Weekly AAR Showcase: The Necronomicon in Byzantium

[coz1]

Time for a new showcase, methinks.

[Le Jones]

Congratulations

[Enewald]

over two weeks now, time for a new winner?

[coz1]

over two weeks now, time for a new winner?

Indeed. Usually in these cases, the previous winner will nominate a new successor.

[Enewald]

Time for a new showcase, methinks.

Someone inform Peter Ebbesen?

[coz1]

Guess not. As it has been way too long to pass this on, I will take executive action and pass this to an AAR I am surprised has not been picked in the past. But it certainly offers a great moment to use this award for what it was intended - that is highlighting AARs that may not be known by the greater population and deserve some more attention.

Thus I give you Brandenburg III's The Dark Muse. It's an ambitious project and I'm sure he'd love a few more eyes. Head over and take a look. Congratulations Brandenburg III!

[Doge Robert]

Congratulations

- I have yet to read his AAR completely, but what I have seen so far, inspired by this showcase, seems very promising indeed.

Besides, how often is it that you actually get to know, from the very outset, that you WILL get to see the finish of the story, as it is already written..? It may mean that the story is inflexible from the point of reader-effected story-line, but it means that there is virtually no chance that the AAR is abandoned mid-story, which is nice to know.

[Qorten]

Congrats, Brandenburg III! Very well deserved.

[XHR]

Congratulations B3! A wonderful aar that has very well earned the award

[Enewald]

Congratulations!
Probably the best EU narrative AAR that I've been reading!

[asd21593]

Congrats, The Dark Muse!

[aldriq]

Congratulations! I hope new readers make the effort and read it all from the beginning, it's well worth it.

[Brandenburg III]

Not only would more eyes be nice, I’d also like to see more monkeys in suits. But I think everyone wants that.

I’m always surprised whenever I see myself put up for these awards, particularly since I don’t think too much of my writing.

Thanks to coz1 for giving me the weekly award and for getting this thing back on track. While I’m not much of a comment person, I always look in on these weekly awards when a new winner is announced.

After I saw Muse was in the subject line, I went to the first page of this thread and scanned through some of the first winners to see how things are really supposed to be done. I was surprised to see that not too much has changed. People talk about their AARs, how they came about, etc. But it seems to me they used to do it with more words and description. I’m going to revive that tradition but only because it gets me out of writing my 1500 words for the day.

I’ve broken it up into a few sections below.

What is The Dark Muse About?: I’ve read a hundred times that if you can’t describe your article or book in one sentence, then you need to simplify. Basically, a book permits some trained people to travel back in time with an allowance to change history. But I can take you deeper than that.

In 1981 János Takács is a popular Hungarian painter lauded throughout the Western world for his paintings of shorelines, ports and beaches. Twisting such landscapes into a Mannerism style hasn’t been easy for him but János has been rewarded for his difficult work.

On a return trip from Madrid to Budapest János finds himself in a world of trouble after an emergency landing in Algeria. The Hungarian is kidnaped and taken to an undisclosed location in an abandoned factory in Central/Southern Algeria. It is here where Khayr ad-Din introduces himself to János. Khayr also introduces the artist to a book.

The book is old and battered but it has great power. For someone trained to read it, it has the strength to alter known history. Unbeknownst to János, he was trained as a Reader and must form Khayr ad-Din’s paradise or face the wrath of a man bent on global domination.

What Inspired The Dark Muse?: Some from the beginning of this thread have mentioned they were inspired by other writers on the forums for their specific AARs. Unlike them, I had this idea before I began looking into narratives. But when I discovered a few AARs were really stories, I thought I had to try it out.

It took some time but I began tinkering with an idea of a man walking into a centuries old building where he’d take a book out and begin reading it. It would throw him into a world where he’d be able to alter history, much like the story I’m writing now. Originally it was going to be based on Bosnia but as I felt the story drifting, without a clear outline or ending, I scrapped it.

