#FINALLY got my drafts back below 100!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

neoflect · 1 month

Text

sharing some of my disorganized jojo musical thoughts now that ive had a week to sit on it and ive rewatched it several times over. i intended to wait to publish something like this until a subtitled version was available, but im not seeing any indication that thats happening any time soon so for now youll have to deal with my loose interpretations from my extremely rudimentary and rusty japanese… so take what i have to say about the finer points of characterization with a grain of salt. gratuitous spoilers below obviously, both for the original source material and the changes made in the stage production

my feelings are OVERWHELMINGLY positive. of course there are things i can criticize or that i would have personally done differently but oh man… i have literally not thought about anything besides this fucking show for a week. im 100% confident in saying this is a better adaptation of the source material than the tv anime. sorry to the davidpro staff, i respect their hard work and their love for jojo and their dedication to what is by any metric a pretty difficult property to adapt off of the page, but i dont know if i can ever forgive them for leaving half of the first episode’s storyboard on the cutting room floor in order to fit a standard half-hour tv slot, especially considering that what they cut is some of the really crucial character-building stuff. happily those scenes are not only reproduced in the stage version, some of them are expanded upon!

with the quick disclaimer that i’ve only managed to get my hands on the final 4/14 performance with shotaro arisawa and yoshihisa higashiyama, from what i’ve seen the casting is perfect. i’m sure there’s a rip of the 4/13 performance somewhere (i’ve seen clips) but i haven’t been able to find one… every single performer knocks it out of the fucking park, the cast chemistry is incredible and even the minor characters are loaded with charisma. and mamoru miyano… my god… mamoru miyano i owe you an apology. i was not familiar with your game. of course hes been killing it for decades at this point but i had soured on him a little bit recently because i felt like he was overcast in everything and i just didnt connect with his dnt reinhard at all, so when the casting was initially announced back in august i was underwhelmed, and of course my standards for the dio role in particular were astronomically high… i’ll go more into detail later in the post because i have so so many things to say about dio’s characterization here but mamoru miyano’s performance is like, life-changing. i had impossible expectations and he exceeded them.

sorry if im gushing. i am a hater by nature. its unusual for me to be so thoroughly pleased with something. im not even a musical theater guy. these are strange new feelings for me.

just to balance things out i’ll talk about a couple of the things that didn’t really work for me: first of all, the music is just ok. my initial draft of this post called the music “bad” but three additional viewings later i have warmed up to some of the songs. i don’t know if this is a shortcoming by dove attia as the composer or if it’s just me, as i said i’m not a musical guy and a lot of the genre conventions of musical theatre are not really the things i look for in music that i enjoy, but like… even at their worst they are serviceable. nothing here is sonically unpleasant to me. high points are “resolve of the ripple” (zeppeli’s hamon training song, a jazzy swing number - it’s simply catchy and fun to listen to) and the closer “phantom blood” (a sweeping ballad that reprises the earlier “light and darkness”/”golden spirit” leitmotifs into an epic duet between jonathan and dio as they join hands and walk off into the darkness together… made me cry! i wont lie! on every single one of my numerous viewings this one got me misty eyed!)

wait i forgot this is supposed to be the part where i’m being critical. ok my most loathed song in the musical is “dio’s world”. sorry dio nation. it doesn’t really work for me. i think this might be a case of my standards/expectations being too impossibly high because it’s not even really the worst song in the whole thing. and of course miyano eats it up so it’s not really his fault. i just find it kind of underwhelming… i find the melody a little grating, it’s kind of just a generic rock number, it’s just missing a particular je ne sais quoi…. the essence of dio isn’t there… lyrically though i am obsessed with the premise of dio recruiting his minions by selling himself as a kind of social revolutionary who is upending and inverting the brutal hierarchy of post-industrial victorian society with zombie blood magic. you win some you lose some.

the second sticking point for me is the costumes. they’re perfectly serviceable… adequate… but i mean when it comes to jojo “serviceable” and “adequate” costume design obviously falls well below what’s expected, right? a lot of the outfits have kind of a boxy, almost flat-looking kind of unflattering fit on the actors, which if i wanted to be generous i could attribute to the challenge of bridging the gap between these frail slender musical theater twinks and the two-meter-tall 250lb roided-out beefcakes theyre meant to be embodying. (bearing this discrepancy in mind a lot of the insane martial arts stuff in the second act doesn’t really land with the oomph that it should, but i also understand logistically why this kind of casting is not practical, and all things considered i think shotaro arisawa does a really incredible job of embodying jonathan joestar even though he kind of looks like i could snap him in half over my knee like a twig. he’s very cute. so i’m not mad about it.) of course, again, logistically, i understand that in a stage musical production, where actors only have minutes to complete costume changes, some sacrifices have to be made to the creative vision in the name of practicality. nevertheless this is jojos bizarre adventure!! i want to see some fucking baubles!!!!!!

which is all to say that… after carefully considering it for some weeks… i still have extremely mixed feelings about dio’s grink ass feather bathrobe look. it’s not that i dont think its something he could wear (the concept of dio lounging around in his gothic vampire palace doing re-animator style body horror experiments on the local wildlife in this “officer i have no idea what happened to my husband”-ass nightgown is nothing short of hysterical to me) but then he wears it into combat and i felt a little disappointed… it has the same unflattering fit issue as the other outfits in the show, and it is just such an un-araki-like design… where are the gaudy color combinations? the bizarre geometric patterns? the tease of an exposed boob/thigh/midriff? erina gets a stage-original dress design that i have fewer issues with because the excessive pleats and ruffles have more of an araki-esque sensibility, but every time i look at dio’s robe it feels like there’s something missing. i’m going to choose to be nice about it because it’s not at all a deal breaker and, again, mamoru miyano devours the look. it’s fine. it’s always fun to have a new dio outfit. if anything, the fact that the blu-rays are being marketed as “2024 cast version” gives me hope for the possibility of a future production with a new vision for the costume design. (although the fact that this was such a difficult production - with stunts and pyrotechnics and moving setpieces - that its entire first week was cancelled indicates to me that the prospects for a future production from a different company are impossibly slim. i guess there’s always hope?)

in terms of the writing and the changes that were made from the original narrative, honestly i don’t really have an issue with anything that was cut. sorry if there are any diehard stans of Poco’s Unnamed Sister out there who are steamed that their favorite minor late phantom blood character got the axe, i kind of understand how you feel because i’ve been malding over david pro cutting the Danny Lore for eleven years, but i think it was the right choice and the story flows so much better. the real juicy meat at the core of phantom blood as a narrative and the thing that brings it head and shoulders above so much of the rest of jjba is the character-driven drama - that deliciously pulpy victorian gothic family tragedy - and the relationship between jonathan and dio. the musical beefs up the character drama and slims down the action-driven second half by trimming out the extraneous battles. the only real downside i see to this is that the absence of tompetty and his prophecy makes zeppeli’s arc and death feel INSANELY abrupt, but tbf that’s not a deal breaker for me. sorry zeppeli. you were born to die.

