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weaselandfriends · 2 months ago

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The Making Of: When I Win the World Ends

(For my previous Making Of post, see The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic.)

I. 1999

It was the year of the cubicle movie. It was the year of Fight Club, of Office Space, of Being John Malkovich, of Three Kings, of The Matrix, and of American Beauty. It was the year of suburban malaise, of eternal sunshine, of ceaseless normality. A year of United States hegemony; a year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.

Before the millennium turned and the towers fell, there was an initial challenge to this order, a completely inconsequential one made consequential by a newly minted 24/7 news media machine running out of noise to fill dead air now that people were sick to bursting of the Clinton impeachment. This challenge came not through war, revolution, or violence, but through entertainment. Children's entertainment.

And I was a child. Unaware of any cultural context, I knew only one thing: I loved Pokémon. I really, really loved Pokémon.

I owned Red Version, Blue Version, Yellow Version, Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Snap, Hey You Pikachu, a Pokémon Tetris sort of puzzle game, even the Pokémon TCG game for Gameboy. I had ten to fifteen strategy guides for the games, an encyclopedia of the 151 Pokémon, a choose your own adventure book, an I Spy-style book. I had Pokémon figurines, Pokémon plushies, toy Poké Balls, toy Pokédexes. I had Pokémon stamps and Pokémon stickers and a deck of Pokémon cards. Not trading cards, just a standard 52-card deck with Pokémon pictures on it. Of course I also had the trading cards. A complete set of the first three runs, plus a special Mew card you could get from I dunno Toys R Us or something as part of some promotion. I had a guide for the card game that explained which cards were good or bad even though I didn't even play the card game. I had a Pokémon Tamagotchi and Pokémon pencils and Pokémon erasers and Ash Ketchum's hat and I dressed up as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Of course I watched every episode of the anime, and in notebooks I drew doodles of existing Pokémon and came up with names for new Pokémon. My father had died that year.

My father was a sports fanatic. Traditional sports. He, too, collected. Sports memorabilia, baseball cards, figures of famous stars. When I was an infant, he drove me on a cross country road trip to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I became a part owner of the Green Bay Packers. He had always wanted me to grow up and pursue professional sports. When I was born, the doctor apparently said to start looking for football colleges, a quote he saved in a scrapbook of baby photos. He had played sports himself, in college; he was a baseball catcher, until a hitter accidentally struck him in the head with a full force swing.

Almost everything I personally remember about him involves him dying. He was sick for a long time, and I remember hospitals and hospital beds and strange smells and gauze. And then one day my mother told me he died.

He was a charismatic man, very social and very popular. He had many friends and a lot of family, all of whom had constantly been around our house. Once he was gone, they stopped coming around. Then it was just me and my mother, who was not a fanatic for anything, except maybe her job as an elementary school teacher, which consumed her time as she assiduously prepared lesson plans and graded tests until late at night. When my father died, she got into some argument with his side of the family, the details of which I still don't fully understand, and afterward they no longer spoke. Her own family lived far away, out-of-state, seen only at Christmas. The house became quiet.

And I… played… Pokémon.

II. The Electric Tale of Pikachu

Toshihiro Ono was a mangaka primarily known for shotacon and futanari hentai. His credits such as Innyou Megami and Anal Justice made him a no-brainer pick for the officially licensed Pokémon manga, Electric Tale of Pikachu, as it too would feature a 10-year-old boy as the protagonist.

This manga would be the foundation for my conception of what Pokémon was, narratively. Though I also had the Pokémon Adventures manga that ran concurrently and which has by now long outlasted it, Electric Tale left a significantly deeper imprint on my memory.

In summary, Electric Tale is a retelling of the first two seasons of the anime. Ash Ketchum is the main character, he's accompanied by Misty and later Brock, his rival is Gary, and Team Rocket harangues him.

What sets Electric Tale apart is its tone, which is far more adult than Adventures and the anime. Obviously, part of this comes from the author's primary area of expertise being hentai. Even in the censored English version, there is a sense of sexual playfulness in how every single female character is an older woman who likes to tease Ash about his romantic interests.

But there are other elements that creep in unrelated to sex, due to the perspective of someone only used to speaking to adults who suddenly has to speak to children. Ono doesn't really get the childish fantasy of leaving at 10 being normal in society, so he introduces an element where Ash can only get a one year deferment from school and will have to return unless he hits it big. Team Rocket are former competitive hopefuls who flamed out and then, with no education or work experience to speak of, had no choice but to turn to crime. The Pokémon are depicted more realistically, often eschewing the toyetic mascot elements of their designs.

And the landscapes are often wistful, even apocalyptic in their presentation:

This more sedate, mature, realistic depiction of Pokémon became what I wanted Pokémon to be, what I projected onto an original Red and Blue version that left everything open to interpretation, and what would increasingly frustrate me with the series as it deviated more toward bombastic villain groups with goofy destroy-the-world plots. (Which was what put me off Pokémon Adventures.)

Amid all this, one panel stuck with me in particular. One panel I would think about ever since I first saw it as a child, that would turn around in my head and keep coming back. That panel would eventually—over two decades later—become the basis for When I Win the World Ends, the seed from which an entire story grew:

III. The Unkillable Demon King

But in the interim, the seed remained dormant. 1999 fell away. I grew up. I played later Pokémon games and increasingly lost interest by around Gen 4 and 5. Then I went to college.

That's when I started playing League of Legends.

I was something of a psychopath in college. I operated on a strict schedule and did not deviate. Wake up, read 50 pages of classic literature, write 2,000 words, go to classes, study, and then by about four in the afternoon all my obligations were done and it was League of Legends until midnight.

I wasn't actually interested in the League of Legends esports scene in its infancy. In 2012, I was actually invited to attend its World Championship in Los Angeles and refused. (When I received this invitation, I had just finished reading Homestuck for the first time, and was caught in a month-long haze in which I could do little but bask within what I considered the greatest artistic achievement I'd seen in my life. It was this month that inspired Modern Cannibals.) I only liked playing the game and watching Dunkey videos.

It wasn't until the next year, when a girl I was interested in recommended I watch, that I tuned in to my first professional League of Legends game, at the 2013 World Championship. It was there that I got to watch this new, hyped, upcoming Korean player who had apparently taken the pro scene by storm that season. That player was Faker.

It has seemingly become essential to the narrative of any sport that there is "the man who always wins." American football has Tom Brady, and the moment Brady retired, he was replaced by Patrick Mahomes. Basketball has LeBron James, picking up the mantle from Michael Jordan. It's as if someone being "the best" validates the skill-based promise of the sport, the fundamental top-down fairness of its premise, the idea that the person who wins is the best and deserved it. Faker would become the backbone of League of Legends esports and his ascendance correlated to that of the sport itself, from its humble roots at small-scale tournaments in places like Jönköping, Sweden, to max capacity arenas in the biggest cities in the world.

It's surprising, though, how the legend of Faker had already begun even before he won his first World Championship. League of Legends was designed as a clone of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a popular mod for Warcraft III that emphasized competitive play. In its infancy, the competitive scene was mostly dominated by players who had migrated from DotA to League. They were older, winning thanks to a fundamental conceptual understanding of the game that was superior to everyone else, and frankly not very good in the aggregate. As League of Legends esports exploded in popularity from 2013 to 2015, these old pros would get filtered out swiftly, with even the biggest and most popular names retiring after only a couple of years in the scene.

Even once the new generation of League-grown talent ascended, though, careers were nasty, brutish, and short. The best players only remained on top for a season, as game patches dramatically changed viable strategies. Internationally the sport was dominated by Koreans, with the Korean regional league sometimes being seen as more difficult to win than the World Championship, where Koreans often breezed through uncompetitive Chinese, European, and North American squads.

This possibly affected the demographics of the professional scene. South Korea has mandatory military service, and leaving the pro scene to join the military was basically the end of a Korean player's career. This meant that it was rare to see a Korean player older than 25. Retiring in your early 20s was and remains common. Korean organizations, which had an infrastructural leg up on other regions due to the popularity of StarCraft 2 esports in the country, became adept at scouting promising players at 15 or 16, building them into top level competitive pros, wringing them dry for a few seasons with brutal training regimens, and spitting them out.

