#btw she barely aimed at the armpits

[skznccmlee]

Since when I am SO ticklish on my armpits and inside of the elbow????????????????

[alirhi]

I just want this done 😭

When I was 15, I started RPing with my friends over AIM. Usually we'd only stick with a particular story or set of characters (always original work; I wasn't much into fanfiction back then, though I'd started a few that never went far lol) for a session or two and then move on, but I had this one friend - we'll call her T - who had one character with a really rich, interesting backstory. We stuck with him and the boy I'd created to pair with him and just kept developing this story over several months.

My character, Zephan, ended up getting sidelined by another, much more interesting character who got added later, Kieran. And the first incarnation of what would eventually become the Crossroads series was born.

This is a really long rant, so I'll be nice and put the rest under a cut.

I have no fucking idea why T wrote with me, tbh. She was in her 20s. I was 15 and really annoying, and really bad at writing. 😂 I look back over that early material (and my ooc ramblings) and I want to die. Or reach back through time and slap that kid lmao. But anyway, for some reason this grown-ass lady put up with me, and my barf-inducing fawning over her character, and out of all that truly fucking awful writing, a pretty great idea came about.

I wasn't going to get into this, but then I realized context kind of matter lmao so here's a (hopefully) quick rundown on Crossroads 1.0:

Zephan is a bi cutie who meets a really hot guy, they hit it off right away (no insta-love, so at least I had that going for me lol) and start dating. They both have secret traumatic pasts neither is ready to reveal to the other, but of course, they come back to bite them in their respective asses. Zephan starts acting really strange; not moody so much as literally his entire personality changes. Eventually he learns that when he was a baby, he was possessed by this dying creature who needed a body - Kieran. And part of Zephan's trauma is actually linked to a monster from Kieran's past tracking him down. Kieran was weakened by the shit that almost killed him, so once he was safe in a new body, he kinda just went to sleep for 20 years. But then he started waking up and taking control of the body, which Zeph's not too happy about. They fight for dominance, hurting Zephan's bf in the process (emotionally lol not physically), and bf fucks off to a scary place from his past while Zephan and Kieran go to Kieran's home world to try to sort some shit out. It doesn't work. Eventually, they do figure something out with the help of one of Zeph's best friends, Leyna, who happens to be a super powerful witch. She splits them and gives Kieran a new body, he goes home to face his monsters, Zeph tries to find his bf... the whole thing was left unresolved because T and I drifted apart and I haven't spoken to her in like 17 years lol

in the meantime, I met a new bud. We'll call this one A. Me and A? IRL insta-love, yo! Not the romantic kind, but definitely BFFs from the second she first spoke to me. It's been a roller coaster since then lol. She's still very much in my life (is my unofficial sister) but our friendship has been nothing but drama the whole damn time. Not all of it was rl drama, though! A became my new RP partner! and guys, back in the day? This girl had some good ideas!

I can't remember anymore who was responsible for what. We spent years talking about this story... and not doing much else with it tbh. I got a little writing done here and there, but was hampered by all the rl fights and her flaking constantly, and when the drama got bad enough that we "stopped being friends" (every few weeks in high school lmao and a few times in our 20s), I had to go back and rewrite everything to get her contributions out of there.

It wasn't called Crossroads yet, btw. Until around 2012-ish, it was just this one story line - Achlais (T's suggested name for Kieran's world. I later learned that it's apparently Gaelic for "armpit" and was like "fuck that" XD but I loved the sound of it. so my friend - we'll call this one S - did some digging and found this really cool Greek deity Achlys and we were both like "yeah, that works." So...yeah. story was just Achlais/Achlys)

Achlais centered around Kieran and his struggles. Zephan became a footnote in this much more interesting character's journey. See, Kieran was born of trauma; he's a rape baby and the first thing he saw in the world was his mother being killed for having him. Never mind the fact that the man who killed her was his father and her rapist. Always blame the women, amirite? The cool thing is, though, daddy fucked himself over big time. Kieran was his first child, and by the very strict laws of their world (not Achlais; Kieran was born on a different world, called Takaldor, and then banished to Achlais) is the only legitimate heir to the throne. Oh, yeah. Daddy's King of Takalador. And mom? Mom's human, but she's also a Queen of another world in her own right. So enter leetle Kieran, heir to two thrones and shipped off to a third world and left to die. His body does, but his soul's too strong, so he body-hops for a while. Finds stillborn babies (no soul to fight him) and takes their bodies. Kieran gets to live, parents get to raise their child instead of mourning them. They never know their kiddo is actually just the vessel for a half-demon magical parasite lol.