okay. okay. i think 1500 words into the post is enough fucking around so let’s talk about the real reason why you and i both know we’re here

musical dio is SO fucking sad. he’s positively wretched, you guys. he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone and forced to eat cement when he was six. he cries even more than he does in the source material and even when he’s not crying he frequently delivers his lines as though he is moments away from bursting into tears. back when the musical first opened i was snooping on the reactions on jpn twitter and one commenter said they could see miyano’s tears and snot from the nosebleeds even without opera glasses, a remark i initially assumed was hyperbole but that i now think probably was not. araki’s dio is certainly tortured and a deeply pathetic crybaby beneath all the cruelty and posturing, but changes in the musical and miyano’s embodiment of the character bring this pathos to the fore. he is literally haunted: dario’s ghost lingers, a manifestation of all of dio’s traumas and insecurities that emerges from the recesses of his memory to taunt him with the reminder that he will always be his father’s son, all the way up until the very minute that jonathan breaks down the door to his vampire lair. i am OBSESSED with this - not only for the obvious reason that i delight in dio’s suffering personally but also because kong kuwata is a delight and he fucking kills it every time. also lends itself to a category 10 leitmotif moment at the top of the second act when dio emerges from the charred ruins of the joestar estate singing dario’s theme and calling out to jonathan - if i had to pinpoint this is probably the moment when this musical stuck for me as the Real Deal. they Get It.

the first solo number in the show is dio’s disney princess I Want song (amazingly, simply titled “dio”) where he weeps for his late mother and his wretched lot in life, and then - in a creative decision that made me clap my hands and hoot and holler at my screen in real life - there is a reprise of this number (delivered, naturally, through tears) when dio is almost arrested for murder and decides to become a vampire instead. so there’s this amazing hopeful uplifting inspirational orchestral music accompanying the onstage action of dio ruthlessly slaying jonathan’s dad and then getting pumped full of lead by a bunch of cops. it is brilliant. 10/10 no notes. it’s moments like this that i think really sell the “softening” of dio in the stage version for me, even though i am historically Not A Fan of fanworks that take a similar angle - like, yes, he is sad, but specifically he is narcissistically obsessed with the spectacle of his own suffering, he is boiling over with bitterness and rage for everyone around him who (by his own estimation) could never hope to have suffered as much as he has. this sensitivity and self-pity he wallows in are not expressions of a guilty conscience or a desire to change - they’re entirely the opposite - every cruel and monstrous deed dio commits is always justified to himself because he is simply the saddest little boy who has ever existed. he has been done wrong by the world and so there is no limit to the depravity he may reasonably respond with. i’ve seen several commenters describe this as a drastically different interpretation of the character from araki’s dio (and someone told me on twitter that mamoru miyano himself has also said this, but i cba to go digging for an actual source so take it with a grain of salt?), but i… dont think thats the case! dio’s obsession with his own weakness and his self-perception as the eternal underdog (as compared to jonathan) are certainly more exaggerated in miyano’s performance, but i don’t think this is an angle to the character that’s been manufactured out of whole cloth. the genre conventions of the stage musical force the melodrama up to eleven and dio’s incredibly repressed angst is the most rich vein to mine for that. hair-trigger sadist dio is still here, it’s the same guy, he’s still killing people mercilessly, you’re just getting to see him sing a big ballad about his feelings instead of confining those to an internal monologue.

if anything, the exaggeration of dio’s pathetic/cowardly/crybaby traits combined with his megalomaniacal aspirations and bottomless well of cruelty is just right. it’s perfect. fucking around, finding out, and then trying to weasel his way out of the consequences with crocodile tears just so you don’t see him drawing his knife to cut you clean open… yeah. thats the stuff. thats my one true blorbo. sad to say i will love him for ten thousand years.

i think that might be all i have to say… or at least all i feel like saying here… most likely ill come back and edit this post later. i certainly have some additional thoughts and some more esoteric/controversial takes but they’re not suited for a public blog. real ones will understand. im keeping my eyes peeled for somebody to translate this thing but to be frank i am kind of enjoying this little corner of fandom as it is right now: just the asians and the true hardcore phantom blood phreaks. i have not had this much fun in jojo fandom in almost a fucking decade. as soon as somebody publishes an english version my timelines going to get flooded with all the most deeply annoying “kono dio da” “speedwagon waifu” reddit guys and 15 year olds and my suffering will proceed. unfortunately this is my lot in life and i am doomed to be here forever because dio put a worm in my brain

#⚰️#jjba tag for blacklisting purposes but i dont want this in the main tag

86 notes · View notes

avelera · 2 months

Text

Avelera's Dreamling Fic Status Update:

Keeping Sanctuary (subscribe for updates here) - Giving Sanctuary Sequel follows Dream and Hob from the events of the altered meeting in 1689 up to the modern era. (aka, What if they hooked up after the 1689 meeting?) Current word count: ~7,000 words across several chapters. Realistic progress update: 1/10 complete total, Ch. 1 is about 1/5 complete.

(The rest are below the cut!)

Come live with me and be my love - Dream and Hob fall in love during the Regency Era when Dream loses a bet to Desire. Shenanigans ensue. (aka, What if they hooked up after the 1789 meeting?) Ch. 16 is at 2,500 words, probably about 1/3 done. Current plan is to wrap up Part 1 in the next few chapters then create a part 2 which finishes out their "1 year of marriage" on a month by month basis instead of following them day to day like Part 1 done. Probably won't be a separate fic though, just a change of format.

This Rough Magic - My take on "Hob rescues Dream from Burgess" with a twist that Hob ends up on Burgess's radar himself when he picked up some occult magic skills in the hopes of contacting Dream after 1889 and apologizing. Now he has to pretend to be friends with Burgess in order to get them both out of there, because Burgess thinks Hob can help force Dream to give him immortality. (aka, What if they hooked up after the 1889 meeting?) Ch. 9 is about 800 words in. Story is still very much in progress I just have a lot of WIPs, as you can see.

Joke's On You (I'm Into That) - The 1589 meeting goes very different when Hob proposes to Dream, who is so offended that he just can't let the matter go. A very angry, very horny competition kicks off between them. (Aka, what if they hooked up in 1589 when they were both at their absolute worst as people?) I have literally 40,000 words written for the rest of this fic. The problem is, there's big gaps in that first draft I have to fill in and scenes that need to be added. This might be my favorite WIP but it's also the hardest to write with all the smut scenes so it'll arrive whenever I can manage, I'm afraid.

Banana Daiquiris Ch. 2 - Comic-canon compliant (mostly) - Dream fakes his death to go on a vacation with Hob and Destruction. They end up in Tahiti. Destruction plays matchmaker. Hob doesn't know whether to thank Destruction or strangle him. Current word count 6,000 words. I've been playing around with adding on to this fic for ages. One of these days, I'll pull it all together.

