Are you new to MDV? If so, then you most likely have not even thought to get caught up on the articles of MDV. More so, you probably don’t even know where to begin looking for it and what to look for.

Then this is the place for you, as being the longest term writer for MDV (not counting Streetz), it is my job to take you on a tour of the MDV Article Archive.

I hope you brought a feather duster and a haz-mat suit, this could get messy.

*Gas mask on...*

…Let’s go in.

It is just another Thursday in paradise. I sit in my big, comfortable, fluffy, leather backed chair reading the newest slew of articles to finally come trickling across my desk. The guys across the hall seem to be doing a lot more tapping of their gums rather than tapping on the typewriters these days.

I look across the room and out the window wall of my office. Out there sit the men of the Vortex. What a cast of characters they are. I might even say some are sight for sore eyes, but then, most of them rarely are seen in my parts. You know, the place where the articles go for a final look over.

Through the smog that seems to be coming from Luther’s desk, I see guys walking, guys talking, some even laughing out loud. “I really need to get that Ryu guy in check. He comes in here, completely out of no where, and runs around like he the owns the damn place…

“Ryu?!” I hold up the article in my hand and point to it. Quickly he comes trotting over to my door with a sheepish grin on his face.

“Chief?”

“Where the hell is yours?”

“I uh… I am sure it is around here somewhere Chief.”

“Stop calling me ‘Chief.’ Stop walking around talking. Stop babbling on about marbles, and get me more articles! You are falling behind in your article count as well as the rough edits! How can I get…”

“Right Chief, right away Chief.” With that he runs out the door and begins talking with Mal again. Out of principle I continue to finish my rant, as you can’t waste a good one. It doesn’t matter if there is no one to listen to you; as a matter of fact, no one does anyways, so why be concerned with the fact that no one is physically present to listen?

I begin to actually read the article in my hand. While reading I reach absent-mindedly for a drink of coffee when I knock it over, spilling it across the desk and the three articles waiting for my approval.

“Son of a b—Daz!”

“Yes sir?!” He appears nearly out of thin air outside of my door, nearly sending my heart through the roof.

“I need a rag, a big one. This damn coffee spilled everywhere in here…”

“Sure thing Tyn, but why me?”

“That’s a good man. Hurry back with that rag.” I stand up and walk past him through the door. He follows me for a few steps, as if he expects me to answer his question, but after I began my next rant, he must have figured it out, as the next time I see him he is holding the rag.

“Luther…Vamplord….” Luth looks up at me, cigar smoldering in his lips. “What the hell do you call this?” I hold up his article, text centered and bold, looking mighty fancy. He squints through the smoke and finally recognizes it.

“That’s my article.”

“I know! That doesn’t answer my question! I said, ‘what the hell is this?’”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this is CRAP! This is the worst piece of work I have ever seen out of you, Mr. Vampire. What the hell is going on? Have you been feeding off of stray cats in the back alley again?”

“No sir, I…”

“By the way, your cigar is hurting my eyes. Would you like to put it out, or can I show you what to do with it?”

“Uh, no sir I…”

“Ryu, do you think you are special?” I quickly turn my attention to him as he is standing a mere three feet from me and is talking to Mal about me as if I can’t hear him. “Do I need to sit at your desk with you and hold your hand while you try to focus on your work instead of playing patty-cake with Mal?”

“Patty… cake?”

“Excuse me Tyn, can you take this rag…?” I whirl around to see Daz looking at me impatiently. “I also would like to know why you yelled for me.” Disbelief courses through my veins as again he really expects an answer to the question. Very well….

“Will someone who is well versed with the Guild please explain to Daz why the new guy gets called on to do the crap jobs? Perhaps someone well verse with sharp knives as well?” With the completion of my sentence, Mal nearly knocks Ryu over trying to volunteer.

“Oooh, me! Me!!!” The lunacy of Mal approaching is enough to unnerve the new comer, and he retreats to his desk.

“Thanks Mal, oh, that reminds me, Streetz wants to know if you can do something about that smell coming from your desk. Are you cooking a baby over there?”

“No,” he replies with a sly grin, “that was three weeks ago.”

“Can you not do that at work? Great, thanks.” He looked a bit confused, most likely at the “not” part of the sentence, but I know these guys well enough not to let him try to ask questions. It is best to just continue on with something else.

