Welcome to Berne

One of the great things about doing postgrad studies is the lack of sleep, the inability to spend time with your family, and the huge student loan the ability to learn things that you never really thought about.

In the past I used to think I knew a lot about Copyright; what it was, what it meant, and what you could do. In fact, I felt so confident that I worte a “licence” for the good contributors of 4LS to make sure that we were all covered in “any circumstances.”

Oh, how niave I was…

Actually, nothing that I did in that licence was wrong, but certainly a lot of the thinking was. In fact, now that I’ve had the most basic of introductions to copyright law, I can see that there is a lot of ignorance in the whole topic, from wirting for VNs, Creative Common licences, and Facebook.

I’m not going to go on an bore you; let’s face it – law is a pretty dry subject. But Facebook doesn’t own your photos. I don’t own all of the Copyright to Katawa Shoujo, in fact no-one does. But I still own a part of it; a little less that 5% of it to be precise.

If you are doing something creative, and I imagine that this includes a few people that read this blog, then you should probably know more about Copyright. A good place to start is the Berne Convention, which has now been (mostly) ratified in most of the important countries.

Instead of trying to explain the salient points here (as I have a crying baby to deal with) I’m going to leave this one hanging here. If you’ve got questions about the Berne convention or Copyright, please throw them out here. I will admit that I am not a lawyer, however I did find it interesting that a lot of the hysteria over Facebook seems to be unfounded. So, if you are intersted, please either read up on Copyright, or ask me a question in the comments.

PS Artic Gale Chapter 3 is up.

Things you wish you didn’t know… but that you should.

A few weeks ago I poorly explained the fact that I like to know secrets. Knowing that I have exclusive access to somewhere really gets my motor going.

 

One of the points I was trying to make in that post is that I sometimes take that too far. Given the chance, I would go to the Chernobyl reactor just to see what it was like. I will (and, I guess in some cases, have) put myself in harm’s way so that I can “know” more.

In some ways, I think that this has allowed me to have a broader opinion on a lot of topics. I also hope that it has made what I scribble down here a little more interesting.

 

But there is one topic that almost brings me to a combination of tears, bile, and vomit. It’s human trafficking. However, when presented with information, I am compelled to read it all, to try to understand all parts of the story, and ultimately, to tell it to you all.

I’ve poked around Human Trafficking a little, reading small news reports, and generally being ashamed to be a man with typical male sex drive.

However, I recently bought Slavery, Inc, and have devoted a lot of my (very limited) spare time to reading it. I’m only 60% through it (thanks, Kindle!) but there are so many stories in there that you really wish weren’t real.

One in particular almost reads like bad horror. It is the story of a girl who had escaped the clutches of her captors after who knows how many years of being whored out. She recalls the story of a girl a few years older than her who tried to escape. The other girl was from a foreign country, and knew few words in the language beyond “Mister” and “Yum Yum”.
One day she escaped by hiding in the Madam’s car. As punishement, the remaining girls were locked in their rooms for two days without food.

On the third day they were released and fed a chicken curry. Obviously starving, they wolfed down the curry. When they had all finished, the Madam told them that they had just eaten the runaway, and that they would suffer the same fate should they try to escape.

 

Now, there’s no way for me to verify this story; even the journalist writing the book notes that this could simply be a mind-game. But it doesn’t change the fact that there is a concerted effort around the world to buy and sell children for sex. Even girls that are “old enough” to make the choice to become prostitutes were probably coerced into that position one way or the other.

 

However, as much as I wish I didn’t know that this happened, I’m also glad that I do know. I have no idea how I can put a stop to this trade, but at least I am not feigning ignorance anymore.

 

Anyway, in lighter news, I have basically shirked my work duties after 14 straight days on, and I’ve done a bit of an edit on the next chapter of Arctic Gale.

Please check it out, and let me know how I can improve my “Action” writing.

And now, back to reading.

