Archive for the 'Tales' category

But While I’m Between Jobs

Jun 18 2012 Published by under Related To Work I'm Doing, Tales

I did promise to give the brief version of “what happened” at the last gig. Let’s see if I can manage “brief” for the first time in my life.

Unfortunately for my more gossip-oriented readers, there aren’t really any really juicy details worth sharing. It came down to bad planning, inexperience, and bad luck.

Here are some general things that apply to lots of companies.

- If I’m going to be one of the most experienced people on the team, and the investors don’t think they need to meet with me before I’m hired, and after I’m hired they don’t ask what I think of the budget or the schedule, I’m going to need to know what their background in games is.

- No, really, “played lots of games” is not an asset in any role except design, and even then, it’s an asset, not a sine qua non.

- You’d think I’d know this one by now, being as it has now bitten me in the unspeakables four times, but… if anyone tells me that I’m not allowed to talk to the Extremely Sensitive [major figure], there are shenanigans afoot and it’s going to end in tears. My tears.

- Third party tools are for prototyping and demo building. Not MMO production. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to show me a shipped product or an entire team of programmers. Preferably both.

- Hard work isn’t enough unless it’s focused by an experienced project manager with solid goals and a long range view.

Odds and ends specific to the gig in question: Some key hires (project manager, server programmer) were just made too late in the game to make the kind of progress we needed to make in order to get something playable in front of… anyone, really.

(Not that hiring the project manager earlier would have been a guarantee. A project manager with ten years of experience herding MMO cats and an empty suit who’s been failing upwards for ten years? They look exactly the same from the outside. You just can’t know which is which until you’ve stood in knee deep, er, mud with one of them. I say with gratitude and pride that at my last gig, I got to work with one of the best MMO leaders ever…who was never officially announced due to coming on just a few months before the end. Someday I will be able to thank this person publicly, with trumpets and bells.)

The concept was awesome enough that if we could have gotten something playable in front of y’all, I think we could have generated enough excitement to land more investment. As it was, though, we never managed to get the (third party) patcher to work, on top of other ground-level issues.

Finally, quite aside from the other issues, luck played a role. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Everything that worked wonderfully on the internal server would just fall apart when exposed to air. A working patch would stop working at the exact moment when we needed things to go smoothly. I’d be literally mid-sentence announcing something that had been stable for hours when it would crash. Man, I started taking that shit personally after awhile.

But I’d say, at the end of the day, what we mainly needed was more experience (and more willingness to leverage the experience we had, as opposed to wheel-inventing strategies). People point to Mythic as an example of a bunch of crazy kids making a dream come true, but as the saying goes, Mythic was an overnight success that was years in the making.

I came to that party relatively late, in mid-2001. The existing company had already made something like half a dozen games, one of which formed some of the underlying structure of DAOC. The team might not have had any AAA MMO experience (mainly because back then the only AAA MMOs were UO, AC, and EQ) but they had plenty of experience making multiplayer games for the PC. Mythic had some lucky breaks, some good timing, my guild leaders, and a market new enough that we were setting some of the expectations as opposed to the modern problem of trying to meet expectations…but even with all that, success had a lot to do with the team’s leadership and experience.

I believe the concept of Dominus was brilliant, and some of the people I was working with were truly gifted. No team could have tried harder, either. The support of the community was amazing to see and feel, and I think the ideas the community brought to the table would have augmented the design in a way that would have created one of the most phenomenal MMO experiences yet.

I guess that’s the worst of it, for me. The community really kicked ass. Even my ever-so-slightly cranky people were major contributors to a degree I have only rarely seen before. I knew, KNEW that the game was going to scratch a major itch for my favorite kind of player. It’s never fun to see a dream die, but this one was the hardest to let go.

May we all eventually meet again. Again.

5 responses so far

Ah, Memories

Oct 09 2011 Published by under Tales

Firor sent a fabulous story to Scott in celebration of DAOC’s Ten Year Birthday. Read it!

My own two cents: Scott is being a little too modest, here. What he is not saying is that he wrote that CS tool, from scratch, in six weeks. His brainchild outperformed every other such program available in 2001, and he did it with no time or resources. In a closet. An actual, literal closet next to a poorly ventilated bathroom used by 40 heavy smokers.

*My* office was a very nice coat closet that had its own window. The only real problem with it was that the coat hooks were directly behind my chair and at the same height as my skull when I stood up.

