#I actually outlined like half a whole story basically just this

[whumpsoda]

I. I love vampire hunters turned thralls. Brainwashed into adoring little pets to creatures of which they once chased down with the goal of killing… UGH just someone who used to hate the thing they now address as master… bonus points if they get their memories erased and have no memory of their hunter past :3

[thecousinsdangereux]

i just recently discovered your soulmate au and i loves it so much. so incredibly intriguing and well written and damn is it hot 🔥 thanks so much for sharing with us. in your mind, does it have a happy ending for them?

also wanted to ask if you'll be checking in to see the big warrior nun announcement coming tomorrow?

Ahhhh thank you! This ask is kind of tragic now given how everything with Warrior Nun ended up going, but I thought I'd use it as a way to share my ideas for the rest of a beggar in the morning, if anyone is interested in learning how it was going to go. Long story short, it was going to have a happy ending. :)

Here's a full outline for what I had in mind for the second half of the fic. Under the cut because it's very detailed in the parts that I'd started writing. Also in case anyone cares about spoilers? At the moment, I don't plan on finishing this fic, but I do plan on returning to writing in general, so guess there's a non-zero chance that I could come back to it. Stranger things have happened.

Beatrice keeps looking for the recipient of the Letter she's been trying to deliver and starts taking trips out into the countryside. She takes Ava's advice and takes to enjoying the journey - stopping into small cafes for lunch rather than eating in the car, taking the long way when it means she can enjoy a new view, etc.

During one of these side quests, she's told about a man who lives way off in the middle of nowhere who has the last name of Reis (the last name of the Letter recipient: Lara Reis), and she tracks him down. He had a sister who had a child with someone who was not her Match. I wanted to go more into what this looks like (and how the church is still anti-abortion in this world, because they think this could potentially ruin a future match, cue eye-roll) but in this case, the woman was basically run out of town. The man directs Beatrice to an orphanage where the child was raised.

This trail eventually goes cold because the orphanage has no records of the girl. They only know she left when she became of age.

The end of chapter six is basically Beatrice being frustrated and taking some 'advice' from Lilith to find someone to fuck hfkjshlk so she goes to the bar and ohhh nooo Ava is working that night, filling in for someone. Ava gets jealous, Bea does some shots, and it's basically a rehash of the lemon drop scene from the show, but hornier. Eventually, they make out, and decide to be friends with benefits.

Chapter 7 was honestly just going to be porn. lol. It's actually some of the first stuff I wrote for this fic - just a page of porn. Beggar came out of a Secret Santa fic exchange, and my friend Alex asked for lots of sex and a soulmate au. So... Chapter 7 was the payoff (part 2). Here's a few disjointed scenes, in case anyone is interested in reading some unedited very E-rated stuff.

A few months go by and all the nuns visit Beatrice for her bday and they're like huh so what's going on here and Beatrice has to pretend that it's not that serious with Ava (lol). I also wanted to do a conversation between Shannon and Beatrice where Shannon talks about the whole Mary thing and loving someone against the will of god (or at the very least, in the very gray areas).

The end of chapter seven is Ava finally talking about her past, which is that Ava doesn't remember hers. She woke up in a hospital without her memories and then spent the next decade traveling around trying to find something that felt like home.

In chapter 8, a lot of time passes, and the fucking continues. Beatrice is kind of losing it, poor girl.

I hadn't exactly decided what was going to happen next, but Ava was going to overstep in some way (or in some perceived way) and Beatrice was going to panic. Either Beatrice was going to have a brief thought about being in love, they were going to have reallyyyy soft sex, or something like that, but either way, Beatrice was going to have to admit she has deeper feelings for Ava than what's allowed allowed, so she goes back to Spain and ignores Ava's texts/calls/etc.

Eventually she realizes she owes Ava closure. She comes back and kind of explains why she's reacted the way she has. She gets more into why she joined the church and it's not for God or the Church itself, but because she does genuinely believe that love itself is holy. She admits she's falling in love with Ava, but she can't break her vows. She believes giving into her feelings would be putting herself above the whole history of love... the sanctity of the entire universe... and to be that selfish would be monstrous.

There's a callback to their early game of three questions, and how Ava still owes Beatrice one answer. Beatrice nearly asks if Ava loves her, but pulls back because she's scared of the answer. They basically break up, but Ava tells Bea to let her know when she's ready to ask her last question.

Beatrice takes it HARD. She buries herself in her work and starts visiting hospitals in various towns. She finds a Spanish doctor and he recognizes the number (or rather, the system behind the number) that is on Letter Beatrice is still trying to deliver. He tells Beatrice she's not looking for a hospital in Portugal, but rather in Spain - one in a small town in Andalusia. He mentions a patient who was in a coma, who woke up without her memories.

At this point, Beatrice obviously knows and she flies to Spain in daze. She visits the hospital, gives them the number, and asks for the name of the patient. When they'd brought the girl in, no one knew where she came from, she didn't have an ID, memories, etc. Nothing except for an old receipt from a restaurant in Portugal. ("Beatrice braces herself for what she already knows, but doesn't want to face.") The nurse at the hospital tells her they used a generic Portuguese name for the girl and it stuck: Ava Silva.

Beatrice visits Cat's Cradle because what else is she supposed to do? How is she supposed to deliver this Letter to Ava, who she's obviously in love with. She talks with Mary and we get the other side of the whole Mary/Shannon thing, and Mary is kind of like, okay, the Letters matter but they don't Matter. Beatrice asks Mary what she would do if she got a Letter (since Mary isn't a nun and could get one, but Shannon never could) and Mary basically says she would throw it away without opening it because she wouldn't want to give Shannon a reason to go self-sacrificial.

Of course, Beatrice doesn't really think this is her call to make. She's going to deliver Ava's Letter. There's this whole scene of her very dramatically and angstily getting ready for the delivery in the Official White Habit, then walking through the town she's come to associate so completely with Ava. And chapter 9 ends.

When Beatrice walks through the doors of the bar, Ava looks up, but doesn't seem surprised, even says 'oh, finally', which is pretty much the last thing that Beatrice expected, but then again, maybe it should have been the first, because Ava is always surprising her, and shouldn't she expect it by now? She asks Ava if she'd known that she was the person Beatrice had been trying to deliver to all along and Ava looks confused at this, like she hadn't considered that at all. "It's not that. I just knew my Letter would be coming because I'd already met you."

Beatrice is like, no no no. That's not how this works. It can't be me. I've been carrying this Letter with me this whole time - before I met you - and the Letters are only sent to a person when they've met their soulmate. And obviously, Beatrice is a nun and can't have a soulmate, etc. etc.

And then Ava says something like this: “Maybe every once in a while, God -- or the universe or whatever it is -- knows that it’ll be really hard to make two people meet organically, so it fudges the rules a little bit. Makes one girl a nun, makes another one hard to find, and sets up the dominos really early on."

And when Beatrice says she's being ridiculous/it's impossible, she says, "I know what’s in that letter. It’s you. I don’t need to open it to know it's you." and "Maybe it’s like some people say and god arranged it all. Fine. Then god chose me for you. Simple. He made me in this exact way, down to my hands and toes and whatever, so that I was perfect for his favorite creation in all of the universe. Because that has to be you."

And: "Or maybe it’s like what those other people say. You know - the past lives reincarnation stuff. Fine, then in our first lives we fell in love and then I found you in the second and third and the five hundredth. I found you and I picked you and I wanted you every time. Or okay, fine, maybe it’s what the the pseudo science people say. Even if those guys are right, I still know. It’s you because at the very start of the universe - at the very beginning of everything - we were the first two bits of something. The first two tiny little sparks. One of those was you and one of them was me. And even when we split off into a million trillion billion infinite pieces, the core of one was you. And the other one was me."

And: "In every religion or in any theory, the world exists so that I can find you again, and the world will do whatever it takes - bend the rules in whatever way - to make sure that at the exact right time, we would meet. And maybe it wasn’t perfect - maybe it was stupid hard for us to get to this point - maybe there was an easier way to make it happen - but I don’t care. Because it worked and I found you and I fell in love with you and I would do anything for that. So yeah. This Letter is telling me that I’m for you. That’s easy. It’s not faith. It’s just a fact.

And: "Besides, whatever’s on that paper? It’s going to be you. If it’s a picture of a butterfly, then it’s going to be you because of that time we went to the dam and one landed on your hand and you said “isn’t the world beautiful?” and that’s when I knew I loved you for the very first time. If it’s the notes to the first bar in At Last, then it’s you, because we used to play it all the time in the bar and I always thought it was fucking stupid to think you'd know like that right away, before everything, but it was the song that played in my head anyways when you walked in the bar that first night. There she is, I sort of thought, a dream that I can speak to."

"It could be any single word or phrase or letter and it would be you, because I love you and I love you so much I see you in every part of this entire world. I love you and I want to keep you with me always, and so you’re always there in my thoughts, slipping over and into everything else and I love it. It makes me love everything I see a little bit more, because it reminds me of you. It makes the world more beautiful."

"So, no offense, but I don't really give a fuck about the Letter. I already know it's going to be you. But I think you need to see it. So you know you’re not as selfish as you think you are."

And Beatrice admits that she wants to be with Ava anyways. Even if it makes her selfish. (Even if it makes her heretical.) Love is holy and what she feels for Ava is holy too, even if it's a sort of holy no one else will ever understand.

I went back and forth about whether they actually SHOULD open the Letter. lol. But I think I eventually settled on that they should, and that when Ava does open it, it's a blank page with like, 7 little dots and Beatrice is like??????????????? But Ava recognizes it instantly and it's the freckles on Beatrice's cheeks, the ones she's always tracing, and she does that again, following the ink on the paper.

Beatrice had been ready to give up her religion for Ava, so getting to keep it, maybe, suddenly is a LOT. She can't quite believe something divine would do something like this for her. But maybe she can believe that something divine would do something like this for Ava.

