#it's a little thing but I don't think I've ever actually finished an editing project like this lolll I usually abandon them halfway through

[footnoteinhistory]

"You've certainly come a long way, Mr. Fuddy-Duddy." "Oh, darling, who knows how much longer we'll all be together? A road trip could be fun." JOHN LARROQUETTE as Carl Sack BOSTON LEGAL 5.13 "Last Call"

[metfell]

since thes and holly have made their posts i'll make my own as well i think! i wanted to give it a bit to just let those blogs have the spotlight lol.

so..... yeah. i'm retiring @tmmyrp and @latenightmining!

i had SO much fun writing for those blogs, and its kind of crazy just how many years i spent on them- tmmyrp especially. i'm actually incredibly happy with where they're being left; i feel like they're essentially finished.

of course there's things i wish i could have done differently on both of those blogs. in particular, i don't think i understood c!crime enough to have done them justice, and i think i didn't make ranboo confrontational enough. but other than that, i'm still proud of the work i did.

especially with latenightmining. getting to weave my own personal headcanons for their backstory of being half dreamon, including a connection to cdream, explaining the origins of the enderwalk, resolving the lack of communication between cbee, it was all so satisfying because at the end of it all i got to connect it as accurately as possible into canon. i'm SO proud of latenightmining. so incredibly proud.

i made so many amazing friends and mutuals, and seeing all of the incredible fan content surrounding our little roleplay group was one of the things to keep me going on those blogs for so long. its amazing to think that people made art and writing and edits all for something i took part in. so much fanart, so much fan engagement, its honestly incredible. i love all of the work you guys have done, and i always will.

of course, i want to thank my system for taking so much of their time to write for these blogs. @silktouchhands and @theprimebell were the masterminds behind them, and @nuclearblast and @angelpray understudied perfectly whenever they weren't at the front and a thread needed to get done. so give them a round of applause for sure, it couldn't have gotten done without their help.

but most of all i want to thank @heartofaspen, literally the best roleplay partner in the world. beau kept us on track, and was so so so easy to get into a writing flow with. i don't think either tmmyrp or lnm would be where they are without @tubbolul. literally one of the best ctubbo writers in the whole world, beau nailed his character every time.

i don't want people to forget these blogs ever existed, i'm not deleting them or anything, just not writing on them anymore! go through the archive, read old threads, tell me your favorite moments, anything! i still care so deeply about those blogs, but i have a life i need to get back to, and my own personal projects i need to work on.

We had some laughs! It was fun. Y'know. All good things must come to an end eventually.

also i've always hated gertrude and i'm glad he died badly-

[crimeronan]

hey what is wwaitsoatl?

oh! it's what we are is the sum of a thousand lies, my most popular toh fic by FAR and the thing most toh people here started following me for. back before i got sucked down the princess luz hyperfixation rabbit hole. it's a fic that takes more work to write than any of my others because it has an incredibly involved drafting & editing process. bc i am a perfectionist.

the premise is a canon divergent timeline wherein belos suspects that hunter lied to him at the end of hunting palismen. and completely wrecks hunter's shit forever. and infects him with curse goop in the process. and darius (who, Very Importantly, does not yet have a friendly rapport with hunter) trips over the kid's half-dead body.

and freaks.

and kidnaps hunter n takes him to the owl house. bc that's the one surefire place of refuge on the isles.

there are a bunch of emotional threads, hence why it's novel-length and not even finished yet despite being about just four characters chilling in a house together.

mainly it's about:

hunter unraveling his cognitive dissonance and cult brainwashing in an AU where he doesn't have all of hollow mind's answers; his feelings are Incredibly complicated and messy & he gets incredibly mean and snarly about it

darius grappling with the fact that his own grief and resentment blinded him to a kid who Very Much Needed Him, darius dealing with the fact that actually he never DID grieve his mentor or his mentor's dead family

darius and hunter developing a rapport in a timeline where hunter very much has Not broken out of all the cop shit that darius disdains So Much. so darius is so fucking exasperated and tired all the time

eda trying desperately to help hunter learn to live with a curse / chronic pain / chronic illness, while having very little faith in herself to begin with

luz feeling Horrifically guilty about hunter's curse and injuries, bc she thinks she should have clocked the abuse and brought him home with her or otherwise stopped it

hunter developing an almost immediate and pathological emotional attachment to luz because of her kindness, which complicates all of his complicated feelings WAAAAAY MORE

eda, darius, AND luz all desperately trying to get hunter to admit that he's been abused and that what happened wasn't his fault. you would not believe how fucking long it takes.

i'm actually really, really, Really proud of it -- it's rare for one of a writer's best works to be their most popular, but this genuinely is one of mine. if not my best work, period. there's a lot of nuance and messiness and emotional complexity and grief and arguing that i'm SO happy with.

also, despite the subject matter, it's often extremely lighthearted. some of the funniest dialogue i've ever written is strewn throughout all these serious emotional threads.

i'd apologize for how long this response is but this story is a heart project and has 67,000 published words on ao3 so far. (the chapter i'm writing rn will likely be another ~8,000 words, then there are a couple more chapters to come.) so there's a lot to say!!

it's my most popular ao3 fic for any fandom, ever, in the 12 years i've been on the site. the response has been WILD. if you sort by kudos, it's the 31st most favorited owl house fic Of All Time, the 7th most popular fic involving darius, and the 5TH most popular hunter & luz relationship fic. again, of all time. which is. insane.

people have been very kind and patient with me having been too sick to work on it for a while. there was a seven-month break between chapters 8 and 9, and if i finish chapter ten soon then there'll have been a nine-month break between chapters 9 and 10. so i don't know how many people are actually going to come back to read it, a lot of ppl have moved on from the fandom and such. but i'm extremely extremely extremely grateful to everyone who's given it a look!

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Beta Reading, Workshopping, and Peer Editing for Indie Writers: a Guide

Beta reading is a term you might hear tossed out as a vague buzzword, kind of like how people talk about "character development" and "worldbuilding"; I've made a bunch of posts to demystify words in that latter category, but beta reading is a different type of term. Where those latter words and their ilk are terms of craft, things we can discuss in theory ("this is how I think characters are developed best"), beta reading is about a novel after its first draft and first wave-ish of edits. Pretty much everything before and after the production of a novel or story is purely up to what works best for the writer, so this post will introduce beta reading if it's new to you, and I'll give you my process if you want to tinker with it!

Beta reading is when interested readers work through your polished manuscript and make workshop comments so you can make an extra wave of edits. Publishing houses usually have two waves of this type of reading--alpha reading (AR) and beta reading (BR). If you can find enough people to alpha read for you (and you want alpha readers), go for it! But if you're confident in your grammar, your ability to craft a scene and characters, and the other formalities of creative writing, alpha reading isn't a requirement (as an indie. If you ever query your work to a house, it'll probably go through alpha reading).