“I could probably offer at least five different ways to effectively put out your damn cigar off the top of my head, Luth. You have been here for how many years, and I still get crap articles from you. Look at Beebles.” I gesture across the room, through the thick smoke into the side office where sits a normal everyday guy typing away at a computer. “Do you know that in all my days, I have never stepped into his office? Do you know why? He never misses a deadline, never slacks off, never sits around smoldering like a burning pine tree in a forest fire! Look at his desk! His stack of paperwork is just as high as yours, yet his is all sitting in his outbox, while these papers here,” I smack wildly, sending his pile of papers fluttering all over the room, “have not ever moved from this spot. LOOK! There are spiders spinning webs in your outbox Luther. What the hell is going on?!”

He just looks at me as if he is seeing the wall behind me.

“Am I growing horns here? What the hell are you staring at?”

“Nothing. I … I just don’t know what to say, Tynion.”

“How about yes, sir, I will do better, sir. I will put the damn stinky ass cigar out, sir, and focus on my article, sir. I will trip Ryu every time he runs past me, sir. You are still only three feet from me, Ryu. I hear every last word you are saying. Mal, would you happen to have some left over chain from that meal the other day? If so, can you please figure a way to keep Ryu at his desk? Luther, come with me, I need to show you something.” Just then a hamsandwich walks by.

“Did that really just happen?”

**Later in the Lobby**

“Look Luth, you have always been one of my favorite, most loyal writers. That is why I bust your chops all the time. You’ve been dead a long time now, I understand that, but you have to stop dragging your feet through everything. Maybe you don’t have feeling in them or something, I don’t know….” After rummaging through my very large key ring, I finally come across the key I have been looking for. “See that haz-mat suit over there against the wall? I suggest that you put it on to preserve your clothes and 1920’s hair do. Oh by the way, they called the other day, they’d like it back.”

Apparently he isn’t in the mood. I shrug and chuckle at my own humor as I reach for my suit. Once we both have the protective gear on, we enter the now unlocked door before us. Inside, I bumble around, looking desperately for a light switch. I feel something move past me and suddenly the lights flicker to life.

“The benefit of undeath; I can see in complete darkness.” He cracks a slight smile.

“Show off….” I walk past him and straighten a crooked light stand. “This, Luther, is the Article Archive. This is where all of our articles come to die once they have been read through. No one ever comes here to see them.” I blow on the cover of a dusty tome, and dust spirals away across the room. “It’s too bad, too. There is at least three year’s worth of material here. I’d say about 80% of it is damn good stuff. Obviously, not every article is worth its weight in gold, but most of them received positive feedback and were enjoyable reads, however Streetz ended up just locking the door as no one ever comes down here. He figured, ‘Why keep it unlocked? No one comes around anyways.’ Pretty sad. Come this way.”

I lead him across the room to a set of shelves. The first one is chucked full of work. There are long articles, short articles, colorful articles, and even some to make you laugh. Then the other shelf, upon further inspection, is only a quarter of the way full and looks pretty sad compared to the first.

“What is this?”

“This is the backbone of the archives. On this shelf over here,” I pat the full one with a lovingly soft hand, “you will find every last article written by Beebles or myself. Anything you want to know about the history of MDV is most likely found in here.” I squint a bit and peer at the other shelf. “That one there is everyone else’s articles. As you can see, there is a bit of disparity going on here at MDV.”

”I don’t understand what you are getting at here.”

“Don’t you see Luth, Your articles should be here in this shelf with ours, not in that shelf with their’s. You should be helping us fill this shelf, not eating dust in their shelf. In that shelf you will find your one hit wonders; guys who stick around for six months and write two articles. These were the guys who couldn’t cut it, the guys who thought that they were too big for themselves. They hit it off great with an initial article, people loved it, then they couldn’t muster the intestinal fortitude to continue writing. This work began to stink over time and then they disappear. All we have of them are carbon dated articles from 1946 and no corpse to speak of.”

“I don’t think I follow.”

“Luther, you are better than those guys, yet you are not stepping up to the plate. I am trying to preserve you while you are still here. Why else do you think I am so mean to you?”

“Because… you are a mean guy?”

“No.”

“Because… you don’t like me?”

“No.”

“Because… vampires make your skin crawl?”

