OTF's Blue Publication April 2013
Hello, Everyone!
Before getting to the content of this month's issue, I would like to discuss the changes in our membership. Because of reasons you may already know, Navi and AJ have left the Communications Department. Before Navi left, she had Shannon take over as editor of the Blue Report.
After looking at her school schedule, Shannon has also decided to leave the team. As she will be to busy with her schoolwork, Shannon has relinquished control of the team to me. I know this looks very shaky with the lead changing so many hands so quickly, but I assure you I will not let this valuable resource of information go away.
Moving on to better news, I would like to welcome a new member to our team, CL5 Sarek! Sarek will be taking over the caption contest from here on out. Here's to looking forward to what I'm sure will be great content from our new author.
On to the theme of this month's article. To celebrate the release of King's Landing this month's Blue Report is completely Game of Throne's themed!
Below you will see, The monthly promotions, A brief introduction to the Game of Thrones world for anybody unfamiliar, The winner of last month's caption contest, Sarek has a recap of all the events leading to King's Landing's release, Tanya will answer questions OTFers have asked her about the process of making this new chat room, T'Pel has gathered some beautiful fan art of the series, and I have collected some Game of Throne memes for your viewing pleasure!
Congratulations to the following officers who were promoted at the launch of the new King's Landing chat room!
CL3 CheesesteakIf you have never seen the series, you may be completely lost as to why a group of dedicated fans would put in the hours of completely voluntary work in order to make a new Game of Thrones chat room. Below I have put together a brief intro to the world of Game of Thrones in order to familiarize you with the amazing, intricate world of Westeros, brought to us by the amazing author, George R.R. Martin.
Game of Thrones is an American epic fantasy television series created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. It is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin's series of fantasy novels, the first of which is titled A Game of Thrones. Filmed in a Belfast studio and on location elsewhere in Northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Iceland, and Morocco, it premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011. The series has been renewed for a fourth season, to air in 2014.
The series, set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos at the end of a decade-long summer, interweaves several plot lines. The first follows the members of several noble houses in a civil war for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms; the second covers the rising threat of the impending winter and the mythical creatures of the North; the third chronicles the attempts of the exiled last scion of the realm's deposed dynasty to reclaim the throne. Through its morally ambiguous characters, the series explores issues of social hierarchy, religion, civil war, sexuality, crime and punishment.
The series is full of many intricate plots and lots of diverse charaters. To keep everything straight this graphic may be useful.
That's it for now. If you are still curious, I suggest watching and reading the series. It is amazing!
Congratulations to James Gilfoyle. His caption happened to be very funny if you read/watch the series.
As I'm sure most of you probably already know, Tanya spent much of her time, despite also tending to a child, working to get King's Landing launched. Our own Cameron had the idea to let the people ask the questions they'd like to know about the process of making King's Landing, rather than the usual interview format. Her answers are below:
Trinity: how many times did you have to slap that trinity chick? she cray cray
Tanya: Less than I expected I would have to. And I felt bad slapping her for doing all the work.
Deus: Of all the time spent on the GoT room, how much of it was spent in pajamas eating cheetos?
Tanya: Perhaps 30% in pajamas, and 0% on the cheetos. I don't type with orange fingers. I actually get dressed in the morning and stay dressed until after I put the child to bed most nights.
SyNii: Just how bad was that SyNii guy to work with?
Tanya: He was challenging, but I think it was good to have him on board. It is important to have people of varying backgrounds and opinions, not just yes-men on your team. He and I both learned a lot on this project, and a lot of it was from working together. I think he'll have an easier time on future projects, now that he has been seasoned.
James Gilfoyle: What was the biggest challenge you faced?
Tanya: The banning of a certain member threw the biggest wrench into our works. Just what I want a month before my intended launch is a major dramatic episode that takes my team's focus off of the project. It took about a week to sort things out, recover, and get back on track. For a time I thought, we can't do this. I'm gonna have to do the rest of this by myself. Thankfully that didn't happen.
James Gilfoyle: What would you do differently next time?
Tanya: I'd make my deadlines absolutely clear. I'd spend less time chatting, more time working. Many nights I stayed up until 1am but wasn't actually working, just felt I had to stay up that late as penance for my project. And I would make it absolutely clear who is to do which avs .. ahh heck, just give them all to Trinity again. Everything was completed on time, and there isn't too much I'm eager to go back and change yet.
SyNii: What was your favourite bit to work on in the project?
Tanya: I enjoyed the idea-generating parts in the beginning. It was all fresh and new, we were just dreaming and writing some of these dreams down, ranks and colours, bartenders and themes. And even back then Michael and I were arguing, geez.
I also enjoyed getting to play with photoshop in making the pips.
SyNii: What part of the project gave you the most worry, like 'This is not going to work..we can't get this done'?
Tanya: Michiel gave me some anxiety, as I sorta forgot to give him a deadline until he only had a few weeks left. The way he works, he gets something 80% done and THEN presents it for opinions. It meant I had to wait a while to see anything, and I just saw the days ticking closer and closer to our launch party.
But when he'd present things, they'd typically be brilliant and he wouldn't actually need that much feedback, just a thumbs up to continue and a few little tweaks. I was blown away when I first saw the login, and again with the chat top, which arrived only a day before it was due. YIKES. It's fortunate he's so good at what he does.
The least challenge was definitely Ohm. He's a lot like Andrew Maxwell: smart, hard working, and difficult to get a hold of (mostly a time-zone issue). He pretty much got everything done quietly then was all, "Yeah, here's your chat, right on time."
SyNii: Did you have a kind of 'EUREKA!' moment, if so, what was it?
Tanya: It was at the beginning with Synii, when I realized this could be done, that we really could build our Game of Thrones chat. And when Trinity turned in her first assignment (and everyone else's to boot) I figured it wouldn't take too long either.