Faker was the exception. Though he had been discovered young by SK Telecom, a major Korean telecommunications company that did esports on the side, and gone through the training regimen, he refused to be spit out. He simply didn't stop. He won in 2013, then with a completely new four-man squad around him won again in 2015 and 2016 before narrowly losing the 2017 finals in a nail biter. Given League of Legends esports had only existed since 2011, he basically accounted for half of the championships up until that point. Nobody else, except for his teammates, had won more than once. And it was like it was known he would be this juggernaut the instant he manifested ex nihilo. Like it was known, even in 2013, that he would always win.

Then, Faker stopped winning.

By 2017, League of Legends esports was a titan. Venture capital firms, seeing the millions of eyeballs, thought that this was the next NBA in its infancy, and decided to get in on the ground floor. Multiple millions of dollars were pumped into the scene as even mediocre players in weak regions like North America pulled seven-digit salaries. In China, where League of Legends had become the national pastime, the nation's richest oligarchs ran teams for fun and vanity, outbidding Korean organizations for top Korean players in pursuit of a trophy that had gone to Korea every year since 2013. Riot, the studio developing the game, pumped tons of money into creating a professional sports product, with skilled announcers, dedicated arenas for regional leagues, live performances by musicians like Imagine Dragons and Lil Nas X, and all the other bells and whistles one might expect from a program watched on ESPN.

In this milieu, it seemed like Faker had finally reached his limit. He was still good, but not the best. Even as an individual, while everyone still considered him the "greatest of all time," he was considered outmatched by newer pros like Chovy and ShowMaker. 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 passed with no championships. In 2022, on a team of mostly rookies, he reached the world finals, but was ultimately beaten. Korea's stranglehold over the sport had been shaken by China, which had finally strung together some championships. People wondered if Faker would retire, although he had managed to avoid mandatory military service by representing Korea in the Olympics-esque Asian Games. He'd dealt with wrist injuries and his level of play dropped year over year. He just didn't seem to be that good anymore, potentially holding back his team of talented young players rather than leading them to victory.

Then, in 2023—

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And in 2024—

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In the end, never count out Touchdown Tom. 11 years of professional play, 5 world championships.

From this longwinded explanation, you might have realized that after watching that game in 2013, I became a League of Legends esports fanatic, fulfilling the prophecy set before me by my father though perhaps in not the way he would have expected.

And the things I become a fanatic about, I want to write a story about.

IV. Modern Cannibals

There's a deleted scene in Modern Cannibals, as Maximillion is driving Z. and her friends through the Utah desert. He starts to talk about Pokémon.

"I bring it up because my university thesis was about Pokemon in particular how Pokemon has basically trained an entire generation of children to think in a completely different way than preceding generations my generation for instance our fad was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now I don't know how much you know about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but from an educational standpoint we're talking absolute bankrupt complete and utter goose egg but Pokemon now Pokemon you see it's more like there's some substance to it you know that refrain Gotta Catch Em All right?" "..." "Well to most parents it looks like a marketing gimmick you make one hundred fifty-one characters and structure a game around collecting them the merchandising potential is astronomical kids buy one hundred fifty-one trading cards stickers coloring books figurines uh collectable lunchable toys I'm sure you've got some yourself."

He continues:

"But really you look at the game itself before the big toy explosion the game itself the focus is placed less on the collection and more on the catalogue you're given a blank encyclopedia to fill and you fill it by capturing one hundred fifty-one Pokemon but the goal is to create a complete database of each and every one and this is what I argue is the educational core of the Pokemon series." His hands left the wheel to conceive of his idea in the cool air of the car, which remained steady on its ever-forward path. "Our modern era is no longer one of singular isolated knowledge it is one of the catalogue the database which is most clearly personified in the advent of the internet because now all knowledge can be at the fingertips of any one human being all that is needed is someone to go and put the catalogue together and presto whiz bang it's there think about it Z. when you catch a bunch of Pokemon where do you store them?" Z. didn't need to think long to remember the game's mechanics. "In the PC." "Exactly now isn't that odd consider it in real life terms you have real life creatures made assumedly of flesh and bone and yet you store them in a computer how does that make sense you'd expect a farm or a holding pen but no it's the computer and that too prepares the budding portion of the millennial generation to become cognizant of the linkage between the computer the encyclopedia and the database structure of knowledge in a new era." "So," said Z. "So you're saying Pokemon taught kids how to think in the digital age?"

There's also a deleted character in Modern Cannibals. Well, mostly deleted—he still shows up, unnamed, in a couple of pages. He is Cole Coulter, Z.'s older brother, a popular League of Legends streamer. Before I deleted him, his role was to accompany Mrs. Roddlevan and Frederick in an attempt to bring Z. back home. He had POV scenes that gave insight into the weirdness of his cotravelers, but ultimately, I decided he didn't add anything to the story and removed him almost entirely.

Even then, though, I was already considering the future of Cole Coulter as the protagonist of a story about League of Legends esports. Playing under the ID MadKing, he would be a North American professional top laner, once known for his aggressive duelist style but recently forced into playing boring tanks as the esports metagame became more sophisticated and tactics-based.

The story would be simple, something I envisioned as a "sports story" only about esports instead of regular sports. It would start with Cole's team being relegated from the league, only for Cole to get a last chance signing to a new team with two promising Korean imports. One import, the mid laner, would be a charismatic and eccentric player in the mold of Doinb/Ganked By Mom/Huhi, while the other, an AD carry, would be introverted and pissy and elitist, in the mold of Piglet. The team would initially struggle, cultures would clash, then a mid-season replacement to sign a psychopathic Tyler1/Tarzaned style streamer as jungler would revitalize the team, put them on a major run, and get them to the World Championship. Though they would eventually fall after a miracle run, Cole would get a moment to truly shine on the biggest stage when he won a pivotal game by aggressive split pushing rather than tank play.

Thematically, the story would be about two things. First, a counterpoint to the idea of American exceptionalism, featuring a league where Americans are particularly bad compared to Korean or Chinese players. Second, an exploration of what it means to be exceptional at all. Cole would be an all-around mediocre person. Middling at school, at (real) sports, at the various popularity contests of being a teenager. League of Legends, this niche sub-sport, is the one thing he truly excelled at, the one place where he was good, better than 99.9 percent of all players, and yet even within that statistical greatness he wound up, ultimately, in a professional scene where he was once again mediocre, relegated to "tank duty," to facilitating other players to carry.

What does it mean to be the best? How can someone be so, so good, only to reach a level where they were still nothing special? Is there any way to win if you're not "the man who always wins"?

I remembered that panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu. The last people filtered before the final champion. It's certainly no walk in the zoo!

This idea was pretty detailed for a story I never wound up writing, something I mostly blame on the years 2018 and 2019, when a lot of bad things happened to me and in retrospect I consider it a minor miracle I managed to finish Chicago at all. As a human being, I would be decimated for the next three years, and so a lot of stories I might have written in that time never came to fruition.

Meanwhile, League of Legends esports reached a peak, then the venture capital bubble burst as investors realized there was no monetization scheme in place for any interested party except Riot Games. Money hemorrhaged out, Riot shifted resources to Valorant, and a sport that had been overinflated based on projected exponential growth in perpetuity fell back down to earth.

Also, Players came out.

Players was a 2022 mockumentary about a fictional League of Legends team competing in the North American league. Conceptually, it was doing a lot of what I had planned for my story: following a single team on a rags-to-riches run, focusing on the interpersonal drama of the team members, asking questions about greatness and its pursuit. It's a pretty good show if you're familiar with League of Legends esports at all, with a lot of on-the-ground fidelity that gives it an authentic feel, which is exactly what I had been hoping to use my esports fanaticism to accomplish. It completely took the wind out of my sails; it was like my idea had already been done.

So by 2022, the idea of a League of Legends esports story was dead. But there was still a drive to create something with that spirit, that would delve into those themes.

What remained after all these years of sifting the sieve, letting sand slip through, was that one panel from the manga. The number of people pursuing greatness slowly filtering until only one remained. And if I wasn't going to pursue that idea through League of Legends, maybe I could pursue it through another vehicle. Maybe the vehicle through which the idea had originally been exposed to me. Pokémon. It all came back to Pokémon.

V. Everything Evolving Into Crabs

I knew immediately that if I were to write a Pokémon fic, it would be a tournament arc. This was the natural evolution of my esports story idea. Also, if I were to write Pokémon, I wanted it to be a story about utopia, immersed within Pokémon's near-future ideal world, where everything is clean and healthy, where society is neat and ordered.

