#gotta make a story outline for this universe

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is: Wormdebut! Wormdebut has published 18 fics on AO3 all in the steddie tag!

@thefreakandthehair recommends the following works by @wormdebut:

Tell Eddie He Looks Sexy With His Hair Pushed Back

Kiss Your Knuckles (Before You Punch Me In The Face)

Hell Bent For Leather

All You Have Is Your Fire

It Feels Like Fourteen Carats But No Clarity (When I Look At The Man Who Would Be King)

Worm is incredible! For a humble worm, they sure know how to write fanfiction. ;) But seriously, Worm has a way of exploring different dynamics in such depth with an immense amount of care that's so obvious in the finish products! -- @thefreakandthehair

Below the cut, Wormdebut answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

These two idiots inspire me. I mean look at them. I think the thing I love about Steve and Eddie is that to me they are destined to be together. Post-Canon, Alternate Universe. It doesn’t matter. They are meant to be together in any scenario. I could and will write about these two forever.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

Rockstar Eddie, baby. I love some good sex, drugs and rock and roll.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

Is safe (mostly)sane and consensual BDSM a trope? I like to write that. 😂

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

Tuesday’s Gone With The Wind - Thisapplepielife there is nothing quite like reading this for the first time. I truly thought I was going to explode as it was being updated.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

Omegaverse! I have a fic in the worm vault that will come out eventually. Wormegaverse. It’s coming. I’m fucking stoked for it.

What is your writing process like?

Hoooboy. It’s a mess. I cannot write an outline to save my life. (I’m looking at you King of Hell Eddie fic. I know you need an outline okay?) I tend to write in order, but if I get stuck I will skip a scene or two ahead so I can figure out how to squish two pieces of a story together OR I will write little notes about my intentions and skip it and come back. (My favorite note of all time is when I wrote “spit kink shit.” So I could remember my very pure intentions)

Do you have any writing quirks?

Boy do I! I tend to go into like writing fugue states where I will just bust out thousands of words in a sitting and if I am not doing that I am thinking and over thinking about when im gonna fugue out again. I also get really stressed when it actually comes time to write a sex scene? Weird, I know. But every single one is super important to me and I want to make sure they read well. My friends can attest that I am an absolute basket case when it comes to me writing Steve and Eddie getting down and dirty.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

God when I’m done. I am NOT great at posting chaptered fics but I am trying to get better with it? I prefer writing larger pieces though. I am an over-thinker to a fault and for some reason I stress less with one-shots.

Which fic are you most proud of?

It’s gotta be Kiss Your Knuckles. That fic is everything to me. But my Boys Who Kiss series is also so fucking important to me. Those two have so much more to tell y’all and I can’t wait to share their lives with you. I’m a musician so any of my fics that are heavily laced with performance and song are very special.

How did you get the idea for Kiss Your Knuckles (Before You Punch Me In The Face)?

I remember listening to Twin Size Mattress one day and I was like—Holy Shit, this is so Steddie-Coded it hurts. And it’s post-canon AND Rockstar Eddie? Incredible. The words just screamed Eddie Behavior and I knew Steve had to write a one-hit wonder about how he felt.

When writing Kiss Your Knuckles (Before You Punch Me In The Face), what was something you didn’t expect?

Oh I sobbed when I finished it. I couldn’t believe that I had actually finished it. It truly means the world to me and I wanted to share it with you all so badly. I cried for like an hour.

What inspired It Feels Like Fourteen Carats But No Clarity (When I Look At The Man Who Would Be King)?

Honestly? Tumblr user @ghosttotheparty had made a post about the scenario that Fourteen Carats is about and I messaged them and was like hey listen I want to take a shot at this, if that’s okay. Fourteen Carats is the first fully formed fic that I have ever posted aside from tumblr Drabbles and while I personally don’t love it I keep it up just in case someone somewhere does. 😂

What was your favorite part to write from All You Have Is Your Fire?

OH. Absolutely just eluding to Tattoo Legend and Icon, Jim Hopper. God he so fucking hot neat.

How do/did you feel writing Tell Eddie He Looks Sexy With His Hair Pushed Back?

I felt some type of a way, clearly. I think this is my favorite Eddie that I have ever written (My favorite Steve is Kiss Your Knuckles Steve) and he just kept getting more and more interesting. Like who the hell fucks you and speaks French while they do it? Tell Eddie Eddie does. And thank god for that guy.

What was the most difficult part of writing Hellbent For Leather?

Writing sub/bottom Eddie! I did this fic as a gift for tumblr user @gorgeousgreymatter-x (love you bitch) and it was hard because I don’t often write that dynamic, but god damn I loved these two Steddies.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

Ah— “It is, and I do.” Something about French chef Eddie, really—yeah. I am proud of everything I have written but if I can be honest with you I rarely remember what I have done. I often joke that it’s simply Steve and Eddie in my brain just writing what they want, because people will quote my work or talk to me about a scene and I’m like—‘I wrote that?? Nice.’

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

WELL. Once I can break myself out of this accidental hiatus I am so excited to share more of For Your Entertainment with yall. I am also so fucking excited to share King Of Hell Eddie with the world. I can’t fucking wait. I am working on a ‘Came Back Wrong’ fic that is less scary and more comedic and I am stoked for that. I have quite a few things that are happening and I am just so fucking excited to share them all with you. 

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Just thank you. Thank you for reading and thanks for letting me be a part of all of this. I have not felt this inspired and loved in a long fucking time and I’m not going anywhere so I hope yall will stick around for the wild ride. Fucking love you.

Thank you to our author, Wormdebut, and our nominator, @thefreakandthehair! See more of Wormdebut's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[aleielle-of-roshar]

Wip Whenever

Ayy thanks for the tag @sulphuricgrin! Currently working on a world map for my wof au since my app just added the ability to change canvas sizes and I wanted to test that (its max size rn lol)- buuut I cannot confirm nor deny if I’m almost done with the outline for my elder scrolls au fanfics 👀

Gonna resize the continents to fill the map more when I’m done, just wanted to get them slapped on there first before I do so lol (got like three left to do the lining of)

I really gotta stop making more mature stories / com in the universes of books I read when I was a kid and actually focus on my own universes ngl💀✌️

tagging @neptuniadoesstuff and @bookworm-driven-insane >:D I wanna see what y’all are working on hehe

[its-in-the-woods]

The Woman Who Couldn’t Die Part 6

master list

Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,

Pairing: The Ghoul/Cooper Howard x Original Character 

Alternative Universe where I make things up cause I can only research so much

Synopsis: There is something in the woods, and our brave travelers are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

MINOR GET OUT. Rating/Warning: This is based on fallout except typical: Drug use, blo0d/g0re, animal death, alien critters, angst, lots of hurt no comfort, Canon divergence, hints of SH/SA/NONCON, Slow Burn,

Note: that I will not be spoiling any of the reading. I will keep my tags relevant without spoiling what is happening in the story.

Enjoy the show kiddlets.

Night seems to come faster here, the tall imposing trees shrinking the daylight away. They had walked until Jade couldn’t see and almost fell again. The Ghoul had thankfully caught her before she had hit the ground, his lightning fast reflexes snatching her as she tripped over the uneven road. Carefully right her, and making sure he didn’t pull on the stitches Jade still had in her arm. 

