Rob Osterman's Blog, page 5

Love in Space ME3 Style

So I know I'm late to the game, but I am finally playing Mass Effect 3. Finally.

Actually if I'm being honest I've had the game for a while (as in when it came out) and I played it once before but I didn't get very far. I also took a passing stab at ME1 and gave up on it fairly quickly because I wasn't quite sure what to make of a FPS RPG and so despite the reviews I gave it a pass to indulge in other Bioware titles. One of the notable ones I really enjoyed was Dragon Age: Origins, even though I was unable to see it through to the end.

But I'm playing it through and I'm enjoying the story. It also happens that recently the question was raised about the relevance of in game romance and story telling.

And this takes us back to the nature of stories, video games, and the stories we tell. I know for me, part of my writing muse has been to work on the tapestry of a good game and adding my own stories to the characters there.

So, ME3 and the nature of romance....


First let me say that I'm not done with my first play through so I'm not entirely sure where some of the plots are going, but I do "kinda" like this current plot.

I'm playing a woman Shepard and mostly taking the Paragon choices in RP when they come up. For those not familiar you have the choice in dialogues to be empathetic or hard nosed, Paragon or Renegade. I'm playing this Shepard as mostly a "good guy".

There is also this very sweet specialist assigned to your ship, Traynor. Took a second to place her because she has a proper English accent but dark skin, but then it clicked and I thought of the potential love interested she might be an interesting one to pursue.

Now the compliant about romance stories in gaming is that they often feel like a matter of picking the right buttons to click at the right time and that the relationship doesn't evolve naturally. Well it is a game so natural is a little odd, but in any good story the romance can't just happen. I know I've struggled in Mind the Thorns to make a romance for Regan follow a natural flow rather than just be "poof - here's a romance for the heroine!"

So my first reaction to the debate was that you can absolutely craft a series of dialogue choices to create a natural flowing romance, hints at something there, more questions about what makes us tick, and eventually something possibly grows. Admittedly Dragon Age did, I think, a pretty good job of this.

As I'm playing, I'm thinking about how I'd like to see my Shepard and Traynor hook up. She's cute, delightfully out of her element, but very knowledgeable about her specialty, and seems like an interesting character.

During the play through (remember I'm not done yet so things could change later in the story) she offers to come up to the captain's cabin for a "game night" of playing Chess. While there Shepard shows off the space (it's big compared to the crew bunk) and shows off the fact that, yes, she has an actual shower. Traynor comments that she'd love a chance to take a real shower, and Shepard okays it.

I mentioned earlier that in games I like to see the romance naturally blossom. Here's what rubs me weird with this story arc. I'd like to think that I was just following what was natural assuming a romantic interest on Shepard's part, but I honestly also wanted to avoid blocking off romantic opportunities later. My brain was on the "if I pick B will I still have a romance option later? Or do I Need to pick A now?" And right up to the end of the scene where the two of them are cuddling and talking about how Traynor may just be using Shepard for a chance to have a real shower from time to time (she also sends an email where she says despite the shower she still feels a little dirty), I really didn't allow Shepard to follow anything natural. I was picking choices because I felt "If I don't pick them I'll lose all chance later".

Now it's been a while since I dated. A good good long while, but I'm pretty sure (and my wife will correct me) that I had more than one opportunity to show interest or not. And to shut down all possibility of a relationship I had to do more than just not get in the shower with someone. Granted there are ways to completely shut down all chances, but usually they involve more than showing discretion.

I do think that romantic story arcs can be well done in games. I know that in Dragon Age Origins I did feel that my character developed a natural relationship with her companions on every play-through I did (though I didn't finish any of them). In ME3 though, this case felt very "paint by the numbers" romance.

Weekly Omens 2/23/13

Ahh, Midwinter Break... a week of "working" which really translated to playing with the 5-year old, playing through Mass Effect 3 (I'm still getting the hang of the combat system) and poking at my writing.

Not the most productive week I've ever had but a good week over all.