It's in his last host body before Zephan that Kieran gets his name (mom was killed before naming him; he eventually found a host with a name he liked and kept it)... and also the bulk of his trauma. woo lol. He's kidnapped by the main villain, Kanaye (I was obsessed with A and K names in my teens. this story was rife with them until I painstakingly went through and changed as many as I could over the past few years), kept as a slave, bad things happen to him that I won't go into detail on because I forgot to put a trigger warning in the beginning. 😅 But just... really, really bad, traumatic shit. And even though his mind is fully grown at this point, his host body is a child (5ish when kidnapped, 7ish when Very Bad Stuff starts, 15 or so when he escapes. ...oh yeah, spoiler alert XD Kieran escapes). I had this policy that I still sometimes have trouble shaking off: I was never satisfied with my writing until it made me cringe (from ick factor, not from lack of quality lol. unfortunately, I have a very strong stomach and my tolerance for ick only grew as my writing got more icky lmao so... yeah. that snowballed.)

While in captivity/slavery, Kieran meets a girl also enslaved to Kanaye, named Amara (see? A and K names 🙄) and falls in love with her. He escapes, joins a gang (don't ask 😂 I'm trying to keep this as bare-bones as possible because there are a lot more stories than just this one in Crossroads), eventually when he thinks he's strong enough to take on this crazy demon wizard, he goes back to rescue Amara. he fails completely, Amara is mortally wounded, Kieran's host is killed, and Amara uses the last of her strength (she's magical af and that's why Kanaye kept her around) to push his soul to Earth. The whole thing with Zephan happens, just with a different bf who opens up this whole awesome subplot having to do with one of Achlais's moons. Anyway, when Kieran gets his own body back, he goes back to Achlais (where his enemy has literally taken over the world) and leads a war against Kanaye. Then he stands against his father to avenge his mother, and eventually becomes King of Takalador. unfortunately, it's a super ultra over-the-top racist world so they hate him for being half human, and there's like civil war and shit. fun stuff. Also, his mother is brought back from the dead lmao. There was stuff with different types of dragons, a whole slew of fantasy species and magic and y'all I have been building this world since I was 14 (yes, before the RP that kicked off the main plot. I had the world before I had characters or plot)

I would love nothing more than to go into excruciating detail about the worlds and their canon history and that awesome moon subplot and everything, but... I mean, look how long this already is, and I haven't even touched on the other stories yet lmao

The first non-Achlais/Achlys story to get linked to it was A's and my amazing (if I do say so myself lol) retelling of the war between the Biblical Heaven and Hell. It's told from the perspective of the First Fallen, and reframes the entire thing. Adonai (God, if you didn't know his name) is a psychotic fuckwit, there's an oft-repeated saying that no man is made more in His image than his Catholic priests, and Lucifer and his followers didn't fight for the throne or because they hated humans or whatever. that was all propaganda. They fought for their freedom, and they won. As part of the treaty that finally ended the bloodshed, they were given Hell but with the caveat that they have to torture the souls of evildoers. Kay, fine. They got a level for that lol. They finally have a home! They're safe from Adonai!

Until he breaks the treaty himself, determined to have his favorite pet back, and kidnaps Lucifer. His eldest daughter (a general who helped lead the first war) invades Heaven to get him back and a second war breaks out. The rescue attempt is ultimately successful, but Luci's just about fucking had it. There are all these rumors that Adonai can be killed, but because he created all things, kill him and reality unravels. Lucifer gives zero fucks. He's willing to put it to the test. Turns out is exaggerated... but pretty much true. The reality he created - Heaven and Hell - does depend on him being there and, y'know, alive lol. and so it all collapses when Luci kills him. The few survivors become refugees and they end up on - you guessed it! - Achlys!

There's also this whole other realm we created with our own made up Gods and Goddesses, that also comes into play and has its own story arc, but we'll get back to that. Just remember that the main Godly place is called Valdell.

Next we have the one I'm struggling with most rn, DJ's story. DJ is the oldest OC of mine in the entire Crossroads series. I made him up when I was 13/14. Originally, he was supposed to sort of blend into the background; he was just the bestie of the one I'd intended to focus on, Kali. but Kali's kind of a fuckhead and DJ was much more fun lol. They're both still in play, and still besties, but DJ is the main and Kali's just kinda there XD

Oh, DJ Gallagher, how I love thee, let me count the ways... On the surface, his story doesn't seem at all connected to the rest of the Crossroads universe (unless you're eagle-eyed and notice little Easter eggs here and there). There's no magic, it takes place entirely on Earth (in my hometown in the 90s, specifically lol)... doesn't seem to have much to do with this epic fantasy adventure. but oh, it does. DJ's got quite the future ahead of him... or did, when A was supposed to be writing this with me.