Anyway. My contribution to this stroll down memory lane: Like everyone else, I’d been working solidly for six months without coming up for air on my own tasks, so I absolutely did not know any of the stuff that Firor talked about in terms of numbers and load expectations. I also did not know anything about business projections or prior MMO sales performance. All I knew was what the beta testers were saying and how many people on the big news sites were excited about the game. So I figured we’d hit 100K customers easy, right out of the gate, even though that was by no means a guarantee for AAA MMOs in 2001. I also assumed that everyone shared my confidence.

When we actually hit that number, I was too green, too inexperienced, and too ignorant to realize what we’d achieved. For me it was just… yeah? So? When’s the first patch? I walked in on one celebration (involving shots of either scotch or whiskey in dixie cups, I don’t remember because I’m basically a slushie drinker) and just stared at everyone, like, “sure, I’ll have a shot, but why are you all so happy? And what about this quest problem?”

I think it was Mark Jacobs at the celebration lunch a few days later who asked me why I wasn’t bouncing off the walls, and I said something like, “Of course we’re a hit. It’s been obvious all along.” He just stared at me, speechless, for the first and last time in his life.

Now that I have more context, in terms of what the odds really were against us and how close we came to not launching at all… my god. In some ways, I would give anything to be that confident about anything, ever again. On the other hand, I was an insufferable git, so it’s for the best that I have a clue now.

I’m pretty sure that as soon as Scott finished the CS tool, we got cracking on the Herald. That was fun. No one had anything like the Herald at the time, so it was exciting to just invent something. And as with pretty much everything else about DAOC, we did it because we didn’t know we couldn’t.

It was the most fantastic, most glorious experience. The seven of you were there with me. Thanks.

 

28 responses so far

Metaphorically

Jul 19 2011 Published by under Tales

Hey guys, we’re going to be making cookies!

Awesome, I love ice cream.

Uh, sure? I’m really excited about these cookies.

What, don’t you like ice cream?

Sure, I love ice cream, but we’re making cookies.

Why can’t you make ice cream? It would be really popular.

If we were opening an ice cream store, that would be brilliant. But we’re selling cookies. We’ve built this whole business plan and bought all this equipment for cookies. You would need totally different equipment to make and store ice cream. We don’t have the room or the money or the time. So, about these cookies…

Ice cream sandwiches.

What?

Ice cream sandwiches. Ice cream AND cookies. You’re just making excuses not to make ice cream.

That’s not the kind of cookies we’re making, and ice cream sandwiches are bland as hell. We’re making really good cookies. Someone else might make really good ice cream and make you happy, but we cannot make you happy. I’m sorry. If you want a cookie, though -

An ice cream sandwich doesn’t have to be bland, if you hand made the cookies and used special ice cream.

And that would scale how well?

You’re awfully greedy, you know that?

I’m not greedy, I want to make cookies. And that reminds me, there’s the equipment issue.

You don’t need special equipment.

We’d need freezers.

Nah, man, ice cream is better when it’s a little melty.

No, it’s not. And why am I even talking about this? We’re making cookies.

But I want ice cream.

Go next door!

They aren’t making the kind of ice cream I want.

Make your own ice cream.

I want you to do it.

/headdesk

 

33 responses so far

OMGWTFOCD

Jul 13 2011 Published by under Tales

Getting back into full time community management was easy. Actually, kind of embarrassingly easy. I swore I would never personally care (as opposed to professionally organizing and conveying feedback) about the mechanics of crowd control ever again. And yet here I am, having long InternetIsSeriousBusiness conversations about immunity timers as if I’d never left.

This is either the most ridiculous way for a grown woman to make a living, or the most awesome. Possibly both.

Anyway, the thing with the steepest learning curve is the freakin’ acronyms. It’s not that they change, exactly, but new acronyms do come into play over the course of years. Twice now I’ve found myself frantically googling an acronym, muttering to myself, googling a second time with +MMO at the end, and then staring in horror at a few dozen completely contradictory links. The meaning changes depending on which game the player is “from,” and in order to do a good job, I’ll need to keep that in mind. It’s awfully like the word “fanny.” The different meanings aren’t terribly far apart, as it were, but in the context of… player versus player contact, you reeeeeeeeeeally need to know which fanny you and the other player are talking about before you issue/accept any invitations to duel.

