#check out the comic sans powerpoint! and maybe some of my worldbuilding posts on the garble if u can find them dhfjdf

[albatris]

hello! somewhat new follower here, I love what ive seen of atdao and rental car but also I'm,, not fully sure what they're about? oops? if you have a summary post for them (or want to summarize them shortly [or not shortly haha] here) I'd love to see it!

hello!! welcome somewhat new follower to the Whatever This Is!! I love u and I hope you're having a good day!! I am very sleepy

but yes!! yeah, I can do this

so uhhh "I like these vibes but I have no idea what this WIP is about" is a pretty standard reaction to this blog hahahaha. my general approach to writeblr has been "I'm just going to start yelling about my WIPs with no context and people are welcome to jump on board for the ride if they like!!". that being said - I have a few posts that might be up your alley! but some of them are! rambly! lengthy! being concise is not my strong suit

I will give you a basic rundown of each plot (still will probably be a lot though) under the cut, but first I'll toss you a few links to some specific info that will talk about it all in more detail :3

here's the original comic sans powerpoint intro for ATDAO, though it's very old and certain details have changed now.... here's my go-to explaining-the-ATDAO-plot ramble post..... and here are some funky little character intro slides to give you a quick rundown of the MCs!

here's my powerpoint for rental car! much shorter and neater than the ATDAO one, and a pretty decent rundown of the plot! I recommend this as the place to start!! my explanation of rental car under the cut will be very sleepy and clumsy. (though I did make the powerpoint before I started writing, so some of the details particularly for Yvonne and Alex are different now.) but ye, you can find lots of more specific posts about worldbuilding elements and characters in the general rental car tag (it is also currently much shorter and neater than the general ATDAO tag hahaha)

both projects also have a playlist too, n I love to share those whenever I have the chance lmao

now, I will tell you of the plots, in an attempt to summarise that will likely still get very out of hand, if you care to read c:

so first up is All the Doors are Open! my longest-standing WIP! I'm bad at picking genres blah blah young adult fantasy/sci-fi/adventure blah blah. aims to land right in the dead centre of the overlap of "serious story about serious things" and "nonsense silliness and a bonkers plot that knows it's bonkers and leans into it hard" :P

vibes? found family, power of kindness and connection, goodness of humanity, learning self love, lots of cheesiness, happy endings all round! plus, ‘cause it’s an important point to me For Reasons, a psychotic protagonist whose psychosis isn’t demonised or used for some cheap plot twist like “haha the whole thing was a delusion all along none of it was real surprise!” or “turns out it was never psychosis and it was just magic powers!” - neither is it ignored or “just something that happens to be there”. it’s an integral part of his character and plotline alongside the very real magical bullshit he’s involved in, and it affects both how he relates to the world and how he approaches the story’s central mystery. it’s not a story About Mental Illness, but it is a story about mental illness

ANYWAY

ATDAO takes place in South Australia but a weird parallel dimension equivalent of, in a universe where the fabric of reality is unraveling! cracks in reality called Ports are cropping up with more and more frequency, causing all kinds of strange inexplicable phenomena. everyone is pretty sure the end is nigh, but the end sure is taking its sweet time, so in the meantime there's not much folks can do but try to continue about their regular lives as best they can against this bizarre apocalyptic backdrop. like, sure, some guy's feet got eaten by the footpath this morning and your toaster may be possessed, but you have, like, normal people problems. you have rent. you have homework. you're just hoping that weird humming sinkhole in the backyard won't reach your shed because you do NOT have time for that right now

the plot primarily follows Tris and Noa, fellow high school students at Northbrook and best friends four years and counting! I've gone back and forth so many times on whether their plotlines will be separate books or the same one and I still don't know!

Tris's plotline centres around him being the sole witness to a freak car accident that somehow causes his older brother Jacob to blip out of reality entirely. it's pretty weird, even by apocalypse standards. the Department of Interdimensional Instabilities are convinced if things happened the way Tris thinks they happened, then Jacob is deeefinitely dead and there's nothing they can do. the cops are convinced things did NOT happen the way Tris believes they did 'cause Tris is schizophrenic and Jacob was (apparently) already involved in some shady nonsense that would more than account for a disappearance under mysterious circumstances - as in, they think Jacob's disappearance is just regular people crimes and Tris is just stressed out and scrambling for any other explanation. however, due to a series of subsequent odd events, Tris knows for a goddamn fact that Jacob is still alive somewhere out there, scared and in danger. Tris takes it upon himself to find out the truth about the accident and find a way to bring Jacob home safely, whatever it takes. cue bizarre interdimensional mystery quest into a fucked-up pocket dimension that can be described as "being lost down the back of the universe's sofa"! much easier said than done, when most of the time Tris is too anxious to leave the house let alone leave his entire reality

Noa's plotline kicks off with her bluffing her way into a job at the Department of Interdimensional Instabilities (aka the folks who appropriately handle and de-escalate dangerous Port-related situations) 'cause she's broke and desperate. a relatively routine mission goes awry and Noa has a run in with some otherworldly energies that leave her Kind Of Different - she starts hearing strange voices, seeing ghosts and into other universes, n affecting the reality around her in increasingly unpredictable ways. she suspects she herself might be becoming something Port-adjacent, which is. not great! in the midst of her spiral of paranoia and desperation to hiding her growing instability from her new coworkers and potential friends, she turns to definitely-not-a-mad-scientist Melissa Marrick - who claims to have experienced the same thing many years prior and can help Noa find a way out, for a price. Marrick turns out to have her own shady as fuck agenda, however, and Noa is thrown into a bunch of vaguely superhero-supervillain-esque shenanigans as the pair go head-to-head over Marrick's ultimate plans. unfortunately for Marrick, Noa has seventeen years of pent-up rage and is completely willing to kick the ass of anyone who says things like "some people are expendable" and "this is for the greater good". This Shit Is Personal

the other two main characters you'll hear me talk about are Shara, Port enthusiast and amateur paranormal investigator on a quest to find the source of the apocalypse, and Kai, struggling with the aftermath of losing seven years of their life inside a time loop whirlpool and finding out the world moved on without them and their beloved family thinks they died

so that's! all that! don't let the Legitimate Serious Plot Talk fool you, this story is ridiculous from start to finish