On Mind the Thorns:

I'm halfway through the next chapter.  This one is proving a bit harder to write than I'd like mostly because I also see that it's time to start to move towards some resolutions of the story.  No new updates this week but expect one soon.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

This week saw the first posting of a video diary for Bastion, specifically the personal log of Emma Morgan, Mr. Max Ryan's personal assistant.  It was one of the most exciting things to do with this project and I'm very excited by the way it turned out.  I'm looking forward to doing more of these to support the story.

On Fictional Omens

One of the challenges of writing is to keep the language evenly balanced for what you want to accomplish:  Being true to your source material as well as being readable to your audience.  Some people (Meyers) do little to no research at all and thus have wildly inaccurate facts in their writing while others go to such an extreme (Clancy, Crichten) that you almost learn more about the subjects than you do about the plot.  This week I take a look at that on a smaller scale.


At home:

This weekend is the birthday of my beloved so it's out for free birthday dinners, enjoying family time and maybe sneaking out to do some sledding.  I've been putting more time into Mass Effect 3 and the game is growing on me.  I love the story, I love characters, but I'm still getting the hang of the combat system.  It's just a little too soupy compared to a dedicated shooter to really be fun for me after all my hours on Call of Duty.

And.... your weekly video:

I am absolutely cheating and this week's video is the video diary of Emma Morgan, one of the characters in Bastion: The Last Hope.  Yes, I'm using my own blog to post chapters of my web novel.  Sue me.

Clip vs Mag

Some time ago I had the chance to get some first hand experience with firing a hand gun, the point of which was to have the experience to more accurately write the scene in Mind the Thorns where Regan defends herself from a band of hunters. It was a good experience and I think that it enriched my story telling.

For Bastion I have been networking with a mix of "experts" to get things right in the particulars given that all of my characters have such wide ranging backgrounds. But this also creates its own dilemmas.

Specifically, what do you use to load a gun? A clip or a magazine?

According to my handgun expert, it's called a magazine.

Thankfully I think I can safely use the term magazine with out confusing anyone. Similarly there is little risk in using nautical miles for my distances but calling them only miles in dialogue. There is a small risk that someone may check my math and point out that my ranges between locations is off but that too is very unlikely.

But I start to run into other problems when it comes to computers. Apparently databases do not index or connect to a program, the program "ingests" the database.

I can honestly say that I've never heard of the term "Ingesting" a database. It makes sense though, now that I'm writing about it. A data base takes the data offered to it, and it internalizes it just as we take in food. It's not a horrible word, but it's just one that, even as a fan of sci fi, I had never heard of before.

And this creates a unique dilemma when writing: do you use completely accurate language and alienate those most in "the know" or do you use the common language that laymen would apply and thus understand?

Referencing back to my time at the gun range, I remember making a mental note that the "thing that holds the bullets" is not a clip, it's a magazine. I had never called it that before. In fact when I said "magazine" I usually thought, historically of the "powder magazine" where all the kegs of powder are kept. I didn't think directly of the "mechanical device to hold and feed bullets into a gun".

So when a character reaches for more ammo, does she grab a clip or a magazine?

And this is really one of those cases where you can't win for losing. If you're accurate you risk losing readers, and if you're not you face the same danger.

My advice, if I'm at all positioned to offer it, is to err on the side of the layman. While it's good to show that you're doing your research you also don't want to risk losing the majority of your audience. There are some outs, such as mixing terms or using both the common term and the official term in the prose, but it's important to your narrative to stay within your voice or character. You also can look for chances for a character who would know the right term to correct your narrator with the correct one as a means to say "hey I know we call it this but the right term is that."

At the end of it all, the most important thing is to keep the story fun to read and as grounded as possible in reality, even when that reality is not real reality.

Weekly Omens 2/16/13

Valentines week, a week to celebrate your loves or curse your loneliness  depending on where you sit on the spectrum of romance.  I'm fortunate in that I have love to celebrate but I do remember the dark times that came before and I offer sympathetic thoughts.

