Writing Confessions

@soliton: My mod account against your Mav account. Sound good?

I was gonna play this one close to the chest for as long as possible, but context clues were going to give me away sooner or later (or people who remembered this av), but this is way more fun.

And the winner of this bet is....

Making Mav's new AV now ~_^

@lady_liberty: Have fun with that haha

Out of curiosity - what was it that gave me away?

@lady_liberty: @the_shogun:

Man of Steel received mixed reviews. The consensus among comic book fans was the same. Some liked it. Some didn't.

Affleck as Batman received overwhelmingly negative feedback, but after the first trailer, everyone suddenly started loving him. I can post a thread right now and ask if they like how Affleck seems to be portraying Batman and I can guarantee that the feedback will be mostly positive.

I'm talking about the vine in general (notice how I didn't specify with the RPG section). The vast majority will suddenly start loving Deadpool.

@aoife: Everything ;-P

Honestly, virtually everyone who has been around a while has an extremely distinctive authorial voice. I spot most everyone by reading their 'forum' section.

However in your case it was made easier by your profile picture, your AV and your forum wallpaper. Plus the quote in your Status section. Its a very 'Mercy style' account. You've always liked Rogue and always liked pictures where your character is mysterious looking in robes and/or a hood. You've always liked wolves and 'lone wolf' or 'wolf pack' themed stuff. You've always liked the fierce and petite style characters such as are used in your AV.

On top of that I knew you couldn't be Zauby. You mentioned being tired and not doing something. Zauby would have mentioned being tired in the context of doing something anyway. Zauby would never use that AV (she likes much more vivid colors and close up shots of the characters face) and probably wouldn't use an easily recognizable quote in her status either (her quotes are generally framed as thoughts that are internal to the character and directed at the external world, where as you frame things as external or authorial thoughts directed at the character; Zauby's quote is her character speaking, your quotes was you speaking about the character). And Nord mentioned the alt in the context of not roleplaying with her; you generally only RP with about three or four people, which told me that Nord knew who you were, and knew he probably wouldn't end up writing with you. That couldn't be Zauby; they write together quite frequently so if you were Zauby he would have the expectation of RPing with the alt in some point in the future.

Most importantly you didn't put a period on the end of your sentences. Zauby never misses the punctuation.

@maverick_6: Feast your eyes on the GLORY!

@lady_liberty: Goddamn, LL. You truly are my successor in alt-detection.

That breakdown is the most on point thing lmao, to the point where you figured out stuff that I hadn't actually realized (the quote thing is very true - I almost always use quotes that speak about my character as opposed to quotes in character voice).

Also, all of this:

always liked pictures where your character is mysterious looking in robes and/or a hood. You've always liked wolves and 'lone wolf' or 'wolf pack' themed stuff. You've always liked the fierce and petite style characters such as are used in your AV.

May as well be trademarked by me at this point

This would have been the perfect Maverick AV.

I bet LL can spot me a mile away when I make a new character.

@superior_nobody: Torn between humiliating my rivals and building my enormous ego I'll always choose my ego ;-P

@lady_liberty: That was some Holmes-level deduction, there.

@lady_liberty:

You could always edit "LL was right" into the pic. lol

Best of both worlds.

On one hand, this AV. On the otherhand, someone made a chuck norris joke about one of my characters today.

I'd say I can live with this.

This statement does me proud!

@maverick_6:

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Bradshaw seems like he'd have Chuck Norris level rumors.

@the_custodian: Ohhh yeah lol, generally at first glance!

@aoife: I'm the Taskmaster of CV skills ;-P If I watch someone else do it for long enough, I'll absorb it and be able to do it myself.

And yeppers. 'Big names' are almost always the easiest to spot though. Camouflage is about making your presentation close to the baseline. Big names are almost always people who deviate strongly from the baseline in some way. So unless someone is capable of suppressing their inherent personal approach that made them successful in the first place they are at a large disadvantage when it comes to sneaky alts.

Oh my god she went for the simplest approach and it's beautiful.

@lady_liberty:

lol, I figured. I know I have writing patterns and I don't do a thing to hide them.

@lady_liberty: LMAO. You truly truly are.

There have been times where people haven't figured out it's me for a while. But there was only one time where I actively tried to avoid detection and managed to pull it off and that was loooooong ago.

