages 1-6)
Geb and Galv challange Ares for the fate of the Earth, they fight, Ares gets distracted and bored. A number of main characters are introduced, they all fight each other. Establish the Darkside and the shadowy figure controlling him (Bill Gates).

(hyperlinked)TotallyEvil (pages 6-9)
Geb and the band of heroes fight Semievil's sister, TotallyEvil, and her cohorts at Stonehenge. They take a detour to Disneyworld, Darkside plots, Dr. Evil claims to be their father, and babes in bikinis at the end.

Etc. etc. etc.

NeShattered
Pages: (hyperlinked) 1, 2

(hyperlinked) 'Age 1 - The Sundering (page 1)
(hyperlinked) Chapter 1 - The Question
Highemperor tries to shape the NeS in his own image, the Answerer hunts him down, etc.

(hyperlinked) Chapter 2 - The Answer
1000 years have passed, and now it's Evil Geb's turn, etc.

Etc. etc.

The Neverending Story Thread^2 (a.k.a. NeSquared)
Pages: (hyperlinked) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

(hyperlinked) Family Feud in Hell (pages 1-3)
Helebon and Jim Seven are having a spat for control over Hell, and Jim Seven convinces the heroes to join. Etc. etc.

(hyperlinked) The Eighth Dimension (pages 3-6)
The heroes are trapped in the 8th dimension, and are exploring their new territory, finding a way out. They find a haunted house, which they make their new base of operations. Meanwhile, Evil Geb tricks them into a contraption, which launces into the next story-arc. etc. etc.

More or less the basic format. What do you all think? Any suggestions?

Tracer: I thought about having something like this in the ISB index, but I figured this would clutter the ISB index up. Having a format similar to what you have would be better and (though it'd be a bit redundant) have a link to the workshop thread with the 3 NeS threads.

EDIT: Another note to myself - finish that letter to Joss Whedon already! Oy.

So not only does NeS have a myspace group, but now it also has a facebook equivilant!

Facebook group:
http://umbc.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208172645

(And the myspace group):
http://groups.myspace.com/plothole

NOTE: Unlike the myspace group, the facebook one requires you to be registered to facebook to see it. It is, however, basically the same thing as the myspace equivilant. Yes, I like whoring out the NeS.

If only I could get myself to actually write something now, or do anything productive for that matter... v_v

post. Geb wouldn't leave me alone, so...



What do you guys think? It's my first attempt at a NeS post while slightly drunk.

I was surprised there wasn't anything inappropriate in it. Ah well. Good stuff. I'm telling you, people make good NeS posts when tired, drunk, or otherwise not thinking normally!

In case anyone was curious, I edited his post because I felt that Qhobeg, not Semievil, should have said all those lines that now Qhobeg says. I talked with Sarn about it, and he seemed fine with it. It's virtually identical otherwise.

And I only bothered you to write Sarn cuz I <3 you so much....

TLTE! I know you're there! Go write your masterpiece posts already!

Yay, forums are back!

I wonder if I should work in more massassi "current events" into NeS...

NEW NOTE: I'm slowly starting the one thing I said I'd try a little bit before, with linking all the pages of NeS as well as linking by "storyarc." Not much so far, but I'll keep you updated. See what I got so far on the second post of this here workshop thread.

Just wanted to get myself an idea who's technically been writing for NeS since the start of this storyarc (approx. 4-6 months ago) and how many posts (BUMPs and the like included) and the last day since they posted. In order of who posted last:

WRITER - # OF POSTS (LAST NeSHATTERED POST/LAST NeSQUARED POST)
Sarn Cadrill - 6 posts (Sept. 23/July 22)
Cool Matty - 11 posts (Sept. 21/Sept. 21)
Gebohq - 17 posts* (Sept. 21/Sept. 19)
Voodoosnowflake - 2 posts (---/Sept. 6)
The Last True Evil - 7 posts (Aug. 25/June 25)
Tracer - 16 posts (Aug. 24/Aug. 18)
quesadilla_red - 2 posts (Aug 24/---)
Semievil333 - 4 posts (Aug 15/June 26)
JediKirby - 3 posts (---/Aug 11)
West Wind - 4 posts (---/Aug 9)
Majir - 5 posts (---/Aug 8)
Lord Grismath - 3 posts (---/July 27)
Ari - 1 post (---/July 21)
sugarless5 - 2 posts (---/July 11)
Ford - 3 posts (---/July 11)
Antestarr - 1 post (---/June 4)
Sok Munkey - 1 post (---/May 16)

*Note: Some 2-8 posts of mine were of the B.U.M.P. variety (though one introduced the tumbleweed as a character without me having known it would, and one was in place of one of Tracer's posts that was moved to NeShattered) and one normal post was in conjunction with Kirby.

I've "written out" Antestarr and Sok Munkey already (though there's a chance Ante will be coming back sooner than later -- he's on temporary assignment in Kuwait).

DISCLAIMER: Despite the nature of this post, this is not meant as a threat/reprimand to anyone who was mentioned in the above. I simply wanted to get an idea of who's been active most recently and how much over the past story-arc. It's been sluggish, and I'm having difficulty myself with it SPEAK UP THOUGH! Lemme know what's going on, what's on your mind, what you're having difficulties with, etc. etc. I'd much appreciate it!

Hooray! I'm done my table of contents, more or less! Go look, and let me know what you think! (it's the second post of this workshop thread :p)

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?p=251150#post251150

EDIT: There were some wrong hyperlinks. They should be fixed now.

Do you still need me to write a Character Sheet?

[QUOTE=Janitor Bob]Do you still need me to write a Character Sheet?[/QUOTE]

That depends. Are you going to start writing again? 0=)

Seriously though, even if your character was currently active, there's never a NEED. However, even if your character isn't active, a character profile is always awesome, especially since your character has been a real big one -- up there with Krig the Viking and the Otter.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you'd like to write one, by all means, write one!

(P.S. Good to see you around. :))