Hello,

PTA does it again, this time for our regular group which includes me, Tod, Julie, Maura, and Tim (that's Mountain Witch Tim).

As you might expect from a pack of Greg the Bunny fans, our premise featured a show-within-a-show. Taking a page from Matt Gwinn's Kayfabe, we decided that our show (The Heel) would be about a pro-wrestling cable show called "Wrestlerama: Rock Bottom." Part of the fun is that such shows include both the wrestling matches and a whole lot of skits about back-stage events, so they are already shows-in-shows. But our TV show is about the real production team. Obviously, taking a page from Metal Opera, the fictional show starts out in the crapper.

Kimmy / Malevola is the title character, with the basic idea being that she's Wrestlerama's crucial "Heel" character - the villainous wrestler who (in the in-show show's fictional story) cheats her way to the top with illegal moves and general dastardliness, to encounter decisive, heroic justice during the final bouts of a given season. Backstage, Kimmy is of course a fine person who brings heart, hope, and good advice to everyone on the show.

Kimmy was created almost fully communally; I was the one who suggested the contrast between performer and role. No one claimed her as "my character" until the other characters were made up and taken by their primary creators, leaving Maura (enthusiastically) to play her. Maura instantly stated this protagonist's issue as femininity.
Connection: Lydia, the female "Face" of Wrestlerama, and her friend (despite the fact that they beat the shit out of each other for a living)
Edges: pro wrestler; spot-on intuition

Hugh Brown is the cutthroat, expert producer who's been brought in to turn the show around. His whole point is that he'd rather die a thousand deaths than have anything to do with a pro-wrestling show, but it's actually his big chance to show the network how good he is, so he can move on to "real TV" as a big-shot producer. So his issue is clearly ambition. Tod made up Hugh almost whole-cloth, but his first scene in play and subsequent characterization was far more communal, as you'll see.
Edge: executive producer
Connections: Louie the sinisterly effective union guy; the top-shark executive "one step up in the food chain"
He also has a Nemesis, the male Face of Wrestlerama, named Lance - who has nothing but contempt for his current career because he's about to land a key role in Days of Our Lives "any minute now."

Patty Davis is the new PR and promotion person, a middle-aged woman who feels out of her element both in the genre and in terms of her career plans. Her issue is self-worth in fairly straightforward terms. Julie didn't remember that her character's name was the same as Ronald Reagan's daughter, but decided to keep it anyway because she liked its no-nonsense, basic sound. She made up Patty in about two seconds.
Edge: expert schmooze
Connections: TV exec who got her the job; daughter Barbara

Billy is the hopeful gofer, who would like one day to be a pro wrestler himself. His issue is also self-worth, in another way - to recognize that being good at something is about today, not a reward that you get later.
Edge: perfect gofer
Connections: his mother (who believes in him wholeheartedly); head of unofficial Wrestlerama fan club (initially unnamed, but just you wait)

Tim suggested that instead of 2/3 or 3/2 Traits, we should do 1/2 or 2/1, and I agree with him. I find the rules combination to be too rich and perhaps a little oriented toward making sure that everyone can have "powers."

By the time the characters were getting nailed down to this level of detail, people were already proposing scenes and inventing vignettes like Kimmy on the phone to a boyfriend, and all sorts of stuff. I sort of had to corral them into the Screen Presence step, and even had to enforce the business of writing the story arc sequence privately - "Trust me," I said, "it works."

Here's what they came up with - damn, I thought I had my notes on me, but I don't, so a detail or two might be off - but the first episode is right, and the 3's are all in the right places.
Kimmy 2-1-1-3-2
Hugh 3-2-1-2-1
Patty 3-1-2-1-2
Billy 2-3-1-2-1

The group got it instantly - clearly the show opens with a real knockout, strong-character episode which nails down the production leadership in a big way, therefore paving the road for low-totem-pole aspirant performer and the top performer to shine later. And since there are no 3's in the final episode, that means that it (like the middle show) should feature major genre-based adversity, which of course means some kind of rival wrestling league and a televised showdown.

We talked about which episode to do and the cry instantly went up to start at the beginning, something I haven't seen before. "Okay," I said. "Let's take a commercial break, and I'm ready."

From this point on, all narration was intensely communal. The person whose turn it was (scene framing or narration of conflict outcomes) definitely had the Buck, but massive suggestions of dialogue, events, TV-based visuals, and more were essentially constant. Some of the sentences in the upcoming account of play should be understood to be truly amalgams of one person saying the first three words and going "um," then another person shouting out the basic verb phrase, another suddenly describing the action in TV terms, and finally the first person going, "Yeah!" and maybe saying the whole thing over.

