storytam @storytam@toot.cat
Hi, I'm Alison and I live in Taipei! I make games and write sometimes. 21, bi, she/her pronouns. Talk to me about SFF short stories, story games or politics!
Low key I've never really understood how people make super close friends or even network online....
There's a script that's worked for me in person and that is:
Be smiley, make conversation, add on social media, casually invite to hangout
But I don't have a script for online yet aaah maybe because idk what the equivalent to a casual invite is (& also I don't post enough LOL). Maybe I just have a lurker's personality
The mood is plotting out romance novels about lesbian flower farmers that I'm never ever going to actually finish writing
(except: she's a hot butch lavender farmer! she's a writer who does terrible tie-in novels for children's shows but wants to finish the Great American Novel!
when she rents the cottage next door for the summer... probably a lot of descriptions of food and inaccurately romanticized details of flower farming life occur)
@storytam I have a proposal I haven't properly written up yet for making it possible for people to host their own paid comics and such, and letting people read them using the reader's choice of RSS software. Larger publishing platforms would also be able to use the same tech. I've been working on the piece that lets readers get the full archive, not just the last few pages of the comic. The payment piece is technically already possible but awkward to use, so I hope to simplify that too.
I wish there were more good non-Amazon options for buying comics (since Amazon owns Comixology now)
I have a Nook but it's super old and only black & white, I'd love a digital platform that just let me read online or have a desktop/mobile app without like.... giving money to Amazon LOL
cat: i am an amazing and brilliant creature, perfectly evolved to successfully fill my ecological niche
human: you look like a fuzzy baby
human: hey everyone come look at this fuzzy baby i found
cat: IT IS NOT MY FAULT I LOOK LIKE A FUZZY BABY
My absolute fave thing is when comforting surroundings are paired with stressful emotional drama.....
Fraught conversations in kitchens, working through trauma on a long vacation in the countryside, political machinations on a large fluffy sofa
*walks onto stage*
Homestuck
*drops mic*
Different approaches to narrative creation:
1) What kind of story would be good for these characters? Start with a person and a personality. What do they struggle with? What shaped them? Watch the plot unfold around them.
2) What kind of characters would be good for this story? Start with an idea or a place or a scene. A woman meets her mother, who has become the North Wind. What kind of personality would it be interesting for her to have?
There are definitely more methods but I'm #2
I want 2 press the cat paw
The new Netflix romcom with Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs as the secondary couple is out today and I want to watch it so badly omfg
Sometimes I get upset about perceived lack of quality in my writing and how it's not Beautiful or Perfect yet
& then I remember how many imperfect narratives there are out there that I fully and unironically love
Everyone underestimates the extent to which the Gorillaz's Let Me Out is a total banger
@storytam
When I was more interested in building and managing online communities I had a nascent theory about what I called 'church ladies'. the people who did all the unglamorous behind the scenes work, and traded mostly in inter-group social capital.
I figured you could pretty easily gauge the health of a community just by identifying who those individuals were and what their stress to enthusiasm ratio was.
We just saw a giant baby on TV and my aunt yelled out 巨嬰 , I'm so absurdly delighted that the phrase sounds so much better in Chinese
@storytam This fellow hangs out near a bookstore where they have most considerately put out food and water just for him. He will meow at you and accept pets but refuses to look in the camera
@storytam Continuing upon the theme, here is a cat on their favorite perch in Future Factory, a cafe near Yuanshan
Since I may not have a cat of my own here is a thread of cats I have found in Taipei, starting with this #cat outside a stationery store (Tools to;live by in Da'an)
I want a cat.
I want a cat!
I! Want! A cat!
I! WANT! A! CAT!
(i want a cat)
I'm absurdly furious about the mosquito bite on my FINGER for some reason
WHEN DID I EVEN GET BIT. I DON'T UNDERSTAND.
Like it's not good, but it's perfect
-> the weird datedness of the era when the internet was around but it wasn't weird to call someone yet
-> earwormy singsong repetition
-> the cultural position of deandre cortez way as the voice of a generation
-> SINGING THE PHONE NUMBER AS THE HOOK THAT YOU COULD AT THE TIME ACTUALLY DIAL