Great Triumphs and Tragedies - aka, "Dream Accidentally Cursed Hob with a Normal Life" Fic - Dream learns that from 1689 on, Hob's life has been safe. Too safe. Improbably safe. Nothing bad or extraordinary or even terribly special has happened to him since Dream began to consider Hob his friend. He knows this because during his imprisonment, Hob's life became exciting again and suddenly went back to normal the day Dream was freed. Hob is not convinced that Dream is the reason for this, Dream disagrees. They talk about it. And fight about it. And some things that they've probably needed to talk about for a long time finally get said. (aka, sometimes the author just needs to write their weird headcanon into a 20,000 word fic that's almost entirely dialogue). Current word count: 19,000 words and about 80-90% finished. I'm hoping that posting what I've got will help push me through the final stretch.

And for fics that haven't been posted anywhere yet (you can subscribe on my Ao3 author page for alerts about them):

Hob Amesia Fic - Dream and Hob are dating officially now in the 21st century when Hob gets hit with what seems to be a memory loss curse, shaving off 100 years of his life each day until Dream finds a cure. This effectively grants Dream a walk down memory lane as he is reacquainted with the Hob of each era and, in the process, learns how much longer Hob cared for him than Dream ever realized. Current word count: 35,000 words. Currently writing 1489 (1889-1589 are done) and I might re-write the opening. It genuinely kills me not to have this one posted lol.

"Fairy God Marlowe" - 1589 fixit fic where Hob and Kit Marlowe strike up a conversation while Dream and Shaxberd are talking. Hob and Marlowe talk about plays, and faith, and salvation, and queer love, and what it means to live forever. Hob gets a second chance at a first impression. Current word count: ~5,000 words. Sadly, it's all dialogue in script format. I'd need to convert it into prose to publish which would be a slog. So it's a bit shelved until I find the energy to do so. No, I will not post it in script format, I'm allergic to the thought.

I've got a few other concepts kicking around, but these are the ones that actually have (*does a quick calculation*) over 100,000 words written that I haven't had the chance to post yet?? And it's driving me insane????

Anyway, I should probably pin this post for those curious lol. Feel free to ask me any follow-up questions, I love talking about WIPs even as they ruin my life!

#dreamling #maggie's writing progress #dreamling fic update #1689 fic #1589 fic #arranged marriage au dreamling

103 notes · View notes

steamberrystudio · 7 months

Text

05/11/2023

Hey everyone! Time for the bi-weekly tumblr update for Steamberry stuffs!

I feel like I have missed a few tumblr updates. I went back and the last one I can find is *dated* August 24 - but was actually posted on September 24th. LoL

I had one dated from October but it looks like I may have never actually posted it. That seems about right for how things have been going for me.

It's been rough. Like...really rough. I'm going to assume that the September 24th post was my last tumblr update. I have been updating on Patreon and even updated on Itchio, so there have been updates. Just apparently not here.

(below, you'll mostly find information on WSC but there is a quick update on GS remnants as well!)

Summary

Have written all but Yren's route *through* chapter 9

Numerous new BGs

Ramble

So the last time I posted it looks like I was just starting Chapter 8 in When Stars Collide. I am currently wrapping up the final scenes of chapter 9.

My word count in the September update was 373,000 and it is currently 413,000. I am just shy of 90% of the way towards my final word count goal.

I am about halfway through writing Yren's chapter 9 content (about 8000 words of content total and I've got nearly 4000 of that written). Once I have that bit written, I will be done with Chapter 9 for all characters.

I've gotten new art since my last post but honestly I'm not sure at this point how many. Looking back at my emails, it looks like I've probably gotten 3 new complete BGs + 1 BG sketch since my last update here on Tumblr.

I have updated all the CGs with the new background art as well - the introductory CGs in the current snapshot, of course, use the old backgrounds and the new conference room looks completely different and has different chairs. So I had to go back to those CGs and re-do the chairs. That is done but I haven't actually coded the new BGs yet. I have, however, updated the artwork.

That's basically the major stuff for now with WSC.

Gilded Shadows

Working on the lore book. The art book is complete but I decided to hold off releasing it until the lore book is done so I can release them together. Lore book is taking a while as there is a lot of content to format and I'm adding to it as I go.

It is nearing 100 pages already and...yeah. There's a fair bit more. So it's gonna be big.

Screenshots:

None this time....I don't think.

Upcoming Weeks:

Basically the same old stuff. I will be writing for WSC. I am currently trying to hit a goal of at least 6500 words a week so I can complete the draft by the end of December.

So far I have been able to do that although some weeks I barely managed. It's, as I said, been rough.

I'm continuing to work on the GS lore book. Most of the stuff is at least collected in one place right now, so I just have to format, organise, and add any commentary.

But I've changed computers at least twice since starting this game and some things I remember writing and am now struggling to find. So...that's fun.

Anyway I will try to make sure I post here every two weeks going forward instead of writing up a draft of the post and apparently never showing anyone. 💪

#whenstarscollide #indieotome #amare game #english otome games #steamberry #updates

50 notes · View notes

orbital-inclination · 10 months

Text

Me: I do not need another thing to think about I’m in the middle of drafting a comic and some 4-5k ish words into two chapter drafts I do not need—

My brain: ok but what if in an inverse twist of the undertale multiverse, all au monsters are sentient/robotic androids, sort of like how bitties are in Bitty AUs. With different “brands” representing different AUs. Thus allowing things like “coding” to have a very literal meaning. Underfell bots are constructed for gladiator cage match’s for the entertainment of betters (and probably 100% illegal), Swapfell Gold and AU off shots are military androids sent off to fight wars for their human owners and governments so human soldiers never have to be faced with the brutality of their nation’s international policies. Meanwhile, Class, Swap, and Outer are all domestic brands with varying emphasis on subgenres; pop stars, fashion icons, artificial internet celebrities designed to market certain company’s as “approachable” to the masses, or even legal unpaid domestic servants or nannies.

(Info dump continues below)

Outcodes are fun because they are individuals who were corrupted in some way, and therefore considered disposable by the company who made them. Realizing this individually or because another outcode contacted them, most who are still online out in the world are in hiding. A caught outcode is sent back to the factory to be destroyed and recycled. It’s a death sentence.

On The Star Sans: Dream, Blue, and Ink are outcodes who independently escaped captivity, met each other through happenstance and have since established not just a team but a found family in the process. They live double lives, by daylight they pose as functional domestic bots, and by night they are the Star Sanses, heroes of Ebott City! Motivated by the altruistic desire to help others in need (humans included) but especially other monsters/bots who need help.

Legally, a domestic bot must be registered to a human owner. Normally the bot has no control over this. Dream, Blue and Ink have found a way to bypass this system. Independently they’ve picked out decent people to live with. The humans are unaware they’ve been setup. Dream picked a kind but lonely elder woman, who without family nearby, needed someone to help her live safely and independently. She sees Dream as the grandson she never had. To the surprise of no one, Ink chose an artist; an eccentric magician who moved to Ebott from France, intending to settle down after trotting across the globe for a good couple decades. Ink has accepted him as a father figure. Blue is happily rooming with a professional athlete who volunteers to coach at the local high school, the women has a busy professional life and when she’s gone, he has run of the house and equipment.