Later, I wanted Beatrice to have a conversation with Mother Superion. I thought it would be interesting to get into the philosophical bits of it. To debate if Ava could actually be right in her ideas about how this could be, and still fit into what they know about god/Letters/religion. I liked the idea of the conversation ending with neither of them really knowing, and Mother S being like, look girl, you'll never know for sure, but that sounds like faith to me. And Beatrice says no, no this is different, capital F Faith is for the divine. This is just trusting that Ava isn't lying about the freckles thing, or won't get tired of me, or won't find someone else. Etc etc etc. because it's panicking time for Beatrice, suddenly. And Mother Superion just raps her knuckles sort of in the most gentle way she can manage and says "That's love, Beatrice." in the way way someone might say "That's pussy, babe."

Beatrice does leave the church (though she eventually goes back to 'consulting' kind of like Mary). And when she does actually physically leave as well, Ava is waiting outside on a bench. Beatrice asks why she didn't just come inside, and she says something about being a little afraid of churches these days. She did steal god's favorite, after all.

And then they walk off into the sunset, with Beatrice being like wait a second, I thought you said this was all God's plan. And Ava shrugs and says that she would never willingly give Beatrice up, so god might come to her senses and change her mind.

I was going to end it there, but I did consider doing an epilogue as well. Early on in planning I had this idea where, years later, all the nuns regularly come over to the Silvas (because Ava does keep her 'second' name, though she does start to learn more about the Reis family, and meets her Uncle - the dude Beatrice learned about the orphanage from). And on one of these occasions, the nuns are all in white, and they're delivering Beatrice's Letter, which is addressed to Beatrice Silva. In the end, I decided against this, because I liked leaving it more open-ended, but nothing had been set in stone at this point, of course.

So yeah, that was going to be a beggar in the morning. lol. I plotted most of it out before I even started writing, because it wasn't the sort of story you could make up as you went and still tell it well. And I did want to tell the story well! There's a part of me that's sad that I wasn't able to, but I do think it was worth writing what I did. I really loved seeing people realize that Lara was Ava, even as early as chapter 5! And I also loved people coming up with theories about how Avatrice would be endgame. Some of them were honestly really good and maybe better than mine fhdskjhfd I had one person be like PLEASE let Ava's Letter be for someone else so they can metaphorically spit in god's face and honestly that was valid.

I don't know if anyone is going to bother to read this very, very long reply to an ask that doesn't actually ask for any of this, but it honestly just feels nice to put all these ideas together and 'complete' the story. Even if I've done it in the most half-assed way possible I am so sorry fhadskjlfhldsj

[thegnomelord]

was thinking about drawing Ifrit from "Hell has a basement floor" and had some headcanons on his appearance.

on one hand i was thinking to make him tall and burly, built big to store all the mana and power he has, make him built like a volcano.

on the other.... what if and hear me out.... Ifrit.... skinny. tall and gangly, long limbs, underfed, outlines of bones poking out from underneath the skin, sunken eyes for that extra unsettling factor. besides magic does have a cost. maybe it's just your body that needs to be exchanged.

now i thought of the second hc because tall and skinny isn't exactly associated with the kind of brute force Ifrit has but he's still strong even if his lifestyle is gonna put him in an early grave. now imagine when he's finally part of tf 141 they notice that he's not very well in the food and weight department for his height and the amount of energy he spends so... they start feeding him (especially Price and Soap because protect and care hoard/pack)......

i've also been getting into the trope where characters gain weight as a sign of health and living a better life. so yeah tell me what you think

and maybe share your hcs on Ifrits appearance because i don't want to butcher your creation on accident

Okay 1: you have no idea how happy it makes me when I hear ppl want to draw fan art of my stuff :DD, internally I'm like that dog video where the dogs happily tapping his paws lol bc he can't contain his excitement lol. And also yeah, I'm a huge sucker for the trope and your little idea with Price amd Soap tickles my brain.

And 2: man you did some mind reading bc your hcs are actually very close to what I've made up for the lore of the whole au. While I want to overall leave Ifrit's body type ambiguous to give readers some space to imagine themselves in Ifrit's place, Ifrit is 100% underweight with more of a volleyball/basketball player type build, as mages focus on stamina and endurance rather than raw strength bc that can be augmented with magic. Also has stretch marks because their weight fluctuates a lot lol

Okay lore spoilers so if y'all want to find out through the story skip this-

Okay so— magic is increadibly taxing on the body, not just by eating away flesh and creating mage marks as a Mage's power grows, but just by simply existing inside the body magic stresses the body. Because fundamentally magic is toxic to humans, and even mages who have the needed adaptations to utilise magic are no better than our ancestors when they were first learning to stand on two legs.

The best metaphor I have for magic is chemo drugs. They're used to kill a cancer but they also damage healthy cells. Magic, similarly, damages the body by existing inside it, but also is used by mages to heal the damage as soon as it happens. This uses a lot of calories and also why mages have really irregular weights, losing 10kg in a week isn't an uncommon thing.

Someone possessing even half of Ifrit's capabilities would need to eat 3x that of a regular human of the same height and weight. Mages are literally Shaggy from Scooby Doo lol. And that's only to get the bare minimum their body needs, caloric need becomes much bigger if they're active like Ifrit is. So you'll find that many mages, but especially military ones, are underweight and need to regularly get Iv fluids and nutrients to help their body recover from using magic. They also need to eat a lot of highly caloric food, which isn't easy when one of the most common side effects of magic use is puking your guts up.

Most military mages don't reach 30. The average life expectancy is around 25, with active duty (i.e. constant missions and daily magic use) mages lasting on average 3-4 years before their body basically breaks down, but they can last longer depending on how conservatively they use magic.

Now, knowing all that, Ifrit has been actively using strong magic on par with military mages since they were 14-15 years old and while they're not the healthiest, they're healthy as a horse when compared to most mages. The reason behind their continued survival — their mage marks.

[panlight]

A few minor tweaks that would have made Twilight a more cohesive story:

Don't kill Victoria in Eclipse; her gift is evasion, if anyone could escape, it's her! Actually, don't kill Laurent either. He dies off screen, it wouldn't really change anything. He can get his original happy ending with Irina.

Make the "Riley" Mike Newton, or Eric Yorkie, or Tyler Crowley. Someone Bella knew, someone local. In the book we don't meet Riley until his death scene so why should we care about him? The horror and tragedy of one of Bella's schoolmates being used and corrupted by Victoria would be much more narratively satisfying, and would give the human kids like, a purpose in the story other than existing to love or be jealous of Bella.

Tempted to do something similar with Bree, but it might be overkill to have two kids from Forks end up in the Seattle newborn army. So EITHER make 'the Riley' someone Bella knew, or 'the Bree' but maybe not both.

If we must stick with the basic Breaking Dawn outline, then Victoria living to the end of the story keeps the flow of the original antagonist. If the "Riley" survives he can be the one to report Renesmee's existence to the Volturi (as he did in Forever Dawn), if not, Victoria can get someone else to do it.

Name drop more of the Breaking Dawn visiting vampires earlier in the series. The only ones we had really heard about before were Peter & Charlotte and the Denali 'cousins.' I don't know about anyone else, but my impression from the first three books were that these were like, the only people willing to put up with the weirdo Cullens. Them suddenly having loads of friends willing to risk their lives for them felt like it came out of nowhere. It was fun to meet Peter & Charlotte and the Denali because we had heard of them before; everyone else felt like they came out of nowhere. Maybe when Bella is getting a tour of the house there can be gifts from other vampires ("is that . . . is that an Ancient Egyptian canopic jar?" "Oh, yes, a gift from Carlisle's friend Amun), or name them specifically in Eclipse when they are trying to find people to help them after the Denali refuse.

Have a few more vamps (other than Garrett) go vegetarian in the end. There's this whole big speech about about how special this diet makes them and then like . . . no follow up at all. Whatever you think of the premise of vegetarian vampires, it's just unsatisfying that it doesn't really go anywhere. The only convert is Garrett, who does it for Kate, not actually because he was inspired by the Cullens or whatever.

Okay this one isn't minor but: JACOB! FIGHT! THE IMPRINT! That seemed to be what his character was set up for. He's the one to champion falling in love the normal way. He's the one who resents choices being taken away from him. Him fighting an imprint and winning seems like a much more natural arc for him than becoming supernaturally obsessed with a half-vampire baby. The shifters and vampires reluctantly working together in Eclipse to protect Forks/La Push was much more interesting than them being forced to because of Jacob's imprint.

[nomsfaultau]

thank you so much for writing mandatory family reunion. i just reread it for the eighth time. i think im going to dedicate my life to life to reading your other sbi fics until you update again. also; do you have any tips for committing to fics and not leaving them half-finished?

ahhhh that’s so sweet glad you enjoyed! As for writing fics, having it be your special interest really helps. But for more general advice on finishing:

-Don’t stick to just one story. Which seems counter intuitive! But inevitably you’re going to hit a snag in one story. So instead of stopping writing at all, switch projects. Writing involves a whole bunch of thinking, and stuff needs time to percolate in the back of your head. But having a small project to work on in the mean time keeps you engaged in the writing process, gives you practice, makes you feel like you’re making progress, and allows time to work out the other story. I personally have 1-2 main projects, Fault and MFR, and then rotate a couple back burner stories that I work on whenever I get inspiration and fully expect to have very slow progress and possibly never finish. Short stories, one shots, hell even just writing little one off scenes that don’t go anywhere. It’s a way to keep writing fun and thus you’re more likely to continue working on the stuff you’re trying to complete. Don’t feel bad if there’s breaks between working on your main project. Writing involves a lot of thinking and it takes time to do that.

-Devoting time to do that thinking also significantly helps. When you’re falling asleep can be a good time to rotate stories in your head. Could also be if you’re walking from place to place, or brushing your teeth, or other little gaps in the day. Even if you’re not physically writing, it’s still part of the process and can make it easier when you actually sit down to write because you know what scene you’re most excited to work on. Also, talking over your story idea with a friend is a great way to stay motivated if you can get over the mortifying ordeal of being known. You can bounce ideas off them, and other people’s investment in a project can be a great motivator to finish. Like legit a single ao3 comment once stopped me from my plan to abandon a fic. Reminding yourself why you (and other people) like the story makes it easier to want to continue.

