Hey there everybody,
We’re entering the final stretch of the Worldbuilders. And in case you don’t make a habit of checking the Worldbuilders News page, or following us on facebook or twitter, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about one of the newer things we’ve been doing this year.
I’m talking about our Stretch Goals, of course.
As I write this, geeks of all creeds and nations have banded together to raise $274,000 dollars, which means we’ve unlocked ten Stretch Goals and we’re closing in fast on the eleventh.
In case you’ve missed a few, I thought it would be a good idea to gather them all in one place for you to take a gander at.
We mentioned this one on the blog last month, but back then we didn’t have the terrifying video footage yet.
Since then, we’ve edited together this:
Honestly, this video kinda horrified everyone in the office, and the first time we watched it there was a lot of awkward laughter and cringing behind hands. But it definitely started us out in the right foot in terms of proper promotional Ballyhoo.
- $50,000 Paul & Storm Mock Pat.
This one pretty much speaks for itself.
You don’t want to know how many times I’ve listened to that.
(Click to embiggen. If you dare….)
Jim did yet another of his cover pose parodies for our $75,000 fundraiser, and did a great write up about it over here.
If this intrigues, or even disturbs you, you can buy a calendar full of these over on The Tinker’s Packs.
- $100,000 Brandon Sanderson live-streams a story.
This is a really cool one. Brandon has agreed to write a story and broadcast the event live for everyone to see.
What’s more, the story will be based on ideas and suggestions from viewers turning in to watch.
Afterward, he will be releasing the story into the Creative Commons, so anyone can download the story and finish it on their own.
If you want to be a part of it, keep your schedule open on January 17th from 2-7pm Mountain Time, and keep an eye out for the link to view it on the Worldbuilders Facebook Page.
I’ve talked about my love for the Doubleclicks before. And I’m pretty sure I’ve shared around their epic song Nothing To Prove, where they talk about the bullshittery inherent in the whole Fake Geek Girl movement.
So when they agreed to come in and help us spread the word about Worldbuilders by performing Moonlight Sonata on a pair of cat keyboards… Well, I couldn’t help but love them just a little bit more.
Epic and awesome.
Mary Robinette Kowal is a truly awesome person. Some of you might remember her as the person who beat me at being me in my twitter contest earlier this year.
Since Mary has proven that she can mimic me so well none of you can tell the difference, we were delighted when she offered to write some NOTW erotica fan fiction for us.
Yeah. You heard that right.
You can download it and read it over here.
You may have seen the recent blog on the subject, but if you haven’t, it’s over here.
- $200,000 Milynn Sarley and the rest of Team Unicorn will pie each other in the face.
We haven’t gotten the video for this yet, but it’s for a very legitimate reason:
So a guy just punched me in the face because my friend and I asked him not to hit in us. My hand is most likely fractured. There were cops.
— Milynn Sarley (@milynnsarley) January 11, 2014
So while we might not have this one yet, we’re pretty sure it’s going to be awesome.
- $225,000 Patrick Rothfuss will reveal his first piece of fan fiction.
Once, years and miles away, I wrote out the lyrics to a song that gets mentioned in some of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.
Specifically, I wrote the lyrics to “A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob on the End.”
This was long, long ago, you realize. Twenty years.
Neverthleless, because I’m a packrat, I managed to find an old copy tucked away in a folder. It was printed out on a dot-matrix printer, for those of you who even know what that is. In computer terms, it’s like finding something written on a papyrus scroll.
It was my first piece of fan fiction. And now that I’ve unearthed it, I’ll be doing a blog about it and posting a video very soon.
- $250,000 Peter Orullian will perform a heavy metal version of Joss Whedon’s “Ballad of Serenity” theme with lyrics retooled for Worldbuilders.
This also got a lot of laughs in the office.
Future Stretch Goals
We’ve got some awesome stuff lined up for the next two weeks as well:
$275,000 Trey Ratcliff, internationally renowned photographer, will take an “ill-advised” bathroom selfie.
$300,000 Scott Lynch & Elizabeth Bear will give a drunken review of the second Hobbit film.
$325,000 John Scalzi will perform “But Not Tonight” on either ukulele or tenor guitar.
$350,000 Hank Green will seduce a particularly nice-looking tree.
$375,000 Patrick Rothfuss will team up with Mary Robinette Kowal to read the NOTW erotica she wrote.
