Allamorph

Oh man, Mitch. I remember specifically targetting him at one point. He had a great wit and a great mind, but that kid was way too proud of knowing All The Words. There's no need to deliberately obfuscate everything in creation to make yourself feel superior. It's so much more fun to let other people do that work for you Hey, do we have any options for redacting parts of posts anymore, or did the spoiler function swap to that depressing hidey-box thing permanently and that's all we got?

I don't think either format is oppressive, really. It just depends on your particular playstyle. And, if I recall correctly, back before 2010 the Boards boasted plenty of RPs with both short- and long-style formats. Personally, I gravitate towards the longer ones, but that's mostly because I feel challenged as a writer that way. A tweet-sized RP would probably be much more action-oriented, since it would consist mostly of the DM and players shooting either actions, choices, or lines of conversation back and forth to each other. There used to be regular RP rooms in the TheOtaku chatroom. I remember three in particular that kept reopening every day for literal months, so obviously the format isn't inherently awful. All you really need are a few like-minded people.

Haha, sorry, CaNz, it seems like your thread has been hijacked. Who knew the topic that could draw the most posts is a discussion about why nobody posts anymore, eh? =P Anyway, James touched on (and Shy and TrollBoo expanded on them a little) essentially everything I was thinking about, but I think everyone keeps missing another major point. I totally agree that social media was and is a huge factor in the decline of message boards in general, mostly because it caters to the quick, stream-of-consciousness style postings that, let's be honest, don't require a whole lot of effort input for a whole lot of potential positive feedback. Of course, this is me speaking from my vast, extensive knowledge of .... uh ... three separate message boards, so, you know, take that as you will. Mostly I just couldn't get into any others, to be honest. Ironically, it was that "excessive" quality of effort that drew me in here, since I found an outlet for more straightforward, thoughtful and thought-provoking discussions with people who actually understood their opinions. I still think James and I could get into a fairly good debate if we set our minds to it, haha. I think it was a rarity for us to ever agree on anything, and I definitely remember nitpicking the crap out of him on just, you know, a regular basis, but I could always count on him to make stellar points. Usually. Heh. I've also noticed that, as I've bopped around the internet, I really haven't seen any other boards with as pleasant a design as OB. I still half-consciously judge boards I look at against this one. We've gone through, what, five different iterations, and that's just since I started lurking back in Fall '07. I didn't even join until '08, I don't think. But the point I think people miss is that we all just grew up. College took some of us away, but really the workforce took the rest of us, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed "man, I can get so much more done when I'm not sitting there glued to my F5 key waiting for someone to respond to my post". Being a student in the Navy for two years and a nonqual for the last year has usually left me with around three to four hours of free time per day, including transit to and from base, shopping for stuff, and, you know, general life necessities other than goofing off, which was much easier to do in college when I had a cafeteria and a living space I didn't have to pay for. That, or families. It's not exactly simple raising a kid and maintaining a highly active internet social life. I'm pretty sure that's where Indi went to, and I think a few others hit that milestone as well. I think this really applies to me, to be honest. It wasn't always intentional, but I can't deny I have a tendency to deliver certain of my points in a stark, brutal fashion.

dat missy elliott tho

Shinmaru can only be a Señor Taco.

Truth has been dropped in this house tonight. He who hath an ear, let him hear. You said that it's been three or four months since you couldn't play. What does that mean for you once you have the option to play it once more?