Before going into the scenes myself, I want to invite anyone who was there to describe anything I've talked about so far, or simply to diving into describing the first scene, which I framed. Anyone else, if you have any questions or comments of any kind, please feel free!

Best,
Ron

Tim suggested that instead of 2/3 or 3/2 Traits, we should do 1/2 or 2/1, and I agree with him. I find the rules combination to be too rich and perhaps a little oriented toward making sure that everyone can have "powers."

Whoo-hoo--I finally played PTA!

I loved the communal quality of the game. It was a great deal of fun, so much so, that I think we will continue playing Wrestlerama beyond what was initially started as a one-shot. Good thing we started with the first episode.

Another thing I liked-- no character sheet, no paper, nothing. Only Ron as the producer took notes. The characters and show that we created were so naturally intertwined that I could sit there quite comfortably and participate with no need to refer to the usual gaming props.

And fanmail works wonderfully.

A minor correction to screen presence, I'm pretty sure Patty's was 3,2,1,1,2.

I wasn't paying too much attention to the clock. I think set-up took about an hour and a half (and that's likely padded), and we played the first episode in a couple hours.

Julie

Hello,

All the prep took a little longer than I expected, about an hour and a half, as Julie says. We'd really wanted to play, so I was concerned about time. As it happens, someone (Tod or Maura, I think) suggested that we were doing a "half hour show" in terms of how much story/conflict etc would be included in a given episode. I liked that idea because I've been convinced by a number of shows that half an hour is a fantastic story-unit, whereas an hour can be, but all too often ends up being a half-hour unit with a thyroid problem. I had to watch the clock, as I had a lot of errands waiting for me at home, so I think we played for a near-exact two hours. I'm not equating this "show length" to actual play time, but since a certain rough correlation might be expected in a very efficient game like PTA, I was glad to know that we would be playing in this context.

On the other hand, the two 3's in Screen Presence meant this was a knockout episode, right out of the gate. H'm, I said. I as Producer start the first scene, and then the two 3-bies get to start scenes. Easy! I'll do a scene with the two other protagonists, so they can get their 2-sies under way, and we can build up a whole bunch of sturm und drang for our new exec and new promotion person when they show up. In fact, better than easy - all I have to do is inject as much chaos as possible and back it up with maximum budgeted rolls.

I opened with a Wrestlerama broadcast match in which Malevola decks Lydia with a folding chair in dastardly fashion, then cut to the actual production rooms and offices. (A little later, I raised the issue of having every episode feature at least some Wrestlerama footage, which gained the "yes, duh" response from everyone.) It was fun to see Maura get into the wrestling scene (she won the roll to see if she and Lydia succeeded in making good wrestling TV; I narrated it) and we set the tone, I think, for everyone to feel invested in anyone's roll. I was really big on that throughout prep and play this time around; I wanted to avoid the "I don't narrate so I shut up" misperception that sometimes plagues games like this. I also had a great time narrating the outrageous Color talk of the announcer, who of course included all sorts of scripted stuff like how Malevola's restraining order not to approach Lydia within 100 feet was waived for the match, etc.

Fanmail flew like rain, and one of the neatest things was that, given that everyone was kibitzing like crazy, anyone could get fanmail even if their characters weren't involved. We weren't giving out fanmail for role-playing in the sense of "acting," but rather in the sense of co-authoring.

Kimmy came off to me a little wimpy, though, when Maura did her voice and actions. I saw her as the heart of the show, and at the moment, Maura was really playing up the sympathetic and good-hearted feature ... but hang onto your seats, sports-fans, this reaction on my part is only a setup for what happened in later scenes.

Anyway, time for the problems and chaos. I had Billy's connection, the "number one fan," show up, and suggested that Billy had slightly misrepresented how important he was on the show's staff, as in, he was the director (Tim was riffing at this point so we pretty much built the problem together). Billy enlists Kimmy's help, and both of them are also concerned that the show is about to be canceled, etc. I was trying to come up with a good name for the fan, and someone said "Ralph," and someone else says "Ralph Muenster," and I said, "No, no, because if we do that, I'll be imagining Ralph Mazza, and ... damn it. I'm already imagining him and it's too late." Hilarity ensued because we all instantly imagined the real Ralph about ten years younger and really obnoxious, and "Ralph Mazda" was born as Billy's connection.