Alpha reading is to catch grammar and syntax slips, mischaracterizations, character development that doesn't add up, excesses of adverbs and adjectives, and other craft faux-pas that the average reader wouldn't catch. Your alpha readers should pretty exclusively be other writers.

Beta reading is to gauge what your audience is thinking or feeling while they read your work. If your beta readers want to make alpha reading comments ("I don't feel like [character] would do that here"), that's A-okay, especially if you didn't have alpha readers, but that shouldn't be your chief concern with your betas. These are your audience surrogates! The job of beta readers is to tell you what they think or feel: "I like this," "I don't like this"; "This paragraph hit me hard"; "This word is confusing"; etc. If they add more words to their comments, that's A-okay ("I like this because these words go well together" or "This word is confusing--does it mean X or Y?") but not necessary! If your beta readers are your audience and not people who really get how writing works, then you should be taking any reasonings in their comments as loose, loose suggestions. Maybe those words that go well together to one reader feel, as you look at them a second time, cliche. Or perhaps the confusing nature of a word or phrase was by design. In any case, try to see your beta readers as a "live audience reaction" and not a "live reactionary critique."

One aside about alpha/beta reading: "this is bad" and "this is good" comments are toxic and should be avoided at all costs. Tell your readers to avoid these before they start writing. No good can come from these. Even "I don't like this" and "I like this" are worlds better, though still not great. But absolutely warn your readers against using objective blanket statements like "good/bad" as they read.

Now that we've laid the foundations, I'll go into my own process so hopefully everything above makes more sense.

Before I give my manuscript to beta readers, I go through 2-3 waves of revision on my own. After I finish my first draft, I wait about a month to let the dust settle, to gain at least a little emotional distance from the project so I can look at it a little more objectively. Then, I read it through, revising for content: cut this scene, add a scene here, chop paragraphs and sentences, add paragraphs and sentences, move this chapter here, make sure this character actually functions as he should in the narrative, etc. These are my macro edits.

Then I let it sit a week or two and go into line editing: punctuation and syntax, word choice, tweaking figurative language, etc. Close pruning of your work. Filing your nails after you've clipped them.

The third read-through is at a normal reading pace, as if you were a reader, to catch anything that may have slipped past during your close edits and revisions. This third read-through is likely the first time you've read your manuscript as it should be read--a book! This step, then, is a victory lap, but it's also one last troubleshoot. You might not find the errors in a computer program until you run the program. So too it is with writing.

This is a lot of work! You might want to relegate these tasks to your readers, but DO NOT!!! If you're still heavily revising and editing your work, don't let your readers to the table. This is your work and your story, and outside influence will stray it from what you want. Own this. Buckle down. Read.

Once you've got your polished draft, it's time to contact your readers! I would recommend 4-6 readers total unless you think you can handle more cooks in your kitchen at a time (I cannot). I typically just ask some of my friends to beta for me. Here's an example text:

"Hey all! I finished that book about church camp a while ago and was wondering if you'd beta read for me! Basically, I'd just need you to read through the book and make comments in the sidebar whenever you like something, don't understand something, are excited or intrigued by something, or other general impressions. You can comment however often or little you feel comfortable with--some people make one comment a chapter, others make multiple comments a page--anything works great. Really all you shouldn't comment are blanket statements of "this is bad" or "this is good," but feel free even to say stuff like "I like this" or "I don't like this." Just avoid objective language when possible.

I don't have any money for this, so sorry in advance, and if possible, I'd love for all of my beta reading to be done by the end of summer.

Let me know if you're down or not! :)"

I really have had readers comment that much and that little on my manuscripts. This is normal. If your readers are supposed to comment whenever something in their attention triggers, different readers' attentions will trigger differently.

It's also a wise idea to form your beta reading group (again, especially if you aren't doing a wave of alpha reading) as a mix of people from different backgrounds and writing experience. My church camp novel group is below:

Person A who went to church camp with me, is into poetry

Person B is into fanfiction, little church experience, mindful of social issues

Person C has little church or writing experience, mindful of social issues

Person D is very into writing, pretty into church

Person E is very into social issues and church, not a writer

I would advise to find a similar balance of people who are into your subject matter and those who aren't.

It's also helpful to give them a timeframe to read by, and make this longer than they need. I gave people ~two months for my ~60k-word novel.

Also, as a little incentive for your readers, plan something for when everyone's done! A post-beta party! Something like this will also encourage you through the process :)

Once you have your betas' comments, it's time for one last wave of revisions. Compile these comments however you like, and start tweaking. I like to have each beta's document open so I can cross-reference while I work through my own doc. And remember: these are audience comments, not writer comments (unless you explicitly brought writers on). If someone says something confuses them, that might just be their cross to bear. If none of your other betas were confused by it, or if one of your betas compliments the same section, it may be worth ignoring that first comment. Try to rule with the majority when you can, and take everything with a grain of salt. "I don't like this" doesn't mean it needs to be changed. It means you should figure out why that reader doesn't like it.

If you have any questions, my asks are open! Again, this is a pretty open concept where anything works as long as it works for you, so don't feel pressured to "get it right." But if you have any questions or suggestions, I'm all ears :)

Hope this helps!

[jabmanjoshua]

The Neverhood Movie as a Graphic Novel?

Hi there, I wanted to make a special announcement. (It's my first ever announcement)

If you're a fan of The Neverhood you're probably aware that there was a theatrical animated movie

in the works back around 2007, long story short, it never came to be.

However, in recent years, a PDF of the canceled film's outline that Doug TenNapel apparently wrote

was posted to the internet for all to see. And while some people have said that the story presented

in that twelve page document isn't great, I believe that it could've been a GREAT story!

...With a little tweaking.

That's why I'm excited to announce that I'm working on a fan-comic based on that outline!

The Neverhood Movie Graphic Novel.

This comic will adapt the 12 page outline and expand the story to about 190 pages!

(The page count may be higher in the final version depending on how many pages I can make under DeviantArt's 200MB file size limit for zipped files)

If you have read the PDF (or watched Teadraws videos on the topic) and didn't like the story

Don't worry! some changes will be made to make the story a much more enjoyable experience.

(Willie won't be picking his nose, leave that to Pikk from Nnewts)

Other changes that will be made include;

• The Hall of Records lore WON'T be retconed. (some details may be differ)

• Klogg will be RED instead of GREEN. (A green Klogg edition may become available if there's enough demand for it).

• The Moosts will look less like mindless Mickey Mouse Club members and more like big mice.

• Shella (not Sheila) will be one of the main characters as Klaymen's big sister.

And more!

Q&A

Q: Have you read Doug TenNapel's graphic novels?

A: Yes, I've read almost every graphic novel he's made. I've read;

They Called Him Evil (It's a one-shot, but Doug wrote it, so I'm counting it)

Gear (20th anniversary edition), Creature Tech (2018 edition), Earthboy Jacobus, Iron West,

Flink, Monster Zoo, Power Up, Ratfist,

Copyright; Image comics.

