[Media] Exclusive Interview: The Free State of Sabha’s Martin Geoff on Sabha and Human-Trafficking - A Follow-up
Exclusive Interview: The Free State of Sabha’s
Martin Geoff on Sabha and Human-Trafficking - A Follow-up
Martin Geoff on Sabha and Human-Trafficking - A Follow-up
Introduction
It's been weeks since my last foray over the project, and so far, many of you seem to enjoy what I've written for the mockup: while some feedbacks are really vague, few are explicit enough to understand your reasons why. And it was a fun read, more than I could've hoped for. I try my best to answer most of them, although I probably left a few behind due to the lack of spare time.
However, I'm not here to gush over how truly thankful for the positive feedback (and don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate it.). Since I won't be posting a lot until I have the rest of my personal projects straighten up, I thought that articulating the behind-the-scenes process behind the writing can be a fun endeavor to commit. I enjoyed noting the first dev log over the design and writing choices I have to make, laying out the reasons why I do this or that, for example. To make this a bit of a tradition for the thread, I want to explain some of the creative influences over the thumbnails and the man himself: Martin Geoff.
Thumbnails
I have two things in mind before I design the thumbnails: The topics and the presentation. To make it short, I try to tone down the feed to something balanced, at least in the sense that I don't want the entire mockup to be too serious or generic. I wanted to add a semblance of levity to acknowledge the already exaggerated worldbuilding of the timeline, so I made half of the thumbnails to be a bit comical. And when it comes to the topics, most of them here are references to old footnotes I have since my foray with the Time Magazine. Since I want to remind people of the events I've written months ago and I'm not keen to come up with some pointless fillers, I thought that the best thing to do is to recycle these talking-points into a concise piece.
1.1: I didn't like the thumbnail for the Spratly Incident; feels too mundane than what I have in mind.
I made some effort to make the design as authentic as possible, something you could imagine being posted on YouTube one day. The ones that I love the most are the video for TheMemestorian: Basically a shoddily-designed collage of Pepes and Wojaks. It's a reference to the Grand Kekistani incident, an event mentioned in my Neo-Barbary Crisis map. The premise was inspired by Lauren Southern and her accomplices' attempt to harass some refugees before being detained (at least that's how I remember it), so I have a little thought experiment wondering if they get kidnapped in the process.
Another favorite piece of mine is the one for Vox. To me, writing the title feels like a sudden "Aha!" moment. I tried to avoid generic and lazy titles like the Second Cold War, so I came up with a name that reflects the premise: A global proxy war based on economic strongarming and electronic warfare. In a sense, it's loosely inspired by a scene from Doctor Who's Christmas Special: The End of Time. There's a clip where the Doctor listed the whole collage of nonsense that will happen if the Master frees the Time Lords. The Skaro Degradation, The Could've-Been King, and the Nightmare Child? Despite showing very little, the writers give such a sense of gravitas and dread to them. That's why I titled it the Quiet War: To give a unique take on this whole Sino-American tug-of-war.
Martin Geoff
I never like the idea of relying on worldbuilding alone, especially when conveying something personal or on-the-grounds. I didn't realize this was a problem until I finished my huge project on Time Magazine, where I have to think up the writing style for each feature article. Since then, the style of writing shifts from straightforward descriptions to a more immersive take accompanied by accounts and such. With this comes to mind, I try to dig back some of old my plans for character introductions. I long for the day where I could introduce people like Za'im and TheMemestorian properly, characters that are basically locked inside my head for a while. So comes the first to receive the very spotlight: Martin Geoff.
1.2: This is how I imagine him: Pretty average in height, albeit more white and with a more relaxed posture and body language.
Writing his dialogue was such a wonderful treat, especially since I never got to do this sort of medium before. Since a winded description can't bring justice to his character, I look towards interview transcripts from CNN and MSNBC as inspirations. With the necessary references at hand, I eventually head to the writing board and get to work. It took me an entire week to finish it: Half of them are spent on the rough draft and the few remaining days on cleaning the grammars and punctuation. Believe it or not, I used a stopwatch to record each timestamp for the sake of detail. Since I'm writing an interview transcript of my very own, I feel that giving a reference for each dialogue will prove useful for you guys.
His characterization is morbidly comical: An amalgamation of both Handsome Jack's sociopathic tendencies and Andrew Ryan's fanatical devotion to his utopia. The dialogue for him was intended to be completely casual, absence of any semblance of formality in contrast to Charlotte McLamb. To reinforce that sense of personality, I flared it with murmurs and discourse. At the same time, I don't him to be just a one-dimensional comic relief where people read him and go "funni libertarians, lol". Character-wise, he actually honest in his attempt to build a utopia from nothing, even trying to showcase the relative success of his project. That's why I contextualize what he's actually done in contrast to rambling about his political mindset.
I can't imagine him being replaced by anyone because he was intended to represent the already outrageous premise of having a Rapture/Rhodesia-Esque libertarian state in the middle of a war-torn country. If he was replaced by anyone else, I don't the faction will have the familiar sense of outrageousness, at least to me.
Conclusion
Well, this concludes the behind-the-scenes introspect of the mockup. I tried to write more but I don't want to overstay my welcome. And when it comes to future content, it's either going to be about the Libyan National Army or another update for the main map.
Anyway, I'm all done here. Let me know what you think about Martin Geoff. Do you think he’s a character worth expanding or just a one-note comic relief?
Cya, folks!
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