This idea caused me to remember the novel Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, which I had read a few years back. A mostly autobiographical bildungsroman written on the precipice of World War II, the novel ends with the young protagonist on a journey to Central America, where he meets an idealistic doctor who believes sport to be a proper substitution for war. He tells the story of two tribes locked in internecine conflict through generations, able to replace that violence with soccer matches.

And wasn't that what the world of Pokémon was, a utopia revolving around neutralizing weapons of war by using them for competitive sport?

This tournament, I envisioned, would not simply be about deciding who was best, but an ideological battle for the future of the Pokémon world. To that end, I imagined a war between an entrenched trainer class, who competed as philosopher-warriors, intense individuals with deep connections to their Pokémon, and an upstart commercialization that sought to replace the ideological underpinnings that made their society so safe and prosperous with economic accumulation. It was from this kernel that the character who would become Aracely Sosa arose: charismatic, appealing, human-empathic, and propped up by a support staff who did all the hard work of teambuilding for her.

I imagined the story having an ensemble cast, focusing on nearly every competitor equally, with the Aracely character not having any especial focus until her improbable rise to the top. I imagined a final round where she faced off against "the man who always wins," and though she would lose to him, she would seem to have won the ideological battle, altering the course of society as major corporations scrambled to employ her formula for success at a much grander scale. The story would end with this realization of the earth-shattering importance behind her run, only for Aracely to sink in disappointment. Because in the end, all she really wanted was to win.

The more I thought about it, though, the less I liked the idea of an ensemble cast. The ensemble cast element of Chicago hadn't gone over very well (though I like it), and I figured it would wind up inflating the length of the story considerably. I was coming to the end of Cleveland Quixotic, after all, and once more wanted to write something smaller, tighter, and denser.

So I oriented my thinking to instead have the story revolve around Aracely and one major rival, to give an interpersonal mirror to the ideological war being waged. Thus, Toril came about as an antithesis to everything I had imagined Aracely to be: gruff, antisocial, independent. Their rivalry would culminate in a semifinals battle, before Aracely went on to fight "the man who always wins" in the finals.

I forget exactly when the gender theme came into the equation, but it evolved as an outgrowth of (once again) my competitive League of Legends expertise, where women are essentially nonexistent despite there seemingly being no biological blocks against them. This dovetailed nicely with Pokémon, a world where women seemingly could be powerful competitors, but where—in the anime at least—none ever are. For instance, look at this chart of every major tournament in the anime:

Every known winner is male. Every known finalist and semifinalist is male. Only a handful of female characters have reached the quarterfinals. What possible in-universe justification could there be for that?

This question was actually far more prominent in early planning and drafting than it wound up being in the final work. Initially, I had Aracely's personal motivation revolve around a drive to be the first female trainer to win; this would increase the ideological conflict between her and Toril, who attempted to ignore that she was female altogether. Over time, this theme would see diminished importance in face of the last piece of the thematic puzzle: cults.

It came from reading Underground by Haruki Murakami, a nonfiction journalistic account of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks carried out by the cult Aum Shinrikyo under the direction of its leader Shoko Asahara. Japan in the 90s was experiencing its own End of History, one taken literally by those disaffected with modern society's grand narrative. The prophecies of Nostradamus became fashionable among the young, who believed that 1999 would be the final year before the world was destroyed. Murakami interviewed both survivors of the gas attack and members of Aum Shinrikyo, collecting worldviews of people who simply thought they were "different" and who were willing to give everything in their lives to the one place that seemed to accept that difference.

The 1995 attacks were a watershed moment in Japanese culture. In their wake would come pivotal works of Japanese pop media, like the titan of otaku culture, Neon Genesis Evangelion:

(What's scary about Nostradamus' prophecy is that it might not come true. A year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.)

Pokémon, whose first games released in Japan in 1996, also emerged within this post-Aum world where fixation on the minutiae of pop media was becoming a primary pillar of meaning for the youth, and it's hard not to see echoes of cultism in the evil teams that dot the series' landscape. Even Team Rocket, originally more modeled on organized crime than occultism, veers that direction in Gold and Silver, and afterward the organizations and their world-ending plots become increasingly absurd, to the point where it starts to become unclear why anyone would ever follow, say, Lysandre.

As I mentioned earlier, my personal interest in Pokémon was at odds with these clownish, Saturday morning cartoon villain organizations, but Murakami's account of the Aum attacks recontextualized them for me, made them make sense even within the framework of a "realistic" utopian world. The last elements snapped into place, and I knew my main character would be the member of one of these cults. A cult dedicated to, what else? Evolution. A core element of the Pokémon series, a perfect metaphor for the frustrating lack of movement of the End of History 90s. I imagined a cult leader as a surrogate mother figure for Aracely, who would have a strained relationship with both of her own parents, and deciding on that, the idea of making Pokémon's canon evil mother Lusamine the villain was a no-brainer. I imagined a post-SuMo Lusamine, unable to move on from her experience merged with Nihilego, languishing in Kanto after being sent there to consult with Bill, who had his own experience being merged with a Pokémon... It didn't take long to figure out how all these pieces connected.

The full form of the story had taken shape.

VI. Showdown

I knew immediately I would be following Showdown rules for the battles. No alternative even crossed my mind. I had dabbled in Showdown a few times over the years, first in Gen 3 OUs, then later in Gen 7 OUs, and I knew from experience that Pokémon is a monumentally more interesting competitive game when operating at a high level compared to either its depiction in the anime (shounen logic, mid-fight evolutions) or the general playing experience (spam your best move on your overleveled starter). I knew I would use competitive rulesets before I even considered the thematic or worldbuilding aspect I would eventually take in the story itself (i.e., that the specific rulesets prevent battles from becoming bloodsport and enforce order on the world). I simply thought doing battles this way would be far more entertaining.

To prepare, I started playing Gen 9 OUs under the guidance of a few friends who were into the competitive scene. I grinded the ladder for months, eventually getting a good enough grasp on the metagame to reach 1500 Elo on the Showdown ladder, which is not very good but generally higher than someone can reach with dumb luck.

Crafting the tournament format and rulesets used in the story wasn't difficult. I modeled the tournament format on the League of Legends World Championship, with region-based seeds (having been selected due to performance in regional tournaments) competing in four groups before the highest performers advanced to a single elimination bracket. Initially, I envisioned a 32-competitor bracket instead of the 16-competitor bracket that would appear in the final draft, but otherwise the format came quickly and easily.

In terms of the rulesets and available Pokémon, my considerations were made primarily in terms of what would be most entertaining to read. I decided to include Mega Evolutions and not include Z Moves, Dynamax, or Terastallization, because Mega Evolutions are cool and those other gimmicks are not. The bring-9-pick-6 format, while unusual in Showdown rulesets, is similar to the rules in Pokémon Stadium and VGC tournaments, and also adds a level of intrigue to which Pokémon each competitor uses. (It also enabled Red's Zapdos at the climax of the story, which was something I knew I would bring out from very early on.)

With the help of one of my friends who knew competitive Pokémon, I scripted out each battle assiduously before I wrote them. Every battle was tested using Showdown itself, with only a few turns mocked up to account for luck. For instance, in Aracely versus Jinjiao, Slowking is meant to stay asleep for three turns. Rather than rely on luck to ensure Slowking actually slept that long during the test, I could give Slowking a useless move and have him use that instead to simulate being asleep.

The only thing that couldn't be tested in Showdown was the 7 PP Kingambit trick Red uses at the end of the story, because it's impossible to set a Pokémon to have fewer than max PP in Showdown. This led to one of the bigger mistakes of the story, as it turns out that Encore would simply wear off if Kingambit ran out of PP, rather than forcing him to use Struggle like I assumed. Luckily, even if this were the case, it wouldn't change the outcome of the battle, so it's not an error I lose too much sleep over.

Character teams were chosen to thread the needle between a few considerations. The team needed to be competitively viable, reflect the character's personality in some way, and be distinct from other teams for the sake of variety. (Variety is somewhat unrealistic in real top-level competitive Pokémon, where you'll often see many almost identical teams in the top ranks. But that would be boring.) Some lack of optimization was allowed under the conceit that actually training these Pokémon to peak form would take a lot of time in the real world, compared to Showdown were optimization can be determined quickly due to the ability to immediately adjust stats and builds.