Error specifically is one example of a horrible tragic case of a classic sans being tossed into gladiator rings, miraculously survives his first match and than every single one after that but at a steep cost. The brutality of the ring gradually corrupts his code because he is being forced into a function that conflicts with the programming he was “born” with, (the birth of Geno), and later, utterly desperate, Geno hacks into his own systems. Though surviving the attempt is not intentional, he does. His owner, believing him to be defunct throws him out. Error awakens in a trash heap, finally free; and vows untold destruction on the men who made him. (And naturally all of Ebott city too)

And also later: Y/N finds and mends Error’s battered body (after a vicious fight with another outcode) and this starts a very tentative relationship or something idk this is as far as I got.

#orbital chatter #long post #I need to get this out of my head so I can actually focus on what I want to focus on!!#robot!au #automon!tale

101 notes · View notes

amadeusgame · 1 month

Text

Development Sidequest: The Mystery Game Jam

Back in February, I planned out my next several months to help stay on track for Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~Waltz to release this Fall. I had a good chunk of work planned for April:

Mechanics - prototype + implement all "Must-Have" new mechanics for the full game

Background Art - finish 1-2 new backgrounds (to avoid screwing up my wrists again drawing all of them at the last minute) (also because I learned that how I draw the backgrounds impacts how I write the scenes)

Sprite Art - finish 1-2 new sprites

Music - fully flesh out a placeholder track for 1-2 BGM pieces

Narrative - write first draft of all scenes through a certain point in the game (naturally these scenes will change when it comes time to implement, that's just how this goes)

Marketing - prepare + announce 100 Wishlists celebration; make + publish press kit

Which is a lot, but doable if I'm working at it consistently. I'm only working part-time, and Amadeus is my "real" job, so to speak. Right?

Wellllllllll...... there's this little thing called the Mystery Game Jam.

Suffice it to say that I did not accomplish all of the above, but I DID write an entire mystery game. More below. Stay updated here: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

I heard about the jam, and thought back to my previous devlog where I discussed at length how doing other random projects when I was "supposed" to be working on Amadeus has been so valuable for me. I also felt that it would be wise to get more mystery writing experience doing something low-stakes and small-scope, to pull away from this single massive project for a bit and just work on the craft of writing. It would help me learn more about my own process. Also, it would be fun!

So I got a group of people together and gave myself the role of writing our game. I've had a ton of help brainstorming, solving plot issues, and generally improving things thanks to my teammates; the whole process has been collaborative (which is what makes game jams fun). However, I've been responsible for actually writing all of it.

As a result Amadeus had to get put on the backburner, because it turns out that brainstorming + outlining + coordinating + finalizing + writing-with-full-implementation-directions, a complete mystery story- that doesn't have a thousand plotholes- in a month, is a ton of work. Fun work! But a lot of it. As a result, what I actually accomplished from my April to-do list for Amadeus is closer to...

Prototyped "save/load" mechanic

Implemented mechanic that can create pauses mid-text-appearance for dramatic effect

Researched and sketched 1 new point-and-click background

Have sketches for 2 BGM pieces (but both need to be more fleshed out to be usable as placeholders)

Outlined draft of narrative for 1 new scene in the intro (but needs a lot more detail/workshopping)

Planned 100 Wishlists celebration (but didn't get everything ready to announce)

Made draft + format of press kit

Which is, honestly, still a decent chunk! I'll have to do some work readjusting next month's to-do list to account for the fact I'm a little behind, but it's reassuring to see that even in a month where most of my energy was dedicated to a side project, I still got a lot done.

This is where the portion of the devlog directly relevant to the game Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee draws to a close. That 100 wishlists celebration announcement will be coming next month, along with a separate announcement. Lots of news coming in May!

As always, all relevant links here: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame - I will also add our Mystery Jam game here for a bit when it comes out, so you all have something new to play! Check back after May 5, 10PM Pacific!

For the remainder of this log, I want to discuss the process of writing our Mystery Jam game. I have learned so much from it and it's been an incredibly rewarding (if, at times, difficult) process. Collaborations are such a completely different beast from solo projects.

Mystery Game Jam Retrospective

It's a bit strange to write a retrospective when the game jam isn't actually over yet, but my role is mostly finished and I've handed it off to our implementation guy who is hard at work. You're doing great, S1x. Keep it up!

I've done a ton of game jams in the past, but they were always weekend-long jams and I was always just doing audio for them. I've never done a month-long jam before, and I've never taken on a primary role that wasn't as a musician. This was a lot of firsts for me.

I truly believe that game jams don't teach you as much about game development as they teach you about project management. To actually finish a game, so many things have to happen that are all interdependent, and you have to figure out what to do first and who to talk to at what stage so it all somehow comes together on a super-strict deadline. This interdependency is even more apparent for mystery games, where it's fully expected that the player will be paying attention to clues all across text, visuals, and interface. You can't give a completely finalized asset list to artists until you know exactly what every aspect of your mystery will be, otherwise you'll end up forcing your icon artist to re-draw the same asset a bunch of times to match the tweaks you made to the story.

So the biggest obstacle in making this game was that we didn't reach the "details of mystery are completely finalized" stage until over halfway through the month, mostly because I kept putting it off (I'd overwhelmed myself by giving myself all this and also Amadeus homework). We also had to coordinate across time zones and work schedules which introduced additional delays. We got to that point eventually though! Notably, once I had figured out some important things...

This is a collaboration. I was trying to do too much big braining on my own at times when what I really needed to do was schedule a voice call with teammates and bounce ideas. Talking things out with our background artist in particular helped a lot with getting past some hurdles that were really not working.

I am not a writer who can design a mystery puzzle in a vacuum and then add characters as set dressing on top. Once I realized I was stuck, I decided to just start writing out the prologue scene to get a feel for the characters and setting; this forced me to create unique characters who had a reason to be there, and those reasons gave me ideas for the mystery. It turns out that designing a puzzle is a lot like solving a puzzle: if one angle isn't working, take a break and try another angle. You'll learn more about the puzzle, how it works, and eventually all that knowledge will come together and you'll figure it out.

This is a game jam game. This is (probably) not going to be anyone's magnum opus. This is going to be a very fun silly knockoff Ace Attorney game with a robot detective. I'm generally good at keeping a chill attitude for weekend-long game jams, but because we had a month I was taking it way too seriously at first.

Most importantly... it's not reasonable to write an entire new mystery from start to end in a month while also doing a ton of work on Amadeus and working part-time. So I eventually told myself it was OK to ignore everything else except work and the game jam for a while, and focus on this.

(...I also spent about 20 hours obsessively working on my Very Spoilery Ghost Trick ROMhack when I was overwhelmed, as a sort of escape. It was obvious that my brain was refusing to work on the game jam so I just let it do what it wanted for a few days. Sometimes the ADHD wins.)

