Guys, I don't know what is going on with IntenseDebate and I'm a little worried it might be down for a while because their support blog hasn't been updated in 6 years... If comments are still wonky next time I post, I'll export the blog to a new URL and use Disqus. I'm going to finish up the comments:
HolliWeen
Yeah, I think Luce is partially at fault here he should have kept it professional with Imogen. I feel like Haley should have clocked she would be a problem sooner.
I agree, Luce knows he is at fault and Haley was just trying to give her a chance because he likes helping people. Neither of them expected her to do something like what she did.
ScropionPin (June)
I feel like it's controversial but I think Price has a point with some of the jailbait stuff.
Yes, Price is supposed to be correct. I know Them isn't a well known site but they usually have good thoughts about LGBTQ issues in a more intersectional and critical way beyond something like The Advocate.
Trichelle
mmmm, I knew that Reid was going to come back and cause some trouble
I needed for there to be a reason all this old stuff would be so readily available so I wrote in a documentarian! I would say Reid is being a *little* opportunistic with the whole thing but not intentionally trying to cause trouble.
SLODGER:
I was so hyped when I heard experimental fiction and this did not disappoint. The AMA was tough to read because I didn't know what to believe but I really liked all of Maverick's stuff.
I was afraid it would be confusing about what was real and what wasn't so I tried to dispell the untrue stuff right after it was said.
Tabbi
I ship LivDoher and HurleySeason...just throwing it out there.
*throws on conspiracy hat*
Hmmm, Liv's avatar looks like one of those dollmakers ? I wonder if that means anything SHV .. .
I'll talk more about the usernames and avatars in the post but they literally mean nothing. A lot of dollmakers have a randomizer button so I would use that to create a quick random avatar.
July
🙃
Somebody needs to talk to DarknessBind
So...I basically went to the Supernatural fanfiction page, sorted it by explicit and then doctored up the first entry I saw, stealing both the title, description and tags from the first few things I saw. That person's actual names is DarnkessB*o*u*nd. I felt gross making it but I really wanted a Too Far moment that would fuel a backlash to the backlash.
Corriander Season
I can tell this was a total labor of love with the care given to each detail. AMAZING. Hun, I have to know was this the grand unifying vision for the entire serial ? It's like you put down breadcrumbs along the way that all fed into this opus !!!
Also you should write all the internet headline titles from now on !
I wouldn't say...labor of "love". Just me being silly. I knew I wanted to do something like this when I started the serial, if I wasn't going to do it the serial would have ended at the wedding.
HappyApple
Okay, Who thinks SHV needs to write a 21st century epistoalry novel about a group of sexfluencers trying to become successful in LA ?
I think it would be so hard to do something like this from scratch. Fun idea, though !
HelloDecember
Is Nova the only reason Haley doesn't want his relationship with Maverick public ? I wonder how people would react if it was out in the open.
I think he wouldn't want it all over the internet and be "internet famous" no matter what. But if he didn't have Nova he probably would have just admitted it when people started digging and putting things together.
Sundance_Girl
*Pointing gifs!*
I needed a "voice of reason" in a section so I finally decided to use a comment section name.
Darcy_Lover
Uh, SHV was there a world where THIS was the last chapter. I'm not ready for this to end. Haley is my new fav and I need to know he has an HEA
No, I would never end it with something like this.
StrawberryMarg
Did they shade Reid's documentary ???? Clunky and poorly lit
I wanted to make it clear that it wasn't a fairly low budget and obscure documentary which is why no one found it for a decade.
Lorrie C
I think it's nice that Luce just needs his circle to believe him and that's it. I feel like more people should operate like that.
Luce is also in a unique situation where everyone in his family knows what Haley used to do.
LOTRMom
Okay SHV. How long have you been sitting on this ??? No wonder you used that .gif in the post. This has spoiled us !
I feel so bad for Astumi, Eloise andMai to have this on top of losing their parents.
I started working on this chapter in the Fall but I've had it outlined since Spring. Eloise and her sisters are the one perspective I think gets lost in this.
Topaz
I guess posting that photo was Haley's hamaratia. I hope he learns from his mistakes better than Nova does. They need to lock him down.
Yes, Haley has always been a little vain. As for Nova, jury's out....
Topaz
I guess we are so used to seeing Haley happy and sunshine but he was kind of mean to Luce in this chapter when most of this is on Haley and his actions
According to Lile, I once said something about characters being allowed to be angry...that's a little bit what this is. He's taking some pent up frustration out on Luce because of his relationship with Imogen.
CA_Blues
....oh...the female youtubers have less subscribers..
#truthinfiction
I can't remember how much thought I put in the subscriber count (that tea account with 9 million was probably too many subscribers...) but in my head the female influencers have straight male fans while the men have gay male fans and straight women.
Petunia
No, SHV you got the internet spot-on by being able to break down all the tropes of internet drama. Luce and Haley are really going through it. I feel like they will have some peace when Nova turns 18.
I haven't really thought about this, but they probably won't. Nova is very high maintenance and will probably continue to bother them.
Okay, on to the post.....
The Dorkiest Waste of Time
I knew from the start I wanted Years to show Haley's past accidentally going internet viral. I thought I'd blog about how Years 26 came to be.
When I started drafting this section around April I wasn't planning on using the images and was going to basically do what Lile did in QC. That was my big inspo for this. I knew I wanted:
- A viral post
- The backlash
- Backlash to the backlash and....backlash to the backlash of the backlash ?
I spitballed some headlines and then some random tweets. This is a screenshot of my very draft-y outline, I didn't edit this screenshot so some of this stuff is real raw:
It evolved from there. I wanted to capture that thing on the internet where it stops being about real people but what they represent. And then show the consequences on real people when the internet does this.
It's why I ended up bringing Maverick back, I realized he would be useful in the whole internet drama of it all.
When I finally sat down to draft the chapter in Fall I decided to make it all non-narrative. I decided to use the Buzzfeed article format to guide the story a little better instead of having a chapter of random tweets.
The new article headers are all some screenshot, "white out", re-type with close font basic-ness.
Original Them:
SHV:
Original Medium:
SHV:
The original Refinery29:
Me, stealing...IDK why I made it italicized.
I'm not sure how or when I came across the social media post generator idea. I think I vaguely knew you could make fake tweets and went from there. For the tweets I used TweetGen. For short iPhone convos I use ifaketextmessage. For the YouTube I used fakedetail. I used Zeoob for Instagram.
Zeoob has a lot of generators but the formatting is off . I used their iPhone one for longer convos an because it shows time stamps.
The Guru Gossip was kind of a clusterf*ck. I had this brilliant idea to just make a text box in Microsoft word and then save the textboxes as images but it didn't go exactly how I planned but I got it there.
The Process
In order to create chapter 26 (with the way my brain works) I basically wrote out every piece of text that appears in a Word doc and then went back and made it into a tweet, headline, article etc.
The draft:
The final product (the names got changed for some reason)
I just kept snipping, whiting out and cropping my way through it. I also tried not to use faces. Then I just sort of put it together.
The biggest time suck was creating a bank of profile photos and usernames...most of the usernames are takes on existing usernames I found under a viral tweet or on a GuruGossip page. I was just trying to get it done so I didn't create any hidden relationships between the avatars. I didn't want to us real faces so I focused on dog pictures and icon makers.
It was a fun project !
Chapter 27
A picture of Haley and Nova goes viral online but starts to impact Haley's life IRL when a former nurse starts posting about him on Reddit.
-1- Tracking Aeroplanes by The Echelon Effect
-2 - i'm so tired by Lauv and breathe by Lauv
-3- Intentions by Justin Beiber
