Edit the Third: As this has become a springboard to attack other writers, this post is going away.

Okay, full week -- cant get to LJ from home. From work, fine? From Edmonton wireless Internet, fine? But not from home.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So -- apologies for continued silence.

Can't reach LJ from home. Can't reach LJ from home. But it works from work?

This is odd. I've thought we were under a DDOS attack for the past week, but apparently just me!

So in a rare vacation talk with my wife (rare in that it was the first time in months that we'd talked about something beyond a) work, b) kids, c) what needed to be done to keep the house from physically collapsing under its own decrepitude within the next 24 hours, or d) how tired we were), I realized that I was ready to start doing my own writing again.

I got Islands in the Mist ready for submission last year, and sent it out, and then... didn't do much with it. It came back, but I was hip-deep in work, and even though it wouldn't have been much harder than some cutting and pasting, I didn't have the emotional energy to put the novel back out to another publisher or agent. I haven't done any of my own writing in a year, either, at least not beyond polishing up Islands. And now that ME3 is, if not out the door, at least ramping down, I'm ready to do that again.

More than that, I need to do that again. I love working at BioWare -- it remains my dream job -- but I need to do something where I'm in charge, something where there's no art budget, no cinedesign budget, no restrictions on how many people can be in a scene or how many places I can have the heroes go or how much damage I can do to the environment. I work really well within constraints, but I need to get out of them and write something where I can do a few things that are utterly impossible to do in a video game.

My wife's vote was that I continue working on the trilogy I started with Islands, and her vote counts for a lot, so I'm doing that. :) (It was either do that or try a modern superhero story, but a) I don't have the superhero story worked out yet, and b) I think that if I wrote really fast and tried really hard, I could finish the superhero novel just in time to watch the superhero novel crash and burn as subgenre of the week.

As far as the other novels go, I'm not sure exactly what to do with them. Palace Job has been sitting with a publisher who is really eager to publish it, except that they've been really eager for several years now and have published other things since, and multiple people have told me that they don't have the best reputation. With no agent, I'm close to out of places I can submit (some publishing houses take unagented submissions, but not many), and while I really truly believe that Palace Job deserves to see the light of day (as opposed to, say, everything before it, which I will happily shovel under a rug as needlessly self-indulgent growing pains), I don't quite know what to do with it.

But I do believe I still have at least one more place I can send it, and given that that place has been holding onto Gilding the Apocalypse for so long that all the references to the WB television network and how wacky and magical it is for a handheld computer to be able to download an entire dictionary in just seconds would be have to be rewritten, I can lob Palace Job their way and not worry about it for a few years. (And again, it's not that Gilding has been rejected -- I have people at the agency saying that it's on the desk of someone important, just waiting for the right time for him to read it. For like seven years. This is why I will try to write timeless classics from here on out.)

My two big hurdles, as far as I can tell, are a) convincing a publisher that the weird crap I write when I'm not at work is worth publishing (you know, unlike the straight-laced play-it-safe Friend-zoned Turian and Singing Salarian stuff I do at my day job) and b) convincing an agent that they can and should represent this. A large part of that is that I probably don't take my own fiction seriously enough. I have a few places in ME2 where I really hit things hard and played it straight to get an emotional hit, but I also have the places where I wink at the players, and my fiction is like that as well... which probably works against me. I like doing it. I think readers would like reading it. But it's not serious and professional, and in a novel that's not explicitly labelled "THIS IS FUNNY OKAY?", that can be off-putting.

Or I'm overthinking it and should just keep doing what I'm doing. Only more often, now that ME3 is just about done and I can see straight again.

Lastly, as much as I hate doing so, I should probably try to consciously network more. I have friends who have published, now, and they have so far not procured me an agent or convinced the places that published them that I am totally worth checking out, so it's time for me to go sell myself. We'll see how that goes.