Reaching that key point-- the point where all of the details were finalized and everyone knew exactly what needed to get done-- was a huge milestone. But even after that, I still had to actually write the words for all of it. Writing in the sense of "mapping out the major plot beats and details of the mystery," and writing in the sense of "actually writing, line-by-line, the text of the game along with implementation instructions" are completely different skillsets. I already knew this from my experience working on Amadeus, but I had to re-learn it here.

Fortunately, by the time I was sitting down writing words, our musician had written some total bangers for the game and I was able to listen to those to really set the tone for what I was writing. If a certain dialogue box cues the "totally-not-objection" theme, then the energy for those next few dialogue entries should be VERY high energy. Listening to that theme while writing made sure it matched! And once our player character artist had designed the MC, I was able to find that character's "voice" much more easily to match the energy of that character. The work of other teammates helped inspire me to do my own work, and have more fun doing it.

I really like doing these collaborations because it's fun to make something completely different than what I would make alone. I also like collaborating because there are certain changes I'm forced to make to my workflow in order to make life easier for my teammates. It forces me to be more organized. I have to do more pre-planning so I'm not forcing artists to revise their work 20 times, and so the implementation engineer only has to implement once with a few exceptions, and can easily swap out placeholder assets when those come in. Thinking ahead like this is a really good habit to get into in general! Even as a solo dev if I learn to make my own life easier in this way I will save myself the headache.

Will I learn that lesson? Most definitely not. But hopefully I'll take something away from this. For example, the awesome beautiful spreadsheet I made to format my scripts for implementation:

(I'm still not the easiest person to work with, though. I'm kind of bossy. While I do try to at least not be every artist's worst nightmare, it's definitely in everyone's best interest that my big major long-term project is a solo work.)

I'm excited to see how it all comes together in the very end. I'm excited to see what people think of it. Where, on the spectrum of "too obvious" to "moon logic," am I landing on average? Just how weird is the pacing of reveals? These are questions that a non-game-jam game would be able to answer in a playtesting/beta phase, but this is a game jam game, so you get what you get. Making it has been really fun. Look forward to it when it comes out! It will be posted by S1xplus, our implementation engineer. It should end up on my itch page as well.

Look out for ROBOT DETECTIVE: THE CASE OF THE AUTOMURDERATED INTERN (working title)!!

#Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #devlog #indie game dev #mystery game jam #mystery game writing

10 notes · View notes

takitafulily · 7 months

Text

·*"A word on this page is a person who's out there, and by some miracle, we've crossed paths..."*·

WOOOOOOOOOOO! FIRST FOLLOWERS MILESTONE! Thank you everyone for supporting me and getting me to 100 followers! As thank (and to my own excitement) I finally get to do a followers' event!

You can request for anything in the list below, anything in my request box and I'll write it within 100 words! The word count will of course go higher the more milestones we hit (sweats...), but for now I can handle a couple hundred words!

Since it's Halloween season and I've barely wrote anything for it, I especially welcome Halloween requests! If I need to, I will close the ask box if there's too many requests but for now, go crazy!

Requests:

Misadventures of the MCs! (Probably my most well-known series)

What in Hell is Bad! (I have a few drafts of fics of this fandom cooking but I'm excited to write more!)

Obey Me! Both OG and Nightbringer! (Note: my knowledge of nightbringer is limited since I haven't read much of the story but I'll give it a shot!)

Twisted Wonderland! (My long 2 year hyperfixation lol... with the Halloween events going on right now, go nuts!)

Mystic Messenger! (Got back into the game after 2 years, still love the characters, the only thing keeping me and Saeran apart is the fucking hourglasses [or lack of])

LoveToDo! (*sigh* my precious child that no one's heard of, I only wish to do you justice so the world will learn how wonderful you are...)

Thank you and have fun! ~*·*·*~

28 notes · View notes

weaselandfriends · 10 months

Text

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

38 notes · View notes

valoisfulcanellideux · 4 months

Text

I see the tag-spamming pornbots are back

That's two days running now that I've opened up the EmpiresSMP tag, only to be confronted with a video of a naked female crotch or a pair of tits, with NC-17 bold title text right at the top of the tag feed.

Good job I only ever open the tag feed at home because it's on a separate tab on my PC, rather than opening it at work where my co-workers might see it.

I always report these as bots, rather than as adult content, mainly because they're abusing the tagging system. Genuine adult content should be tagged correctly using the 'sexual themes' Community Label that Tumblr provides, so that minors and those not interested in viewing adult content don't have to see it.

These pornbots are never tagged with those labels. I have zero problem with correctly-tagged adult content, but I do have a problem with people deliberately abusing tags to shove their T&V into other users' faces.

More after the cut, because I got wordy...

This is a HUGE fucking problem, Tumblr. EmpiresSMP is Minecraft content. The minimum age you can be to get a Tumblr account is 16 in the EU and 13 elsewhere. And even then, if you are over 16 in the EU or over 13 elsewhere but are under 18, then:

These pornbot posts are not flagged as explicit. They do not have Community Labels applied. They are deliberately using tags that will appeal to a specific userbase that is more likely than many others to include minors.

I'm not a prude. I'm not a gatekeeper. I'm not against adult content. Adult content has a place here, but it has to be properly tagged and labelled so those who don't want to see it don't have to. In fact, I was one of the people protesting loudly (on my older account) when Tumblr basically hid away anything (including a lot of non-adult content) that their automated system flagged up, even to the point of hiding those posts from the person who had posted them so they couldn't even access them to check them/appeal the decision.

If you weren't around on Tumblr back then it might interest you to know just how difficult they made that appeal process. To even find the button on each post you wanted to appeal you had to copy the permalink (which took you to a 'page not found') from your main blog feed, create a new post, paste the link into that post, remove a bunch of text (added by Tumblr) from the start of the link, save that new post as a draft, then click the link from that draft. Only then would you get to the post itself, where you could finally find the "appeal" button. You had to repeat that process for every single post you wanted to appeal. And nope, you couldn't get to the post from your Archive. The above laborious process was the only way.

Imagine having to do that when 100+ of your posts had been flagged, and you didn't even know what those posts were because they didn't even retain their titles or show you even a blurred view of any images. They were all just called "Hey, this post may contain adult content, so we've hidden it from public view". That was the 'added by Tumblr' text at the start of every link, so even hovering your cursor over the link would cut off the actual post name link and only show you that.

Some of my image posts that were flagged as adult content, and which I appealed are listed below. All but one of these were Sims 3 screenshots and not one of them contained any nudity whatsoever:

a male couple cradling a newborn baby (both the original post and a reblog)

the same male couple talking to a nurse in a medical facility (both the original post and a reblog)

a 1940s-style office scene

a medieval peasant child talking to his mother in their garden

a Sim cosplaying the Saturday Night Fever disco dance

two Sims in fancy dress (one in An Officer and A Gentleman formal naval outfit, the other as the previous-mentioned Saturday Night Fever white suit)

black and white images of a male Sim in a suit

two female vampire Sims laughing and raising 'plasma juice' drink cartons in a toast

a female vampire Sim wearing bright fuchsia pink and black clothing

a male Sim sunbathing on a lounger, wearing a white tank top and blue denim shorts

a 1930s formal dinner party

landscape screenshots from the MYST game Uru Live

a reblog of someone else's Sims 3 custom content (a vineyard, of all things; I couldn't appeal this because it was down to the original poster to do that, as it was their post that was flagged)

So yeah. When they want to, Tumblr can make things really fucking difficult for its users. It just that those measures usually only affect genuine users, rather than bots.

