Absolute Resolution

I’ve been playing a bit of APB (All Points Bulletin) lately, and it’s a fun diversion from more serious endeavors: such as studying or writing.
For those of you that don’t know what APB is: here’s a brief synopsis for you.
It’s a MMOG, or Massive Multiplayer Online Game. The fundamentals of most MMOs is that you create a character within the given gameworld and you attempt to climb the various ladders to personal virtual success.

Success might be reaching the level cap, being known in game for something of  “Leeroy Jenkins” Fame, or merely going for the social/gameplay elements within.
What makes APB different is that it’s a modern, real world MMO. Instead of the plethora of Fantasy types dominating the market. Such as World of Warcraft (WoW), Everquest (EQ), and the literal thousands of Free MMOs.

Note: There is a subscription fee of 10 dollars (USD) a month to play. Which doesn’t sound too bad if you ask me considering the 15 dollar (USD) fee most MMOs require.

To be very blunt about it, it’s cops and robbers in a video game where your allies are players, and your opposition is also players. There are No non-player characters (NPCs) in this game. So be wary, it’s purely PVP or Player-Versus-Player.

For me, I like the Enforcer (see Cops) side of the spectrum. You’re doing your job trying to clean up the streets and taking Criminals (the other faction) down all the while.

As for weaponry, you have your standard FPS fare. Although I will point out that it’s Third Person. So you’ll be staring at your character’s back for quite some time. Aiming (pressing the Right Mouse Button) will pull the camera closer so you can make more accurate shots from a distance.

Thus far, it’s quite a fun diversion. There are a few things I hope Realtime Worlds (the developer) adds into the game.
One: They fix the matchmaking system. It can be a little intimidating to sign onto a mission and end up having to go against a higher level player. Because more often than not, they have better gear and some character traits (special gameplay tweaks like added damage, for example) you won’t have.

Two: They add a better cover mechanic. It’s nice to be able to crouch and lean (the latter of which I still haven’t figured out how to do) around corners: but there’s no way to lean up against a wall and poke your head out. It’s a fairly clumsy system.

Lastly: They make the cars, the only method of transportation actually feel more “real world” than “arcade” in terms of physics. They just don’t feel like they’re gripping the road, if you get what I mean. Stopping seems awfully hard, and using the hand-break to go around corners easily leads to a spin-out.

So that’s my look at APB anyway. Not a “review” so to speak, just a look at the game in general. Who knows, maybe I might expand on this at some point in the future.

Anyway, peace.

-Kory.

Well today marks my 24th cycle of existence on this ball of rock we call Earth. Another halo to put around my head, so to speak.
Egotistical? Maybe. I’m feeling prideful, happy, expressive and it’s showing through my work. Each page is getting simultaneously smoother and sharper. There’s a flow that I’m reaching into, putting my hands into the real waters of storytelling and putting what few drops that are left between my fingertips on the page.

My novel is exploring a world I thought I knew as I re-examine the framework I set down during the past three years.

So far, I’m loving it as I am loving life.

Personally, I wish I had a means to remove the endless swarm of bots that predominate my rather weekly commentary. Oh god would I ever love to give the bastards that write them an ever so loving choke-slam into the ground, followed by a heavenly well placed beating for a good half hour.
But I digress. There’s nothing that I can do about this idiotic situation other than amuse myself at the constant stupidity of “their” collective inability to correlate commentary with the overall message of each post. A Thousand Untold Stories isn’t a data resource hub about Linux or any other OS, but due to the technical limitations of their code they’re helpless to make that erroneous load of bullshit ever evident.
Now pardon my unfortunate profanity, but I feel it’s within reason considering I’ve “banned” well over 200+ comments due to the belief they’re all primarily bots. So I think I nice polite F-U is in order.

Beyond that, I’m revising and working hard on my Novel. Transforming it into a first person narrative with an emphasis on present over past tense. In other words, the more traditional and modern approach to storytelling. Hopefully this will serve me better.

First off, Valve’s release of “The Passing” happened last Thursday. I only recently found out about it late Saturday Morning. So me and my regular buddies teamed up for the regular ol’ romp in a new area. First we saw Francis, that big dumb lug of a biker turned survivor. He offered the new crew the opperunity of moving forward if they could put some gas in a generator: with nowhere else to go: that’s just what we had to do.
So we moved onward, through a spiraling pathway of back allies, buildings, and roadways. Fighting through zombies all the way.

Long story short, I found what happened to Bill, and I’m going to miss that SOAB. Why? Because he was a role to play, he had a voice and a compulsion to live: to find that he’s the one who canonically sacrificed himself for the others fit him to a tee.

It’s a testament to storytelling when you can look at the corpse of a character with such a small amount of character development and see, entirely that he or she would do that. You get this feeling that, that’s who they are, they’d just do that.