That’s not thing making me QQ the most. The seven (the eighth one got here too recently, sorry) of you might remember that three plus years ago, I posted something about my personal life. Well, he’s starting to read. Mainly the internet catches his attention when it types in all caps. Sometimes, I’ll think the toy train session is in full swing and I’ll start reading a message board, and then I hear a little piping voice carefully read out “W…T…F.” I turn around to find the Ninja Preschooler standing there at my elbow with a big grin, and then he capers off chanting “WTF! WTF! WTF!”

Which, really, is one of the saner reactions to the internet.

13 responses so far

Somewhat Paraphrased

Jun 20 2011 Published by under Related To Work I'm Doing, Tales

The press release finally went out, and therefore it’s official. I’m working for an MMO startup called Pitchblack Games. I didn’t exactly let the cat out of the bag last week, but it was meowing loudly. I’m the admin on the FB page, the contact on the Twitter feed – heck, on my own Twitter, I had it in my bio for a couple days. I always switch my Twitter bio to a disclaimer whenever I’m under contract, and just spaced on the fact that it was a SEKRIT.

So, to answer the usual “what made you take this job” question, I thought I would post a paraphrased version of the phone call I got from Pitchblack:

Them: We were wondering if you’d be interested in working with us.

Me: Great! So what can I do for you?

Them: (request for information)

Me: (standard explanation of what I can do, what I love to do, what I want to do)

Them: (sales pitch about company, word “amazing” crops up more often than is really normal)

Me: (trying to repress cynicism after five years of hearing this kind of thing and failing)

Them: (sincere description of the team and the game they’re making)

Me: (getting flashbacks to another startup I loved) So… what’s the idea behind the game?

Them: A three faction PVP MMO. In space.

Me: (The flashbacks are getting stronger, plus bonus points for sci-fi) Really?

Them: Earth was invaded by an overwhelmingly strong alien race, the Rodon, and humanity only survived because the alien race that kind of sort of created the Rodon intervened. Those guys, the Salent, are playing a very deep game. Anyway, there’s one element in the whole galaxy required for technical advancement, inventions, good gear, defense, and other stuff that players invent and make, and it’s mostly found on one planet called Dominus. The faction that controls Dominus has a major advantage.

Me: (Whoa.) Anything else?

Them: (List of things on which a big budget project simply can’t take a chance.)

Me: (weakly trying to be cool) That’s all?

Them: Well, there are jetpacks.

28 responses so far

Why I Hid My Gender

Jun 03 2011 Published by under Just Thinking, Meta Community, Tales

Long ago, I wrote a psychotic, frothing rant that had everyone convinced I was male. It was my first experience with the automatic respect a person gets just for being male.

Just now, every male reading this let out a hoot of laughter. “Respect? She thinks I get respect just because I’m a dude? Man, she oughta try life in my shoes.”

All I can say to that is that you haven’t tried life in mine, and that you do in fact get a “free ten percent off all bullshit” coupon just for being born with dangly bits. I mean 10% – it’s not a lot, it’s barely apparent (and not apparent at all if you’ve never known anything else), but boy howdy, it sure does add up over time. Remember, I was a writer before I’d ever even heard of MMOs. I’d even written rants before. People reading with the assumption that I had a penis had a different and more positive take on my work than they did when they knew I had a vagina.

Just now, many of the males reading this repressed a grimace at the thought of the word vagina. I don’t know why. The word “penis” is a lot sillier sounding.

Anyway, after people found out the MMO ranting was written by a female, the feedback changed. Only a little bit… see above about 10%… and I didn’t notice at first because I had an audience that was primarily made up of people who’d come to me assuming I was male.

What changed?

The post-gender reveal feedback was just a little more… argumentative. This being the internet, I’d always gotten mail from people who assumed I hadn’t noticed [insert obvious truth], but when it became known that I was female, those letters got slightly more frequent and the tone got a little more patronizing. I never got any email saying “you’re funny, for a man” but post-gender reveal I got “you’re funny, for a woman” at least once a month. What was really “funny” is that those letters were from people who were trying to give me a compliment.

By the way, lest you chalk that up to the weaker social skills of the typical gamer, I’ve got fourteen years of experience WITH gamers and I assure you, the gamer population has exactly the same social skill set as the general population. The fringe freaks get all the attention, but pound for pound we’ve got the same “types” as any hobby.