NOW FOR RENTAL CAR

A Rental Car Takes a Left Down Rake Street and Disappears is my first foray into writing horror, but idk if it's turning out very horror-ish yet xD aside from this, it's fantasy/supernatural, aimed at an older audience than ATDAO but I feel weird calling it adult fiction lmao

honestly the powerpoint and the rental car tag are your best bets for understanding the gist of the plot I think. but I will Try to summarise here, I'm just not great at rental car summaries yet....... eeh

it's......... about a bunch of unhinged weirdos trying to murder a giant vampire hivemind! it's campy! it's violent! it's incredibly self-indulgent! it's wholesome in a yikes kind of way! it’s still an albatris WIP so it’s incredibly cheesy and silly, but also like. MUCH much darker and more visceral than ATDAO

the plot is. hm. regular normal human person Nathaniel Finch is on his way home from work like usual! then the next thing he knows, he wakes up covered in dirt in his rental car on the side of the road in the middle of the night nine days later! with no memory of what's just happened to him!

after considerable panic and confusion, he returns to his life and quickly realises that something is very VERY wrong with him now cough he's turning into a vampire cough. despite his near chronic agony, coughing up of blood, almost passing out in public several times, newfound allergic reaction to sunlight and sudden influx of completely alien murderous urges, Nat just kind of goes "fuck fuck fuck I don't have the time or money for this fuck" and decides He Is Fine. On God, He Is Going To Be Fine

one thing leads to another n he accidentally commits an extremely gruesome murder and drinks a dude’s blood at work, then is yoinked from the grisly crime scene by Quinn, a totally normal kind selfless human person with no ulterious motives whatsoever <3

n basically, yeah, Quinn is a shady bastard who loves going on a bit of a power trip and has a whole system of both vampires and humans under their thumb. likes to pounce on newly-turned vulnerable vamps because they're easy to manipulate and exploit and gaslight ‘cause they’re scared and confused and desperate

Quinn and Nat have a whole tense thing at first where Quinn is in control then Nat flips this on its head then they both kind of reach a very dicey stalemate n end up just being kind of. vaguely partners in this whole big mess. then friends who genuinely value and trust each other <3 they kind of speedrun a very intense love/obsession romantic relationship with each other. is it healthy? not really! are they equally fucked up and monstrous and an equal threat to each other? yeah! are they equally adoring and consumed by and in love with each other? also yeah! do they actually genuinely care about each other on a deeply loving, gentle, selfless level? eventually!

are they still very yikes? yeah. yep

so ye, plotwise, Nat is trying to adjust to his new. situation. while trying to figure out what the fuck happened to him during his nine day blackout (besides Got Turned Into A Fucking Vampire Somehow), n every bit of the mystery he solved lands him with ten new questions. he gets kind of. dragged into this whole bullshit confusing violent power struggle between like six different parties, while having NO fucking idea what his role to play in it is

Quinn also has no idea. Quinn just hopped on board because “hey new vampire I can bully look after <3″ and then gets roped into.............. the everything

n idk how to go about explaining it without spoilers, but it turns out Nat was not turned into a vampire by ordinary methods and Is Not A Normal Vampire, n just

look, man, there’s a giant vampire hivemind called the Garble that exists as the origin of all vampires and the very very very centre of this thing is MISERABLE and wants to stop being immortal and finally be allowed to die, while the rest of the Garble has taken on a mind of its own and Refuses To Let It Die, n blah blah they’ve gotta murder Vampire God. they’ve just gotta do it. Nat Finch Is Going To Murder And Eat God. okay. this is a reasonable goal for any normal 25 year old

uhhhh other things in rental car, hmmmm

there’s an ugly cat that is like 90% of Nat’s emotional support system! there’s a fucked up little house that gaslights you! there’s body horror! there’s mind control! there’s vampire zombies! there’s Quinn shoving a guy’s head through some temperamental electrical equipment and frying his brain! there’s Nat pinning Quinn down on a bed with claws to their throat and threatening to kill them and Quinn being weirdly, uncomfortably into it! there is a LOT of characters getting some good ol' sheer cathartic fucking FURY. there’s. an extremely bittersweet but not necessarily unhappy ending, depending on which angle you tilt your head at when you look at it

it’s found family! Nat, Alex and Yvonne are nice enough people albeit a little unhinged and not particularly well-adjusted, Quinn is fully a dramatic evil supervillain with a huge soft side but zero morals whatsoever, Lloyd is Just Kind Of There, look, they all make it work. Quinn and Nat take turns holding each other back from making objectively morally terrible violent decisions by the scruff of the neck. peace and love on planet earth <3

also gonna tack on two recent worldbuildy posts you can check out if you want also to help you get a better feel for dynamics and worldbuilding. they’re Rambles though. I like them but they're wordy :3

a post about Quinn’s deal, a post about the Garble

ok goodnight I love you. godspeed, stranger