~March Madness: Writing Edition~

[Deleted]

I have decided to commit myself to a "month of writing". That means that I will be planning to post something every single day for the month of march. I will be writing from the fanfiction story list I made a while ago, as well as for Bellum and EotD. Additionally, I might write a few abstract pieces if the mood strikes me. You can, for example, expect at least one more erotic piece in similar vein to Madness in the Moonlight and The Overheat, though perhaps closer to the former in mood, as the latter was rather silly. I intend for each of these posts to be, at the very least, over 10k. And at the very most, there is no upper limit. So for the month of March I will be posting a total of at least 310,000 characters, very possibly more.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, aside from getting you all mentally prepared to stare down the tidal wave of words I am sending your way, I also intend for this to be a challenge for all of you. I don't expect any of you to post every day (though that would be amazing), but I would like you all to try and make this month a writing month for you all as well. Write more than you normally would. For every post you all make in either EotD or Bellum, I will count up the number of characters in those posts. In addition, I will count the characters in my own Bellum and EotD posts with the characters from yours. I will then separately tally the character count of all my posts outside of EotD and Bellum. If the collective EotD and Bellum character count between all of us is 100,000 or more characters LOWER than my personal out-of-RP character count, I am going to leave this site. Not immediately, I will at least stay and wrap up the current EotD story arc. But once that is done, I'm gone. If I can personally churn out 100,000+ more characters' worth of content than ALL OF US can generate in BOTH RPs over the same span of time, I think it's time for me to move on, because at that point it'll be like waiting on a horse with four broken legs to drag a loaded buggy across 10 miles.

If you think this is extreme, well... it is. That's sort of the point of the whole "madness" thing. I am taking a gamble, betting on whether or not you people can keep me here. The writing period starts and ends according to Pacific Time, to accommodate our Californians. So by my time, 3:00 am on April 1st is when time is up. Any posts after that time will not be counted in the character tally. Whatever it is at that point, that's what it will be. So I hope you're all ready to write. I sure am.

[Deleted]

A thought occurred to me after a while - to add a little incentive to the opposing side of this "wager", if by some event it turns out that the EotD-Bellum character count actually winds up 100,000+ characters OVER what I produce on my own, I will never again mention leaving the UBS. Consider it a way to solidify my faith in you all, I guess.

[iamsuperguppy]

I want writing to move forward as much as you, but I hate these threats of leaving. No matter how slow things get, I don't want to see these RPs die. It's been part of my life for so long now that I can't see going without it.

Seeing a post from you every day will be awesome, but not at this price.

[Deleted]

Feb 29, 2012 19:07:56 GMT -5 iamsuperguppy said:

I want writing to move forward as much as you, but I hate these threats of leaving. No matter how slow things get, I don't want to see these RPs die. It's been part of my life for so long now that I can't see going without it.

Seeing a post from you every day will be awesome, but not at this price.

This.

[Deleted]

So, it seems that quite a number of you are on board with Drone's little "I'm sick of Fro threatening to leave" schtick. I thought I would take some time to address you on this matter, since it seems as though you lot treat this as a joke (especially Data, who seems content to casually mention it to Sorzo as if it's nothing to be concerned about, yet then has the gall to act all sad and say things about how he doesn't want me to leave). By the way, Data, it was September, not November.

Let's just take a brief look at what the conditions for last time were, by the way. I was reminded by another poster that I was posting as much as the next three most frequent posters combined, and a handful of you were posting barely once over an exceedingly large amount of time. And my whole point for that rant, and the "threat" (come on, let's stop being childish, it's not a threat, it's just factually what will happen, it's a notice) was that every time I rant at you all, you barely manage to string together enough writing to make me feel like it will get better, but then you immediately return to your normal routines. I would like to test that by looking at how well you did on the conditions at that time. My conditions for that were:

"If, in the time it takes me to post these two segments, there haven't been AT LEAST three posts from writers OTHER THAN DRONE, then I'm out. If you meet this condition, I will be starting an official post counter with everyone starting at 0. If, thereafter, I ever post 5 times without there being AT LEAST 3 other people posting during that span, then I'm out. If it ever again becomes the case that my posting count combined with the 2nd highest poster's count is roughly equal TO THE ENTIRETY OF THE REST OF YOUR POSTS, then I am out. What do I mean by "I'm out"? Exactly what it sounds like. It means I will quit. I will leave the UBS, permanently. I'll leave the Admin account to whoever wants it, I don't care."