Ralph shows up, and boy does he want to get into Lydia's dressing room, and he's very excited to meet the show's director (Billy, sporting a clip-on tie), and he roams all over the place causing trouble. Let's see ... he provided an opportunity for the show to feature Tim's suggestion for a running celebrity cameo by opening a male wrestler's room door so we get to see some famous actor's butt (I forgot who). But that was nothing, considering the cancellation memo on the bulletin board and Ralph's nasty little cell-phone camera, and so on and so forth. Oh, and Lance, the Face male wrestler, called Billy over to fix the toilet at exactly the wrong moment. I believe Tod suggested he call Billy "You little butt-plug," which sort of got Lance a running start as a character and established for good that this was a cable show. Relevant, as you'll see in a minute.

We rolled, with all sorts of fanmail getting spent by Tod and Julie on my side, against the characters. They wanted maximum chaos for their characters to deal with, you see, and as it turned out, they sure got it. I cannot begin to describe how rapidly the narration was constructed (I think Tod rolled highest?) and how much everyone contributed in a veritable hailstorm of called-out suggestions and coloring of one another's statements. As the story goes, Ralph did see the cancellation notice; he did see Billy unplugging the toilet as Lance glowers at him (but being Ralph is too clueless to figure out that Billy isn't a bigwig); and he wanders into Kimmy's dressing room at the wrong moment.

As the narration went, Ralph hurtles out of the dressing room with a stool or chair or something in the face ... but that only means that on the fan website that goes up that night, not only are terrible things said like "Times are so hard for the show that the director cleans the toilets," but features a graphically topless, outraged Kimmy in a perfect "finish throw" position, with a blurry too-close object in the top left of the picture's frame. And then we pull back to see Ralph, chuckling, with a bandaged face. Ralph is a Connection, not a Nemesis, but that doesn't mean he has to be an obedient sidekick!

Everyone bulked way up on fanmail, with great acclaim and with good faith. And our two new pros show up at the office/set facing a PR meltdown.

Before someone else chimes in to talk about this scene or the next one, I want to raise the issue of Budgeting. We had Screen Presence = (3+2+3+2)*10 = 30 for this episode, which struck me as a hell of a lot. I just shrugged and maxed out with every roll, i.e. spending 5 Budget every time for six dice. I couldn't see any reason to do otherwise, and frankly, it now fully eludes me why a Producer wouldn't just seize the max for every roll. Failure is just as fun as success in PTA, and once the players have fanmail they can set the odds as they see fit, essentially. I don't see why the Producer has any reason to lowball them, especially since the only consequence of running out of Budget is that the players have increased chances of success. Can someone point me to any threads that have discussed this or related issues?

Best,
Ron

I'm going to join the chorus and say that I had a blast playing PtA.

Ron Edwards wrote:

Kimmy / Malevola is the title character, with the basic idea being that she's Wrestlerama's crucial "Heel" character - the villainous wrestler who (in the in-show show's fictional story) cheats her way to the top with illegal moves and general dastardliness, to encounter decisive, heroic justice during the final bouts of a given season. Backstage, Kimmy is of course a fine person who brings heart, hope, and good advice to everyone on the show.

Kimmy was created almost fully communally; I was the one who suggested the contrast between performer and role. No one claimed her as "my character" until the other characters were made up and taken by their primary creators, leaving Maura (enthusiastically) to play her. Maura instantly stated this protagonist's issue as femininity.
Connection: Lydia, the female "Face" of Wrestlerama, and her friend (despite the fact that they beat the shit out of each other for a living)
Edges: pro wrestler; spot-on intuition

From this point on, all narration was intensely communal. The person whose turn it was (scene framing or narration of conflict outcomes) definitely had the Buck, but massive suggestions of dialogue, events, TV-based visuals, and more were essentially constant. Some of the sentences in the upcoming account of play should be understood to be truly amalgams of one person saying the first three words and going "um," then another person shouting out the basic verb phrase, another suddenly describing the action in TV terms, and finally the first person going, "Yeah!" and maybe saying the whole thing over.

someone said "Ralph," and someone else says "Ralph Muenster," and I said, "No, no, because if we do that, I'll be imagining Ralph Mazza, and ... damn it. I'm already imagining him and it's too late." Hilarity ensued because we all instantly imagined the real Ralph about ten years younger and really obnoxious, and "Ralph Mazda" was born as Billy's connection.