I'm pretty sure you have no idea what I said. Part of me wants to tell you to go read it again and figure out what was really going on. But I'm not really in my usual Student, Instruct Thyself mood right now, so let's elaborate. OB was in decline well before I joined the Navy, and that was over three years ago last October; I received my first Good Conduct Medal the first week of November last year. (Technically it's been four, since I signed my contract in April, but I didn't ship to BT until October, which was the start of my active duty service.) It wasn't really a secret, either. We members just didn't want to openly admit that we were all growing up and moving on, and that we as a collective weren't really interested in putting forth the effort to nurture new young members to follow behind us. By sheer coincidence, around the same time longtime member and well-respected staff Shy created a thread purposed specifically to hold those thoughts which members might want to babble about to other members but which didn't really merit intensive, multi-paragraph essay-style board discussions. Unfortunately, the thread turned into a dumping ground for basically everything that also ends up on places like Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr, sans the image-hosting capacity, which caused a lot of the more senior, geriatric members to bristle at something that was so markedly changing the way Their Boards functioned. So we move forward, and I push myself through the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Training Program, often with very little time to devote to heavy community involvement. I notice that other members are likewise disappearing, some more obviously than others. Many of us lurkers who still retained some (possibly petulant) form of nostalgia, or who just couldn't bring themselvse to remove the place from their Bookmarks tab, felt bothered by the now obvious decline in activity, and various attempts to counteract it were taken. Around this time, the opinion started circulating that casual posting style of the PRP was contributing heavily (singlehandedly, according to some) to the reduction in activity, while others held that by consolidating all the tiny unimportant threads into one giant deliberately unimportant thread it had merely removed the illusion that there was any significant activity at all. But nobody did anything about it. A couple of people put slightly passive-aggressive slogans regarding the thread in their signatures (for what reason I can't fathom), but beyond that the conversation concerning action about it stagnated—as did the Boards. This cycle of descrying the thread and defending its existence continued at random but broad intervals, usually when more than two old members happened to be lurking at around the same time. And each time produced the same result, except that the next time there was typically less and less of a community response defending it, until most recently when all voices in its favor have essentially died out. And even then, those who didn't want it closed weren't really in favor of the thread itself, just against actually doing anything to it. I'm not sure why. Regardless, whether or not the PRP had any perceptable impact on the Boards whatsoever isn't the issue. The issue is that the opinion of the community as a whole ranged from neutral to negative on it. Beyond that, to make an accurate decision on the thread's effects on the Boards, one has to step back and observe the pattern surrounding it from a social-engineering standpoint. To bring OB to this point today took a minimum of five years. The thought that a complete turnaround to a burgeoning, member-swollen, discussion-intensive message boards is possible in a mere two months after half a decade of apathy and obscurity is beyond unreasonable. OB may one day flourish again, but it's not going to happen overnight. As for myself, I specifically wasn't bothered by it either way. I feel no different about it now than I did before. In fact, I believe that all the vitriol directed towards it by other members, blaming it for "destroying the boards", was entirely misplaced. So me stepping up to be The Guy Who Killed It served a dual purpose. The thread has been killed, removing what has been dubbed the most glaring unsightly blemish on the Boards today—and in doing so, the giant overinflated scapegoat for the Boards' waning has been removed. Because, no, it wasn't the PRP that killed OB. It was us.

FINAL SCORE: NE 28 SEA 24 That was, without a doubt, one of the best games I have ever watched. Except for that fight right at the end, truly worthy of the legacy of the title history. Both teams played their hearts out, and those last two 4th Quarter drives were absolutely ******* incredible. The last two plays of Seattle's drive were especially nuts. Seattle should not have held onto the football to get that 1st and Goal, and New England should not have been able to intercept it on the one yard line (or, alternatively, the Seahawks should have run with Lynch instead of passing, but whatever). I don't remember having this much fun watching a professional sports game since I got to see the Carolina Hurricanes take the Stanley Cup way back in .... oh man, 2006, wasn't it? I had just graduated high school. Criminy, that was almost a decade ago now. Anyway, no. Incredible, incredible game. The Patriots have proven themselves again, and absolutely no one can talk **** about Seattle having a freak program after taking their conference championship and then playing New England down to the absolute wire. Great football programs, great teams, great game, magnificent Sunday evening.