Here's what's been going on around these parts, for those not too busy staring longingly into their lover's eyes:

On Mind the Thorns:

The choice has been made that Regan will keep quiet and bide her time to strike back.  But who can she call to help her?  Emma?  Thomas?  Daryl?  It's been a long time since we've seen Daryl.  Is he still under contract with us?

On Bastion: The Last Hope

We are introduced to Max Ryan, an agent of the mysterious Project Bastion.  We see a glimpse of this organization as it monitors the end of days.  What is their role in all this?  What will they do as the meteors continue to fall?  Will they do anything?

On Fictional Omens

I responded to a critique that I was not passionate about the plight of Regan in Mind the Thorns.  Being fair, I have lost some of my oompht for writing it which has been a mix of work, family, time management, and other projects.  I take a few moments in this week's post to reflect on what kind of woman Regan has evolved into.  Is she as much like Bella as I fear?

At home:

Xander is up with his grandparents for the weekend leaving the wife and I alone with the baby.  So far we've done some cleaning, a little shopping and just enjoyed each other's company.  Our prayers go out to a friend who's going through a rough time herself and we wish her well if she should read this.

And.... your weekly video:

This week's video is an homage and a hug to my beloved wife who has, though simply being mindful of food intake and personal will power, dropped 4 dress sizes in the last 4 months.  Nothing like a little flash-mob cooking to remind us we could all eat a little healthier.

Passion for the Passionless or Regan becomes Bella Swan

I got an interesting email last week while working on the latest update for Mind the Thorns.  To paraprhase my Beta reader who sent the email:

"Is this girl ever going to grow a Superbowling* back bone?  Seriously!"

And that's when I realized that when I set out to write a "Better Twilight" but also with the twist of it being a Reader-Directed novel, I ran the real risk of it turning into "just another Twilight".  Only rather than Meyer-pires, it is populated with Oster-pires, and rather than being about a teenage angst ridden girl, it's a middle-aged, still somewhat angst ridden woman.

Here's a little backstory on the creation:


At the same time I had often fussed that Twilight just isn't a very good story nor does it offer the kind of heroine who should be celebrated.  The romantic male lead is a bully, is abusive, and really not the kind of guy I'd want my daughter dating.  So one of my goals was to create a story that was more engaging, more "realistic" and put Regan in a better place than Bella ended up.  I wanted Regan to be a strong woman, more like Zoe or Willow**.

So as I laid out my first set of chapters, I had a rough plotline in my head.  Regan would have to gather up some McGuffins (generic "things" that a character is sent out to recover or carry or deliver***) , and over the course of that would also be presented with a chance to reconcile with her ex-fiance (who she gilted at the altar), and if possible find her own peace in being single.  I had not yet decided who her own love interest would be, yet, and one of my initial goals for her was to possibly end the novel as a proud single woman.  Since it's still a work in progress I won't comment on my current end game plans.

But I have been upfront about how I knew the story would end, at least for Book 1 of the stories of Regan Fairchild, Accountant, Bachelorette and Vampire.  I had three set story arcs, the artifact gathering, the making peace with Harrison, and the finding peace with herself, the end of any of which would serve as the end of the novel.

What happened as the story progressed surprised me.

First, Regan was consistently making "soft" choices.   She would frequently choose to let things happen, to go alone from point A to B or to simply let things happen and from that continue.  She frequently deferred to the situation she was in.  Or so it felt.

Going through the polls now, however, I'm seeing a good deal of hidden strength in the choices that have been prominent.  She opted in chapter 6 to grab a gun and have a shoot out rather than simply curling up in a ball and hoping for the best.  She stood up to the Earl enough to insist he come to meet her in public rather than going to his house.  She could have, at the end of chapter 11, opted to go home and resume a quiet normal live, but instead it was a night (and a life) of partying and frolicking that she chose.