I’m not sure if I like Dubstep

I’ll be honest. I have never really associated with one type of music over another. I’ve bought who knows how many CDs and tracks, but I don’t think I’ve ever bought a band t-shirt. And a few years in the theatre industry meant that I’ve probably been to more concerts of a diverse nature than most other people.

 

But then… dubstep.

 

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t hate it. There are some tracks that make me go “huh, interesting.” But I’ve not yet been inspired to spend money on it.

 

Now, I’m sure that I’m bound to invoke the ire of many by saying this, but I do like this track:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW0AuyCTBkU

That’s Chronicles of a Fallen Love by the Bloody Beetroots.

I’m not sure why, but I would really like it to be the ending theme to something that I’ve written. Obviously, this isn’t really your standard high school romance type of track. However, every time I hear it on the radio I just wish that something like this was written for something that I had written.

 

So anyway, track like this inspire me. When I was writing KS I was constantly listening to music (embarrassingly, it was mostly anime songs that I could barely understand at the time).

The emergence of dubstep as a popular form of music seems to have inspired me to re-visit the violence-fuelled writings of my past.

Whilst I haven’t really “taken the axe” to Arctic Gale in the sense that Suriko and SilentCook took the axe to the Hanako Path, I feel that I’ve started to edit AG with more vigour.

 

So please, let me know if it is working. If that is the case then I’ll go and buy the Bloody Beetroot’s CD and listen to it on repeat on my impending flight to Germany

http://cplcrud.wordpress.com/arctic-gale/chapter-1/

I Like Dead Trees

I mentioned a few posts back that I had found the last lot of writing that I was working on before joining 4LS. From memory, I even tried writing both in parallel for a time, but it never seemed to happen.

Anyway, since I thought the story had some merit, and I couldn’t think of a plot for a Horror VN that I, just now, thought would be an awesome idea, I’ve thought that I’ll go through the existing story and clean it up a little.

So, lo and behold, how do I begin this story?

A gust of wind whipped along the tundra, stirring the branches of a long-dead tree; a freezing wind, the kind that cut through your clothes, shooting bolts of pain into your bones.

Sound familiar?Let me jog your memory:

A light breeze causes the naked branched overhead to rattle like wind chimes.

Okay, so the original had “xylophone” in it but that was deemed too difficult for the Katawa Shoujo readership…

Still, I didn’t even realise that I had put exactly the same setting in the first line of both of the things I was working on at the time. In fact, I had even read all of the draft of “Arctic Gale” and didn’t even realise it.

What does that mean? I don’t know. Perhaps I’m deluding myself into thinking that I’m actually creative. For those of you that follow 4LS’s Secret Santa you’ll understand that I’m not an artist.

 

Anyway, please have a read of the Prologue to Arctic Gale. I’ll put up a Blurb on the place holder page in a bit. But for now, I should really read some more about defamation.

Joining the ranks of the Spectacled

You remember the first time you watched something in HD, or when you first upgraded from a VGA monitor to something with a few more dots? How clear everything got?

Well, I’ve recently done the same thing with my eyes. I should explain that I have pretty good vision to begin with, but after a medicare-covered eye test, I’ve found that it could be better than 20/20.

Suddenly it’s not so tiring to drive home after a day of office work. I can’t wait until my family comes back so that I can examine my baby in the eyewear equivalent of High Definition.

Is this important? Not really. I’m still very much getting used to wearing glasses. I was told that I don’t really need to wear them constantly, but the differnce is addictive. Plus, as someone who is pretty smart to begin with, this is just a way of signalling that before I even open my mouth.

Anyway, today marks the end of Final Finale. Could this be the end of Hanako and my relationship? Perhaps. I’m not quite sure that I could write more Hanako right away. I’ve been thinking more and more about reviving “Run,” or maybe one of the other things I was writing before I moved into Katawa Shoujo nearly 5.5 years ago.
Thanks to everyone who came to the AMA. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I think the level of the questions was quite good. There was hardly anything challenging at all.