Which leads me to my next point:

“Nobody Survives Forever” is the tag-line for The Passing. For the most part, life will move on. Life seems to remind us, time and time again that there’s  a certain heartlessness and hopelessness to situations that keep coming at us. Life’s the anatomy of a tidal wave, it will keep coming, it’ll move through you and it can push you forward or pull you back. What you choose to do, defines who you are.

For me, I’d be willing to sacrifice myself for others. Maybe I’m too hopeful. Maybe I’m too naieve and maybe partly suicidal. From what I gather, life’s worth living. Life’s priceless. Even if you end up dying, you can give another a purpose: give them a boost to push them to the surface.

RIP Bill.

For some reason I find myself often in the employ of using pretty dismal music while I’m working on Frailty (or any number of a thousand other things I can’t seem to ever finish). It’s an oddity really, I have no reason to be sad or depressed, but this haunting, echoing music just draws me in.

Another muse for my work, I suppose. So this post’ll be about my various Muses. Things that get me to think, and evolve the work I’m well… working on.
As I said, dark, tranquil music. Such as some of the instrumental stuff from Myonmyon, Touhou, and a few too many OSTs (Official Soundtracks) to list, that just get my head in the right mood for writing. If you’re curious, here’s a few links to a few mixes I enjoy.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prHx5kZ43u4 This dark, harrowing theme is my current fav. It has a lot of emotion to it. I like to refer to it as the “The Twilight”. It sounds like a moonbeam going through a forest at night on a snowy mountainside. The Guitar’s dissonance really makes this piece shine, in my opinion.

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzWvtPSzSls This one, is more aggressive. More “In Your Face”. I’ve found it good to listen to it to the point of nausium, and then switch to a number of either brighter or darker tracks. The shift in tone helps me convey mentally how it feels to have either won or lost a tough battle.

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOZt-lCIRHM Speaking of Upbeat. This theme is a nice change of pace, still forward thinking in melody but ultimately it’s pleasent.

So music helps me out, and no doubt plenty of other writers. There’s something about the “unsaid” stories that take place during a particular song. The composition of sound rings true through how carefully it varies and how quick it conveys itself. Like writing, a slow story can have deep, dark tones and shift to lighter, softer, and faster ones at a moments notice. Keeping in beat with the story the writer is trying to tell.

Music helps, but it doens’t replace not doing the homework. Frailty is a Science Fiction piece, so, everything has to be at least somewhat grounded in the reality of the world as it presents itself. You can’t have things magically appearing out of nowhere, that just doesn’t work. Suspension of belief can cripple an otherwise beautiful piece of work. So to that end, I regularly study anything and everything related to what I’m writing. I’m a geeky guy that wants to know how something works so I can tell you how it works and make it feel real, with some real experience behind it.

If I can’t do that, then I’m not as good of a writer as I could be: which means back to revising and work for me.

My last muse that I’ll share today comes from an unusual source: Figures. I’m not as much of an avid fan of Anime like I used to be. I still love a few and occationally find some that really draw me in, but for the most part I feel that part of my life has past me. I can’t say that about what little artwork I do is still in that style, but I’m moving forward and potentially away from it as I move towards new muses in that area of creativity.

As for Figures. I find there’s something unsaid about the poses of PVC figures that captures a LOT of life. When they’re crafted with attention, dedication, and quality: they have a life of their own. I don’t own very many myself, however, I do regularly use photos of their poses to get an idea of how someone might move to replicate how their posed. There’s also a stillness to a figure that grants them a lot of other unsaid aspects: a statue of a man or a woman conveys only the physical, leaving the mind, the mental: untouched. You can’t tell who a statue is without either expanding upon your perception of who you think they might be like or doing the research to figure out who that figure is.

A single, well crafted, Figure for me is a thousand untold stories waiting to be told.

Due to the advice from a friend of mine at work, I’m going to change a few prior posts and see what else I can do to make this more formalized and a tad less generic.

So be on the lookout for changes. Plus, who knows, maybe I might be able to tell when it’s an actual human being is responding to my commentary as opposed to an aimless text-bot.

-Kory.

So lets see, I covered Kiyona a little last time. So how about Joe?

Joe’s an odd one. He’s a very capable fighter, good leader, and all around average kinda guy. Joe, unlike Kiyona is a veteran, he knows what he’s doing and he watches over her and the rest of the team much of the time.

He’s always hanging back, looking over them and his shoulders, ready for a fight. However, that doesn’t make him special. What makes him unique compared to his companions is that despite being a powerful Replica, he’s almost knocked into Kiyona’s boots a bit by his own unfamiliarity with what his body can do.

