Whiskey in the jAAR - Part Deux-twa

[filcat]

"Acknowledged."

You say it without giving any gesture that may differentiate your existence from never-being. The dim table-light you pulled off from your backpack and installed on the table at the unseen corner of the bAAR hardly illuminates, allowing only a partial view of your face, in any case. on the table, there are manuscripts, drafts, sketches, abstracts, for the next chapters of your work, scheduled for an unknown date. Crusaders, kings, mongols, riders, gers, romans, franks, berbers, tibetans; words are scattered around, randomly, arbitrarily, irregularly. Only you see the master-plan beyond their permutation.

[the belated] arrives late.
[the belated]: Hey guys, I have not heard from you for a while. What's go-
[the belated] sees the others, lined up, trembling, looking at their own feet, paralysed, silent they are. Then he sees the one that is in control. He sees him, and his eyes.

[the belated]: OH SHT!
[the auto-censorist, whispering]: We are well beyond that. Shit, fuck, damn, all free to use.

[the critic]: Wait - damn?? That one is always free - wasn't it?
[the bong-smoking chill-bro bum, terrified just as the others, yet barely able in standing next to them]: Yeah bro. Damn I need a lighter. Anyone?
[the tired]: It depends...
[the brash]: What on earth are you talking about?
[the detailist]: He is right. For example when clarky-boy gable-chap said Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn to vivien leigh, it was considered profane, a terrible attack on the moral values of the society, using such a language in a film, according to prohibition code of the time.
[the bong-smoking chill-bro bum]: Yeah bro, that kind of stuff. Thirties was crazy.
[the editor]: Thirties were crazy. Were.
[the colloquial]: OI! SHHHH!

They realise [the serious] has been looking at them, and now they all make the eye contact. The eyes of [the serious] emit harrowing lightnings. All succumb to silence, back to looking at their feet. Their tremor, now uncontrollable; knowing the furious gaze of [the serious] is still upon them, they become smaller, and smaller, and smaller.


"Acknowledged; yet, the well-being comes first. There are only five people who responded, and two of them have brought distressing news about their health. I am primarily concerned for their condition."

 

[filcat]

After the last draw, you toss the cigarette, and take a step forward; yet before the foot lands, and the hand is about to open the door, you notice the litter bin, shining adamant against the cold.

You take your step back, walk towards the spot the cigarette landed, and kneel down to pick it up. You see the old ones tossed around, you collect all your mess from the past, and you throw them to the bin. Quick dusting off the hands, you take a look one more time to the surroundings; good enough.

You enter the bAAR.

The dim light illuminates as much as the moon on a clear night. The ashes and the remaining logs seem abandoned in the fireplace. The tables have thin layer of dust piled up. The television is reflecting the nothingness. The counter is in tears for missing the barkeep.

You take off your hat and your coat, hang them next to the door, walk towards your table at the corner. You realise again; there is no need to stay in the dark spot, for all the chairs are alone; yet, you continue to your destination. You check the sacks, the pouches, the bags; finding the sawdust, you walk towards the fireplace. After clearing up and piling the fresh ones, you disperse the sawdust and light it up. For a moment longer than minutes you observe the fire spreading around enough to sustain its own life, jumping onto the smaller parts, then finally the flames begin to kiss the logs. Their dance hastens, and you stand up, walk back to your table, despite every other one is available.

You sit on the chair, your eyes follow the cracks of the fire, the smoke lingers into the chimney, and there is now another source of the light, into the hall bringing the colours of the bright.

You pull up the papers. Chapters over chapters after chapters into chapters. Tales within stories through AARs. You notice a mistake. You bring up your pen, cross over the word, and correct it, but you notice one more. And one more. And there are many more. You rub your eyes, and continue to edit the parts; they are still not ready to publish.

At one moment you take a brief pause, look around the hall of the bAAR.

"Well. Just as before," you murmur. The silence resonates in the void, then it clashes with the words from the past floating in the air of infinity. You pull up your m-system, enter the time for a quick scan, smile to some of the old ones brought by the temporal filter, then check on one of them. You pause, then you push the buttons, and the letters appear on the holographic screen.

– Leaving it a bit late, I know, but would any of you lot fancy another Festive Video-Call Meet-Up some time next week? Sure we could arrange something if a few of us would like a chat…

"Hmmm. This one was from last year March; the last one was in July. It seems the time is ripe for another round."

You pause.

"Otherwise, no worries. I will keep the place warm."

 

[DensleyBlair]

DB stirs to begin their quarterly bAAR-crawling.

