Welcome to the New
Space Dock 13!
Helping Authors Write Weird, Bizarre, Absurd, Psychedelic Horror-Fantasy Since 1996!
(We've Moved & Changed URLs; Space Dock 13 is now EelKat.com)
(We are also novel-writing-tips.com, a-pink-unicorn.com, & of course are still SpaceDock13.com)
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OMG!
We beat our traffic record for this website!
On December 23, 2019 THIS PAGE got 300,000 views in a single day!
And here's another page to answer how and why that page got so much traffic.
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I Now Hold The World Record
For The Highest Level Ever Achieved in Witcher 3!!
If One of These Videos Is Active,
I'm Live Streaming Right Now...
I stream on Twitch, YouTube, FaceBook, and Twitter. I have no pre-planned schedule for which site I will go live on. I do NOT multi-stream on multiple sites at once, so if I am live on one, I am not live on the other 3. (The FaceBook one will say "Video Unavailable" when not live.)
WARNING:
Avallac'h & Ciri Shipping Happens Daily In My Cult of Avallac'h Stream
(This seems to piss people off so we seem to need to provide a warning about it)
Vanilla Avallac'h vs Modded Avallac'h
Vanilla Avallac'h vs Modded Avallac'h
If you are Mormon, Mason, Jewish, or Zoroastrian, take a close look at his gambeson and see what you see. If you are Mormon, Mason, Jewish, or Zoroastrian, you'll see it and you'll know exactly what it means. On the other hand if you are a Gentile or an Infidel, you won't have a clue.
>>Both images on the left from May 2018, the 1st Avallac'h Playthrough
Vanilla Avallac'h has black hair and eyebrows turned grey, and has an appalling LOD of 5 and draw distance of 7, and has no hairworks effects, no wind effects, and while his 3d model & texture files have wrinkles, scars, bruises, bug bites, moles, and veins, you can't see them on the vanilla settings.
Also while Avallac'h's clothen had a RedCloth file, it had very low grade settings/pollies causing the details of the cloth weave, seam stitches, and embroidery to be blurry.
Vanilla Avallac'h has pupils that react to light, like all other characters in the game.
>>Both images on the right from September 15, 2020, the 3rd Avallac'h Playthrough
Modded Avallac'h has a 5,000 LOD and draw distance, resulting in wrinkles, scars, bruises, bug bites, moles, and veins on his skin can now be seen. This also revealed that he has a fine scar down the side of his nose and one over his eyebrow, both were not visible at all with the vanilla LOD settings.
Hairworks and wind effects have been added to his hair.
While we are talking about his hair... notice that he wears payot. If you don't know what payot are or why a man would have them... Google will help you. It brands him as Hasidic.
His hair and eyebrows are changed to blond (as described in the novels), his skin has been lightened several shades (again to match novel descriptions), and he has new texture files for his eyes to make them pale ice aquamarine with pink pupils, as described in the novels.
Modded Avallac'h has pupils that are frozen into tiny pinpricks and never grow or retract with light changes, matching the information we were told about him having suffered severe nerve damage which caused him to have tiny frozen pupils that did not react to light.
Because the file which changes a character's pupils, is NOT connected to their eye file, but rather is connected to their shadow file and changes not only the size and shape of pupils in different lights, it also changes the shadows on their face, and changes the intensity of their makeup.
The result of changing this file, is that shadows on Avallac'h's face are now fainter and his vanilla very dark eyeshadow is now many shades much lighter.
This results in a bright highlight on his cheekbones, making them much paler, and has caused an illusion that his cheekbones are even sharper than before, even though no change was made to his 3D model bone structure... i is simply a result of less shadow below his cheekbones with brighter highlight over them, and fewer shadows around his eyes.
I increased the depth of Avallac'h's RedCloth file (edited the 3D model to make ridged details a deeper depth) and increased settings/pollies causing the details of the cloth weave, seam stitches, and embroidery to be much sharper and more noticable, making the cloth look more real.
And speaking of the cloth looking more real... if you are a Gentile or an Infidel, you won't have a clue what it was I mentioned earlier, so let me point it out... on the beast of his gambeson, right over the nipple, there are slash marks that are stitched into a very specific pattern/design... this marks Avallac'h as a very high ranking priest, one who has access to the deepest, inner circles of the Temple, on par with The Levite in the Bible, it also tells us that he is a virgin and living celibate lifestyle because of his religious rank.
