Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Quick Blog...New Site Coming Soon!!!

Hey everyone! And by everyone I mean the 2 or 3 followers who read my blogs, this is just a quick little blog to share some news. My last blog (the one under this one, natch) was basically a long winded explanantion of why I started a blog/why I no longer write for Bam!Kapow!. Well, I decided to take a look at B!K! today to see what's what, and the site was given a total overhaul and an upgrade, something we had been waiting to get for months!! So as the rage settled down, I talked to my editor and found out that our new site is finished!!! Not finished as in it's up and ready to go, but finished as in I can finally get back to work and start writing some articles for when it goes live!! So if I don't post for the next few days it's only because I'm busy trying to gather all my writers again and get some articles ready for when the site goes up. Ill put more info here when we are ready to go. 

In the meantime, check out this awesome Stormtrooper Dance:

Monday, August 16, 2010

Why I Started A Blog... Or How I Failed As A Writer

Now I've been getting a lot of questions lately that sound like:

"Hey Scoot, we love the blog, but why did you start one?"
...or
"Don't you write on the internet enough as it is?"
...or
"Seriously dude, 'All You Can Eat' is really more of a suggestion than a rule..."

Okay, well that last one wasn't a question, more of a really hurtful remark, but either way, I'm going to use this blog to answer, well, the first 2 questions. And by answer I generally mean cause even more questions and maybe rant nonsensically for a while. Yea, that's a word.

So I started this blog because I am a writer. I love to write. I have ever since i was just a wee little lad writing short ghost stories, or coming up with comics in my head that were usually way better than the ones I was reading. And while I ultimatly would love to write fiction in the form of novels, I currently haven't finished a single novel that I've started. And oh, how I have started some.


Here's a list of some of my novels that I started and for some reason never finished:

Lifeline (Or something like that)- The story of a teenager who's brain is evolving and the psychic connection he makes with the beautiful girl next door, while a sinister government agency tries to track him down and use him for evil... Yea, this one i finished, but it was with a to be continued so is it really finished? No...
Beautiful People - The story of a timid music professor who moonlights as an "aggresive observer" (stalker) until the night the person he follows ends up dead, and he is implicated in the murder... My computer crapped out and I lost the first 7 chapters, and jus't couldn't really get back into it
Meet God - The story of an average Joe who dies and goes to Heaven, only to realize that he is in the midst of an election to see who will become the new God, or the new Devil. This one never really got off the ground, just a quick write up and "storyboard" and then I moved on
Untitled Beatles Romance Novel - The story of a boy and a girl on a trip across the planet to popular Beatles stops, where love can't be far behind...I just really wasn't very good at writing romance
The Z List - The story of a group of survivors in a dystopian future wasteland, and how they survived amidst nuclear war, starvation, other survivors...and zombies. This one I am still currently working on, so I can't say for sure that it will go unfinished as I am making good headway on it

The point of this was I realized that while I love to write, I don't necessarily have the commitment to write a 500-1000 page masterpiece. Which is when I started writing for Bam! Kapow! Now for those of you unfamiliar with B!K! this was a site dedicated to covering news about heroes, villains, and everything in between. That meant superhero movies, comic series, funny web comics, anything and everything we could tie to a superhero.


When I first started at B!K! it was by myself, and i sent in a few opinion pieces to the editor-in-chief and then he sent me a few stories, and then I stopped writing for a couple of months. Then I came back to B!K! and started covering a lot more news stories with a lot less opinion articles. I soon became frustrated with the EIC as I would send stories and he wouldn't put them up, or he failed to notice when he sent the story to more than one writer and would generally ditch mine in favor of his friends. Whatever, it was his site so i wasn't going to argue. That led to my second hiatus from B!K! as I felt I was putting in a lot of work and not seeing anything in return. Then a few months later I noticed that a fellow writer at B!K! who had joined a month or two after me was the one and only poster on the site, taking care of every news story and opinion piece all by himself. So i wrote him asking if I could again start contributing, and he told me HELLS YES as the EIC was no longer working on the site, and had given my fellow writer editorial control for the time being. And thus began a new era of B!K! where somebody was actually in charge who cared about the site and actually tried to accomplish some things. And from that point on I never had another hiatus, as I worked very well with my fellow writer/new editor.