That is decidedly untrue. I have always had a neutral stance on it, and actually defended it a couple of times. As for why I advocated its closure...I believe my quote by Petie sufficiently explains my stance on the subject. Iirc, Shy was against it about ten posts after he created it. Ah, irony.

Yeah, it's kinda getting that way. Activity really stalled around 2010, I think, and has been slowly trickling off since then. It did used to be much more active, though. And, once upon a time, I was this section's moderator. =P But that's neither here nor there.   Sort of. You're right that I'm referring to verb tense, but it's not the individual verbs, it's your choice of which tense you're using at the time. Here, let me show you a few examples.   He opened the door and stepped outside. Courtney greeted him with a hug. Michael shuts the door behind him and locks it.... // "Smell this one." She says. Michael looks at her and then takes a whiff.... It was absolute bliss. // Michael took a look at her and liked what she had to wear. ... "You look pretty in it." Michael says, a bit embarrassed. "Well I'm glad you like it," Courtney says, "A lot of the other boys don't like what I wear." "What's wrong with how you dress?" Michael asked. "I honestly don't know. My mom says it's because they like me." She replies. Here, I've highlighted both the past tense and the present tense verbs you're using. As you can see, you're switching back and forth between them quite rapidly, and with little logical sense or apparent motive, which leads me to believe that you don't realise you're switching tenses at all. This problem is fairly common to newer writers, or writers with little proofing/editing experience, but the fix is fairly straightforwardâ??and, unfortunately, kind of blatantly obvious. 1. Read what you write while you're writing it. 2. Wait a few days, then reread what you've written. Look specifically for errors. 3. Pick a tense. Stick with it. If you don't know or aren't sure of the different situations for using different tenses, stick to past tense. Once you get better at spotting your tense-switching, you'll start to develop a sense for when past is appropriate, when present might be better, and when [and how] to use future tense. So you're looking at a Young Adult audience. That's what I thought you meant, but I had to check. Here's the deal. I asked the question because although you said "juvenile fiction" and that phrase is commonly interchangeable with Young Adult fiction or Teen Fiction, your writing reads like a third grade primer. It's very blocky, moving directly from key action to key action. The most difficult syntax you use is a compound sentence. I think at a couple of points you made an attempt at more complex syntax, but since you weren't sure how to handle it you fell back on what you did know, and ended up (unfortunately) flubbing it. Your narrative thus reads very simply, with little to no appreciable detail or internal character thoughts/observations. It's almost devoid of any sort of artistry at all. Additionally, what detail you do include is token, somewhat stilted, and often contradictory. For instance, at the beginning of the excerpt you mention that the couple is outside in a park, taking in the flower-scented air and listening to the birds sing, but later you say that the sun was setting and it was getting dark at around 4pm. Now, I live in upper Washington state, so I'm fairly closer to the pole than the equator, but the only time it gets dark that early around here is in the winter. What you're describing is clearly not winter. What this means for you is that you need a lot more practice. You need to take your story ideas and thresh them out through notes prior to setting them in prose. You need to decide on setting and character and plot details, and then you need to stick to those details. You need to write sketches, and then you need to follow the points I listed aboveâ??specifically points 1 and 2. You also need to read a lot. Read that sentence again. It says a lot. It also means many, many, many different authors. If you want to write, you need to read. You need to look at other authors' styles and how they handle the language. You need to look at what they're doing with their characters and how they're advancing their plot. And you need to do this to the point where you can start reading a book and immediately identify if an author is good, bad, average, awful, or spectacular. And then you need to write again, and reread yourself again, and critique yourself again. You have to become your own hardest critic. Look for things you did well, and look for things you did horribly. Then find ways to make the things you did well even better, and find ways to fix the stuff you messed up. Sure, some people may be talented and can do stuff like this with what seems like relative ease compared to you. But talent does not equal skill. Skill is equal parts hard work, patience, and desire. Talent is icing on the cake. If you want to write, then write. If you want to write better, work a little more. If you want to write well, work your ass off. By no means do I mean you are horrible and you should never write again. That's a preposterous idea. Simply being unskilled is never a reason to give up. What I am saying is that you are currently a fairly young writer in terms of experience, and your writing shows it. You have a lot of room to improve, and I believe if you really want it, you can rise through that room and develop into a fantastic writer. You're just not there now. I'm not going to comment on your content. I believe that any story idea can make an excellent book. The success or failure of a story depends entirely on the presentation, expression, and craftsmanship of the author, not what they choose to write about. Remember that, because many people will tell you exactly the opposite. I wish you the best of fortune, and I urge you never to lose the passion for storytelling. Also, the word you're looking for is 'novella'. ;) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What are you even saiyan? Retcon pun.

