Even if that's true, the RIAA may not be so understanding.





That might work, since it's a fairly common name people will have to think about to get.





Noted.








You should really watch the first Hellraisers movie before using any reference to them. Like Nightmare on Elm Street, the production company is very protective of the still-lucrrative franchise.





It's possible Hellraisers ripped off from the game - but now they practically own the franchise, and still sell toys.





I do remember one of the Hellraisers characters used chains with meathooks on them. No armor though.





I admit as late at night as I posted that reply, I assumed since you were publicly posting your notice, you were warning us all to stop using Vinnie for now.









That last part was direct from me more than a generality. I guess I'm discovering that I like writing, but the *quality* of it seems to be audience-driven. The better the response, the more I'm motivated to include more detail. If I'm just posting to try to keep the PVB alive, I tend to keep the stories shorter and quicker moving.

Unfortunately, the latter doesn't make good practice for decent writing. So I'm lamenting a bit that the low turnout is making me *less* capable of producing publish-worthy writing, and practice-wise I'm becoming less and less capable of maintaining the quality necessary. So now I'm a little envious because of the hole I've fallen into while others are finding the success I feel like I'm now far, far away from.

That feeling also is because I get the sense that for half of the tiny audience here, my stories, or style, or use of characters, or just that it's me posting it, does not motivate them to read or reply or stick around despite my somewhat frequent posting. That, for lack of better reasoning, tells me I don't quite have the magic necessary to draw an audience, which is necessary for real success.





I agree that it's organic, what I meant is because we're losing people *now*, perhaps the process needs to be accelerated a bit. Right now we're stuck in an awful cycle where as the poster-characters are forcibly retired, and no new ones are added, the cast is shrinking. As the cast shrinks, we lose more poster-characters. See where this is headed?

I think if more non-poster-characters are added - and Visionary has provided quite a few, Al B Harper a couple, etc, so I know posters can do this - the stories will no longer be strangled by a restrictively small cast. Posters may stop by from time to time to see how their fictional creation is doing even though they don't have a personal stake in the characters' names anymore.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I think.





What I see in common among people who left seems to be (at least what I've seen) that this is a childlike place to be outgrown and left behind when it's time to "grow up" - i.e. get married, raise a family, get a real job, etc. Then again, there are some of us who refuse to grow up.

Then again, maybe people feel the need to "outgrow" the PV because it doesn't grow with them. A lot of the stories seem to be related to Marvel crossovers or Avengers. At the same time, when a lot of people reach a certain stage in life, they start to feel like reading Marvel comics isn't appropriate anymore - and consequently, the PV is the baby thrown out with the bathwater.

So it's great that the PVB has it's humorous namesake comedy/parody/dramatic stories, but maybe it also needs stuff that's darker, or even more humorous, or even far different - oddly enough like World Class, which I'm still struggling to draw an audience with. Or in short, stuff that people won't feel like reading it at work during a lunch break will get them fired.

The trick is figuring out what to post (and how to write it well), and how to draw in both the writers and the audience.