I am alive and well

You see what I did there?

Lots of major life stuff going on right now. Transitioning from grad student to predoctoral intern and moving halfway across the country while simultaneously collecting data for and writing my dissertation. I haven’t had much time to update anything or play much GW, as you can imagine.

But I have had time to do some thinking.

I’ve been pondering a way to tie GW Belzan to GW2 Belzan and I’ve been focusing mainly on the story I’ve already written (i.e., Chronicles of the Eremite). This has largely been unsuccessful.

It is the season of rewrites and reboots and all that fun stuff in comics, movies, and movies about comics. Everyone’s starting over. Why not me?

So here’s the plan. I’m working on an outline for a new background story. I’ll be overhauling the site over the next couple months and archiving Chronicles. It’ll still be on the site, but prolly not so prominently displayed. I’ve also done absolutely nothing with the Friends, Acquaintances, and Allies section, so I’ll prolly do away with it. The NPCs and alts pertain directly to my Chronicles storyline and the vast majority of other characters are friends who no longer play GW, so it’s difficult to acquire game pics and RP storylines from them.

I also haven’t had much time lately to talk about all the new stuff mentioned in GW2. I’m excited about the engineer (and, I called it, totally) and extremely excited about underwater combat. Dungeons are exactly what I expected them to be: GW1 transplanted to GW2. That being said, I’m ready to go kick some Ascalonian Ghosty ectoplasm (I’d usually say butt here, but I’m sure you can see how that word doesn’t really apply since they have no bodies).

I can’t wait for the mesmer to be released and I’m looking forward to reading about the asura (logically, these are what’s coming next). I’m ready to learn about PvP. It doesn’t really apply to me all that much, but it is something I can see myself having fun with. It’s basically one ENORMOUS dynamic event afterall.

That’s it for now. Look for Belzan related posts here in the future and get to reading Talk Tyria for interesting GW2 related articles. I’ll prolly have one or two posted there in a while as well.

It’s a Great Big Universe

Yet another interview was posted today about GW2 over at Massively.com. This one is mostly written for people new to Guild Wars and covers a lot of basic information about professions, races, and the 3 new novels (I should get my copy of Ghosts of Ascalon in the mail soon!). There was one section of the interview that I though was pretty pertinent to GW for me:

What writing advice do you have for fans who enjoy fanfiction within the Guild Wars universe?

It’s a big world. You don’t have to keep within one epic or one large structure. In Guild Wars 2 the dragons are the greatest threat, but there’s so much more going on. It’s a living world; it’s a dynamic world. There are places where you find your piece of earth and you can develop and play with it.

We have events, we talked about events like centaurs attacking, but we also have tiny events that are just “What was that? How’s that going to happen?” They run the whole range, and I recommend that for anyone who’s writing fiction, who’s setting it in the Guild Wars world. It’s a big world. Come find a place for yourself that you’re comfortable with.

I’ve always liked telling stories. That’s what Chronicles of the Eremite was all about: telling my character’s story within the GW universe. Every character I’ve created in GW and other role-playing games has had his/he/its own background story–even those used for one-shot campaigns. I feel that I better understand my character if I know where he/she has been. Plus, I enjoy writing and putting my characters in situations to see how they would react. It is the conflict of character in all of the novels I read that I enjoy the most. What is character development without conflict afterall?

Much of Belzan’s story in GW1 did not involve the actual plot events of Tyria, Cantha, Elona, or EotN. They were short stories and occasionally based on in game quests. I might mention the overarching story in passing, but it wasn’t my focus. I liked this aspect of LOTRO a lot, but the montly fee kept me from bothering to explore it more.

That being said, I can’t help but share the first thing that came to mind when reading this part of the interview. When Jeff Grubb said “it’s a big world,” I couldn’t help but think about Yakko Warner. I give you Yakko’s Universe Song. Enjoy.

The Future

I have neglected my story. Grad school is a busy time and thus I have placed my priorities there rather than here. I have a lot of Belzan’s story left to tell and I will be adding to it periodically. I’m considering revisiting Chronicles entirely and, in light of the new transition in GW with the War of Kryta, I want to write Belzan’s story more from his perspective and include his thoughts on all the goings on.

As such, I see the future of this blog being more of a character journal. Few people care about the progress of my titles other than me, though I’ll continue to update them here. I’ll write more background stories, perhaps more in the form of short stories rather than a longitudinal progression, and include a time line somewhere just to keep track of things. Really, all of the writing is up in the air at the moment and I’m giving lots of thought to its overall future. Continue the story? Write episodic short stories? Write only a blog? We shall see. For now I’m content on writing journal entries and seeing  how that goes.

Table of Contents

It has been a busy holiday for me and as such I have neglected my blog. I intend to get back into writing my fiction soon. As a teaser, here is the table of contents for my story.

Table of Contents

Prologue — The Exile
Chapter I – The Alchemist of Arah
Chapter II – The Knight of Istan
Chapter III – The Scarred Child

• Part I – Trying Times
• Part II – In Danger
• Part III – Greetings and Farewells

Chapter IV – The Quest for Purpose

• Part I – Lion’s Arch
• Part II – Northern Shiverpeaks
• Part III – Ascalon

Chapter V – Master and Apprentice

• Part I – Sacrifice
• Part II – Betrayal
• Part III – Atonement

Chapter VI – The Muse

• Part I – Campfire
• Part II – Retreat
• Part III – A New Beginning

Chapter VII – Mantle of Lies

• Part I – New Faces
• Part II – Scepter of Orr
• Part III – Chosen
• Part IV – Refuge

Chapter VIII – Mentor and Apprentice

• Part I – Of Grenth
• Part II – Spiders and Dragons
• Part III – Lost

Chapter IX – Mark of Dwayna

• Part I – Old Friends
• Part II – Old Foes
• Part III – Bone and Wing
• Part IV – Path to Truth
• Part V – Rituals of the Wise

Chapter X – The Vampire Verata

• Part I – One Step Closer
• Part II – Blood Drinker
• Part III – Crusade
• Part IV – Loose Ends

Chapter XI – The Wise Man of Shing Jea

• Part I – Ashbearer
• Part II – Common Ground
• Part III – Dragon Lady

Chapter XII – The Dracolyte

• Part I – Champions of Claw and Wing
• Part II – Disciples
• Part III – Wisdom and Religion

Chapter XIII – The Quest of the Five Houses

• Part I – Path Less Traveled
• Part II – Culture
• Part III – Elona
• Part IV – Change in the Wind

Chapter XIV – Grief and Loss

• Part I – Forgotten History
• Part II – Heroes of Legend
• Part III – Rise and Fall of Divinity

Chapter XV – Ascension

• Part I – Pilgrimage
• Part II – Trials
• Part III – Unspoken Truths

Chapter XVI – Purpose

• Part I – Earthquake
• Part II – Far Shiverpeaks
• Part III – Son of a Bookah
• Part IV – Retribution and Aid
• Part V – A Time for Heroes

Chapter XVII – Eternal Alchemy

• Part I – Algorithm
• Part II – Facets
• Part III – Apostate
• Part IV – Shadows