A collaboration?

[JJ Burke]

i think what jp means is that we can better design our page layout(s) by first knowing our content. for example, will there be one dominant image on the home page, or two or more? will content be organized into different sections? does each article need its own page, or do some things work well side-by-side?

i propose that, rather than appointing an actual editor, we use polls to make editorial decisions when there are more than one opinion.

i also propose that each of us represent the work of a doomed staff member of this eldritch news site, and invent the story of that person's subsequent death or disappearance.

i also propose that we destroy all evidence of our plans once the project is completed. we will admit no involvement with the thing except that it was submitted anonymously here at the temple of dagon.

maybe we can have a photo of the ominous package aleister found under his windshield wiper one day — a package containing a cd — a cd containing the ftp directory of a website that never saw publication.

stories within stories! weeeeeeeeee

[Eternities End]

I Like it!

[Grendelvs]

i propose that whatever is done, it be done over seven days. the contents begin to correlate over the course of the week until the paper reads like the Weekly World News.

tell you what...once i'm done with the page (it looks just like the jpeg i posted, except it works as an actual page, because it is one) i'll post it mostly blank. i put two things on it (the microbe/fossil thins and a policeman found guilty of murder "Those kids were out of their minds," he claimed) and include the code.

once the ah, committee has decided, whomever can do it can change it. the layout, content, whatever...just let me finish it before you tell me that it isn't what you're looking for. *L*

[JJ Burke]

AAAAAAA!!! stop the presses! hold the phone! nobody move until i have another thought!!!

it's totally worthwhile to experiment in this early stage

[Grendelvs]

RE: staff members...would it be too cheesy so ah, homage other characters in the entirety of the Mythos?

for example, i loved William Browning Spencer's book Résumé With Monsters, and i'd like to play off of a character's name from that. or reference the main character's book, The Despicable Quest. would it be too eye-rolling bad, or what?

[Grendelvs]

ooh...and i would just like to say, the title of this thread makes me think of Tenacious D.

a collaboration,
abomination
an amusement park ride

(paraphrased from Warning)

[JJ Burke]

the homage question requires us to decide the angle of this thing.. we can either treat it completely seriously and see how far the hoax can go, or we can make it more of a clearly fictional tribute type thing.

either way can wind up good or bad.. for my 2¢, it would be more interesting to do the hoax, and in that case we should avoid any winks or nods that might disrupt the realism.

this could be a good point for our first editorial poll.. hodgson is the most prolific poll poster among us... hmmmmm?

[Jesus Prime]

I think we go for the hoax. When this is all done I'll move the thread to one of the... secret forums...

[Hodgson]

Not to be difficult, but I wonder whether doing the project solely as a fake news site won't limit the scope somewhat. You mention making it a realistic hoax. There are some things that you might like to produce for this project that won't seem plausible posted to a news site.

But if the news site is incorporated into something larger, then it could be done. I would suggest (I don't remember whether I mentioned this before) that all the elements be integrated by way of hyperlinks into one large document, written by a single author. The text that contains the links could be written after everything else is done. Think Foucault's Pendulum, House of Leaves, or even "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (Borges).

This approach might allow not only for both realistic hoax elements as well as (perhaps dubious) tribute elements, but it would also allow for the loose, braining-storming method of construction that's been proposed.

And by the way, I may as well mention as another possible element the "Bloop" that Enkil posted about elsewhere.

[JJ Burke]

Not to be difficult, but I wonder whether doing the project solely as a fake news site won't limit the scope somewhat.
...
This approach might allow not only for both realistic hoax elements as well as (perhaps dubious) tribute elements, but it would also allow for the loose, braining-storming method of construction that's been proposed.

i wasn't thinking of a regular mainstream style news site.. more like an underground zine or something. a regular news site would have to contain a bunch of other 'newsy' stuff that isn't pertinent.
i'm thinking of a group of people sort of like us, but fatally curious versions, who met online and decided to put their heads together over some weird things.. and now they're all gone from their various parts of the world and nobody knows why.
these ideas are compatible, i think

[Grendelvs]

fatally curious versions? hmm....

once, i stuck my head inside a running motor/generator to see if i could see where some flashover we were getting was coming from.

[Eternities End]

Really...once when I was a kid I stuck my finger in an electrical outlet because I thought thats were Lepricons hide there gold

[Grendelvs]

*sniff*

smells like Family Guy in here.

[Pinonomicon]

Perhaps rather than a bonafide news site, we could make it like an amateur paranormal site or something, which would give a reason why paranoid 'nonsense' was allowed to be postted. I think that a news site would severely limit what we could include...most news sites have a short text section, one small picture and four or five links to largely uninteresting 'related' stories.

[JJ Burke]

i have an idea for my 'guy'... he's a freelance reporter in southern california, investigating a death or something that smells to him like a cover-up. he's written a couple of articles on it already, but none of the local rags want to buy them — they're too weird, too uncomfortable to read. finally, he comes across this group of like-minded weirdos on the web, and they give him some piece of information that opens up a new lead. he starts down this new corridor of mystery, and *poof* he's gone.

anybody else have ideas like this?