$400,000 Sandeep Parikh will drink Capri Sun while doing a handstand with other members of The Guild.
$425,000 Bradley P. Beaulieu will read an excerpt from The Hobbit while enjoying the Wisconsin weather.
$433,420 Molly Lewis will perform The Greatest Adventure on various silly instruments.
$475,000 Pat Rothfuss and Amber Benson will write urban fantasy erotica together.
$500,000 Neil Gaiman will read you Green Eggs and Ham.
Now I hear the more observant of you saying, “What’s up with that $433,420 stretch goal?”
Well you see, that’s how much money Worldbuilders managed to raise last year: $433,420.
That is my personal goal for this year’s fundraiser. I would very much like to beat that. If you’d like to see that happen as well, there’s a few things you can do to help.
1. You can donate here.
This one’s obvious. If you donate to Heifer on our Team page, you’re not only making the world a better place, but you can win some of the thousands of books donated by generous authors and publishers.
2. You can help us spread the word.
Share the videos. Tell your friends. Makes some noise on twitter or your blog. (If you’d like to contact us for a more traditional interview, or would like to help out in some other way, here’s our e-mail: questions [@] worldbuilders.org)
3. Let us know what you’d like to see.
If you have any suggestions for future stretch goals, I’d love to see those too. I’m hoping we’ll need to add a few more before we’re done this year….
Thanks for tuning in folks, and thanks for being awesome,
pat
24 Comments
I didn’t know about The wind comes….I’ll be needing to look into that.
Awesome. More smut to read on my tablet. My day just got so much better.
These look awesome!
I have no clue who Team Unicorn is but I’m about to go find out, also…WTF that tweet…that’s awful.
Good thing Worldbuilders was here to restore my faith in humanity after reading that.
This was the first video of theirs I saw:
http://youtu.be/o3-SEo26tM8
I couldn’t stop laughing.
They crack me up on a regular basis….
Damn I love MRK more and more each day. That was some awesome erotica :) Next year – I say she has to do MORE! I’ll beg prettily and everything.
My vote for stretch goal? Pat shaves that animal he calls a beard! :)
Blasphemy!!
Two things: I wish I could give all the money! this year…and, I’m beginning to think Jim Hines just likes dressing up in risque reverse-gender roles. :-P
I am COMPLETELY in love with Peter Orulian’s heavy metal ballad.
If I could afford it, I would donate $500,000 myself just to get to Neil Gaiman reading Green Eggs & Ham.
…or, if I had 25,000 friends, I could talk into donate $20 each…
Pretty good erotica, and I’m a hetero male. She pretty closely mimicked your voice. Not quite though.
Hummm Erotica, only problem is Bast is supposed to call him Kote not Kvothe.
Pat did you add the Paul and Storm write like the (name of) wind to your get psyched mix tape? I simply assume it is a tape and not a CD because how cool would that be I imagine it would include survivor eye of the tiger and mayeb AC/DC Hell’s Bells to get in that special mood.
I clicked on the “You can donate here” link near the bottom of the page and the website it sent me to is a Runtime Error screen.
That should be fixed now!
Thanks Brett.
Time to buy an Iron Pendant to contribute on another note Ms Mrs? Kowal does an incredible job mimicking your writing style plus she fooled most of us (including myself) on Twitter. Not sure I can finish that erotica though simply because the way the books are written things like these are implied rather than quite so explict. I’m just jealous I can’t write like that I guess.
I actually address the change from implied to explicit! Ha!
(And thank you)
Wow, the Wizzards (Rincewind wizzard ofc, not normal wizard) staff song will be amazing. But can you sing it Nanny Ogg style?
Would live to see you and P.Terry do a duet next year!
Pat, you said in time of Mountain (the Brandon God streaming), but which Mountain? There are five fucking Mountain, 4 of them placed in the United States.
Until now, I didn’t know the worst: I probably won’t see the streaming (due to the hour, cause in Spain we are 7 hours or something like that from United States). Will it be recorded? I know, I can see the story after, but I want to see the streaming. Thanks
There is only one Mountain Standard Time (MST) in the USA. It is Greenwich Mean Time -7:00.
Are there other mountain standard time zones?
I hope this helped.
Love the stretch goals and the World Builders icons at the bottom.
I hope last year’s total is beat.
“Before your beard eats you please write like the wind”
I’ll be chuckling over this one for a long time, I’m sure. Thank you!