Ron Edwards wrote:
We rolled, with all sorts of fanmail getting spent by Tod and Julie on my side, against the characters. They wanted maximum chaos for their characters to deal with, you see, and as it turned out, they sure got it. I cannot begin to describe how rapidly the narration was constructed (I think Tod rolled highest?) and how much everyone contributed in a veritable hailstorm of called-out suggestions and coloring of one another's statements. As the story goes, Ralph did see the cancellation notice; he did see Billy unplugging the toilet as Lance glowers at him (but being Ralph is too clueless to figure out that Billy isn't a bigwig); and he wanders into Kimmy's dressing room at the wrong moment.

Found it:

Patty 3 2 1 1 2
Bill 2 3 1 2 1
Kimmy 2 1 2 3 1
Hugh 3 1 2 1 1

So the next episode is clearly Bill's big whopper, and I hope it features his mom; the middle episode is going to set up lots of things and feature some external adversity (and Kimmy and Hugh haven't locked horns yet; I see lots of potential there); the fourth is the title character's big feature episode, and the final one emphasizes Patty, but as mentioned before, must be about something really big and external - almost certainly, unless we change our minds, a great big Pay-Per-View against another wrestling group.

Anyway, none of this must be very interesting to consider unless you recognize how many important intercharacter relationships (support networks as well as potential conflicts) got established in this first episode. We should probably just forge ahead with the events.

So, Julie, I believe the next scene was about Patty showing up to her first day on the job? I'm interested in how you'd describe that one.

Best,
Ron

Hi y'all,

Like everyone else I had a great time. I kept thinking that I should use PTA to play with my non-gamer friends. I really felt that once we had the general premise of the show worked out, and who the characters were going to be, we all just kinda knew which direction the characters and story was going to move in.

Just to clarify, "I" was the one narrating that first conflict. At first, I was envisioning that Billy would have to convince Kimmy to play along with this charade, but then Maura kinda went along with the plot on her own. And that's when someone (I think that was Tod, too) suggested that Lance yell from down the hall. It was also my idea that Ralph should wonder into Kimmy's Dressing room. Someone had suggested that he sneak into Lydia's room, but I thought it was only fitting that he should sneak into Kimmy's, since she was the star of the show.

It was interesting that with that first conflict, umm... I think it was Julie and Maura that threw in Fanmail against Billy. I think everyone (including myself) really wanted that scene to end the way it did.

Ron Edwards wrote: So, Julie, I believe the next scene was about Patty showing up to her first day on the job? I'm interested in how you'd describe that one.

Oh.

Well, in that case, Julie started the next scene with Patty at her desk, first thing at work in her new job, staring in dismay at the brand-new website. She then described how she would run around and whip everyone into shape in the face of this PR disaster, finding out who was responsible, etc etc.

I'm a little hazy about who contributed dice, but I'm under the impression that she had very little against a very lot, and she lost the roll, but got to narrate. At first, Julie narrated by herself and fairly generally, i.e. not role-playing actual dialogue, but then the group dynamic kicked in.

This one was kind of interesting, because although Kimmy was not technically present in the scene in game terms (i.e. Maura did not enlist Kimmy in the conflict and did not roll for her vs. me), Kimmy was used as the linchpin of resolution for the scene. We all agreed more or less telepathically that Patty's unsuccessful authoritarian rampage would come face-to-face with Kimmy's muscular but feminine goodness, Maura provided the basic role-playing context through describing them, and I provided the dialogue:

Kimmy: "You know, the people here work hard. They really care about this show. [pause] Do you?"

I also want to emphasize how we ended the scene - unlike many of them I've seen in RPGs which are very explicit about scene/conflict distinctions, the end of the conflict does not have to be the end of a given scene. I'm really glad we understood that, because this was a "3" episode for Patty, and this scene is a therefore a biggie.

I think Julie continued to narrate the scene by having Kimmy and Patty go for coffee, and having Patty say to Kimmy, "Make me care," in a nice way. She and Maura did some great stuff, including Kimmy's view of pro wrestling, which I hope Maura will provide here, and having Patty's teenage daughter call in the middle of the conversation to reveal that Patty is going to be a grandmother.

Anyone remember more about how we elaborated on and concluded this scene, during and after the dice part?

