Behind the Scenes: The Warrior Faculty

Today we've got part-two of the Professor series. The Warrior faculty is led by Kherif Halden, Rui Halden, and Ivan Trowe.

Professor Halden is the head of the Warrior department. He oversees the day-to-day affairs of the program and deals with the Warrior majors and minors. He is brash, blunt, unsympathetic, and serves as an appropriate introduction to the Warrior major as he teaches first-years Sparring. He doesn't place as much value on the rules as the heads of the other departments.

Professor Rui Halden, often referred to as "The Firecracker of the North" both for her fiery temper and quick blade, is the second-in-command of the Warrior department. Even more so than her husband, she is hot-tempered, impatient, and impulsive. She teaches endurance training, Nornese fighting styles, and upper-classmen studies with an emphasis in rune magic as it applies to weaponry and combat situations.

Professor Ivan Trowe specializes in teaching weapons work to first-, second-, and third-year students. Providing balance to the Warrior faculty, Professor Trowe has a calming effect on the students and is known for his limitless patience. Composed and contemplative, Professor Trowe is one of the few Warrior teachers capable of conducting class without raising his voice.

Any questions?

Behind the Scenes: The Mage Faculty

Today, we're bringing you a look at the fine instructors behind the Mage program at Eastridge. The Mage faculty is composed of Eleanore Beven, Isabella Colwyn, Joe Valint, and Violanna Laurel.

Eleanore Beven is the ever-respectable leader of the department. Level-headed and pragmatic, Beven provides a stable foundation for the Mage staff. Though the personalities of her staff vary greatly, her strong leadership unifies them, and she's more than capable of settling any conflict.

Isabella Colwyn, more commonly called Isa by her colleagues, is the powerhouse of the Mage department. She specializes in Combat-Casting and has a no-nonsense approach to students that even the Warrior faculty respect. Her impressive height adds to her already imposing presence.


Joe Valint is the first Mage professor that most first-years encounter. He teaches many of the introductory courses, but he also oversees Magical Ethics and a few higher-level seminars. The most laid-back of all the Mage faculty, Valint is the most approachable and charming member of the staff.


Violanna Laurel's first passion is teaching Decorum, and she's often single-handedly responsible for encouraging the students to have any sort of social lives; however, she has a natural aptitude for animal sympathy magic. She has a gentle demeanor, and she generally avoids conflicts unless anyone threatens her beloved Decorum classes or the Winter Ball.


Any questions? =)


--KL & JLY

Easden Never Looked So Delicious...

To continue on with our dessert theme, we thought we'd share this Map of Eastridge cake that KL's friends made for her birthday! On it, you can see all of the main continents. Also, it was delicious.

(Mmm Eastridge!)

Sooner or later, we do plan to make some newer, better maps. These were made by KL on one of those days when JLY left her alone for too long. Had she been there, the name The Middle Sea probably wouldn't have made it past her, despite KL's insistence that it's in the middle. (Never mind that on a globe, there wouldn't really be a middle...)

Take care,

KL and JLY

Finishing the Second Book

Things are busy here at the SFA office, also known as KL's place. It's been a year since we started writing Book 2, and that means our demanding, entirely arbitrary, and self-imposed schedule requires us to finish it within the next couple weeks.

Today, we got to some of the more exciting and fun scenes that we've been looking forward to for quite some time. Sometimes writing is hard, and you have to fight for every word, but sometimes writing is easy, and nothing feels better than writing when it feels right. We like to joke that, once we got past the Winter Ball, the book would write itself. Luckily, in all honesty, it is starting to feel that way. Hopefully this good streak of writing will last.

To that end, we've been working overtime, both so we can take advantage of this bout of inspiration and so we can get it done before our deadline and before JLY goes back to school. Not that we were slacking off before, but we've gone from meeting two or three times a week to virtually meeting every day (including weekends, though there tends to be more cheesecake and video games during those meetings).

(KL's Beautiful Homemade Cheesecake)

We also recently celebrated KMRicker Day as she visited us just this past weekend. She's got some great artwork coming up for you to see. There just might be some second-year profiles in the works. =)

Things have also been busy with Phase II: Tales of Eastridge. We're really proud of our beta group. They've been responding well to our various prompts, and we're really excited about how their stories are developing. Once we have a little more time, we're still hoping to figure out a way to open the beta up to more people... But that's probably still a ways off.

We'll keep everyone posted.

Best,

KL and JLY

Archived

If you'd like to see the original blogs, you can find KL's here and JLY's here.