I spent part of the night trying to pinpoint what really bothered me about the book. Part of it was the stuff I mentioned -- okay, obviously, most of it was the stuff I mentioned. Some of it was minor to most people, in all likelihood, but major to me (like Adam's apples).


( wall of text )

So anyway. Frustrated by book more than if it it'd just been a flat-out disaster. And when I said "good for someone who isn't me", I mean that sicnerely -- every book has flaws, and enjoying a book is usually more about finding a book whose flaws don't bug you and whose strong points pull you in. This book had some strong points I really loved, and some flaws I couldn't get over, but I suspect that a lot of people would love it.

I was told to check out this series. I was going to tweet these, but it ended up being a wall of text by Twitter standards. Also, people might take what I'm saying as some sort of official BioWare response, as opposed to "Well, got the recommendations, let's see how it goes..."

Starting Elantra book preview. We'll see how this goes. 

Originally posted by kylecassidy at post

Originally posted by gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

For what little it's worth, passing the message:

"...She stopped blogging. Eventually she got rid of her Twitter account. She
cancelled speaking engagements because she was afraid she would be
murdered. It seems that as soon as a woman is popular enough to be
noticed, someone decides it’s time to play dirty. (In the midst of the
media attention, they took the opportunity to post obscene and harassing
photoshopped pictures of Robert Scoble’s wife at the same time.)"

Please pass the word.

For those of you who don't read the official BioWare forums, I posted this up there not long ago, and wanted to pass it on.

Kepral's Syndrome and Cystic Fibrosis: A Request from a BioWare Writer

Professional game designers never cackle when their game succeeds in emotionally engaging the player. That would be wrong.

Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to comment on my previous post or respond to me on Twitter. I'm currently looking at close to 200 comments, including some from the posters who were behind the BioForum post I quoted. This is obviously something that we want to get right,and hearing your opinions and concerns gave me some good direction, I think. (And please don't take this reply as me trying to shut it down. I don't have time to individually reply to every comment, but I've read every comment so far, and will continue to do so.)

Things that I've read in a lot of different comments:

Do Not Weaken FemShep: FemShep is not a woman who happens to be an Alliance military officer. She's an Alliance military officer who happens to be a woman. No matter what changes I suggest in the writing room, I can promise that this will never change. Commander Shepard should always be a strong character, a decorated officer who is dedicated to saving the galaxy.

More Sir and Ma'am: While I personally try to avoid it because I worry that it puts me on the slippery slope to weakening FemShep by NPC reaction, many people commented that they'd like more "Yes, Ma'am," responses when it's appropriate. That's a very easy fix, and given how often it came up, it sounds like one worth doing. (And I'll have to check with our military-expert writers to get a firm sense of when it's appropriate and respectful, and when it could be taken as "I'm insulting you by not calling you sir.")

Humanity Yes, Girl Time No: I'm conflating several different posts here, but one comment that came out often is that people didn't want FemShep to be more empathetic or more in touch with her humanity by default, but this quickly turned into several comments that noted that players would like to have the opportunity to be more empathetic or in touch with their humanity, regardless of gender. It's funny, because to me, that's a completely separate issue -- the issue of Shepard getting to be vulnerable is completely compartmentalized from the issue of whether FemShep should be written as different from MaleShep. I don't know whether that's good or bad thinking on my end, but to answer this as best I can without spoiling anything:

Commander Shepard is an Alliance marine. Regardless of gender, when Shepard is on a mission, he or she isn't going to break down and cry at horrible events or situations or losses. However, when Shepard is not on a mission, there's an opportunity for him or her to be a little more human and react to some of the things that had to be tucked away during the mission. We saw the fan reaction to Shepard having drinks in his or her cabin with Liara, and how much people liked Shepard getting to voice an opinion about being hopeful or worried, upbeat or grieving. While our first priority is to deliver an excellent main game with exciting and engaging missions, I hope we'll have time to give Shepard more of those off-hours moments in our future content.

