User blog:Micfac08/DtR Wiki Updates (August 2010)

August 31, 2010 (5:20 AM EDT)
Made some progress today--somewhat, anyway. I updated the Brandon Danber, Ashley Chamberlain, and Melinda Flint character pages and completed them with data through episode 2. I was going to move on to Josh Poncek's character page, but... didn't. That's next! Following that is the Jack Brock, Jarrid Harlen, and Dustin Finley pages, which likely will come later today... or if it doesn't, it'll be the first September updates. Any sharp-eyed readers out there will find that Brandon and Ashley's character histories will have nearly identical summaries for episode 2's data. Yeah, that's because with the exception of the final sentence in that data is copy-and-pasted. Couldn't be bothered to write a completely separate summary of those two characters, who spent the vast majority of their "screen time" in episode 2 together. I'll probably end up doing something extremely similar with Jack, Jarrid, and Dustin, who each spent the second episode appearing in the same scenes with one another. Saved a bunch of time doing that, that's for sure, and it's just as accurate anyway. So... yeah. There may be a new update before the end of today, if not, see ya in a new blog!

August 29, 2010 (4:15 AM EDT)
Well, I made a little progress today. Not a ton of progress, but some! This update includes adding a cultural references section to both the episode 1 and episode 2 summaries, as many episodes of the web series would include at least one reference to another movie, television show, or other forms of entertainment. In addition, the Rachel McCarey, Jamie Blonner, and Danielle Grayson character pages have all been updated with data complete through episode 2. I thought about plowing ahead and moving onto Brandon Danber's character page as well, but I've lost my motivation for the night, it seems, so that'll probably come either later on today or sometime late tomorrow night. Another issue I'm running into with the wiki is me finding summarizing the same events I've already summarized in the episode summary page for each character, especially whenever many characters appear in the same scene together, something the web series was notorious for doing, with groups of five, six, seven, or even more characters commonly being shown in the same scenes together, which means I then have to go back and summarize those events five, six, seven, or even more times for each of those characters, so it's becoming somewhat tedious. But I think the way that I'm going about doing this is the right way to do it. I figure it's better to have everything updated as I go instead of trying to just do all the episode summaries and then attempting to go back and write accurate (and detailed) character histories upon the completion of that. At least this way, I'm forcing myself to make these articles extremely detailed instead of briefly describing several episodes' worth of material into a couple of small paragraphs. I like detailed wiki articles, although I am coming to realize that these are going to be enormous articles when compared to your garden variety wiki articles covering other topics.

August 28, 2010 (4:00 AM EDT)
All right, it's been over a week since I posted any updates to the wiki already. I said at the beginning this project was going to meander in and out of my interests due to the sheer size of the entire thing, didn't I? We're already hitting ten days between sizeable updates and the wiki's still not even a month old. Oh, well, I know it's something I'll "eventually" get going. I am still filtering ideas on how I'm going to get the first installment of the novel series going once I actually allow myself to start working on that. I have it in my head that I won't be starting writing installment #1 of the novel series until all of the web series material is on this wiki. Will I stick to it? Hmm... we'll see. I may end up getting the first installment started, but it certainly will not be finished before the web series material is completely chronicled in this wiki. Besides the fact that I have absolutely nothing of any kind of real substance to show for the novel series at this point, there's also the hurdle of figuring out how to get it published, be it on a website or actually getting it published in print somewhere. At this point I have no idea how to even go about getting anything started, and since I have nothing to show for the novel series at this point, I don't even know why I'm rambling on about this right now. Though the 4:00 AM timestamp on this update may have something to do with it....

Anyway, in this update... there's not a whole lot to report, but Michael Bennett, David Richards, and Rocky Fronset are now updated with data complete through episode two of the web series. The next updates will come for Rachel McCarey and a very brief update for Jamie Blonner, whose "cameo" appearance at the beginning of episode two of the web series is all the material that the character saw in that particular episode. These updates are coming slower than I had intended them to for some reason, and I'm not even sure why. Laziness is my favorite excuse, so let's just go with that. I think there may be more updates coming this coming week, hopefully enough to finish off the episode two material and start moving into the episode three summary, but only time will tell how far I get in completing that goal.

August 18, 2010 (3:45 AM EDT)
Something very irritating happened around 7:30, 8:00 this past evening when I first started working on this wiki. It was either my internet connection, my laptop, or Wikia itself, but my computer was fighting me tooth and nail to be able to update this wiki tonight. It would either take forever to load a page, or it wouldn't load the editing page completely and I'd have to reload the page over and over again. This went on for about an hour, and it nearly stopped me from continuing with it. Eight hours later and here I am ready to rattle off an impressive list of updates!

