Thank you Majiir and West Wind, for responding to this workshop stuff. I didn't want to bother you two anymore after having written your stuff, but I'm glad you two stuck around a little longer to comment on your own work. I feel I have a much better understanding on the intentions of the themes you two worked with, and can better tackle any changes/whatever we might make while staying true to the spirit of what you wrote.
First, Majiir:
Your first response is completely understandable. Any of us who've written anything significant for the NeS know the same feeling, when other writers don't seem to understand, appreciate, and use your material the way you had envisioned. And yes, sometimes it's for the better, and sometimes it's for the worse. If I had thought less of the work you two did, I wouldn't have brought it up in the workshop (note: this doesn't mean I think less of everything that I don't comment on in the workshop! Just so we're clear on that...)
There's nothing to apologize about the speed at which you two finished your stuff. I ragged on you to finish it because I rag on everyone -- we're all pretty slow these days when it comes to writing stuff, and you certainly didn't put NeS in a bad spot or whatnot.
About Mayaal, Bhac, Thand and Tsolo: I'll talk about them later, in addressing West Wind's stuff.
About burdening the thread: I'm going to talk about this mostly in response to WW's post, but your last point about the old conflicts/enemies sustaining us was something I wanted to argue against. I feel we have PLENTY of old conflicts and enemies still: the Forgotten, the leftover forces of Hell, the heroes affected by the Dust,
Thand... most everything still left properly unresolved. Maybe it's a sign that they weren't interesting conflicts/enemies, and maybe they're ideal things to be the target of Tsolo, but if possible, I don't like introducing story elements only to have them fade away, as is often the case with stuff in NeS. West Wind brings up some good points about it, though, and I'll get to those further on. Also, I never got the impression you two were snot-nosed brats coming to crash the party -- quite the opposite.
The premise of setting up another story-arc for the heroes to come back to is both good and bad. Hopefully it can be worked in for the better.
I personally liked your use of literary conventions, and the idea of the Hero's Last Bullet, and I think Kirby is just miffed at how they played with "his" characters.
And now West Wind:
First off, I want to thank you again for replying. I'll be honest: I didn't have high expectations for your voice towards the end, as I was waiting for your storyline to be finished. I've seen many other writers in the past just "fade out" and, when I ask them to at least tie up their part of the story, I never hear from them, or they get angry for feeling "burdened" with writing, or whatever, leaving myself and the other writers to often feel our own "burden" to do something significant - proper closure or whatnot. All the talk of "burden" is certainly a fallacy in NeS spirit, but it's there all the same. I also know the difficulties of close co-writing a storyarc from personal experience, and from what little I got, I was starting to empathize with Majiir, who had seemingly been the only one attempting at some closure and not just "fading away." However, your thorough and detailed response here showed me otherwise, and I'm very, very grateful for it. I certainly know the experience of having a bunch to say and not the time or energy to say it all.
Thand's Grand Plan: Awesome -- I didn't miss anything. I had mistaken your contribution to strengthen Thand's current mysterious plans for a specific plan I thought might have been in your storyline. I'm still interested to see what some of the other writers think of my idea...
Thand vs. Tsolo: I'm still not entirely convinced that Thand, at least at the moment, ever really needed a counterbalance, though I think I understand the logic behind this a lot more now. As it was before, I had gotten a different impression, as Thand had launched books at Tsolo -- which is not only very physical attack (where, as you've figured correctly, Thand is all about the mental, making him a very unique NeS character) but also a relatively poor attack (I mean, really, who's seriously going to be taken down by a bunch of books?) -- and that scene seemed to have presented Thand as rather irrational. Thand's strength comes from his reasoning abilities, as well as his (logical) super-human intelligence and wisdom, as well as the fact that the NeS does not consider him a villain, but more of a NPC, leaving him immune to the conventions that often drive the (meta-)story of NeS. A more accurate opposing/equal force to him would be a character who's strength lies in faith, and who probably has an equally NPC-like status. Your explinations here, as with everything else in your workshop post, help clarify that it is otherwise.
Tsolo: Again, Tsolo came off differently to me because it had appeared that Thand was being used as the previous "bar" or standard for the greatest threat to NeS and then pushing the bar by having Thand attempt to stop Tsolo with no effect. Tsolo's role as a trimmer of the "dead" things in NeS, as with your meta-story goal in making the NeS more concise and easier for new writers is admirable. Knowing what I know now, this may yet prove to be an awesome addition to the NeS. However, trust me when I say that the NeS will ALWAYS be confusing, and it will ALWAYS be big. We've trimmed quite a few times before, only for the NeS to grow back weirder than ever. It's alive, I tell you, aliiiiiiive! But yeah -- this just goes to show that I need to do a better job of enforcing the "convention" of no conventions, especially for new writers.
Bhac and Mayaal:
The problem here isn't so much that Mayaal was "killed" -- it's that their characters and purpose appeared to have been fundamentally changed, or at least spun. As they were, in the story, they served to make sure the story stays
active and in
balance or order. Bhac would encourage evil when the forces of Good had it too easy, and Mayaal would encourage good when the forces of Evil were dominating. In this way, they've almost replaced the roles that the Protectors of the Plotfractal once had -- that neither Good nor Evil had the definitive upper hand, and that the NeS would remain in conflict. They are also meant to be a sort of side-line joke: as Hands of NeS, they "run" the show like a director or manager would, and when the writers got stuck, they would fight each other, to ensure that there was always a conflict (neither of these ideas, however, ever got used much). For Bhac to incapacitate Mayaal the way he did could very well drive the story to imbalance, which is against their roles.
Or so it would seem...
I'd always been iffy about some of the Bhac/Mayaal stuff -- for instance, if we know that they will always end in a stalemate, how could they possibly drive any real conflict? I think what you two did mixed it up well enough, and a post could easily be made to re-establish their characters without altering what you had them do.
About the rest of your post: Again, knowing what I know now, I think there's a lot of awesome potential to be had, though I don't necessarily think it should involve Thand the way you had in mind.
I'm still very interested in what some of the other writers think on the matter -- TLTE in particular, as he has a special investment in Thand's character. And now that THEY'VE finished [i[their[/i] storyline, I really need to shape up and finish "my" storyline... oy. Don't hesitate to move along without me though!
) but really, I just keep not putting the lil' time every other day like I was when I started that sub-quest thingy.