We carried on that way for a while, with another old writer and a slew of new writers that we brought in ourselves, and eventually my Editor (not the EIC but the fellow writer) taught me how to post and i became the Assistant Editor, which felt great for me. I got less writing done, but what I was able to do was on my terms as I had control over the entirety of not only my articles but the other writers articles as well. We worked this way for almost a year, and had really gotten a great network of writers together, when my editor let me know that he wanted to buy B!K! but was rebuked by the EIC (who hadn't done anything worthwhile on the site in months) this left both of us feeling a little let down by our EIC. Well, it wouldn't be the last time.

We continued our work on B!K!, introducing new features that were loved by readers, and moving on from our superhero inspired news site into a straight up fan site that was feeling a little boxed in by our specific criteria. So my Editor than confided in me that he was starting a site of his own, and asked if I wanted to come along as the Comics Editor (as we had more to cover than just superheroes now) to the new site. The answer was a quick yes, but unfortunately as with most things they are never ready when you want them to be, and we are still currently waiting for the site to be finished.


And then it happened about a month ago, our EIC said he was coming back full time to B!K! which we thought would be fine as long as he worked comfortably with our system and our writers. But no, as soon as he logged back in he wanted us to start running all articles through him, as well as pretty much replacing our entire "staff" with his own. He wiped my editor off the site and didn't leave much for me to do, let alone the new writers we had brought in ourselves who had no previous contact with the EIC. Now I'm not bitter or angry or anything, it was his site, and it was well within his right to take it back. But how about a thank you for all the hard work, or even an extension to our writers to continue contributing to the site, but no, nothing.

So why did I start a blog? Because I miss being heard on the internet. I won't go so far as to say I was famous or anything (but if you google SupaScoot I'm like 7 out of 10 hits) but I definitely missed the daily grind, getting the scoop or being scooped, and all the collaborations with my fellow writers. Plus I needed another outlet to keep from going insane. So here we are now, still waiting for the site to be ready, and i started SupaScoot In A Nutshell to satisfy my own sick desire to be heard by strangers through the computer. And to vent every once in a while. Now I hope I don't get in any trouble for talking about these issues that we had with B!K!, I'm not dropping any names, but it does feel good to answer a few questions there, and if I caused more questions, fell free to leave a comment! And be on the lookout for our brand new site coming hopefully as soon as effin possible.

I'm Spent...

P.S. You can check out some of my favorite B!K! articles (these are ones that I wrote) down below the posts. I wrote something like 170 for B!K! so these are just my top 10.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

What I did on my day off... Beware the epicness

Hey y'all (Look at me acting like i have readers)  not much going on right at the moment so I thought I would take some time and throw up another blog. I'm just going to talk about my day, as event filled as it wasn't.

So first of all, I don't generally work Fridays. I work for my brother at a bottled water store called Claysmore Spring Water and am lucky enough to have a 3 day weekend...all the time.  So to start off how my day went I have to let you know about a very epic LRT trip I had on the way home on Thursday. At the U of A LRT station, you have to take two long escalators down to the platform. Up at the top of this trek you can hear the bell that signifies the LRT's arrival, and you have about 20 seconds to get on the LRT. Well. I was just stepping on the  first escalator when the bell went off. So I hurtled down the first set of escalators, pulled a power turn onto the second step, hurtled down the second flight, nearly jumping a group of tiny Asian schoolgirls, and when i reached the bottom of the escalator, the final bell went that signaled that the LRT was pulling away, I power slid across the platform and jumped onto the LRT as the doors started to close behind me. I locked eyes with a couple of the passengers as i slid on and the doors closed behind me. It was pretty amazing, and i could tell everybody was impressed (or not, but it sounds better if they were) until I tried to walk away to a seat, and realized that my jacket was caught in the doors... It was epic.