You know what? DJ's getting his own post. He deserves the attention lol. Just know that I love this boy, and his story is the part of this series giving me the most grief right now in my attempts to rewrite yet again to get all of A's crap out of the way.

Claddagh - Rebecca's story that I posted a bunch of snippets from a few days ago - is the next road added to Crossroads. What's her connection to all this? Well, in addition to her meeting Lucifer and his daughter/General Haliel, you learn that she is actually Rachel's (Kieran's mom) little sister. She's also the final piece of the puzzle at the end, in the one book that ties all of these stories together. Thankfully, despite many attempts to get her to, A never even tried to look like she was helping with this one. S was, back when we were friends, but she ghosted me in 2015, so I wrote her character out, replaced her with Fiona, and got a much better plot out of the deal, so that worked out lol. Thanks for being a bitch, S!

There are smaller parts, as well (Claddagh's planned to be a pretty long series, and so was Achlys when A was involved) - Dying Breed, in which Johanna's mother is abducted and skeptical, cynical Jo is forced to see a world of magic that her mom had been trying to show her (and protect her from) all her life; Annwn, where we're shown that Jo's mom actually knew a boy from DJ's story, Ice, and begs him to take on this insane quest that only gets crazier once he's actually on it; and the Winter trilogy, which genuinely started out as a joke, but my friends liked what I had, so I decided to keep it. That one's... it's different. XD it's a "reverse harem" story that gets pretty squicky. I'm not entirely sure how much of my original plan to keep. A never had a hand in any of this (though a mutual friend of ours, L, was briefly trying to help me with Dying Breed before she had to bow out) but just because it didn't come from our 2 AM spazz sessions doesn't mean all the ideas are good lol.

And then there's Heart and Seoul, which is actually a really long fanfic we wrote 11 years ago. We never finished it (almost, though) but it got popular for a while, so we decided to convert it to an original and, due to references mainly in DJ's story, it became connected to Crossroads. I was actually very happy to cut that lol. It's A's baby so I feel a little bad for saying this, but... I never loved that story as much as she did. It was fun for a while, but I'm so over it.

Valdell had its own trilogy planned, at first, too, but it was kind of just more of the same tired crap that one comes to expect from A - mpreg for the hell of it and a "doomed" romance. meh. On their own, they're not bad story elements if done right, but when it's literally every goddamn story she comes up with, it gets old real quick.

So that was Crossroads 2.0 - it went through many stages and rewrites, but that's the basic gist. We had this whole interconnected Whedonverse concept, and an MCU Phase 1, 2, 3 thing going on (Phase 2 was kicked off by one of the Valdell Gods getting fed up with all the mortals' bumbling and erasing all of existence except his home and the other Gods. his wife flipped shit until he remade it. DJ was brought back as a girl. wife was like "fucking really? are you kidding me?" so he rolled his eyes and fixed it, and DJ got a Phase 3. also, Lucifer got 3 phases because of some shit with the whole killing Addie thing and a boy named Cole...)

It got...complicated, to say the least. Convoluted is probably more accurate. So when I made the decision to cut A out once and for all instead of spending my life in limbo waiting for her to suddenly become reliable, I cut like... that whole MCU concept. I also cut out a lot of what happened in Achlys, and around 20 planned books got cut down to 5. and the whole struggle with DJ... character arcs that I loved are gone, that whole awesome subplot I mentioned in Achlys? gone. which means I have to rewrite shit all the way back to the first book, because it was an underlying mystery that persisted through the whole series!

A lot of stuff, I cut because it was just bad. Whether it came from her brain or mine, or this weird hive mind thing we have going on when we're overtired, doesn't matter. It was bad. Some stuff was great, but I cut it because it was either her idea initially (she used to be so creative before she dug herself a little rut and decided it was comfy and dis is home nao) or tied into her ideas and characters too tightly. I couldn't cut her Achlys characters, for instance, without cutting that mystery subplot even though the mystery was 100% my idea, because we'd worked together on building the shit necessary for it to exist, and solving it for the reader hinged on A's characters in the Zephan chunk of the story. and none of that is there anymore. Zephan's not a part of this at all. That whole story line is gone.

Unfortunately, erasing the Zeph part also erases Leyna and her brother Lucian, and Lucian appears in DJ's story and that was a clever little tie-in before, but now it's just... a random boy who appears for one scene and is mentioned once or twice, and that's it.

So it's been a struggle, to say the least. I don't know if I should stick to my guns and keep this new, much shorter Crossroads 3.0, or rework it one more time to keep these elements I loved...somehow. ugh.

fml.