A Gentleman’s Agreement
Edit: Links added. I’m an idiot.
Most of you came here pretty recently, to read my Let’s Plays of Morrowind, Dwarf Fortress, and (now) Dungeons and Dragons. That’s all well and good—I have a lot of fun with those projects, and don’t see myself stopping them any time soon. But you should know that my real magnum opus, the project that I’m most passionate about, is Vatsy and Bruno.
If you came in within the past month or so, I’d imagine the weekly Crossfire Tango posts are more confusing than anything. See, how it works is, I’ve had this serial story going on for like 6 months now called Vatsy and Bruno. It’s subdivided into chapters, with Crossfire Tango being the third chapter. The first story, First Ink, ended up being about 25 standard single-spaced pages long. The second one, From Breakfast to Hell, was more like 45 pages. You can find edited, compiled copies of the first two stories here and here.
Now, I can get why you wouldn’t really want to read these. For one thing, it’s some random guy’s net fiction. You’ve got no guarantee it’ll be good. In fact, if you’ve got any experience with internet writing, you’re probably going to start out assuming it’s gonna be terrible. I don’t think it’s terrible. Well, actually, I’m not crazy about the first one anymore, but other people seem to like it. Of course, even if you do like it, you’re going to have to read almost a hundred pages to get fully caught up.
I’m the best salesman ever.
Here’s the thing. I’ve got two problems: getting people to read Vatsy and Bruno, and wasting the block of free time I’m going to have at the end of this week. I figure, why not solve both problems in one stroke?
I’m going to make you a deal.
If at least three people read Vatsy and Bruno: First Ink (for the first time) before Friday, and leave some sort of comment here, I will post an additional Cahmel this weekend. If two of those people read From Breakfast to Hell before next Friday, I’ll do another Dwarf Fortress post THAT week.
Sound good?
How do we get you to do an extra D&D post?
Cash money.
Oh great, Rutskarn. Up until now I’ve just skipped the Vatsy and Bruno stuff in my feed reader. Now I gotta read two chapters in two weeks. You just ruined my timetable for this weeks completely. Thanks a lot.
Oh well. I’ll post my thoughts on First Ink on Thursday. You really are the best salesman ever, I guess.
Luckily, Thanksgiving break is the perfect time for me to catch up.
Professionally, length is measured in words, since there are many different media sizes, each with different word/page numbers. Specifying lengths in terms of pages is typically used in academia, where student work is always printed on A4 paper, and in citations, where the text has already been printed, and the page numbers are canonical.
Word counts are a built in feature of any text editor of consequence, or if you’re a nerd, wc.
PS: So drunk right now.
The first time I read crossfire and tango was about a month ago when it showed up in my RSS feed for Chocolate Hammer. I was only hoping to catch more Let’s Play Morrowinds, but after reading a few of the posts I had to go back and find out what I was missing. I really enjoy these two characters and their antics. I finished reading the first two chapters last week at work, so not sure if that counts.
I would do my usual sycophantic dealie here, but I’ve already read all of Vatsy and Bruno. Shame, that.
Do I count? I’ve read them all so far.
Your “here” linkies don’t work. Cause I’d be interested in reading them.
Good going, Rutskarn. Even though I want to read Vatsy & Bruno, I’ve never been able to find their humble beginnings in the depths of this website. You go and compile them into easily readable chapters, but you forget to actually post links to them. Thanks.
Seriously, could you get us some links?
Apparently, you don’t want us to read them after all… 😛
Aww man, Rutskarn. You know I’ve already read them. I should have never told you, if it meant I’d get another Cahmel.
Oh, and anybody who’s interested in getting us all some more brilliant writing from Rutskarn should look in the pages section near the upper right of the site. Several handy links are up there, and the Vatsy and Bruno links are like links to ‘GET RUTSKARN TO POST MORE.’ Please click those links.
Dude, I am so glad you put this up or I would never have been exposed to the greatness that is Vatsy and Bruno. I just read First Ink and will not sleep till I have consumed the rest you have available.
Oh, snap, I totally forgot the links.
I’ll go ahead and push back the deadline by one day.
Awesome. My Vatsy and Bruno reading sprees were always interrupted by weird tagging on your part, and sheer full-blown retardedness on WordPress’ part.
Now I’ll have something to do other than Project Euler stuff.
Wow, Rutskarn. I have never felt compelled to read Vatsy and Bruno until now, but voila, I reads it. Hooray. Shoop da whoop. Very nice. Cough.
A terrible thing that I have already enjoyed them and thus cannot leverage that towards enjoying more goodies. *ponder* We’re going to need to bring in fresh recruits.
Just so it’s clear: I’ve always had them over there, in readable form. It’s just that they fly under the radar.
I totally just went and read First Ink just now.
Deheh.
Shotgun.
Just finished First Ink.
A very enjoyable read.
Superb, considering most net fiction.
Assuming you guys are telling the truth, that’s three.
So, congratulate yourself, extra Cahmel-havers.
First Ink was pretty good. A bit too purple for my taste in places, but a nice idea quite well-executed. You can bank on my reading the next one before a week is out 🙂
Just finished Breakfast to Hell, I like the way this dystopian mad-science-driven ride is shaping up. The rookie adventurers were especially funny. Also, Creatively Ethical Sciences Association is probably the best name for an evil group of mad scientists ever.