-Keeping a rough outline of what you envision for the story can give you a road map to how close to done you are and where to go next. Just like you can hop between projects, I find jumping around the plot time line to write what scene I’m most interested in atm keeps me going instead of writing everything in order. Though, all writers have different degrees of plot planning, so that depends on your style.

-Art! I’m an artist, and while writing definitely fuels what I draw, I find doodling cool scenes I want to write really inspires me to keep going. This sorta falls under the same category of continuing to think about the story and motivating you to finish. -I found keeping a writing journal has improved how I view my writing. Basically, I’ll jot down a bullet point list of scenes worked on that week/month. Writing is a very slow process, so seeing a timeline of actual progression on a story makes it feel like I’m actually getting more out of my head and onto paper. I also jot down what ideas for scenes I came up with since that’s also part of writing, and might include a chill no stakes writing goal for that period, like work on X or Y project, or a particular scene. Sometimes my goal is just ‘write at least one sentence’. I give it lots of leeway, and accept that the muse may just be somewhere else that week. And if the goal isn’t met, no sweat! Life can get busy at times and it’s more important that you aren’t beating yourself up if it’s been awhile since you last touched a project. Forcing yourself to write a scene that isn’t ready won’t result in a good scene or an happy writer. Switch projects, give yourself time to think about it, take care of yourself, etc.

And, legitimately, don’t be afraid to abandon a piece. Maybe you’ll come back to it, maybe you won’t. It can feel disheartening to feel like you can’t seem to finish a project, but unfinished pieces also do a lot for you: they hone your craft, allow you a creative outlet, give you scenes that could potentially be reworked for later pieces, and most importantly were hopefully fun to write! Story crafting is a hobby that should bring you joy, not frustration and shame.

Like, I have stories that will never see the light of day and are just so I can have fun and poke it with a stick occasionally. I’m 100% confident in saying that every author will have tenfold the number of unfinished wips compared to complete works. That’s just part of the creative process: exploring different worlds to find the one you want to write.

Perhaps a fic might never get finished, but in the wise words of Technoblade: “if you enjoy it, it’s not time wasted, no?”

(Now, I think he was talking about murdering people, but the point still stands.)

[sincerely-sofie]

Seeing as you have finished writing the script for your AU thingy, I wanna know, how?

Like, were you motivated the whole time? Or was it a on and off writing type thing?

i'm trying to write but I don't know if I have the motivation...

How did you keep the motivation if so?

Oh man. I have so much to say about writing and creativity that I could make an entire series of posts talking about the subject, but I'll try to keep things orderly and brief.

Disclaimer: I should let you know that I have never finished a writing project before recently finishing my TPiaG AU. Keep that in mind when reading the advice I offer— the tips I give have only been put into work in my own life over the course of the last couple of months, but they’ve proven very effective in my experience!

Sofie Creativity Tips Episode 1, go!!!

Was I motivated the whole time I was writing TPiaG / How did I stay motivated?

Absolutely not. If I hadn’t provided myself a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline for TPiaG before starting the writing process, I would have given up thanks to a mix of writer’s block and absent motivation. Motivation is a fickle muse and prone to ditching me for months on end, so I’ve adapted by trying not to rely on it, but also by creating new motivation rather than clinging to past motivation. I create motivation for myself in two ways: removing friction when writing and being my own fandom.

Removing friction is pretty simple— I create very detailed chapter outlines that remove any fear of writer’s block, set up my devices in a way to make it easy to access my manuscripts and notes, download premade writing playlists that have Pomodoro session break timers built into them, and more. Anything that makes the writing process easier to get into and enjoy doing, I make sure to incorporate into my life.

Being my own fandom is less intuitive, but a thousand times more rewarding in terms of motivation. I make memes of my characters. I write self-indulgent snippets on the side. I make AUs of my own work. I make playlists and save audio clips that suit the characters. I draw comics exploring concepts that might not get into the manuscript itself but that I want to make content for regardless. Basically, I dive in deep into the story, characters, and world, and try to do so with the enthusiasm that I give other people’s projects.

(That part is extra fun, because if I have a headcanon, it automatically becomes canon to whatever AU or original project I’m working on. I have all the power in the world when working like this, and it’s very fun.)

What changed and made it so I finished my first ever written project?

This isn’t exactly what was asked, but because I have eschewed motivation as the main driving force in my writing process, I figured I’d give another insight into how TPiaG went against the pattern of half-started and swiftly abandoned projects that came before it and actually got finished. Late into October, I adopted a new method of producing first drafts. Previously, I would spend weeks polishing the same chapter and would only move on to the next chapter once the current one was perfect. My new method is the complete opposite. I’ve started calling it Writing BFF:

Write bad

Write fast

Write fun

First up, write bad. The point of this is not to waste your time writing prettily during your first draft. Don’t bother agonizing over how to reword that one sentence to be more elegant when it does the job well enough to get its point across. Don’t go off on a 30-minute research tangent in the middle of a writing session because you want to fact-check that one detail and make sure it’s perfectly accurate when you could just put a placeholder detail in brackets and CTRL+F search and plug in something accurate later on. Don’t write pretty, write bad. And be okay with it. You can’t edit an empty page, so fill the page with as much garbage as possible so that you can turn it into gold later on.

Next, write fast. This is only effective when paired with writing bad. Don’t pause, don’t hesitate, don’t deliberate. Write as much as you can and do it as fast as you can. This idea is best illustrated by Chris Fox’s book 5,000 Words Per Hour, where he talks about increasing your WPM (words per minute) and how it makes everything about your writing better. The person who creates a beautiful first draft once every three years is doing okay, but the person who cranks out a complete manuscript every three months learns leagues more about writing than the first person does by the end of three years. The second person has practiced outlining, drafting, editing, publishing, and more with every manuscript completed. The faster you write, the better you get, because practice makes perfect and quantity begets quality.

Finally, write fun. I write what I enjoy, and if I’m not enjoying it, I pivot the project so that I enjoy it again. I like writing deeply personal stories, so pretty much everything I write is heavily based on my life and experiences— TPiaG included. Grovyle’s portrayal is deeply influenced by my experience being an elder sibling who has been a bad example of self-talk, and cleaned up my act because my younger sister started echoing how I spoke to myself. Dusknoir’s portrayal is informed by my experiences with being the therapist / mom friend in different social circles as well as attending actual formal therapy. Twig is the character that my experiences have the greatest influence on in her portrayal, and I joke about her being a self-insert, but ultimately all of the characters are self-inserts to some extent. I also enjoy low-stakes and slow slice-of-life stories that are driven by character growth. If I ever stop having fun with a project, I inject more of myself and my preferences into my work to get it back into my favor.

TL;DR / Writing advice lightning round

Write as badly as possible as quickly as possible, and have fun as you do it. Momentum yields motivation and stagnancy yields doubt. Editing comes only after the first draft is complete. Be your own fandom and your project’s biggest fan. Give yourself direction and ward against writer’s block by making detailed chapter-by-chapter outlines. Make the writing process as easy and enjoyable as possible. Motivation is a lie and if you chase after it instead of making your own, you’ll be writing on hard mode for the rest of your life. Reject perfectionism, embrace flawesomeness.

If I didn’t answer your question right, let me know! I’ll do my best to correct it.

[mrslittletall]

fic writer self-recs

tagged by: @misskriemhilds (thank you and sorry for taking forever to do this)

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favourite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers.

Alright, without further ado, let's begin:

A Storm is coming (Dark Souls) This fic came to be because I was stuck with another fic of mine and frustrated and was like "Okay, but what would happen if Ornstein followed around the Chosen Undead during the second half of the game?!" I wrote the first chapter and added chapters whenever I felt like it and then this thing had over 40 kudos despite them not having gone on the adventure yet and I was like "??? Where did'ya all come from???" And then I started to put effort into this fic. My Chosen Undead, Tempest, grew into a proper OC. The story became a clear structure and outline. And the relationship between the two grew into a slowburn mutual pining romance. That is my most popular Dark Souls fic and I consider it my Magnum Opus as a writer. I sometimes write these two still for one-shots and they always always are so easy to write. They feel like a part of me now. Thanks so much to everyone who gave this fic a chance and stayed with it. Thank you so much.

Keeping it together (Dark Souls)

This is the fic I was stuck on and why I started to write Storm. It is basically about Ornstein dealing with Artorias' death. Horribly. I had a hard time myself during writing this, living through burnout. The year 2019 was my year to heal from everything and I made good effort but then... well, you know what happened in 2020... Anyway, I struggled a lot with this fic, but I think the last chapter of this is the best chapter I have written in my whole writing career. And it only happened because I took a deep breath and then suddenly everything was clear and I knew what I had to do. Off Balance (Hollow Knight)

Ah, another case of "I am writing this on a whim." This fic came to be because of some art of teenage Hollow and I was like "Oh, I want to make fic to this art". I first thought it might be a one-shot but I got ideas and continued and then it turned into a full fix-it and PK redemption arc. You can see in this fic how it grows and the characters with it. You can see how I make WL from sad mother to the queen she is, how PK grows into the role as a father but never stops struggling and how Hollow turns from the Pure Vessel into a child that enjoys life. This fic was extremely well received and I regurlarly receive kudos on it. I am coming back to this universe, I promise. It was just... after 2022, my life turned into hell. Hollow, Pendry, Rydellia, you are waiting for me, right?

Frenzy (Bloodborne)

Is that one of my best works? Honestly, it isn't, I really need to rewrite parts of it. But it is very dear to me. The idea was "What if Laurence got too close the Amydgala and turned into a catatonic state as result?" It was an exploration of the Frenzy status. Mostly from the caretaker POV of Ludwig and a little bit of Laurence (because he is not really there most of the time in the fic). I did quite some research on the topic but I vomited out this fic in a week (YES, REALLY), so it is pretty rough around the edges. Ranni and the horrible, annoying, obnoxious Tarnished (Elden Ring) I got this idea after the Mini Ranni quest in Elden Ring. I was like "Wow, she needs someone that shuts her up." And then I though "Hm, I need a Tarnished who can annoy her to no end." And who was grinning at me?! My version of Laurence (Bloodborne), who can be a horrible annoying obnoxious asshole! So I made an Elden Ring version of him and wrote him into this story. And it WORKED! This fic actually got quite some numbers. I guess I am not the only one who wanted to annoy Ranni xD Alright, let's see how many fic writers I can think of tagging... @within-its-cave @ruthlesslistener @deluxinn @redsixwing Go on, give your fics some love!

