RonO's Ramblings

Earlier this summer, Tara and I made plans to not go to LoneStarCon 3 so that we could save our money and my vacation for Loncon 3 next year.  Admittedly over the last month or so, I’ve regretted that decision, even though the financial and vacation issue is still valid.  So, with bouts of boredom, and feeling sorry for myself, I’ve been attending LoneStarCon 3 vicariously through friends and others posting on various social networks (primarily Twitter, Facebook and Live Journal).

Thursday was fairly quiet.  I was moderately busy at work, and there wasn’t that much going on at LoneStarCon yet to be reported on.

Friday, however, was the day I most missed being there.  I followed the Twitter stream (using #WSFS) for the preliminary business meeting.   I was fairly happy with the results.  The item I was most worried about – the amendment to remove all of the “fan” categories from The Hugo Awards, except the new Fancast category, went down quickly to an overwhelming objection to consider.  The most recent proposal for a YA Hugo Award also went down to an objection to consider, but the people originally moving the motion had asked that it be withdrawn earlier, so I cannot wholly complain.  The Best Dramatic Presentation Extra-short (<15 minutes) also went down to an objection to consider.  The other amendments made it to the main business meeting.

Friday was a quiet day at work, but somewhat short since I had to get home to help Tara take The Girls to the vet.  Afterwards, we did some running around to get stuff for The Kid’s birthday on Tuesday – and pay too much to have it shipped up to where he is via FedEx due to the lateness of our shipping.

I did start Saturday morning following the business meeting twitter stream again.  Pretty good results as far as I’m concerned.  The two items that both seemed to be at least partially designed to keep supporting and voting membership prices high (and they are high enough to make a lot of people feel excluded from Worldcon, and excluded in a way that lessens the value of The Hugo Awards) were referred to committee, as was the YA proposal.

The amendment to just strike the requirement that electronic publications be opt-in, without providing anything to ensure that paper publications would be available to those who don’t want electronic publication, was accepted.

The amendment that would have expanded Best Fan Artist to include performing arts was basically gutted before being passed.  If I understand the final text, it basically does nothing at this point.  I’d have supported that one in its original state at least a bit.  I do see a possible problem there that graphic/visual artists could see this as taking their Hugo Award away and giving it to Filkers – not too far of a stretch from the admitted idea of making sure that Filk could be awarded under that category.

Aside, Filk is a bit of a hard fit for The Hugo Awards.  As far as I know, only one musical album has ever made the final ballot for The Hugo Awards, last year’s nomination of Seanan McGuier’s Wicked Girls, which was nominated for Best Related Work.  Many argued that they belong in Dramatic Presentation, but I don’t agree.  I’d like to see something that would allow The Hugo Awards to recognize Filk, and possibly other fannish performances, but I’m not sure how to do it.  And, I’m likely to not be in the position to do anything related to The Hugo Awards for at least the next Worldcon, possibly more.

Saturday was when I noticed not being at LoneStarCon 3 the most – Tara has gotten a bad cold, and there wasn’t much to do at the house.  I only got out long enough to run over to Costco, and in part because of how I was feeling, in part because it was Saturday afternoon at Costco, and in part because Costco’s air conditioners weren’t keeping up with San Diego having a dew point in the high 60′s; I didn’t enjoy that trip as much as I do sometimes.  Finally, by sitting down with Tara and watching more of The Legend of Kora off of DVD, I felt a bit better.

The evening ended for me with the mixed news: unofficially, the 2015 Worldcon was awarded to Spokane – the bid I’d been marginally part of since near the beginning – but the 2014 NASFiC went to Detroit – I’d been part of the competing bid for Phoenix, again marginally, for most of its existence as well.  In at least one way, I’m actually glad Detroit won.  If next year’s NASFiC had been in Phoenix, I probably would have needed to go to promote Westercon 68, and possibly help out.  This way, I can concentrate on going to London without that distraction.