“Careful there, ya got to tell me when yah can’t see,” The Ghoul said firmly. He had been weirdly quiet, usually there was a story or two they’d share between them. But today he had asked for silence, his head tipping this way and back listening to every small sound. Lucy had heard almost nothing, the silence was eerie. 

“I can’t see in the dark,” Jade said huffing, dropping her bag on the ground and stretching her back. She groans, the stitches in her back aching as she moves trying to pop bones back into place. The long walk always left her feeling stiff and tense, the added hush of the forest making her extra tense. 

“Exactly,” The Ghoul says, also dropping his saddle bag. “I can, so you gotta tell me when yah can’t see.” She wishes she could make out more than his shadowed outline, she was used to the dark, but this felt different. 

Jade flops herself down on the ground, digging around in her bag for water. “Guessing fire is out for the evening?” A fire here was a deathwish, she’d only be able to see just beyond its light, setting them up for an easy ambush.  

“Not sorry. Somethin’ is very off about this place,” The Ghoul states, she could hear him take a hit of the inhaler. Had he been taking it more often? She pushed the thought out of her mind, she needed food and maybe to try and sleep. The last thing she should be worrying about was if the Ghoul was going feral, they had a dozen plus vials on them. Right now making it to the next morning was more pressing. 

“I don’t like it,” Jade finally says, she didn’t, the whole place felt spooky. No noise. How was there no noise? “It’s too quiet, can hear you think.”

She could almost see the Ghoul’s eyes light up at her, “Don’t think you’d wanna know my thoughts now, Tiny.”

Jade huffs cracking open a can of food, she couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe she didn’t want to know, maybe she did. Jade knew somewhere down inside she wanted to know, to understand him more. Why? There wasn’t much of a reason besides connection. Something that was far too difficult to find in this husk of a world they lived in. Maybe she could pry something out of him tonight. She looks up at the stars, even though they weren’t enough to give light to this wretched place. “What if I did want to know?”

Silence for a moment, but then she hears him sit down, almost beside her. But always an arm's length away, why he couldn’t just sit beside her she didn’t know.  She remembers the heat of his hand wrapped around her body, how his hand had been inches from her face. Pushing that away she continues to eat the mystery meat in front of her. 

“I’ve been around for a long time. Too long if you ask anyone who knows me.” The Ghoul said out into the dark, his voice low enough that it didn’t echo. “Nothing good in between the holes I call ears.” 

Jade mulls that over, it was the most he had said all day. Hoping she could convince him to tell her more she asks, “How long?”

She could hear his boots slide on the dirt as he stretched out, “Long before you’re born, or your mother, or your mother’s mother.”

“You talkin' pre-bomb?” Jade pushed, she was walking a tight line here. He told stories, but never anything truely personal. Jade wanted more, she needed to understand what drove him to stay alive this long. 

“Depends on which bombs you are talking about.” He says she could tell that he had opened a can of something. At least he was eating, he hadn’t touched a thing all day besides the chems and a small amount of water. 

“I am talking about the bombs that end everything,” Jade states, she wasn’t terribly well versed in history, it wasn't like there was anyone teaching her. That said, she knew that there had been a single large event that had happened. That had flattened the entire country with nuclear bombs. This didn't cover the bombs that had been dropped between warring factions, or some such horseshit like that. 

“Yeah, a little older than those bombs,” He says it like a joke, like the fact he was over two hundred years old was nothing. How the hell had he stayed alive that long?

Jade finishes her can and drops it beside her with a clang. Every noise echoes around here, making her skin crawl like something was watching her. She rubs her hand nervously over the stitches that she could feel poking at her clothes. 

“Don’t think I’ve met anyone from before.” She adds, not entirely sure where to take the conversation. “I knew Ghouls could live for a long time. But I didn't think it was that long.���

The Ghoul huffs, dropping his own can beside them. “If you keep yourself fed, and watered pretty much immortal. Comes in handy I’uppose.”

“Have you thought about-” Jade stops herself, who was she to ask if he had thought about ending his life? She’d been here for a short time and the thought had crossed her mind more times than she could count on both hands. 

“Maybe one day,” The Ghoul hummed, she guessed he had laid down as his voice was lower to the ground. “For now, just gonna take it as it comes.”

***

The forest was eerily quiet, no buzzing insects, or scurry of birds, just the sound of her boots and the Ghoul’s spurs hitting the ground. Jade feels tight, her whole body coiling readying for something to jump out of the forest. If last night was bad today was somehow worse; she could feel that both of them were waiting on the edge of a knife for something to jump out.  There were a few dilapidated signs, a handful of empty tins, and other trash. But other than that no other signs of anyone. No fresh tracks, or small fire pits, it was as if no one had been here in years. The Ghoul was on alert, checking behind them regularly. The Ghoul being on edge only heightened her fear.

“Have you gone this way before?” Jade asks, talking helps ease the anxiety, even if her voice echoes around the place. 

“Not in a long time,” The Ghoul said, he stopped abruptly, head tilting as he listened. He held up one gloved hand to silence her.

Jade stops, trying to force herself to listen harder. The squeak of her leather holster and the rustle of the Ghoul’s jacket seem to reverberate around them.  As she stood with her head tipped the same way as his, a twig snaps. 

“Something is coming our way,” The Ghoul said, the shotgun he wore on his back now in his hands, he loaded it swiftly and started moving backward down the road. 

Jade grabbed her pistol checking rounds as she took up the same backward walk as the Ghoul did. She could now hear more limbs breaking off trees as they started to move back at a fast pace. Looking up at the tops of the trees she could see them moving; the trees parting in horrid cracks and snaps. 

“Fuck, fuck,” Jade stammers out starting to turn, pistol still in hand as she looks towards the Ghoul, an unreadable expression across his face. 

“RUN.” The Ghoul yells as he starts to move, turning the same as Jade. They both run in the opposite direction of the horrid noise. 

The beast crashes through the trees onto the roadway with enough force to topple trees onto the road. It was an unimaginably massive hulking thing, bear-like legs thick as tree stumps; each foot lined with dozens of claw-like talons, black matted fur that faded up into scale covered skin. The creature was nearly as tall as the trees, the head a mangled twist of flesh that looked like the burnt carcass of a deer. Its eyes flaming red, mouth open in terror inducing scream. The monster charged towards them as they ran, the haunting call shaking the ground beneath their feet. The screech was loud enough to momentarily deafen them. 

The Ghoul stops, sliding into a half kneeling position and firing a shot at its head. Jade took up the same crouched stance, steadying herself as she fired at the beast's underbelly. Black ichor oozed from its flesh but the beast didn’t slow down. Jade moves lower aiming for a leg, she watches as chunks of flesh go flying out of the thing. 

“Take out its legs” Jade calls, watching the Ghoul load in different ammo, before leveling his weapon back at the thing.

The creature came up on them fast and hard, the ground around them shaking. A loud pop erupts and one of the creature's front paws explodes into gore. The creature fumbles but continues forward on three legs. Barely slowed down by the missing appendage. 

“Fuck,” The Ghoul roared as he reloaded and went to aim, a chuck coming free from the blast. It wasn’t enough, the thing was going to be on top of them in moments. 

