ISH-O-Vision™ Colors and Notes
The following is a list of ISH-O-Vision™* voice colors of those characters pertaining to my work in TMC World, along with full names or titles as appropriate. This list should reflect the most up-to-date versions of everything, seeing as I update it every time I add or change something (such as Terrin's list of titles, which I update every time I start a new chapter, it seems). Also included are the actual html RGB hexadecimal values of the color. Basically, this is just so that I don't have to go plumbing the depths of the coding in previous chapters to remember everybody's text color. So it's largely for my benefit, but somebody, somewhere, might find some of this of slight interest for some reason other than for posterity.
ISH-O-Vision™ colors:
Mainline TMC Chronicle
(possibly but not necessarily in order of appearance)
* denotes an actual TMC party member
Terrin*: silver (#C0C0C0)
MacLeod*: darkcyan (#008B8B)
Calain*: red (#ff0000)
Arian (the bard)*: darkviolet (#9400D3)
Timmy the Little Boy in Chapter 4: powderblue (#B0E0E6)
The Head Clown in Chapter 4: khaki (#F0E68C)
The Great Gandalfo: green (#008000)
Princess Montane: orchid (#DA70D6)
Bob of Bob's Discount Magical Crap and Taxidermy Shop: lime (#00FF00)
Eskar the Ale-Pumper of the Iron Flagon: darkgoldenrod (#B8860B)
Elysia Galanodel (the Elven... seductress): pink (#FFC0CB)
Leah Galanodel* (the Elven cat-burglar): darkslategray (#2F4F4F)
Any Orcs I Might Use, Ever: brown (#A52A2A)
The Guy In The Bar That Called Calain "Doorstop" in Chapter 8: peachpuff (#FFDAB9)
The Putz from Chapter 8: darkmagenta (#8B008B)
Nash (the sorcerer)*: orange (#FFA500)
Quinn, Lord of the Northern Wastes: lightskyblue (#87CEFA)
Loctar, of the Evermerere Highlands: blue (#0000ff)
Sir Marcus of the Black Dragon: slategray (#708090)
The Nameless Vampire Warrior from the North: dimgray (#696969)
The End of the First Demon War
Lord Silvaire of Terrin: lightslategray (#778899)
Sir Tyrael of the Shining Tower: goldenrod (#DAA520)
Tull the Blacksmith of the Shining Tower: steelblue (#4682B4)
Ra'ith: indigo (#4B0082)
Soveliss the Ranger: forestgreen (#228B22)
Beornhelm the Ranger: darkgreen (#006400)
The Younger White Dragon: darkgray (#A9A9A9)
Aramus of the Northern Wastes: dimgray (#696969)
Yrius the Gold Wyrm (Sir Tyrael's bonded mount): gold (#ffd700)
Porrus, Earl of Sandwich: burlywood (#DEB887)
Shohei: yellow (#ffff00)
Full Names and Such
Mainline TMC Chronicle
Sir Terrin of the Shining Tower, Bandit-Slayer and Hero of the Township of Su-lain, Righter of Wrongs, Doer of Good and Adjudicator of the People's Justice of the Township of Fallior, Knight-Errant, Chosen Champion and Protector of the Royal Line of the Kingdom of Crystalis, Holy Knight of Pelor (later Lord Terrin of the Shining Tower, [...])
William MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod (sometimes known as The Raging Highlander)
Calain the Unstoppable of the Iron Mountain Clan
Nash, Sorcerer Supreme (voted Most Constantly Immaculate Hair by Magic Combs Monthly)
Monsieur Du Pont Du La Pont Du La Pont DeLeon (otherwise known as Arian to anyone that doesn't want to say his whole ridiculous name)
Princess Gwendolyn Montane of the Kingdom of Crystalis (later Lady Gwendolyn of the Shining Tower, Princess of the Kingdom of Crystalis)
Loctar of the White Mountains, Lord High Protector of Greywode (though he didn't have this full title yet when he appeared in Chapter 9 of the TMC Chronicle)
Bob the Astounding, Transmuter, Evoker, and Taxidermist Extraordinaire (Valedictorian of Soredomo Magic Academy with High Honors)
Shohei the Shining, Illusionist and Cantripper Extraordinaire (Valedictorian of Soredomo Magic Academy, Only High Honors Student Ever To Be Expelled And Successfully Reinstated Twice Whilst Still Graduating Valedictorian, Only Allowed To Graduate Because Expelling Him A Third Time From The Academy For His Conduct At The Graduation Ceremony During His Valedictorian Speech Would Have Meant Having To Put Up With Him For Another Year)
The End of the First Demon War
Lord Silvaire of Terrin, Sultan of the Saladin Desert, Holy Knight of Pelor
Sir Tyrael of the Shining Tower, Holy Knight of Pelor (later Lord Tyrael of the Shining Tower, Planar Guardian of Evermere, Holy Knight of Pelor)
Aramus, Captain of the Rylesian Guard
*ISH-O-Vision™ is the name given to the system of colorizing dialogue in a story to reflect a different voice for each speaker, generally by employing hexadecimal color codes or color name codes in HTML, which is my preferred medium. For example, look at the following excerpt from Chapter 7 of the Chronicle of Terrin, MacLeod, and Calain, which is a conversation between Bob of Bob's Discount Magical Crap and Taxidermy Shop and Calain the Unstoppable of the Iron Mountain Clan:
"We... er... need some... magic." said Calain from his head atop the halfling's left shoulder.
"Ah. It so happens that you've come to the right place. What kind of magic can I help you with? Evocation? Levitation? Illusion?" asked Bob helpfully.