Greg: And that’s my major problem with the first one. I mean, some of it works, but some of it’s just too damn flowery and too damn long.
Just finished Breakfast to Hell. It was glorious.
Heh. So, does it count that I finished First Ink maybe a day or two before you posted this, and am currently reading though Breakfast from Hell?
Is kinda twisty and confusing, so my head isn’t wrapping around it too well.
So… didn’t last until Thursday. How typical. Anyway, here are my thoughts on First Ink:
It was a fun read, though a bit too bloaty at times. The language and the humour were supber, the vocabulary a bit steep however (for a German, anyways). The characters of Vatsy and Bruno were well defined and hilarious, so for such a short piece well done.
And I especially liked the Steampunk-ish dystopian setting. It reminded me a bit of the Penny-Arcade-Adventures in tone, very well crafted. Your writing really made the setting come alive.
And the best joke, by far, was the headhunter having constant monologues. Great idea.
So all in all a very well done piece.
Great. You’ve done it. Now I’ll have to read all the rest of Vatsy and Bruno. Satisfied? 😉
I just read through them a few days ago myself. Either Wednesday or Friday last week; I can’t recall which. Anyhoo, of what I’ve read of your stuff so far, I enjoy Vatsy & Bruno more than anything else, even before I read, or even noticed that there were, the earlier stories.
I already read both and didn’t comment. Is it wrong for me to comment on them if you don’t know whether I’ve read them or not?
Hey, I’ll take any comments I can get.
That’s what it reminded me of, Penny-Arcade’s
“On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness”
Thanks Alarion!
Breakfast to Hell was also good, though confusing at times. I’m sure the extreme confusion of the underground fighting in the dark was deliberate, but you might possibly have overdone it a bit. I mean, not even the slightest _hint_ of what the thing(s) looked like?
Greg: That part was actually totally intentional. I guess I took more of a Lovecraft position on it, in that it works better if they don’t get the same generic oh-it’s-creepy description.
Oh, Lovecraft went way overboard on description – he just resorted to calling things indescribable. If you’re looking for horror that only hints at what you’re dealing with, you need to look at authors like the long-deceased M.R. James.
I’ve been reading crossfire tango, despite not having read the first two. I just read this post at 12:30 at night, so it looks like I have some reading to do tomorrow. I’m a fast reader, so I should be done with both chapters by friday if I start after college tomorrow…. 🙂
errr, to clarify, I’m in the UK and its technically half an hour into thursday. Yep, tomorrow (AKA, later today) I shall CONSUME First Ink…
Wow. Most popular post ever, and seems to have brought the Lurkers out from underneath the floorboards? I admit, I have no idea how lurking works.
Hi! I’m a stalker on the Dwarf Fortress series. I found you through Shamus Young’s blog. In hopes of an extra Dwarf Fortress post, I have just read the entirety of those two chapters of Vatsy and Bruno.
I love the atmosphere of the city, and the details about the thugs working for restructuring bureaus slowly becoming more corporate. The hints about massive government conspiracy are always nice, though it’s the little details that get me, so the conversation between Bruno and Gold Mask Guy do a lot more for me than heavy hints about the Writers Guild being on the government payroll. The bit about “what could have gone better in this assassination?” made me very, very happy.
Similarly, the conversation with Doctor Pots and Charlie was awesome — the bits about their thuggery organizations going through mergers and acquisitions was simple, but well done. The constant atmosphere of casual filth and stink makes me happy, and very well described. Again, it’s the little details that just make the story for me, and you have them constantly and everywhere. Yay!
Weirdly, the ultra-urban filthy feel with government conspiracies and corporate malfeasance combined with surrealist journalism gives it all a zany halfway-to-Transmetropolitan feel.
I very much mean that as a compliment, in case it wasn’t 100% clear 🙂
Noah–thanks a lot for the review. I haven’t read Transmetropolitan, but I’ve heard that thrown around a bit occasionally–might be worth checking out.
TransMetropolitan is definitely worth reading, if you haven’t. The protagonist is a dystopian-near-future version of Hunter S Thompson, and the city is a lot of the draw — it’s beautifully intertwined, intricately described, and full of all sorts of lovely freaks interacting with each other… People that have given up bodies and been downloaded into clouds of nanites, people that have chunks of television-like audio/video surface implanted, people with various designer body parts and diseases, people that have become half-alien hybrids with purchased alien DNA, people that were thawed after decades of being cryogenically frozen…
But half the fun is that they’re all people, loving and fighting and doing drugs and watching TV and petitioning city hall and eating fast food and… y’know. Being people.
And a great story. But I could just hear about the protagonists and the city forever, even without a story, and be happy.
“I remember one day you locked yourself in the office for 24 hours, not leaving until you’d done field investigation in at least ten different places and interviewed at least five different people.”
l’awl
“…you can do that?”
^ had me giggling like a madman
In my work for a newspaper, I have met far too many writers like Vatsy. I can relate quite well to the poor Writer’s Guild.
Just read first ink, and while I enjoyed it, and felt it was well written, I have no real desire to read some more about V&B
You horrible, horrible person
Both your link result in a 404 or 504 error, Rutskarn. What the hell’s it about anyway?
M: The story has since been completed, and merged into a single download. You can find it under “Vatsy and Bruno: A Tale in Three Acts,” under “Pages.”