Any rational thought went out of Jade’s mind, her pack slipping off her back, they were going to die, and the beast was going to be on top of them in moments. Dropping her pistol, which had been nearly useless up to this point; she grabs the machete from her back and runs towards the thing. She could hear the Ghoul calling out her name as she ran straight at the beast. The thing's head coming down, mouth opening, decaying teeth, and spit drooling out.  Wild eyes burning against hers as she dove towards it. Jade could see right down the beast’s throat, as she crashes into its mouth, her makeshift sword straight ahead of her. The feeling of hot humid stink coming out as she turns to swing in an arch around the inside of the monster's throat. A wrecked scream shook her as she felt black blood splash around her. Her ears going deaf from the intense noise ringing around her. The space got smaller as she slashed and swung wildly, chunks of its flesh flying as she lodged herself in its throat. She could feel it trying to swallow, her machete lodged firmly in the roof of the creature's throat. Reaching for her waist Jade grabbed her hunting knife sticking it down into the soft tissue. The thing is trying to scream as she cuts and hacks, trying to remove herself from inside its maw. 

She felt another impact rattle the creature’s body, the beast tossing it’s head back and forth. Jade holding on for dear life and as she tries to cut and saw through whatever she could. Reaching up she grabs the machete slamming it in between her feet as she slides towards the monster’s guts. The soft flexible flesh below her opens up as she slides down the horrors esophagus. She dug her boots in as she felt it start to fall, her body tensing bracing for impact. Her world goes dark as she watches the ground come flying up as the creature collapses. 

The Ghoul felt fear wash over him as he saw Jade leap into the gaping maw of the thing. He calls out her name several times hoping it would somehow stop her. The creature stopping and shook its massive head back and forth trying to cough her up. He could see blood oozing as his companion struggles inside. He reloads the explosive round back into his shotgun. The beast pausing long enough for him to aim for the other front leg. The rounds punching through and shattering the beast's foot. It rose on its back to feet, front stumps trying to grab at the horror's throat. He could see the machete blade poke out and start to slide down opening up the beast’s throat. He reloads and aims for center mass,firing. The Ghoul hoping to the stars that he would miss where Jade was. A head sized hole went through the beast's chest, it sways back and forth before falling forward.

“Fuck,” The Ghoul shouts, running toward the beast, its fiery eyes dimmed, black ichor covering the ground, guts, and bones scattered in a circle of gore. 

He got to the beast trying to move it, which was a near Herculaneum feat. He managed to roll it enough too see where Jade had hacked underneath its giant jaw. The slit she had made that ran down the monster’s neck, gaped open. Following it down he used his blade to start opening it up more, going down to where Jade’s hands were gripping the machete. Two of her fingers on her left hand were gone, as he peels back the meat to reveal more of her arms.

“Jade, Jade,” Ghoul shouts, fingers slipping on all the black blood, he grabs at her hands and tries to pull. The right one felt wrong, looking into the hole it is clear that her arm is probably dislocated. Cussing some more, he cut and cut. Thankfully his knife was sharp. He found her head and her eyes rolling back as he tips her face up to him.

“You better not be fuckin’ dead,” He shouts, slapping her face trying to get her attention. “Come on girly, come on.”

He held her up and cut low enough he could grab under her left arm and pull. Hoping that he didn't tear her stitches as he yanked. Part of her popped out, her hips still stuck. Growling he rips at the flesh tearing it apart with his gloved hands and yanking her out. Her body flops on the ground covered in black goo. Scrambling over to her, he flips her over clearing her mouth and nose of any goop. The stuff was everywhere. He shook her, calling her name several more times, but she lay limp in his arms. Pulling one of his gloves off he searched for a pulse, his hands were too thick and gnarled from radiation to feel much. He lays her gently, taking his hat off he unzips her jacket and pulls her shirt up placing his ear on her chest. 

The soft steady beat of heart and lungs working was like a shot of chem. He leans back covering her skin gently, wincing at the number of fresh bruises blooming across her abdomen. Looking around he spots her bag, getting up he walks over and opens it up, grabbing a stimpak. He walks back and injects one into Jade’s neck. She doesn't move. 

He wasn’t sure the extent of the damage, she was missing two fingers which could be stitched closed and bandaged, her right shoulder was dislocated, another easily fixed thing. The bruising was worrisome, looking down he could see her feet weren’t sitting properly. Moving down he moved her pant legs up some, the coloring was purple at the top of her socks.

“Goddamnit,” The Ghoul hushes, he’d need to get her boots off. He untied them, opening them up some more, her feet were so swollen they didn’t want to come off. 

“You’re gonna hate me, but these got to come off,” Sighing, he cut the boots off. His hands might have lost a lot of feeling but it didn’t feel like her bones were broken. Carefully he grabbed her heel pulling it towards him and twisting. A satisfying pop echos, the Ghoul letting out a breath, before moving on to the next one. He rests her feet down on the ground, checking over the rest of her, he was shocked there wasn’t more damage. Next, he grabs her right arm feeling up to the shoulder and rotating it into place. The girl didn’t even move, he wonders if he should be grateful or worried. Leaning down he could still hear her breathing, looking over her face he couldn’t see any bruising but that didn’t mean there weren't issues. He grabbed his hat and slipped it back on, staring at her. 

As the Ghoul ponders what to do next with his companion, his eyes catch the black slim moving. Standing he watches as it starts to slither back towards the body. Looking around he could see bone had started to grow out of the stumps of the blown off paws. Turning he saw the slit at the thing's throat begin to mend. The black ooze moving on its own back to the mangled body.

“What the fuck,” Ghoul mutters as he watches the things start to piece it’s self together. It wasn’t instant but it wasn’t slow either. In a matter of hours, most of the gore would be gone and the creature repaired.

The Ghoul turning back to his unconscious companion, his mind running. Some part of him wanted to leave her there, take off, as she probably won’t make it anyway. Las thing he needed dead weight and all that. His eyes looking over his companion, she looked so different compared to the day he found her. Her skin wasn’t pale anymore, now a deep sandy color, the stitches on her arm poking out. 

Jade may have looked like a frightened young woman when he met her, but she was anything but. She was a survivor, a fighter, and had had his back on more than one occasion. The stupid girl had jumped down the throat of this beast without thinking.

“FUCK,” The Ghoul shouts, kicking at the dead carcass as he stomps over to the treeline. 

Snapping several smaller branches he walked back over to Jade, digging around he found a length of rope. He used it to make a makeshift sled. He wasn’t going to be able to carry her all the way out, but dragging her might give them enough to get away from whatever the fuck that was. He shed his duster laying it down on the makeshift sled, before moving his companion onto it, Placing the bags on either side of her bare feet to try and keep her steady. Grabbing the rope he started to move away from the dead beast. Looking over his shoulder he saw the blackness still seeping back into the dead body. He wished he had a bomb, so he could blow the thing up enough that it would take weeks to piece itself back together not hours.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

seven

*likes, reblogs, and comments are greatly appreciated

*we got a lot of hurt, and very little comfort, it's gonna be tense for a while friends.

@pixelatedprofilepic @hiddlebatchedloki @toogaytofunctiondangit

[moltenwrites]

Thanks @nczaversnick for the tag!

I got tagged for a character name origins tag, but I did that very recently, and the post also mentioned talking about the characters origins, which I’ll gladly yap about!

The Artist

Gotta be honest, it feels odd that Ive BARELY talked about the artist here considering how important they are to How Our World Ended. The Artist is a God who can create universes, and observes them

The artist is a literal outline of a person, with a white line covering their eyes. They exist within a black void, as a result of destroying their own universe. The origin for this character is odd, and many years old, but I’ll try to get a good timeline.