"Er... well... uh..." stammered Calain, having no real knowledge of magic.
Obviously, the colorizing process yields what I believe to be a more enjoyable reading experience, or I wouldn't bother to go in and code all the different text colors. Mostly, it just functions to give characters a "voice" of their own to differentiate between them more effectively. Each color in the TMC Chronicle (and in my other, previous use of ISH-O-Vision in the latter chapters of The Adventures of The Insane Space Hunter (TAOTISH)) is hand-picked by me to reflect something about the character--William MacLeod's color, for instance, is darkcyan, which is similar to one of the primary colors in the real-world MacLeod tartan. Silver is what I chose for Terrin the holy knight, being that it reflects purity and honor or some deliberately corny crap like that. Brown for orcs would reflect an general uncouthness and almost dirty, earthen quality to their voices. Plus, they're kinda brown and furry. I don't always have an amusingly important reason for what I do. :P
The origin of ISH-O-Vision™ dates back to my days on a fantasy wrestling online game that I've long since forgotten the name of. Something on IGN, I think. This was in late 1999 or early 2000. Anyway, my wrestler was called Insano, who was more of less the conceptual forefather of The Insane Space Hunter, which was the screenname I'd happened to pick for myself a few months earlier when I'd joined the message board pertaining to the Metroid Database.
I used to colorize the text of different characters in my posts--the system was that you would post to the message board your taunts or showboatings, or even written descriptions of the happenings of a particular match as appropriate. My match "rewrites," as they were called, took place in the form of two commentators, Bob Hayes and Tony Jabroni. Each had a diffent text color, Bob being yellow and Tony being red. My character had a navy blue-ish voice, which was also the color of The Insane Space Hunter's voice when it came to that point in the story. I had actually been putting random strings in font color tags to see what they yielded, and that one happened to be "tomcat" which I then stuck with until I stopped sticking with it. Anyway, that was when I first started colorizing text for dialogue.
Later on, something spawned from the community on the Metroid Database Message Board (MDbMB), which was called the Battle of the Posters (BOTP). This was in October of 2000. A bunch of us got together and created personas based on our screen names, which we then collectively wrote a story about. In the story, a great almighty being (called TJ, after the host/owner of the MDb and the MDbMB) promised the competitors, our characters, a great prize should they be the last one standing. It was pretty simple; we'd write three different "moves" or kinds of things our characters could do, as well as a description of their personality. After that, we would write stories, but not about our specific character--everyone else would write about our character, and we'd write about theirs. This effectively made it fair, especially in regard to the problems the fantasy wrestling league I'd taken part in had exhibited, where although there was a computerized system in place that would determine who won a given match, the rewrites generally were one-sided face mashings without much of anything going the other way.
The first battle elapsed, and I later archived it in story format on a site that is, amazingly enough, still active (the other site I linked to earlier is the much better version that a guy named Outerverse whipped up, which was the official Information & Data Center after BOTP2 began). I didn't actually initially ISH-itize it, but I did colorize a few things (including the character list on the archive site). ISH-O-Vision became official procedure in BOTP3. I ISH-itized my posts in BOTP2, but it wasn't official procedure until 3. There were 6.5 BOTPs, referred to as a decimal number because we started BOTP7, had some problems, had the board crash and had to revert to a previously archived version where we hadn't started the story yet, and then ditched the operation. Thus, BOTP6 was the last official BOTP. I participated actively in BOTP1-5, then dropped off the internet entirely partway through BOTP6. The Insane Space Hunter was treated as a non-player character (NPC) for the rest of BOTP6, though I started playing him again once we began BOTP7. Somewhere between BOTP2 and 3, I started the aforementioned The Adventures of The Insane Space Hunter, which were his non-BOTP adventures. Considering he died in BOTP1, BOTP2, and BOTP3 (at least), it was amusingly difficult to keep writing him back into existence. I ended up colorizing the latter chapters of TAOTISH and plan to go back and colorize (and proofread) the older chapters, but I also plan to finish the TMC Chronicle and here I am, explaining ISH-O-Vision™'s origins to nobody in particular. So that may or may not happen.
When I started the TMC Chronicle in September of 2002, and wrote two and a half chapters or so. I finished Chapter 3 on November 28th, 2003, at one in the morning, at which point I got around to actually titling the chapters and began Chapter 4, which I finally picked up and finished (and began working on the following chapters) in June 2005. At this point, I posted it on a message board and ISH-itized it, which I had not done previously. I originally had it posted on my Asylum site, where it still sits color- and update-free, but I simply copied the text off of that site when I moved it to the board. Then, I simply created a site for it that I have yet to post anywhere, which is where you're currently reading this.
That is, more or less, the ridiculous and surprisingly convoluted history/ies of ISH-O-Vision™, The Insane Space Hunter/Insano, the TMC Chronicle, and the Battle of the Posters. Have a nice day.
Joshua Thompson, April 28, 2006
The entire ISH-O-Vision™ concept is the intellectual property of Joshua Thompson, who operates under the internet screenname "The Insane Space Hunter," for which the colorizing process is named. Feel free to use it as much as you like, it's not like I can really sue someone for making somebody's voice pink if they want to. That's kinda why I came up with the idea. Don't bother including this notice with any usages of ISH-O-Vision™, nobody's probably going to read it anyway. Have a nice day.
©2005-2006 Joshua Thompson, Chris Morgan, and Keith Keydel. Monsieur Du Pont Du La Pont Du La Pont DeLeon is the intellectual property of Neal Schlein, which he's perfectly welcome to keep. All other characters are the intellectual property of whoever played them, should they still remember doing so. Have a nice day.