Let's see how you did, shall we? All posts in either RP since September 9th amount to:

Fro – 13
Drone – 7
Iam – 5
Thunder – 4
Data – 3 (went MIA for quite some time)
Free – 2
Prae – 2
JW – 1 (been MIA for months now)
James – 1 (been MIA for months now)
Will - 1 (still kind of not even IN the RP yet)

First off, I would like to say that I am exceedingly proud of Iam managing to post at the third most frequent rate despite having had to work with two of the slowest writers here. Well done. But secondly, I would like to pay special attention to the parentheses. We have people leaving without mentioning it, people losing interest and vanishing, people saying they're coming back when they really don't... all of them with virtually no communication whatsoever... and I haven't heard many of you criticize any of these people. Again, I have to hand it to Iam (and Will included this time), I did see the pair of you letting Data have it one night. But it's a seldom occurrence. A lackadaisical attitude on most of you that basically amounts to "meh, who cares?" Yet you have the audacity to criticize ME for making my intentions fully known and giving you a chance to change my mind about it?

But let's focus on those numbers. By my count, 20 > 19. So by my own conditions, I should already be gone. I won't hold to this, because three of my posts came from Bellum, which is marked as low priority posting, so I can understand the lack of your posts there. But even 17 to 19 is still unbearably close. And if you remove the two MIA Europeans and assume Will maintains that rate whenever he gets himself in gear, it's tied at 17 posts. Two people generate equal posting to the other six involved. And you have the nerve to say you're tired of my so-called threats to leave? Every damn time you people do the same thing. You improve a little bit, and you fall off when it seems like I'm satisfied.

Here's the fact of the matter. It's not a threat to say I'm leaving. It's a truthful statement of intent barring your collective ability to meet a condition I set. You manage to meet the condition AT FIRST, but over time you fall off and degenerate back into the old habits and behaviors. And that is why my "threat" resurfaces. And that is also why I decided to do this for the month. I want to see an elongated period of time with improvements in your posting rate. Because I don't want to be here in 2030 still not even halfway through the story. If you find this to be a "threat" and it makes you "tired" of me, then prove to me that I'm wrong and shut me down by using my own conditions against me.

But it's almost sad that we've known each other this long and you still don't even seem to understand which of us is the more tired of this ordeal. You treat my intent of leaving like a silly little game or something not worth being focused on. You act like I do it for kicks or something. Rest assured, I don't. That little feeling of irritation you have when you think about how "tired" you are of me saying I'll leave? Multiply that by seven times and you have reached perhaps the liminal part of my feelings when it comes to seeing this perpetual regression of writing speed. So it goes both ways, people. And the funny part is that YOU have the power to prevent me from ever talking about it, but you only USE that power when you absolutely HAVE to use it, AFTER I've talked about it. So quite honestly, you can only blame yourselves for how "tired" you are of my "threats".

[Deleted]

So, after a series of convoluted and unintelligible dreams last night, I have come to the decision that I will cancel the terms of March Madness. I don't feel as though you guys are the problem; I feel as though the problem is me, myself, and Irene. That bitch. Holding it against you all that you can't post half as fast as me is just a little cruel and unusual, and placing the burden of keeping me here on you all is yet another cruel thing. I feel it was probably a way to allow me to leave without guilt, if I could blame it on the fact that you all couldn't contribute to the RPs and didn't care. And I'm likely correct in thinking that none of you care about the RPs as much as I do. But I probably care too much, which is the real issue here.

So I am going to remove the terms of March Madness. I will continue to write everyday and produce posts everyday, but there's no longer a reason for you to compete with me. If you want to, feel free. Otherwise, no pressure. I'm done talking about leaving, and I'm done talking about you all being too slow. Just write what you can write when you can write it. Right? Or is it write... rite? No, no, it's right. Yeah, that one.