Initially, they were just a character for me to project negative thoughts onto. Then, the idea of them being a creator of universes came into my mind. They were first put into a story during a OLD assignment which I unfortunately do not have access to anymore. While it was bad, it solidified the character in my mind. And they always stayed in the back of my mind, untill I came up with How Our World Ended. And considering how important they are to the ending, and hell, the universe of Souls Collide, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them ( random note, but I feel like the watcher from What If was a big inspiration of the concept )

RES

Ugh, so this one is a littttle embarrassing. A lot of my older ideas have evolved a lot, and that includes the early stages where they were inspired by some…. Odd stuff ( you don’t wanna know how souls collide itself started )

Anyways, if I remember right, I always liked the idea of doing a more medieval fantasy story. Souls Collide takes place in current times, so that line of thought was always an interesting thought experiment. Anyways, in 2021 I was watching the game awards because I had nothing better to do. I was kinda zoning out, untill the live performance of the song enemy started playing. And as it played, the premise of How our World Ended, or at least a rough outline, hit me. And as time went on, more music inspired more about the story. Hells coming with me by Poor Man’s Poison gave me an idea for a second half of the story that was, admittedly, terrible. But the ending, that was cool, and it stayed. That song also gave me the rough outline of what I wanted Res to be. A revenge fueled fire soul was how he initially was gonna be. But as time went on, a lot changed. I changed him to be an ice soul, as the protagonist of souls collide is already a fire soul, and I didn’t want to overlap that. Then, Res became more fueled by grief. Now, Res is cold and calculated. He works as a vigilante of sorts, and is far more caring once he gets to know someone.

Oof- that was long, I’ll do a quick lighting round of origins that are WAY shorter.

Salazar

Two big inspos for this guy. Firstly, I always wanted to do something similar to the organization 13 from kingdom hearts. Salazar, and his past in the council of fate, was initially gonna fill that role. Over time, the council shrunk and that role more fell to the gods. Then, for his explicit personality, it was heavily inspired by moon waltz by cojum dip. Something about it just fit the guy, and me misinterpreting the wrestling mask of the album cover as a masquerade mask 100% shaped both his chilling personality and his design

Nelios

Okay I think this one is just funny. So, I didn’t plan this book well. At all. I kinda just went “ fuck it “ and let it happen. That’s why the first draft is VERY rough atm. Anyways, Nelios wasn’t originally in the story at all. I was just gonna name drop him, and maybe give him a scene or two, but when I wrote a full chapter of him, I loved him so much, he became VITAL to the story. His personality came from a mix of “ how can I make an arrogant asshole likable? “ and “ how can one make this guy a fun ass character to write “

Okay I rambled for WAYYY to long there, but I have a lot to say haha. Anyways, tag list time.

Tagging @aintgonnatakethis @ddgraywrites @jjoneswriting @revenantlore @noxxytocin @yourpenpaldee @illarian-rambling @theverumproject @autism-purgatory @gioiaalbanoart @the-letterbox-archives

@mk-writes-stuff

+ OPEN TAG

[op-sys-chaos]

Excerpts from Sunny and I’s DMs about The Drakes Spoiled Brat, in no particular order

Sunny = @batfambrainrotbeloved

Bryn = me

Sunny: “Yes pretty!! And Deadly-“

Sunny: “Quick opinion question-“

*About 30 messages of me talking about interior design follow*

Sunny: “Because I need the VIBE-“

Sunny: “I keep trying to find reference images of "giant ass creepy painting on a wall" BUT Pinterest keeps giving me live laugh love style shit”

Bryn: “JUSTICE FOR ALFRED’S PIS

*PUE

*PIE

😂 apparently I can’t spell today lmao”

Sunny: "The pie deserved better"

Sunny: “And I shall, after I finish this fucking pie chapter”

Bryn: “Okay but odds on on the Wayne’s actually looking out a window in the right direction in that massive ass house”

Sunny: “Plot convinence odds”

Bryn: “Fair, fair”

Sunny: “True- I underestimated Tims utter need to throw hands”

Sunny: “ALSO ALSO- another debate scne

sene

jesus okay 

s c e n e”

Sunny: “Okay ignore the fact its mlp- BUT this vibe basically

WAIT NO WRONG SONG

...Its still mlp”

Bryn: “Oh noooooooooo”

Sunny: “I can see the memes already <333”

Bryn: “[redacted] not doing his fuckin research: this is fine”

Sunny: “it just fucking DIED- thats not important”

Bryn: “[redacted]: I wish I could be happy 

The universe: you won’t be happy unless you’re dead bitch”

Sunny: “NOT THAT H E KNOWS THAT”

Sunny: “huh... so THATS what happened”

Bryn: “[redacted]: “I wish to be remembered as great” Tim: “yeah a great PAIN IN THE ASS-“”

Bryn: “I can and will contribute ideas”

Sunny: “IM COPY PASTA INTO THE OUTLINE DOC DONT WORRY”

Bryn: “D O  I T”

Bryn: “Some much needed humor before you break Tim again”

Sunny: “HUMOR TIME BABYYY”

Bryn: “DAMNIT IM MAKING MYSLEF CRY”

Sunny: “GOD IM MAKING MYSELF SAD”

Bryn: “TIM WOULD SO BE SPIRALING, THE POOR BOY 😭”

Sunny: “BECAUSE AGAIN- HES AN IDIOT”

Bryn: “YES YES YES ABSOLUTELY”

Sunny: “AHHHHHHH”

Bryn: “OH NO TRAGIC IDEA”

Sunny: “DO TELL???”

Bryn: “Oh noooooo I’m too good at angst ideas sometimes…”

Sunny: “No no you gotta share now”

Bryn: *shares an idea, idea redacted for your sanity*

Sunny: “FUCKO 

OH MY GOD

Shock factor is THERE”

Sunny: “If not that's totally fine- I'll just do some FBI flagged list worthy research”

Bryn: “I love that, I hope we can see the instant regret in the actual story :)”

Bonus: a comment from the Google doc for Chapter 11!

Bryn: “Jason, having found one of Tim's broken birds, running into the batcave with it in his hand: THE BIRDS WORK FOR THE BOURGEOISIE GUYS”

An unredacted version will be posted when we eventually get to the point in the story where the redacted stuff no longer spoils anything!

[erose-this-name]

Hey, I really like your whole universe and how you set up your lore, and kinda want some tips.

I want to finally work on a story I have been fleshing out in my head for over half a decade, but I don't know where to start, or what information is needed, or even which character to follow.

Do I start at the basics of the multiverse, a multi paragraph info dump that is basically integral to understanding the system, do I start with the character, the setting, the themes?

I can't even choose which plotline to do because I have such a backlog of cool story ideas that I basically am stuck in decision paralysis. Same exact problem with characters too. Turns out, having around a hundred characters, each mostly fleshed out and with unique personalities, causes problems when you gotta focus on one

The first step is to not be worried or intimidated. Anyone can write. It's not a task of innate talent or current experience, but of passion and willpower. If you don't have those then idk, advice givers usually just assume you do. But they're the main thing.

Writing is as easy as bleeding.

You start with world building, but you probably already have enough to get started. World building is easy, just write shit down when you think of it and keep doing that. When you can't think of something, just plagiarize Tolkien or Dune. Everyone does it.