Now, please note: These are just observations. I didn’t give a damn. No one ever believes me about that, but I don’t give a damn about that either. But if you think about it from my point of view, first as a writer and then as a community weenie, you’ll see why. See, there are tradeoffs.

As a writer: My audience mushroomed. Females made up a bigger portion of the early MMO population than anyone realized, and there was a certain amount of “gotta support my sisters” attitude back in the early days. So the news spread and more women started checking out my site – a site they might have otherwise ignored because they thought I was just another boy in love with the f-bomb and masturbation jokes. More men started reading, because let’s face it, a lot of men get a charge out of women in love with the f-bomb and masturbation jokes. And there were men that came to wonder at how the bear could dance at all. Whatever! No writer really cares about why people are reading, so long as they read.

As a community person: All of the above arguments, plus one biggie. Men are more respectful to other men, but they are kinder to women. That is a generalization, and certainly being a female community lead put me in for a certain kind of nastiness about my sexual attractiveness and availability (pop quiz: Ever seen a poll on a male community lead with the options “I’d hit it” and “Bitch is a three bagger“? That’s happened to me on nearly every job I’ve ever had). But across the board, I think I’ve had it easier than any of my male counterparts. People are less confrontational, more willing to listen, and just… friendlier. Not much. About 10%.

There’s another really obvious difference, and it’s one you can see without being either a writer or a community weenie. Strange women on the internet get forced into a “category” pretty quickly, in terms of how other people define you – we’re either mamas, sisters, buddies, or flirts. (I say “flirts” knowing that on some forums, it’s actually “whores” but I’m trying to be gracious.) Men get pigeonholed as well (the genius/the jerk/the nerd/the smartass), but you’re a lot more likely to be allowed to just be… you. And your categories have more to do with who you are than your gender. Furthermore, people interact with you as an individual from the beginning.

As a female, you encounter a large group of people that can’t settle down until they know which category you’re in, and every interaction with you is filtered through that lens. You can eventually come to be treated as an individual, but you never get to start that way. You have to establish yourself, talk often, and have a very strong written voice. (Ahem.) Neutral, normal female voices stay in their category forever. It’s helpful at first, because it gives you a quick shortcut to establish a relationship. People feel like they already know you, because subconsciously they’re associating you with the women they know of that category. It gets limiting pretty fast (you’re never X, you’re always X The Girl), but again, with the right kind of “voice” a female basically gets the head start on bonding and then switches tracks to have the advantages of individuality.

It evens out. I don’t waste any time in life trying to decide if it’s better or worse to be one gender or another. But it is different.

On TERA, I set out to hide my identity for a number of reasons, but I didn’t actually intend to hide my gender. Then it turned into kind of a funny thing. I was Schrodinger’s moderator – I was whatever you wanted me to be, and opening the box to find out for sure would have ruined the fun. And I found that yet again I was enjoying the best of both worlds. I had the automatic respect and the authority of a male, and I didn’t have any of the gross comments on whether or not I was good in bed. I had warmth, but no peen waving. I kept hiding my gender to see how things would go, honestly. I knew it would be out eventually, either at the first fan gathering or the day I left for my own community, whatever came first.

Then it came out by accident – one of the guys was in a hurry one day and used the correct pronoun instead of a neutral – and nothing really changed. Just that ten percent. Ten percent less respect, ten percent more warmth.

It was a fun experiment on a grand scale, one I may never get to repeat. But it’s one I wish everyone could try.

29 responses so far

Confidential to TERA People:

May 31 2011 Published by under Tales

Welcome :) Think of this as your final exam from Tithus: Have you learned to read the goddamned stickies and FAQs?

This blog is only sporadically updated, so something I put up the last time I had a flood of fresh meat is still valid and on the front page. Well, the blog is now four years old, not 3.5, but the suggestion on what to read before you post is still valid. The LinkedIn link is still helpful for anyone who wants to explain to me that I don’t have enough experience.

Trust me, at this point? If I’m wrong, it’s because I’m just wrong, not naive.