I recently offered up Mind the Thorns for review and admitted that I felt Regan was getting harder to write because she was not quite as different than Bella as I had wanted.  But I think, now that I take a good hard look at her experiences, that she is proving to still be a strong woman, just a different kind of strong woman. She still has taken charge from time to time, but she tempers it carefully.  She is far more Willow than Buffy, more Inara than Zoe.

And she still has a story to tell.


*I have decided that I will swear, henceforth, by using the term Superbowl as my profanity of choice.  So from now on it will be things like "Shut the Superbowl up" and "What the Superbowl."  Thank you Hungry Howies.

**Jos Whedon was once asked about his propensity for writing strong female characters.  His answer:  "Because you're still asking me that question."

*** The use of McGuffins is a very standard trope in adventure stories.  In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo is expected to take a ring to a volcano, or to deliver the McGuffin from point A to point B.  In SciFi a crew may be sent on an away mission to find a specific rare alloy that will save a planet.  The alloy itself is unimportant and just about any name can be given to it.  What matters is that the alloy be recovered and while recovering it, "Interesting Things" happen to the crew.

Weekly Omens 2/9/13

Well, here we are another week down. You would think, dear reader, that with a snow day on Friday that this weekly wrap up would have gone up on time then. But no, I took the day off to relax with the kids, look out at the piles of snow in the yard and just enjoy the day away from the computer, mostly.

It is a little odd in that the last three weeks of school, we have yet to have a full week anywhere. The first was cut short by Martin Luther King day, the next by and ice day, and this past with a snow day. What next? Locusts day?

Over in Mind the Thorns:

There is a new chapter up! Finally some direction for Reagan as she learns a little more about the Earl, Jeremiah, Vampire politics and herself. Head over there and cast your vote for how she will get through her current predicament.

In Bastion: the Last Hope:

This week's update features a radio broadcast from a day into the mysterious meteor strikes and a little insight into their origin. As with any multimedia chapter your feedback is very appreciated.

At Fictional Omens:

I love commercials and their unrepentant need to convince us to consume. This week I featured some of my favorites from Super Bowl Sunday.

And lastly a video. Today was my son's first trip sledding. Remember kids- red makes it go faster.

There was a game?

So Sunday I had planned to grade papers and watch the Superbowl.  As luck would have it, I was invited to my sister's for the evening and we watched most of the game there.  Of course, the Lions did not even make the playoffs, and the two teams that provided workhorses for my fantasy team were also out (the Patriots and the Redskins) so I was left really with no one too root for.

Except the commercials.

Here are my picks for the best commercials that I was able to catch:


Hungry Howies - Best Commercial if its True



Toyota - Best Twist in a Commercial



Jeep/ USO Best Commercial to Make You Cry

Weekly Omens 2/1/13

Well, the week started off slow, picked up speed sickly fast, and then cruised into another weekend.  Not a bad time, though a bit tiring on its own.  I'm finding it harder and harder to listen to NPR without getting annoyed that they keep covering the same things over and over, and I don't agree with half the spin they put on the things they do cover.

I also had a chance to actually have a fairly real conversation with a family member about race and ethnicity and that was one of my week's highlights.  Of course this weekend I have 130 quizzes to grade, and three chapters to write (two for Bastion and one for Mind the Thorns) if I want to keep on my current schedules.

So... on to the wrap up:

On Bastion: The Final Hope

We get an insight into what kind of progress mankind is making at countering the "Cloud of Death" spread over the land by the meteor shower.  Look this coming week for a multimedia piece as the next installment.  I should probably figure out what that will be....

On Mind the Thorns

I continue to suck and owe everyone another chapter.  I need to do that this weekend if for no other reason than to stop having say every week that I suck.


On Fictional Omens:

I reposted something from last summer about the way in which self-publishing may have contributed to the demise of Foyt and her racist scifi novel Save the Pearls.  I dug it out of the archives because it appears there is a sequel to this travesty coming and she's looking for reviewers to pre-read it.  I can only imagine how much she's learned about sensitive topics since her last foray.

I should also note that my own frustration with lack of notice by the larger writing world is starting to build given that I've yet to really do anything too stupid and thus have been rewarded with heaping piles of obscurity as thanks.