Btw, the world building is the least important part. Never exposit on it unless it's relevant to the story, and try to do so with show don't tell. Readers are only interested in relatable characters going through relatable character development. Not even hyperfixating autistic people will read your multi paragraph lore dumps without those relatable character arcs to draw them into the world.

This is very unfortunate if you are autistic like me and care most about world building.

Where you start depends on your writing style.

If you do an episodic shonen/journey to the west style format it's a lot easier to just do all the stories, but that's a lot harder and time consuming and might not be as impactful. (I do that because shorter plotlines helps with ADD, but it has it's downsides).

You can just write individual short stories for them all and never really have any central plot. This is a lot more difficult than writing a long story, though.

If you do want a single main plot, you might have to accept most of the characters and plotlines won't get any attention.

KILL YOUR DARLINGS.

Just look at Arcane. There are 168 champions in League of Legends lore, all with varying degrees of having their own character arcs, plotlines, and fleshed out-ness. Only like 9 or 10 of them appeared in season 1 of Arcane, and I imagine season 2 isn't going to introduce nearly as many new ones in addition to that cast.

Would Arcane have been better if there were 168 deuteroganists? Hekatonhexekontoktoganists? Of course not!

Don't worry about getting all the OCS. Just pick the one or two or five you like the best. Those are your primary cast. Then picking the rest is easy because you only need the ones that would best support that story line. If they come up, you can give a few others passing mentions to give the world a feeling of being big a fleshed out, but most you can just forget as they will serve no purpose.

Cut out the fat.

Think about identifying characters that would make good narrative foils to the main cast, or could logically be involved in the main plotline. Then give some of those guys their own character arcs / b plots. Then you're done!

Well, you still need to actually write the story. Some people just start writing without really planning it out, which is valid and lots of famous authors do this. These authors are cowards.

What I do is start with a rough plot outline. Decide on the basic narrative arc, what happens at the beginning, the climax, and the end. The consequences and how/if this furthers any character arcs.

Make a checklist of all the events that have to happen between those points (don't waste time on complete sentences here, no one but you and maybe a coauthor will see this). Then think of all the other stuff that will happen between those to make sure its actually a logically possible chain of events (you will really regret it if it isn't).

Now delete it and start again because you realize it will have poor pacing or have irresolvable plot holes or just isn't very clever. Do this several times until you're happy.

Perfection is when there is nothing more that can be removed.

The whole process should only take an hour or two at maximum. (For me, one page of plot list roughly translates to 5-10 pages of short story, unless there's combat or dialogue. Then idk, it just takes longer.)

Oh, and don't forget to kill your darlings! Like, literally kill them. You're not really writing unless it's physically and emotionally painful. Painful for who? Yes.

Then you just keep fleshing that list out until it becomes your book's first draft. (You will need lots of complete sentences for this step) (it will also take quite a bit longer than an hour or two) (it's very satisfying to mark off each point on the list)

Now delete your first draft because it's terrible and painful to look at. Restart this entire process several times until you become good at writing. This will take several years, so don't put it off!

NO PAIN, NO GAIN!

So now you've finally written a story you can say your proud of? Great! The last step is figuring out how to publish it. SURPRISE! That should have been your first step.

You now realize it's virtually impossible for you to ever publish because publishing agencies hate you as a person, and also they only publish romance and mystery authors who are already famous so they don't have to spend money on marketing. Realize this is why new authors suck this past decade.

Congratulations! You are now depressed and aimless in life. Just like every great author! Use this pain to fuel yet another book!

This will be your best work yet, as it is genuine and made for no one but yourself. You will never find such happiness anywhere else. 👍

(btw, this post is an example of how important character arcs are to maintaining interest. It has a story of me slowly losing my mind for EDUTAINMENT PURPOSES. Do this when world building ❤️‍🩹)

[agent-troi]

I gotta know what Borrowed Time is. :DDDD

ok soooooooo this behemoth will never see the light of day bc it is simply too elaborate and complex for me to give the attention it deserves in the limited free time i have, and the potential audience for it is maybe like three people including myself, so it’s doomed to remain a wip forever but anyway this was my reaction to the star trek coda trilogy:

for some stupid reason the powers that be decided that, due to the recent revival of on-screen star trek and associated tie-in novels, the beta canon novelverse couldn’t continue to exist (i.e. pump out new novels in that timeline). simply concluding the storyline and writing no new novels would’ve been bad enough, but they also decided to rub salt in the wound by retroactively undoing the entire novelverse timeline, making it so that in canon none of those events ever even happened.

they created this whole spin-off universe, created new characters, let us get attached to them, and then pulled the rug out from under us by decided they just weren’t as important as the new shows (some of which i actually like, but that’s not the point). to my mind, there was absolutely no reason the tv and novel universes couldn’t coexist, or at least the novelverse characters could simply just ‘sail off into the sunset’ as it were, and just not write any new stories about them but let people imagine that they’re still out there having crazy space adventures.

anyway i was so pissed in the immediate aftermath of reading that that i started outlining this massive story that entails one of my most beloved minor characters from the novelverse (pun intended- she’s the daughter of my otp) getting transplanted from her dying universe to the prime timeline, and initially she doesn’t remember anything from her home timeline but eventually the memories start to come back, and she works on a way to bring her timeline back into existence.

i wrote a few ficlets that lead up to what this story would've been, but as i said this behemoth will probably never be finished lol

[the-fallen-blue]

Apropos of nothing in particular and also several annoying things that always seem to come back,

absolutely nothing ever needs to happen in a story.

This isn't even about Watsonian justifications for Doylist bullshit, like she's gotta be naked because she's solar-powered, or whatever. Or not entirely. That's a part of it. But it's a broader category. It's "maybe that woman just wasn't gay in that writer's mind, it would damage the integrity of the character to just ~change~ her for ~woke~" It's "maybe the black guy died because that was the natural end of his story" It's "it wouldn't make sense to have disability in this world because they have healing magic"

It's this idea that a story has some kind of intrinsic, inviolable integrity of its own, that it can make choices for itself outside the minds of the people writing it and those choices are worthy of respect and of more importance than the impact of that story on the very real people involved in creating or reading/watching/playing it.

It should be self-evident that this is not true in a collaborative medium. Maybe the integrity of the character means this is a childfree action hero but now your actor is pregnant. Maybe the natural conclusion of the arc was a huge party setpiece but there was a budget issue and a fire on the lot and now you can only afford a bottle episode. Maybe it wouldn't make sense for the warrior to survive his wounds, but the player might have no other tank in the party and so he has to be available for the final fight.

And so suddenly, magically, what was intended is easily compromised. The warrior gets unexpected help from an old ally, making the injury survivable. The characters never make it to the party and spend the whole episode trying to fix their car at a gas station. The hero somehow gets in-universe knocked-up! And the story is totally derailed, and everyone involved just deals with it and makes the new path as believable and honest as possible because that is the most basic level of competence required from a professional writer.

What is less evident but no less irrefutable is that this applies just as much to a true, one-creative auteur project. There was an outline but the hard drive got bricked. There was an essential character-building plot point but the author foolishly did enough research to realize it wouldn't work. The author has experienced a Lifechanging Perspective-Altering Event and decided they can no longer conscience redeeming the villain, even though it would be out of character for the hero not to try. And now they must work around it. The narrative must adapt to the new goal, the new resources, the new context in which it is created.