I also tried to give some preference for Pokémon that would be more familiar to layman fans, though this was difficult because Gen 8 and 9 have outrageous power creep and many popular early generation Pokémon have been completely phased out. (Using Megas helped with this issue.) It was this consideration that led to Azumarill being Aracely's ace. There was also an innate challenge to imagining what the competitive scene would look like without legendary Pokémon. Zapdos and Landorus-Therian have been inexorable staples of the competitive scene for generations. What happens in a world where they aren't used at all?

In the original 32-person bracket, I imagined Aracely competing against Jinjiao in the first round, then minor characters Adrian da Cunha and Jacq Ray Johnson in the next two rounds, before facing Toril in semifinals. I imagined Adrian da Cunha as a "hometown hero" whose team wasn't great but he was plucky with a lot of grit, and Jacq Ray Johnson as a self-aware heel who liked to use cheesy strategies and gimmicky Pokémon like Smeargle and Ditto. Condensing from 32 to 16 occurred around the same time I had settled on Lusamine as my villain/cult leader, which led to replacing those two with Gladion. I developed full brackets for both the 32-man and 16-man iterations, with character names and regions, just in case I ever needed to mention them.

All that was left to do was write the story.

VII. Unbroken Line of History

I began writing in September 2023 under the tentative title Unbroken Line of History, which I would later change to simply Lines. In the original drafts, I opened the story with a modified version of the panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu detailing how people are filtered over time in their pursuit of being the best, this time starting with all 8 billion people in the world until only one remains. The story then cut to Aracely's perspective in the restroom as she mentally prepared for her final group stage match.

At this point I was more set on Aracely being the clear protagonist of the story, so she had a few facets of her personality designed around that. First, as I mentioned before, there was a feminist angle where she was motivated specifically to be the first female trainer to win the championship. Secondly, I threw in some more generic nervousness/fear of failure. The other major difference is that I did not lead with the cult prophecy of the world ending. I originally envisioned the cult reveal to be a mid-story twist, and only obliquely hinted at it.

The scene still played out with Toril appearing and the two getting off to a bad start. Then, Cely's father tried to talk strategy with her while she ignored him, before the battle transpired in much the same form as it does in the final draft.

I showed this early draft to my friends and most disliked it. My girlfriend at the time told me Cely sounded like an edgy 13-year-old boy, while my neuroscientist friend whose aspirational idol is Bondrewd from Made in Abyss wanted to know more about the oblique hints of a cult, finding everything else boring. Another friend said it was stupid that there were 30 seconds between turns during the battle and that the Pokémon should just go at each other; nobody would actually want to watch a battle that was paced so slowly. (I vehemently disagreed with that take. Basically every popular sport balances between slow-paced moments of strategy and fast-paced moments of action and execution.) Some people I showed it to did enjoy it, though. Gazemaize, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory, was especially enamored by the Brittany/Gardevoir reveal and the Bud Light Analyst Desk, and implored me to keep both of those elements at all costs. 7th, one of my friends who helped me with the Showdown stuff, was so into it she drew fan art of all the characters (which I've posted before) and also wrote eight pornographic short stories about them.

I rewrote the same opening scene several times across October and November, though these were minor iterations without significant adjustments. Frustrated with the lack of progress, I decided to take a break from writing to simply think about the story for a few months.

During this time, to fix Aracely's edgy 13-year-old voice, I decided to lean into her being from Pokémon Los Angeles (with her native region, Visia, being a play on "visual" as a reference to Hollywood) and gave her a Valley Girl accent. To prepare for this, I listened to hours and hours of ASMR videos of people speaking like Valley Girls and took notes on their inflection and syntax. It was here where I decided on Aracely's underlining quirk, as a way of capturing the unique style of emphasis Valley Girls used.

This also made me realize I needed to adjust Aracely's personality. Despite the tone of her voice, she was still acting antisocially. She didn't want to talk to her father, she didn't want to talk to Lachlan Nguyen, she didn't even really want to talk to Toril. Toril herself was a lump of coal. My own misanthropy kept leaking into the characters, even when I conceptually didn't want them to have it. I thought back to Cleveland Quixotic, and how what made the Jay and Viviendre romance work was that they actually both liked each other, and figured—even though I didn't have explicitly romantic plans for Aracely and Toril—that I needed to do something similar to make their rivalry truly pop. Rather than avoid people, Aracely would lean into talking to them, even if they were annoying. Although Toril remained frigid, there would be a part of her yearning for emotional contact, a way to coax her out of her shell.

I also thought deeply about the structure of my stories in general, and my inability to come up with good hooks. It was around this time that someone I knew was reading Chicago. They pointed out that the plot of Chicago doesn't really start until Chapter 26; that I was "burying the lede." I considered this. My logic, when writing Chicago, was that the Empire moving to take over Washington would be a twist, something that would shock and excite people and change their perception of the entire story.

But did that make sense, when really the story was "about" that twist? Didn't that just make everything before the twist harder to get into for a reader? Chicago might look radically different if I revealed the Empire's goals immediately, but it would also probably be a more immediately engaging work. I'm a big fan of delayed gratification in storytelling, but had I taken it too far?

This was a major revelation for me, and immediately I understood what I needed to do for my Pokémon story: move up the cult plotline. Place it front and center. Name the whole story after it even. I decided on framing the opening scene from Toril's perspective, depicting Aracely initially more as an alien other, emphasizing the fact that she was in a cult rather than hide it behind foreshadowing. This could also lead to Aracely and Toril having more of a dual protagonist setup, which would make my planned two-half finale (one half where Aracely battled "the man who always wins," one half where Toril got involved in stopping the cult's doomsday plot) work even better.

Confidence resurged. At the end of January 2024, my girlfriend of seven years and I broke up. A few days later, I started writing the sixth—and ultimately final—draft of When I Win the World Ends.

VIII. When I Win the World Ends

Now it's the part of the Making Of where I actually make the thing I'm supposed to be making, but there's a lot less to say about it. Once I have a plan, the actual writing of the story is the easy part, and most of what I wrote—with a few exceptions—looks similar to the story as it exists now.

There were some oddities. I wrote the first seven chapters (everything up to the end of the Jinjiao battle) and then had to take a two week break to write a short piece for a writing contest I had entered in December as part of an effort to stop overthinking WIW. After this interruption, I returned to WIW writing perhaps a bit more perfunctorily than I usually would, leading to an original version of Chapter 8 (the chapter where MOTHER makes her first real appearance) that was short and abbreviated. Later, in editing, I would rewrite most of this chapter.

A few ideas emerged while writing, like the motif of serendipity/Logos, which I felt tied nicely to the ideas of evolution and history. It was also in this draft that I introduced Cely's friends Haydn and Charlie, as a nod to an earlier work of mine also featuring a fashion-obsessed girl from Los Angeles. (Speaking of nods to earlier works, in the original 32-man bracket, Cole Coulter featured as one of the competitors, but he didn't make the 16-man cut.)

The process went smoothly. I finished the draft at the end of May, a little under four months after I started it. I had envisioned the full story as being about 70,000 words, but the draft ended up closer to 115,000. Underestimating story length is just an essential element of the trade, though.

A few days after finishing the draft I went on a four-day Oklahoma Darkness Retreat where I had access to zero electronics. The goal was to think about my story deeply and how it could be improved in the editing process.

In this time chamber, where I did nothing except complete crossword puzzles and read The Recognitions by William Gaddis, I came to a realization. There was one element the story needed that wasn't already there.

That element was Sabrina. In the original draft, Sabrina was not present during the scene where Aracely meets the Old Man. She was mentioned obliquely a couple of times in conjunction with Aracely's "psychic powers," but it never really built to anything. There was still a scene where Aracely was interrogated due to her relationship with MOTHER, but only by nameless goons, and the scene lacked tension as it was clear Aracely could talk circles around them.

When I returned from Oklahoma, I prepared for my conception of Sabrina as a character by writing an 8,000 word short story from her perspective, which hashed out an entire backstory for her. Then, I started editing the draft.

For me, a lot of editing is just polish. Usually, cutting out needless sentences and fixing clunky ones, as well as emphasizing a few of the more understated themes and motifs. For instance, during editing, I made slight additions to emphasize the thematic connection between Aracely's suicide attempt and the global war that almost destroyed the world, as well as the connection between the moon and cyclical insanity (lunacy, etymologically, being related to the moon). I made the Old Man more of a Walt Disney-esque figure (from my notes: "a dying Disney"), rewriting much of his dialogue to either be direct quotes or to evoke his ideals. I also expanded on several of the scenes where Toril and Aracely interact to make their relationship more complex and nuanced. I gave MOTHER some new dialogue, including her speech in Chapter 18 about loving a child for the potential it promises, while also paradoxically wanting it to remain a child forever.