Anyways, here's what I did on my day off. I ran errands. It was not as epic as my LRT Power Slide Entrance, but it was fun. My roommate and I had a few mutual stops we needed to make so we figured what the eff, we might as well do them together. So first we went to the bank, but he forgot his wallet so we went back to the house. We then went to the bank, where i deposited a check, and my rm broke his bank card. So we figured no biggie, we are here, he might as well get a new bank card. 30 mins later and he had a new card, account, blah blah blah. So already we were running behind schedule. Time for breakfast at Ricky's, which was right beside the bank luckily. So we head over there and fail to notice the sign in the window that says it's under renovations, so we spend another 5 mins whining about how the place was closed until we found the above-mentioned sign. So we head to a different Ricky's, gorge on some omelets and got ready to finish the day's tasks. As my rm started explaining his previously un-mentioned "list" I realize too late that my hour of errands is slowly turning into a day of errands. But I like to roll with the punches, so fine.

We head to the most hated mall in Edmonton, Mill Woods Town Center, and stop by Murray's for a mediocre but cheap haircut. So this is pretty much where we meet the last of my list... the only thing I have left to do is purchase a video game. My roommate still had like 20 things to do . So I go pick up my video game, taking my time because anybody who knows my roommate knows that he can take absolutely forever to do one thing. Oh yea, I got Dante's Inferno, awesome but creepy:


So i head back to my roommate, who is now shopping for things that were not on the list, and i convince him through sheer crazy eyes that maybe it's time to go. But no, we then head to payless shoes and I decide what the hey, I do need a pair, might as well.

$30, ya can't really go wrong. My roommate thought so too, because he picked up 3 pairs of shoes. 3!!! Anyways, the hour of errands turned into 6 hours of errands, and that is how i spent my day off. Now you are as bored from reading it as i was from doing it. Still a good time I guess, better than hermiting at the house all day.

That's it from me. See ya next time...

Thursday, August 12, 2010

To Blog...Or Not To Blog

All right, ladies and gentle men, it's time for my second blog... uhhh....so.... carry the one...damn it. Of course, it helps to have something to blog about. I'm not the kind of guy to just make a post saying something like:

"Hey, Im eating Pizza Pops..." (Which I am...) or

"At work, all day long..." (Which again, is true, sorry boss, eating my lunch, thy work will be done)

That just seems like a waste of my time and yours. This is why I dislike Twitter (yes, even though I am on Twitter), i don't need to hear that you are going to the bathroom or that you farted and it smelled like candy canes. BORING! That is not what I am about or looking to read so I'm not going to do that here. I don't understand how people can put so much time into thier online persona and then just drop crap down onto people. I like to sit down and cruise the net, and find interesting, and maybe even thought provoking things to read, watch, criticize. It absolutely blows my mind when i hear that some of those YouTube'rs actually get paid for the dribble that they produce. Like this guy, Fred on YouTube (You don't have to watch the whole thing, I promise):





This kid gets paid!!!! Almost 2 million people subscribe to his videos!!! What kind of world do we live in where this kid is considerd to be entertaining? I mean, I could easily film a video of me rambling about some stupid garbage for a couple minutes, change the pitch of my voice, and make money but i actually have some pride with my work. I like most things connected to my name to be something i would like to show my family. But i guess I'm of the minority.

I think I just blogged about hating other people's blogs...It's amazing how quick these things can write themselves.

Oh well, thats enough out of me for one day.

Damn, these are good Pizza Pops...

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Welcome to SupaScoot In a Nutshell!!!

Hey everyone, welcome to the first blog EVER from me, your favorite superhero, SupaScoot. All right, now I'll be a little clearer. My name is Scott Fraser, and I write online under the screen name of SupaScoot. You can catch some of my written works on Bam!Kapow!, where I reported on news and information regarding basically anything superhero related.

This is different... I have plenty of opportunities to argue superhero semantics and other nerd related issues as SupaScoot, so here I'm going to talk about Scott Fraser; Me, myself and I. Thoughts and issues in my own personal life that I choose to tell you about, whether you like it or not. So if you clicked on this blog to hear my thoughts on who shot first, Han or Greedo... or whether or not I liked the 90's Spider-Man Clone Saga... or if I think the consumerism of Hollywood could be bastardizing the beloved comic stories I hold dear, well, you might still hear me talk about it, so DON'T click away. But I will also try to express more personal issues here, a therapeutic inner monologue, if you will. Maybe even participate in a cryfest here or there, you never know. Feel free to leave comments, as I like to feel loved by all.

Welcome to SupaScoot In a Nutshell