—Another meet-up call? Capital idea, @filcat! Capital idea. I could do with a good cheer up at the moment, and that would be just the thing.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

TBC taps his stick along the ground as he carries various consultations on AAR ideas and game conversions to the wingback corner where the HOI lot used to live and he has since ruined.

"Sounds like an idea. As anyone who has ever read any of my work will no doubt be astounded to learn, I have once again had plans dashed by the unique way paradox games and save files operate, and so am just in the precomencment stages of my next big idea. A lot has changed since the last meet and greet, given then I had just managed to complete an AAR for the first time and have since completed two more. Talking Turkey is very, very nearly complete now and Vick3 came out at last. Significant and interesting times for AARland."

He leaned forward, stoked the fire and leaned back, lightning a pipe and breaking to a new tense.

"We also need a new landlord."

 

[filcat]

The letters within the words follow the lines into the paragraphs forming the pages through the tales.

And it started only by a correction on a singular mistake you noticed.

You take your eyes away from the endless hole you descended into, and you look around the hall, seeing the two figures emerged out of the darkness. Another one has left a notification also with the thumb-up by the m-system. You did not notice them when you arrived before, but this is bAAR, and there will be writAARs and readAARs and commentatAARs forever more.

"Splendid. Though it will probably be better if a new thread is started to make the call notifying all. So far only you, DB, and TBC, have reacted. And Wraith. Not the M-11 shotgun ("The Wraith"), but 11B; one of N7."

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

"Well...really it should be @coz1 or @DensleyBlair. Sure I could do it but I have no gravitas or tenure. Yet."

TBC prodded a few more unconscious HOI people, then gave up and used one of them as a footstool.

"Renewel by fire isn't always bad, as they say."

 

[coz1]

"Mind if I borrow a light, Master filcat? Seems my zippo is out of fluid."

Cupping his hands ever so gently over the flame, he gives thanks with a nod, "Ahh...there we go. Can't sling the fabled Dirty Rag (tm) without a smoke. Thank God it's still allowed in this watering hole."

Having been an old hat at this for some time, drinks flow in no time, "I suppose I could handle duties for a time until the relief bAARtender gets here. I'm just like Norm at Cheers. This is my home away from home. As to a get together, that sounds like a capital idea. Had to miss the last one so I need to catch up."

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

"Miss N is...Well...I won't say what they said. But I think we're slumming it till another mod gets tricked into purgatory on this subsection. Which means we default to seniority, and it's between you two. El Pip too I guess but relying on him to open and close a bar regularly seems like torture for all of us, including him."

 

[Wraith11B]

The soldier, on a brief respite from the calls of his daily watch standing, strolled into the bar. It had been a significant length of time since he had popped in for a pint, and the sounds of an active bar was drawing him inside.

"Hey chaps," he said, lifting his hand in a wave to everyone. "Good to see you all. Sounds like a get together would be nice to arrange!"

"Splendid. Though it will probably be better if a new thread is started to make the call notifying all. So far only you, DB, and TBC, have reacted. And Wraith. Not the M-11 shotgun ("The Wraith"), but 11B; one of N7."

"I'm touched, mate, you remembered! Anyways, I'm lolling about, keep me in touch!"

 

[DensleyBlair]

“God, never thought I’d hear my name thrown around in discussions about AARlander seniority, but I suppose after a decade I shouldn’t be too surprised. I can certainly help out keeping this place ticking over. Pretty much runs itself, anyway.”

At this point DB’s tone, cadence and general expression contrive to communicate a curious sentiment, best expressed perhaps in the form of a ‘’.

 

[El Pip]

Pip looks up from his mountain of research books and adjusts his top hat.

"I'm afraid my colleague TBC is mistaken, if left in charge of this place I would solve the problem of erratic opening and closing times by just never closing the bar."

 

[filcat]

More figures emerge in the hall and the endless night stretches into the darkness fighting with the light of the flames singing with cracks in the fireplace.

"I'm touched, mate, you remembered! Anyways, I'm lolling about, keep me in touch!"

"Cheers mate," you say, then you lower your head, grabbing your flask of emergency vodka that you have brought hidden on your return trip, knowing the menu of the bAAR has a strict policy against it; a sip full of three shots now travels into your stomach, and from there it will be digested into your veins, reaching the brain relaxing the nerves giving a short joy. After a quick burn on your throat, naturally.

it's still allowed in this watering hole.

"That may be, but I will still go out when the need of obsession arrives. Speaking of which, hold on for a moment."