Mixed Reactions to Sexist Jerks: Some people (including posters who I know to be women) liked getting the chance to have someone be sexist to them and have Shepard pull a gun or snap off a good comeback. Other people (including some whom I believe to be women based on the context of their comments) found that to be an uncomfortable reminder of real life that they'd rather not have to deal with in a video game. Other people had a "good for the gander" opinion and wanted to see the same happen to MaleShep. This is one I'm going to have to think about (and talk about with the rest of the writers). Making our players feel uncomfortable because we've given them a really complex multilayered choice is great. Making our players feel uncomfortable because the game has reminded them of unpleasant situations they have to deal with in daily life is not, and that's something I'd like to avoid unless your day job is using a biotic shockwave to go husk-bowling near explosive crates.

Thanks again to everyone who offered advice and opinions, and to everyone who also noted the parts that worked for them that they don't want to see changed. I've played through ME1, ME2, and parts of ME3 often enough with both MaleShep and FemShep to love both of them, but I really want anyone who plays the game to feel like they're playing as a strong, assertive, empowering character, regardless of whether it's MaleShep or FemShep. Your comments will help me do a better job of that.

For context, as this is public: I'm talking about a video game series for which I'm a writer. In the series, you play as Commander Shepard of the Human Alliance Military. You can choose whether Shepard is male (MaleShep) or female (FemShep). There's a fantastic  fan video showing a lot of the game as played by a lot of different versions of Female Shepard:



One thing I saw called out on the BioForums was a page with requests for the developers. A lot of them are outside my area of expertise, but one in particular goes directly to writing:

5. Acknowledgement of Shepard's Gender.
------------------------------------------------------------

It is pleasing and helps game immersion when an NPC’s reaction is based on Shepard’s gender. Aside from romances, there are only two places in ME2 where this occurred.

1) The Batarian merc recruiter on Omega
2) Gianna Parasini on Illium.

It really was brilliant to see these unique situations as they help to make the game more personal and add more to the experience. We would like to see more of these situations. Even a simple sir or ma’am distinction helps.

This is fascinating for me, because it is almost completely the opposite of what I try to do. If I can in any way avoid having someone mention Commander Shepard's gender, I will do so. I will phrase lines so that a "he" or "she" never needs to be said ("Commander Shepard did everything possible" instead of "Commander Shepard did everything he could," for example). And while the accusation is likely to be made that that's laziness, it's really not -- making a new line of dialog, slapping the "Is Female?" conditional on it, and changing "he" to "she" isn't that difficult.

It's more that when you make a second line, the inclination is to do something different with it -- as long as someone is recording another line any way, why not comment on Shepard's gender in a more direct way? An appeal to strength for men and gentleness for women? Or an suggestion that a female character is here to flirt with someone? Or...

...And that's where I stop.

Because I don't want to assume that because someone plays FemShep, their Shepard is automatically kinder, more sensitive, or interested in flirting. That kind of assumption is what gave us games where all the women are archers or healers, because gamers were ready to see a woman in a game, but not ready to see one in armor hitting things. I played through Mordin's loyalty mission for a class recently, and I played through the scenes Renegade for MaleShep and Paragon for FemShep. I did it because I liked specific line readings for male and other specific line readings for female, but the first question I was asked by the class was whether the female version of Shepard was more empathic and caring. If I ever do it again, I might reverse my playthrough style, just to see how the class reacts to FemShep agreeing with sterility plagues and executions.

This kind of assumption feels particularly egregious to me when it's Shepard automatically giving a different line for gender reasons -- when it's the writer directly putting words into the mouth of the player's avatar. It's a little easier to justify having an NPC really react differently to a female Shepard, of course, because then you're not inflicting sexist opinions on Shepard -- you're just saying, "This particular person in the galaxy happens to treat men and women in different ways." It's valid and reasonable to assume that in the future, there will still be sexism and gender assumption stereotyping that is more pronounced when coming from some people.