Shit happens. Stories change. If you are genuinely incapable of writing a story of just as much quality and honesty when you are presented with an unexpected "you can't do this" or "you must do that," if you genuinely cannot create a work of art that has value and power when you do not have absolute freedom, I am afraid the problem is not the limits, it is that you simply suck at writing.

In fact, the true argument being made with "maybe the story just ~had~ to go that way" is not that an author cannot work around limits; it is that the particular limit being objected to is not one that an author ever should be asked to work around. EG, the boobplate is out of character, but it has a financial reason, "sex sells," and that is acceptable. Making the deuteragonist bi even though the devs originally designed him as straight doesn't actually change anything about the story, but that has a woke reason, "letting queer gamers experience the same story as straight ones," and that is not acceptable. It is not genuinely a discussion of the requirements or integrity of the storytelling process; it is the exact same tired old conflict about whose benefit and whose harm should be centered, in storytelling as in everything else.

[buthowboutno]

buthowboutno's Unsolicited Writing Advice

Howdy fam!!

This is a post that i’ve been wanting to make for a while so!!! Finally fucking sat down and did it lmao

Considering we’re past the halfway point of ATWLP and over 125k words written for the universe, I thought I would share some writing advice and tidbits I’ve picked up along the way!! (especially for you baby writers out there) (we’re ignoring the fact that I only broke my five year writing hiatus like seven months ago)

ANYWAYS, ramble under the cut <3

--

Don’t force yourself to write linearly

If you’re dragging your feet along writing sections just to get to a certain scene in your head and losing motivation, just… write the scene you wanna write. This might be specific adhd oriented advice, but you gotta use your juices when you have them. 

I’ve recently posted a chapter that I wrote all the way back in November. Did I have to edit some parts in light of changes I made to the outline and the way my blorbos have developed? Yes, but that’s way easier than starting it from scratch and losing all of my ideas when the scene was first bouncing around my head.

Outline outline outline… but don’t be a slave to it

Sometimes all I can manage the energy for is a long series of bullet points outlining a chapter, but it makes it SO much easier to sit down and type everything out properly later.

I also find that having a main outline for my entire story helps me from falling into plotlines that I don't know how to get out of or losing motivation for a fic because I haven't figured out the end goal for my characters. It's easy to sit down and work on a chapter because, for the most part, I already know how it's going to end up.

Having said that, sometimes your characters are stinkasses and decide to completely break away from what you had planned, and that’s okay! Understanding how you can and cannot shove your blorbos around for the sake of plot is a part of learning how to be a better writer.

Don’t delete your writing!

Chances are if you hate a section, it’ll read a million times better after you set it down for a few hours. Us writers can be so incredibly critical of ourselves, but resist the urge to select all and backspace!!! If anything, leaving a section you hate allows you to come back and edit it into something way better instead of starting from scratch again.

If you have to delete a section that just doesn’t fit in the story anymore, still save it!! I have a bits and pieces doc that houses all my deleted scenes that have been revived in later chapters. You never know how deleted scenes might help you pad out future parts of your story.

If you’re a literature snob (like me) and want to just flat out improve your craft… you gotta do your homework

You will always become a better writer the more you write and for those just looking to get out some emotions or have fun, that is perfectly fine! Ignore me! You’re already doing fantastic, look at you go!

But if you’re the type of person to read a fic and be like… “wow, that was better quality than most published books. how do i get to that level??” this is for you

When you’re reading, regardless of what it is, make a mental (or physical!) note of the things you like and dislike.

 Ex: How does the author portray a certain emotion? How do they lay out the scene? What different aspects of characterization stick out to you? What’s the word choice like?

Never gonna bash on anyone who just wants to read for enjoyment, but when you start to exercise that muscle I /promise/ you that your writing will improve that much faster. (It really is annoying how the fucking rhetorical analysis skills they teach you in highschool help, but they do.)

Ages ago I went to this conference for young writers and in one of the seminars I went to, this pair of authors talked about this spreadsheet they set up to better lay out the aspects of writing they really loved or wanted to avoid in their genre. I think this is vv important when you’re planning out longer pieces of writing; you don’t want to get stuck in a trope you hate!

Watch critiques of books!

Booktube is super fucking great for this. I’m personally a video essay bitch, so I’ll sit and watch a three hour long video of someone dissecting a novel and giving a review. That shit will help you with everything from learning how to construct longer and cohesive plots to avoiding certain pitfalls that may turn an audience away from your work. 

Rachel Oates is one of my forever faves and Alizee is a youtuber that I’ve just recently stumbled upon but love all the same.

 I WILL SING THE PRAISES OF OVERLYSARCASTICPRODUCTIONS ALL DAY EVERY DAY.

They have really excellent videos that go into the different tropes and all the ways they can present in stories, whether it be good or bad. This helps you get familiar with the building blocks of a narrative and decide things like wanting to subvert a trope, build upon the popular ones, or even reject them all together. Fic is basically built on fandom-wide tropes, so I think it’s good to be familiar with them.

Just like artists, we gotta do our studies, too

Back when I was a infant writer (i.e. in eighth grade) me and my friends would find different writing prompts on pinterest and spend a few hours working on them before sharing what we wrote. Even if it's not for a larger work, it is /really/ good practice to describe scenery in a picture or come up with a character on the fly and explore how they interact in a situation.

It’s is the literary equivalent of drawing a hand instead of putting it in a pocket so you didn’t have to deal with it

Write messy! Write fast! Write garbage that you’re going to delete in five minutes! You’ll be surprised about the gems that come out of doing this. Literally some of my favourite lines have come out of a frenzied 10 minute keyboard mashing session.

Don’t be afraid of critique but know the difference between that and simply being hard on yourself.

 I think this is probably the biggest thing I’ve struggled with as I’ve gotten back into writing. Before I started posting, I had about five chapters saved up ‘cause I was agonising over making everything perfect. Do I see, six months later, things I know I could have done better? Yes, but! I wouldn’t have been able to grow or develop as an author if I didn’t take that first step of posting and moving on to other parts of the story.

There is a time and place for critiquing and editing your own work and seeing where you can improve, but you also gotta meet yourself where you’re at. We’re not going to be Shakespeare overnight. Getting better is a process, baby! Embrace the fact that if you’re embarrassed about your work years or even months down the line, that means you’re growing as a writer.

And remember stinkies, any creation is good creation. Don’t go comparing hits or kudos or likes and being down on yourself, the act of creation is an important part of the human experience!!! Even if the only thing you ever put out is a 100 word drabble about lightning mcqueen making love to bowser, i’ll be proud of you. 

Happy writing and get yourself some water <3<3

[trickster-shi]

It has taken (checks watch) a…year and a half, but I finally had a breakthrough on the next Home Across the Universe one shot and kinda feel like shouting it from the rooftops. Like, I’ve been fighting this one shot for FOREVER it feels like and it did not want to be pinned down and written.

But I now have a solid outline for the next four scenes. There is joy and some angst and some cuteness and some self discovery that Derek has been avoiding.

And Kate. She’s there and she has an evil plan and I cannot wait to get in there and let her set it up because it will make her eventual defeat so very sweet.

But I’m still at work so I have to wait until I can settle in at home to actually do any of this. I know where the story is going, though, plus I have a title and summary, so I’ve made it through the hardest parts. Now I just gotta finish writing it.