Tommysaurus Rex (original and 2012 version),

Copyright; Image comics and Scholastic. (Graphix)

Return to the Neverhood (This one was actually written by Terry Scott Taylor, but Doug did the art, and he created the Neverhood so...)

Copyright; Stunt Grafx/Stunt Records.

Ghostopolis, Bad Island, Cardboard, and all 3 Nnewts books. (Hence the Pikk reference)

Copyright; Scholastic. (Graphix)

Q: How will you release the comic?

A: I plan on submitting it to DeviantArt as a zipped .cbz file.

Q: When will the comic be done?

A: I plan on getting it done in 2026 (which, if I'm not mistaken, will mark the original game's 30th anniversary).

Q: Is Doug TenNapel or anyone else related to his graphic novels involved in the making of this comic?

A: No, this is a fan project made entirely by me aside from it being an adaptation of text by Doug TenNapel.

Q: Why are you making this comic?

A: Well, as I said earlier, I think this story Doug tried to tell with his outline could've been great with a little tweaking. And after seeing several pieces of fan art of the movie versions of the Neverhood characters, I think there are at least some people who would like to see what could've been. This is my way of giving them the chance to see it.

Q: How much is currently done?

A: As of writing this I just recently finished the rough draft of the script, I'm taking a break from the writing side of things to work on the character designs and concept art for the locations in the story. (The Neverhood, the Junglehood, Klaymen's house, Hoborg's castle ect.) Next month, I plan to edit the script and then properly format it for panels and page count.

(I also took the time to read the Doug TenNapel books I hadn't read yet.)

Q: Will you post updates on your progress?

A: Yes I will! It won't be regular updates but I will let you know when I;

• Finish editing the script.

• Get the script properly formatted.

• When I finish thumbnailing all the pages.

• When I finish sketching all the pages.

• When I finish flatting all the pages.

• When I finish coloring and rendering all the pages.

That's all I have to say for now, until next time I hope you're as excited for this fan project as I am.

[moonshine-nightlight]

2024 Writing - Plans

similar to last year, i wanted to post a little look forward at my plans for writing this year are. the necessary disclaimer: this is 100% high level, optimistic, ideal situation and subject to change but i still like thinking about it and posting for anyone who's interested. see this post for last years!

so, i like separating things out it mini goals/sections so see below:

Nothing's Wrong with Dale: with DSM self-published under my belt, I'd like to focus on the NWWD publishing journey next! The main obstacles/costs are time and money. Hiring an editor and a cover artist are the pricey-est part of the process but my own edit (first to convert everything from 2nd POV to 3rd POV and then another high-level edit/revise once i've got it in the right POV) will take the most time and needs to be done before i hand it over to an editor. Then after the editor takes their time (and NWWD is much longer than DSM), and finally i need to process all of their edits as well. And i need to do all of this while i do my day job lol.

i've already converted the first 11 chapters to 3rd POV (i hav some IRL friends/betas who only read that version, so if u feel like the tumblr version took a lot of time lol). the timing of being able to publish this year will all end up depending on how quickly i can do all that and kick off the part of the process that depends on outside parties. Even if i manage to self-publish in this year, i don't expect it to come out until lik December and even that's ideal, super best case scenario.

Long Stories: I want to outline both A Perfectly Ordinary Research Position and Shadow Diplomacy and then pick one to be the new long story on here. I do what i call a chapter outline and a scene outline, which is confusing to not!me because the scene = a chapter on here. i should probably rename that process lol. (NWWD was 11 'chapters' and 35 'scenes' for reference).

once i pick a project, i just hope to post as many chapters as i can. Since this will be new, long, and likely just building steam, i actually think it'll be my lower priority after the Short Stories and NWWD publishing, but we'll see. i'd like to start putting that up in June, according to my tentative 2024 schedule.

Short Stories: Since i didn't get as many of these done in 2023 and they've been haunting my brain longer, i want to for sure get some of these shorter stories done. learning from last years overestimation lol, i plan to post 3 short stories: Courtship Confusion, Feral, and finish Free Piano: Haunted, in that order. i'm excited about all these stories and will let me cover 3 different types of pairings (although technically all are Reader) which is fun. All have been outlined and have parts and pieces written. I wish Feral and FPH could both happen in the fall but the timing just doesnt work out so summers gonna b a little spooky lol.

The schedule i worked out makes it so all this will be possible, but also basically has no breaks in sunday postings after my haitus which is beyond optimistic but i lik to start overly confident lol

Hiatus: this is also your reminder that my work has a specific Busy Season which honestly started already (lucky me) and i will b beyond busy Jan-March at a minimum. i hav more projects than ever with my promotion, a lot to learn, and a lot to juggle so minimum 6 day work weeks will be the name of the game - but hopefully all goes well and i'll get a nice bonus i can feed directly to my editors lol

anyway, that's where i'm at right now and I'm looking forward to all the exciting writing and publishing to come in 2024!

Feel free to send in any asks about upcoming/current stories!

Thanks again for all your support in 2023 and Happy New Year!

[ghostoffuturespast]

2024 Wrap Up

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, VP, mods, etc) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2024. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Turning in my homework late, but thanks for thinking of me @streetkid-named-desire! Not gonna tag anyone since we're in the new year, the new year smell's already worn off, and you tagged most of the other people I know lol. Feel free to do this and tag me though if you want!

These aren't all fandom related:

Friday Field Notes

Had a lot of adventures this year. I don't exactly remember when I started this series, but I think I had my anniversary at some point lol. I actually didn't spend as much time in the field this past year as I did the year before. One of my coworkers being on maternity leave plus turnover with part-time staff, definitely made for a lot of scheduling challenges. I got a lot more acquainted on the technical side with plants, did a lot of event planning, and got to take my fancy camera for a couple spins. Hoping to take more photos this year.

Native Plant Gardening

What started out as a project for work has turned into a full on obsession. This isn't just a hobby for me, it is a calling and I am on a goddamn mission. I got the pilot installation for half of a garden at work and the pocket prairie in my front yard along with supplemental plantings in two other gardens at work. And I've already got so many plans for this upcoming year. Probably too many. I just love the puzzle aspect of native plant gardening though and I've learned so much from the little victories and the many, many mistakes I've made. Looking forward to seeing what blooms this season.

Doodling

I don't think I made any total masterpieces, but I've definitely drawn more and done more visual art projects this past year than I have in a good long while. My art ambitions have largely vanished for the most part and I'm honestly okay with that. I had a lot of fun getting back into the groove of things and just doodling for the fun of it. It's been nice scribbling and splashing ink around again.

From The Top

After a year and a half, this vp adventure is over... For anyone that has been following along with my VP, I officially wrapped up my photo story playthrough in the beginning of December. (Right before the 2.2 update, so I guess I have an excuse to return sooner than i thought lol) I'm still currently going through the back log, and most of the photos I'm posting now are from 2-3 months ago, but it's almost time to, finally, meet Hanako at Embers.