We're sad that we had to lose all the comments in this transition, but hopefully, there might be some new ones. =)

Take care,

KL and JLY

What I'm Reading

(Reposted from 03/31/09)

I've noticed that a lot of people talk about what they're reading... I guess what you're reading can say a lot about you. In my case, these days what I'm reading is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, and Phase Two Applications. I can thank JLY for World War Z-- a late Christmas present-- and for the Applications, I can thank all of you. ^_^ Actually, World War Z has technically been put on hold so JLY, KM Ricker, and I can cram every free moment we have full of application-reading. It's been a couple of weeks, and we're nearly through all of them, and I have to say that it's been a fun couple of weeks.

To say that we're enjoying the Phase Two Applications would be a horrible understatement. Without exception, the applications have been thoughtful and interesting to read. We spend so much time talking about SFA and thinking about SFA, I sometimes feel like we're in our own little world. It's like JLY, KM Ricker, and I have been having a party and suddenly we look up to realize other people are there, standing in the room with us. Which is cool. We spend so much time building that world... It's nice to be able to share it with people who are just as excited about it as we are.

That being said, for anyone who applied, you're probably curious about just what's going on behind the scenes over here. Well, I'll tell you.

First, JLY catalogs everything. You know how she likes spreadsheets. I half suspect she doesn't really need them--when we were printing them out, I'd call out each person's name so she could check them off the list and she'd offhandedly reply with the character name and a fun fact about that person. That's how good she is--she knows each and every one of you.

Anyway, after JLY, KM Ricker, and I printed out each application, we sorted them according to majors.

After that, well, let me describe the scene for you.

JLY sits at my desk, at the corner. She's in her chair--aptly appropriated by her since it's the chair that she sits in every time we work on SFA. She has the stack of Thief applications as well as the stack of Cleric applications. KM Ricker is on the couch flipping through the Warrior applications. Me, I'm in a chair at the table, taking a look at the Mage applicants. We've each got a slice of chocolate cake, because, why not? I felt like baking.

Two of us read through each application. We go through about a batch of ten, and then we discuss whether or not the applicants might be a good fit.

I really must say, I'm pleasantly surprised by how awesome all of the applications are. And I applaud everyone's bravery for applying. It's not an easy thing to write like this, to bare your innermost thoughts. When you do academic writing (essays, or the stray thesis), there are "therefores" and "thuslys" to hide behind. But to write fantasy... That's putting yourself out there, vulnerable, and saying "I think this is cool" or "I think this is funny". And that takes guts.

Personally, I don't think I would have had the courage to put SFA up on the internet or out in printed form if it weren't for JLY. I can hide behind her and see all of the good parts that she's written instead of worrying over all the flaws I've introduced...

Anyway, the point of this post is to thank everyone who has applied... Thank you for all of your courage to put yourselves out there, thank you for your time and effort in writing your characters, and thank you for the entertainment. =)

Take care,

KL

"I like how you turned my stalkerish nature into something endearing."

-JLY, after reading this post

Drowning, and the Results of Averi's Test

(Reposted from 02/13/09)

As they say in Firefly:

When you can't run, you crawl. And when you can't crawl, you make JLY carry you.

(Well, something like that... ^_^)

95% of the time, I need a project to work on. I can't just watch TV... If I'm watching TV, I need to be writing, reading, drawing, wrapping a present, cooking a meal, eating that meal, or sipping a tall glass of hot chocolate.

It might be high school that did this to me. I've talked about it before, but if you haven't read those posts, here's the basics: The high school JLY, KM Ricker, and I went to had some strict rules about how tough of a course load a student could take... So of course, JLY and I petitioned to take the maximum course load-- AP English, AP Bio, etc. etc. The end result was much too much homework, far too little sleep, and a merciless need for productivity. During those years, I found out just how much I can get done in 24 hours, and I developed a lingering feeling that I always should be meeting that peak productivity.

So 95% of the time, I want to have something to work on. This somewhat compulsive desire to be productive allows me to get quite a bit of work done on any given day. On the other hand, when that 95% wears out, I hit the 5% of the time when I'm flat-out exhausted, mentally burned out, and ready to curl up in a corner somewhere and just watch some mind-numbing reality TV.

I guess the way I would describe it is that it feels like drowning--at first, it's just a tiring, aching of the limbs. Then it starts to dawn on you how much you've spent of yourself, just treading water. Movement becomes harder. You need to convince yourself that it's worth the effort to push your limbs through the water. Your muscles ache; it's a struggle just to breathe. But you keep churning water, because you know that all you need is to keep your head above that water line.