[fuckrealityfictionisbetter]

Here’s how my season 4 went

It was set a year or two after s3 (they still have powers because fuck that shit)

Luther’s still a stripper, he’s dedicated his every spare moment to looking for Sloan, got a massive child drawn looking investigation board about her right next to 5’s mess of cult board

Diego works as a chef because top notch cutting skills, he and Lila have a baby she looks after at home, they love eachother but they can hardly scrape by, she wants to take on a couple hit man jobs but they agree no killing, that they’d make a normal life for their kid so she wouldn’t grow up like them…

Alison got her s1 perfect life back, she’s trying to suppress everything that happened but it’s slowly leaking into her career, making her seem a deva and a mess (ur traumatised babe go to therapy)

Klaus went off to find him in this universe (assuming everyone else would do the same but he was the only one who thought of it) he finds his Irish self who’s also immortal (he moved to Vegas in his early 20’s has a kid and is definitely not called Nathan) it’s assumed Klaus and Irish klaus have been hanging out and working on trauma and their powers for the last year

5 has tried going under cover in every cult he finds, tried finding mysterious and investigating but honestly there’s not much going on, Ben keeps bullying him about it but he’s TRYING OK! You wouldn’t understand this is serious work! The fbi won’t have him because he’s a kid apparently!

Ben has been stuck living with Luther and 5 (every time he tries to leave Luther drags him back and 5 kept getting reported to child services when he tried living on his own) he keeps getting in bar fights but has slowly become more attached to his definitely not brothers

Viktor still has his bar and failed dates with everyone in town because lol

——

Rough outline

Irish klaus gets kidnapped by people who think he’s American klaus, leading to a very confused family and Ben telling him there’s no point trying to leave the fam he’s tried with no avail (leading to a very annoyed Ben when he is allowed to go back to his wife and kid)

Klaus has healed a lot, turns out running from himself all these years didn’t help and he needed to actually sit down and have a conversation with himself instead, he’s got dope powers and there’s gotta be a fight in a grave yard (he also gets a ghost bf enemies to lovers because I think them arguing and making out in public would be funny)

Turns out 5’s cult is the big mean guys and he is THRILLED, Ben will never hear the end of this, the cult wants the fam to end the world again because of weird cult reasons

Idk the middle

At the end the fbi is impressed with 5 and even after lying about being 19 they won’t have him till he’s older, Alison ‘convinces’ the agent to take on 5, Diego and Lila

Viktor opens a new bar right where everyone lives, Luther works behind the bar (badly) Diego decides to be a chef there instead of the fbi but Lila and 5 love their jobs, klaus is happy with his ghost bf and bumming on bens sofa, Ben decided to stay after a heartfelt leaving scene sometime in the show, Alison is trying writing, the big screen isn’t for her anymore but she has some interesting stories on other timelines and assassinations to tell, Luther still hasn’t found his love again, but because the fam were on the news British Luther shows up?! At the bar and they really hit it off!??

[ayaisokay]

Tgirl Moans about Labels

Despite the title, I'm going to be moaning about microlabels (and briefly, pansexuality); however, you should be aware that I DO NOT think less of people that use obscure neo pronouns or labels.

Why we use labels

Labels like "gay" and "straight" indicate the scope of your attraction. Homosexual & Homo romantic create a distinction that clarifies the nature of your attraction. They help adequately and simply communicate who we are while also allowing people of our likeness to realise there's others like them— the inclusive element.

How do microlabels get in the way

If you ask me, some microlabels border on hyper specific obscurity that either communicates information that isn't necessary (from the outside looking in), or the information that is supplementary and better falls under "your type" or personality traits.

As an example, I have a friend that was looking for a label that encompasses them, as a bi person that only liked feminine expressing (not indentifying) people. Why does that need a label? That is deadass just your type. You like girly girls and femboys.

If we make hyper-specific labels for every aspect of ourselves, we will struggle to fit in anywhere because our label becomes far more individualistic than inclusive— it gets isolating in a way.

Moreover, people change. Your hyper-specific label might be invalidated by a single event that alters the way you think and feel. Then, you're stuck trying to find or craft a whole new obscure label.

When you finally figure that out, you gotta hope and pray people discover it, recognise it, understand it, and use it.

Pansexual's take on pan

I used to identity as pansexual but decided it didn't feel quite right. Not because of me, but because of the identity itself. But why?

Pan does whatever the plot requires

I liken pansexuality to a poorly explained fictional power. The scope and nature is never outlined by the story, so to the reader, the power seems to work (and fails to work) whenever it is convenient for the plot.

Pansexuality isn't a grounded label that every member of the community views the same way— to a worse extent than terms like Gay or Lesbian (more on that later).

In high school, lgbt friends described pan as being "bi with extra steps." Others have claimed pan is just bi with a minor somantic difference. Some people say that pan is just being bi but also being inclusive for trans people. From my understanding, pansexuality was an attraction not based on sex/gender. Personally, I think that idea makes pan more of a microlabel than a sexuality.

With that last concept of pan, it doesn't actually communicate a sexuality (i.e, who and how you're attracted to someone (or not in the case of asexuals)). Instead, it communicates details about the sexuality. It's like if I asked you who your friend is, and you told me that they play Pokémon. It's nice to know that detail ABOUT them, but that doesn't tell me WHO they are.

Based on the aforementioned idea of pan. You could theoretically be sexually/romantically available for members of all sexes, or a singular sex. But, just saying "I'm pan" fails to communicate which is the case.

Gay and Lesbian

When I was growing up, Gay and Lesbian fell under "homosexual." An attraction to the same-sex. Personally, I prefer the idea that it denotes attraction to the same gender. But, that's the newer take.

As a trans girl, I don't think it's fair to tell an older lesbian she's transphobic for claiming her lesbian status as a reason not to date a trans woman— why? Because, to her knowledge, that's NOT what the label means.

In that kinda situation no one is right. The use of the labels isn't actually universal and that creates in-fighting and division.

If you ask me, the entire damn system needs to reworked.. and no I did not write this entire thing with nothing in mind.

Where is your system

As I said, I do have something in mind.

THEN SHOW ME

but, I'd like to see if this post gets me slandered or something crazy first 🥲

[appleboxdog]

I would like to show some process or writing my comic story thingy that I’ve been working on for almost four years now!

So my main story, not Out of Bounds, is called SELINA, that’s about it.. it’s about a multiversal being going on a rampage and destroying a bunch of worlds/universes. Now a group of fools gotta stop her, basically it.

I made a first version of a comic in early April 2021 (plus some paper outlines the year before). There were a lot of things wrong with this but I’m going to focus on one aspect, the main character.

The main character was a man named Edd, who had a deep, deep past with the villain Selina. He was basically her best friend in every reality and world, almost like her sidekick. My first comic version already had a problem right from the beginning. I started it with “I don’t know how long it’s been, possibly two or three years… the day all the worlds were doomed..”

BOOOORING!!

Where’s the interest in that!!! Where’s the flavor!!! World info dumps at the beginning of a story? Worst move you can make!! And I did it.

See, the problem is that Edd has SO MUCH background with Selina and literally just in general that it’s hard for someone to connect! He goes on all like “we moved on… here’s a reference no one is gonna get….. I’m gonna kill her!”

So after 3 long boring chapters of a poor fast paced comic, I made half of a chapter with some improvement. This time Edd had no inner dialogue in the beginning and there was a HOOK!!