And sure, 13-year-olds will have seen far worse than a pair of boobies at the top of their Minecraft tag searches. I get that. I was 13 once and I know what I got up to then! But that's not the fucking point.

The point is that I don't want to open up my favourite Minecraft SMP tag and have a video of someone's vag at the very top of that tag search.

I don't know what the answer is to this, tbh. It certainly is not to go and ban all adult content again, but surely there's something that can be done. Maybe at point of sign-up (I can't even remember what kind of CAPTCHA tumblr uses these days) because the blog names - usually three completely random hyphenated words like "mousemat-turnip-calendar" - must be running from a script until it finds a combination that doesn't show "this username is already taken". IDK, maybe block rapid sign-ups from a single IP address, or something?

I've been on Tumblr for ten years now, and I'm just tired of this shit. Really fucking tired.

#rantypants post #tumblr pornbots

6 notes · View notes

artaxlivs · 10 months

Text

Help-Liv-finish-her-Big-Bang WIP game! 💫

Hey peeps! Lex @thefreakandthehair made their own version of the WIP game specifically for their Big Bang fic and it looks fun and challenging. I totally voted, will be back to vote each week. Unfortunately, that, like the regular WIP games, doesn't work for me. We're all different types of writers and that's okay. I'm catering this one to me. You should feel free to the do the same!

My goal is to have the full 100% draft of my Dirty Dancing AU completed by August 31st and I need deadlines to make that happen (that inattentive ADHD yo). So, rather than asking people to pick a new WIP for me to work on or vote words into scenes (I can't write that shit out of order). I'm gonna do this:

Each Monday from now until then, I'm gonna post a motivation poll. For every vote encouraging me to get my goddamn shit together, I will write 100 words before the next Monday's poll.

With each new poll, I'll post a good size snippet that your votes helped motivate me to write during the previous week. Today I'm posting one (below the cut) that I wrote this weekend.

Snippet below the cut:

It’s just a few cabins down from Eddie’s which is how Steve had known where to go last night, they’d walked past it before seeing the commotion at Chrissy’s. They knock but Eddie uses a key to open it just a bit and ask if they can come in.

She looks tired. Wrung out but in the way that shows she’s just been through something not in the way that she’s still going through it. Her normally shiny eyes are dulled but her smile spreads when she sees Steve behind Eddie. Putting her hands out, she says softly, “Steve, come.” She beckons him closer before opening her arms so Steve can lean in for a hug. “Thank you, thank you so much Steve.”

He’s uncomfortable. Not with the hug, he likes Chrissy. She’s sweet and strong and so brave. Her arms are small but her hug is tight. No, it’s not her. It’s the praise for something he didn’t do. “I didn’t do anything but get someone who could actually help you.” He says softly when he pulls away to sit in the chair that he’s pretty sure Robin slept in.

Eddie swoops in for a hug, “Tell him Chris, he won’t hear it from me.” He kisses her forehead as he pulls away and then leans in to kiss Steve on the mouth, squeezing his thigh as he pulls away. It’s unexpected but not unwanted. Steve feels his cheeks go pink and Eddie grins, biting his lip before flouncing out with wild energy. “See you tonight, Stevie!”

Steve’s eyes follow him out and when he turns back to Chrissy, her eyes are twinkling and she’s got a full bright smile shining towards him. “Finally! Tell me everything!” Her nose wrinkles then and she amends, “well, not everything just like the non sexy parts.”

“It’s Eddie, Chrissy,” Steve looks at her seriously, “it’s all sexy parts.”

5 notes · View notes

elphabaoftheopera · 9 months

Note

HELLO!!!! how are you? it's been a while haha 😅... but, long story short, after watching wicked last night im back in the fandom! and what better way to celebrate than read a fic by my favourite author 🥳 ? so, i read "In Any Universe", and boy do i have a lot of good things to say about it!!!!!

this fic is awesome, im sad that i didn't read it earlier! it had my favourite tropes that were amazingly executed, along with so many wacky and interesting alternate universes 😁😁! some that stood out to me were fake dating, masquerade, family and musical. to say that i really enjoyed these would be an understatement!!!! first of all, fake dating is my absolute favouriteee trope, so i was so so excited to see it applied to fiyeraba so well! the masquerade was honestly a really interesting plotline, and the musical universe was cool to see referenced! and family au was soo adorable, and parents fiyeraba make me feel so happyyyy ❤️❤️! overall, they were all so so romantic and cute and made me realise how much i miss fiyeraba 🥺!! i also really liked the general storyline, and the pipeline of fiyero coming to terms and accepting his situation was so lovely and satisfying to read!

i was wondering if you had any little facts about this fic? it was super creative and i couldn't help but love every separate storyline!!!!!

sorry for gushing, im just super happy to be back and reading your fics again! ill hopefully in the fandom again for a while, so i can find the time to read some other works of yours and maybe reread 😁😁😁

@melop-sia!!!!! It's so wonderful to hear from you!!!! Welcome back to the Wicked fandom! Your message just made my entire day, I actually screamed when I read that I was a favorite author of yours, words like that TRULY go a long way. thank you for your thoughts on In Any Universe. I had so much fun writing that one!

Welllllll since you asked, I'd love to share a little bit about it!

Light spoilers for In Any Universe below the cut!

The idea came to me when I was just thinking a lot about fanfiction tropes in a loving way, inspired by fanfiction writers and our tendency to put the same characters into countless different situations/lives and have them fall in love all the same. I got the idea when I was driving (most of my ideas come when I'm driving) about my otp essentially going on a "tour" through the different tropes. Initially it was supposed to be 100% comedic and self aware.

I didn't have a strong throughline planned out in the beginning that would set them off on their journey. I thought about (and even drafted) Fiyero mentioning how "random" it was that they got together and if any one thing was different they'd probably not be together, then I'd have Elphaba take offense to that. But it just wasn't working, especially because I was clinging to the idea that I wanted Fiyero to be human in the present timeline. Once I finally released my hold on that idea and let him be a Scarecrow, the story throughline became much clearer to me! It was easier to write when Fiyero had a "lesson" to learn (sort of "It's a Wonderful Life" style, though I've never seen that movie). That of course made the throughline a bit more serious, as well as some of the timelines getting increasingly darker.

I just can't resist angst and hurt/comfort no matter how hard I try!

I just really love the quote I put at the beginning of the story about finding the same person over and over.

As for the stories within the story, I just started by making a list of as many tropes I could think of. Fake dating, fix-it fic, crossover, etc. and eventually trimmed it down to the stories that made the cut. I wrote them all out of order and then stitched them together later with the throughline story. I think I did the coffee one first, then the masquerade, and then I put it down for several months (as is my style) and picked it back up with the Wicked actor one.