So that's what I've been doing lately... Just treading water.

Luckily for me, I've got a JLY. She recently wrote a post titled "Co-Authors Are The Best". I would like to reply, "JLYs Are The Best". If JLY and I each have a specialty, I would say that one of JLY's specialties is in caring about our world... Every little detail of it, which she meticulously chronicles in various Excel spreadsheets... So I fully admit that I'm not really pulling my weight right now... I mean, JLY is practically dragging me uphill over rocks. Big rocks. Sure, I try to help sometimes... It goes something like this:

KL: Okay... Let's work on... Our guide to the world.
JLY: Are you feeling okay?!
KL: ...No... But we should...
JLY: This is like my dream!

And a typical day of us working on answering questions on the forum more or less follows this pattern:

KL: Hmm... What 'Age' are they in?
JLY: Oh. They're in the Iron Age.
KL: What's the difference between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age?
JLY: Well... (Smiles!) The Bronze Age is like the Mayans...
KL: Whoa, whoa. Okay, as long as you understand what's going on.

Well, my point is that if you see JLY on the forum, be sure to shower her with praise for her dilligence... ^_^

For my part, I've been trying to get back to normal. To that end, JLY and I have tried to do a few more fun things lately. JLY and I don't make it a practice to schedule in fun, but when we burn out, it becomes inevitable. That's one of the nice things about co-authoring/co-projecting with your best friends. When we've pushed ourselves too far, JLY and I (and KM Ricker, when she's not toiling over her drawings) get to have fun.

So what do JLY and I do for fun? Well, recently we had what I'd call a 'Left 4 Dead Party'. This consisted of 2 flat-screen HDTVs, 2 X-Box 360's, 2 copies of Left 4 Dead that I borrowed from various sources, and 2 very accommodating friends to keep JLY and I alive as we run into walls, fire, and zombie hordes. The night was spent passing two of the campaigns, and to summarize, it involved a lot of JLY and myself shooting our FPS-savvy friends in the back of the head. ^_^* Heh. Our friends have assured us that in the event of an actual zombie apocalypse, the first thing they will do is take our guns and leave us far, far behind.

But there's only so much zombie-hunting a person can take... Especially when JLY spends about an hour to figure out how to get up each ladder... Our latest distraction was a game based off of Battlestar Galactica. Having not watched much of the series, I wasn't too enthusiastic about trying it, but it turned out to be one of the funnest boardgames I've ever played. I think what I love about it is that the emotions end up being real. There are two traitors for every five-person game, and when I had to stab one of my friends in the back, I felt genuinely terrible, and he felt genuinely betrayed. That game is an emotional rollercoaster, but it's definitely a good time.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to-- trying to relax, breathe, and just have some fun without feeling like I need to be doing seven other things at once. My bills are paid, my work gets done at my 9 to 5 job, and there's gas in my car. Everything else can wait, because every now and then, you need to make time for fun. Right?

Speaking of fun, by popular demand, I put Averi through the Mary Sue Litmus Test today. She scored a somewhat chagrining 39, which in this test equates a Mary-Sue, although not a hopeless one. You can see the full results and read for yourself what a 39 means.

All right, so admittedly, the SFA characters are meant to play off of many of the fantasy tropes. There's just no getting around a few of them, like:

Is the character related to royalty or nobility?
Has everyone significant heard of the character?
Is the character rich or well-to-do, although she/he doesn't work?

(Warning, Spoilers for Book 1!)

There are some others that could have been avoided:

Was the character ever abducted?

I read that and thought 'curses, book 1!' They weren't even trying to abduct her... -sigh-

Then there's this one:

Is the character's name an unusual spelling of a more common word or name?

I think 'Avery' is normally how the name is spelled. In my defense, I only swapped the spelling because I was ripping off one of JLY's characters from a previous story. That character is named Avery, and I thought changing it to an 'i' would be fun... It started out as a place-holder, but when JLY nick-named Wisteria 'Raven', all bets were off--I previously had a character named 'Ravenly'--so more or less, it was a fair trade... Right?

<3

KL

A Parting Quote-- for context, we had been laughing over something, rather than working:

KL: Okay... We need to listen to a calming song so we can work.
JLY: No! Not calm! UN-CALM! UN-CALM! *Shakes fist!*
KL: I'm putting that on my blog.
JLY: That's not funny... It's not funny to anyone but us.
KL: Yes... Well, that's never stopped me before.