On their own, the slash marks do not identify a specific religion, but one of 5 religions. However, that, with the payot, and the fact that he covers his head when going outside, brands him as a Hasidic Jew.
We further know that in the novels, ALL Elves are Jewish, and the masque of the Elves during the Human invasion, was an outright retelling of the Holocaust, and Avallac'h spoke an ancient dialect of Hebrew and was unable to understand most Humans as he spoke none of the common tongues.
Raise your hand if you ACTUALLY KNOW what Manna is? Sephiroth? Sackcloth and ashes? Golems? The Tree of Life? The Pentagram? Tzitzit? Are you able to explain ANY of those things and what they are, when you encounter them in quests in the game?
Can you explain WHY Geralt meditates on a prayer rug facing East?
Explain to me WHY after her grandmother dies, Ciri shreds her cloths, starts wearing sackcloth, and rolls her golden blond hair in ashes to turn it into dreadlocks, resulting her becoming known as "the ashen haired maid"?
When the game shows you Avallac'h naked in Kaer Morhen, can you read the Hebrew writing tattoo across his chest and abdomen? Do you know what the symbols on his tattoos mean?
After having watched more than 5,000 playthroughs of Witcher 3 on Twitch, I'm continually amazed at how few people ever recognize the plethora of openly Jewish characters and miss the HUNDREDS of Holocaust reference easter eggs that flood every segment of the game.
And now that the books are becoming popular, after 40 years of being ignored by the bulk of society... it likewise amazes me, how many people are so clueless about the Holocaust and what happened to the Jews in Poland, that they read the Witcher novels with blind eyes, and completely miss that the Gnomes and Elves are blatantly Jewish, while the Humans are blatantly Nazi, and the mass murder of millions of Jewish Gnomes and Elves at the hands of their Nazi Human invaders, is an outright retelling of the events of real world history.... of that happened just 80 years ago.
Our world is in a pitiful state if the so recent mass murder of 20 million is so easily forgotten, so soon.
If you know nothing about the Holocaust, you REALLY shouldn't play this game or read the novels it was based on, because you'll completely miss the message they send. It'll go right over your head.
Spend a year or two doing some massive research into the Holocaust, especially what happened in Poland, and THEN play the game and read the novels, and THEN remember that the author who created this: was a Polish Jew who as a small child, saw his friends and family murdered, and then you'll understand why he wrote what he wrote.
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The Princess Bride predicting Covid-19?
Avallac'h's a Good Tutor?
Of What? How to Better Bed Kings?
EXTREME SPOILER WARNING!
Please be aware that nearly every page on this website contains spoilers to something. I talk about a lot of fandoms, and go into great detail analyzing them when I do. If I am talking about The Witcher series, InuYasha, Disney Ducks, the Quaraun series, or any other fandom, you WILL encounter spoilers about it.
People have phobias of publishing?
I don't know...
I found this and had to comment on it.
It's so strange:
Writers with phobias of traditional publishing in its current state?
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Writers who write, but have a phobia of traditional publishing in its current state...
Writers who write, but have a phobia of traditional publishing in its current state... from r/writing
Writers who write, but have a phobia of traditional publishing in its current state... (self.writing)submitted 19 hours ago * by knightofquillsEditor
I'm really interested to hear your story and what your work is about.It's occurred to me how author-focused the world of books has become over the past few decades. The author seems marketed and judged just as much as the book. With the need for author twitter, blogs, photos (so many breakthroughs/bestsellers/prize winners are gorgeous young women to boot) etc etc, it's easy to see how those who are socially anxious, reclusive or very introverted (and lets be honest, that's a lot of writers who aren't in it for the fame), would rather just not chase the traditional publishing dream.
There seems an expected loss of privacy now. Another whole issue is being so close to your intended audience through the internet (forums, reading screeds of reviews etc)... is this an issue for you too?
Do you think the sort of exposure that comes with modern publishing would taint your process? Is there a particular fear you have? Have you ever been turned down by an agent/ publisher for refusing to engage in social media or demanding anonymity? What is it that drives you?
Interested to hear your thoughts and experiences!
Writers who write, but have a phobia of traditional publishing in its current state...