Here are some thoughts that were too long or too inappropriate for my farewell post on the board:

- I was so madly in love with you censored expurgated unprintables, I couldn’t seem to walk away. As I said, I got some “better” jobs over the last year, and every time push came to shove, I rearranged things to keep modding for TERA. In fact, when I got the offer for the upcoming gig, I initially tried to negotiate the contract such that I could keep the Tithus gig. The technical diagnosis for that mental process is “holy hell, I am a delusional bag of stupid who needs to be clubbed like a baby seal.” Seriously, only infatuation and possibly lust would cloud my brain to such an extent that I thought I could do a full time director job (even on a much smaller game) and keep a PVP forum clean “on the side.”

- I owe all of you a lot. My career had become something that was just a paycheck, with a big scoop of “why bother” melting off at the side. You all have reminded me what I really love and why. I’m heading to a startup for a small game with no budget where I’ll need to do three jobs, where the faith of the community will be the line between life and death, and I’m not sure I could have worked up the nerve to do it again if I hadn’t had this year with you.

- (To the seven regulars: Yeah, “again.” I’ve got DAOC flashbacks like crazy.)

- You do not know how lucky you are with your community director. Seriously. One of the reasons I was on my way out of the industry was because too many community people were marketing sock puppets with the spine of chocolate soft serve. You like that euphemism? I’ve grown older and wiser and I try not to talk about feces so much. Anyway. I fully admit that when I realized what BroMags… and now I have to call him Jason, which is so weird after a year of calling him BroMags… anyway, when I realized what Jason’s background was, I kinda braced for the worst. I expected spin and gladhanding. But I was totally wrong. He’s a gem. He cares about you. He’s straight with you even when it costs him something. He’s got a big picture view but he’s always got time for the small stuff. Frankly, he’s one of the top three community people I’ve worked with, and if I were advising a global AAA title on personnel, he’d be my top choice.

I personally was very lucky to work with both Jason and Evan. Outsourced mods are usually treated as… disposable. They didn’t treat me like that at all, and as it became apparent that I was attaching myself to their community like I was a cross between a barnacle and ten year old duct tape goo, they made more room for me. It was an act of generosity I won’t forget. Oh, sure, when you have a director level person as your board monkey, it does save a bit of time and money all around, so it’s not like this was about altruism. But there was never any kind of “putting me in my place” thing. We worked together very smoothly, and I’ll miss that a lot.

I didn’t say any of that in my board post because I didn’t want to listen to three pages of “OMG, what a brown noser.” WTF is it with the confusion between brown nosing and affection on the internet? I’ve been wondering about that since 1997 and I’m no closer to figuring it out other than a broad spectrum “some people are asshats.”

- I said once I don’t remember the names of the people I edit and suspend. That was quite true. But I do remember the names of “my” regulars, and I sincerely, truly, madly hope we all meet again.

24 responses so far

Actual Conversation

May 23 2011 Published by under Tales

Awhile ago, I mentioned that the seven of you are more informed than the typical MMO player these days. Just how much more informed is apparent from the following:

[13:50] Sanya: I’m schooling some very, very young MMO people.
[13:51] Sanya: I feel ridiculous doing this.
[13:51] Big Brother: heh
[13:51] Big Brother: But it’s gotta be done.
[13:52] Sanya: Because [unless I pipe up, people will think] UO was intended as a niche product to satisfy hordes of PVP players cruelly excluded from other MMOs. And DAOC was meant from the beginning to appeal to UO players. AC never existed. And Everquest was the product of a scrappy little group of gamers who sold out to Sony. AND WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA.

I realize it’s futile, but… http://xkcd.com/386/

12 responses so far

College Dorms and Retention

Oct 20 2010 Published by under Meta Community, Tales

Y’all seemed to enjoy the behind the scenes story last time, so here’s another. (NB: It was a long time ago and I didn’t know squat about market research, metrics, or anything like that.)

I just put up an article at Metaverse (http://metaversemodsquad.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/retention-part-29-have-a-bag-of-tricks/) where I said “I once ran a program where I pursued college students living in all-male dormitories.”

The story isn’t quite as funny as it could be. It started as an accident.

I was in charge of putting a few thousand people into a beta test. (All applications had been vetted for system specs, connection, and everyone had been in at least one prior beta test.) First I put in all the people living in Alaska, North Dakota, northern Wisconsin, and Maine. It was wintertime, and I figured people living in those places might want something fun to do… and furthermore would test for hours. Great beta testers don’t go outside, right? (I was right about North Dakota and Maine, but Alaskans are surprisingly fickle and there weren’t enough people in northern Wisconsin to indicate any trends.)