And now a musical interlude:

Repost and Update: Forget the Pearls- Destroying Eden

So some time ago, by which I mean about a year or so, a self publishing author put out a book called Save the Pearls Part 1:  Revealing Eden.  It was... hm.... controversial

Actually it was a train wreck upon crash upon a disaster with a reactor going critical just as the iceberg sent it sinking.  But, like many good dramas, this appears to be the gift that keeps on giving.  It seems that Ms. Foyt hasn't learned a single thing except that everyone loves a sequel.  So how do you follow one of the most controversial books of 2012?  Why you publish the sequel the following year!

So, to help everyone keep some perspective on this new train wreck on paper, I'm reposting my thoughts on the first train wreck this week:


It takes place on another planet.  There, a great ecological event has made most of the planet uninhabitable.  It is especially dangerous to one of the three principle races.  Where the Croa's can live in the exposed environment for a few hours, the Wie succumb to a form of skin cancer and die within minutes.  Because they are so fragile, the Wie have become a minority, prized for their rarity but seen mostly as toys, or dolls, or things to keep as possessions.  They are not seen as worthy of the respect shown even the lowest Croa.  In fact they are so admonished that the Wie will hide who they are, wearing long concealing gowns, and hiding their forms so that the Croa are not reminded that useless sub-creatures are among them.

It is against this back drop that a Wie girl dreams of a better life.  She knows that her chances of survival are minimal.  If she cannot marry a Croa, she will be relegated to a short life as a trophy piece.  What can she do?  The story of her struggle against prejudice, against nature and the ghosts of the past.  She must deal with those who discount her because of her racial status.  She must prove herself and endure.

That book, I think, has a lot of potential.

That book, however, is not Save the Pearls: Finding Eden.

Okay, disclaimer:  My wife received an advance reader copy that I was able to sneak a peek at.  I got through the first four chapters before I put it down.  Honestly I wanted to read a little more as I understand that the first four chapters are poor representations of the overall story but I just was not enjoying the prose enough to continue.

If you're not familiar with the train wreck that is "Save the Pearls" let me bring you up to speed.

Save the Pearls is a YA SciFi/ Speculative fiction novel, self published by Victoria Foyt.  Ms. Foyt is not a newcomer to the writing, boasting several film credits on her various biographies.  She is not a newcomer to the world of fiction and even has access to the Huffington Post as a means of promotion.

In StP, whites are the minority due to extreme solar radiation that killed most of them off as the human race scrambled to retreat underground for survival.  Blacks are the majority and a brutal one at that, many of them seeking to kill all the whites and hold the earth for themselves.  It is all intended to be a "flipping racism on its head" story and one that involves "seeing beyond skin color" by casting the victim of extreme racism to be a pretty blonde white girl.

Needless to say, it fails.

What's interesting to me, however, is that the book has gotten some good feedback from people who have read it cover to cover.  Most of the negative reviews seem to be from people who read into chapter 4 and then stopped.  Most recently Weird Tales planned to publish the first chapter as a teaser.  The owner/editor had read the book and at first thought it was a compelling piece that examined racism in a different light.  He pointed out that the key to understanding it was to understand irony.  Within hours WT was slammed with negative comments, boycotts and resignations.

A look at the Amazon.Com page shows that Ms. Foyt has layered on the positive reviews her work has gotten through other media, possibly in an attempt to push the actual user reviews down, and possibly just to get some positive reviews onto the page.  In addition she has gone to amazing lengths to defend her book as non-racist.  Most people, it seems, including me, have read the first four chapters and then put it down.  The African Americans featured there are portrayed in a horrible light, and I have to agree that "coals" is not a positive name for them.  Perhaps she should have considered Obsidian as a name, or just "Obs" if that was too much of a mouthful.  I think she could have spared herself some of the accusations even using the name "Flints".

But this gets me to the point I was going for:  Self Publishing is partly to blame.

