"How NaNoWriMo laid waste to itself with a single blog post"

"NaNoWriMo thinks writing is merely a suggestion."

It is an egregiously clickbaity headline and deck/drop head, to be sure, and the giant image of an upset Lisa Simpson is completely extraneous, and such is usually the case with my admittedly very limited (pretty much for that very reason) exposure to The Mary Sue.

But, in this particular case at least, the article itself under all of that superfluous crust at the top was actually kind of interesting. (Even including all the Twitter embeds. At the very least, it wasn't an "article" that consisted of around 98% of nothing but Twitter embeds, which is something I've seen far too often lately on other such "news" websites.)

In any case, if you don't want to go through The Mary Sue, here are some other alternatives, (possibly) with less sensationalism. The thing on The Mary Sue is just what popped up in my Google News App, is all. (And, yes, I just took that and used it as an opportunity to criticize The Mary Sue itself in the first half or so of this post, as much as the whole NaNoWriMo thing in the second half, below.)

Anyway.

Basically, the people supposedly "in charge of" NaNoWriMo apparently seem to be of the opinion that using AI to write is okay, actually, and that you're being "abelist" and "classist" if you criticize its use in writing, because poor, disabled people apparently need all the help they can get. Or some shit. The people whom they ostensibly claim to represent seem to vehemently disagree, however, to the point that they are cutting ties with the so-called "organization" altogether.

I know people who have participated in NaNoWriMo in the past, but I've never tried it myself. It always seemed needlessly stressful to me, but good on anyone who has ever succeeded at it. I'm not sure why there ever needed to be an "official" "organization" attached to the whole thing, though. Especially one with such dubious notions. When I first heard about NaNoWriMo, decades ago, I just thought it was an unofficial activity that people were just kind of doing, of their own accord, as a "viral Internet thing," rather than something that was an actual "official" Thing™, which "needed" an "organization" of people "in charge of it" or whatever. Like, who even decided that shit? And who let them get away with it, and why?

From the end of The Mary Sue article: "The bottom line is: Writing is free. You don’t need to wait for a specific month or be involved in NaNoWriMo to do it. There are writing communities everywhere, especially online, where you can find support, validation, and inspiration to finish that story you want to tell."

Tales Unwritten - Season One.

They're done. For now, anyway. (Follow up to this.)

It's only five episodes, so I'll just embed them all here, for the hell of it.

---

( Youtube embeds behind cut )

---

There's also an "after each episode discussion show" called Tales Unraveled, which I will not be embedding here, but there's the link, so yeah.

And that's it. At least until they record more episodes over the course of this month, apparently, though who knows when they'll get those all edited and polished up for release. The individual "session zero" episodes for Karna, Maud, and Martin will be made available at some point in the future as well. (Or, alternatively, are already available, if you pay them cash money via Twitch or Youtube membership or Patreon or whatever, none of which I am nor will be doing in the foreseeable future.)

So... I liked it a lot. I especially like the pared down edited nature of it, which cuts out all the chaff of excessive math, trying to figure out spells, an hour or however long of playing a gambling game, etc. That was always a problem with Critical Role for me, because in that, pretty much nothing is edited out. Which, I mean, it's fine for what it is, but I much prefer an hour or maybe two of just the "good stuff" (with the extra bells and whistles of art, music, animations, etc.), compared to four or six hours of all of it (with few, if any, extra bells and whistles). Even so, that's still about seven hours of stuff right here, in the first season. There is also the fact that there are only three players, as opposed to seven or eight or however many they have on Critical Role now, which helps. And it also helps that Nick is playing Karna as a character who is very conflict-avoidant, and that Stephan as a DM is entirely willing to allow the party to avoid fights altogether if it makes sense. Combat was always the least interesting part of Critical Role for me.

I'm not saying I like this better than Critical Role, but... I'm kinda saying I like this better than Critical Role. At least so far.

Maud is still my favorite... but... she does, at times, veer a wee bit too far into almost chaotic stupid territory. That said, Jesse is doing it because it's (usually) funny and is in character for Maud, not for the purpose of being a contrary dick, and it hasn't caused any real problems... yet...