Wow, I haven't done this in a while.  Standard preface: I am honest, often to the point of brutality.  No offense is intended, so if any is felt, please remember I am being as tactful as possible given the subject matter.   Right.  So, although this isn't much of a sampleâ??more of a ... a blink, I guessâ??it's still enough for me to pick out a couple of items: one comment, and one question.  Comment first. Your tenses are inconsistent.  You switch from past to present back to past, without even realising you're doing so, I think.  And while I understand that this point could be considered an editing/revision comment, when you say you write as much as you claim and yet demonstrate such a glaring weakness in work I believe you're proud of (ugh, dangling participle), it calls into question your entire repertoire.  With so little to go on, I can't really tell if this is just a momentary lapse in style or if this sort of tense-switching is rampant throughout the rest of your work. From experience, Present is a harder tense to maintain consistently (especially with flashbacks), and for, in my opinion, a debatable reward vice Past.  That isn't to say Present isn't useful, or is undesirable.  It's mostly just situational.  It promotes a very active narration style, since the narrator is essentially keeping pace with the main characters instead of looking back, and is simultaneously much more limiting, since you as the author are now denied the advantages of using 3rd Omniscient as a perspective, and so are restricted to the information inside the head(s) of whomever you happen to be following at the time.  By comparison, Past is much easier.   Tenses may seem like a relative non-issue compared to plot content and character development, but they are grammatical fundamentals that can quickly label you as a novice writer if ignored or misunderstood or misused.  Professional writers have been sensetive to what tense they are using for so long that the process of selecting, using, and maintaining the correct one are almost as reflexive as walking.   ...no offense if you're wheelchair-bound or afflicted with some other form of paraplegia or mobility impairment.  It's just that breathing was too natural.       My question for you: when you say that this story is intended for "juvenile readers", what age range/reading comprehension level are you considering?  I have a remark on the subject, but your answer to this question will determine what direction that remark takes.       Sadly, with so little to go on, I can't really remark on anything related to style or content, or really anything fun that we as writers do.  I have a feeling your reticence to post more is due to a fear of plagiarism, which I understand.  But, unless the responses you're seeking are along the lines of Sounds great!  Can't wait to read more!, with the bare bones you've provided here, there isn't a whole lot of constructive feedback possible to give you.  You trusted the boards enough to hope you got a response at all (which is admirable, given the abundance of tumbleweeds around these parts...), why not trust us to handle your work like the mature adults most of us try to be? ...I mean, you know, when we're not deliberately being completely not mature at all.  With fart jokes.  And stuff.