Ms. Foyt, clearly, did not vet her book enough before investing in taking it to press.  The more I read reasonable people trying to defend it, the more I think maybe she had the starts of something viable, but because of wretched poor execution she utterly failed to connect.  In fact she totally missed the point.  A good editor might have seen this book and said "okay, there's a great ironic story here, but you gotta rename the races, cut some of these negative stereotypes, and lose the black-face unless you totally change the role it plays in the story.  Do that and you've got winner."

But no one did.  And if they did try to, it's just so much easier for Foyt to ignore them and go her own "creative" way.  One of the great hallmarks of self-publishing that I see touted over and over is that the author retains complete control.  They get to pick the cover, they get to pick the chapter formatting, they get to keep every story intact.  But that also means that they keep all of the responsibility when the project goes off the rails.

And unlike a lot of self publishing authors starting out, Foyt had money to throw at this. She had a short video produced to help promote the book.  It featured white girl in black face, cutting back and forth between her black and white personas as she made a desperate plea for someone to love her and marry her and spare her life.  Even a minor publishing house would have said "wait, we can't have our name attached to this."  But a producer who makes money on self publishing authors has no reason to be a voice of reason, and an actress trying to get paid does not either.

Then when everything did go off the rails, there was no one to tell her to sit down and stop before she made it worse, which is all Foyt seems to be focused on.  The firestorm with Weird Tales seems to come from her effort to get a reputable outset for Sci Fi/ Speculative fiction to come into her corner.  According to their blog "Marvin was approached by Victoria Foyt, and was asked to review her novel. He was told that she was being slammed online by people who had not read it."

She was reacting to the bullies of the Internet by looking for anyone and everyone to protect her.

And at this point a traditional publisher would have sat her down, told her to shut up, and let the storm run its course before anyone else got pulled into the vortex of destruction.  They would have given her a script to read on the Today Show, sent her on to look contrite and then locked her away before she ruined the careers of anyone else.

But, again, she had none of that help.  She went it alone and she paid for it, both by creating a work that lacked any kind of racial sensitivity, but also attempting, fruitlessly, to defend it.

Foyt's reputation is more or less a wash now.  Weird Tales is going to be paying for this for a while.  None of the creative participants in this came out the least bit ahead. 

Does anyone?  Yes.

The people who took Foyt's money to publish and promote work.  Every copy she had printed and mailed out for review, they made money.  The producers of her racist promotional video made money, as did whoever did the make up for it, I'm sure.  Everyone around her profited on her mistaken belief that she was going to revolutionize the discussion of race in the modern era.  

She kept creative control.  They kept her money.

Weekly Omens 1/25/13

This has been a good and bad week for me.  Some great things happened, and some not so great.

Here's a wrap up of the week's posts and news:

At Fictional Omens -

This week I finally got up my post about writing what you know and if you don't know it you need to research it.  The post was heavily informed by fellow author and fan-nerd Janine Spendlove.  Check out her War of the Seasons if you haven't.

At Mind the Thorns -

There has been no update because I suck and I haven't made myself write it yet.  This is bad.  This is very bad.  I need to write it.

Think of this as an opportunity to play catch up for those of you who are a few chapters behind.  See the favors I do you?  Here's Chapter 1 for those that have never read it.

At Bastion: The Final Hope

This week's update is an image from the point of view of one of the survivors. I'm still not sure the "story" there is direct enough but the whole project is an experiment anyway so we'll see what happens.  Comments are, of course, welcome.

In life -

It's been a bit of a crazy week.  Monday was off because of the MLK holiday (I was supposed to be writing) and I was sent on an errand to get Hot Dog for the Skylanders game.  I love my wife dearly but she's more obsessed with getting all the Skylanders than the 5-year old.

The new semester is off to a great start and content for Bastion is rolling along at a great rate.  I have several actors involved to create the multimedia content.  I have to admit that I'm very excited for it and it's distracting me from what I should be working on.

And your video of the week.... hmm...  How about Glee?  What I want to know is why do I need the Glee cover to have a great version of this song without profanity?