Myria can run circles around him with ease, and he has a tough time keeping up. Hoots can tell him what he’s capable of, but he doesn’t know how to access it. So instead, he provides aid in the most mundane sense: dealing as much damage as possible. He’s a trained marksman, preferring pistols and assault rifles. A Malkov in his hands is a lethal weapon, regardless of it’s poor thermal range. As for his Assault, he’s more than capable of keeping the pressure on and providing accurate support or suppression fire.

His primary motive, uniquely enough isn’t combat focused. No matter how good he is at it. He wants to remember who he was, and his frequent resurfacing memories are leading him closer and closer to figuring that out. There’s quite a few women that have had an impact on his life, and the women he’s around, such as Myria, the Siren, and sometimes even Kiyona tends to trigger these split-second episodes that leaves him dazed for hours.

I feel one of his shining moments of proving who he was, was ignoring the urge to kill the Siren out of rage. I know, as a writer, I write, the words that appear on a piece of paper: but there’s a mysterious part to telling a story that we’re not always on the ball with. Good characters, interesting characters, surprise us.

Joe did just that with letting his sword go and sparing the Siren.

Joe’s just awesome. Next I might go into either Myria, or Hoots, or maybe both of them.
-Kory.

Needless to say, this site isn’t dead. Just a bit, on the back burner, so to speak. I want to update it more frequently with posts, but alas that doesn’t seem feasible at the moment. Additionally, it’s not like very many humans actually check out my site anyway, which is a shame.

Feedback is impossible without participation and advertising, I suppose.

Anyway, Frailty is progressing along and I’m exploring each character’s background and personalities a little more. There’s a motto to life that I’ve instilled in each of them, something that they will always try to do in the face of immense adversity. Regardless of the cost to them. Because, I believe people are like that when you get down to their core beliefs. What really makes them up.

But that’s not entirely human now is it? Yes there’s things that naturally cause us to go into “Do or Die Mode” but how frequently does that happen? Not very often, unless you put your life on the line in terms of your profession.

So what else is there beyond “Do or Die” motives? Everyone’s got passions, things that make them smile, frown, and cringe. How about tears? What makes people just break down, devastated and cry.

There’s a lot I need to work on to make my character’s realistic enough to be proud of them.

Maybe I should start with a few of them.

The big one is Kiyona. She’s the one that I hope people connect with, and root for.

So who is Kiyona? What’s she doing out in the middle of a war zone between two dying races? What could she hope to achieve?

Kiyona is a fourteen year old kid with too much potential. That’s Kiyona for you. She’s called a Technus, or essentially a hybrid of “Tech” and “Magnus” (an old word meaning “Mage”). She can manipulate how mechanical systems work with her mind. Rearranging code at the speed of thought.

This enables her to be the ultimate thief. She could open any door, shutdown any security system, and even disable any security forces guns! However, she’s untrained, lacking the same ol’ same ol’ experience that everyone’s looking for with applicants for the job.

However, the reason why they have to bring her along is that she’s one of only a few with it at her level. She’s unique that way. She’s a severe danger to anything mechanical, and seeing as almost everything is: she’s a massive threat, and the perfect person to bring along into a warzone.

If she knows what she’s doing that is.

But that’s who she is, but not WHO she is. Who, in the greater, more interpersonal sense. Who is she? She’s a fourteen year old girl trying to find her place in the world, surrounded by tougher, stronger, smarter, and more experienced teammates who won’t let her get out there with the rest of them. So she’s held back from her amazing potential.

To this end, she falls back a bit. Loses her voice and hides in the background. She studies and practices, but wants desperately to get out there: to contribute to the team.

That’s her Do or Die Motive. She desperately, wants to prove herself to the team. But that’s just one of them. She’s got more than just one, A person can be defined by one motive, but that’s not realistic: that’s more retrospect. Especially if they fail.

So another one of her motives goes towards her Father. A man she was too young to remember, but cherishes, and admires. She’s only heard and seen him in Legacy Files, contained in her Ouros. She has never seen or touched him within her physical memory, he only exists to her and her companions in their collective Legacy Files across their Ouros.

As the story progresses, I’m hoping she’ll discover more motives, more reasons to live despite adversity.

I’m a fan of stories writing themselves. I feel I won’t ever be a “Prolific” writer. A story is done when it tells me “enough is enough”, and the ending is clear in front of me.
-Kory.

Well I’ve finally gotten over my writers block, again, and I am working on expanding Frailty of Glass. I’ve been struggling with deciding what I am going to do with my life, and where I am going to go. So thus, I took some time off from writing to figure that out.

Sad thing is, I probably won’t ever actually figure that out. I have a range of talents and an interest in pretty much everything with no real dominant one to go with. So needless to say, I have no idea where to even start.

Well I got to cut this short, got to get to work in a few.
-Kory.