I initially got into vp for landscape photos and for the longest time didn't think I had much else to contribute being a vanilla console player. I didn't think anyone would care to see Grandpa and console doesn't stack up to modded pc vp. Probably won't ever. But you can't tell me that I haven't done some crazy fucking shit while pushing the boundaries of what people thought possible on console.

So It Goes

(checking the calendar)

Yep, I did finish a 489k word CP2077 VxRiver Ward tinfoil hat theory fan fic back in April 2024 and not, in fact, what feels like twenty years ago.

Ten months later, I'm still tired from having written it.

[blazehedgehog]

ICYMI: My Sonic Frontiers Criticism/Essay Is Out Now

So here's the last four months of my life come to fruition: the longest piece of edited criticism I've ever put on my Youtube channel, clocking in at just over an hour. For those of you that may be new around here, I am pretty against making long videos. I don't know if I overthink things too much or what, but it's rare for me to have much tolerance for feature-length reviews of things. They can wear me out just watching them, and it definitely wears me out to make them.

But sometimes you just have a lot to say. And I didn't even necessarily say everything I could have said here; there were things I would have added if not for the looming deadline proposed by the video sponsor. That's not a complaint -- sometimes you need someone else to tell you "be done by this date or else." Limitations foster creativity and toiling away at perfection can sometimes be just as toxic as crunch.

What I was trying to say is it's a big video, and it was hard keeping everything straight in my head because there was so much. One of those times where I was glad how I planned things out in advance, because sometimes the thoughts you had four months ago are not the same thoughts you have today, and the thoughts from four months ago were better.

It's already proving to be a bit of a divisive video, given I am going against the grain here. But I'm a big boy. I've spent time on the front lines of these sorts of things before. I know how to handle myself. I mean, half the reason I started my tumblr back in the day was pointing out some of the truly deranged takes I'd get in the replies to my Sonic 06 video.

Though I do worry. I'm getting a lot of people who are... politely declining to tell me what they think. More than a few "I don't agree with you, but I'm glad you released this video" that then never elaborate further. And that makes me feel bad? But why? Do I want to argue with my friends? Not particularly.

But more to the point, are people afraid to argue with me? Do I get too aggressive? I've picked up on a vibe, not just from friends, where people seem to go out of their way to avoid arguments with and/or around me. I mean I literally just said I started my Tumblr blog as a "get a load of this guy in my comments" spotlight (which, for the record, I don't do anymore). I don't want to be scary. But is it scary, or is it a strength? Or am I just imagining the whole thing? History says it's probably that last one, but it doesn't stop me from wondering. It's a lot to chew on.

At the end of the day, I do think parts of this script could have been better. I do kind of get a little mean at a couple points in ways I could have written around. A lot of people are bristling at the opening spiel, where I get more than a little "you people" about the Game Awards voting situation. There's another part later in the video where I also feature actual comments from a previous video and as I was editing it together I thought, "this sounds mean." But given I was less than 24 hours away from that deadline, I just had to roll with it (so I at least blurred the names and cropped the avatars out).

I'll end this post by quoting what I wrote on Patreon day before yesterday for the early access version of this video:

What a march this has been. I've worked on some videos that felt like they took forever, but nothing like this. This felt like the project that would never end. Some of that's because, after pushing myself so hard on the Sonic Adventure 2 video, I tried to be a little more casual with this one. I think I started the script around the end of April, a couple weeks after finishing the game on-stream. The idea was to avoid burnout.  And then the script grew, and grew, and grew, to be the longest script I've ever written. After doing voice over, I had three hours of material I had to cut down. I captured more than 60 hours of gameplay from more than 50 games. Thank goodness I took the time to stop and "storyboard" out this review like I did with the SA2 video. It actually proved to be extremely valuable here -- with a video this long, that takes so long to put together, it's hard to keep all of your ideas hot and ready in your head. Often I'd fall back to the storyboard and realize I planned something months ago that was way better than what I was doing in the moment.  And then in July, a sponsor came calling again. Suddenly I had a real deadline. The last four weeks have been a race to move this mountain of material into something resembling the shape of a video. The last couple days in particular have felt something like a miracle. A work ethic I hadn't tapped into in years suddenly roared to life as I locked down 20+ minutes of video in a matter of hours. It may have involved several actual panic attacks and me running on about four hours of sleep, but here we are. I was revising the script all the way up until a week ago. In retrospect, the sponsor segment probably leans a little too much on SAGE content, but by the time I realized that the train was barreling down the tracks too fast to stop. Thoughts for next time, I guess.

Patrons get a PDF of the script I used, including an unfinished earlier draft I abandoned where I think I was actually even meaner about it, if you can believe it. They also get a PDF of what my "storyboarding" process looks like (which is all just text).

I'll probably toss up a post for all the art I made for this video, too.

[donnerpartyofone]

We can all agree that pedestalizing people is bad for various obvious reasons, but I think a lesser-discussed subtext of this behavior is the implication that the pedestalized person gains caretaking responsibility as a natural consequence of their alleged superiority. Put differently: If you get turned into Superman, it becomes your job to save people.

I have a dear old friend who has a bad habit of idealizing people. It starts out as sweet and flattering, then it becomes kind of overbearing--any kind of distorted perception of oneself becomes burdensome even if it's positive--and then eventually she starts making noises to the tune of "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!" Like if you accept that you're her hero, the expectation is that you have to do what a hero does, and suddenly you have all these chores and favors and stuff lined up that are not really great for the friendship. In the case of my friend the behavior is not consciously manipulative; anyone will tell you that she's not, like, a bad person. She's just deep into this idea that somewhere out there is someone who can fix all her problems for her, she's really not into resolving things on her own. She's a classic self-help addict (could use more emphasis on the "self" part imho) and, hilariously, she has been "fired" by more than one phone psychic who she wouldn't stop calling. Like those people chose to stop taking her money in order to push her out of the proverbial nest. And of course, like a lot of people with this disposition, she doesn't actually take the advice she's given, just does whatever she wants instead...and then comes back in short order to ask for more advice.

Perhaps ironically, she is a very talented and energetic person who actually CAN do a lot on her own, and a few years ago she started writing a fun, quirky, topical book that we all agreed was a great idea and might actually make money. In a moment of epic stupidity, I offered to give her "friendly feedback" whenever she wanted a reader. Soon I was embroiled in a weeks-long argument about how she could pay me even though I didn't want money, and then when I named a price she couldn't pay it, and if I lowballed her she'd say that was "unfair" to me and my supposedly valuable services, and eventually I had to have this like meeting with her at a neutral location that was mediated by her ex-girlfriend to find some kind of rational end to the conversation. That's how I became her editor, even though as I frequently and forcefully reminded her I am most certainly not an editor and have none of the necessary skills or education other than the ability to read; all I ever offered was the "friendly feedback" thing and suddenly I wound up in this nightmare business relationship that was predicated on her delusions about how I'm the smartest bestest writer in the whole wide universe and I simply must save her poor little book project or it will perish.

