WHY GOD!?! WHY DID WE DO THIS!!!

*Sigh* Back to Blazblue I go.

Previously:

• Skullfuckmas Cross Stitch
• Join DO XIII
• WE! WERE! LAAZZZYYYYYYYYYY!
• NYAF’s Fanfic Panel
• Skullfuckmas Cocktail
• WOW Fanfic Review
• And a Sparklevamp who likes to climb trees!

“Can I Join Disorganization XIII?”

The answer is yes! There have been numerous people who have come up to us asking if they could be a part of Disorganization XIII. We always tell them the same thing.

1. Contact us. The first thing you need to do to become a DOXIII member is to let us know you exist. We can’t make you a member if we don’t know who you are. An e-mail is more than enough. DisorganizationXIII@gmail.com remember that!

2. Contribute to the website. The second thing you need to do to become a DOXIII member is provide the website with content somehow. Write, film, record, or otherwise do something that can be posted up on Disorganization-XIII.com. Send it to us, and if we like it, we will post it up right away!

3. Come up with an idea. The third thing you need to do to become a DOXIII member is show us that you have something to add to our line-up when we hit the convention scene. It can be a new panel idea, or it can be something new and fresh in a panel we have already done. What do you want to do for DOXIII?

4. Prove it. Finally, you have to put your money where your mouth is. You’ll have to meet up with us on Skype or in person and show that you have the chops to get up there and do the stupid shit we do on a regular basis. It’s kind of like an audition, but with less pressure. We cannot tell you how many people ask us to be on Spoiler who turn out to be unable to write or tell a joke in front of a crowd without panicking. Sorry guys, you gotta have balls to do the shit we do.

That’s about it. Make it through these four steps and you are in. Several members, such as Koshi of Spoiler, JJ from This Panel is Gay, and Scott from Anime Press Your Luck have joined Disorganization XIII in this fashion. However, if you aren’t looking to join up as a full member, we always accept submissions for website content, or even simple suggestions for how to improve our panels. Hell, half of the Spoilers I write come straight requested from the fans.

So, in a sense, your Skullfuckmas present this year is the opportunity to join up with us and do what we do best: make total asses out of ourselves. Merry Skullfuckmas everyone, and a Happy New Year, which also hopefully presents you with few situations in which you would be skull fucked!

Previously:

• WE! WERE! LAAAZYYYYYYYYY!
• NYAF’s Fanfic Panel
• A Skullfuckmas Cocktail
• WOW Fanfic Review
• And a Sparklevamp that likes to climb trees

That depends on what type of member you are, I guess.

I’m the president, and as such I have the most responsibility in the group. I schedule our appearances, organize our panel line-up, act as the go-between for us and convention staff, produce a good portion of the content on the site, set up collabs with other panelists, schedule meetings, podcasts, and rehearsals, participate on most of the panels (along with all the work that comes with being on a panel), and generally do my best to stay on all my members’ asses hard enough to get them to do work without creating too much drama.

Casey is our current co-president, and she does everything that I can’t do, which is a LOT!!! She primarily handles the online stuff, managing the facebook, twitter, flickr, and a good portion of the website. She is also the other half most of the website content. In addition, she handles a shit fuck ton of organizational stuff that I fuck up on, and acts as our primary motivational force, i.e. getting people to participate in new ideas, such starting up a podcast. She is basically our resident Mom, and goddamn do we need one. [She also reads every post that goes up on the site and then goes back and corrects grammar and spelling! - Casey]

After us, there are the senior members, i.e. members that return year after year for a panel that has been proven to work. Jay and Mike from Fan Fiction and Kirk from Spoiler are some of our oldest and most valuable senior members. We put a lot of trust in our senior members, and we generally listen to their suggestions and advice, but in return we expect them to keep coming back every year and not just flake on us. As long as they do so, we will continue keep the comped badges flowing their way. Senior members are also strongly encouraged to submit content to the website, but good luck with that. ^_^

Then there are our tech guys. These guys provide a valuable service to Disorganization XIII, but they never get on stage. Justin Woo is our sound technician that has more than once bailed us out of a jam. We also have tech guys for computers, as well as more social activities like running around conventions getting pictures of cosplay. Koshi handles that, but he hasn’t done enough panels to be a senior member yet.

Then we have junior members, AKA the newbies. Junior members are people who have just joined on with Disorganization XIII. Not everyone is cut out for doing panels, and many panels fail. Not only that, but some people just don’t mesh well with the rest of the other Disorganization XIII members. Junior members either start up on a new panel or on a panel that Disorganization XIII has done in the past. If everything works out, then they come back year after year with the rest of us. If not, THEN IT IS THE DOOM PIT FOR YOU!!!

Finally, we have honorary members. Honorary members are not actually active members of Disorganization XIII, but cool guys that in their own right have made the convention scene awesome … or just any damn person we feel like proclaiming as one of our members. Notable honorary members include Adam Hennessey, creator of Anime Parliament, and Barack Obama. Honorary members have some sway in our panel lineup and many times do crossover events with us, but they normally do their own thing.