The largest changes were in the three chapters I almost fully rewrote. The first was Chapter 8, which as I mentioned earlier was overly terse. In the original draft, it depicted MOTHER as more pathetic, more dependent on Aracely. I decided to make her a more threatening figure, and incorporated a few references to the Moloch sacrifice scene from Valle Verde to make her seem more like a false idol. Similarly, I rewrote Chapter 12, which was originally a very short chapter that focused solely on a conversation between MOTHER and Nilufer that ended with the order to kidnap Aracely. In rewriting the chapter to include Fiorella, I gave myself more opportunity to flesh out the respective philosophies of her and MOTHER (including some of the story's most salient discussions about why cults exist), as well as give more of an insight into the inner workings of RISE as an organization. And lastly, I fully rewrote Chapter 19 to include Sabrina.

The last changes I made in editing were to the final chapter. When I finished the final draft of the story, I sent it to several readers, many of whom had looked at the original drafts of the first chapter, as well as julirites, the author of a Fargo fan fiction called London. There was an immediate and minor backlash to the final chapter, which was originally much more pessimistic, from most people who read it. In the original version, Aracely and Toril were not still in communication. (Fiorella was also dying of cancer instead of jockeying to replace the Old Man.) The finale had a much more somber, sedate, tragic note. Juli and 7th disliked this sad ending, while Gazemaize wanted me to cut the final chapter altogether. I felt confident that the final chapter was necessary, though, and revised it to its current version, which was much better liked.

And then... the story was finished, near the end of July. I crunched the numbers and realized that if I posted two chapters to start and then did a twice-weekly posting schedule, I could end the story serendipitously on October 12. So I did.

IX. Names and Special Thanks

In my Making Of post for Cleveland Quixotic, I had a fairly extensive list of where I got all the character and place names from. The list is a lot less extensive here; most names I constructed for the purpose of sounding evocative, rather than taking them from someplace specific. For instance, I chose the name Aracely Sosa because it sounds like whistling with its repeated S sounds, compared to Toril Lund which is a lot harsher with its consonants. You can see a similar rationale behind names like Fiorella Fiorina, Yui Matsui, and even some of the background characters, like Jacq Ray Johnson, Jr., where there is a lot of emphasis on alliteration and rhyme.

There are a couple of exceptions. Jinjiao is the in-game ID of a longtime Chinese League of Legends pro of middling notability. He picked the name (which means "Golden Horn") as a reference to the Golden Horned King, a villain from Journey to the West.

Lutz, Fiorella's cameraman, was named after an extremely minor character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, who is not playable and only appears in a singular cutscene before being killed. They are so irrelevant that despite naming a character after them, I actually forgot their name, which is Lotz, not Lutz.

Haydn is named after the famous classical composer.

Special thanks to 7th and Elick320 for helping me with the teams and battles. Thanks to Gazemaize and julirites, among others unnamed, for reading and providing feedback. And thank you all for enjoying the story.

#when i win the world ends #wiw #bavitz #the making of #writing #pokemon #fanfic #fan fiction #league of legends #faker #the electric tale of pikachu #Youtube

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weaselandfriends · 1 year ago

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The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic

I. Context

After I finished Chicago in 2019, a powerful and persistent fatigue gripped me: the fabled "burnout." The next two years would be the least productive of my literate life. As one day ebbed into the next, I wondered if I would ever be able to write again. I thought of Andrew Hussie, who, after years of feverish activity on Homestuck, seemed now capable of only short spurts of creation, heavily assisted by amanuenses.

It wasn't an issue of knowing what to write. I had been developing the idea for Cockatiel x Chameleon since 2015. I knew its plot, characters, scenes, themes. But when I tried to manifest it into reality I felt drained. What I managed to scrawl was junk, far below my standards. Goaded by a lurking terror of infinite lassitude, I forced myself to blurt 60,000 words of an initial draft; loathing it, I scrapped it entirely.

That was when I got the idea to write a "fun" story.

My vision for Cockatiel x Chameleon was technically complex and emotionally demanding. Maybe something simpler, a straightforward adventure, would be a stepping stone to recovery. I thought back to Fargo, which I had written (unlike most of my works) with relative ease and minimal forethought. How could I emulate that experience? What made Fargo so easy compared to Chicago and Cockatiel x Chameleon?

After reflection, I concluded that Fargo was, at its core, a revenge story. Revenge stories are older than dinosaur dirt. They are fundamental to human experience, easily understood, all structure inherent in their premise. The hero, wronged, seeks revenge on the villain. From that sentence alone you understand the protagonist's motivation and the plot's direction: trending inexorably toward final confrontation. With such a powerful core, it'd been easy to add details and complications to Fargo as they popped into my head, without warping the story's innate trajectory.

If I wanted another "easy" writing experience, I decided, I needed a similar type of story. Something with a clear premise that removes the burden of planning. A "template plot," where beginning/middle/end is fundamentally present and the writer merely adds their own spin. It took little time to think of such a story type. After all, it had been ubiquitous in Japanese media for the past decade. Not only was it popular with readers, it was appealing to amateur authors; many of its biggest examples originated as web fiction.

I decided I would write an isekai.

II. The Isekai Genre

A person from the real world is transported to a fantasy world.

Not quite as old as the revenge story. Nonetheless, this narrative concept has existed for over 100 years. The premise immediately informs the challenges the protagonist will encounter. They will adapt to a world they know little about, introduce knowledge from modern Earth society, and rise in power and prominence. Toss in a Demon King hellbent on world domination and you get a clear narrative climax. The details can be changed nearly any way without issue.

(Or so I thought.)

In retrospect, I myself was being transported to a new world. If we ignore The Chronicles of Narnia or The Pagemaster or Digimon Adventure and focus solely on the contemporary isekai genre (say 2012 on), which is what I intended to emulate, my experience extended to only the following titles:

1. Sword Art Online

2. Log Horizon

3. No Game No Life

4. The Saga of Tanya the Evil (or Youjo Senki)

5. KonoSuba

This is not only a pitiful sample size, but a specifically poor representation of the genre. Sword Art Online and Log Horizon exist in their own subgenre—trapped in a video game—and have many oddities unseen in more traditional isekai. No Game No Life and Tanya the Evil are "real" isekais, but both have unique worlds that eschew most traditional fantasy elements (especially in Tanya's case). And KonoSuba is a parody.

Nonetheless, I felt that, via cultural osmosis, I "understood" the isekai genre. Based on a few video essays I once watched that roasted dreck like Trapped in Another World with a Smartphone, and reverse engineering KonoSuba's parody, I conceived an impression of isekai as wish fulfillment: A loser gets another chance at life, often with some boon to ensure they don't muck it up this time. They become the hero, triumph with their strength and modern intelligence, and meet lots of attractive women.

I smirked. Heh, I thought. What if I made an isekai... that wasn't wish fulfillment! Truly novel. Let us take the premise of KonoSuba—a benevolent god gives a loser a second chance in a fantasy world—and turn it on its head. Instead of a benevolent god, what if the main character was sent by... a devil? The loser protagonist makes a Faustian bargain to become a hero. They get exactly what they wish for, except they're still a loser at heart, and inevitably bungle everything due to their own social incompetence.

That was the flashpoint. Ideas came together quickly, exactly as I hoped. Soon I had a narrative. It went like this:

III. The Original Idea

Our protagonist is a bumbling failure who lives with his mother. One day he sees an advertisement for a devil's wish-granting service. Being a fan of isekai anime, he goes to the devil and wishes to be sent to another world, one where he'll be the most powerful person. The devil, a sleek and professional businesswoman, agrees to the unusual wish, but pushes the work of actually creating the world to an overstressed, chain-smoking intern. The intern cobbles the world together in a matter of hours and our protagonist embarks on his journey.

He arrives to find the human kingdom besieged by the Demon King's army. The humans are outnumbered; total defeat is imminent. Just as he wished, though, the protagonist possesses incredible power. He charges into the fray, destroys the demon army singlehandedly in instants, and slays the Demon King himself soon after. The protagonist enters the human kingdom hailed as a hero.

