OrcishLibrarian has just posted the article "Highlighted M:EMory: Sertaria" in Expanded Multiverse/M:EMory.

Comment on it here!

I always get kicked out of reading the dossier by the names Afresa and Ameran (complete with red, white, and blue color identity!). They are really unfortunate, as they set the impression that the world is all about transplanting real world continents into Magic whole in the fashion of a parody, and I know that isn't really the case.

I'm not sure if I like the extra link click it takes me to get to the meat of the content. It feels like a let down to only get a paragraph or two from a front page link. Maybe post excerpts from the world building or post one of the stories set on on Sertaria?

yeah that got me too. unfortunate.

Yeah. We were young and naive back then. It's probably on the "to change" list for Sertaria. It really wasn't intended to come across like that, but it's still weird no-one noticed while building the world.

Afresa never quite bugged me, but Ameran always has.

Honestly, Afersa wouldn't bother me if not for Ameran. The two together...

And of course, it doesn't help that Ameran's colors are Red, White, and Blue.

Yeah. I remember my chart



I also remember Keeper noting that Ameran had been intended as Athens/Greece but that CA wasn't bad


IMO Faskeria with the Pale/Kithkin dream war and Gentev are the most interesting parts of Sertaria.

OH, hey. I was looking for that map a while back. Between Thorneau, Dammerdall, and Aliavelli, I think we now have huge swaths of Europe covered, and if "World Wide Web" gets voted in, we'll have more of Africa, as well.

To be fair, starting from a real name can get perfectly good results that carry their implications without punching you out of the narrative (I'm assuming that got us from Scylla + Charybdis to Syl + Chardis). It's just that the line between a name that shows wit and a name that shows its ugly innards is also easy to cross.

Thanks for bringing this up, Doctor -- a couple people have made this point to me.

My original intention was just to link back to the Archives, since one of the goals of the Highlighted M:EMories was to encourage people to delve into the M:EM Archive. But I also don't want to make it any more complicated for people to read the M:EMory than it has to be.

So, I guess I'll just pose the question here: Would people prefer to have the content (or, for things where it isn't practical to include the full text, maybe just an excerpt) in the front page post, or are people fine with just linking back to the full version in the Archive?

I think the content should be mirrored on the front page article.

...

You're the first person who has noticed this, or at least the first person to mention it. Yes, that is, in fact, the genesis of the Dual-Walkers' names.

Well done.

do I get partial credit for seeing them, thinking "hey that sounds really familiar..." and then never bothering to follow up on it?

Sure, why not?

I'm assuming I'm simply the first to mention it. Gotta leave my ego some room to grow rather than inflate it to full too quickly.


I agree with this. So far, the M:EMories have tended to link to more content in the archives for people to delve into, which I assume will continue. That should hopefully be enough to hint that there's a huge world waiting for the readers to explore. That reminds me of another thing with Sertaria's dossier - it's a bit of a maze of spoiler blocks. I counted almost 50 spoiler blocks, some used for asides, some for subdivisions, some seemingly as headers... That also discourages reading the dossier.

Yeah, a number of style guides/dossiers would benefit from a reformat and consistent use of Sblock vs. Horizontal Line vs. Paragraph Break.

Sertaria's age really shows

I literally never made the Ameran connection during development until Skibo complained about it and I still have a hard time believing it was anything but totally unfortunate coincidence. I don't think he even noticed Afresa, and I didn't till... literally just now?

Anyway yeah Sertaria needs work. I think it's got some very cool components though and I hope people take it out for a spin at some point again.

Also wow front page o_o

I can't recall whether you were involved in any of the threads, but the issue of Afresa has been raised a couple of times already.