Quote:It may be important that Cobalt Greywalker was willing to listen to criticism about his story and work with the other writers to make the story fit into the setting, while murmur the fallen was not.
More importantly, when criticized Murmur nodded, said "yeah, I'll change that" and then never did. Moreover, he didn't bother to justify, defend or argue the case, he just sort of wandered off leaving the storyline in limbo.
PROTIP: This is a bad thing to do. It's irritating to the people who care about the work - not just Fenspace as a whole, but the specific story/wiki entry/whatever in question. Even if you think it's an uphill battle, you should always try to make a defense of your decisions. At the very least, it gives us the Collective a better sense of where you're coming from.
Quote:That didn't stop Rob Kelk from later introducing Project Artemis, another group that's very good at space exploration but in a noticeably different way. However, Rob got Mal's help in defining Project Artemis before the group was fully introduced into Fenspace, and both writers have been part of the Fenspace Collective for a long time.
And since we're talking meta, I'll be perfectly honest; the core conceit of Project Artemis was going to happen eventually regardless. This is because I am a *huge* Space Shuttle fanboy and the Soviet Air Force exists around Ptichka only because I couldn't come up with a plausible caper mechanism for stealing Enterprise from the Smithsonian. The other shuttles would have come to Fenspace at some point no matter what just because. Rob just happened to be standing right there when the brainworm emerged.
Onto other matters...
For me, Rule 0b is the key rule, particularly the bit about hogging the Cool. I understand that there's a strong desire to make your creations stand out from everybody else, and when the major established Cool includes (among other things) huge domed cities on the Moon, a wheeled space station crewed by meganekko androids, floating diamond cities in the clouds of Venus, a dozen different varieties of mad scientist, a colony of space ninja and the Goddamn Buckaroo Banzai it can feel a little crowded. Which makes it even more important that you talk to people first before posting a complete work.
(Of course, this rule was formulated back when half the board's population was at least looking in on Fenspace. Now that it feels like it's only me, Rob and Cobalt - with blue moon cameos from Foxboy, KJ, kentmagus & Bob - who have any serious interest in the project... well, at least I'm not bitter. Much. Anyway.)
ETA: Crap, that was depressing. Trying to move from that aside to something more productive:
When Cool intersects with Consensus, Consensus is going to win. It has to, otherwise the collaborative framework will break down. As an example, I'm going to pick on kentmagus' "Dr. Grey" story. In the story, we meet the title character, a standard Evil Mad Scientist(tm) surrounded by his creations. This in and of itself isn't a bad thing - the Supers are a notable faction with not a lot of detail fleshed out. Even though Grey isn't a *good* guy, he is technically a Super and therefore his existence helps flesh out the group that little bit more. Where "Dr. Grey, Scientific Necromancer" goes off the Consensus rails is in the second half of the title. While we're willing to accept Evil Mad Scientists(tm) in our fictional ranks - if only to balance out the Good Mad Scientists(tm) like A. C. Peters and the Mostly Neutral Mad Scientists(tm) like the Professor - Dr. Grey's abilities and stated accomplishments jump him far beyond where the Consensus has decreed the current state-of-the-art to be. It's like (poor analogy coming up) a somewhat low-key pulp adventure story and throwing the Silver Age Lex Luthor into it. As cool a dude as Lex is, he sticks out like a sore thumb and his presence breaks the setting. Same thing here with Dr. Grey. I do want to stress that the idea of Dr. Grey isn't the problem, just the initial execution.
This is why discussion is a key thing. Instead of having to critique a finished work - which has the potential of getting out of hand and leading to bad internet drama - going through an RFC thread with suggestions will help retool original ideas and help them fit better into the established collaboration.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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