[love-triangles-au]

Salutations!

I'm new to this AU and I was wondering if there is an actual story about Venuz and Bill or if it's just the little peace's of art that make it up, if so, where can I find it? I would really like to know the whole story about these two.

:D

Hi there, thanks for the ask! There is a larger story in the works, yes! A...much larger one, really. There are some scattered mentions all around the blog but I'll use this opportunity for a proper update.

So, TBoB complicated things a bit. We're currently reworking much of the second half of the story, but I'm comfortable saying that the first half is still pretty solid! The beta is in the works, so far with about 5000 words. Here are some peeks behind the scenes to showcase how things are going!

In order, here's the home page of our Milanote board, then the story outline, then the brainstorm section, then world-building in regards to Venus. Not shown here, "Basic Plotline" as seen in the first image is where I've been playing around with the revision. Its been tricky, but I think we're almost there. I'm liking the pivot!

In the meantime, there are a whole bunch of tidbits on the blog you can check out if you'd like! Feel free to browse or let us know if you have any burning questions. :]

Thanks for your interest!

~ Mod Emily 🦇

[bonecarversbestie]

I decided to invent my own writing tag game bc I am very nosy:

(I’ll go first)

Describe your writing process from idea to posting/publishing

So it’s pretty unusual for me to have a single idea that I can turn into a whole story so my notes app is full of shower thoughts and ideas that come to me while I’m falling asleep until I have enough to turn into a story.

Then when it comes to writing fics, I like to outline and draft the whole thing and then post each chapter as I edit them. I don’t think I could keep my own story straight trying to write and edit each chapter individually. Plus I’m more likely to finish my projects this way 😅

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Plotter!! I need a detailed outline to basically act as a “todo list” while I’m writing. I need clearly defined scenes and ideas or i get too overwhelmed to actually write them.

I wish I could be a pantser but I am not cool enough 😭

What do you listen to when you are writing?

Usually I listen to “crackling fire rainy evening ambiance” on YouTube while simultaneously playing “medieval lofi beats” on Spotify 😂😂

What’s your drink of choice(while writing)?

My desk is currently covered in an embarrassing number of flat, half drunk sparkling waters and room temperature cups of tea 😂

Promote yourself! What’s your favorite thing you’ve written?

I have only written two things in my life but The Scenic Route is my current pet project. It’s my first fic and I have learned so much in the process of writing it.

Share a fic of yours that you think is underrated/deserves more love.

My only other fic is Reverie — my elucien week one shot (I feel like it is appropriately rated 😂😂 everyone was so nice)

Do you have any advice for new writers?

I am currently a new writer but my advice to myself (and others) would be this:

1. CLEAN YOUR HOUSE BEFORE YOU START A NEW PROJECT cause it’s not getting done for a while.

2. Take your time outlining and drafting. Don’t rush just bc you’re excited to “get to the good stuff”. It’s all the good stuff.

3. Don’t be afraid that it will be bad. If your story interests you, it’ll interest someone else(and you might even make some new friends).

What is a writing style/technique that others do really well that you'd like to get better at?

I would love to become more poetic with my prose and imagery. I also want to incorporate more humor into my writing. (I want regency rom com vibes)

Is there a character you were surprised you enjoyed writing as much as you did?

TAMLIN 😆 And my favorite OC: Toes the polydactyl cat

Tagging some of my wonderful writer friends (no pressure of course):

@zenkindoflove , @crazy-ache , @olenvasynyt , @the-darkestminds

[halfratsalready]

Help me figure out what fic to write next! ✨

I feel like I’m in a weird limbo after finishing the first arc of the Lose Yourself series and I have a few ideas floating around in my head for what to write next (after the Wanderrose fic exchange, at least), but I have no clue which one to focus on.

So if you happen to like my silly little stories and want a say in what my next fic is, I’ve got some ideas and a poll below the cut! 💕

Idea I: Dark & Angsty Murder Mystery 🔪

I've discussed this one on here before so it might sound slightly familiar, but this would basically be Angst: The Fanfic. If you thought any of the Lose Yourself series was angsty, this fic is probably 10x worse. Part of me worries it's a little bit too dark to be a Just Dance fic. Multiple murders (though not described in detail), an intense attempted murder (that is described in relative detail), and some of that patented Night Swan mind control, plus some supernatural elements later on. But also a sizeable portion of it is Brezziana and Disocball playing detective and trying to solve a rash of murders, which should be very fun, in a weird and kinda dark sorta way.

Wanderrose ft. best friends Jack & Brezziana. Also featuring Discoball, Sara, Mihaly, Mothigan, Cygnus, Felicia, Boss Witch, Si'Ha Nova, and Agent D

I have the first chapter and a half written of this one already. It would be 9 chapters total.

Idea II: Angsty Jack-Centric Post-JD24 Fic 🥀

This is an idea I've had for a while but haven't really gotten around to properly outlining. This is based on my theory of sorts that Night Swan exploited the wrong weakness when targeting Jack in Dance With the Swan, where she realizes after the events of JD24 that she hadn't done it right and approaches it from a different angle. Basically just a lot of Jack-centric angst, a lot of Night Swan & Jack interactions, and a world where Treasure Jack may or may not actually become more than just an illusion...

A lot of Night Swan & Jack but definitely featuring at least some Wanderrose. Also featuring the Just Dancers, Si'Ha Nova, and the Traveler, and maybe some others.

I haven't even outlined this one yet, so I have no idea how long it would be.

Idea III: Significantly Less Angsty & More Random Self-Indulgent AU (Actually a "Silly Little" Fic This Time, For the Most Part, at Least) ✨

I've been toying with the idea lately of an AU where Leda and Sara were sisters on earth and Sara has been searching for her sister. I think it would be fun to do some intentional canon divergence (and not just have my fics' canon be derailed by a new event). There's a few directions I've considered taking this in, including Jack ending up on earth (there's like two or three ways for that one to happen and like two or three directions I could take it in) or Sara's adventures in the Danceverses just going really differently.

Still a lot I'm not sure about with this one but it's been bouncing around my head since Night Swan: The Prequel dropped, so here we are. Definitely would have Wanderrose cuz they own my heart.

The Poll

I have no idea which idea I really wanna commit to following through on first. Every time I think I'm leaning towards one, I end up leaning towards another. So I'm throwing these out there in the hopes that a few of you will be able to help me out with your opinion!

If you wanna share your thoughts in the comments or reblogs also, I’d love to hear what you have to say, so I don’t have to wait the whole week for the poll to finish to be able to see which idea(s) is/are getting the most interest!

[starzzmissthesun]

Since you asked I have to tell you abt this story I came up with like 4-5 years ago and have held so deep in my heart since! The characters are literally a part of me atp. So the main character is named Margaret Lainey and the whole story is basically in the format of her diary, it's 14 entries within the month of February and let's just say I put her through it😭. She starts off the journal entry explaining how she has to start writing in the journal as recommended by her therapist who she sees bc of a suicide attempt... yeah

And towards the the first half of the entries you see her getting better up until Valentine's day, a very pivotal part of the story, where everything just starts going down hill.

A lot of it as to do w/ her unrequited love, she's head over heals for this girl Lydia, who she believes is straight, now obviously Lydia not returning her feelings isn't the only reason she goes off the deep end, it just sets back on all the things she still hasn't healed from, considering she's been struggling for a looooonnng time.

What's a really devastating part of the story is also Margaret's best friend Jamie, now Jamie is a trans, mtf, but as the whole story is told in Margaret's perspective its unknown to her and the reader which means Jamie is dead-named and misgendered the entire time (shes still super important and gets her own story bc ive always wanted to also write a sequel for her) so Jamie is like really in love w/ Margaret, a lesbian, but Margaret thinks Jamie is a boy the whole time :(

At the end of the story the last chapter/entry is a suicide note, Margaret kills herself which is definitely foreshadowed throughout even though you also think she's gonna be better by the end, but unexpectedly it's actually a double suicide w/ Jamie so after reading the 1st part ur supposed to be like hello what!?!? Hence the sequel which is Jamie's story

I love them both sm, I have story names and outlines but I never feel confident enough to do their story justice😓

The story names have been the same since I came up with it

Part one: Through My Eyes, Love Margaret Lainey

Part two: Through My Eyes, Love Jaime Blue

So now that background story rant is out the way (sorry its so long😭😭) here are some fun facts abt them

Margaret

Her favorite colors are green and yellow, she paints her nails purple and blue and black constantly and always has them chiped from picking away at them,she cuts her own hair so it's always really choppy, she's got tons of beauty marks but she doesn't like them, her favorite books are No longer human by Osamu Dazai, The Catcher in the Rye, and Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, her favorite movies are Coraline, Heathers, Thirteen, and Girl Interrupted, she enjoys reading, photography, and collecting odd things, some of her favorite songs are Cigarettes out the window, Death of a party girl, I'll die anyway, Change (in the house of flies), Ptolemaea, she's constantly humming and writing on her arms, she's got a horrible sleep schedule and bad trust issues and horrible self perception/esteem, she loves to take pictures of Lydia whenever she sees her even though she knows it's odd and she shouldn't, her loves to hang out with Jamie, it always makes her feel content

Jamie

Her favorite colors are light pink and red, her favorite books are The picture of Dorian Gray and Speak, her favorite movies are As You Are and the Corpse Bride, she also loves horror movies even through they give her nightmares and make her keep her feet strictly under the blankets at night, some of her favorite songs are Heather, Family line, I can't handle change, Christmas kids, Heart to Heart, Out of Touch, and Sailor Song, she loves fashion and wants to have an odd shoe collection one day, she paints her toe nails red constantly with a stolen bottle of polish, she likes to sit in her closet with a blanket and a flashlight with a book like a little kid, she hates looking at herself in the mirror, she loves to hang out at the park with Margaret, swinging on the swings and pretending like it's a date just for five minutes