Soon, the Human King emerges from his castle to express his immense gratitude. He offers the hero anything, including his daughter's hand in marriage. The hero takes one look at the princess―named either Mayfair or Viviendre, I wasn't sure which―sees she is exceedingly beautiful, and eagerly agrees. He's gotten exactly what he always wanted!

Unbeknownst to him, the king is a schemer. Advised by two strange beings—the rotund fairy Tetzel and the living plant Tintoretto—the king believes the hero is too popular; the people would side with him if he sought the throne. The king offers his daughter not in goodwill but to tie the hero to his side. His ultimate goal is to control the hero's power to imperialistically expand his kingdom.

Meanwhile, the princess has her own schemes. She's a lesbian and has zero intention of sleeping with the hero. In a comic scene, she gives the hero excuse after excuse why they can't sleep in the same bed despite being married; the hero naively buys it. Eventually he catches on, but while he's upset by the situation, he's too morally upstanding to do anything but accept it. (This would be a recurring theme: The hero could use his strength to force people to do what he wanted, but constantly shirks from doing so because he refuses to act in a way unbecoming of a hero. His morality and desires exist in a constant state of push and pull.)

Eventually, the hero and his wife compete for the affections of various female characters, with the wife always winning. Temporary the elf was part of this subplot: A dimwitted ambassador to be competitively wooed. To keep the hero sated, his wife buys him a female slave to use "as he likes." The hero, possessed of modern anti-slavery sensibilities, is appalled. He instantly frees the slave girl and enters a crusade to abolish slavery in the kingdom. Unfortunately, because he is not particularly smart, when he debates the slaveowners over the evils of slavery they routinely trounce him (using many arguments real-world slaveowners once used). Again, he could use his incredible power to kill the slaveowners, but they're law-abiding members of society. Murdering them would be "immoral" in the hero's eyes despite his staunch belief in the immorality of their actions.

Around this time, the hero finally uses his power for something good and sends gold back home to his financially poor mother. Unfortunately, this charitable act also goes awry when his sister, an IRS agent, thinks his disappearance is a ploy to evade taxes. She gathers a posse: her coworker boyfriend, his two friends (I called them Aaron Van Zandt and Allen Van Langevelde, envisioning an American Psycho vibe), and a private detective. Using security camera footage they track the protagonist's last known movements to a dingy apartment building, where they find the overworked devil intern who created the world and force him to send them there too.

They roll out in a huge SUV: Five people plus the hapless intern, armed with guns and equipment. The king, not wishing to lose the hero, decides he must intercept them before the hero learns of their existence. In a big setpiece-style scene reminiscent of Children of Men, a horde of knights ambush the SUV on a forest road. Arrows fly through the front windshield, killing the boyfriend (passenger seat) with an arrow to the neck and wounding Aaron Van Zandt (driver). The SUV crashes into a tree and the sister flees on foot, followed by Allen Van Langevelde, who has barely spoken before then but who now reveals themselves to be a badass marksman as they dispatch knight after knight with efficient hunting rifle shots. The private detective is wounded in the leg and forced to remain behind, while the devil intern cowers in the backseat. Aaron Van Zandt limps out of the driver's seat and attempts to follow Van Langevelde, but a knight on horseback rushes past him and knocks him down a steep incline, where he smashes his head on a rock and seemingly dies.

The knights surround the vehicle. The private detective fights back, but is overwhelmed and killed. The devil intern is captured to be burned at the stake later. The sister and Van Langevelde escape on foot, but without the intern, they can't leave the world. They need to rescue him before he is executed. Meanwhile, Van Zandt, clinging to life, is discovered by fairies and brought to their court.

And then...

IV. The Problem

And then I got stuck.

First, it should be clear by now that I did not actually have a plot. I had a series of incidents, loosely organized. Vaguely I knew the main character would work to overcome his social ineptitude and ultimately truly succeed, accomplishing the character growth his get-rich-quick Faustian bargain could never provide. But nothing came together in a coherent structure. Despite my intention to stick to a template plot, I instantly destroyed the template by killing the Demon King in the first chapter. I still had character conflicts and ideas to pursue, but no actual story.

Plus, the main character being a loser made him—well, a loser. Even if he eventually grew, he still ate shit again and again before vanishing entirely from the big action setpiece.

So my original idea of quickly and easily constructing an isekai plot hit a roadblock. Luckily, it was now 2021. After two idle years my fatigue seeped slowly out of me. Finally I regained my energy; I no longer needed to write a "fun" story. I decided to shelve the isekai, potentially permanently, and worked on Cockatiel x Chameleon in earnest.

This time, the draft of Cockatiel x Chameleon―which would be the final draft―progressed acceptably. It consumed my entire focus and I might not have thought about the isekai at all if not for two hiccups. First, though I now had the mental willpower to technically execute my ideas, the emotionally intense material of Cockatiel x Chameleon still left me sometimes wistfully longing for a story not quite so bleak and harrowing. Second, I revisited the isekai genre.

V. The Isekai Genre, Part 2

The anime analysis YouTuber Ygg Studio (formerly known as Digibro) posted a video called Is Mushoku Tensei The Most Influential Isekai? (History of Isekai) that outlined the isekai genre's chronology in Japanese pop media. Watching the video, I discovered some surprising origins to the "contemporary" isekai genre. Though there were many isekai stories―even popular ones―before, the current isekai craze seemingly began in 2012 on a Japanese webfic site called syosetsu.com, where several popular isekai were written in close temporal proximity to one another.

The main titles of note were Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei—followed by KonoSuba, which was specifically a parody of Mushoku Tensei, instead of (as I once believed) a general cultural conception of isekai. In fact, it was these three works that created the current cultural conception, establishing many now obligatory tropes.

So, I decided to watch Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei.

I was shocked! As it turned out, my clever and subversive idea―treating the hero as the loser he was instead of as a wish fulfillment badass―had not only already been done, it was foundational to the genre! Both works feature loser protagonists whose social ineptitude constantly causes problems for them despite their cheat mode powers. Both protagonists are forced to develop as people rather than rely on their advantages, and the development of their relationships with the other characters is a crucial consideration of both works.

As it turned out, Trapped in Another World with a Smartphone (which I also haven't seen) wasn't the beginning and end of the genre. I had underestimated isekai. In retrospect, the languid existence of my 2019 and 2020 led to me ironically attempting the same cheap wish fulfillment of my imagined isekai protagonist. I wanted a "fun," "quick," "easy" story and intended to use isekai for that purpose, the same way an isekai protagonist assumes being sent to another world is an easy way to becoming a hero.

It was time to return to the planning stage. This time, I wouldn't take things for granted.

VI. The Original Idea, Part 2

First, I revisited my protagonist. Originally an afterthought: a punching bag who failed whenever he exhibited any agency. I decided on another direction. My hero wouldn't be a loser by incompetence, but by choice. He would be clever and intelligent, but unwilling to apply himself. He wanted a new world because the original didn't seem worth it; too rigid, too structured, too immune to change. His journey would be discovering it wasn't the world holding him back, but himself. Believing nothing could be changed, he stopped himself from changing. Thus, Jay Waringcrane came into existence.

Earlier ideas were remixed around this new protagonist. I merged the devil boss lady and the devil intern into a single character, a semi-hapless sort for Jay to outwit. That was Perfidia Bal Berith. The hero's sister, whose subplot originally lacked any connection to him, now became a foil to his ideology. She exhibited utter faith in the "real world"—its mechanisms, its processes—and applied herself diligently to maintenance of its status quo. That was Shannon Waringcrane.

Still needed a plot. Since my hero was no longer a social bumbler, I discarded the original beginning where he annihilates the Demon King's army and toyed with a new idea. The human kingdom, besieged by the Demon King's army, becomes aware via prophecy that a hero is about to appear in their world. The king sends a party led by the gallant prince to find the hero and bring him safely to the kingdom. When Jay arrives, he meets the prince and his crew, but they are immediately beset by demons, who kill most of the party and grievously wound the prince. Jay, the dying prince, and the sole other survivor―a taciturn, dark-skinned mage named Viviendre who is secretly the prince's lover―barely escape. The prince succumbs to his wounds shortly afterward, leading to an emotionally-charged moment in which Viviendre laments his death and blames Jay for causing it. Leading to an adversarial relationship between Jay and Viviendre that, after much character development, would eventually turn into romance.

Then Jay would lead the kingdom against the Demon King, constituting the main plot.