“Sometimes, but no.”

“Because… I am a bad writer and you think more of me than I do?”

“No, and if you don’t quit putting yourself down, I’ll dig out that old bottle of blessed Jack Daniels I got two years ago and trick you into having a pint again. Boy wasn’t that a good time?”

After a moment’s time he finally smiles and concedes. “It certainly did burn on the way down. Why don’t you pull that out sometime?”

“How about now? It is not like we are doing anything important, right?”

“True….”

So you made it this far and for that I congratulate you. This tells me a few important things about you. First, you know how to operate a mouse. Next, you know how to navigate the web enough to find MDV in the first place. Finally, you are interested in further reading of both my writing and of MDV articles in general, as the introduction to this article clearly told you that I was going to help you find the old articles and what to do once you got there.

Speaking of there, where is “there?”

“There” is the Article Archive; the place where all articles go to die once they have been published. I’d guess that any one article is actually on the front page for around two to three weeks. If you are newer to MDV than that, then you have not seen anything older than that. Please don’t think that this extremely mathematical equation is correct:

Old = Bad

It is far from the truth. Old is vintage, like a fine wine; it ripens over time. And remember the lesson of life that has been proven recently by the return of bell-bottom pants: Old shall become new.

Which reminds me, the guy who brings back the mullet should be strung out on the rocks and left to get a severe sun burn while we all stand back and laugh. The mullet was cool in its day, but I don’t ever want to see it again.

Now, back to the point of this article: To take you on a voyage. We will go to a far off place where you can read for days, months; dare I even say years?

Off we go… to the Article Archive!

While sitting at the main page of Vortex, along the top of the page you will see a series of links. Left to right, you will see one called Articles in the forth slot. Click it and you will begin your quest.

Inside, there is a group of blocks with labels. This is where things may seem to get tricky, but it really is not. Going left to right again, you will see Article Archive, Blog Notifications, News, 2008 Article Archive, and 2007 Article Archive. Below there is a link that we will be skipping called “Write for MDV.” Guess what that link is for…?

Now, if you click the link called “Article Archive,” you will be mystically taken to the main place of the archive. Note the new boxes that appear. Yep, they reveal that the 2008 and 2007 Article Archives are here as well, which is why I skipped them earlier. However, now you will see 2006 as well.

More importantly, I’d like to direct your attention to the two boxes at the right labeled “by Author” and “by Series.” These are the goods that I want to show you first. Follow me…

Click “by Author.”

Once inside, you will see more boxes, but I encourage you to scroll down. You will come across a large box labeled “Past and Present Authors of MDV.” In this box you will find the most current roster of MDV writers. Most are listed by their forum nicknames, but there is one person bold enough to put himself out there as a proud man (me!).

*Ehem*

You can click any of these names and you will be taken to a place in the deepest, darkest depths of MDV where all the articles are sorted by name. For example, if you click my name (Chris Newton (Tynion)), you will see a complete list of all the published material I have contributed to MDV, with the newest articles on top. This is the same for any other writer. I believe Streetz only starts a page for you if you have three published articles or more. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember him saying that at some time.  [Editor's Note: You are correct. ~Streetz~]

So now you know how to find more articles written by any one person. But what if you want to read all the articles of one series, and you know that more than one writer has contributed to that series

Simple! Click your back button from there, find “by Series” and click it. Now if you scroll down you will find an extensive list of the article series that have graced the MDV Red over the years. With each series, you will find a brief description of it which might peak your interest in reading more about it. All of the articles inside are sorted by date, with the newest articles on top.

Finally, I can lead you back towards the entrance and out of these haz-mat suits. Let’s take the long route though. By clicking backwards once more, you will be able to find the 2006, 2007, and 2008 Archives. In these archives you will see the order of publication for a given year. All of these articles, again, are sorted from the oldest to newest, with the newest on top.

Done!

Now you are a completely trained expert in the use and search of the MDV Article Archive. Now there is no reason that you cannot search and find something to read and keep yourself out of trouble and in good standing with the wife (unless she is jealous of all the time you will be spending reading our articles).

I hope you have enjoyed this tour of the place. Please leave the suit at the top of the stairs for the next guy.

Until we meet again.

-cpn

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.
Find other articles by this author here.
Find other articles from this series here.

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