This morning, before church, I got caught up on the official info for the 2014 NASFiC and 2015 Worldcon, and am hoping that the rest of the weekend I’ll be able to keep busy enough to not start feeling bored, depressed and missing being with friends at LoneStarCon.

 

After tweeting in reference to this idea, I was encouraged to go a bit further.  So, here is a semi-serious piece of business for the WSFS business meeting at LoneStarCon 3.  As I (almost certainly) won’t be able to be there, if anyone wants to run with this, feel free.  You may even include me as one of the makers of the motion:

Short Title: A few quiet meetings

Moved, to amend the WSFS Constitution for the purpose of placing a moratorium on Hugo Award Changes by striking out and adding words as follows:

1. Amend Section 6.6:

The WSFS Constitution may be amended by a motion passed by a simple majority at any Business Meeting but only to the extent that such motion is ratified by a simple majority at the Business Meeting of the subsequent Worldcon.

6.6.x: Amendments relating to Article 3 – Hugo Awards, may not be approved at any Worldcon where another amendment to that article is up for ratification. Further, no amendment relating to Article 3 may be approved at any Worldcon between 2015 and 2017.

6.6.y: Amendments relating to section 6.6.x (above) may not be approved at any Worldcon prior to 2023.

Proposed by: Ronald Oakes

Maker’s Statement: The Hugo Awards have been subjected to additions and changes at nearly every Wordcon over the last 10 or so years. The rate of change is leading to increasingly heated debate on about the make up of the Hugo Awards. By slowing the process of change to the Hugo Awards, the members of Worldcon will have more time to examine the impacts of prior changes before making further proposals.

 

Here it is Saturday night, and I’ve not posted much about what I’ve been doing at Comic-Con.  I’ve posted a couple of things to Google+, Facebook, Twitter and one to LiveJournal without hitting my WordPress site. {For those reading this on one of those, I usually cross-post things from my blog to all of the above, and often post the same – or very similar – things on Google+ Facebook and Twitter that don’t end up here}

Wednesday, I took the day off to help with setting up the Conjecture + Westercon 68 table.  Since we didn’t need to be anywhere until 11:00am, when we picked my vice-chair and the stand for the banner up in La Mesa, our morning was fairly relaxed.

After picking Kae, my vice-chair, up, we drove to the Convention Center and parked next door at the Marriott.  We had two boxes of stuff, the banner stand and a loose poster tube with the Westercon 68 banner.  It turned out that getting this stuff from the Marriott to the convention center wasn’t trivial.  Tara took the larger and heavier box on her scooter – which wasn’t as easy as she’d originally thought.  I had the other box and the banner stand, and Kate had her own stuff and poster tube (I think I’ve got the distribution right).  With this stuff, we had to work our way from the parking garage, to the sidewalk along Harbor, and then up to the front of the Convention Center.  Once we got in front of the Convention Center, we needed to work our way down to the doorways in front of Ballroom D.  Ballroom A is the closest to the Marriott, and was were Volunteers were being allowed in to get their credentials and assignments.  Ballroom B had the disabled entrance, but it was mostly unused.  The people lining up to be the first to get their badges were outside of Ballroom C, where they would later enter.  So we had some cross-traffic to deal with before we could go in.

It didn’t take too long to get Kate her badge (one of our two exhibitor badges) and Tara and I the stickers that granted us access until the floor officially opened.  Nor did it take long to set up the table once we found our way up to the Mezzanine.  The only thing we were lacking was tape to tape up the banners.  So, Tara and I shortly left – getting the car out just shy of it being parked into a third hour (at $7.00/hour after the initial $8.00 hour).  We then headed to see if we could park at Old Town (no spots) and then on to Qualcomm Stadium – stopping briefly at Lowes for the missing tape.

We boarded the trolley, and headed over to the T&C to get our non-preview night 4-day badges.  The ride and walk from the trolley station to the exhibition hall at the T&T was a bit longer than I’d expected – mostly because I didn’t expect them to be sending us in the furthest door into the furthest end of the T&C’s convention center.  {This is MUCH further than any of the space being used for Westercon 68, except for the hotel front desk, and we’ll make sure people coming from the trolley to check in know that they can call for a golf-cart shuttle from our foyer which is much closer to the trolley station}.