But is it fun? My assumption -- and we all know how well those work -- was that women who buy our game and select FemShep are coming from real-world lives where they often are treated differently or stereotyped for their gender, and that just like I, an asthmatic and out-of-shape dude, enjoy playing Commander "I headbutt krogan warlords and Vanguard-charge armed commandos before elbowing them to death" Shepard, those women would enjoy playing a Shepard who wasn't asked if she was planning to take maternity leave and have kids, or if she worried about her figure in that armor, or how she felt about the genophage as someone who could one day be a mother herself. I figured that since most people play games for fun and entertainment, they'd enjoy playing in a world that was largely free of people treating you differently based on your gender.

I know that trying to be gender-blind in real life doesn't work, because in real life, being gender-blind is usually just code for "I'm going to ignore the massive privilege that I have as a dude." I thought gender-blindness, as much as possible, was a good idea in this game, though, for the reasons I presented above.

This isn't a defense. I help create a product. If the audience for this product wants something that I'm not providing, and that I can provide easily, then that's a change that I want to make. And I'm not particularly worried about bad execution of a change -- we've got multiple female writers and editors who can check to make sure when I write Shepard having a Girl Moment, I'm not actually writing a What Guys Think Girls Are Like Moment (and they would be writing many such moments themselves, so even if mine are mediocre, theirs are excellent). I'm more worried about making a change whose basic premise is flawed, because I'm misreading the intent of the forum posters, or taking the request of a few forum posters as indicative of a majority opinion.

So, people with opinions on the matter, I would like to hear them. Purely from a writing perspective, do you want more acknowledgment of your Shepard's gender, or do you prefer the largely gender-blind galaxy you play in right now? And why?

Edit: An update, not an attempt to shut down discussion: I've compiled some of the initial feedback in a follow-up post. Thanks again to everyone who commented. I don't have time to respond to everyone individually, but I've read every comment posted.

A big jealous howdy to everyone who's there!

Here's hoping I don't see a lot of posts with the -Fail suffix this year!

As anybody who follows me on Twitter or Facebook knows, our cat Rajah passed away on Thursday. He was almost 19, and he'd had a lot of great years, but it was still rough.

( Details )

He was a great cat. And I'm better for having had him in my life.

Fun stuff first:

After multiple years and a lot of time sitting on the dusty shelf folder of my hard drive while I tried to figure out how to make it what I wanted it to be, Islands in the Mist is finished. Did the final spellcheck last night, and now all I need to do is let it out the door.

Being unagented gives me a very easy focus, as the number of pro-level markets that take unagented fiction is not large:

Ace/Roc (query only)
Baen
Daw (paper only)
Pyr
Tor (paper only)

Not sure what order I'll submit in, although I can say in honesty that printing a novel in standard manuscript format and then shipping it internationally sounds less than entirely fun. The novel is about 125,000 words after edits, and in Standard Manuscript Format, it's almost 600 pages.

In any event, thanks so much to everyone who critted, read, or encouraged me during this very long process. It feels like a pretty good novel now that it's finally done, and I can't wait to inflict it upon an unwitting public.

It's been awhile since I've updated here. Not dead, just kind of lurking. Let's see.

Me: So, what's the kid watching these days?

DA2 Writer: Lot of Caillou. And Farrzle.

Me: Oof. That's brutal. Man, the only way I get through Dora and Diego is to imagine that backpack and rescue pack are actually horrific interdimensional beings using Dora and Diego for their twisted ends.

DA2 Writer: You mean every time they produce something or turn into something on command, they're coming one step closer to entering our world and devouring everything?

Me: I kind of imagine them being like that big black ball thing from Heavy Metal.

DA2 Writer: So somewhere, a 12-year-old girl is staring in horror at the Loc-Nar and watching...

Me: ...Diego.

DA2 Writer: That might actually make Diego worth watching.

