John August

John

Running the length of Malawi

Africa

[Malawi Map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malawi)In 2007, Ryan Reynolds and I [visited Malawi][johnaugust], a land-locked country in southern Africa, where we helped out with a group that runs day centers for thousands of orphans.

Since then, I’ve kept up with the organization, helping to build a secondary school and medical clinic.

Marathoner Brendan Rendall is currently running the length of the country to raise money to build a new wing for the secondary school, which is bursting at the seams. The block will include two science labs, an art room and a general classroom.

Brendan is running 650 miles. **That’s 25 marathons back-to-back.**

You can follow his progress on this [map][map] ((If you zoom in on the map, you can find Mulanje south-east of Blantyre.)) and see photos from the run on Facebook with the hashtag [#runmalawi](https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=%23runmalawi).

The school and related programs are run by Friends of Mulanje Orphans, which is one of the best charities I’ve ever enountered. Over the years, it has supported a generation of kids who are now helping run the program.

I’d urge you check out their [great work](http://malawiorphans.net/wordpress/?page_id=414) and [donate][justgiving] to Brendan’s campaign.

[justgiving]: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/helpfomo35

[map]: http://z6z.co/runmalawi

[johnaugust]: http://johnaugust.com/2007/home-from-africa

A Writer’s Guide to Allies

Follow Up, Genres, Story and Plot

On Scriptnotes, we often talk about heroes and villains. In [episode 252](http://johnaugust.com/2016/an-alliance-with-house-mazin), we discussed allies, and the different types of relationships between two characters.

What is the point of an ally in narrative?

  1. Characters advance their interests through allies.
  2. Characters learn about themselves through allies.
  3. Characters suffer pain for the wrong rewards.
  4. Allies define the incorrectness of a character’s starting point, and the correctness of their arrival point.
  5. Allies are more subtle and universal than enemies.

In real life, few people have villains that must be vanquished to save the day. But everyone has friends — and friends can be tricky, tricky things.

Allies should theoretically be capable of being heroes — except in feature films, they can’t. Rather —

  1. They need to illuminate the hero without pulling focus.
  2. They need to challenge the hero without becoming the villain.
  3. They serve as a proxy for the audience, asking our questions, sharing our fears.

There’s not much to learn from “we have to stop the evil genius before he blows up the world.” But drama, both in the real world and in fiction, comes from interaction with characters who are theoretically on our side.

Craig had a bunch of examples from Game of Thrones, some of which we didn’t have time to explore on the show. So here’s his complete list.

**Marriage of convenience**
We don’t like each other, but we need each other

**Buddies**
Jon Snow and Tormund

**Unrequited love**
Jorah Mormont and his Khaleesi

**Misplaced faith**
Cersei and the High Sparrow
Sansa and Joffrey

**Parent/child**
The Three-Eyed Raven and Bran
Tywin and Tyrion

**Codependency**
Jamie and Cersei Lannister

**Disciple and prophet**
The Faceless Man and Arya Stark

**Manipulator and Manipulated**
Littlefinger and Lysa Aryn

**Sparring Partner**
Tyrion and Varys

**Animal loyalty**
Hodor and Bran

**Bad for each other**
Jon Snow and Ygritte

**Alpha and Beta**
Jon Snow and Sam
Yara and Theon

**Oedipal**
Robb and Catelyn Stark

**Master and slave**
Ramsay Bolton and Reek

**Bound by honor**
Brienne and Sansa

You could argue with any of these categorizations. The point is that characters can be related in many ways other than the simple hero/villain paradigm.

Less IMDb needs a new home

Apps, Less IMDb

iconLess IMDb, our browser extension for making IMDb less cluttered and more useful, was the very first app we made. ((Is a browser extension an app? Debatable. There’s code and logic, and it has to be installed in an app-like way. But compared to Highland or Weekend Read, it’s not nearly as sophisticated. It falls into the murky area between web and app design, which is part of why it was a great first project for us.))

Here’s what I wrote [back in 2010](http://johnaugust.com/2010/less-imd):

> They’ve made it more difficult to do the one thing I come to IMDb to do: look at credits. New sections for photos, videos and trivia (star signs!) push credit lists below the fold, forcing you to scroll.

> Rather than complain about it, Ryan and I decided to fix it.

And it worked!

In the early days of browser extensions, Less IMDb became very popular because it did exactly one thing well: rearrange layouts to get rid of the cruft, letting you focus on the stuff you’re more likely to actually want.

Six years later, the little yellow tab remains in the upper-right corner of my IMDb windows, silently re-jiggering things. Remarkably, despite all the changes of technology, the extension still works.

Mostly.

Except on Firefox and Chrome.

And even on Safari, layouts will occasionally break spectacularly. IMDb pages aren’t static; you never quite know what you’re going to get. When IMDb reskins entire sections to promote a big summer movie, our little extension gets confused.

Getting Less IMDb back into fighting shape across multiple browsers will take a savvy web person 10 to 30 hours, and it’s just not a priority for us. We’ll be launching [Highland 2](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2-beta/) soon enough, and that occupies every brain cell of design and coding talent.

But reworking Less IMDb might be a great project for someone else, which is why today we’re releasing all of the source code for it with an MIT license. You can download it here:

[Less IMDb source code](http://qapps.s3.amazonaws.com/LessIMDb.zip)

Everyone is welcome to use this code to make their own version of the extension. And if one of those versions is great, we’ll even give you the name if you’d like it. (You can find us on Twitter: [@qapps](https://twitter.com/qapps?lang=en).)

I’m really happy we made Less IMDb. It set a great tone and mission for our company: making useful things we wished existed.

I hope someone takes up the charge and can give Less IMDb the love and attention it needs to go another six years.

Three Days to One Hit Kill

Projects

Next week we’re consolidating our One Hit Kill inventory, which means counting, boxing and shipping games from four different warehouses.

We’d much rather these copies of One Hit Kill be in players’ collections than Amazon’s shelves. So through Friday, we’re selling One Hit Kill at [50% off on Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/One-Hit-Kill/b/ref=bl_dp_s_web_14031125011?ie=UTF8&node=14031125011&field-lbr_brands_browse-bin=One+Hit+Kill).

It’s a great chance to nab a copy, or one for a friend.
OHK expanded
ohk-makers
ohk-core

One Hit Kill is only available on Amazon’s US store. (International buyers can find it at the [OHK site](http://onehitkillgame.com).)