After we got our badges through the regular lines, we were briefly directed over to the disabled services desk there, but some communications mistakes kept us from getting our disabled sticker and attendant’s badge there.  We returned to the trolley, and proceeded down to the Convention Center and back up to the mezzanine, to find the table fully set up and ready to go.  Tara and I waited up there until the exhibition opened, went down and talked with some of our friends (but didn’t buy anything, because we’d already bought them or they weren’t available), and headed out for dinner before heading home.

Thursday, we got a reasonable start and made it to Qualcomm Stadium in time to catch a not-unreasonable trolley.  We arrived, and promptly found the disabled line for Ballroom 20.  We were let in fairly reasonably and Tara got a good spot.  However, due in large part to one person with five or six attendants, I ended up sitting in the middle of the row behind the row for the attendants and non-chair using disabled, where I remained until the third panel – when I finally was able to get the seat behind her.

The first two panels were preview showings of the pilots for Intelligence and Star Crossed – both mid-season launches.  Both Tara and I enjoyed Intelligence, but found Star Crossed to be less interesting.  The former has some similarities to Jake 2.0 and Chuck, except the enhanced agent was an agent before hand, and the show is strictly serious action-drama.

We mostly ignored the panel on Beauty and the Beast, but really liked the panel we’d really waited for: Psych.  Psych was its typical love-fest between the audience, writers and cast – but fun as usual.

After that, we got a late lunch, early dinner (it was about 3:30 or 4) at Burger Lounge, and then spent some time at the part of Petco Park that has been turned into Nerd HQ for Comic-Con.  We then found the parking lot that has been turned into an extension of Comic-Con with some tent and trailer exhibits and the food trucks and tent vendors.  After that, we found our way back to the Convention Center for the facilities (which we couldn’t find in the parking lot) and then – at my suggestion – worked our way back and found the 12th and Imperial trolley station giving us very good seats and easy loading for our trip back to Qualcomm Stadium.

Late in the day, and even when we got home, I was noticing some burning pain in my right heel and some aching under the balls of both feet – but mostly the right foot.

Friday (yesterday as I write this) we got a similar early start, and got in line for Ballroom 20 again.  They moved the overflow disabled line to a more sensible location, but did cause some concern since we could observe that they let three groups into the room before they let anyone out of the overflow disabled line – but it turns out they were doing a good job of enforcing the reserved seating so we got pretty good seats (same rows, but further from the center).

The first two panels were great – one with the writers from The Big Bang Theory, and one on The Legend of Korra.  The latter included a full run of the first episode of the second season.  We then partially tuned out for the panel on Bones.

The best, and most anticipated, panel of the day was the panel on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  After receiving a partially standing ovation, Joss Whedon answered a question (possibly by a plant) about showing some clips with a statement to the effect of “We had a bit of trouble with the lawyers getting permission to show any clips, so we’ll just show the whole pilot instead.”  Of the three pilots seen, this was by far the best – a good follow-on to The Avengers, with elements expected both from Marvel and from Whedon.

After this, Tara and I got lunch from one of the tent vendors, spent a bit of time in the exhibit hall and returning a phone call (from Thursday) before splitting for two evening panels.  I went to one featuring Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, moderated by Wil Wheaton, which was a lot of fun.

Over the course of the day, my heel continued to hurt off and on, but more on than off.  So, I decided that I should bring my cane with me today.

This morning (Saturday) we got another good start and got to the convention center at about the same time.  Once we got into Ballroom 20 for two pairs of back-to-back related panels, I took an extended bathroom break and tried to pick up some stuffed animals for Tara from the Nick store (Pabu and Naga).  But, I was too late.  (We have a different plan for tomorrow that should work better – hopefully without costing us seeing the Doctor Who panel).