Said DA2 Writer and I hit a library full of impressionable high school students and told them all about being writers and how BioWare work. It was a ton of fun, and the students asked a lot of really intelligent questions.

Work continues. Work is hard. Work is secret. The usual. It's both inspiring and humbling to see the high expectations people have for ME3, and I hope we can meet them.

On Wednesday of last week, I got the call that my grandfather had passed away. He was 92, and it had been a long time coming, so nobody was really surprised or had unfinished business. It just left everyone sad. Work was amazingly supportive as the Damsel and I dropped everything and made quick plans for a flight from Edmonton to California.

We got in on Saturday night and got to spend Easter with my mom as a result.

On Monday, I helped my mom by going to the final viewing, and then we headed over to the service. It was a Catholic funeral mass, and I did one of the readings. It was interesting, because I got to see the reading beforehand, and I had enough time to think about how I wanted to do it. I ended up going back and forth with my wife on it, because I kept feeling like the expectation would be that I would do "one step up from high-school reading" (not quite sing-song, reading by rote), and that if I put some voice into it, it might come off as pretentious or even humorous. But my faith was so important to my grandfather that I wanted to do the reading well -- I didn't want to do a by-rote sing-song reading. I wanted to read it the way he'd have wanted it read.

So after some hemming and hawing (and one joke version as Lotso from Toy Story 3 that made my wife fall off her chair laughing -- apparently I do a good Lotso), I put some soul into it when it came time to actually do it. Not over the top -- honestly, I hate doing readings with microphones, so part of my slowness was trying to make sure that I wasn't speaking too quickly for the mic -- but with emphasis and a bit of passion. My cousin (who read the responsorial psalm) said that she was ready to shout hallelujah, which is either a compliment or a jibe (or both -- hard to tell with the Finn family), but everyone else liked it. The Damsel sang for the service -- a lovely Ave Maria at the opening, plus some Catholic songs throughout (On Eagle's Wings and Here I Am, Lord aka the one that keeps drifting into the Brady Bunch theme song).

The service itself was really nice, not counting my own stress. (And pall-bearing. I really dislike the white gloves.) We said later that a good judgment of a man was how many of his children's exes came to the funeral to pay their respects -- there were three ex-sons-and-daughters-in-law present to offer condolences. It was also really a family funeral -- all the grandkids (like me) doing readings and prayers for the faithful and the kids (like my mom) speaking and offering remembrances.

Afterward, the family went to a nearby cemetery for the internment. I always feel like the internments are a weird after-step. At Great Aunt Peggy's funeral, we had a lovely service, and then went to the cemetery and had... a second service, with a local priest who'd never met Aunt Peggy (as opposed to the bishop who spoke at the first service and had known her for years when she was in charge of the Catholic Women's League). This was kind of like that. I mainly tried to keep my sister warm (donating a coat, since it was starting to rain, and, well, at this point, I'm Canadian, and if it ain't snow, I ain't cold) and my mom comforted (she bore up really well, but she had to organize a lot of this, and it really took its toll).

We ended the day back at a rec room by the church, eating really nice food and talking about Papa and having a kind of impromptu family reunion. Which, again, I think Papa would have wanted.

Have you ever wondered what Jacob's loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2 would have been like if Jacob's dad had been not Ronald Taylor, but Taylor Swift? Wonder no more!

(Courtesy of the awesome Arch4ngel on Twitter, whose late-night back-and-forth with me turned into mutual dares of me writing Jacob's loyalty mission to Taylor Swift's "Mine", and her learning the song in a single night and recording it the next day.)

Creepily, I didn't have to change the line "You are the best thing that's ever been mine." Think about that!

So I have opinions.

( Trigger: Tragedy with Children )
Which is a damn shame, because as far as emotional button presses go, it was very effective. And if they'd actually had the guts to make a game like this, I would likely never have played it, but I certainly would have defended its existence.

My wife Karin (aka the Damsel) and I got interviewed by BioWare for Facebook Friday. Take a look!