Last night I was at the Judas Priest concert in Tacoma, for their Redeemer of Souls tour, and I had an absolute blast. Managed to get ticket on the floor, got in early enough (despite a stupidly-placed accident where, like, five highways merge together) to get basically right up front, and ... yeah. I have no voice today. Well. I do have a voice, but it's stupid low. Everyone I've talked to says I sound a) horrible; or b) like the radio announcer for Jazz 89. But the whole night was full of awesome. Started out when I was heading into the Dome through the General Admission area, and surrounding the line of people heading in were small clumps of people armed with picket signs, all of which read some version of the idea that All Have Sinned (which is, you know, a valid point) and that we were all going to Hell (which is, you know, mighty dadgum presumptuous, seeing as I have been saved for 20 years, which is most of my life, and I will be attending a Judas Priest concert if I damn well please thankyouverymuch). This, of course, was prompting a volley of raucous retorts back at them, including at one point a defiant "WE WORSHIP THE DEVIL!!", followed almost immediately by a more moderate and pacifying "We don't all worship the Devil," which I found extraordinarily entertaining. And then an older gentleman in a wheelchair rolled up past the line, looked at everyone yelling, looked at me, and said, "I don't know what all you young folk are so worked up over. This brings back memories for me. What's a Priest concert without bible-thumpers hollering at us?" He then rolled on to ticket-check, and I burst out laughing. A group called Steel Panther opened for Priest. This group is basically a smashup of Glam Rock, shredder metal, Van Halen, and Zoolander, and they know it. Their bassistâ??who is, like, 90% Duck Face and took frequent pauses for hair sprayâ??was described by their guitarist as either the foxiest man on the planet or the reincarnation of Farrah Fawcett, and they played high-brow charts such as Asian Hooker, The Shocker, and 17 Girls In A Row. Didn't take themselves seriously at all, except for the fact that they can freaking play, and they did a fantastic job as the opening act. And then Priest came on stage and brought down the house. The knot of people around me, near the left front of the stage, ranged in age from probably just barely legal (couple of gals) to some guys in their late fifties, and all of us were rocking out hardcore. I also managed to snag several photos on my phone; the best one is right here. That is Richie Faulkner, who saw me with my phone up, aimed directly at me, and held the post until I threw him a fist, which he returned and then went to the other side of the stage. So. Where do you go for concerts, OB? Who do you scream for? What kind of crazy crap happens to you? I want to know.

All right, OB. It's done. What Next.

Hey there, fellow Lurker of Creative Writing Forums Past. I remember you. =) The holiday period around the turn of the year is one of the few times (really the only time) us guys in the military are reliably able to get time off. In fact, we get so few regular opportunities that we are "Strongly Encouraged" to take one of the standdown (read: "the military does no work") periods for leave and go home and see people. My first year in I had just graduated basic training a month earlier, so although I was authorised leave, I didn't take it, but now that I'm actually working on Big Navy's schedule I never pass up the opportunityâ??especially since the only time off I've taken in the past year was four days for a memorial service. This year should be enjoyable. Prior to arriving back home, I plan to drop by [color=#800000]Kimmeh[/COLOR's place in Arizona and hang out with her for a few days. It's a touch easier now that I live in the Puget Sound area and can bop through Phoenix on my way back East. Traditionwise, my family hasn't really got anything beyond the exchange of giftsâ??which, unfortunately (at least to me), tends to take the form of "hey, what do you want this year" and then giving it to them. We used to have a large family gathering on my father's side, complete with a visit from Santa (for the young ones) and a traditional Southern feast, but we haven't really had one of those in about a decade, mostly due to people being really spread out, and the gradual, inevitable thinning of the numbers in my grandmother's generation. My parents and siblings still gather on Christmas, and I make it when I can these years ... holy crap this is sounding more and more depressing. Totally not the case. Anyway, our regular thing is, the morning of, we ditch all electronic stuff. No television, no computers, no phones, no internet, just us six sitting with each other in the living room and paying attention to each other and looking at what everyone's surprise stuff was and just generally talking to each other. It's nice. Also one of my sisters picks one present every year to use four entire rolls of Scotch tape on, and it's always funny when we find out who got it.