It wasn't long before I was getting these late night phone calls telling me I was doing a bad job because I had to be "REALLY BRUTAL" and "TEAR IT APART" and she couldn't figure out why I wasn't doing that. I reminded her over and over that I'm not a real editor and I'm doing only what I am capable of doing and I'm certainly not being dishonest with her, which was the unpleasant subtext. If she's unhappy she should get a real editor, or at least a lit student who could use the pocket change. Then one day she changed her tune and told me I had actually edited her book so hard that it completely removed her personal voice from the text, and she was forced to start the whole thing over from scratch. I was deeply relieved.

...but of course, I've never stopped hearing about it. Once a year or so she comes around to remind me of what a totally radical job I did awesomely editing her super book, and don't I want to come back and finish it with her? I make a civil reminder of the fact that actually she was totally unhappy with everything I did on the book, and I don't think it's a good idea for us to work on it anymore. The response is always something like "hahaha i dont remember that LOL" (I think she really doesn't!), and I just have to back away slowly. This is not even the most fraught thing she's involved me in; hopefully I will not get started on the time I agreed to pick her up from a minor outpatient procedure, which transformed from a simple favor into a plan for an elaborate slumber party in a hotel featuring more and more people including her crazy mother who she was in a vicious fight with...while I just tried for weeks and weeks to get her to tell me where and when the procedure was happening so I knew when to pick her up. And I never even found out the answer after all, somebody else took care of it in the end, for some reason.

Anyway I'm typing all this out now because It Is Happening Again, she's trying to rope me back into the book thing which she somehow remembers as this great experience, and she wants "a friend, not some stranger" to help her finish it. And I'm trying to figure out if I should a) remind her yet again that she was very unhappy with my work on the book, and I am not a real editor, and maybe "some stranger" would be really great for her because the situation will be more professional and there won't be any impact on any of her personal relationships, or b) just tell her I don't have time, good luck! I kind of feel like being more explicit with her might give her a much-needed wake-up call about how she's been mixing business with pleasure, to her own detriment. I also feel like it would be the more respectful thing to do, to treat her like an adult who can hear something tough and make a rational choice with that information. But on the other hand maybe this is a good time to set a boundary and NOT act like it's my job to help and guide and save her, even if it's just with tough love this time. Ugh!

PS There's actually a secondary component to this which is that she's a hairdresser, and that's how I originally befriended her. She's intensely affectionate and emotional, but she's also a huge flake and I almost never get to see her if it isn't for an appointment--which she often has to reschedule several times anyway. A little while ago I told her I need to grow my hair out and save money and she panicked, seeming to realize that if she has to make actual social plans she won't be able to stick to them. So her way around this appears to be getting me back into a business relationship where we're trading haircuts for editing, and I don't want to do any of it. I just want her to like be normal with me, but that is entirely too much to ask of some people.

[crows-murder]

2024 writing roundup

thanks for the tag @bobtheacorn !! 💜

words posted:

127, 796!! which is a little pleasantly surprising to me because i felt like i wrote so much less this year lol

but a win is a win!!! that's my second highest year!!!!

additional words written:

*kicks all my unfinished wips under the rug* lets not focus on that lol

fandoms:

- rise of the tmnt

- batman

- psych

- macgyver (2016)

- lord of the rings: rings of power

highest kudos + highest hit one-shot:

doubt comes in and kills the light for both! 2, 567 hits and 337 kudos!!

new things I tried:

writing-wise i mostly stuck to what I know and generally like (whump and some flavor of hurt/comfort). i did write a fic in a slightly different, more experimental style since the character was drugged to the gills and hallucinating, but i don't know how well that turned out lol

fic I spent the most time on:

this year? i'm a little ashamed to say this title doesn't go to alll the ashes in my wake, my largest writing project in years, but a fic I HAVEN'T EVEN POSTED YET

its a tales of the tmnt fic I've been working on since the show came out and kind of my second brain child (sorry, number one spot still belongs to ataimw, my baby. my beloved <33)

its a very ambitious project bc its essentially me giving these boys a farmhouse arc, which means adding in shredder, AND ALSO CASEY!!! i created a casey for this show, specifically for this fic, and i actually love her so much.

it's been so much fun plotting out this fic and i've written a whole lot for it (and yet i still haven't finished writing the first chapter lmfao)

i kinda had to step back at some point bc i was genuinely tweaking out anytime i thought about it. i genuinely stated going a little crazy ahdjfkkf. and also the hyperfixation shifted a little, but im determined to post at least the first chapter sometime this year!!

fic i spent the least time on:

For sure paris brest + catacombs. It's 1k, my shortest fic in a long while and I wrote it in like an hour or so, barely edited it before sending it off into the void.

favorite thing i wrote:

a hard question to answer, as always, but i think i'm gonna go with it's the fear not the ghost (that keeps me haunted) bc i always love writing steph. she's my fav girl ever <33. and this fic is generally very dear to me. its actually a pretty old wip, from 2022 or something, that i never actually got to finish, but it was one of my favorite dc fics and i wanted to post it to motivate me to actually go and finish it so!! here's hoping for chapter 2 in 2025!!

favorite thing(s) i read:

FUCK YEAH FIC REC TIME

I'll Be Right There by Smuffly is probably my favorite psych fic i read. it is SO good and really well written. had me invested the WHOLE TIME and i even read it two more times anfkfkfk. i absolutely love shawn's characterization as well as all the other side characters, it felt like it could've straight up come out of the show. the fic was really well-paced and the mystery and intrigue had me HOOKED.

i wonder if your therapist knows everything about me by paperclipbitch is a queen's gambit modern au. I recently rewatched the queens gambit and immediately went on ao3 to read fics. I would sell my left kidney to get the second chapter. I loved their fake marriage au as well, their writing is always sooooo *chefskiss*

More recently: Travelling Incognito by roseveare. its an fma fic I definitely wouldn't have found without my good friend @sassydefendorflower (who has been witnessing my descent into insanity as i watch fma) recommending their stuff. i, personally, am a BIG fan of outsider pov and this one is genuinely so so good. i also really like their other fma fics, their writing style is so wonderful and i love the way they write ed.

writing goals for 2025:

finishing all the ashes in my wake is honestly my biggest goal for this year. motivation kind of died a little bit, and also life got insanely busy for me, but it should calm down a little and i hope i'll have more time to write!! i really haven't had a lot of time to spare for my hobbies like writing and reading and i've been really missing it, so i'm going to make an active effort to write more as well!! i really miss it

another goal is to finally get to 100 works on ao3! i'm currently at 92, and i really think this year will be it 💪

also, and this is something i doubt i'll achieve in only one year, but i'm at about 500k words and i'm aiming for 1 million 🤞

new works:

so many!! i'm working on a prequel series for fmab centered around ed and becoming hero of the people. i also have a more introspective fic in the works focusing on the tma-esque horror of the fact thst ed and ling straight up got eaten and stuck in an endless void full of blood water. fun time!!