That left around 2700 more beta slots.

After putting in all the people with the last names beginning with Z (to make up for years of never getting to go first for ANYTHING) and people whose application numbers were divisible by five, I inquired about maybe getting some kind of program to do the choosing for me. No such luck.

As a loyal Hokie fan, I put in all of the applicants with Virginia Tech emails.

For this next part to make sense, you have to know that there’s an all male dorm at VT called Pritchard. It is a hellhole. It is an apartment tower filled with feral manchildren who are living without adult supervision for the first time in their lives. You could die of testosterone poisoning just by taking a deep breath in the lobby. The mattresses are unspeakable, and I know that because periodically the savages will throw them into a giant pile in front of the building.

Maybe it’s changed, but that was all pretty true in the 90s.

Anyway, after I put all the Hokies into the beta, I noticed that I suddenly got a pile of applications where the players listed their address as Pritchard. It’s obvious, in hindsight. Given how quickly infectious disease travels through an all male dorm, it stands to reason that news about games might sweep through even faster. Gives new meaning to the term viral.

Shortly thereafter, and indeed every chance I’ve had since, I’ve made a point of including the occupants of male dorms in beta tests where “word of mouth” was a goal equal to the testing purpose. It’s a little thing that takes no effort from me to produce outsized results.

7 responses so far

Yes, I Saw The Louse Blog

Oct 13 2010 Published by under Tales

Thanks for the… many… links. (If mine is the only blog you read, the blog in question is here.)

As practically everyone knows, I have a binding contract that says I cannot talk about What Really Happened to me. [My lawyer reminds me: It says right here that what really happened was that we mutually agreed to separate, and every time that I've been asked since then, I have said we mutually agreed to separate.] I also cannot say anything about EA, anyone still working at EA, or any product now or ever developed by EA that might be “disparaging.” The only thing I can say, as a matter of fact, is that the contract exists.

However, I am allowed to say what didn’t happen.

I can’t comment on the Louse’s actual post. But in the comment section, someone asked what happened to me, and the Louse responded:

Wow, Sanya. That was a long time ago.

Yeah, that was actually not Rob Denton. That was her having a fierce, loud fight with Mark Jacobs about forum postings. Sanya had a very hard line stance on developers posting on the boards.

That’s… not what happened. At all. Oh, it’s true in that I don’t think devs should post unless they’re willing to commit to a regular posting schedule, and follow the same rules as the community team (including courtesy, genuine respect for players, making no promises, speaking only to areas of personal knowledge, etc). But that wasn’t even part of the scene that led to the end of things.

Also, to be fair, Mark actually wasn’t the one with the hard line real name policy. That was me. Mythic didn’t have that rule until I showed up. This isn’t the post for me to go into my philosophy on the topic, and I’ve droned on and on about that in the past.

I’m not bashing Louse. I feel bad for him/her, given that there are not that many people still at Mythic that meet all the criteria AND can type that cleanly. The internet is busy cheering at him for “standing up,” but the internet isn’t going to protect him from being crushed like a bug by [a] legal team. And that, my friends, is why you’re not going to hear about what happened to me from me. Not until my lawyer gives me the all clear ;)

P.S. Also in the comment section: “I am Rayn from Percival and I would like to know if you know why they banned me back in the day on DAOC.”

DUDE. FFS. I’ve got nothing in my contract saying I can’t talk about what happened to you, so I can tell you why: IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I TOLD YOU BACK WHEN WE BANNED YOU. Really! Honestly trulio really-o! You got caught in a CS radar trap, and yet I was so willing to believe you were innocent that I demanded and saw the screenshots and logs with my own eyes! I told you then, I told you at the Toronto fan gathering, I told you AGAIN at the afterparty, and I’m telling you now! Build a bridge and get over it already!

But, hey, I’ll give you some new information – the marketing girl and I both thought you were hot. Holding that opinion was especially disconcerting for me because after all the back and forth over your banning, I’d totally pictured you as a basement dwelling trog. But hot where hot is due. So there you go.

Edit to add: And the truth comes out! Rayn did not post, and he moved on further than his friends did. But I’m still leaving this up, because hell, it’s funny and true. But please read the existing comments before adding your two cents about the Saga of Rayn.

EDITED AGAIN, ARGH MAKE IT STOP EDITION: New people, read this note of welcome, please.

146 responses so far

Older posts »