Writing plugs and Drinksgiving update · 1:35am Nov 30th, 2017
Want to write something? Save the weekend for the Writeoff Association! We've rolled around to a long-form FIM competition again. (See previous posts if you want the sales pitch.) If the 72-hour crunch of the Writeoffs isn't your style, the deadline on the Lunbra contest got extended; there are prizes and (so far) few entries.
Looking for an update on Drinksgiving? See below!
All things told, I think it went pretty well! Attendance hovered around a dozen for most of the evening. I started out doing drunken pony Tarot readings, and then quickly switched to Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder.
Yes, as a divination tool. And ... it worked surprisingly well! It helps that it uses characters I'm really familiar with, has a wide variety of absurd situations, and has different variations on those characters. It really helps that it's themed around telling stories to begin with. All those things make it easy to pull narrative out, which is what makes Tarot readings work. My guinea pigs seemed happy on the whole with their readings and I think I'm going to add TSSSF into my regular Tarot deck rotation, if only to prove that it wasn't a fluke.
There was drunkwriting! I had nothing to do with it, though, because I spent the night in Tarot mode. FanOfMostEverything set up camp in the google doc the same way a dedicated Black Friday shopper sets up a tent outside their favorite store, and started sober-writing something about Discord creating the sphinx as a test run for making gryphons; he was promptly dogpiled onto by an army of drunken helpers sabotaging increasing the entropy level of the text. I honestly have no idea what's going on with the final product, but it stands as a record of ... um. Of alcoholic decisions. That were made.
I did follow through with my threat to channel Princess Luna, who dropped by in the text channel to chat for a little while. (Morning Sun's version of Luna snarked in audio chat for a bit as well, but I think Sunny was a little too inebriated and/or off-mood to make it stick.) In hindsight, the shift from drunken shenanigans to Equestrian visitors dramatically upended the tone of the room in ways that I didn't adequately compensate for.
Nevertheless, it was a qualified success, by which I mean: it was an adequate proof-of-concept to tell me that I really ought to do it again — in its own dedicated venue.
There were a number of folks who swung in primarily out of Luna curiosity, and a number of folks who seemed to care very little about it, and separating the audiences would have been kinder to them both. I do anticipate having future Luna time again; I'll try to announce something probably in early December. For longstanding reasons, my default would be to do this on a Thursday (Hornsday) night, but if the folks who want in on that have different availabilities, she and I can flex that.
Anyway, thank you to everyone involved, and hope you all had fun!
Fuck I missed this!
What little I caught of it seemed like great fun.
FWIW, I was interested in both, but I also agree that they seemed more like two separate events. There was also just some lack of focal point overall; I think the previous events you've done all had solid prompts and smaller sets of core people to coalesce efforts/interactions around. It was still nice being there, though; thanks for putting it on! And thanks for the TSSSF reading; I'm still chewing on it and being amused at how well that deck works.
4738752
Yeah, this was definitely a more unfocused round.
I think Luna and I owe you a private follow-up, btw. Not going to happen in the immediate future (Writeoff weekend and juggling some events next week) but don't let me forget.