i also have another big project lined up, the totmnt farmhouse arc fic i mentioned previously!

tagging @sassydefendorflower @goldenraeofsun @aeligsido @witchofthemoss @pickledcarrotsandradish @a-canceled-stamp @cuephrase <333

[sarandipitywrites]

saran's year of writing (2023)

hey y'all! saw a couple posts like this floating around and thought i'd hop on the train, because this year has been WILD for my writing (in a really good way). let's start with the bullet points version and i'll put the details under the cut. here we go:

I JOINED WRITEBLR

shared snippets of my work with other, actual humans!

made friends?!

started (and finished!) draft 2 of Dead Roots, Dark Water

wrote 1 short story for every week in october (that's 5 stories in a month! that's great for me!)

first NaNoWriMo in 10 years (and i finished it!)

drafted and re-drafted The Art of Empty Space

started draft 3 of Dead Roots, Dark Water

details, links to projects, me getting maybe a tad too personal, and those all-important wordcounts under the cut:

I JOINED WRITEBLR

i just realized i only started participating at the beginning of october, but it feels like i've been hanging out with you all the whole year 😅 maybe that means i should cut back a bit? nah...

really though, this year was the year i started taking my writing more seriously (not in a 'gotta get published' kind of way, but in a 'writing makes me happier than anything else and that's enough reason to set aside time and energy for it without feeling hella guilty' kind of way) and seeing you all posting your work and being so positive and encouraging to each other was what helped me get up the nerve to join in. and i can say without a doubt that it's the best choice i've made all year. y'all are such a supportive community and i've never once felt like i was encroaching or didn't belong here (and for me, that's really saying something)

so i guess what i'm getting at is: THANK YOU! i've loved reading your snippets and projects this year, and i'm way more confident in my own than i've ever been 💜 y'all are good peeps

Dead Roots, Dark Water

word count (edited and written): 187,789

that's a lotta words! DRDW is both my longest work wordcount-wise, and the work i've dedicated the most time to... probably ever. and i'm SO happy with it, it's a little concerning (/positive)

DRDW is now on its THIRD draft, and (assuming i don't do a massive re-edit) should be ready to start posting in 2024! *excited screaming* i've never released anything i've written in its entirety (the snippets i've been posting are actually a lot more than i've ever shared before), so this is MASSIVE for me and i'm both excited and terrified! overall, though, it's a very, very good thing

Short Stories

this october, i decided to challenge myself to do several things i don't ever do: write short stories; write them on a timeline; and share them. and i did! i wrote one short story for each week in october, and posted them here. they're far from my best work, and due to the timeline, they never could have been my best, which oddly i think helped make it easier to post them? they were also the first pieces i shared here (or anywhere)! they're not awesome, but i'm proud of them and i'm proud of myself for sharing them

NaNoWriMo and The Art of Empty Space

i've done nano once before, ten years ago. i was in college and had a lot more time then (and a job where i could spend the entire day just writing - i didn't know how good i had it), and even so i remember struggling to reach my word goal. but by the power of writing everything in wingdings so i can't second-guess my word choices, i made it this year! and even though i decided to challenge myself by writing a romance-heavy project (something i've historically avoided because IT'S HARD FOR ME, DAMNIT), i love AES and its characters and that feels fucking awesome.

even though my brain decided to spring a surprise plot restructure on me and now i have to rewrite like half of it. it'll be better for it, though, so it's all good 🥲

What's Next?

my plan for early 2024 is, of course, going to be to work on draft 3 of DRDW with the hope of getting some chapters posted (they are LONG, so i'll probably post to tumblr in chunks and the full, unbroken chapters on Ao3 due to formatting). once that's ready, i'll be able to return my attention to AES and getting draft 1.5 all written up. i've mostly figured out where the plot's going there, so it'll just be writing it up to figure out the gaps. if i'm able to write something for november again next year (which i really hope i will; nano did some great things for AES), it'll probably be one of the other Jak & Daxter fics i have kicking around in my head, because i am Obsessed (and switching it up between working on fanfic and original fic seems to work well for my brain).

i've been not super active here for the last month or so because Real Life Work is kicking my ass, but hopefully that will calm down and i'll be able to do more of what i want: writing wild shit, reading your wild shit, and screaming about it together 💜

good vibes and best wishes to everybody in the new year 🥂

[snek-panini]

At long last, I've finally finished a new book! And it's actually not a fanfic this time! This is a bind of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. This was supposed to be my fourth book for Binderary, but I didn't finish it in time. Procrastination's a bitch. Fun fact: the first thing I ever bound was a public domain short story called The Machine Stops, but since it was the first it is...not a good skill showcase. This one is so much better. More pics and process talk under the cut!

Close-up of the cover, and a pic of the spine. The blue bits are cardstock, and brown ones are faux leather left over from when I bound Pray for Us, Icarus. The images and author's name are in black embossing ink. Something weird happened with the texture on these--the author's name came out nice and smooth and solid like always, but the stamped images have a bumpy texture to them and some leather visible through the powder. They were done with rubber stamps on an ink pad and the text was done with an embossing pen, so I think it's a difference in the ink. It's a nice texture though, so I don't mind. I had originally thought to put the title on the front, but I really liked both stamps and I like how it came out.

Top view and endpaper. I'm really pleased with how the case fits; that's been something I struggle with on a lot of projects and I think I'm finally getting it down. The endpapers are a floretine print that I bought from Hollander's and cut to size. They got a little wrinkled when I cased in, especially in the back. It's my first time working with this kind of paper and I used too much glue. I also tried stitching them to the text block this time, but I don't think I'll bother with that again. I didn't like how flimsy the single-sheet signature felt next to the thicker ones in the text block. Fun fact for those who've seen an adaptation of this story but not actually read it: there is actually no hot air balloon in the book, even though it's in all the adaptations. There was a movie made in the 1950s which added the balloon and it's been in every version since then.

Title page and chapter header. I've been saying for a while that I wanted to up my title page game, and I really love how this looks. The image here is a free vector pulled from Seekpng.com. It's the same image on both pages, the one on the chapter header is just smaller and in gray instead of black. I've also chosen a name for my bindery, largely because other people had names for theirs and I thought it was cool and wanted my own. It's Paper Snake Press, you can see it at the bottom of the text. I want a logo too but haven't gotten around to making one yet. 2d art is, uh. Still not a strength for me.