There's sm more to say and I also have a character sheet for Lydia cause she's actually great but I think this is all it's gonna be, if you actually read this whole thing ur kinda the best cause I ranted sm 😭

Oh my GOD!!!!!! I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!!!! GENUINELY GOT A PARAGRAPH IN AND STARTED SHAKING A BIT CAUSE I GOT SO EXCITED!!!!!! THIS IS SUCH!!!! A COOL IDEA!!! I ACTUALLY LOVE THE WHOLE DIARY ENTRY CONCEPT SO MUCH!!!!! THIS SOUNDS SO AMAZING AND COOL!! I LOVE THESE CHARACTERS SO MUCH??? GENUINELY I LOVE THE UNRELIABILITY OF MARGARET???? AND THE STORY ITSELF IS SO COOL? I WOULD LOVE TO READ THIS ACTUALLY, LIKE COULD BE A BOOK IT'S SO INTERESTING??? AND LIKE I CAN JUST IMAGINE THE FORESHADOWING YOU COULD PUT IN HERE? I ALSO LOVE HOW YOU HAVE SUCH A GRASP ON THE CHARACTERS? LIKE THEY FEEL REALLY REAL. UGH I ACTUALLY REALLY WANNA KNOW MORE!!!! I TRUST YOU COULD DO THIS JUSTICE🙏LIKE YOU HAVE SUCH A GRASP OVER THE WHOLE THING, AND IT'S GOT SO MUCH TO IT? I THINK THAT YOU SHOULD PICK YOUR FAV CHAPTER THAT YOU THINK COULD DO THE BEST AND START FROM THERE!!!! (also if you have any character designs lmk cause I'd draw them for you totally:D) ugh this is actually so amazing, if you ever wanna say more, feel free!! Cause id be ECSTATIC!!! Also, I really love the idea that it's almost destined for her to die, but it's so unexpected when she does. :DD

[ellraiser]

Mudborne - Devlog #02

Hey everyone! Been awhile since I opened up Tumblr to write something - I've been trying not to add the pressure to make myself post every single month, as half the time I don't have much to say and the other half making it something I HAVE to do prevents it from being something I WANT to do But it's been a little while of working on Mudborne stuff in between all the final APICO update stuff, and I wanted to share where I've got to so far with your new fav frog game

Back To The Drawing Board

So if you haven't already seen, one of the main things I'm doing with Mudborne is updating the style and the art. The gamejam version was made in a week, and a lot of that was shameless art rips of APICO with some reskins - which was still cute but after working in the APICO "style" for nearly 5 years now I wanted something different. For that I'd already played with a few ideas:

The game is set in a pond, so I wanted it to be mostly water. This meant thinking about what the landmass or even buildings would be like - I've always found the land style I did for APICO really weird as it's severe top-down but all the sprites are like sortof side view? So I wanted to work with that in mind and have the land match that perspective more. I also really liked the idea of the stone slabs as the land instead of dirt, as it had a nicer overall vibe and helped the mud stand out from the "dirt" of the early ideas. I also wanted to have lots of plants and nature stuff that wasn't necessarily interacted with but added to the overall scene. One thing I really hated with APICO is it relied on the trees/shrubs for balance of the overall palette, so this time I wanted enough flora scattered across the waters to make it look pretty all the time not just before the player has a killing spree with their axe. What I ended up settling on after a few weeks was this:

As you can see it's mostly water, with some large stone slabs to act as "land" and break it up, and lots of green. I wanted a consistent darker outline for anything you can interact with, which then let me have a lot of "background" flora and scenery.

The stone slabs also felt like a perfect place for buildings - I'd tried an attempt at a few building designs, but overally didn't really like how they fit in with the world

Having the stone slabs as the buildings felt more natural and the little extra details of grates and drains and windows I think helps sell it more as lived in. Also by having a fixed "size" of the blocks in tiles, I could match that for the inside so all the spaces matched up when going in and out (and also means I'd be able to show "hidden" rooms while inside that give you a clue to how to get into them)

To finish it off, I worked on the menu designs to see how the UI would fit in - there's some similarities to APICO's basic UI style but I changed the colors a bit and added more space around all the elements. I also wanted some clearer slot stuff, so like mushrooms and their powder/magic mud to have a small icon for the mushroom, buckets to have a liquid icon - I'd made a few sprites in APICO that were far too similar, so I wanted to avoid that this time round.

I also wanted to keep the main UI as minimal as possible, just some indicators, a current quest log, and then the tooltips if hovering something - this means I've got some flexibility later to add some more stuff. Once I got this coded up I'd tweak a few things, including the design of the titular mud itself, but overall things pretty much match those final concept arts above.

===

Lost In A Dream

With that done I wanted to work on the next main part of the design - the dream world. In the gamejam when you dream you visit the big frog god and they tell you your progress, but what I actually want is a whole dream world that acts as an "opposite" to the waking world.

With APICO I always felt like the gameplay was fun but the NPCs and story and exploration was pretty non-existant. In Mudborne I wanted to expand that, have a similar "maths for fun" genetic puzzle to work on as the core game but then have a much richer world to explore.

With the dream world I could have things change between the worlds - new doors and rooms appearing, broken bridges now fixed, stone lilypads disappearing. By using the big froggy pools the player can switch between the two, and access new areas they couldn't before, along with new frogs or mushrooms or NPCs. This ends up with a sort of APICO x Metroidvania in a way, you find different mushrooms, create new frogs, and based on the frog genetics you can "unlock" these gates to get to new areas - some part of the main story, others optional to learn more about the secrets of the world, but the different frogs will gate your progress and exploration. It also gives me a lot of scope to do fun things with the differences between the two worlds, whether thats trees turning into jellyfish that float around, or NPCs being different and saying/selling different things.

It also has some importance within the story itself so I think it should end up as a nice mix of fun gameplay, cool vibes, and a nice story to tell.

===

Something Old Something New

With the overworld itself I'd done a lot of changes, looking at the gamejam you can see just how much differs, not just colors but the world objects too.

Some of the items I still liked, like the mushroom designs or the basic tools, some I think make for a fun "nod" to APICO, (like the frogspawn being the honeycomb sprite but modified), with the objects themselves though I wanted to try and match that new "perspective" shared by the stone buildings and the trees.

I also wanted to start using some more colors and have things less flat, so it was nice to finally move away from a lot of the stuff I'd drawn for APICO. When it came to the menus though, I still think the rough style of menus worked really well - it's been battle tested and I know what worked and didn't, but the UI has always been pretty solid. The main changes I did was update the spacing between elements to give the slots + UI inside menus more space, and then I wanted to change some of the border/header styles slightly and have the tiny lilypad icon in there too. To start with I just fleshed out a bunch of the machines I had in the gamejam plus a few extra ones (also yes thats a slightly different shade of brown to APICO, you have good eyes!)

I really liked some of the menus have these sort of "mini" interfaces inside that showed a bit more of what is going on in the overworld, so wanted to lean into that a bit with some of the other machines. I also still liked the idea of having some mechanism stuff - for APICO players I appreciate it's lost the charm, but anyone new to Mudborne thats never heard of ol' bee game can still appreciate it!

===

Maths For Fun

As I started implementing the mechanics some of the menus changed a bit - for the current "vertical slice" I'm making for pitches, the main machines I needed were: - Spawner (frog+frog = frogspawn) - Grinder (mushroom = powders) - Cauldron (mud+powders = magic mud) - Nursery (magic mud + frogspawn = tadpole) - Feeder (tadpole + bugs = frogs) - Bed (skip ahead time)

The main differences to the gamejam version is the extra step with mushrooms (so that you don't have to find + pick as many mushrooms as you'll get multiple powders from one), the cauldron accepting up to 3 powders that can be the same or different (so one magic mud can have 3 buffs), and the nursery having multiple layers (so you could do 3 different genetic changes or use a +1 mushroom 3 times for a +3 in one step) The nursery change is the most important here, as being able to do 3 buffs at the same time is important as it's part of the genetic puzzle I'll explain later - but it also removes some grindyness, instead of needing to do 3 cycles for a 4 trait to become a 7 trait using a +1 mushroom, you can do just 1.

The feeder expands the process to include bugs you find to feed the tadpoles - once they grow they'll appear in the overworld as actual frogs again to catch, but this time they might be some new species depending on the genetic modifications you made with the mud. I'm still playing with what the different bugs might do or how which bugs are decided as needed, but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with from a mechanics standpoint. The final "new" machine I needed was the actual teleportation pools - these would have the genetic "lock" that you need to make a frog to match.

The puzzle starts off simple enough, get a frog that matches the 7 traits the pool requires. Putting a frog in the pool starts the little coloured lines to "move" from left to right, stopping if the number the frog has doesn't match whats needed. Once you have a frog with all numbers matching, all the dots can join up, and the pool unlocks to be used to travel between worlds.

"That's easy" I hear you say, and yes! To start with this is easy enough, sure you might need to combine different mushrooms to counter certain modifications you don't want, but you can cycle frogs as much as you want to keep modifying until you get there. However this is me making a game so obviously I need to then show you something that makes you cry - which is when I introduce the concept of ancestors to the genetic locks

Instead of just looking at the traits of the frog, it also looks at the traits of the frog of the previous generation, and maybe even the generation before that! So starting from the first "column" you need to jump to the next one in a single frog cycle, using the right mushrooms to modify the numbers in one leap (ha). 

You then might need to do that again (and again) until you have a frog that has each previous generation matching whats expected. There'll be some tools to help you "predict" this, as well as lots of different mushrooms you'll find as you explore that do different things, +1, -1, *2 AND -1 etc. Planning this out is a nightmare as you can imagine...

Also having 7 traits each with 7 values means a lot of combinations (823543?!?), which means I can "hide" a lot of frogs to be discovered. For example go scroll back up and look at the "finished" concept art without UI for both the waking and dream world - notice that piller on the left? By travelling to the dream you can get the missing numbers that give you a trait "key" you could make to find a new frog.

In this way there can be a bunch of frogs you have to find to progress through the pools to new areas, some frogs you can get through experimenting (what if I do 777777?) and some found through clues in the world. 

===

What Next?