I have seen this opinion posted over and over and over again.  I have also yet to hear a rebuttal to it in quite some time.  In fact, I think the last rebuttal to it might have been mine, and if I recall correctly my opinion at the time was something along the lines of "...eh".  But every time the question of closing it comes up, we all collectively sit here and wait, and time passes, and we all forget, and then a few years later somebody says it again and we remember how we didn't want to be That Guy, I guess, and nothing ever happens.   However, I happen to have a reputation for being That Guy.  So, you know what?  Let's do this. Petie, Des, I formally request that The Padded Room Party be closed.  It was fun when it was first started, but many tasty things spoil, and that thread is far past its expiration date.  The community at large believes it to detract from the boards overall.  I see no reason to leave it accessible if no one is around to stand up for it.

Keep in mind that this particular area of the world has been embroiled in territory wars for its entire history.  For Israel's history alone: migrated there, settled (with some minor tribal bloodshed), grew, moved to Egypt to escape a drought, live there long enough to become a large enough group of people to comprise a nation-state of their own, were enslaved out of fear of uprising, won their freedom, returned to their previous land (which was now inhabited), conquered it, grew more, and at various points were captured and released over and over and over again by countries including Edom, Syria (and Asyria), Babylon, Persia, Rome, Greece, and Turkey, were scattered, settled across Europe, were almost wiped from the face of the planet, and were just handed their old "ancestral lands" back because that's what we (yes, we) thought they should have to live on.   Yeah.  We kinda kicked the Palestinians out of Palestine.  Remember that.  This particular century of conflict is in no small part the fault of the winners of WWII.  That was us: Britain, Russia, the US, whoever made up the UN.   But if you look even further back in history, you realise that the conflict is even more complicated than that.  You know how Israel is incredibly proud of being descendents of Abraham?  He had another son.  His wife was mad about not having a kid and told him to knock up her maid, basically.    And ... he did.  Kid's name was Ishmael. But then Abraham's wife had a son of her own, and got jealous and effectively had her maid and the boy chased off.  He went on to become the ancestor of the nation of Edom, and basically everyone else in the area.    So, when you listen to news in the Middle East area, especially around Israel and Jordan and Palestine, keep in mind that this isn't just about people who want the same place to live.  This is, quite literally, a blood feud. And it's been going on for over four thousand years. Yeah.

A: "So, you're on first?" J: "...no, actually Who's on first, I'm on watch first." A: "Ah, and then What's on second?" H: "Who's on first? Who's on third?" Me: "I Don't Know." A: "You don't? You sure? It's an old comedy sketch." Me: *stares* A: "Black and white? Radio broadcast, too, but you're probably too young to know that...." Me: *stares* A: "Nothing?" Me: *stares harder*

  Not. Allowed.

Reported for creeping.

ASK SOMEONE YOU KNOW TO TEACH YOU. THEY'LL BE REALLY HAPPY AND PROBABLY GIVE YOU LOTS OF GUIDANCE AND RECIPES AND YOU WILL EAT MAGNIFICENTLY FOR WEEKS. ALSO BUY A CROCK POT. LIKE, FOR SERIOUS.

Reading Rainbow was a kids show on PBS hosted by LeVar Burton of StarTrek: TNG fame, whose sole purpose was to promote reading to primary school children.  From what I remember, each show would take a few books, tie them together with an applicable theme, and read excerpts from the stories, often animated.  That was the whole show.  Really absurdly simple, when you read it like that, but its only aims were the promotion of children's literacy and the encouragement of imaginative growth.   It's ... I dunno.  It's like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, I think.  It's a grown adult just talking to kids, not as though they're incapable of understanding the world, but as if they matter and have thoughts of their own.  There was no false excitement, no "dumbing down", like many of the shows I see now.  It was intelligent, but still on a level approachable to children.   LeVar hosted it for years, too.  It started airing in 1983, I think, a few years before I was born, and I remember seeing on PBS through high school.  Apparently they stopped filming it in 2006 (when I graduated), and ran reruns until 2009.  That's twenty-three years of hosting the same show.  And now he wants to bring it back.  The man is dedicated. Here is the theme to the show, which I could still sing to this day. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGhfI_NwcA[/media]