In the first pair of panels, we saw an 18-minute preview of the new series: Once Upon a Time: Wonderland, and then saw a good panel on the parent show Once Upon a Time.  Afterwards we got a panel with the full voice cast of Futurama and a panel with mostly writers for The Simpsons.  The panel on The Simpsons also featured two performances by The Spring in Springfield – a quartet that performs many of the songs from The Simpsons, albeit mostly from earlier seasons.

Today we had a not-quite-so-late lunch at The Old Spaghetti Factory, checked on the staffing at the fan table, and headed over to see the final Warehouse 13 panel (boo, hiss. SyFy).  This was also quite a good panel, although several of the cast were a bit broken up and knowing that in just about six-weeks their run on this show is over.

After that, we grabbed some yogurt at the other branch of our local (4S Ranch) frozen yogurt place – Sweet Things – in the Hilton.  They’ve cut their hours back for Comic-Con; that is their closed hours, so they are open from 5:30am until 2:30am.  And they were hopping in there.

We made a quick run back over to the exhibit hall so I could take a look at the $50.00 Game of Thrones pop-up map book (which looks good, but I’m not going to get it this weekend), before heading home.

Tonight’s trolley ride was less pleasant than some.  First, we had to get a couple to vacate one of the priority seats so that we could fold up the bench for Tara to park her cart.  Then, having had one confrontation already, I chose not to try to kick anyone out of the other seat.  So, Tara had to listen to one of the people we evicted complain about her until they got off, and I ended up standing for the entire run.

While the cane did help my feet, they are still sore.  And, I managed to leave my wrist-brace in the bathroom the first time I went, so my right hand is griping a bit as well.  I’ll use the cane again tomorrow (and I think I know where another brace is, so I may be able to help there as well) but if it is still bothering me on Monday, I’ll probably go to urgent care and get it overanalyzed only to be told to rest it up and take anti-inflamatories.

 

I'm tired. Yesterday, I drove up to Reno and drove back today (538 miles each way - 8:48 travel time according to Google Maps).

Yesterday, I didn't get on the road until after 11:00 due to delays at this end, and had The Kid with me (I was taking up to a treatment facility in Reno that, hopefully, will be able to deal with his issues). As a result, we had lunch at the Lake Elsinore McDonald's I use as a way-point I used to make sure that my car's GPS didn't argue with me about taking I-15 through the Inland Empire rather than the slight shorter, but actually slower, I-215 route.

However, my car's GPS apparently thinks that freeways are much faster than non-freeway highways, so it tried to run me through Sacramento. Having driven both of the Sacramento routes within the last week and the US-395 route two years ago, I still argued with it until it gave up and quit trying to send me to I-5, somewhere around CA-60.

Because I had The Kid with me, I couldn't keep listening to _A Storm of Swords_, so had planned on listening to music; but could not get my iPod to play properly through the car stereo until I got a 3.5mm audio cable in Bishop (I couldn't find one at the Arco in RB, nor at one of my other pit-stops, nor could I find the one that should be in my office), so I ended up listening to KNX for several hours.

We stopped for dinner in Bridgeport (it was too early when we hit Bishop, and I could tell it would be way late by the time we reach Nevada), at a burger walk-up that wasn't too bad.

We arrived late - after 9:00 - and it was after 10:30 when I got settled into my hotel.

Said hotel, a Baymont Inn, was not that nice. The room was fairly clean, but the bathtub was stained and they forgot to give me soap (which I could have gotten from the front desk, but it wasn't worth it for the short night).

I stopped back by where The Kid was about 9:00, only to find that all of the paperwork had been sent here by FedEx, so I could have left earlier. My early trip wasn't quite as quick as I'd have liked. I ended up stopping in Carson City at a Lowe's to make use of their facilities (and briefly look at blinds to appese some of my guilt), then at a McDonald's Minden for a supplement to my breakfast, and finally at the Wal-Mart in Minden to track down something to keep the tea stain on my shirt from becoming permanent.

