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A jam submission

Personal VillainyView project page

evil boi
Submitted by miserytourism (@miserytourism) — 29 days, 1 hour before the deadline
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Play monologue

Personal Villainy's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Experimentation#34.6674.667
Overall#44.3334.333
Polish#43.6673.667
Poetry#54.0004.000
Overall#53.8673.867
Interactivity#62.6672.667

Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Name you'd like to be published under, if accepted
lynchpoet

Short bio, written in the third person
lynchpoet/rudy is a hick from Malone NY who designs games, writes poetry and gets destroyed by 14-year-olds on League of Legends. when not doing any of those things, lynchpoet collects a disability check and works with friend, William, running Misery Tourism, a site that publishes outsider art.

Artist Statement, about your piece
I won't belabor this point, since there's a long Villain Monologue (from me) inside the document that explains my intentions, but basically, this is what happens when I let my characters become symbolic tulpas to help me write.

These were all made using some version of a computer program I created to help me do a very specific type of constrained writing where a series of clickable prompts influences the flow and content of the piece. The program and some of the rule prompts changed over time, but its goal remained the same: allowing my villainous alter-egos to augment, dominate, and eviscerate my dumbly-personal autofiction. This merger of characters and myself was inspired by shit like Bleed from roleplaying games ( https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Bleed ) and sentiments like those found in this thread ( https://www.writingforums.com/threads/do-your-characters-ever-start-writing-themselves.157712/ ).

What do you need from us, when giving feedback on your piece?
Anything. Any feedback is cool.

Questions, Comments, Concerns?
Keep doing these jams.

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Comments

Excellent items from you.  I’ve take note your stuff prior to and you’re just too magnificent. I actually like what you have obtained. Stranger Things S04 Hoodie

Host(+1)

Hi lynchpoet!

Not only did you provide cool poems, you also created a tool for making poetry! That's so cool! I'm super impressed with GLYPHS, even though it took me a second to figure out how to do it. I've never thought to gamify writing in this way, and it's a tool I'm going to use whenever I feel a block. So thanks for this! 

I love that each glyph has its own personality (seriously, this is so charming), and as you keep writing, any train of thought gets derailed as a new one comes in! So many voices, so many different openings. I really love this program. It feels like the glyphs are the ones in control, and I'm just sorta along for the ride.

I also adore the poems you've written. They're so lively. I wish I had more to say right now, and I'll come back and say more later, but presently I'm just in awe at what you've made (both GLYPHS and the poems).

P.S. I'm sorry for the delay, but I'll send you a PDF with comments of your poems soon!

Submitted(+1)

I really dig this Oulipo-like concept; makes me want to glitch out my own writing process with a bunch of GLYPHS inspired by the characters/archetypes and motifs in my own repertoire. I almost wish it were possible for each page of the PDF to be comprised of two layers, one made of solid paper with the poems and another made of transparent paper with all the footnotes, so that it's possible to enjoy a first-level or first-level-plus-meta reading, depending on your mood. One of my favorite things about this concept is just the kind of metal-level discussion of your poetry that the GLYPHS invite while making the process of writing sound, feel, and seemingly execute itself like a teenage-era frenzy of creation -- I love that contrast. Kind of makes your program feel like a time machine, too.

Some of my favorite moments: I selected "Suicide by Skywalker" that Sunday morning (esp. in light of the footnote explaining the poem's background); i glanced away to the window ( which was an event horizon of the early 2000's ) (-- dude, so true). I'm also inclined to ask everyone in the jam to tag themselves as one of your GLYPHS -- I'm Rice Rocket, the Belief Sculptor.

Experimentation - Absolutely gnarly, solid 5. I particularly love how you took the notion of a constraint to an 11 by sourcing each one from an extreme, superficially un-relatable personality.

Interactivity - 4, if only because the interactivity belongs to the writer-player, not the reader (who firmly occupies the standard role of the audience vis-à-vis this collection -- at least once it's done/outside of the auspices of certain GLYPHS during the process of writing).

Polish - This program seems very complex/complicated to pull off, but I think you've done a great job. I tried it out myself and didn't realize until a Google pop-up kept insisting I do something with it that I'd somehow summoned 9 different GLYPHS, and that I could have realized this if I'd just clicked on the images to the right of the laptop screen. I may have missed this in the collection, but if I didn't (or if the cues there were purely visual), please consider adding instructions for use to your piece!

Poetry - A 4 for the end product, even if the process of writing surely comes closer to a game.

... Now that I've finished writing this comment, I kind of wish I'd thought to do it in the program, lol -- but I also think it could make a cool tool for rewriting/branching off existing pieces. If I find the time to try it out with this comment, I'll post the glyphed-out version here...

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks for the comment (and also thank you so much for taking the time to try out the program—that's beyond what I thought anyone would do!).  In future writings, I will definitely make sure to include some instructions.  Right now it's pretty buggy when you write out longer stuff.  Your comment would almost certainly tax it, since it's designed mostly for 1-page, <150 word prose poems that use the RETURN key a lot (this is something else I'll mention in later, more comprehensive versions).  I'll probably play around with some more builds to try to make it a little more stable, too.  

lol @ the tag yourself thing you suggested.  Although I identify closely with Lifesaber (she's the character I've written most about, in other venues), I think I'll tag MOUSETRAP.  Ayyyy,