The text I used was pulled from Project Gutenberg. Typesetting it was and interesting experience, surprisingly different from typesetting fic. When I do fic I keep the editing very light, just really obvious things like misspelled characters' names and quotation marks that are flipped the wrong way, but it always needs something. This one didn't need any of that, which was nice. It also has way longer sentences and paragraphs than fic, and I thought that might be a product of its age, that writers just wrote longer sentences and were more verbose in 1873 than they are now. But then this week I started working on another fic that has the same features, from someone I've suspected for a while is a published author, so I wonder if it's actually a professional author thing instead of a shift in reading tastes over time. I'm not really going anywhere with this speculation, I just thought it was interesting.

I have two more works-in-progress printed and waiting. One is an author copy and just needs casing in, the other's in a halfway stage and has a lot to be done, so it might be a bit before I have more books to post. But there's a whole stack of things I've typeset that I'm waiting to print, so there are good things coming.

[griefabyss69]

@zombiethingy and @steddieas-shegoes both tagged me!!! Thanks for the tags <3 <3 <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

25! All from this year <3 6 of them are microfics but everything else is around 1K - 21K! I've never in my life written this much lmao

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

129,098! That's a lot for me <3

3. What fandoms do you write for?

So far just Stranger Things!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Still Motion (Paraphilia 01)

Last Man Standing (First fic in the LARP AU series)

Between Light and Darkness (First in the Vampire Eddie series)

Acceptance and Negation (Paraphilia 02)

Hell Patrol (First in the Apocalypse AU series)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes!!! There's only one or two I didn't and that's because they were rude

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't think any of mine have an angsty ending tbh... Mostly because I write a lot of porn but also because even when I write for myself to vent there needs to be a way through all of the horrible shit. Otherwise I'm just adding stress to my life!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I'd say they're all fairly happy with a similar type of end goal! HOWEVER....... there's one I have planned that might stand above the rest in terms of happy endings, but it's like... a long term project that I have no idea when I'm even going to properly start.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

So far I haven't! I usually moderate comments, and the rude ones I got were more of the 'you clearly missed the mark of what I wrote' or not finding a polite/nice way of asking me to continue writing the fic

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes! The realistically unrealistic kind! Also, usually involves some kind of BDSM or kink related thing.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I won't say I'll never do it but I don't even have another fandom I'd be willing to write for at this time, let alone smash them together.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No, unless I haven't come across it! I think it's cool if someone gets inspired by something I write though, especially anything that's not already common in ST fandom!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but it'd be cool if someone wants to!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I haven't! I've like.... done a lot of yelling about potential things to write though. I have a lot of WIPs because of some of you LMAO I think the actual writing part of things is a very solitary activity for me usually, but I'm open to trying something short and sweet with someone (if things like time and energy line up as well)

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Steddie, if we don't consider fandoms I'm no longer actively reading things for! However I'm pretty easy to please, I love Steve and Eddie as characters and so seeing them in other ships (like Stommy and Hellcheer or a threesome version etc) is always a good time!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have two fics I started writing before I wrote the first one I published. They're important to me and also my writing has changed so much that I'm scared to even try editing them, because I don't want them to lose that specific thing they have that I might not be able to conjure back up.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Tension, when I get it right, it becomes the best thing about what I've written, no matter what the context is! Also I keep finding I write gay sex between two friends who are in love but just haven't Gotten To That Part yet, so I'd also say an emotional slowburn but a sexual flashfire.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Outlining, keeping up with motivation if I at all try to organize or plan in on purpose. I have to trick myself, like hiding a little pill in a piece of cheese, in order to have planning and organization in a fic. That's part of the reason why I operate in series instead of really long multi-chapter fics, because that's one way I can hide the pill from myself.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I haven't ever and I don't know if I'd be confident enough in my resources to do that! But it's cool when other people do.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

...so I was like 11 years old writing Inuyasha and Kagome...

ST is the first fandom I've published for in over a decade AND it's the first fandom that I've published more than one fic for.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

That's really hard to answer. I really like a lot of aspects from all of them! Dive (microfic, july prompt "pool", body worship) was my favourite for ages, though. And it's still my fave microfic for sure!!

Acceptance and Negation might be my favourite longer fic, there's just something about the antagonism and complicated feelings about being so horny over everything that I find really fun to write!

No pressure tags!!!! @vecnuthy @wormdebut @hbyrde36 @penny00dreadful @stobinesque and anyone who wants to do it! <3

[supersoakerfullofblood]

guess who's back with another question lol

so I've been struggling to get back into fixing my first drafts.. it's exhausting and i really just want to write new stuff but if i do that i won't fix any of the drafts, I'll just keep writing (+ what if i decide to change sth when rewriting my drafts? i can't write new stuff then)

so i find myself at a standstill where is stagnate and do nth. any advice? 😁

If you ever have a manuscript (and I mean a full, completed draft, not like the first ten chapters of an eleven-chapter novel) that you want to do anything with--query, self publish, post online, show to friends--revision is a necessity. Obviously you don't need to revise if you don't want to, but if you want your writing to be as strong as it can be, revising is just as important as drafting.

I think part of why you don't feel motivated to edit and revise is that you're using the verbiage "fix." It makes you believe the work you've done is inherently flawed as opposed to the reality of it being a work-in-progress. A manuscript can feel like a completed project because, well, the book is there! You wrote it all down! And while that is certainly an accomplishment and something you should treat yourself over, it's still not done. If your brain even a little bit thinks of it as "done," then your next thought is going to be: damn, there are so many flaws here, time to fix all my fuckups. It's a thought that paralyzes attempts to actually do something, either to revise or to work on a different project.

The best advice I have, then, is to not let your indecision paralyze you. It's difficult to do anything "wrong" in the writerly life as long as you keep writing (whatever that means for you, whether it's every day or a few times a week). If you want to make yourself eat your writerly vegetables by taking a month off of drafting to revise your manuscript, go for it! It's well worth the effort. If you want to keep drafting and set that manuscript aside, that's okay too! Just know that if you ever want to do anything with that piece (query, self publish, post online, show friends), you're going to want it to be the best it can be, and that means editing and revising.

Side note: you might also find yourself disliking your writing projects near the end of them or after you've finished them. This is largely the talk of a little demon inside you; don't listen to him. If you think you're an alright writer, treat everything you write with respect, because everything you write says something, likely many things you don't recognize for a while, about yourself. If you're in your earliest stages as a writer, though, I'd feel fine setting your writing off to the side if it falls out of favor for you. If you're a new writer, everything you do is experimentation; you don't know how to express yourself yet. I have I think a ~140 page manuscript I wrote in high school that I will never ever look at again because I was young and experimenting and I hate it. This is okay and normal! BUT if you're at least an alright writer (and this is entirely up to your discretion), I wouldn't listen to the little demon in you at all.

[suddence]

Retrospective!

HI. So. Since Suddence draft 3 is done, I thought I'd do a bit of retrospective on this story :^)

This little project started as an escape from my main wip, APHELION, which is a big sprawling sci-fi thing. I thought Suddence would be a nice little novella, 40k words tops.