Best,
Ron

I've been trying to remember exactly what I said to make Kimmy impress Patty, and I think it was something like: "This show is about positive female role models. You might laugh, but our storylines are no different than any story you'll find anywhere else. The difference is that what we do has real consequences and genuinely affects how the story progresses." That was basically it. There was more, but I think I was just repeating myself to warm up to that point. And I got fain mail form everybody. That was one of those times I felt really rewarded for coming up with something good.

Prior to the die roll, I made a suggestion that got a round of unequivocal "no"s. Julie said that in this conflict, that if she lost the conflict her rampage would have the opposite effect, where she would be quickly dismissed by everybody working there. I said that as Patty was going on her rampage, she would run into Kimmy, and that if Julie lost the roll Patty would cause Kimmy to burst into tears and leave. What can I say? I was still playing up the contrast between her character and her persona, and was trying to make her so tenderhearted that she would be easily wounded by some irrational outburst.

As I said before, it was completely refused by everyone at the table. On the other hand, whoever decided to place Kimmy there had the right idea, and Ron's dialogue for Kimmy was spot-on for my original view of her (i.e., save the drama for the cameras).

I seem to remember that someone placed Billy as hiding in a closet somewhere, and I think it was Julie who placed him in my dressing room, hiding with my permission. (Maybe I'm misremembering the "with my permission" part, though.)

Actually, I didn't even remember whether Julie won or lost that die roll. The scene fit so well with where we were going, in retrospect I could have seen it as having gone in either direction.

Hi,

Julie, if you want to weigh in on this scene, please do, but I really liked the whole business about the cell phone call and the grandmother. One of the interesting points, though, is that Patty is starting with a 3, which means this subplot will not be spotlighted - just developed in your "2" episodes.

I like the way that the two authority figures in the show are quickly introduced and "nailed down" through spotlighting, which essentially frees up the season for their stories to be fun but not riveting - and for first Billy, then Kimmy to shine.

Anyway. Maura's monologue about what Wrestlerama is really about hit us all, as she says, and if it hadn't happened already, we all started wanting the show (in our show) to succeed. It was the perfect setup for Hugh finally to be introduced - the corporate shark sent in to turn the show around.

All kinds of suggestions flew about the visuals of how Hugh's entrance(framed by Tod) would work. I liked the idea of a John Woo slo-mo, Tod suggested angles which didn't reveal his face until he interacted with someone, etc. If I'm not mistaken, we never set it in stone just how it was to look - a phenomenon I've noted occasionally in our group, in which we toss out a bunch of suggestions, some of which aren't compatible (technically, not event-wise or theme-wise), and no one feels the need to force everyone to accept one single polished version.

The really interesting thing is that we hadn't settled what Hugh looks like yet. Tod (his player) turned out to be casting about a little ... suggesting e.g. Danny DeVito among others. It seemed to me that Hugh was younger and sharper - practically the show's (our show's, not the in-show one) male lead. Tod liked that; it fit better with the stuff he'd said earlier while making the character. Everyone then threw around names of actors I didn't recognize, being TV-lame, but Tod nailed it down with a mid-30s handsome guy, very sleek, very quick, very relaxed and confident.

Tod had already stated that he really loved to hate Lance, who was listed as Hugh's Nemesis. This scene sure hammered that home - Lance pulls a great big fit about how worthless Wrestlerama is, and how "any minute now" he's getting his part on Days of Our Lives, and so on. There's also the whole PR thing going on, with the website and so forth ... anyway, the best way to put it is that Hugh kicks butt and tells Kimmy, in particular, that her chair-throwing is a PR coup, not a disaster.

Can anyone remember whether it was Tod rolling alone, with lots of fanmail support, or various characters being enlisted into the conflict as well? I don't have that clear in my mind. Playing all this was way more exciting than I'm making it sound, because we've seen Kimmy's goodheartedness, and Tod's depiction of Hugh's ruthless competence really worked for me.

I particularly liked the business about how the website gets co-opted by the show - yet retains its reputation as the "unofficial no-holds-barred" site.

See, I got it - the show is partly about Kimmy learning to be a good Heel, which means getting her persona for Malevola really fucking evil. We'd managed to nail down one half of the title character, through her interactions with Billy and Patty ... but now we see why Hugh is in the show at all. He's not fully a Heel in story terms, but he can teach Kimmy how to be one, and he knows all about going for the jugular.

Maura, when did we put in the stuff about Kimmy's eye makeup? Something about how fiendish it looks. Also, there was all that hilarious communal narration biz about Lance's power-play tantrum, where he's talking about being such a serious actor - wearing, of course, his shiny wrestler tights and big hair and so on. I think Julie woke us up to the visuals on that one.