So right now I've planned out all the mechanics and I've been starting to implement them into a prototype of sorts (in my new favourite engine LÖVE) to make sure it all feels fun and has the right vibe, so lots of little bugs/critters roaming around, a cute day/night cycle, weather etc

I'm trying to spend more time on little details and effects in the world, all very small stuff but all adds up without the player realising, reflections or pollen or subtle movement. 

The goal is to then finish that as a vertical slice I can use to pitch to publishers, cos although APICO did well that was a couple years ago now, and outside of this final update I essentially have no releases until Mudborne is done so money is pretty tight :')

While doing that, I'll be continuing on with the game, starting with the first "training" area that will essentially become the demo. My plan is to release the demo later this year showing that first area, while I continue finishing the game to release in 2025 - right now the demo on Steam is still the gamejam version, which while it has some of the vibes it's not the full concept of what I want Mudborne to be, so I'd like to get that updated to really show people what they can have to look forward to.

I have a lot of the full game mapped out now, in terms of the story, areas, npc, general mechanics etc. I'm also literally mapping it out, each area on some graph paper, so will be interesting to see how closely I follow this for the demo + full game, esp. as I've already changed the houses (and is a nice analogue break for my poor eyes)

===

As I mentioned at the start, having to force a devlog every month didn't work great for me, I'd rather do larger devlogs now and again to catch you all up with what I've been doing over a couple of months otherwise it feels like I'm scraping the barrel some months when I've been busy on other stuff. I do share the odd video + sketch in Discord now and again, so if you want to come chat about it I'd love to see you there, but I'm committing to do devlogs when I can so you can keep up with everything <3 ~ Ell

[eccentric-nucleus]

so, i finally finished (posting) my huge, novel-length teenage mutant ninja turtles fanfic. i just posted the final epilogue over on ao3!

here is my director's commentary on it, if you want to read even more about it. this contains spoilers for the whole thing. maybe read the epilogue first and sit with that for a minute. also this will probably be pretty incoherent if you haven't read the whole thing. it's just a disconnected series of thoughts i have about the story, really

man, this story. this is maybe the longest thing i've ever written? like 'the new hive' and 'hell game' had more words (i think) but they were mostly a disconnected series of sex scenes with thin connective tissue between them. this is ~200k words of a single, linear, mostly-plot narrative. i'm writing scenes that aren't just about getting the two leads to fuck!! that's weird. it's definitely the most ambitious thing i've written. kind of weird that it's tmnt fanfic. that's just how it worked out, i guess.

so back in 2022 i watched the rise of the tmnt movie because people kept talking about the animation quality of the fights and that got me into a spiral of actually paying attention to the ninja turtles. i had never been into them & genuinely i think a huge part of getting into tmnt stuff was that rise actually varied the design of the turtles so that they weren't all basically identical save for color-coding. turns out visual design was the missing mystery ingredient.

also in 2022 i was burning out on writing 'goblin cave', when what i had intended to be a fun little writing exercise ended up getting algorithmically surfaced and getting me hundreds of comments on each chapter. that got a little stressful and i wasn't really enjoying that, so i stopped. but i was like, hmm you know i mostly just write weird porn but maybe i should write something a little more ambitious. with a plot, and everything. 'goblin cave' was (in my mind) all about a character who was created for violence deciding art was a much more worthwhile pursuit. but the main character of that doesn't know what art is. because it's a magical dungeon core. and i was still thinking a lot about dead zones of the imagination, by david graeber. so i was like, okay, let's do this again but in a slightly more self-authentic way and make it weird gay porn with weird animal dicks. let's give michelangelo ninjaturtle a monologue about how the powerful are utterly insulated from any consequence.

(also early on, after watching most of rottmnt, i stumbled across this blog post about the tmnt comics and the end of the world. that ended up being deeply influential on the fic too. i've been kinda in a state for the past few years and this fic is absolutely a part of me working through a lot of complicated feelings about the world and the future. lol people talk so much about people writing dark fic 'to cope' but this was pretty much the first time i've outsourced my emotional processing by having bad things happen to fictional characters.)

so uhhh where to start here. the setting of the fic is this complicated messy mashup of a half-dozen tmnt continuities. it's very rise-heavy, since... that was the only series i had watched(/read) when i had determined the major plot points, but there's a lot of bits and pieces from all over.

to roughly outline the characters here, a huge influence on mikey's personality in this is... mikey's 'dr delicate touch' persona in rottmnt. in the sense that... okay yes yes that is a kid's show and all of his dr delicate touch lines are, you know, setups and punchlines. you think he's going to be nice but actually he's mean! etc. but in-universe it's like, wait hold on a second. mikey is like the most emotionally-intelligent of the four. he absolutely knows when people are on the edge of flipping out and need a calming out to a stressful situation. and instead he freaks them out more! mikey's hobby is: being mean to his friends & family, for fun! what a fun character trait.

i was thinking about this tweet a lot, too. i read some writing advice once that people tend to make characters who are supposed to be likable too squeaky-clean. nothing but positive character traits for them! but actually every 'positive' character trait is exactly the same as a 'negative' one; it's just a matter of focus and degree. a character is light-hearted and comedic? they can never take things seriously, even when they really should. a character is willing to do anything to protect the people they love? so they're violent and threatening and scary if they happen to decide you're something that they need to protect against. etc. i was really dedicated in this to bringing out the worst characteristics of everybody's personalities.

mikey was also very deeply inspired by: all the garbage progression fantasy stuff i've been reading. i've complained about this several times on this very blog, but a constant theme in most progression fantasy is 1. the main character will constantly get more and more powerful and 2. the main character will never really have their relationship with the rest of the world changed via that power. it's just stat-ups. they just have higher stats so they're more powerful. mikey is the most powerful person on the planet and it's fucking ruining his life. he knows that there's nobody capable of actually checking his behavior, & he's in this constant state of thinking he's maybe a few bad days away from murdering half the planet and incredibly aware there's not really anything he can do about that aside from constantly worry. he's kind of an anxious mess.

mikey absolutely thinks it's more ethical to murder somebody out of the sheer glee of seeing people crushed before you than murdering somebody for something as tedious as mob orders. you're satisfying a deep, raw desire felt from the heart! that's good!

what he'd like to do, in some sense, is just hang out in his studio and chill with other artists, but he knows the world is not gonna let him do that. things will come up. a lot of his being a creepy bystander thing while people get murdered is b/c he's very much formulated his morality to be like... it is not his responsibility to fix other people's problems. other people will do what they want and that has no bearing on him. is that a pretty cowardly and self-serving morality? sure! but he was kinda designed to rule the world & his flinch away from that pretty much defines him as a character in this. that's kinda the morality he needed to end up on to convince himself not to be a genocide machine.

he's incredibly aware he could basically be a superhero, & all it would take is... giving up on all his hopes and dreams and constantly engage with his abilities. and being a superhero isn't that many steps removed from living up to his full design spec and just taking over the world and ruling as god-emperror. idk how well i hit all those notes in the actual fic, but, that's what i was going for. mikey as the narrator clearly doesn't want to talk or think about it so it's never really directly confronted.

raph is... okay so i guess a fairly common piece of fanon, for rise especially, is to characterise raph as having multiple personalities? whether that's him just having alters or him having full-blown MPD depends on the fic. my fun little nod to that is that he's kind of a disassociative mess. he has kind of failed to reconcile the disparate aspects of his personality and he switches between one of several different facades depending on the situation. also, you know. the trauma.

(i didn't really mean for it to be as such, but there is this theme in the story about names? despite everything else mikey has a crystal-clear self-conception of himself and has one name, which he gave himself. raph, who has kinda failed to build his own personality, has a collection of name other people have given him, none of which he feels actually fits him. donnie has a more fluid self-identity and also has roughly a million aliases and false identities & constantly slips in and out of character when it's convenient. leatherhead still going by the name mikey gave him goes hand-in-hand with that bit where mikey meanly thinks about how maybe leatherhead's entire self-conception is hung up on something mikey said to him once, etc. this is one of those things that i'd go back and make more present if i did go back and clean up the rough draft, b/c as it is it's there, but it doesn't really do a whole lot.)

--

this fic was inspired by... i had read a few big aus that were just like, taking the characters and loose bits of setting and going off in completely different directions. some of NeiNing's aus were a definite influence, plus like, this one au where raph is an ex-con mechanic, etc, etc. just like "i am going to play out a completely unrelated drama using turtles as the dolls". maybe most directly influential was Of Knights and Thieves, where donnie & mikey are corporate espionage hacker/thief types and raph & leo are do-gooder vigilantes. the original concept for this was much more heavily focused on the art forgery. in a very early draft the idea was leo would get involved much more actively in trying to track down the creator of the false takenobus. then i was like, "i am going to crash a completely separate story concept about the dark armor into the side of this art-forgery story". the filename for the story is still 'lol grindr hookup art thief'. that is not really where the story went.

oh man, the art stuff. i made some posts about this at the time! that are now several years old. here's one! i did end up getting a traditional woodcut printing of Tokaido 53 stations, no. 11, Hokone. in a lot of ways doing all the art research was more satisfying and fun than writing the extensive downward spiral that was the latter half of the fic. but, hey, that's life too i guess.

also raph in this is... okay, so, i don't mean this in a mean way. i really liked the fics! but cndrow has written several raph/donnie fics where raph is just like... like a repeated theme in them is raph confessing eternal love & talking about how he's like, mentally planning on them being together forever. on the first date. and sure sure everybody has different tastes; i'm absolutely sure that my interest in guys who are mean leads to some stories that are extremely offputting to some people, etc. but it's like, oh man, raph, please slow your roll a little. if somebody said they were planning our future wedding all of ten minutes into talking to me i would flee the room. & the raph in blinded by the summer sun is very much inspired by that. sadly, i never fully committed to that. originally i even had a line in chapter 9 where slash was like 'please tell me you didn't drop the 'i love you forever' on this guy already' to imply that that was, you know, a theme for raph, but i chickened out and cut it. raph as a kind of rolling series of bad relationships characterized by him falling forever in love w/ his latest crush until the relationship detonates and leaves him not really understanding how things went wrong. but i don't think that's expressed well like, at all. but that ideally should characterize a large part of why he keeps chasing after mikey even well after the point where it would be reasonable to disengage. also to convey some of the downsides of a character believing in true love. it's rough out there in the world.

also thank you tumblr user averyterrible for writing this goncharov post. that was the point in the story where i was like, actually i have been writing raph as way too much of a sad boy. if i want to play in the space of crime drama, there needs to be some crime! he's a yakuza assassin. he needs to chop off somebody's fingers with bolt cutters.