You stand up, walk towards the door, take your coat and hat, and go out through the door. Lighting up the cigarette taken from the pack, the cold attacks on your face and hands, and the smoke out of the first draw does not help in the struggle.

After nine minutes worth of silence through the tobacco, you toss it, and return back to the bAAR.

"All right. I will open up the thread on the main forum, so more can see the call, and the date and the time can be discussed. Just give me a couple minutes."

You hang your coat and hat fast, then walk hastily and sit on your chair, preparing to set your m-system up for the call.

 

[HistoryDude]

A man walks back into a bar he had once visited a couple of years beforehand. He strokes his beard as he contemplates what to discuss before finally settling on a topic. Just as he is about to speak, he spots the bartender and orders a Shirley Temple.

"Guess the Author has another round right now," he observes, sounding somewhat mysterious. "Anyway, I wanted to bring up collaborations again. There are a few new interactive AARs, but I think that we can go further. I think that a revival of an AARland newspaper (even just as an annual publication) might be a good idea - we had the 2020 one, and the planning thread for that apparently generated some discussion about a 2021 addition, although nothing came of it. I would definitely be willing to contribute AARticles to a potential periodical again".

He tries to think of a good segue into his next idea, but no words come to mind. "Another idea would be a massive narrative AAR with many writAARs for different charactAARs like the Free Company was (and I still need to get around to reading that!). I'm torn between suggesting Stellaris and Imperator - Stellaris has many great narrative writers, but a community thing could help revive interest in Imperator. I have too many active/abandoned/slated for resurrection AARs to actually run such a project, of course, but I'd definitely contribute if the idea interests anyone else".

A thought strikes the man. "Actually, what happened to the AARland podcast. Did it die due to lack of interest after the first two episodes?"

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

A man walks back into a bar he had once visited a couple of years beforehand. He strokes his beard as he contemplates what to discuss before finally settling on a topic. Just as he is about to speak, he spots the bartender and orders a Shirley Temple.

"Guess the Author has another round right now," he observes, sounding somewhat mysterious. "Anyway, I wanted to bring up collaborations again. There are a few new interactive AARs, but I think that we can go further. I think that a revival of an AARland newspaper (even just as an annual publication) might be a good idea - we had the 2020 one, and the planning thread for that apparently generated some discussion about a 2021 addition, although nothing came of it. I would definitely be willing to contribute AARticles to a potential periodical again".

He tries to think of a good segue into his next idea, but no words come to mind. "Another idea would be a massive narrative AAR with many writAARs for different charactAARs like the Free Company was (and I still need to get around to reading that!). I'm torn between suggesting Stellaris and Imperator - Stellaris has many great narrative writers, but a community thing could help revive interest in Imperator. I have too many active/abandoned/slated for resurrection AARs to actually run such a project, of course, but I'd definitely contribute if the idea interests anyone else".

A thought strikes the man. "Actually, what happened to the AARland podcast. Did it die due to lack of interest after the first two episodes?"

*cough*

"We actually have a mega campaign going in right now with multiple character writers, roleplay and an ongoing plot."

The Empire Strikes Back - Part 4

Part 4 "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." Rome has stood for nearly 2500 years, guiding and determining the course of the whole world. But after losing much of the west, will Rome fail at...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[HistoryDude]

The man notes that his first post for that interactive AAR is going to happen very soon. In the meantime, though, he has a question.

"How do people get more comments? Other than by commenting on other people's AARs and making the AAR interactive? I'm honestly curious here."

"I also just overhauled my Inkwell. It's up to date again."

 

[filcat]

You look at the man.

You stretch your back, you close your eyes, you take your breath, you reach the stars that do not exist within the air of the hall of the bAAR with your arms open wide, then you give the breath out. Your eyes are open.

You check your watch, skip the unreliable one on the wall, then you look at the man again.

You stand up, walk slowly to the counter, help yourself with another round of... no, no more pints, that is enough. You go behind the counter and turn on the coffee machine. Electric travels through the cable within the time that is undefined, and you smile at yourself remembering the false analogy of travelling for electricity that you used for simplicity far back in time. Electrons do not move through a cable as such.

You brusch off the pitfalls of the mind jumping from one galaxy to another. And it should be brush; the text is in english, not german, and brusch is gibberish.


"'How do people get more comments?' - quite the question that is," you check the coffee machine. It is ready. You take the cup, fill it, then walk back to your corner in the dark.

"You do not, mate." You sit down, smell the coffee out of the cup at first, then taste a sip to avoid the burn. It is still too hot.