Turns out, it's 60k words long. That's right. It's a wholeass novel.

Draft #1

On May 17th, 2021, I started the first draft. While I had a strong idea of the basic premise and a nice solid beginning, I wasn't sure how exactly the rest of the story would go. Most of this draft was just me writing down scenes that seemed interesting. At this point, I hadn't even figured what exactly Dany was gonna do after reaching Suddence. I threw together some semblance of a wham bam action climax. I didn't like it, but I couldn't think of much else.

Also, while I had the alternating timelines idea already, they were both written in regular prose.

After "finishing" this draft, I went back to my main wip for a while and continued struggling with it.

Draft #2

On November 16th, 2022, I started the second draft. In this draft, my goal was to tie the story down. The prose doesn't have to be good; it just has to be finished and whole. The beginning of the story stays mostly the same, except that I decided wait! Wouldn't it be more interesting if we got to read the flashbacks as if they were Dany's diary entries?

I tested this out and decided, yup. It was much cooler.

So, I focused on this for a while. Progress was meandering and I was struggling a bit with how I wanted the story to end. At some point, I peeked at my first draft, hoping to have some inspiration, and noticed I started it on May 17th. And at this point, it was also almost May 17th (2023). And I thought to myself, "Man, wouldn't it be something if I could finish this draft on May 17th? Wouldn't that be nice and symmetrical? Haha. That's not possible though."

But with the power of promising I'll treat myself to a Lego splurge after I finish the draft, it was, indeed, possible.

Now, as you read through the draft (I say "you" as if you will ever read this version of the story), you will notice that the quality significantly gets worse as it goes on. But I was perfectly fine with it! I had confidence and trust that my future editing self will handle it. All that matters right now is that it's done.

I let the story marinate for a few months, leaving notes whenever I thought of something, and went back to focus on APHELION. And I had a HUGE breakthrough there, which only boosted my confidence. I had been struggling with this wip for SO long, and it was amazing to finally have it figured out.

Draft #3

On August 1st, 2023, I began the third draft of Suddence. I switched my goal from "it just has to be finished" to "it has to actually be good." My mindset on this stage was that it had to be in a publishable state, even though I don't plan on publishing it just yet. I took the chapters one by one, reading each of them out loud to catch any strange wording or confusing moments. (There were a LOT of these that would have slipped by if I hadn't been reading out loud.)

One thing that really helped was keeping a notebook on hand, and any time I thought of something (e.g. checking the continuity on a previous scene, or a reminder to add something earlier, etc) I would write it down. This made editing SO much more manageable. I didn't have to rely on my spotty memory, I could cover so many more bases, and it's very satisfying to check each task off my list as I tackle them.

I wasn't really sure how long the edit would take. My general goal was to have something ready to show by April/May of 2024, where I'll hopefully be tabling at VanCAF again.

And now it's only been a bit more than two weeks, and the edit is done. 😳

Next Steps

So! My next steps will be to get critiques. I've set up a critique form, and now I'm preparing to reach out to people for beta reading. It's exciting! But also nerve-wracking. I've never gotten to this stage with ANY of my wips before. (Unless you count, like, my grad film, which I definitely don't.)

After critiques, it'll be one more round of edits!

I'm also going to have a copy printed out just at a local print shop, just so I can have something physical to hold :3

Publishing

I'm sure I've talked about this at some point before, but I'm planning to publish the story serially online first, and then having physical copies and e-books once it's done airing, so to speak. I've been checking out a few websites, like Wattpad and Royal Road and Substack. I'll have to poke around them a bit more before I decide which one to use.

I haven't really decided which printing company to use, either. Last I checked, BookVault doesn't ship to Canada :'( and the only other printer I've used is Lulu. I guess I'll have to look into KDP and all that eventually anyway, so I'll do some research on that front as well.

Thank you to everyone who's been following along on this journey! For now, I'm gonna migrate back to APHELION.

[maiji]

Something I'm excited about with regards to finishing fight / flight is that now I can finally post a new batch of images to Pixiv! Not just fight / flight, but also other illustrations I finished over the period of time and/or forgot to previously post to the North Bound series there. I really wanted to do one last illustration of these three to close it off. 

I usually wait a day, several days before posting art/comics to other platforms. Partly to spread out the update spam, partly to try to increase visibility, but mostly because 9 times out of 10 if I post things too fast I almost immediately discover some silly mistakes and then I'm crying inside because I'm repeatedly editing, reposting, finding another mistake, repeat etc... and/or I can't edit a post on some platforms and have to delete it all and start over. So I try to pace myself a bit, giving myself a little distance and opportunity to be more aware and mindful. (Sometimes it works. Sometimes I'm like, who cares, no one will notice except me, and move on with my life.)

It's always hard to assess your own work objectively. Projects like North Bound are particularly interesting because of the funny elasticity of time that you have with all the different pieces of it. That some ideas are so old and you're finally getting to them after all these months/years or other people are finally seeing them when you've already long moved on to something else. That different things are at varying stages of conception and sketching and refining and finishing, and so on. Webcomic creators are very familiar with the concept of "webcomic time". I think anyone who works in a field where there's a lag between the initial conceptualization of something and the actual publishing/launching it out into the world know what I mean. Webcomic time maybe even more so because the barriers to entry for webcomics can be wonderfully low and webcomic creators often do SO MUCH in the production so lots of people get to commiserate in this funny space/feeling together. To be honest I think I feel it with North Bound even more than I ever felt it with Now Recharging. The latter I worked on in a relatively regular fashion to hit specific posting schedules, while North Bound really is whenever I can squeeze in the time and motivation and also problem-solve narrative issues.

Looking back, Mirror Most Dark (completed 2017), I Heard A Cicada Cry (completed 2020), Survive (2021) and fight / flight (2024) (see them all here) form a four story set as "this is North Bound Hokushin's formative time before he meets Raizen". But what I really like is that they feel pretty self-contained - more like "this is an interesting little supernatural historical fiction-y series of stories". (Enough so that I actually woke up one night thinking, "Hey, this set of stories would actually make a pretty robust printed book! The 3 comic stories alone come to 108 pages! I wonder how many pages Mirror Most Dark would come to if I re-laid it out as a printed illustrated story... I'd have to redraw the illustrations in black and white to be able to print it more cost-effectively and match the style of the comic stories..." and then I was like no, you already have enough things to work on, and you don't need another box of books sitting in your closet for the next 10+ years.)

Working on these helps me really appreciate the art and craft of storytelling and building out/fleshing out a character, and also pushes me to try so many things I otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to. Mirror Most Dark, the oldest work in this group, still holds up not too badly (though there are a lot of errors and issues, and many things I would change if I were attempting it today...), and some panels and sequences I've been very proud of throughout the stories. When I reread them I do always see little things I'd like to fix, but overall... I made them, I learned from them, they exist, and it was all a very worthwhile experience!