As lunch time was nearing, I took a detour (not really worth it) onto Mammoth Scenic Loop, and grabbed lunch at the Pita Pit in Mammoth Springs. This added a bit of a delay - and probably more than just doubling into Mammoth Springs would have - but was at least a recognizable option rather than the sometimes gamble of small-town restaurants. I probably could have held on to Bishop, since it is much closer to Mammoth Springs than I tend to think it is (even after less than a day).

I made another stop, at Manzanar National Historical Park. I spent more than an hour there - and could have spent more time in the visitor's center museum alone. I cannot say that I enjoyed the visit, after all this park records one of the darkest chapters in American History, but I felt it was worth it. The reconstructed barracks and mess hall are quite telling, as even with possibly better construction, sand and dirt were everywhere in all three buildings. As I was there, I kept thinking that yesterday would have actually been a better day - today was mostly overcast and not that hot, but yesterday when I had made a pit-stop at a rest area not too much further south it had been over 100 degrees and the wind was blowing; which would have probably made those barracks even more depressing.

The last legs of that drive are the worst. I ended up stopping for dinner near where CA-58 crosses US-395, selecting my dining spot as much on the strength of "its not Burger King" as for any other hope of a good dinner. However, the dinner wasn't bad.

The drive across the Inland Empire was after dark, and I got slowed for some construction on I-15 between the county line and Escondido (which my GPS tried to route me around, but I ignored it since I couldn't see the back-up it told me was coming).

I suspect that sometime in the next month (and possibly again regularly for a while afterwards) both Tara M Oakes and I will be making that trip. Given that we'd need to be able to spend part of one day in Reno, I'm thinking that we'll need to go about as far as Bishop after work on a Friday, the rest of the way to Reno on Saturday and then home on Sunday. At least if we're both in the car, I won't have to do all the driving.

(FYI, based on Google maps, I've driven about 2,099 miles over the last 8 days - all without a co-driver, and mostly with only myself in the car)

Somewhere in my Internet journeys while compiling or waiting for tests to complete, I came across The Language Construction Kit, which is actually more of a how-to overview of creating a language.  This has got me thinking that maybe I should have my own languages for my untitled fantasy story which I’ve been working on off and on (mostly off) over the last few years.  As I’m pretty much following a lot of recent fantasy and treating Early 21st Century American English as the common tongue.

Aside: I am convinced that, for all intents and purposes, George R. R. Martin is using that form of that English as the “Common Tongue” of Westros – with the exception of it lacking a couple of words that come from the French, requiring his characters to use the less polite, germanic, forms instead.

But, I have Dwarves as main characters, and there is some action near where I stopped that will take place in the courts of the Dwarven Deep King.  So, having a Dwarven language would be of use.

Looking over the steps in the construction kit, I’ve come up with ideas in a copule of places.  But, I also have a lot of holes that have to be filled in

I’m not entirely sure what all of the sounds (phones and phonemes) would be.  But they would need to support having characters named Bochs (pretty much sounds like “box,” but perhaps with a bit softer c/k sound like you would refer to the members of the Bach family as a group), Parshatch (par-shatch, not pars-hatch) and Gornatch.  Clearly the “sh” and “ch” sounds from English would be fairly common.  Beyond that, I think I’d go for a somewhat germanic, or perhaps Scots, sound.

To be complete, I’d need to come up with two systems of writing: one for use in actual written communications, and one for use when sending messages by heliograph which requires a morse code like system.

But I do have some ideas when it comes to the nature of the language.

I’m thinking it would be interesting, and not entirely out of character, for the dwarf’s language to have thee genders, but not male, female and neuter.  Instead the genders would be for inanimate, wild and domestic, with some exceptions.  The word for distant people would be wild, but alies would be domestic.  Similarly, I’m thinking that money, but not gold and gems themselves, would be domestic.  Ore and rocks would be wild, but refined metals would be inanimate.