But it really goes to Tod, for this scene, because Hugh did become the male lead - and not a good-hearted one like Kimmy, either, but in the way an action star becomes a lead (in the audience mind) by opening an action movie with a knockout fight/stunt scene. I may have narrated his successful outcome (I think?), but his contributions were the real role-playing.

Tim, was Billy in this scene especially? I'm thinking not, but I also remember you providing all kinds of material too.

Best,
Ron

Much coolness. I have a question:

Looking at the whole Issue of Kimmy's personality, and especially this:

Ron Edwards wrote: See, I got it - the show is partly about Kimmy learning to be a good Heel, which means getting her persona for Malevola really fucking evil. ... now we see why Hugh is in the show at all. He's not fully a Heel in story terms, but he can teach Kimmy how to be one, and he knows all about going for the jugular.

Ron Edwards wrote: I'm talking about the straightforward and undeniable observation that asserting one's position through violence is absolutely required in real life.....We all know that "finding one's warrior" is part of living life - the alternative is living in some form of fear.

Hi Sydney,

Since the pro wrestling in Wrestlerama is athletic and demanding, and occasionally bloody, but not actually a "fight" in any sense of aggression or self-defense, I don't think the connection is rock solid.

"Heelness" is fictional villainy, rather than the core/bedrock issue of (for lack of a better term) "coming to peace with oneself regarding violence." I'm not sure I see Kimmy as needing to become more of a warrior (the latter), but I do see her as maybe cueing off Hugh's ruthlessness, perhaps even superficiality, as a good way to construct her fictional Heel persona.

Right now I guess I'd be more interested in how Kimmy deals with dating than in how she deals with a mugger.

The Buck ultimately stops with Maura when it comes to Kimmy, though, and as the show evolves (all my talk about upcoming episodes is purely conjectural until we get there, after all), we'll find out.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Since the pro wrestling in Wrestlerama is athletic and demanding, and occasionally bloody, but not actually a "fight" in any sense of aggression or self-defense, I don't think the connection is rock solid.

Hello,

Let's get back on track (Sydney's confusion has been further clarified privately).

The final scene in our session brought Patty and Hugh together, as the network clamps down hard on what they think is a complete plug-pulling fiasco. But no! They present a united front of hey, what problem? Because they'd fixed it all and spun it just right.

"What about this terrible website?" We own it. It's a PR coup. (They airbrushed the photo slightly)

"What about Lance? He's leaving!" Lance is not leaving and he's toeing the line.

And so on. Patty comes off looking like the big hero, and interestingly, Hugh doesn't. This was an interesting, even a little thought-provoking outcome to his triumphant crisis management in the previous scene ... because it was Patty who found the heart of the show via Kimmy, and Hugh who merely fixed things. He ended up getting his knees cut out from under him by his boss (a Connection), in the sense that he still has this Damocles sword hanging over him. All he bought with his efforts was increased pressure.

As a spotlight episode for Hugh, it was kind of grim, really - this is "success" if you are merely bright, ruthless, and skilled. Ultimately, not much.

I also see incredible potential for Hugh/Patty conflict and Hugh/Kimmy conflict in the future.

Best,
Ron

I just wanted to add a couple of things before this thread completely went to bed. The final scene between Hugh, Patty and the network exec was a little anticlimactic to me, because we'd all been so invested in the previous scene where Hugh and Patty had to deal with Lance. Everybody threw in fanmail against Lance. After that moment, nobody liked the pretty boy. I didn't contribute my remaining point of fanmail to the conflict with the network exec, because I wanted to save it for the next run. Also, I wanted to see how it panned out purely from a spectator's point of view.

As it turned out, I shouldn't have worried about losing my remaining point of fanmail. After the pilot concluded, we were talking about future directions, which kind of boiled into remarks that sounded a lot like "next week" promos to me. I'd described Kimmy doing a commercial, where she held a burger in one hand and said, "Grr! Burger!" followed by a beep and a disembodied voice saying, "Meaner, Kimmy." I think Tod said, "Why couldn't we get the Maybelline contract?" And I responded with, "Grr! Sometimes I feel not so fresh!" And I got another point of fanmail. Note to self: It's not about shepherding resouces as much as it is about generating your resources by adding something entertaining to the mix. As often as possible, without being obnoxious.