No story infodump, plus points for Apple. Anyways I ran into other problems with this version too. Although I fixed plot holes with the villain, there was no motive still. Edd still knew too much and the other characters kept talking about him which was more difficult, he’s such a fleshed out character with so much lore, how is it possible for someone to connect with that with zero knowledge? This is a multiverse story, Edd has lived thousands of lives, there would be too much for even flashbacks to show as a main character.

Now as a side character or second main character? I could work with that. Instead of the reader struggling to understand what this dude was on and what his deal was, he was just the mysterious character who he lore. It’s like if you started a show with the antagonists point of view. If my hero academia started with Todoroki or whatever his name is. Instead it’s Izuku, pretty much a blank slate!! Name one thing cool about him before he got his power. Nothing! That’s the point!!

For me, I needed a main character who was aware of Selina but didn’t have a deep past with her, someone who would be asking questions the reader might have, someone who is easy to see yourself as while still having a complex character backstory and design!

Behold.

Venus is a space traveler who travels the galaxy with her best friend Apollo in a space plane during a space zombie apocalypse. She’s immune and is going around the universe AND the multiverse/realities to help heal people with a cure made from her blood. She barely knows about Selina, she has questions, and the reader will still have questions about her!!!

When I talk about needing a “blank slate main character” I don’t mean just an insert, or that your main character should ALWAYS have questions. This is all only how I do it, and maybe it will change! I won’t know, but currently it’s easier for me to figure out a story with a character who has no clue what’s happening!

This story is a BIG work in progress, characters are still being made, storyline, plot, backgrounds, all of it. But I will be posting here about it, including Out of Bounds stuff!! If you see an OC of mine and are confused on which story they’re in, look for tags! You may ask anything (I’ll try to not spoil too much). I hope to see you there once I’ve made progress on this creation.

[radiaurapple]

for the ask writer game:

numbers 3, 11, 14, 43, and 56 :)))))

omg buckle up this is gonna be long (also going to answer thru the lens of Lucid Dreams, sorry Mr. Shingles lol)

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter / fic

I always start with an outline! For a long-form work like Lucid Dreams the outlining process is a little like the underpainting in an oil painting — the purpose is to set the tone and arrange the major shapes in the composition to ensure that it’ll come together into something pleasing. The outline starts with broad strokes and becomes more detailed with each pass. With Lucid Dreams I began with the idea of opening on Alastor meeting a human Lucifer in New Orleans, only for the reader to later realize that the story is not an AU — that both of them are still in the hotel. The next major plot tentpoles were Hollis, Lucifer’s ability, their deal, and Alastor’s trip to Heaven.

When I begin each chapter, I always have a pretty clear idea of what I need to accomplish and how, so it’s just a matter of filling in details. I have a playlist for the fic I always listen to while I’m writing — music really helps me to hold the tone in my head while I’m working. 

Ideally I’d write the entire story before posting anything so I can set up and follow through on story beats, but that isn’t as fun, lol. For Lucid Dreams I write chapters at least 2 weeks in advance, which accomplishes a couple of things:

it makes it possible for me to maintain a consistent update schedule when I’m busy (I even updated Lucid Dreams during my cross-country move!)

it allows me move beats around and set up references within that window so the story feels cohesive

it lets each chapter marinate in my head for a little while before posting, which is super helpful for revision

This amount of lead time has worked pretty well for Lucid Dreams — there’s only a couple of things I would change if I could:

I realized after Ch. 10 that I wish I had made Lucifer’s human eyes green instead of blue (like Eden 🥺)

There’s a scene I really want to add to Ch. 2. I still might sneak it in there if I have time lol!!!

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

how to choose 😭

All time / any fandom:

Running On Air by eleventy7 | Harry Potter (trans women are women) - I am not exaggerating when I say this fic is a perfect execution of the form. It is shockingly good. It easily stands alongside the best novels I’ve ever read. Lucid Dreams is directly inspired by this fic and there’s a little reference to it in Ch. 7. 

Astra Inclinant by eleventy7 | Harry Potter (trans women are women) 

saltwater said by gimmeshellder | Steven Universe

Radioapple:

Strange Appetites by Gotllphi

my kingdom come undone by literalmetaphor

the Wicked Game series by Trashdemonx — I’ve gotta mention this one because this author honestly might be the best smut writer I have encountered in more than a decade of reading fanfiction — I will absolutely be returning to their work to study it whenever I find myself writing a scene with any kind of physical intimacy.

14. How do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

I am honestly just a very emotional person, lol! I am formerly religious and I often leverage that background for Lucid Dreams, which is certainly cathartic — but in general I don’t draw as much on personal experience for Lucid Dreams as I do for my original work. I have never been to New Orleans, and I am not the Devil. That said, there are elements of the characters’ internal worlds that I see reflected in myself which helps me to write them!

43. Do you take sadistic joy in whumping your characters, or are you more the “If you hurt them I would kill everyone and then myself” kind of person?

When I was younger I always pulled my punches with characters — I’m a very empathetic person and I struggled to bring characters (and myself, and readers) down into dark places. But my best artistic work has always arisen from a kind of feral impulse to capture and reflect pain — it is actually just like the description of Alastor’s second kill in chapter 9. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to understand life as a cycle of making and unmaking, losing and gaining — pain lays the foundation for healing, and that cycle is an essential aspect of the human experience. So I’m no longer afraid of taking my characters all the way down. It certainly isn’t sadistic for me, but it is cathartic, and it makes my work a far better reflection of life. 

56. What’s something about your writing you pride yourself on? 

omg why is this so hard 💀💀

I am a storyteller professionally — I started writing Lucid Dreams after a work-related trauma left me at the lowest I have ever been artistically. This story (and all the nice comments I’ve received about it 🥺) has helped me recover, which is why the prose in Ch. 10 is so much stronger than the prose in Ch. 1. But I’m still not incredibly happy with it, which probably speaks to my own perfectionism more than anything lol. 

So what do I feel Lucid Dreams does well? In the show, we really only see Lucifer and Alastor’s characters at a surface level, and I feel Lucid Dreams is successful at giving them both a complex, realistic, and relatable inner world. I’m also honestly shocked by how tightly constructed and elegant the plot came out — I’ve gotten way more skilled at constructing long-form plots in the past few years and I think that really comes through here.

thanks so much for sending this ask, I had a lot of fun answering!!! ❤️

[authorkrysejay]

Indie Author Update #32

Act two is completed! Finally!!! I gave myself a three day break from writing as a small reward and outlined the main scenes for act 3. I'm a bit worried about the word count, and nervous for the trauma Moira has to endure for the sake of the story but I've gotta get through it with her.

I began writing act three yesterday, with a solid start at 435 words. Its hard to get into the mind set while keeping a distance. It was easier when I had already done the work for act 2 and was able to do minor edits on chapters already completed. Every time I've reached this point in my other drafts, I couldn't continue. But I no longer have the option of going back to book 1 or 2 for revisions.

Also the massive heat wave is not helping my already weakened motivation. Its going up to 40C or over 100F today, which is going to be the worst of it. My small vegetable and herb garden is not happy with the high temperatures. My oregano and basil are already growing flowers, which apparently plants do earlier in the season due to stress.

I also haven't been very active on instagram or tumblr cause I've been focusing on writing and my brain is not co-operating on creating anything outside of book 3. Relying solely on myself for everything is both a blessing and a pain in the butt.

This coming week, I need to make more material for socials and continue writing act three. I need to get that finished by the end of August before I begin university. After that begins, I don't know how much time I'll have to devote to writing.