{"id":2924,"date":"2009-04-10T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2009-04-10T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2924"},"modified":"2009-04-10T13:15:05","modified_gmt":"2009-04-10T17:15:05","slug":"vatsy-and-bruno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2924","title":{"rendered":"Vatsy and Bruno"},"content":{"rendered":"

l4d_ff1.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table>Online Left 4 Dead is now a nightly tradition. This regular evening exodus from the infection zone to a joyous yet undefined safety are ruinously fun, to the point where I’ve spent too much time shooting zombies and not enough time writing content for this website. Perhaps you’ve noticed and you’ve just been too polite to say anything. <\/p>\n

If you’ve been in a game with me, you may have run into lnwlf, Thufir, or thegrimone, all members of my perpetually fallow tabletop gaming group. But more likely is that you’ve run into Rutskarn (who you may recognize from the comments here) who is the most patient of teammates, long suffering in the face of my errant bullets (which are sometimes to the face) and my habit of hoovering up all the pipe bombs. I’ve probably played more games with Rutskarn than anyone else that wasn’t software written by Valve. <\/p>\n

l4d_ff2.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table>In these games we sometimes chat about websites and the running thereof. Rutskarn has his own site, Chocolate Hammer<\/a>, which has tabletop-type stuff, some fiction, and good supply of cleverness. He’s stuck in the stage where he probably suspects he’s putting up good work but doesn’t know how to get people to come and see it. Having toiled* in obscurity** for months*** on this site, I can sympathize. <\/p>\n

* “Toil” in the sense of doing something fun that might vaguely resemble work to someone who didn’t know any better.
\n** Aside from the readers I was able to beg from SDB<\/a>.
\n*** It was actually a year and seven days between the launch of the site and the start of DM of the Rings, but who’s counting?
\n<\/small><\/p>\n

His big project is Vatsy and Bruno<\/a>, a work of fiction that I will excerpt rather than attempt to summarize:<\/p>\n

To whom it may concern:<\/p>\n

We do not regret to inform you that this submission is unusable, unintelligent and frequently illegible. We do not regret that your mental seepage, poured in such an ungainly fashion on your half-cent-per-thousand-sheet paper, will not be gracing this or any future publication of the Writer's Guild World Newsletter. We do not regret that you will\u00e2\u20ac"most probably\u00e2\u20ac"die alone, penniless, unloved and foul-smelling.<\/p>\n

We do, however, regret that we were exposed\u00e2\u20ac"even through this protective screen of incomprehensibility\u00e2\u20ac"to this most unspeakable body of work. We regret that our sanity and our lives can never be whole again after even a brief perusal of your first page. We regret that the stink of hideous purple prose and suspiciously fecal ink will forever saturate our desk space. Most of all, we regret that you had slithered, like a diseased rat infiltrating an unsuspecting granary, into this world on whatever dark day you were born (from the art inherent in your prose, we would estimate about a year ago.)<\/p>\n

If we ever see the name “Vatsy”\u00e2\u20ac"or that name spelled differently, or any name with a superficial resemblance, or anything that even reminds us of you\u00e2\u20ac"on any volume, essay, poem, or bill that ever crosses our threshold, we will ensure that you will not survive the night that follows.<\/p>\n

Wishing you well,<\/p>\n

The Writers Guild<\/p><\/div>\n

I didn’t think to get permission to talk about his age, but I hope Rutskarn will forgive me for revealing that he is not old<\/em>. I was shamed last night when I discovered his age and I realized I was not nearly as promising or as focused<\/a> at roughly that same stage in life. The site is full of amusing self-quotes, witty phraseography, and a solid dose of non-LOLCATS brand humor, a resource which is all to scarce on the internet. <\/p>\n

You could do worse than visiting the site. For example, you could not<\/em> visit the site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Online Left 4 Dead is now a nightly tradition. This regular evening exodus from the infection zone to a joyous yet undefined safety are ruinously fun, to the point where I’ve spent too much time shooting zombies and not enough time writing content for this website. Perhaps you’ve noticed and you’ve just been too polite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-culture","category-pictures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}