I really considered breaking the story up into chapters and sometimes I regret the fact that I didn't, I still consider breaking it up because I know it's very long. Still I think it flows better as a singular piece but at least can be easily read in multiple sittings if you're like me and need mind breaks.

When I decided to make it one single piece I made a real effort to keep the sections snappy and not longer than they needed to be. I was pretty obsessed over word count and keeping it below a certain amount (I think 1000 words). I think the Fake Dating one ended up being the longest and the hardest to keep trimmed. Still, I wanted each story to have a satisfying arc in its own way.

One challenge I gave myself (which was VERY difficult) is that I didn't use the word "love" until the very end when Fiyero told Elphaba he loved her after getting shot. I came to that idea later on and had to edit a lot of the earlier stories. Then he says he loves her many times in the finale scene.

I thought it strengthened his lesson about being grateful for what they did have. I found it really important to mirror the "can't imagine thinking about how things might be different" (paraphrasing) in the worst timeline with her dying in the cornfield with what he'd said in the beginning.

As for the ending I did leave it slightly ambiguous, but I believe as the writer that the journey he went on was real and not a dream (kind of like I believe that in Wizard of Oz Dorothy's experience really happened, even though it seemed like Dorothy was waking up from a dream). However, I wanted to the reader to decide for themself!

I think my favorite ones to write were the Fiyeraba family (I love them as parents!), Coffee shop AU, and the Masquerade. I also found it clever and trippy to do the Wicked actors, but that one was by far the hardest challenge!

I so appreciate your readership and engagement with my work!!!! Please reach out in the future if you ever have thoughts or questions.

I don't want to jinx it because it's still early days but I'm excited to say I've been writing again (Fiyeraba, obviously) now that my life has more time. We'll see where it takes me, so be on the lookout!

#melop-sia #wicked fanfiction #in any universe #writing tag #comments and reviews #story: in any universe

5 notes · View notes

bubblesthemonsterartist · 1 year

Text

2022 Creator’s Self-Love Extravaganza

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite works (fics, art, edits, etc.) you’ve created this year and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world in 2022. If you don’t have five published works, that’s fine! Include ideas/drafts/whatever you like that you’ve worked on/thought about, and talk a little about them instead! Remember, this is all about self-love and positive enthusiasm, so fuck the rules if you need to. Have fun, and tag as many fellow creators as you like so they can share the love!

@thelionshymnal dug this one up and while they didn't tag me, I felt the tag in my heart. Therefore, I pulled out the original rules with a little under 24 hours before the calendar flips over to a new year, I think I am safe in saying that my word count for the year is complete.

I did not write a lot this year! Comparatively, at least.* A mere 25,682 words have gone to publish. But it's also been a very disruptive year in that I quit my job of 5+ years, got rid of ALL of my stuff that couldn't fit into a tiny car, drove seven days cross country to a New Better Shinier Job (while writing a final paper), rented a 10 x 10 room above a garage for several months where my cat was very kind by not murdering me, dropped everything to sit at my dad's deathbed, went right back to work the following Monday, finished yet another graduate degree, went on a trip to Maine with friends, moved AGAIN to a much larger much more private space, and uhhh... signed up for yet another degree program. Because I have a problem. Clearly. Oh and I also broke a bone for the first time in my life! It's in my foot! I haven't gone out to do ANYTHING other than get groceries for the last two weeks and it sucks!

2022 has been a lot! More good than bad and overall improvement of everything, but a lot! And I've wanted to write. I've thought a lot about it in the moments before falling asleep! But any progress is still progress and my body comes first these days because in this house we practice self-care.

That being said, what I have put out, I've been immensely proud of. So, in no particular order and without further ado...

On the Event of the Annual Lilias Recruit Hazing Final Exam (ans, gen)

I wrote third person limited! For the first time! It was weird but also a fun to write something where the audience only has the interactions and body language to read.

2. where mended hearts meet (obiyuki, 🍋)

While I haven't been writing proper most of the year, I have been obsessing over @onedivinemisfit's camboy!obi au. It's been my personal problem, like, ever since she first introduced the concept for it and I've been screaming about it every chance that I get. Part of me much much wants to write the whole thing, but also acknowledged that I did not have the time. But also also I knew I was not going to be productive about anything at ALL until I wrote at least a little smutty smut for it. I mean, two consenting adults who are very accommodating of one anothers kinks and traumas? Sign me the fuck up, let's do this.

3. Drabble-Drabble 2022 Challenge (multiple fandoms, multiple pairings, all ratings)

Perhaps because I haven't had a chance to really focus on my writing this year, I wanted to do something uncomplicated. I remember loving drabbles back in my livejournal days. Just being absolutely laid out by 100 words precisely. But I'd never tried it myself so I wanted to give it a shot! I asked and y'all sent in around 30 prompts and I answered 26! It was a blast, highly recommend to anyone out there that wants to try their hand at it.

4. Seven Nights, Night 7 (Hakuouki, Yamachi, 🍋)

I had a moment when I went to see the timestamps of the chapters I worked on this year and it was literally just Night 7 of Seven Nights. It's split into three chapters, but it's 14k words just leading up to the final night, I don't even know what to say, y'all. Yamazaki is just real shy and writing two virgins was a lot harder than I thought (and I already thought it was going to be difficult!). I do really love it, though, they're adorable.

5. Stone Soup (Spy x Family, Yor & Yuri)

I would be remiss if I didn't include the final posted fic of the year (and my first foray into the sxf fandom!). Not only did I write a child's pov, I got to incorporate some real mean food feels into it. All together a real good time! XD

Okay! I've done it! I've said the nice things about me! Now I shall tag people, hmmm... @spoonyglitteraunt @sabraeal @claudeng80 @onedivinemisfit @infinitelystrangemachinex and anyone else who wants a go!

*Word count by year since 2016:

2016- 97,273 2017- 167,645 2018- 138,769 2019- 130,429 2020- 126,435 2021- 91,014 2022- 25,682

#bubbleswrites #about me! meme #writer meme #2022 writer meme #i could've sworn i did one of these last year but i clearly lost whatever i tagged it as #since the last one i found was the 2020 writer meme #also when I was making this I had clearly forgotten some of the fics I wrote #I got to the b-side of pas de deux and was like #oh wow i wrote that?#how neat #good job me have a gold star #now the rest of you!#give yourself gold stars! 🌟💖

14 notes · View notes

inkovert · 2 years

Note

Welcome back to writeblr! ...I say as I only now dip back in myself after too many years of lurking. >.> I can't wait to follow along with your journey of editing your draft! I'm at a similar point in my writing, and while there's so much talk about writing and plotting and eventually publishing maybe, sometimes it feels lonely to work in that in-between zone of being "done" but not really. And congrats on 60 books! That's insane! As someone who desperately needs to read more, do you have any recommendations for Best and Worst books that you read?

aw thank you! Yes I definitely get the lurking. I've been lurking myself for the past few months but have finally decided to commit to posting again.