Many months later, maybe a year later, I resurrected the idea with an Algiers game and began writing an AAR about it in November. Again I was careless and didn’t write an outline or fill out character sheets. It failed after a few months as it should’ve.

With this newest interpretation I took the time to think of a title, think of a decent outline, plot how the book worked and wrote out very careful descriptions of all the characters. Outside of the Revolution, this is probably the first AAR I’ve put any effort into. And it’s the first AAR I’ve put any thought into.

The Future: There’s still more to release but I think its end is coming up soon. Since I still tinker with the outline and some of the chapters now and again I can’t say exactly how long it’ll go on but there is an end. I give it another month or two so you still have time to catch up if you’re new.

How is The Dark Muse Set Up?: Before I started writing the Muse I thought about a few things I’ve read on the forums. About how some AAR writers have trouble writing real book-like chapters once they’re through with the AAR. I doubted I’d have the same trouble but I didn’t want to risk it and so, I found a median for words per chapter. In private writings I use more but for the sake of AARland and its “read it quick” kind of readers, I’ve placed at least 3000 words per chapter. Most chapters are this size but there are one or two that climbs between 4500 or more.

At the onset I considered my own problems with reading narratives online. I don’t like sitting in front of my computer and reading from my monitor so most are ignored. As a solution to people who may share my sentiments, I began laying out pdfs which readers could read by clicking on my chapter’s titles. After more than a month I realized the site I used eventually lost the files and most became invalid. However, I recently put together all the chapters in pdf form and will have them here and on the chapter page in the Muse thread later in the week.

If you want to use the pdf, know there are no pictures but the story is the same. The other problem with the pdf is that new chapters don’t begin on new pages but such oversights will be fixed upon the project’s completion.

If you read Muse off the paradox site, know I knew little about making pics at the start of the AAR. As it went on I got a little better but there’s still much to learn.

For convenience, on the second post of the AAR, I placed a Chapter page. In addition, so you don’t have to keep going back and forth between the chapter and page 1, I placed buttons at the bottom of each chapter to make going from chapter to chapter easier. I was going to have arrows but they wouldn’t line up right no matter how much I tried.

As it stands the Muse is just over 43,000 words and with anywhere between 4 - 8 more chapters to go, its many more than the 30,000 I had originally planned. If you’re curious, in the pdf its about 90 pages just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Responses:

Doge Robert: There have been a few hiccups along the way. Around the middle of August my computer went down for a bit and I lost about half of my chapters and my character descriptions. Luckily I wrote my outline on paper before I put it on the computer and by that time, I had a good idea of my character’s histories. There are always unforseen events.

The breakdown allowed me to rewrite ideas I had after I completed the AAR. Whether that’s good or bad is for the reader to decide. Even now I’m still going back and tinkering with pieces of the outline and finished chapters that haven’t been released yet.

Qorten, XHR, asd21593 & aldriq: Thanks all.

Enewald: Knowing how many AARs you read, that’s quite the compliment.

I’d write more but I have a paint chip eating contest to get to in Pittsburgh. I hear they eat a lot of paint chips out there. A lot.

[volksmarschall]

Congratz! and most certainly deserved!

[Lord E]

Congratulations Brandenburg III

[Doge Robert]

Doge Robert: There have been a few hiccups along the way. Around the middle of August my computer went down for a bit and I lost about half of my chapters and my character descriptions. Luckily I wrote my outline on paper before I put it on the computer and by that time, I had a good idea of my character’s histories. There are always unforseen events.

He he he.. Fate throws his dice and we can only pray we get lucky..

[Woody Man]

Congratulations

[FlyingDutchie]

congrats, Brandenburg

[Brandenburg III]

Well, its been a week (or close to it) and after going through a number of AARs I've settled on the Spanish Victorian AAR by Legosim, A JugAAR España for the next AAR Showcase.

[Lord E]

Congratulations Legosim