Anyway, here is the link to Part 7 of Final Finale. The name, of course, was because I did intend for this to be my last dance with Hanako. But in doing so I’ve found a new connection with her. By writing from her point of view I’ve been able to get over my major annoyance with her; that her range of emotions is limited by what Hisao can perceive. So, who knows? I think it may be some time though…

Old stuff incoming

Okay. I’ll be honest. I really liked 21 Jump Street.

It kinda redeemed the entire “spoof film” category. There wasn’t much about it that you could really complain about. It had great comedic timing, decent production values, and it is a great way to share a 6-pack with a friend.

 

I won’t gush on about it too much; I’m sure that there are valid arguments out there against it. Hell, if I really wanted to I could probably find a million things wrong with it. But I don’t need to; it delivered a great evening to me, and that’s pretty much all I could ask for.

 

However, it did remind me and my friend about a project that pre-dates Katawa Shoujo. I know that some of you may not have even been born then, but these things happen.

 

Let me set the scene:

It’s 2005. I’ve graduated university about a year and a half ago, and somehow found myself working in theatres.

I’d kept in contact with my uni mates, but had also met a lot of really creative people as I’ve started migrating into the workforce.

After watching Excel Saga a few too many times (and starting the long and winding road towards becoming a weaboo) and sharing it with said friends, we got it in our heads that we might be able to create something that would amuse people with our sense of humor.

 

Drawing on my long-time love of Something Awful, we started working on a script that we called “The Barbecue” (from OMGWTFBBQ). Initially I would wirte the script, and the other two guys would read and contribute to it. There was a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of comments in the script, and it was generally quite fun.

Unfortunately in September that year one of the collaborators was critically injured in a stage accident and was laid up for about 6 months. A roadcase had fallen on him and squashed his entire torso into a 100mm gap. The project was shelved, and we kinda forgot about it.

 

All up, we had eight episodes. I even did screen-readings to myself to check out the timing. All up, the script would have stretched to about 90 minutes, depending on how the various non-speech sequences would have run for.

We managed to get to a second version of most of the scripts, and a second draft of the first episode. But due to my friend’s accident, the script sat on a hard-drive and never really went anywhere.

 

Some of it is still embarrasingly bad. In many way I want to bury it forever and use it only as a learning tool for myself.

 

But, after watching 21 Jump Street, my (other) friend and I have thought that maybe we should at least have a look at it. He’s just as busy as I am, but that’s the beauty of the Internet.

 

I’m going to put up the “clean” (i.e. the non-commented version) of the first episode. In fact, it’s already up here. It is still a draft, and it’s also seven years old, so I make no claims of awesomeness. However, if anyone is interested in helping us polish this gem, then please hit me up with a private message and we’ll take it from there.

 

Of course, if you have a general comment or criticism please let me know. Looking at it now I know that I could easily make it quite a lot more polished, but my various research projects and Final Finale come first…

 

Anyway, sleepies…

Regrets?

It’s funny. If you read a lot of the forum and blog posts from 4LS, you’ll find that a lot of them want to retain their anonymity. I’ve never been ashamed of Katawa Shoujo, but I suppose that I do have one regret. Let me tell you about this in a round-about way.

 

As some of you may have guessed by reading this blog, I have grown up quite a lot since starting Katawa Shoujo. Back then I was a T-shirt wearing, shift-working bachelor who was content to work in an interesting and inspiring industry.

Now, however, I am well upon the path to senior management, I have a beautiful wife and daughter, and I’m helping a hell of a lot of people to do the job I was doing 5 years ago. Best of all, it was an organic evolution between then and now.

And now, I’ve been invited to meet with a not-for-profit organisation’s Board. They are looking for a new director, and they have somehow managed to find me amongst the flotsam of volunteers. I’m not going to mention their name (lest they find out who I really am), but I do have to mention that they are based around words; prose and poetry, spoken and written.

So now I’m torn. Sure, I have enough professional merits to go into an interview and probably have a good shot at landing a position on the Board. I’ve even written quite a lot of widely circulated tutorials and editorials in my industry.