--

to me, the central question in the fic isn't really 'will the mikey/raph relationship work out' or 'will mikey succeed in his plans', it's 'why is mikey doing these things'. & i think the leatherhead chunks in chapter 23 finally give enough context to what's going on with mikey to let people answer that? like oh, mikey is a mess.

(lol the initial setup for the early chapters are supposed to give an audience response of like, "oh no, raph has some dangerous secrets" "oh no, raph is a violent yakuza murderer! i hope mikey is going to be okay interacting with raph" "...oh no, i hope raph is going to be okay interacting with mikey")

a lot of the story really is about how... mikey & raph's relationship is in a lot of ways very adolescent? they have not had a lot of prior experience with healthy relationships, and they're trying, but, uhhhhhhh. mikey likes to act like he's so cool and above-it-all and unaffected by things happening, but that's actually just b/c he doesn't really care about most things. when something happens that he genuinely doesn't like he immediately snaps and has a giant meltdown. (we see this once with raph, when mikey has a panic attack and throws up when raph blows him off wrt warning him of bishop, and once with donny about the armor, where mike immediately starts tantruming and threatening to kill himself. mikey is very bad at resolving conflict. he's kind of a brat, actually.)

like every character in this is in some way their worst self. they're all pretty awful people. but they're all also trying to... grapple with their place in the world and try to be better people. to even figure out what 'better' means. this is a story about how 'being a good person' is a constant struggle, not to 'do the right thing', but to even figure out what's 'right'. it's about picking yourself up again after a bad period and going, well, let's keep going. like mikey has a lot of traits but one that i, the author, actually think is fairly admirable is his ability to get back up and keep going after a really bad period. which is funny b/c characterwise that goes hand-in-hand with his callousness. just shrug off all the misery you caused other people, i guess! see above about positive/negative character traits.

(also uh there's another tmnt fic author whose work has a lot of... a Bad Guy is constructed/identified. then helpless children (or teens!) are rescued from him. then the bad guy is ruthlessly & violently murdered. sometimes onscreen, sometimes offscreen. and then it's nothing but chapter after chapter of people being happy and cutesy to each other. and like, i get it. but the, like, recurring theme there of the Bad Guy having done something fundamentally unforgivable that separates from all understanding & mercy, to which the only justice is a violent death, just strikes me as... simplistic. sometimes people do really awful things and part of grappling with that as an adult with an adult moral conceptualization is realizing that you gotta look past your initial reflex to punishment.

or like, mikey's whole childhood in this really fucked him up but a huge part of his identity is him having to form an identity from that. having to make the determination of which parts of him are 'him' and which parts were done to him. lol @ him aggressively and extensively rejecting everything about what draxum made him to do & then blithely being like 'we were engineered to eat humans anyway' as a defense for all the corpse-eating. mikey you just like eating people & have decided that part does align with your self-identity. mikey would really not appreciate anybody being like 'i'm sorry nobody saved you from that' b/c that (to him) would basically be the same as them saying they thought he was fundamentally, irreparably damaged & was going to be forever incapable of being anything other than what draxum made him to be. he wouldn't take it well.)

uhhh what else. i mean there's a lot. fun fact pretty much every time mikey gets mad at somebody else he's hugely projecting. even his pacifism is like... hmm maybe he should have killed draxum. a lot of his talk @ raph about splinter is secretly mikey relitigating his feelings about draxum. oh what's that mikey you think that splinter is only playing happy family b/c he's immortal and he has infinite time to spend humoring somebody's illusions but that when push comes to shove he'll drop all that? gee i wonder if that might apply to any dynamics in mikey's own life. lol at mikey being like "wow red your life is kind of a fucked-up nightmare of weird psychopaths playing like they're happy family" and then two chapters is like "hey come meet my family. we live in my genocidal dad's bombed-out lab and we're treating him like a weird racist grandpa". i kinda wanted something that would complicate mikey just being like "i am a pacifist now and i don't kill anybody"; mikey that's all well and good but like half his inner tension comes from not being sure if he should've left draxum alive. that's kinda the mirror to him debating whether or not actually killing leatherhead would've been better. (in a few years shelldon is gonna go through a period of not wanting to talk to any of them. mikey & donnie are better parents than draxum but that's such a low bar.)

(likewise at the end when mikey is like "this is raph's healthiest relationship so far!" to leo, like, this is more mikey projecting. really the raph/casey relationship was probably better for raph & casey, idk, who can say. but is mikey's relationship with raph the healthiest romantic interaction he's ever had? yes, absolutely. we don't get to see the mikey/leatherhead relationship really up-close and personal but it should be pretty clear that it was pretty awful for everybody involved. compared to that, the mikey/raph is absolutely mikey's healthiest relationship so far. just. low bars.)

lol i am a little concerned that mikey's tendency to monologue, & especially his whole political monologue near the end, will get people to think he's just acting as an author's soapbox. i mean, okay, the little author's note where i'm like "as always, mikey is a perfect role model and everybody should do what he does" was a fun little joke. but, oof, the number of fics i've read where the authors feel the need to loudly and repeatedly disclaim that This Story Contains Things The Author Does Not Condone In Real Life is pretty disheartening. way to have absolutely no faith in your audience. but likie, the part where mikey is pretty much flat-out like, "actually i think my moral framework is whatever is necessary to justify my actions" is meant to be pretty damning. maybe not of mikey specifically as a character, just of, you know. the whole world where that's a pretty common outlook among people with power.

--

lets talk about the rape. part of it is that it felt like it would be inauthentic to go through the entire story without mikey seriously violating one of raph's boundaries. part of it is that mikey here kinda has the trifecta of ASPD, ADHD, & bipolar, and the thing with that is it's very easy to just say that but a little more difficult to convey the personality traits involved. this isn't really something ever stated as such in the fic, aside from various people calling mikey crazy + raph calls him a sociopath once. it's kind of too didactic to just flatly state "and this is what's wrong with mikey!" imo. but. this is a story about violent people. imo you can't just gesture to a character with the background level of callousness for the genre and go "okay this is a clinical sign"; you kinda gotta do something more direct. 'wow mikey sure is CRAZY and WEIRD good thing it only shows itself as him being slightly mean to people'. no. mikey has done some pretty horrible things in the past and clearly isn't fully done with that.

(i did pretty much go straight down the list of symptoms there. impulsive, suicidal, aggressive, violent, risky sex, arrogant, limited empathy, no regard for other people or social norms, difficulty with relationships, arson, etc, etc, etc. but it's not like he's a 'realistic' portrayal here, since... i mean, he is a super-powered ninja. there's a level of 'superficial charm' here but we do get enough of mikey's interiority to be able to tell he's a total mess in a way that's not particularly constructed.)

also it's like. raph graphically tortures several people to death & i didn't really feel the need to disclaim that here. murder is usually seen as a lesser crime in fiction than rape. people love their violent blorbos but the second there's the implication of sexual violence people freak out. the usual line people say is that the threat of murder is a little more removed for most people than the threat of rape, which idk if i fully agree with. but part of it is also to draw a line between raph's violence and mikey's boundary violation. like mikey says, well, raph tried to non-consensually murder him a few times too.

anyway i don't think i really stuck the landing with that either, in part b/c raph's response to it. he's a little too pathetically accepting of things at the end instead of being angry + violent. that could use a rewrite or two.

--

honestly i'm kinda sick of this story now? which sucks a little, since i kept realizing things about the story all the way up to the very last moment of editing. if i had waited to post any of this until i was done with the first draft... well, it'd be a very different story if i went back and turned this rough draft into something more complete. i never really did manage to hit the character beats with raph i was hoping to. oh well. like, i still like it. but i can definitely see all of its weak points. i guess that's just part of the process of writing. it'd be worse if you wrote a giant novel and came out on the other side not more aware of your failings as an author.

i feel like raph isn't super well-realized in terms of character motivations. or... his relationships aren't shaded in as well as they could be. if i were redoing this whole thing i'd definitely include some chunks of raph pov just to lay out more concretely what he's doing & what his life is like when he's not in the same scene as mikey. i kinda included that raph+donny conversation at the very end just for jokes, but actually ending every chapter with a little section of non-mikey pov would've helped ground a lot of the characters. raph isn't super well-developed and leo is pretty much incoherent absent external familiarity with his character's deal. they're not conveyed super well, in part because, well, any time mikey is onscreen everybody is having to deal with mikey. it's a problem.

but something that absolutely could have worked as a secondary narrative to the story is the whole thing with raph working w/ the oroku. that was a bit of a late addition to the story. it's meant as a reference to, you know, all the times raphael ends up being compared to/assuming the mantle of the shredder in the comics. but as it is since we don't get any real looks into exactly what's going on in yakuza town when mikey's not around none of that got developed very well, imo.

--

it was very important to me that mikey not learn any lesson here. where things are at in the end are pretty much the exact same as where they were in the beginning. the bit in the pizza scene where he's like 'you guys get to live and i get a boyfriend' is very accurate. literally the only change in mikey's life through this entire thing is that at the end he is in a relationship w/ a guy who he can tell some of what his life is like to. not that it's a super healthy relationship, but it is there.

well, that, and also now he's maybe out of time. (uh, so the laughter at the very end of the epilogue is mikey realizing he's out of time. the whole epilogue really is about how he's got all these conflicting tensions of who-knows-what in his life, & then right in the middle of the tension it's like, whoops, the utrom aren't coming in 10 years or 20 years, they're coming now. and in a week you're gonna be getting some really pointed questions about how you know the utrom envoy. and in a few years, well, there's gonna be some planetary evacuation) like the whole story is about... anxiety. mikey feeling the weight of the future on him in every moment. actually seeing things collapse would be a relief; you'd get the release of all the potentiality collapsing into an actual problem. the moral of the story is you get what you get and in the end all mikey's actions, good or bad or otherwise, have bought him is nine more months of ignoring his problems.

anyway sorry to all the tmnt fans who were expecting a happy cheerful mikey/raph story. this is actually about the fundamental injustice of existence. whoops!