I used to be traditionally published, but then I found out I could be making 70% royalties off KDP instead of the 4% to 7% industry standard royalties from trade publishing houses. That was the only incentive I needed to switch.
Also, I've been publishing books since 1978... I'm not really seeing change in the author-focused world of books you are describing.
>>so many breakthroughs/bestsellers/prize winners are gorgeous young women to boot
I've never noticed this myself, but then again, I'm not one for reading most of the new releases either. I don't like the current trend of writing a book to feel like a movie. I'm interested in characters not landscapes and worlds. All the best worldbuilding and plotting in the world means nothing to me if the characters are shitty cardboard cutouts. Sadly most new stuff I've read, I can't get past the first chapter, because it's all "Oooooh look at those mountains!" and "OMG! look at my beautiful self in this amazing mirror, ain't I just gorgeous!"
When was the last time you saw a character driven story that put the character front and center? Nope. Too busy describing factions and war zones and telling me who has a wolf on their flag vs who has a dragon on theirs. Yeah. Boring! Get to the damned character dialogue already! When do the characters get a chance to start talking? When does this author stop yapping about their continent and give the characters a chance to do something? Are there even any characters in this book? Where the hell is the damned dialogue!
sigh
Do NO ONE write dialogue any more? Why are new books practically devoid of dialogue these days? Do people do so much texting and so little actual opening their mouths to talk these days that no one knows how to write dialogue anymore? What is this trend in nearly dialogue-less books these days?
I end up heading to yard sales looking for old paperbacks from the 1950s and 1960s, because at least I know those authors had enough grammar education in school to teach them how to write. Can't say that for most writers today, whom I seriously doubt even took grammar let alone got anything close to a passing grade, if they weren't high school dropouts that is. Do they even teach grammar in school any more? Not from what I'm seeing published these days.
So, yeah, for me, I'm not looking at the authors, I'm too busy griping about the lack of basic grammar skills being taught in schools, causing young authors to not be able to string together words properly, to notice the authors behind the books.
If I find a book I like, then I look into who the author is, but, finding anything published in the last decade that I don't just want to throw across the room in frustration is difficult.
But you bring up a good point, one I never thought of before... I wonder if the shitty crap being published the past decade is not an issue of the school system's incompetence, and perhaps is more a side effect of social media? Could it be kids are too busy text talking on their cell phones in class to pay attention to how to diagram sentences? Are they too busy tweeting when they should be studying and then it shows in their complete lack of writing skills when they try to publish a book?
Perhaps authors these days are focusing too hard and heavy on social media when what they really ought to be doing is taking some GED adult ed classes to brush up on their grammar skills?
But, are there more young women in writing today? I don't know. I'm a straight female, so I'm not in the habit of noticing women in general, authors or otherwise. I'm also a Yaoi author, so, hey, you know what I notice... :P
I wonder if you are noticing young women because you are a man? (Are you a man? I don't know.)
I doubt if there are more women in writing then there ever were. I mean, this year is my 40th anniversary as a published author and, there were plenty of females besides me writing in the 70s and 80s, so not like we weren't out there before.
>>With the need for author twitter, blogs, photos
From what I've seen, only the smallest names in the business focus hard and heavy on social media... most top selling authors don't even have Twitter or FaceBook accounts. The ones that do, it's a dummy account managed by an agent and the author never even looks at it.
Twitter is a chat room. You go on there to talk to people. If you are only tossing around links you are using it wrong. You know before 2014 links weren't even allowed on Twitter, right? 2014 is when you saw me stop using Twitter so much, because like everyone else who used it as intended, I got sick of being bombarded by links and no longer being able to find chatters to chat with.
Perhaps it's my age showing, but I can't wrap my brain around the young people of today's desperate need for attention seeking on social media. It's like everyone under 30 lives only for the amount of "likes" they get on FB or Twitter and have no real concept how to actually socialize in the real world any more.
Everyone has got their face stuck in a cell phone and not one of them can identify a bird or a flower, heck, they didn't even notice the birds and flowers they are walking by because they can't stop texting long enough to look at the world around them.
But has this culture of mindless texting and endless social media, caused the raging trend of shitty crap grammar books being published these days? are these authors so used to excessively bad text talk grammar, that they think poor shitty grammar is good, simply because they wouldn't know good grammar if it stared them in the face?