"It is not just impossible to know; it is an invalid concept even to think about it. You do not, simply. You write, and write more, and all will be read. Who reads when, you can check out perhaps; but not how they read your work, and not what they read out of it."

You stretch a bit more on the chair.

"Making the aar more available is an interesting topic. One certainly writes and posts here to be read; that is agreed upon. Besides, every update makes the thread visible on the main page; if it is missed, then it is not the concern of the writer but of the reader."

You pull yourself up, change your sitting to a more assertive position.

"But there is the case of being seen and never be responded. That is even more interesting. It cannot be known, not even predicted when one does comment, when one would like to comment, else when one even wants to login and be online. Some prefer to remain in the off-zone, lurking," you give a quick look to your backpack, reminding you the times you were not even registered here. You are not certain if it is a fond memory to cherish or an ancient horror to forget. It was simpler back then, though, you agree, and it has not been much since you registered.

"And there is the readability. Unfortunately, not all are readable at all. The main concern is the images. They are put in full scale, filling the entire screen, and in full png format. Thousands of megabytes," you take another sip off the cup, and continue, "and I am not even able to open such threads to look at them. It simply takes forever to open those pages, no matter what stream rate your machine uses."

You finish the coffee, take the cup to the counter, and quickly return back to your corner. You pull papers of rubbish quality stories of yours off the backpack, and start another tour of hunting down the errors, once again, while continue talking: "And in that case, my lad, yours are flawless." You stop, and you look at the man at that moment.

"Your aars are impeccable in that regard; they are pure aars, written and presented with a coherent format without any images. Your words paint the colours of the moment you depict."

You give a brief pause. "I should apologise, as I have been reading your works, from When the night gets dark -extraordinary work, fantastic title- to The Rise of Russia and beyond, but have not commented at all. That is my fault, an inherent inertia of mine, keeping me away from posting, slowing myself down before commenting," another pause, but with a sigh, "because when I go full turbo-filcat mode, without any prior deliberation for the comment, I end up disrupting the thread, intruding the flow with a giant block of text, killing the pace of the story with posts of monstrous length."

You check your watch again. It is time.

"Anyway. I should get going. Write, write more, and all will be read."



Edit: Corrected punctuation error; cleared redundant word; minor addition for clarity.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

"Sometimes, it's just the luck of the draw and finding a topic people want to talk about. I have been writing AARs since 2017 and none of them have gotten half as much attention and views as my first one. Not my best work but an interesting premise I suppose. This was also back when CK2 was a mammoth game and the forums were full of it. My recent escapdes into CK3 and especially HOI4 have been more celebrated perhaps but not a patch on the commentary from readers back then.

Saying that, you write it, they come. The most regularly updated of my AARs have had the highest comment to chapter ratio. Now, Ged was a tutorial for a new game, so that makes sense. But if you get to the stage where you have an established AAR, you are writing an update every week or so, and there's always something to discuss about it afterwards, you'll get people talking about it.

That's what I'm finding with Tomorrow. Lots more commentary than Imperial Cheese (though stunned silence was kind of what I was going for with that one).

Anyway, keep writing, keep reading and commenting on other AARs (which I've certainly not been doing much of recently...), and you'll find yourself an audience relatively quickly. And hey, sometimes check your numbers. Could be you just have a large but silent audience of readers, and that's fine. The vast majority of my readership is very quiet (going off views anyway).

Cheers."

 

[HistoryDude]

"Both of those posts are very useful advice. I just don't really trust views for some reason, honestly.

Also, I always appreciate comments, regardless of how much they could 'derail the thread'. Of course, that might just be that it hasn't happened yet."

The man pauses for a moment before speaking again. "I should probably also note that I'm reviewing AARs now - over at my review corner. I do accept recommendations, but I make no promises (and I'm trying to ensure that certain games don't get too much focus)."

 

[coz1]

coz1 pours behind the bAAR and then lights a smoke before speaking to the room, "Ah yes...comments and how to get them. You can see from the fAARq, this has ever been the quandary from the very start. Times have changed but that fact has never done so. In fact, I took a moment yesterday to conduct a little experiment. I went back and looked at what I consider my nine more or less "important" AARs which really just means those I finished and the one I am working on now. I looked at the views to replies and tried to take something from that. Herewith is that chart:

Now I must first suggest my methodology. First of all, the forum has changed over the years in that before you had exact numbers of views and replies and now once you've hit 1K, it just rounds it out. Thus the above numbers are not exactly precise but it does at least provide a snapshot. Secondly, while you can click on your replies and find out how many were your own comments and how many were from other people, those numbers are no longer available for works prior to the latest forum upgrade so I had to use estimates for the first four AARs (instead of going into each and counting post by post which would be maddening.)

