Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Collab

Writing collaboratively is an interesting process, especially once you’ve gotten used to having it be a solo activity for so long. Some of it is just a loss of control with regards to certain aspects of the story. If you’re both pantsing (that is, “writing by the seat of your pants”) then not only do you not know where the story is going to end up, you might not even know what’s around the corner. Sometimes I find myself floundering, unsure of how I can guide any of the characters in a way that helps my writing partner.

In general, the same techniques used in improv have worked. The most quoted, “say ‘yes and’” has been a good enough baseline and I’m sure with experience, others will follow. The opposite end of the spectrum is also helpful, though. Having an outline and assigning bits and pieces, so long as people understand that outlines can change, can also end up being productive and gets rid of that fear of ruining plans.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of this. I’ve only recently started doing it as a way to keep social with some online friends. It’s a good way to stay accountable at the very least, and it has helped.

-F

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

More Thoughts About Spoilers

I don’t know how I got into this mindset, but whenever someone tells me something they might consider a spoiler, if I ever read or watch or play that thing they’re talking about, I assume they were lying? The first example that comes to mind is a narrative game called Firewatch, which has a twist that can come out of left field if you’re not prepared for it. And even then, after watching a video where someone mentioned it, I had a hard time piecing together just how it had happened while playing. Like, I knew, but I hadn’t accepted it yet.

Maybe it’s that I just don’t care? That seems like an elitist way to phrase it, though. “Oh, you shouldn’t care what other people say happens to these people” seems awfully mean to the people who do really care, and have good reasons for caring. That’s one of the points of media, after all, to provoke empathy. And it’s not like I made a conscious decision to ignore knowing the ending, it just sort of happened, if that makes sense.

In a way, I might compare this to what I talked about when I complained about biopics because those are kind of spoiled by default. People know what happens to Freddie Mercury, for example, just like how pop culture has made the initial genre shift of Psycho less effective. But both of these can be made up for with good elements elsewhere, compare Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Gus Van Sant’s near-shot-for-shot remake and you’ll see what I mean.

This also ties in with a recent trend of creators feeling like they need to be smarter than the people they’re catering to. Westworld ran into this most directly -- series head Jonathan Nolan mentioned changing the twist of an episode because people on Reddit had already guessed the twist they’d been going for. And that seems like a weird way to be making something to me, just shoveling in twist after twist without a thought to cohesion.

The twist in Firewatch, upon reflection, is actually thematically cohesive with the rest of the work. I won’t talk about it here, but it does tie in with the game’s themes of coping with loneliness and dealing with familial issues. So maybe that’s why I didn’t mind knowing about it ahead of time. It seems difficult, to me, for something with a twist for a twist’s sake to have a similar effect, but those media will likely be hamstrung by the passage of time anyway. Once everyone knows what’s up, it’ll fade from the zeitgeist, never to be meaningfully talked about again.

-F

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

When I Can Do Everything, I Can't Do Anything

I’ve written about writer's block on this blog before, but what I didn’t mention as much was this age-old quandary: how hard is it to pick something with a swath of options in front of you? For example, imagine a menu with a seemingly limitless number of dishes, and you’re just staring at it unable to parse what any of the descriptions mean when the server comes up ready to take your order. Compare that to a similar scene but with only a few dishes on offer, which presents an easier decision.

Writing this blog is kind of like that, except the restaurant has a magical kitchen that can make anything you want, and you keep coming back week after week wanting to eat something different every time. It’s difficult to pare down the possibility space in that situation, even though, intuitively, each week reduces the possible choices by one.

This is what things like my Raindrops on Roses series are supposed to come in, reducing the options, but there are weeks I don’t really have it in me to write about what I like in the capacity that I feel these things deserve. So instead I just ramble on whatever topic and push it down the line. There are a couple solutions, and I’m trying some of them, but they haven’t started working just yet. Hopefully soon.

-F

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Algorithmically Generated Consent

I’ve started listening to the algorithmically generated playlist that Spotify makes for me every week -- I’m actually listening to it as I write this -- and it’s been fun! It’s a lot of music that I’ve never heard before mixed in with some that I had, but only through other sources. It’s never anything I’d really go out of my way to look for on my own and that’s a cool thing.

And yet, it worries me a little, because while I do like most of the songs that have been thrown my way, it either means I’ve let the algorithm collect enough information on me to make some pretty accurate guesses or it means I have no taste and will like so many things. I’m actually a little partial to the second reason; it means unless a song is mastered poorly, I can just let it slide into the background. But the first fear is still right there and a bit more worrisome.

One of my resolutions for this and every year was to be “out there” on the internet a bit more, and that’s meant opening myself up to these sorts of metadata collection schemes. I’m sure Google knows all about me, and not just because Blogspot is a Google-owned property. Mostly I hope to just be ignored to an extent, with billions upon billions of people using the internet, the fact that I am probably just a bit of data amongst all that is actually a little comforting to me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t notice when personalized content gets thrown at me.

Youtube’s algorithm is a bit weird, for example. I don’t have the space nor the ability to go into exact details, but the things it tends towards more “controversial” (especially politics-wise) content being rewarded, especially at a quick output. So on completely unrelated videos, I’ll see something with a headline trying to be eye-catching and a little “Recommended for you” tag under it and all I can do is say “Huh.”

Maybe that’s comforting too, that they still guess wrong. Not all the songs on Spotify’s playlists are ones I like, though I’m sure they notice when I skip over them. I do think the black-box nature of the algorithm is scary, of course, but it also makes it difficult to do more than just gesture at it.

A bit of a disclaimer, though. There are algorithms that do more than just recommend media to people or sell ads based on interests. Credit scores, for example, have started determining more than just if someone can pay back a loan, which I think is harmful and dangerous for the same reasons I find the former ones ineffectually weird at times. They could get things wrong. But also for the same reasons, all I can do, from this blog, at least, is mention it.

-F