I’ve also had some wild thoughts about numbers.  I’m thinking of having two different sets of number words, a base 8 set for inanimate and wild gendered things and a base 4 set for domestic things.  I see this as being behind the stereotype that    dwarves are greedy and stingy.  If a contract was badly translated, a non-dwarf could think that they were agreeing to sell 32 bags of grain for 32 pieces of gold, when the dwarf was expecting what would be considered 26 bags of grain and only paying what would be considered 14 pieces of gold.

For the sentence structure, I’m thinking of having the order be verb, object, subject: “John drank beer” would come from a literal translation of “drank beer John.”  Of course there would need to be complications for indirect objects, and other things that complicate basic sentences in most languages.

I also came up with an interesting idea on family/clan names.  An unmarried male dwarf’s full name would be <given name> <paternal indication> <father’s clan name> <maternal indication> <mother’s clan name>; an unmarried female dwarf would reverse the order of the clans: <given name> <maternal indication> <mother’s clan name> <paternal indication> <father’s clan name>.  When dwarves wed, they replace the first clan name – the paternal clan for males, the maternal clan for females – is replaced with a spousal clan indication and the spouse’s clan.

An example, using common English/American names:

If John p-Smith m-Jones marries Sarah m-Clark p-Williams, their names would become John s-Williams m-Jones and Sarah s-Jones m-Williams.  Their first son would be Fred p-Jones m-Williams and first daughter would be Jane m-Williams p-Jones.

This creates an opportunity for an interesting inheritance situation as well: The headship of a clan (including the royal clan, thus the king) would pass to the eldest son of the eldest daughter of the current head.  The further heirs would have to be documented in the cases of no daughters of the head, or daughters with no sons.

If I were able to figure out how to set up the sounds, I could use the Gen tool provided by the author of the Language Construction Kit to produce words, which would at least let me start creating a bit of a Lexicon, albiet one that uses standard Unicode characters in an arbitrary font.

If you are on the San Diego Westercon committee (or want to pretend to be with the risk of being expected to help out), please fill out this survey:

For some time, I’ve had some thoughts about learning a new instrument.

Off and on from the 4th grade through college, I played Alto Sax in various bands.  (I ended up dropping band the last year at each school: part way through my 5th and 8th grade years, moving from Marching/Symphonic Band to Concert Band my 11th grade year, and then no band class at all my 12th grade year, being unable to schedule Marching Band during the fall semester of my 5th and final year at UNM; and was only in the “zoo” band during one spring semester during those same 5 years).  After leaving school, I pulled out my sax on rarer and rarer occasions, and finally sent it home with my sister, brother-in-law and The Albuquerque Boy Choir a couple of years ago – after The Boy Choir tour took them to San Diego – so that they could donate it to Hummingbird Music Camp.  (I presume that it has been played more over the last couple of years than it had over the preceding 20).

However, I keep looking at other instruments that I might be able to use in more social situations (and potentially in worship – but that is much less likely).  The ones that most appeal to me include guitar, autoharp and some forms of drum.

Guitar has some appeal because it is fairly flexible, and classes are fairly available both from specialized sources and places like community colleges.  Learning on an electric has an added appeal that I could use one of the amps that feed into headphones, so that I could practice without disturbing anyone else.  On the other hand, decent guitars aren’t super-cheap (I’m seeing prices in the $100-$500 range for recommended begineer models), and they aren’t trivial to learn, making me more concerned about getting frustrated early on and quitting.

Autoharps aren’t as common as they were years ago, but they seem to be a fairly easy to learn option, at least for playing chords.  On the other hand, they are even more expensive than a guitar, harder to tune (more strings), and not offer as many options beyond chords.

I’ve not always been a fan of drums – largely a bias that comes from the personality of a lot of the kids who play drums in middle school, high school and college band – or at least traditional drums (snare, trap-set, etc.).  However, I’ve been specifically thinking about the Bodhran since I appreciate how it works in much of my favorite music.  Some form of hand drum (conga or the like) has some appeal since I already find myself slapping out beats on my legs, chair, and the like when listening to music – so I may already have some ability with those kind of drums.