This idea improved on the previous in several ways: exciting start, high drama, and a long-term goal. However, as I became more engrossed in this project, I came to dislike the "default fantasy world" I'd used as my setting thus far. When my goal was "quick and easy," the Dragon Quest-inspired medieval fantasy tropes sufficed. Now, they struck me as banal. In particular, a generic "Demon King" villain disinterested me (which was why I summarily disposed of them in the idea's first iteration), so even if it outlined a clear direction, it wasn't a direction that enthralled. I realized that to continue, I needed to do some worldbuilding.

VII. Worldbuilding

I dislike worldbuilding.

I prefer the real world―or the real world distorted by urban fantasy and surrealism―to an entirely fictitious fantasy world. In writing an isekai, I had wanted to maintain the connection between the real world and fantasy world (hence why one of my earliest ideas was for Shannon and her cadre to follow Jay in a modern vehicle with modern weapons). But by relying on stock fantasy tropes, I only exacerbated the core issue. I decided to think deeply about my setting and design it to both stand out and clearly relate to our world.

To determine a deeper connection between fantasy and related, I pondered the historical development of the fantasy genre, from chivalric romance to Tolkien. (I collected my thoughts into this essay.) Tracing this lineage, I considered writing a fantasy world modeled on Arthurian and Carolingian romance. Then I took the idea deeper. Much of the early modern fantasy genre, up to and even to an extent including Tolkien, was rooted in nostalgia for an imagined and idealized past. Many pre-Tolkien fantasy works were born out of Victorian fascination with medieval Europe, as evidenced by the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, the Arthurian poems of Lord Tennyson, and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The original isekai, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, parodied this idealized medievalism (Twain blaming Walter Scott specifically for the genteel Southern culture that propagated slavery and rendered the Civil War inevitable).

Then I realized that, 200 years before this nineteenth-century craze, there was another major literary work that parodied excessive love of chivalric romance: Don Quixote.

As soon as I made that connection, everything clicked. Rather than Perfidia whipping up a new fantasy world on demand, she would reuse one she created in the 1600s for a Don Quixote-esque figure. Rather than Spanish, my Don Quixote would be British, a royalist in the English Civil War seeking escapism in face of the collapse of monarchy. Pursuing standard chivalric romance activities, he would overthrow a corrupt Catholic church analog, slay a few dragons, and war against a Pagan nation that he later converted to Christianity.

What happened to this world 400 years after Don Quixote used it as his playground? I imagined the ex-Pagan nation a vassal to the Christian nation, while secretly plotting an uprising. Don Quixote's descendants, legitimate or illegitimate, grasping to maintain control in face of their weakening bloodline. Dragons hunted to extinction. A stasis that prevented sweeping change without the intercession of a true human, yet gripped by slow decay. Prayers cast for a new hero to save them from this stupor.

I also wondered how the Christians of this world reckoned with a Christianity whose foundational text is clearly meant for a different world entirely. While Don Quixote's scion, still ruler, promoted the religion uncritically to maintain their grip on the culture, underground grew a nihilist cult that believed nobody in their world was saved, that Christ died on Earth and thus only cleansed Earth's sins. All of this intermixed with the same historical devolutionary forces that ended feudalism and gave rise to mercantile oligarchy.

That was the world Jay Waringcrane entered. A world rife with thematic potential. Finally, a plot was forming.

VIII. Starting the Story

This last stretch of planning happened quickly. (Evidenced by traces of the earlier idea remaining in Cockatiel x Chameleon, specifically in the brief descriptions of the in-universe isekai from which Temporary the elf hails.) Rather than fight a Demon King, Jay's mission would be more chivalric in nature; he would rescue a princess from the evil wizard who led the heretical cult. Liking my earlier idea about the princess who first seemed like an ordinary damsel but turned out to ulterior motives, I decided for an end-of-arc twist where the princess secretly worked with the cult all along. Thus, Princess Mayfair came into existence. For the evil wizard, I reused one of the original king's advisors, the living plant.

The gallant prince and his secret lover from the second iteration returned as Jay's companions, although I changed the lover from a mage to a ranger. Shannon would still pursue Jay, but I merged Van Zandt and Van Langevelde into a single character named Wendell Noh and cut the private detective entirely, giving the sleuthing job to Shannon's boyfriend, Dalt Swaino. I rearranged the big action setpiece where Shannon's group meets disaster: Instead of fighting knights, they would fight a dragon, and this time, Jay would be involved.

After that, keeping with the chivalric romance aesthetic, I threw some faeries into the mix (I love faeries): the obnoxious Olliebollen, who would play off the more sullen Jay, and Flanz-le-Flore, a mid-arc complication. I also decided to make the cult members monstrous demi-humans with magic powers; the Christian anathema against magic must necessarily make it actively corrupting in this world run on Christian precepts.

On top of these plans, several long-term ideas already bubbled: The eventual introduction of the devil world, Sansaime's pregnancy, Viviendre, a battle with elves, Mayfair uniting the two worlds. The ideas flowed one after another now that I established a solid base. Sketchy outlines of the full story stood limned in the distance. I was ready to write.

I decided the work would be published serially at a one-chapter-per-week pace, identical to Fargo and Chicago. That decision was baked directly into my original desire to write a "fun" story. With a serial work, there is less burden of technical execution; the focus is on a fluid pace with regular updates instead of unimpeachable prose. Furthermore, serial writing lends itself to story speculation as readers comment every week, turning the work into a collaborative experience. Some readers of Chicago have told me that the reviews on fanfiction.net are an integral part of the experience, for instance.

When I post serial works, I first build up a "backlog." Essentially, that means I write several chapters ahead of what I'm posting online. The backlog ensures I can regularly post chapters even if one chapter takes longer to write than usual. (I can generally write a 6,000- to 7,000-word chapter in one week.) For this work, I decided to complete four chapters before posting the first. This generous backlog allowed me to post the entire first arc weekly, without a break prior to the climactic chapter that took two weeks to write.

When establishing the backlog, I also gave myself more time than usual to edit, which allowed me to polish the beginning for a better first impression. I meticulously pruned the first chapter to make the dialogue between Perfidia and Jay as snappy as possible while also minimizing exposition. (Originally, Perfidia explained the Seven Princes and their increased quotas in an internal monologue, since I knew they would become important much later in the story, but I cut it for streamlining purposes.) Additionally, I spent a long time deciding when Chapter 2 would end and Chapter 3 would begin; originally, the scene at the beginning of Chapter 3 was at the end of Chapter 2, but I moved it because it better matched the tone and scope of the third chapter. Olliebollen was originally far more in-your-face obnoxious; I toned them down. Lastly, I added the part in Chapter 4 where Jay remembers being beat up by Shannon's past boyfriend, which not only hinted at a soon-to-be-introduced major character, but gave Jay a reasonable chip on his shoulder to cause friction between him and Makepeace.

With four chapters completed, I was ready to post. Almost. I still needed a title. The entire time I operated only thinking of the story as "my isekai story." Thinking long and hard, I came up with titles such as American Isekai, The Waringcranes, 144k Angels, and—my personal favorite—Hellbrowned, the last of which I was strongly advised not to use by every single person I know.

(Side note: Setting the story in Cleveland had been an easy decision. It's such a funny city, taking Detroit's tragic Rust Belt decay and removing all grandeur. The Jon Bois video The Browns Live in Hell and the famous Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video sum it up neatly. Setting the story in 2017, the same year the Browns infamously went winless, was also a snap decision.)

Finally, I thought back to Don Quixote, the impetus for much of the worldbuilding, and the title revealed itself.

IX. Writing the Story

Because of my fast-paced schedule, I lacked the luxury to make major changes to my plans as I wrote. I started with a plan for the first arc and scattered ideas for the future. As I wrote the first arc, I planned the second, and as I wrote the second, I planned the third.

Room remained for tweaks, though. Each time I write a story, I try to do at least one thing outside my technical repertoire. This time, I wanted more flexibility in my characters. I usually only introduce the bare minimum necessary, and aggressively cut or merge characters to reduce the total number. In Cockatiel x Chameleon, however, some commentators criticized how the Consortium's limited number of characters gave the impression it was as dead and empty as Harper's real life. While that impression doesn't necessarily conflict with the story, it did expose limitations to my economical approach.

I dislike having limitations. (Unfortunately I have many.) Thus, I decided to write more characters whose storylines were not plotted from the onset, characters I would develop spontaneously as the story progressed.