@aoife: @lady_liberty: I've had alts that were initially mistaken for each of you, which is a point of supreme pride for me. ^_^

I managed to pull it off when I was a beginner ironically. But I can't do it anymore.

@the_custodian: Everybody does I think.

@supreme_shaytan: I learned from the best!

@superior_nobody: The middle way is death ;-P

@necrommander: Thank you hehe.

I love her expression at the end of the gif lol.

@lady_liberty:

Probably true yeah.

Generally I want people to know which characters are mine, I don't know why, but I prefer people to not be confused about it. I do experiment a little with style, particularly as I'm revamping characters (Luna Hawk is now always in the first person for example) but that's about all I do.

@lady_liberty:

According to Buddha the "Middle way" is the path of wisdom. You'll have to take it up with him.

@superior_nobody: Its a Napoleon quote. And a pretty meaningful one, to my mind. He was a smart guy.

@the_custodian: Yeah, once you have a little bit of name and momentum it can be useful to be public with your alts to get people to pay attention to them. I think we mostly play the hiding alt game for intellectual stimulation and bragging rights.

SHE ENDS UP WITH FEZ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

This is almost as distressing as Ted ending up with Robin.......

@lady_liberty:

I'll follow the guy who is known as the symbol of enlightenment instead of the guy who they named a complex after. lol

But we're probably talking about two different "middle ways" or maybe not. I haven't heard the context behind the Napoleon quote before.

Some people cant hide their greatest.

Jackie and Hyde was supposed to be endgame, I'm upset

In my headcanon Eric went on to be abducted by Predators, Fez got his own reality show on mtv, and Jackie and Kelso got married. Hyde.....Hyde went to burning man and was never seen again.....

I'm on board with the first half of this (I really...don't.........like Eric), but I'm gonna fight you on the latter half! I think it's so cute that Mila and Ashton are together IRL now, though.

Jackie and Hyde as a pairing hits like....all of my buttons for what I want.

I associate more with Jackie than Donna?

@superior_nobody: I'm not really a big believer in Buddha or any of the eastern philosophies. Where as Napoleon was capable of accomplishing some incredible goals. So I'm interested in the mechanisms that allowed him to overcome all the obstacles that he overcame.

The context is basically that like Caesar and Alexander he didn't leave behind any kind of theory of war or even tactics. Caesar at least left behind The Gallic Wars and The Civil War. So Napoleon's quotes are scoured for clues to his thought process. 'The middle way is death' refers to the idea that it is better to completely commit to one course of action than to divide ones resources among two courses.

A great example of this is Hitler during the preparation for Normandy. He appointed a number of commanders to the defense of Europe, they didn't agree on what to do, and neither had the authority to overrule the other. So they had to appeal to Hitler to solve the dispute.

Rommel wanted to commit everything to a point defense on the beaches. Disembarking would be the point where the allies were the most vulnerable and he wanted to concentrate everything against that point. The other general (whose name escapes me) wanted to utilize a defense in depth, or elastic defense. There would be a light screening force on the beaches to bog the allies down but the main core of the forces would be concentrated in operational groups that would counter attack when the allies were bogged down.

Hitler split the difference and did half of each. The result was, as Churchill put it, a web without a spider. The middle way was death (and a good thing too).

Its a great quote and it has stuck with me for years and years.

Reminds me. I gotta update a certain guy's bio who I halfway wiped....

Not to mention this guy. He can't just exist to crap all over Abby's life, after all.

@lady_liberty:

By the way, I don't think we specified a time for this AV? How long did you want?

@soliton: I was going to go for a week lol.

Of course now that the site is with gamespot the site is now blocked at work -____- took me three hours to figure out how to bypass this crap.

As you wish.

Gooooood damnit why am i always late to the party.

I've only been wrong about an alt(s) twice.

Twice.

Mk211 Raufoss is a bullet that burns it's way through you, pierces you with a metal almost as hard as diamond, and then after it's good and done, blows up.

Sometimes, it's too easy to not even make new stuff. Just use the stuff that already exists. And maybe just buff it up to CV proportions on some characters :)

Alright.

I'm really tired of saying the word "nano." Nanostructuring. Nano this. Nano that. Fullerene....

If my alt ends up in the graveyard like the last switch caused, I'am done.

@maverick_6: i see mmano

Ok so this way has too may faults to work while I'm at work... I might not be able to do any RPing while at work now :/ thanks a lot stupid CV.