Are we now seeing hoards of authors who hash out books on a whim, then instead of editing and revising to make the book better, do nothing but focus on social media preseance? I certainly hope not! But I suppose it's a possibility.
>>There seems an expected loss of privacy now.
What loss of privacy NOW? Loss of privacy is not new for authors. No writer ever had privacy. You ever been to Bangor? Hillbilly hick town in the middle of hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. Most of the roads are dirt and only used by logging trucks. Head to a little side street off a side street off another side street.... what do you see? a street barely 1/8mile long - 6 lanes wide...to accommodate the HUNDREDS of cars, tour buses, and tourists parked in front of Stephen King's house... a house he hasn't lived in in almost 3 decades, because he had to flee Maine and move into a gated community in Florida with armed guarded to keep out the stalkers.
I grew up here. I remember that street before King was famous. It was just another side street. People on that street used to have lawns... not a 6 lane road up to their front doors. In the 1980s, police surrounded the place after a psycho stalker broke in and took to living in King's attic. Internet and Kindle weren't around back then. You can't blame King's lack of privacy on self publishing or social media.
Authors have never had privacy. If you worry about privacy, then don't get into the writing career.
>>Another whole issue is being so close to your intended audience through the internet (forums, reading screeds of reviews etc)... is this an issue for you too?
And what the heck does reading reviews have to do with authors? Authors don't read reviews. Reviews are written by readers for readers. To help readers decide if they'll want to read the book or not. You're the author. You already know you like the book, you freaking wrote it.
You have no need to read reviews.
Reviews aren't there for authors they're there for other readers. Sooner authors get that through their heads the better off they'll be. If you're an author and your hung up on reading reviews, honey you got ego issues that probably need a psychologist to help you through. Readers do NOT write reviews as a way to try to get a message to an author. Only time you see a review like that it's another author doing 1 star drive by digging to try to make another author look bad, and that's NOT what the review system is for. You're using reviews the wrong way if you are worry about reviews at all.
Far too many newbie authors these days run around worrying about getting reviews. What good doe it do them? Just stressing themselves out needlessly.
>>Have you ever been turned down by an agent/ publisher for refusing to engage in social media or demanding anonymity?
I seriously question the legitimacy of any agent or publisher who did that. They definitely belong on the Writer Beware list, that's for sure.
If you have been turned down for such things, know that this is not normal and that the agent/publisher is likely not legit.
>>It's occurred to me how author-focused the world of books has become over the past few decades.
Okay... so as I said, this year is my 40th anniversary as a published author... that means I've lived through, witnessed, and been a part of 4 decades of the publishing/writing/author industry/world... I don't see that's it's changed all that much. Authors have always done book signings and interviews. Before we had to be constantly on the road, going to interviews in person, now we can do interviews from home over skype or a YouTube livestream. The focus on authors hasn't changed, just the way the author connects to the public has made it easier to connect more often. Authors who want to hide in the shadows still do, like they always did, authors who like doing book signings and photo shoots with fans at conventions, now no longer have to wait for the convention to connect with their fans, they connect online.
So, no, I don't think the focus is on authors any more than it ever was, I think, we just have more options as to how to connect to our fans then we did in the past, is all.
I don't think, there is more of a push to be in the public eye, I think it's just, we have more options to connect with the public now, so now authors who previously wanted to connect to their readers but couldn't fly to the conventions, now have other options, resulting in more authors being noticed in public then before. Authors who wanted to connect with fans, but have a phobia of planes or crowds, now can connect with fans from home without having to get on a plane and fly to some crowed convention.
More options to connect, means more authors being seen in public. But I don't think that means there is more pressure to do so. It's just those particular authors wanted to, so they did.
I don't think an author should be made to feel they MUST have a public presence if they don't want it, and I also don't think the publishing industry is trying to push authors on the public either. Perhaps it seems that way, because the internet made it easier for the authors who wanted a public presence to do so?
>>What is it that drives you?
What drives me?
I fell in love with a character and wanted to know more about him...that was 130 novels and 2,000 short stories about him ago, and I'm still writing him. This year is his 40th anniversary. I love this character. That's what drives me. I'd be writing about him even if I wasn't publishing the stories about him.
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