An example is Lalum. I introduced Lalum in Chapter 5 as an enemy with a unique power for Jay to fight. Zero subsequent intent for her at the time. Then I realized her power would interact well with Flanz-le-Flore's, so I kept her around for that fight as well. When Lalum is attacked in the Flanz-le-Flore fight, I was 50/50 on whether she would live or die. However, a friend reading the story really liked her and wanted her to live, and I realized it might streamline the plot if someone was around to point Shannon and her crew in Jay's direction.

Having spared Lalum from death twice, and also conceptualizing more concretely the second arc—including Viviendre's role in it—I decided I had a use for Lalum after all. I conceived of Viviendre and Lalum being foils, envisioning their eventual confrontation in the last arc. Thus, Lalum went from monster-of-the-week to major character. To a lesser extent, characters like Theovora were introduced offhandedly, and while they did not become major characters, I found small uses for them later.

Speaking of Viviendre, that was another challenge for myself. With her, I wrote something I wouldn't normally: A romance. Cockatiel x Chameleon, believe it or not, was originally intended to be a straightforward romance, but I found myself incapable of writing one and pivoted to its current direction. Nestled within the sprawling undertaking of Cleveland Quixotic, the romance between Viviendre and Jay was my attempt to write two people who genuinely liked each other. Their three-chapter mini-arc in the middle of the story moves at a more lax pace than usual, but allowed me to develop a relationship I otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

In general, Cleveland Quixotic is larger than my other works. More characters, more plot threads, more locations, more everything. Though Fargo and Chicago are also large, they operate in a more enclosed and linear space. My thought process with Cleveland Quixotic was to open up and express that feeling of world-spanning storytelling the fantasy genre is so known for. It pushed my limits, but I accomplished that goal more than in any previous work.

The real challenge is, once you go big, how do you reel it back? So many of the isekai I mentioned remain ongoing, proceeding through arc after arc without end in sight. Today's most notable ongoing fantasy literature, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, is likewise mired in endless expansion the author seems incapable of curtailing. On RoyalRoad, it's easy to find million-word works with early reviews uniformly positive, but recent reviews expressing a new sentiment: "Dropped after nothing happened for the past 200 chapters."

Above all else, I wanted to avoid that trap. My solution resided in the second arc's climax, which I developed midway into writing the first arc. Uniting the two worlds made it natural for all the distinct groups of characters to join up for the finale, tying every plot thread together. As such, I cultivated multiple storylines in the long and less immediately plot-focused second arc, secure in my knowledge of how it all eventually connected.

Even so, at times it grew overwhelming herding so many characters. Many characters wound up less prominent than I initially intended, sacrificed for the good of the overall pacing. Fortunately, few characters wound up utterly vestigial, and those that did were minor. (There's no worse feeling than a character given loads of screentime and dialogue only for them to end up inconsequential when the curtains finally close. Homestuck reeks of it.)

A few miscellaneous changes that occurred while writing:

I intended for Viviendre's brother, the "mad king" of California, to appear in the final arc, wielding ten relics for an epic duel with Jay. Given the large amount of characters already prominent in the story, I cut him.

I intended for Sansaime to die at the end of the second arc and for Avery to live. This was mainly because I wanted Jay and Shannon to have a cathartic moment with Avery in the final arc (Avery still would have died afterward). I realized that, using Pandaemonium, I could have that cathartic moment anyway, and Avery wound up saving Sansaime's life both outside and inside the story.

On the flip side, I originally intended for Mallory to die at the end of the second arc, but decided I wanted her and Mayfair to have a climactic conflict, which could only be done if Mallory were still alive.

I intended to kill off the minor character Gonzago of Meretryce the entire story, probably by having him jump in front of Shannon to take some attack or another. I never found a way to work it in, and I feel like the actual use I got out of him in the climactic fight, though minor, was far more unique. I likewise considered killing Mademerry by having her take an attack for Mayfair, but I prefer her current ending. I did not intend to kill Pythette, but found at the last moment it would be more convenient if she died.

Beyond that, I wrote the story generally according to plan. Leaving aspects of my plans malleable meant I could write quickly without needing absolute certainty in the precision of every line and action. Only in Chapter 45, the climactic chapter with Beelzebub and Moloch, did I sit down and carefully outline what each character would do at each moment in the chapter. (The chapter's seven-minute time limit made such meticulousness essential.) Otherwise, even in other climactic fights, I relied only on general ideas about what should happen and when.

Ultimately, I successfully completed the longest story, with the largest number of characters, I'd ever written. It pushed my limits, but in a way that didn't leave me gasping for air. Instead, I feel ready and eager for my next story. What'll it be? I have an idea and I've already begun research. I hope to start writing it by the end of the year, and publish it by mid-2024. I'll let you know more as things become more concrete.

X. Names

Before I end this post, a few name origins.

Perfidia Bal Berith: As mentioned in the story itself, "Bal Berith" (or Balberith, Baalberith, et cetera) is a false idol mentioned in the Bible. It is also a demon of the Ars Goetia. My familiarity with the name primarily comes from a weapon used in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Olliebollen is based on oliebollen, a Dutch pastry.

Mayfair is the name of a character in Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, the first video game I ever played. Her middle name, Lyonesse, is a character from Arthurian legend.

Makepeace came from an attempt to make a name that would pair well with Mayfair. My primary knowledge of the name comes from British author William Makepeace Thackeray. His middle name, Gaheris, is an Arthurian knight.

John Coke's name was modeled on the character Wicks Cherrycoke in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. I only found out after I posted the first chapter that John Coke was the actual name of a person involved in the English Civil War notable enough for a Wikipedia page. I was more than happy to pretend this incredible serendipity was actually my plan all along.

Sansaime's name was modeled on the characters Sansloi ("without law"), Sansfoi ("without faith"), and Sansjoi ("without joy") in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which was the primary inspiration for the romance elements of Whitecrosse. "Without love" is also a notable phrase in the visual novel Umineko When They Cry.

Whitecrosse's name also comes from The Faerie Queene, being modeled on the Redcrosse Knight, an allegorical representation of England (with its red cross flag).

Many names in Cleveland Quixotic have an "allegorical" sense, being words that suggest a clear, often moral meaning. Charm, Charisma, Mayfair, Makepeace, Mademerry, Theovora ("god eater"), Condemnation, Obedience, Tricia (short for "patrician"), Meretryce ("meretricious"), Mordac ("mordacious"), Malleus ("malleable"), Astrophicus ("space plant"), Viviendre ("life ender"), Perfidia ("perfidy"), and so forth. These allegorical names are a play on The Faerie Queene being an allegory, although many of the names in Cleveland Quixotic are not an accurate representation of their character, indicating the breakdown of allegory and thus clear moral meaning.

California is the name of a location in Amadís de Gaula, Don Quixote's favorite romance.

Dalton Swaino is the real name of a semi-pro League of Legends player.

Wendell Noh's surname comes from a professional League of Legends player. His given name is the name of a character in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light.

Kedeshah is a Hebrew word that possibly refers to sacred or temple prostitutes.

Ubiquitous is an ordinary word with a clear meaning, but its abbreviation, Ubik, is a Philip K. Dick novel that was also the name of one of the demons in Berserk.

The Seven Princes, rather than refer to the traditional Ars Goetia representations of the Seven Deadly Sins, are pulled from John Milton's Paradise Lost, which was the primary inspiration for most devil theology.

Flanz-le-Flore is a corruption of Blanchefleur, a name that appears in a few romance legends.

Lalum is an alternate translation of Larum, a character in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.

Pluxie is a feminization of a semi-pro League of Legends player's screen name.

Tintzel is a corruption of the character's original name, mentioned earlier, which was taken from historical corrupt priest Johann Tetzel.

Jreige is the surname of a semi-pro League of Legends player.

Justin "Just" Vance is a play on J.D. Vance, an Ohio politician.

Temporary, one of the earliest names that persisted into the final form of the story, is modeled on the elves in No Game No Life, who have names like "Think" and "Feel."

The other names in the story do not have any particular meaning or genesis.

XI. Conclusion

I believe that covers the generation of Cleveland Quixotic from beginning to end. If I missed anything, or if there's anything you want to know more about, please send me an ask and I'll be certain to answer. Thank you again for reading and stay tuned for my next work!

#cleveland quixotic #cq #bavitz #writing #the making of #isekai #fantasy

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