However, both time and money aren’t in infinite supply and I have a fair amount eating both these days.  As frustrating as this is, it probably limits or delays how soon I could actually make a serious commitment to learning a new instrument.

Also, it is becoming clear that I will soon have to transition from walks 4 days a week and an hour with the personal trainer one day a week, to something – probably Taekwondo, since there is a close-by school that looks good – to give me a more regular and intense workout.  This will further eat into both my time and money supply (unless it ends up less per week than the personal trainer).

But, I’m still thinking and won’t turn down any suggestions both for instruments to learn, ways to acquire one easily, and how to learn to master (or at least become a competent apprentice) them

Originally published at RonO's Random Ramblings

This weekend, Tara and I headed up to Wondercon Anaheim.  The Kid was elsewhere.

Since I was in charge of the Conjecture 2013 / Conchord 25 table, we needed to be there before the loading dock closed at 9:30.  So the original plan had been to leave about the time I regularly leave for work: 6:30.  Due to the normal delays of getting moving in the morning, we ended up leaving a bit after 7 instead.  And I needed to get gas and let Tara get some cash before we headed up, so we were running a bit later than I’d have hoped.  However, we benefitted by an unexpected lack of traffic, so we arrived in Anaheim in plenty of time to use the loading dock.

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I’ve been considering restarting work on a fantasy story I started writing a couple of years back.  At this point before I start writing, I want to get a bit better idea where the story is going.  But, while I’ve got some of the next part figured out during my working sessions (i.e. during the time between lying down and night and falling asleep), I’m stuck on what to do with two of my characters.

First A bit of background.  The characters and story started out as a setting, pre-generated characters and an adventure start for a D&D campaign I never ran.  The setting for the start of this campaign and, thus, the story is in The Dwarven Kingdom and a large valley nearly encircled by the mountains that make up the valley.  This valley is inhabited by halflings (“Valley Folk”), both farmers and the merchants and traders to facilitate the moving of goods in and out of the valley and the mountainous areas inhabited by the dwarves.

The characters I have are:

• A dwarf fighter who is the leader, a squad leader in the  official military/police of the kingdom, but given command and responsibility for building an ad-hoc command to start the investigation which leads to the adventure.
• A pair of dwarf brothers who are very close in age and have a relationship akin to twins in human populations, who were forced to take different career paths by their clan leaders.  One is a ranger trained with the king’s gamekeeper and the other is a monk – one of the few non-human monks – trained at a monastery outside of The Dwarven Kingdom to the north and east.
• A halfling female cleric.  She is the adopted daughter of a village pastor, having had the rest of her family killed in an orc raid.
• A halfling paladin.  He is the son of a very rich family, and became a paladin after reading adventure stories set in the human lands to the east.  He is in love with the cleric, but is also a bit arrogant (or at least is supposed to be, I’m not sure I’ve written him that way)
• The adopted brother of the cleric.  He ran away from home and has become a rogue while keeping an eye on his sister during her training.  He is also convinced that the paladin is only using his sister until someone of his class shows up, and doesn’t trust the paladin alone with his sister – fearing both for her emotions and her chastity.

So far, the party has investigated the initial problem and partially solved it – defeating the remaining people at an evil, false, temple and discovering that many dwarves and halflings have been led north as prisoners or slaves.  When I stopped writing, the party was heading to the capital – a large dwarven city located in a large cave above the end of the valley opposite its opening.

I’ve decided that at least for a while I will need to split the party, having the squad leader and the ranger track the captives and sending the monk and the rogue to the larger church installation that included  the monastery the monk was trained at.  The rogue is being sent there as the person who found a key piece of evidence that indicates greater evil is afoot, or at least that is what he’s being told.  A friend of his father has also suggested this noting his interest in the monk’s abilities and the need to push him away from his roguish start.

The problem I am left with is what to do with the other two party members at this point.  Each option I can come up with has consequences for the character development – or doesn’t really make sense.

