11.17.09 -- It's been a long time since I updated here, hasn't it? I think at some point I will have to retire this site, or make it a chapter in lydialaurenson.com ... whenever I get around to making lydialaurenson.com. Which won't be anytime soon, because I am currently in Swaziland, Africa, working on HIV/AIDS with the U.S. Peace Corps.
If you'd like to kindasorta keep up with my activities, I occasionally post to a personal blog: dragonladyflame.livejournal.com. I haven't put out that link before, because I felt uneasy about merging my professional game-writer life with my "real" self ... but now that it looks certain that I'm never going back to game writing, why not?
2.21.08 -- The Roll of Glorious Divinity I is out, and turned out pretty well! Stephen Lea Sheppard is an awesomely badass developer. The last two products I worked on were Dreams of the First Age and The Roll of Glorious Divinity II; those will be the last for a long time, I think. I feel like I'm pretty much done with RPG writing -- I enjoyed doing it and I learned a lot, but in the end it's stressful, emotionally unsatisying, and doesn't even pay well.
I think I need to put Shataina's Story on hold, officially and indefinitely. (I mean, I guess this has unofficially been the case for a while now, but ... yeah.) I am working on some other writing projects in my off time, and also some random stuff like trying to make money as a freelance calligrapher and applying to the Peace Corps. And Shataina's Story is unpublishable, because it's fanfiction, so when I do get the time to write, I feel like I ought to put it into other writing.
Maybe I'll get the random urge to write more Shataina someday when I don't feel so pressed to do other things with my time. I hope so.
6.3.07 -- Oadenol's Codex is out, and I'm happy with how it turned out. Yay! (Dustin & I wrote the Manses/Demesnes stuff, not including the hearthstones.) We've been working on a huge chunk of the upcoming Roll of Glorious Divinity I and a smaller chunk of the upcoming Dreams of the First Age, and have had very little time for basically anything; but the books are shaping up to be pretty cool at least.
3.26.07 -- New contract. Different setup. Suicidal deadline. It's great. I'm excited again.
2.26.07 -- More delay. I have been disheartened of late and having trouble working on any writing-related projects. Scroll of the Monk may have been edited more than I was entirely OK with, but what happened to our work on The Black and White Treatises was devastating. Maybe I'm not cut out for freelancing. Or writing. In fact, I should just get a good corporate job with benefits. Yeah! That's the spirit.
11.28.06 -- I did it! I promised new chapters by the end of the year, and yes, it has finally happened! Witness: Chapter 1 of Book 3! Whee!
Moreover, Scroll of the Monk came out recently -- the new "Exalted 2" Martial Arts book -- and if you check the front page, you'll see Dustin's and my names as authors. We wrote the drafts for Even Blade Style, Fivefold Shadow Hand Style, Laughing Wounds Style, Silver-Voiced Nightingale Style, Quicksilver Hand of Dreams Style and Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style. Some were edited a bit more than I'm happy with, but still, it's so exciting that the book is out that I can hardly even squeal.
I was even interviewed (about the book, and being a White Wolf intern / crazed fan in general -- this thesis was mentioned!) last week. What a time I'm having.
7.5.06 -- No new chapters, but -- being as my 22nd birthday's in a week, and I handed in the thesis when I was 19 -- I feel like enough time has passed that I can put the Introduction, which I originally didn't post for free access because it felt too rawly personal, out in public for people to read at will. At a friend's suggestion, I have also added new "Warning: this story is way more brutal than you probably expect" notes in a couple of places.
Permanent random news -- For all you LiveJournal addicts users out there, I've set up a LiveJournal just for updates to Shataina's Story; its username is, shockingly enough, Shataina.
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What is this site where I find myself?
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In case you have found this page by accident (unlikely) or are simply confused by one of my failed descriptions (more likely), you are now at the website for Lydia's Thesis.
Lydia graduated from college in 2004, having written her senior thesis on fantasy, fantasy criticism, the nature of fantasy, and a whole bunch of other ambitious topics. Part of this thesis was the attempt to write out, as a novel, one game she played in the fall semester of her junior year (fall 2002). This was a game of "Exalted", a tabletop roleplaying game manufactured by White Wolf Game Studios. It was a single-player game run by Dustin, who deserves mad props for putting up with her.
Lydia is fully aware that this has been done before. The object of this is not to sell the result of her creative endeavour as a novel (although it would be nice if White Wolf would agree to print it -- unlikely :). The object of this (as a thesis) was to, by way of converting a played fantasy game to a readable fantasy novel, highlight the differences between playing a character and writing her out, and help to explain them; as well, it was to analyze the way in which gaming affects Lydia's life and (possibly nonexistent) sanity.
In terms of why Lydia plans on continuing the story -- well, she can't deny that she derives a certain personal satisfaction from the process.
The whole (280-page!) thesis (which was handed in to Simon's Rock College on May 5, 2004) included the following:
-- Book I / the Prelude of Shataina's Story (which has since become better, or so I hope).
-- An Introduction discussing various things, such as the definition of fantasy, the definition of roleplaying games, how the game affected Lydia, etc. This was where she used the findings from her Fantasy Survey.
-- Calligraphed insets, into which fed Lydia's research on graphoanalysis, etc.
This site holds the current draft of Lydia's creative endeavour, as well as a copy of Shataina's stats from the game. It also has a paper I wrote at the end of that semester for a class, a paper written on fantasy and fantasy criticism. That paper formed the basis for the researched part of the Introduction, which I might put up eventually if people ask for it enough. Furthermore, this site has images of the calligraphed pages I handed in with Shataina's Story, as well as sundry other relevant items.
Onward and upward.
Lydia also submitted Shataina's description to White Wolf and won 3rd Place in the Player's Guide contest. So White Wolf has their own take on Shataina on the Exalted Player's Guide. (Lydia herself doesn't particularly agree with their take, but hey, she's not complaining -- she has all kinds of geek bragging rights now.)
All writing and sundry other art on this website is free to read and / or view, but it is definitely under copyright to Lydia Laurenson (except in places where this would directly overlap someone else's copyright, such as the "Exalted" canon items in Shataina's Story). All rights reserved.
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