Haha I didn't think my editing journey would be of interest to anyone so I'm happy to hear that. I may post about it more than I'd intended to then in hopes that it may be useful to someone.

I 100% agree with you - though I understand finishing a draft of a story requires a *massive* amount of time/effort so understandable that there aren't floods of people posting about this part of the process - but I have been floundering to find advice about editing and while there is some out there I wish there was more! And just more commiseration about how hard it is? Like I've only just started in the last month and I haven't made much progress, I'm still figuring out an organized method to go about it. All that is to say I'm happy to commiserate with you any time about this "done-but-not-really" phase that we're both in lol.

Re best and worst books I've read: oof. It has so much to do with preference! A book that I consider 10/10 great someone else may not find their cup of tea. If you're asking for book recommendations for you to personally read for enjoyment I'd need more info on what you personally look for in books! If you're looking for recommendations on books to read to analyze story elements that I think have been done well and/or not so well, that's a list I'll provide below (excuse if this is not what you were asking for):

Books Stronger in Important Story Elements

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles: Strengths: Storytelling, narrative voice/tone, well-rounded characters, character development. Weaknesses/Criticisms: time-jumps could be confusing.

I think this novel was brilliant and so enjoyable because of the way the story was told. Of all the things I listed as its strengths the biggest was the character development. Following The Count (the MC) from where he began to where he ended, and how his growth came about so organically was so satisfying. And despite the slower-pacing of this story, the narration is delivered in such a charming way to keep you engaged and turning the pages.

Legendborn by Tracey Deonn: Strengths: everything. Weaknesses/Criticisms: nothing (I’m joking I just can’t think of any).

This book is probably in my top three reads of this year. You want well-rounded characters with clear motivations? You got it. You want amazing and well-explained worldbuilding with information delivered to you at necessary times and not info-dumped into a wall of exposition? You got it. You want a well-paced story that nicely balances the heightened action and suspenseful beats of the story with the low-stakes emotional, introspective beats that will keep you hungrily devouring the pages? You got it. You want a well-developed and not-forced romantic subplot? You got it. I have nothing bad to say about this book, but I’m sure there are criticisms out there if you want to go looking for them.

Pachinko by Lee Min-Jin: Strengths: strong characters/character development over long time period, thematically strong Weaknesses/Criticisms: again, don’t have any but they’re there ofc

If you are writing an epic saga or a series, even though this book is a standalone, I think it’s a masterclass in how to write realistic characters who readers get to follow over an extended period of time. You can watch how they grow over a number of decades and simultaneously how they retain their flaws and the core of their identities. A big theme/trope of this story is generational trauma, which is handled incredibly well.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah Strengths: strong atmospheric writing and strong conflict Weaknesses/Criticisms: Some people think the ending was rushed/too unrealistic- while I understand the criticism I don’t agree with it so form your own opinion!

I will preface this by saying there are a number of CWs in this book that I would look up before reading because I was shocked/unprepared when they came up as I was reading. That being said, this is an emotionally heavy book. But what I think it does the best is that it makes it clear from the get-go that the setting is a major character of the book, and Hannah does so with such strong atmospheric writing that you can feel yourself in the bone-chilling, bleak, harsh winters of Alaska. But even more than that, is that the major conflict(s) that are central to the story are not just man vs. man or man vs. self but also man vs. nature. The setting is a silent but imposing antagonist, that is foreshadowed long before it becomes a threat, which makes this book even more terrifyingly engaging.

Books Weaker in Important Story Elements

Disclaimer: I am criticizing these books purely from a writing stand-point. These books may be great content/premise wise; they’re probably someone’s favorite book, and that’s fine. But objectively I think most of my writing-specific criticisms are valid (and I’ve read reviews from other readers who have shared similar viewpoints).

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzales

I hate to criticize an author of color because there’s so few of us out there. But that doesn’t mean we’re above making mistakes. To be fully transparent, I did not finish this book (DNF'd @ 30%), but I was buddy reading it with a friend who did finish it and she told me that all the issues I had with it carried on to the end of the book, so I feel confident/comfortable still saying this. This book had a lot of potential, and the premise was quite interesting, but the strength of the story got buried beneath heaps of exposition/info-dumping, a lot of “telling” not “showing” (mostly with regards to the characters, which made it hard for me to connect with them and see them as real people). Another issue this book suffered from was its lack of focus. The author attempted to tackle way too many things in this story, which left her unable to meaningfully explore any one theme/subplot. So this book taught me that being overambitious with the topics I’m trying to tackle may not always be a good thing and can cause my story to suffer. And info-dumping on your readers can make them want to pull their hair out (at least that was the case for me). See: Lengendborn on how to balance the info you give readers.

Things We Do In the Dark by Jennifer Hillier This is a thriller/mystery novel also by an author of color (I’m sorry). This book did a lot of things well and I think it was a great novel…just not as a thriller. It took me a while to figure out why I felt meh about this book and it was because there was such a lack of suspense. I wasn’t sitting at the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. I felt like I was reading a contemporary fiction novel sans thriller.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch Same as above. This book did not have me hanging at the edge of my seat despite being a sci-fi thriller. What I believe this book suffered from most though, is that it felt like it was written for a movie adaptation, and not to please/satisfy its readers. In this new age where books are being shuttle to the screen with increasing frequency, I get it (esp because this author already has one his books being adapted to screen). But I think that just sets you up for the “movie is better than the book” comment. If you’re a novelist, honor your medium and write a book, not a screenplay.

An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard There are too many issues with this book to count, so I’ll just list the lessons that I learned post-read: If you’re writing a book with multiple POVs, make sure each POV matters. Don’t use multiple POVs just to give the illusion that the story is fast-paced just because we’re constantly shifting POVs, or to make it seem like more is happening in your story when really…nothing is. It just makes the story unnecessarily complicated and hard to follow. Put as much time and effort into crafting villains as you do your main characters. Don’t make them caricatures! Make them well-rounded so they feel real and I actually give a shit about them even if I don’t agree with them. If you’re gonna build up to some intense moment or event - make sure there’s actually a satisfying payoff. Don’t end every conflict/battle in two sentences. It just makes me as a reader stop trusting you every time you point a red arrow at a scene and say “Look! This is cool/important!” I'll walk away feeling cheated and lied to.

I hope this was somewhat helpful to *someone* even if this wasn’t what you were looking for. Feel free to ask any follow up questions or come back and chat with me :)

#sorry this took a minute to answer #I had to really go back through my goodreads and remember what books I'd read this year #and then I was overwhelmed about how to talk about each book #but this was a fun exercise #that I'm happy to maybe do in the future if people find it helpful?#I think reading is *such* an important step in improving your writing that people overlook #understandably so because finding time to read is not easy #but it's really helped me on my writing journey #especially as I go back and edit my first draft #now I know things that made me put down books I was reading #and I know to avoid said things #ask

5 notes · View notes