[fullcry]

*knocks on your askbox* hostage/creature vash au?? may i ask for more details please 👀👀👀

You may!

So, I've had this fic outlined for a while but I wasn't going to work on it until maybe the end of May? I wanted to finish Memories on Film and Biology first, then make more progress on Love and Peace and Gunsmoke.

BUT. @zeearts had to go and create this incredible creature!Vash design and it just got my brain spinning all sorts of gears and now I'm back to dabbling with the Hostage AU!

Basically, the story goes something like this:

Meryl grows up in a rural town without a plant whose primary trade is worm hunting. They've got industrial production going, trading their goods for water from July and other essential resources. There's problems in the town, and being close to July they are firmly within the thrall of the Eye of Michael (except Meryl, ofc, because our girl is Smart and Knows a cult when she sees one).

Well one day Meryl gets chosen as a sacrifice and she gets taken to July where she's put in service to Knives and Conrad as sort of a glorified maid/caretaker to this strange creature Knives proclaims is his brother. Meryl doesn't know what's going on and the whole things seems hella sus and what the fuck is this bird thing huddled in the corner, but she does what she's told and pretends to be a Meek Believer while she tries to figure out how to bust out.

Meanwhile, in the background:

Knives, unable to forcibly control Vash's gate, has proceeded with his "Destroy the Parasites" master plan using the Eye of Michael to start a holy war while he hopes that giving Vash a little of what he wants--a human companion--will weaken his resolve and/or give Knives something to hold over him so he can gain some kind of leverage in this battle of wills with his brother.

Unbeknownst to Meryl Conrad is also plotting, secretly dosing her food with drugs to use her as Test Subject 1 in his plan to create part-plant humans. He hopes that he can secretly dose the water supply he controls to get the drug out to the masses and create hybrid humans that might stand a chance of surviving Knives' war and win a place in his Eden.

Wolfwood, the one responsible for capturing Vash and bringing him to Knives, is also skulking around Knives' lil July penthouse. They've got a baby Livio hostage they're using as leverage and Wolfwood wants his lil bro back and is making his own plan to bust him out while Knives and Conrad are distracted with their war.

Back to Meryl.

Our girl slowly befriends dear Creature!Vash, locked away in his lil plant-proof chamber. He's half-delusion from Knives' mind-fuckery, and through kindness and patience Meryl slowly brings him back to himself.

One day Meryl and Wolfwood meet, and together they strike up a plan to bust everyone out--her, Vash, Wolfwood, and Livio. But things don't go according to plan...

I've been dabbling with it a bit the past few days, though I'm TRYING to stick to the goals I set for myself as much as possible (I have a Patreon now and I'm trying to stick to an actual schedule!) but you know how inspiration can be <sob> It controls me I don't control it.

Speaking of Patreon, for anyone interested I'll be posting WIP snippets of this fic and other ideas this upcoming week on my page!

[i-sveikata]

Hello author Just wanted to say that I am really enjoying the relationship dynamic between Vegas and Pete in your story. I somehow feel that in spite of how the whole relationship began, they both are on equal footing now. They both really respect the other truly. You also mentioned this whole idea in your story too when Pete confronted Kinn about his relationship with Porsche. I am really looking forward to how they are going to navigate their relationship, now that it will truly be out in the open. while Vegas has never hidden or shied away from his feelings since the beginning (kind of like when he was confronted by his father in the safehouse), it will become real for Pete once he comes out to his grandmother. Sure, he has admitted his feelings to other people especially ones in the Main family, but I am really looking forward to how he will deal with everything once his Yaai is involved While we're waiting for the new chapter, there is something I have been meaning to ask about your story. Since you have been so actively interacting with readers of your work and getting feedback, are there any parts which you have altered from the original direction you planning to go to.

Just wanted to add that I am in awe of the way you have just dealt with these characters. Yours is one of the first few fanfics that I came across ever, and it has made me appreciate fanfic writers in a way I never knew I could.

hello anon!!! thank you so much!! yes they are much closer to equal footing than they ever have been before and they are finally beginning to understand one another a hell of a lot better!

ah anon im sorry but dont get too far ahead of yourself there!! you are forgetting how deeply in denial of his own feelings pete has been so as annoying as it might be his grandmother knowing about them isn't going to be the final push he needs to fully face what they are to each other (though that is coming soon!!). Pete is still very much in the denial phase. but yes part of the russian deal will be them standing out in the open with their relationship and navigating everything that comes with that and im looking forward to playing around with the new dynamic bringing pete out into the spotlight for once!!

oh that's a great question!!!! tbh i wouldnt say that ive drastically changed the trajectory of things based off reader feedback because that would imply i had a step by step plan in the first place (lol nope) whereas it was more like vibes and the emotional journey along with a general basic outline ive been following all along. but yes i definitely have been influenced by people's takes or observations on vegas and pete's dynamic in the comments or even just based off characters readers ended up enjoying (for example i hadnt actually planned for dr kunakorn to be a recurring kind of character but everyone seemed delighted with him and then it just worked out having a medical professional around that pete actually trusted and one theyd need cause they keep getting half killed all the time lol) so it's probably been minor things like that. nothing has really been set in stone from the get go (besides me refusing to kill Chan and sort of vaguely following the events of the show) which is more of my preferred style tbh since im writing free of rigid plans so that leaves a lot of room for ideas to shift the story along as they come in tbh.

ahhh thank you so much that's really kind of you to say!! oh wow im so honoured to be one of the first fanfics under your belt! so glad to hear that!!! we really are just a community of writing nerds over here its amazing!

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #22 – Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse

This was a bit of an odd read for me. I grabbed it because I have vague but generally quite positive memories of reading the first book in the trilogy a few years back, and having finished this I’m not really sure why. It’s not that it’s necessarily an awful read – it’s engaging, the moment-to-moment prose is fine, I finished it easily enough. Hell there’s a decent chance I read the sequel at some point. But my main feeling finishing it is that it’s an artistic failure, that I can see the things it was trying to do and generally speaking it just didn’t manage them. Which is a pity, really.

The book picks up right after Black Sun ended, with the crow god reborn massacring the Watchers and plunging the city of Tova into chaos, and world into permanent twilight as the crow and sun gods battle in the heavens. Inconveniently, the actual sun priest survived, having faked her death and fled to the undercity following a coup shortly before everyone involved died, leaving the ritual incomplete and Serpio (vessel and host of the Crow God) alive. The story basically follows the fallout from this, with the sun priest, crow prophet and three other POVs each showing the political trajectory of some different part of the world as things spiral inevitably toward war.

Which is the first problem, really. This is the middle book in a trilogy, and oh you can feel it. The entire book is spent moving pieces into place and just, table-setting for when the actual dramatic plot kicks off in book three. Now, personally I actually quite enjoy books full of intrigue and conversations on the road as people travel places, but it gets a bit excessive. It doesn’t help that half the POVs get barely any development and feel like they end the book in the same basic emotional/ideological place they started it with no progress at all to their arcs. The whole thing ends up feeling like a giant prologue to the actual story.

A feeling which is not helped at all by the book’s length. I’m not at all opposed to fantasy books being less than 400 pages. I am in fact incredibly in favour of it, the ideas of reading another 1100 page tome just makes me exhausted. But when you’re trying to do a George R. R. Martin-style continent spanning politics-heavy cast-of-thousands epic fantasy, you really need the extra wordcount. The result felt incredibly choppy and rushed, almost more like an outline or storyboard than a completed story. Each main character rushes from pivotal scene to pivotal scene with barely any time for establishing status quos or building relationships and connective tissue – instead things are basically introduced once and then the POV’s internal monologue just explains its importance to you, pivotal events in the plot explained either after the fact or not at all. Maybe one or two character dynamics in the entire book actually worked for me, the rest just felt like reading the ‘relationships’ section of a character sheet. It made getting invested in the whole thing remarkably difficult.

The feeling of reading an outline of a book wasn’t really helped by the lore. We got lots of interesting tidbits and implications, even some grand revelation – and essentially none of them are ever followed up on, or given the weight they really need to really land. The revelation of the Sun Priest having no shit miraculous magic powers after three hundred years of them violently suppressing any sorcery especially is, not exactly brushed over, but certainly no one seems to react to it have as violently as you would expect. Similarly, there’s a great book in here of just Tovan political intrigue and festering generational grudges and conspiracies colliding in the dark, but then that would require cutting out Xilla and Balam’s entire plotlines to make room for it. (I still kind of love the idea of the entire Golden Eagle hierarchy being pretty bitter that the coup they’d been carefully planning for years got derailed because a rival house pulled a messiah out of their ass and wiped out the entire governing elite of the city).

Then there’s things like the magic system – or honestly I feel like I should put that in scare quotes. There’s this idea brought up a few times that every form of magic fits into a neat schematic, associated with a particular god and specifically opposing and counteracting one other type of sorcery. Which I honestly kind of hate, for the same reason that I kind of hate the fact the crow god of shadows and death apparently really is exactly as vengeful and cruel as you might expect from that. Which might be building up to a big reveal in the third book! Who knows. But as is, the entire metaphysical setup just feels terribly like something out of a midbudget tabletop rpg setting, and not at all in a good way.

Which is a shame, because generally the setting is just a delight. No small part of that is just from the novelty of an epic fantasy stories that’s painted in the colours of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica instead of Medieval Europe. But even beyond that, the interplay of the different cities and factions within them is very fun, and it’s just a breath of fresh air to have no straightforward hereditary monarchies in one of these at all. I can’t say is felt really real (it is an agricultural society, plunging the world into permanent twilight as the winter ends isn’t dire and ominous, it’s an imminent famine of apocalyptic scale), but the aesthetics of everything were certainly entirely on point. I was left pretty sad this isn’t a series there’s more high quality fanart for, really.