That said, I could use a pretty good data set from the last five written between 2016 to now and it appears I post about 32% of the time within my own works (which still does not perfectly represent the comments to updates as opposed to my own fb-fb. Something else I could quantify if I wanted to do the painstaking task of separating the two which I do not for this exercise.) With that, I went back and applied that to the first four to get a fairly accurate idea for all nine as to how many comments do I get per view and then how many comments per post/update. Again, not perfectly scientific but a decent idea.

I had expected because of the span of time (between 2004 and 2023) to see a pretty wide disparity but as you see, it is fairly consistent. Now some of the earlier works might see an inaccurate snapshot of the time because there is no way of seeing real time view numbers as opposed to what has been added since from folks looking back at them. We'll have to just accept that. However, it appears that I get about 2 comments for every one of my own. That seems about right over time. While I recall probably more for some works and less for others, it averages out. What really stands out is the sheer numbers of views between past and present (which explains why WOTR appears to hold a much higher comment to view ratio.) Yet is also shows that the comment to view ratio is very, very small overall (and I should also mention that this does not account for my own views as opposed to others.) It really is minuscule to consider one might get .008 comments per view which may be a result of time so with recency bias, perhaps WOTR is more accurate. That is still .02 comments per view. Very tiny.

Thus I tend to agree that views are not very helpful it terms of assessing how many are truly following even as one may see the number tick up day after day. Therefor it is better assessed by the thing desired...actual comments. And in that, we can see that times have changed somewhat. People are leaving less comments than they used to (which I believe has much to do with the "like" function in which people are more likely to simply do that than actually write something in reply. I believe the response feature holds a place, but it does not equal nor should replace real actual feedback.)

The first four works were written between 2004 and 2008 and the final five between 2016 and now. Still, up until about 2018 (Heavy Crown) it remains pretty consistent. Even that may be skewed somewhat by the fact that this AAR was the culmination of a trilogy. Since then, however, it has dropped dramatically. It may not seem like much but 2 comments per update which maintained for my entire 20 year history here has dropped to 1.5/1.7 since 2019. What to make of that?

In truth, not much. It is hard to take any true scientific definites from this without contrasting and comparing to others and their works over time (which I am unwilling to do at this time.) I could say that my work, over time, has routinely been dismissed or overlooked in favor of the more flashy works or writAARs during each period of my tenure. I won't deny it has been a thought over the years but that is so much balderdash when considered awAARds won and clear praise from people I respect. It could easily be a number of things that caused what may be considered a low comment to update ratio - the material I write about, the uneven at times update schedule, the manner in which I write usually being very high narrative content as opposed to gameplay/screenshot heavy, or anything other. The thing I can take away from this (admittedly not terribly scientific) exercise is that no matter how many people comment or even view, I need to still write and post and that I should not expect more comments now than I would have twenty years ago because it is clearly less across the board.

Hell, even views are down. Song of Wessex was written within a year and found 77k views. I've been writing WOTR for two years now and it only has 29K. That is sort of a sad fact, but it is what it is. I take what I can get and enjoy every one. While I do not deny I would love to see more feedback to my work, I do not write for that. I write for myself and hope that others enjoy. And that, my friends, is what to take from this silly little experiment."

coz1 looks at his chart and tries again to think about all the math and then his brain explodes leaving the patrons to clean up the mess.

 

[coz1]

coz1 picks up brain matter and gently tries to stuff it back into his head, such that it is and then smiles, "And look at this...

[Read "my" as "the writAAR"]

I decided to take a sampling using the exact same methodology of some of the more "famous" AARs over the last few years including AAR of the Year Winners and other awAARd winning works by the likes of @BigBadBob , @Bullfilter , @DensleyBlair , @Eurasia , @JabberJock14, @JerseyGiants88 , definitely yours @HistoryDude , @Le Jones , @Macavity116 , @Peter Ebbesen , @Revan86 , @TheButterflyComposer , @volksmarschall and @Werther . I found the numbers pretty consistent with what I saw above on my own. Some numbers change, but the end result is about the same. 16 different AARs written between 2017 and the present with the same .008 comment to view and 2 replies to posts as an average. How about that?"

He stamps out his cigarette in the ashtray as he watches the smoke emanating from a very fresh open wound in his skull.