At the same time, another phenomenon developed. The IRC group were a bunch of Superguy authors and readers, all alone in the Net. Well, not really, since you're never really alone on IRC. This early group consisted of such people as 'Narnian', 'Robotech_Master', 'General Chaos', 'Frobozz' and Mason, who also has a journal. Who will also not get a link, because I'm too lazy to dig up my bookmarks page. Note to self: Put in an 'other journals' page.
Anyway, get so many authors in one place and you're bound to come up with something dangerous. In this case, it was 'channeling', the name we gave to the free-form system of role-playing characters from the Superguy milieu, or in the case of non-authors, random characters from the grab bag. It was amusing at first, until someone (probably me, which means that everything which follows would be my fault, which is a wonderful, tragic sort of twist on it all) got the idea to take things a bit more seriously. Stories! Interactive! On IRC! Sort of!
This was, in retrospect, an enormously stupid thing to do. Oh, sure, it was fun, sort of, but really, what the hell were we thinking? It wasn't so much that none of us could write, plot, or role-play, but it was a bit like everyone writing their own stories, in their own styles, with no editor to kick them back into line. Editors exist for a reason, and that reason is to be a higher authority that points out when things don't work. Because 90% of everything is still crap. A higher grade of author just means a higher grade of crap.
And then, about the time the idea was beginning to really filter in that 'Hey! We can do actual, coherent role-playing here!', Jon finished a workable chat-server. It would become named Calvin.
[Sound effect: Rolling peals of thunder.]
And onto Calvin we went.
Now, Superguy itself had been changing in the interim. The New Wave of authors had been followed by the Post-New Wave of authors. Like the internet itself at this point, the new people flooding in were emboldened by the anonymity of the internet, and they were going to take advantage of it, yes they were. Well, actually, in the case of Superguy, it was only one. And he was called the Evil Author.
It's not that we named him that, it's that he named HIMSELF that. It's amazing the rest of us were able to get anything done, what with the Clue Alarm blaring like that in our ears. But something, some community ethic, prevented us from seeing what was really going on. The Evil Author was much like most other newbies, stumbling around, enjoying himself, not getting things quite right, with the exception of the fact that he was deliberately malicious.
Well, actually, that's still up for debate in some circles. Not in this one. Being rather surly, eventually I'd had enough of some of the Evil Author's more irritating habits, and called him on it. I don't even remember what it was that annoyed me so, but whatever it was, it wasn't anywhere NEAR as bad as the response, which was to progress from merely being annoying in the abstract to annoying in the particular, namely, by going for the angle of personal attacks.
I was still, regrettably, a newbie at this point, and I hadn't really been involved in many flame-wars. I wasn't really that big on confrontation, back then. The result of this was that I still had pretty thin skin. It was difficult to get me really mad, but then, nobody had ever tried before. Not for a long time. I was confident that not only was I right, but I could probably convince the Evil Author of my rightness, and in any event, I'd have the backing of the people I considered to be my friends, the rest of the Superguy Community(tm, pat pending).
The Evil Author managed to make this fall down go boom. First, he hit me with the now-common internet tactic of adding an extra letter to my name (to preserve the 'its not REALLY him! Honest!' value, and casting me as a murderous rapist in one of his darkfics.
Words really sort of fail to describe the magnitude of my surl at that. But, predictably, it got worse. This was a tactic I'd never seen before, so I saw red, and basically howled for blood. Evil Author backed down immediately, and changed the name, but really, he'd gotten his hit in, why shouldn't he? The urge for revenge still burned, however, within me, and I was determined to do something, anything, to get back at him. Obviously such a blatant attack wouldn't be stood for, right? Not by the friendly ol' group of Superguy authors to whom I'd aspired to all those years.
As I said, I was still a newbie, really. This was the internet, the bastion of free speech, and whatever the Evil Author might say, he would still be allowed to say it on Superguy. Back then, I really didn't understand this, and really, it was an incredibly embittering experience. I'd come to expect something from the group that it wasn't really set up for. And, being rather uncommunicative, especially after the "It's only words, regardless of what he said. Deal with it, mmkay?" slap-down I got, I wasn't in the mood to lay out my feelings to the people who'd just attempted to hand me a clue about the way things worked. I felt betrayed, really, by a bunch of people I looked up to, who I'd lavished my own creativity on with no expectation of anything other than being treated, I don't know, like an equal. Or at least someone whose concerns ought to be listened to. If I'd expressed this (of course, guys aren't precisely reknowned for the ability or desire to express their feelings) I probably would have gotten a bit more consideration, but then, as I said, I'd just been told to shut up by a bunch of people whose opinions I actually respected. So I did, and kept my burning surl quietly locked up where it couldn't hurt anything except my blood pressure.
Nowadays, of course, I'm pretty well immune to insults, after a stint on news.admin.net-abuse.misc and a few skirmishes with John "Froth! Nazi Scum-Sucking Pedophile Fiend! Froth!" Grubor. Net.kooks are quite good at purging those last few sensibilities. I was on the road to becoming a flame-warrior surl-o-rama kinda guy. But that, as they say, is another story.