The trouble started when I was creating the character page for Jake Tenners, AKA Skullface and updating that page through episode 1's data. The timeline page, which should have followed the Skullface article, did not, because of the aforementioned trouble on Wikia. However, it would let me go ahead and create the article for the summary for episode 2 of the web series, so that's what I did next. Then I created the timeline page and updated it through episode 2. That's going to be a big page when it gets completed through episode 29, that's for sure! (Remember, only episodes 1-29 still exist, episodes 30 and 31 have been irretrievably lost.)

So here's what's new and updated tonight!


 * The Jake Tenners (Skullface) article has been created and updated through episode 1 data.


 * The episode 2 summary page has been created and completed.


 * The web series page itself has been updated in the story section with episode 2 data.


 * The web series timeline page has been created and episode through episode 2 data.


 * The cast of characters page for the web series has been updated, with empty pages for Vic Bennett, Dr. Steve Galan, Karan Harlen, Elaine Flint, and James Hawk, as all of those characters were introduced in episode 2.

Next up is going to be updating or creating new character articles and updating them with episode 2 data. The order I do those in from now on will be the order in which the character appears in any given episode. Coincidentally, with episode 2, that again means we'll be starting with Michael Bennett, who had a big episode in episode 2 as his psychic powers began to manifest themselves, so the abilities section in his page will be filled out to a certain extent with that update as well. After him will be Rachel McCarey and Rocky Fronset, along with David Richards and Jamie Blonner (she made only a cameo appearance in the episode). I'd be willing to bet that it won't take me nearly as long to do episode 2's data because I won't be physically creating all the pages this time around like I was after episode 1, only really adding to them. We'll see if I'm right later on either today or tomorrow morning!
 * The cast of characters page will now also include notations for each episode a character appears in, and that has all been updated through episode 2.

August 16, 2010 (9:30 AM EDT)
All right, I made more progress this morning after I got off work as I created articles for the following locations in the DtR universe: Eagle Creek, Ohio; Eagle Creek Junior High School; Eagle Creek tributary; Eagle Creek Boardwalk; Rollerskate. During the course of making these articles, it was becoming clear that it would be almost too difficult to limit the information in these articles to just data from the first episode at this time, since the settings themselves are not necessarily the focal point of the events of any given episode. To that end, I really only wrote introductory paragraphs for these articles and set up sections that can be filled in as more information is chronicled in the wiki. I did realize during the course of creating these pages that I never bothered making a page for Skullface, who did appear in episode 1, so I do need to do that yet. That's something for the next update, probably later today after I get some sleep. Character page for Skullface and creating a timeline article and completing them through episode 1 are up next, then episode 2's summary, which I hope to actually get to tonight....

August 15, 2010 (10:00 PM EDT)
Okay, well, I made up a bit for my laziness the past two days and finished creating character pages and updating them with data from episode 1 of the web series for every character seen or mentioned in the first episode with exception to the teachers at Eagle Creek Junior High School, none of whom would make much difference in the first episode or any others that followed anyway. Their character data will appear in the Eagle Creek Junior High School article when I get around to making that, which will be in the next day or two. So with all the characters from the first episode now having completed articles for their appearances in that episode, it's time to move on to articles for the various locations seen in the series. The first episode included the following locations, for which articles are going to be created over the next couple of days: Eagle Creek, Ohio; Eagle Creek Junior High School; the Eagle Creek Boardwalk, the Eagle Creek tributary, and the Rollerskate roller-skating rink. I'm noticing that the very first episode of the series is likely going to be the easiest for me to go through the process of creating wiki articles for because it was quite a simple episode, taking place generally in the same setting throughout the entire episode and had a relatively small cast of characters. Future episodes are going to be quite a bit more difficult and more time-consuming to complete, even as it's taken me over a week to get just this far with the first episode's data. It is making me come to the realization that not much (if anything) is going to be written in the novel series in the 2010 calendar year if I continue with my current plan to completely finish creating the web series wiki before beginning any writing of the novel series. As much as I do kind of want to get cracking on getting something written in the novel series, I do feel it's important to have an existing and elaborate reference for the web series established before I get moving in order to be able to more easily make changes to and adapt storylines and elements from the web series into the novel series, even though the events of the web series will not necessarily be taking place in the novel series for numerous installments after the first one (if ever). There have been so many times that I've begun writing chapters of the new incarnation of the series and then abandoned them either after the first chapter is written or during the writing of that first chapter because I didn't have access to what already happened in the web series easily accessible, which is why I'm making myself do the web series information before even attempting to start writing the novels this time around. Therefore, I'll continue to work away at getting this web series wiki finished as quickly as possible, even though I'm realizing this is going to take many months to accomplish. I sure hope that someday, all this work will be worth it!