Well, that’s a basic rundown of the Disorganization XIII hierarchy. You probably only know of our core members, but honestly, DO XIII couldn’t operate if it wasn’t for all of our members doing their best. It looks like fun, but it’s real work and a community effort to boot. What do we get out of it? A couple comped convention passes. A free hotel room here and there. But really, we all do this for the adoration of the fans.

… In short, we are attention whores.

Also, our original fanfiction review expert, Rob, has taken a leave of absence from Disorganization XIII, so the rest of us now have to give written reviews our first shot.

Enendar describes this fanfiction as “The story of a Death Knight Commander and his quest to cure one of his soldiers who is afflicted by a very strange condition.” He also sent us his hopes that the fanfiction was at the very least tolerable.

…

We have a very high tolerance. That’s not what you should be worrying about.

As always our policy is that we don’t sugar coat things. We will do our best to avoid being unnecessarily cruel, but if we find a place to tell a joke or two, we probably will. Me and Rob read through this Fanfiction together, but I am writing the final review. I’ll include snippets of commentary that Rob and I made along the way, and an analysis as well. Our comments will be in bold.

Let’s get this party started.
-

A Matter of Will by Enendar

“So this is the Shadow Vault,” a slender but muscular human with short brown hair sat on an armored war gryphon and wondered at the cold and sharp metal shape of the building that served as the base of operations for the Order of the Ebon Blade in Northrend. As the man glanced around at the tower and the camp outside it, he noticed how starkly the building stood out against the alternate gleaming white ice and dark grey-blue rock of Icecrown Glacier. Although he was covered in furs so that he could survive in the cold north, the man’s armaments clearly showed that he knew how to fight. Turning his eyes to the sky, he searched the clouds impatiently. “The sun has been up for an hour now. Where is she?” Sighing, he dismounted from his gryphon and took her reins leading her to one of the tie-posts outside the vault.

Rob: Guuuaaaaa! Description dump! Also, he lost track of his grammar there. Not surprising given the complexity of the sentence.

Angelo: The author’s first problem is a pretty common error among new writers. His descriptions are too wordy, while simultaneously not telling us enough important information about the characters or setting. In fact, his first sentence was so wordy its grammar degenerated, and by the time I was done with the first paragraph I didn’t feel as if I was any closer to actually getting to know the characters we were dealing with.

Before I go any further, here are a few simple tips.

1. Partition = Make sure that each sentence has a point, and you stick to that point in each sentence. In his first sentence he tries to introduce a character and the setting all at once and it becomes cludgy becuase of it. It would have worked much better if his first sentence was something along he lines of “So this is the Shadow Vault,” a slender but muscular human with short brown hair sitting on an armored war gryphon wondered. He then could have then went on to describe the setting in the second sentence, which is where the setting description picks up anyway.

2. Order – Make sure that your whole paragraph stays on topic, and that similar story points are grouped near each other. For example, the author begins talking about his character, then takes a long time to describe the character’s surroundings, and then goes back to the character again. It would have had more of a sense of flow if the line about the furs this character was covered in, and his weapons, immediately followed the first sentence.

3. Reduce – In writing, less is more. You should only be telling your readers elements they need to know to make your story better. A good writing practice is to see what you can remove from a sentence while still having it make sense. Instead of writing “a slender but muscular human with short brown hair” you could have replaced “human” with “man” because he was in fact male, “slender but muscular” with either “slender” or “muscular” whatever you want to come across first, or possibly neither, and you can leave out brown hair all together if it really has nothing to do with getting to know the character. In fact, don’t even call him a man, call him a knight, and then you can leave out the part about how his weapons made it obvious he could fight.

Look at the paragraph now.

“So this is the Shadow Vault,” thought the fur-clad knight as he landed his war gryphon outside headquarters. He glanced at the metal tower before him, thinking of how it stood out against the white ice of Icecrown Glacier before turning his eyes to the sky. “The sun has been up for an hour now. Where is she?” His eyes searched the clouds impatiently, before dismounting his gryphon and leading her to a tie-post.”

That paragraph flows slightly better and conveys all the information that was conveyed in the original, but now it sounds dry. Why? Because there isn’t actually a whole lot being said in this paragraph. In fact, you could probably shorten the whole thing to something like “A fur-clad knight looked to the sky, impatiently searching the clouds outside the Order of the Ebon Hand’s Northrend headquarters.” and then skip right to the gargoyle fall which comes at the beginning of the next paragraph.

…

Did I just write 400+ words on the first paragraph? This is gonna be a long night.

Tune in next time when I get past the next paragraph … hopefully.

Be on the lookout for a Brawl+ station at Anime USA in two weeks. I, and others will be bringing the tools to convert Brawl to Brawl+ for the gaming room to utilize. I’ll be waiting to face you guys in combat! Anyone who beats me gets fruit salad!