Anyway, if this were the South Park movie, this is the point at which Kenny is badly burned, but perfectly capable of recovering on his own with a little care, and on his way to the hospital.
If this were the South Park Movie, the 'Review Crew' would be the first doctor digging into Kenny and removing a random bit of possibly-spleen material for no clear reason.
Around the time of the Evil Author, Matt aka Narnian began doing reviews of Superguy posts. There were a lot of posts in those days, and this took a lot of work, so the 'Review Crew' slowly began to expand, with Matt coordinating things. Most of the IRC group joined up. We moved to Calvin, and continued. Or was it before. Things were a muddle back then, and I can't remember what the order, precisely, of the events that follow was. Still, it went something like this.
No, wait, I'm getting two screeds confused. We were still on IRC. Roleplaying had yet to REALLY take off. Writing was happy, and reviews flowed freely across the land. All were happy, except for Roger Christman.
Roger, you see, had a problem with the level of anime inspiration in several Superguy authors fiction. I and several of the Young Whippersnappers and New Wave were pretty openly inspired by Japanese animation. For some reason, Roger took issue with this, and screeded on the subject at length, essentially stating that anime and superhero/science fiction could never mix, and that anime should be excised like the evil it was. It was a well structured screed that was simple, neat, logical and completely stupid. The proper response would have been to say 'Shut up, you moron'. My response was to surl.
In the process of blowing off steam and openly contemplating the methods of revenge which might be exploited to paint a massive 'neener neener' at Roger, I mentioned something about actually using this counter-opinion in Superguy as inspiration for something. Which wouldn't have been a problem except that I mentioned it on the Review Crew's IRC hangout. Now, I admit to spouting off a lot, but I rarely follow through, mainly because I'm a lazy bastard. Matt took me seriously, however, and I was 'suspended' from the Review Crew because my opinions were pretty clearly majorly biased, and besides, using Superguy for revenge would have been bad form. This did not help my mood any, and, in the surl that followed, the Review Crew essentially ceased to be.
To be fair, of course, this was as much, if not more, my fault as it was anyone else's. But, again, I'd expected too much of people. It's almost astounding to think I was actually once that trusting, but there you go. Awfully self-pitying as this may sound, the main gist of the matter is this: Superguy wasn't "work" writing, and it wasn't even really particularly structured. It wasn't writing for the sake of expressing a point, getting a story out there or really anything other than fun. When it began ceasing to be fun, it lost, well, the entire point. It was, basically, a humorous list. Humor may be serious work, but, well, not here. This was fun. Once.
Meanwhile, on Calvin, a new form of 'writing' was coming about. Namely, we were, in the development of our own little private world to fiddle about in, recapturing a lot of the spontaneity and fun that was being sucked out of Superguy. Spontaneity.
Spontaneity. A second problem. Perpetual crossoveritis, as we later referred to it in a derogatory manner. At the time, though, it was fun, if a bit tiring. Namely, it was lots of authors diving into a combined storyline which often spiralled out of control in size. Several people in particular (of which I was one) became embroiled in a near-permanent crossover. As soon as we'd finish one, there'd be another on the horizon. Such, well, more organized plotting took a lot of the speed out of things, as not everyone writes and plots at the same rates.
Regardless, Calvin. We were discovering that, essentially, it used the same part of the brain that we normally devoted to writing, as it was rule-less free-form, and, more important, it was fun. It was spontaneous. It was fun. Superguy, increasingly acrimonious and surly, wasn't fun. This was. To absolutely nobody's surprise, we began devoting more effort to the part that was fun.
Enter, once more, Roger Christman, with the 'Calvin.Ist Manifesto', a funny title, really, ha ha. Not having learned from his battle with the anime writers, Roger now took aim at the roleplayers, who he blamed, apparently, for the crossovers and slowness of writing and such. The problem being that Superguy wasn't fun, this was, and none of us were getting paid to write for Superguy. Given a choice, we'd take the fun part over the not-fun part. (About a year or so later, in a stunning demonstration of how history repeats itself, another author would state this exact same point in pretty much the exact same words, and get pretty much the exact same response, only surlier.) Roger telling us to get a stiff upper lip and get back to it did not precisely inspire any of us to get back to Superguy. In fact, it accomplished much the opposite, by making me in particular, and, I imagine the rest of the group in general, even more fed up with Ye Olde Superguy. Unlike the previous surl, this time I felt completely justified in feeling this way.
The smart thing to do would have been quit while I was ahead, give up on the increasingly surly and confrontative nature of Superguy (where several Old Fart egos had begun to clash, 'camps' were forming among various Authors, and things were generally getting ever more surly) and happily while away the time on Calvin. It might have actually worked.
Naturally, this was not, in any way, what actually happened.
Tomorrow: Beyond Calvin and the Decline (but not Fall) of Superguy. Plus, we replace Kenny's heart with a baked potato.
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