Anyway, so here's what I accomplished today (or at least since early this morning): Character pages for David Richards, Mark Shane, Travis Sirlon, and Lisa Walker are all created and updated through information collected in episode 1 of the web series. I have to go to work here in a little bit, so that's all the further I'm going to get tonight. I plan to make articles for the locations seen and mentioned in the first episode tomorrow or Tuesday sometime, and after that, create the web series timeline (and I've got to figure out how to do the timeline itself, because there are three different timelines in this series to be made aware of). After that, unless I find something I'm forgetting about right now, I do believe it'll be time to move on to updating everything through the events in episode 2, so... it's kind of starting to take shape a little bit, slowly but surely. Stay tuned for more updates!

August 15, 2010 (5:00 AM EDT)
If I was impressed with how much I got done the last time I updated the wiki, I'm disgusted with how little I've updated it since then. But I tend to do this a lot, throw myself at something for a minute, then get bored with it and quit for a few days or weeks, then come back, so I'm sure this is going to happen a lot during this whole "research the web series" phase of the series' retooling. I know the only way to get everything done is to just get it done, but I also look at it as me not having to worry about having any kind of deadline, and nobody's standing over my shoulder with a gun to my head telling me if I don't have all the information from the web series put on tthe wiki by such and such a time and date, so... I'm doing it at my own pace, quite frankly. So, therefore, I've got one new page created and updated with all its information for the first episode of the web series and another page started before I decided to go ahead and be done for the night. Josh Poncek's character page is the one I created and filled out completely with episode 1 data, and David Richards' character page has the introductory paragraph written and that's it. I'll try to get the motivation to do more maybe later on tonight (that's going to depend on if I wake up early enough before work) or tomorrow and Tuesday. After that, I work the next six days, so updates during that stretch are probably going to be few and far between....

August 12, 2010 (3:00 AM EDT)
Well, I'm actually fairly impressed with myself for getting as much done today as I did. I didn't really expect myself to actually follow through and do any more character articles today, but I did, and now there are only five characters left to create articles for before I can move on to the locations and timeline articles, and then I can move on to summarizing episode 2. I'm telling you, a good way to learn the ins and outs of any form of entertainment is to try to create a wiki for it by yourself and actually try to do it right. By now, I could probably recite the first episode of the web series from beginning to end without missing a beat. I'm also pretty shocked at the large size of the articles I'm creating for just one episode's worth of material, and I remember for a fact that the episodes got bigger the longer the series went on, so some of these articles are going to be absolutely mammoth before I get done with just the web series side of their histories. By the time the novels get going, this wiki is going to be enormous. It's already kind of getting big, even though there are still a ghastly amount of dead links out there. All right, enough rambling. Earlier today I said I created character articles for Rocky Fronset and Danielle Grayson. After that I created the following pages: Nicole Halloway, Jarrid Harlen, Becky Jansen, Rose Manning, Amanda ("Mandy") Marin, and Rachel McCarey, all of which are updated with detailed information from episode 1 of the web series, with quite a bit more to follow in each case, of course, but it's a start. In the summary for the first episode, I added a subsection where I listed each character that appeared in the episode. This will be a recurring section in each episode's summary, because it will be a running count of the number of appearances each character makes in the web series from start to finish.

The next updates should come tomorrow (well, later on today, actually) or the day after, which will begin with Josh Poncek's character page. Other than him, David Richards, Mark Shane, Travis Sirlon, and Lisa Walker still do not have character pages, and those are the last five characters either seen in or mentioned during episode 1 that need to be added before moving onto creating location pages for Eagle Creek, the Eagle Creek tributary, the Eagle Creek Boardwalk, and Eagle Creek Junior High School. Following that, the web series' continuity's timeline page will be created and updated with information gathered in episode 1, and then after that, it will be time to move on to episode 2. So it's a long, slow, tedious process, but progress is being made, it seems. At least a little bit. I'm still trying to think positively before I decide I hate this series again, quite frankly, lol. My goal for the next day is to finish everything I listed here pertaining to episode 1, and saving episode 2's summary for the following day(s). Check back to see what happens!

August 11, 2010
Today, I added character pages for Rocky Fronset and Danielle Grayson and updated those pages to include information about the character's initial appearances in the first episode of the web series. There may be more updates to come later on today, but that's it for right this moment. Next will be the character page for Nicole Halloway.