But part of me is screaming to let them know about this other, hidden side of my keyboard-stroking. “They’re progressive” my inner self cries. “In fact, they might like the fact that you wrote cripple porn!” For everything that I write under the moniker “cpl_crud” will forever be associated with Hanako’s bittersweet tale. A quick Google reveals this blog, the Mishimmie, and the Katawa Shoujo blog.

If I were to drop this mask and adorn a new one, then I would essentially lose my credibility. I would have to start again. My confidence tells me that I could probably build up a certain fanbase again, but it would be like sacrificing my current position in this industry, re-join the ranks of the freelancers, and do it all again. And I don’t think I’m ready for that.

So, to my regret – sex.

Very early in the production of Katawa Shoujo, we discussed the concept of having sex scenes in the game. Because of the phrasing of the original Raita drawing, it was implied that Katawa Shoujo was going to be a “dating sim,” in full graphic ball-slapping nudity.

When I started taking a more central role in the project, I started to question it. Everyone seemed to have some opinion on it, and with pressure from some of the more vocal members, we decided to leave the sex in. I was a fence-sitter for a while, but once we made the decision (and in the name of progressing) I decided to stick with it, on the condition that it didn’t turn into a fuckfest (which, as we all know, it didn’t). Also, in my mind at the time, I was okay with letting my circle of friends (at the time) in on the fact that I was working on a cripple porn game (as they so quaintly put it).

 

It’s the one thing that I wish I had thought about a bit harder. It would not have been impossible to delete. I know almost all of the devs struggled with the sex scenes in one way or another, and they don’t really add that much to the story. Sure, in most other novels you have sex scenes, sometimes graphically described. In fact, I’m pretty sure that one of the books I had to read at high school, “Tomorrow, When the War Began” graphically described a sex scene between two 16 year olds. But when you combine that with disabilities and cartoon-ish graphics, you’ve got a mixture that is a little harder to swallow.

 

I wonder if any of the other devs are ever going to find themselves in this situation…

That time of life

Ho all.

I know that a lot of you are hanging for more Final Finale, but I’m afraid that the little one is dictating my time more than my hobbies.

That being said I have put some more thought behind it.

One thing I would like to mention though is fan fiction. Obviously, my works fall into the same category, but hopefully the points I am going to make are just as poignant.

I’ve received a couple of comments about the fact that neither of my “future” stories (I’m hesitant to say epilogues) cover the interval immediately after the end of the story presented in KS.

This is deliberate.

Firstly, any good story needs tension and resolution.
For better or for worse, the tension in KS is all cleared up by the time the credits roll.

Thus, starting from the second after the credits roll means that you have to come up with a new tension, a new story, and yet somehow make it believable. Audiences can suspend their disbelief only so far. People just don’t have back-to-back adventures.

For A Runner’s Afternoon I chose to drive the two apart. The tension was already built into the relationship, and the resolution was the pair doing what they did.

For Final Finale I have chosen another turbulent time in Hisao’s life; nearing his university graduation. I won’t give more away.

But to those of you that feel the need to “fill in the gaps” in the timeline, I shouldn’t have to say that you should consider making your tale both interesting and realistic.

New writings

Also, Shintai has posted his follow-up interview here. You can stop complaining about my accent now.

 

Anyway, I had a bit of an idea, so I thought that I would chase it down. I think I’m looking at three parts. Part one is up, parts 2 and three don’t exist yet (and they may be a time coming). I have written notes though, so I know where I want to go.

 

Final Finale – Part 1.

 

Enjoy.

The heat is off… for now.

It’s interesting that it’s only been a month since the release of Katawa Shoujo and already the heat is starting to come off our weird little project.

 

Sure, there are die-hard fans (like those of you that are actually reading this, I imagine) that will continue to hang around the IRC channels and forums, slowly chatting with us and (more than likely) spinning off to create your own little groups with your own not-so-little projects. That’s freaking awesome.