Sending both the cleric and the paladin with the party tracking the captives would make external sense – putting a healer and another skilled fighter with the party most likely to run into trouble.  But the rogue would at the least object strongly, and might insist on going with his sister.  The later option would be disruptive to my growth plans for that character (one fo the few times I’ve had a character I was writing tell me to move him in a different direction than I first had planned), and could be bad from a story direction.

I could split the two up, putting one in each party.  This might be the best option, but I’m not sure which split would work better.  Neither of these options would be objectionable to the rogue – but I don’t think he’d like being under the command of the paladin which would be occur if they were in a party together without the squad leader.  I’m also not sure that the cleric and the paladin would be happy being forced to split up.

I could also create a third mission for the paladin and cleric – probably searching for an individual who has skills and knowledge that may be needed later int he adventure.  But this has the same drawbacks regarding character conflict as the first option, and would require that I deal with three story lines instead of two.

I welcome any suggestions or ideas to help me out of this dilemma, so that the only obstacles remaining are my lack of free time, motivation and writing skills (or perceived writing skills).

If there is interest, I may be persuaded to put what I have online as well.  I doubt I’d ever be in a position to publish this in any way that early web publication would hurt.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that over my lifetime – and mostly over the last 10-15 years – I’ve seen a change in how US (at least) television shows open.

The earliest 60 minute single camera shows I have memories of – mostly mysteries, cop shows, and a few SF titles – generally fell into one of a few styles of opening:

• A teaser scene followed by an opening sequence and then a commercial.
  • Star Trek is an example that followed this for sure.
• A “Tonight on …” teaser made up of clips, followed by an opening sequence.  I don’t recall if these then went straight into the show, or had a commercial afterwards.
  • I think Hawaii Five-O followed that, but since the clip teasers aren’t on the Netflix stream, I’m not 100% sure.
• An opening sequence that incorporated clips for the upcoming episode
  • Mission Impossible is the only example I know of from my early TV viewing.
    
  • Space: 1999 also did this, but I watched only one or two episodes when it first aired – KOB returned to the regular NBC schedule after just a couple of episodes.

Over time, the teaser scene became more common, eventually becoming universal or nearly universal.

The first departure I recall from any of these would be Hill Street Blues which usually opened with scenes from recent episodes (“Previously on…”), a practice previously only used for two-part episodes, followed by the roll-call scene and sometimes a squad room scene before the opening sequence.  The next departure, sort of, was Quantum Leap, which started running a fixed sequence setting up the series, followed by the teaser and then the opening sequence.

Somewhere between the late 1980′s and now, a new style has appeared and become the most common:

• A teaser scene – sometimes lasting longer than in earlier shows – followed by nothing more than a title card, or a quick opening that only credits the name of the show, and sometimes the main producers.  The rest of the credits are run over the first scene following the opening.
  • In my current (February 2013) selection of new shows, this is true for Arrow, Once Upon a Time, NCIS: Los Angles, Vegas, and White Collar.
• A teaser scene followed by a more traditional opening sequence
  • Current shows: Hawaii 5-O, NCIS, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: New York, and Psych.  Hawaii 5-O and NCIS go immediately from the opening sequence into the first scene, the others go into an ad break.

Person of Interest starts with a Quantum Leap type explanation of the premis which ends with the title card, and then flows into the first scene with most of the credits running over it.

I don’t recall where Continuum falls into this.

30 minute multi-camera shows all started with an opening sequence, and then often an ad break before the opening scene until fairly recently.  A few had teasers early on (WKRP In Cincinnati  and Cheers comes to mind).  The first departure I recall was Murphy Brow which opened directly into the first scene – quite often an dialog-free scene with a Mowtown song playing over it – with the credits run over that scene.  This trend has become pretty common for 30 minute multi-camera shows, even if the only two I’m currently watching (The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons – which pretty much qualifies even though it is animated) still use a more-or-less traditional opening sequence – but neither include any credits other than title, creator and producer over the sequence.