August 9, 2010
About a week ago (August 3, 2010, for the history buffs), I finally decided that it was time to sit down and actually make something tangible of this incredibly massive story that has been forming and evolving in my head since I was 14 years old in 1998. Of course, what this series will be when it is written today is absolutely nothing like it was when I first thought of it, but the same basic characters are there, and the same basic plot is still in there somewhere, but with a lot of other storylines and characters thrown in the mix on top of it. I think the main reason why it's taken me so long to actually get moving on writing the rebooted series, set in the 2008-2012 timeline, is not only because I was so afraid of how massive it had become, but also because of a lack of tangible material I could go back and look at for reference in writing the new incarnations. I had started to write the new incarnation three different times since 2004, but never got further than a chapter into it in either case. Lack of proper planning for the Coral Beach side of the cast was really keeping me from getting anything other than Eagle Creek's cast's storylines going. It also didn't help that the computers I use like to crash and need to be replaced before I can back anything up, which is another fine reason for finally making a wiki for everything, so I don't have to keep going back and starting over should anything happen to my current laptop. It's not all just gone when a computer decides it's not going to cooperate with me anymore. Of course, I should back up the files like a normal person, but I like to do things the hard way in life, quite frankly, and backing up my files would make too much sense. So now we've got a wiki for this project, and... well, it'll need a wiki once I get the novel series off the ground anyway, so we'll just call the wiki in these extremely early stages "the series bible," because at this wiki, there's going to be a wealth of information about the cast of the novel series, and in many cases, spoilers may abound about potential future storylines, because the events of the novellas and web series actually take place further ahead on the timeline of the novels, which has been time-shifted nine years into the future from the web series, which was itself time-shifted two years into the future from the novellas. My own feeling about releasing such spoilers? Eh, it's all right. Most of what happened in the web series is actually either going to either not make it into the novel series at all, will take place at some other point in the timeline than late May 2009, or will be so fundamentally changed from its prior appearance in the web series or novellas that anything that happened in those two continuities should be taken with a grain of salt when pertaining to its relevence in the novel series anyway. Anything that makes it into the novel series from the web series virtually unchanged is... well, an Easter egg of sorts for any fans who happen to find it first. The bottom line is, the events that were covered in the web series covers such a small slice of what Dreams to Reality will become as a novel series that I'm not concerned with spoilers about those events being out there. In fact, I've been trying to tell anyone who would listen about this story for over a decade, so if anyone were to contact me and ask me what I have planned to do, I'll probably tell them (at least for a while). I'm telling you, this story is huge, and I could tell anybody anything about it and not spoil the entire thing.

So about this wiki itself... wow, this is going to be an enormous project. I've never worked on any other kind of wiki before, but I knew that it was going to be a big undertaking when I went into it, but... my God, this thing is even bigger than I thought possible. It took me almost two hours a bit ago to create the article for Melinda Flint as it stands today--in which the only information is data from the first episode of the web series and absolutely nothing else. So I'm sitting back and looking at this cast list from the first episode and arguing with myself how I should go about doing the wiki--should I just summarize all of the episodes first and then go back and fill in the gaps with the cast of characters, or do everything step by step, episode by episode, so that nothing ends up getting missed? Well, I've always demanded of myself to make this series more complex than it probably should be, so of course, I'm going to insist that I make this wiki so big, which is probably going to doom it to failure, I'm going to say it right here, right now, at 11:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time on Monday, August 9, 2010. This wiki will lie unfinished and unupdated within two months' time. It is probably true. I'll keep coming back to it, sure, and update here and there, but the sheer mass of this story is crushing, and I really cannot seem to get it moving because I keep finding new ways to scare myself with how big it is, like attempting to create a wiki cataloguing all 30 episodes of the web series and create articles for everything related to it before writing the novel series I actually want to be writing instead of languishing in series history like this. But if authors didn't have a way to put their ideas on paper (or virtual paper, I guess), I'm sure they'd be crushed under the sheer mass of their stories just like I have been with mine, so I think that once I get some kind of system down with the wiki, it'll start to flow faster until that entire continuity is chronicled, and I can use it to use as a frame of reference when writing the new incarnation. Hopefully that convenience will in turn help me to get the novels off the ground faster, and in turn help me make the series better and more successful. I'd like to think that I could maybe eventually get something for this major labor I'm pulling off by myself here at some point!

Updated articles for today are the character articles for Michael Bennett, Jamie Blonner, Jack Brock, Ashley Chamberlain, Brandon Danber, Christina Davis, Dustin Finley, and Melinda Flint. All of their character profiles are current up through and including... the first episode of the web series. Whoo-hoo, lol. I'll begin with Rocky Fronset tomorrow and make my way down the alphabetical list of cast members until I finish with them, and then begin work on the web series timeline, including data on events depicted in the first episode, and begin articles pertaining to changes in continuity between the novellas and web series, and in turn between the web series and novel series, before moving on to summarizing the second episode of the web series and updating the various articles that report on characters and locations featured in the second episode. I'll update here as we go, so keep an eye here for updates!