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Everybody's Writing!!
Woo!!
As you guys know, I write quite a bit. So far, I've finished a couple of stories, but not many.
My first foray into writing was quite forever ago, a story called Raya!, which was (if you can believe it) a magical girl story inspired by Indian mythology. It was basically a CW teen drama combined with a brutal magical girl series. I say "brutal" because it didn't really question the magical girl orthodoxy or anything, it just took things to logical extremes. Though, despite the constant destruction of the main characters rich neighborhood due to what is believed to be actual terrorism, nobody ever moves away.
However, I just stopped writing it after a while, and moved on. I did reuse one of my favorite concepts in it later, and I'll definitely talk about that eventually.
Fast-forward a lot, and my last attempt at really writing something was a story called Honor Board, which was about (surprise surprise) rich high school students navigating their lives. That also kind of petered off, mainly because I could never figure out why the main conflict, that the main character Pfeiffer has to navigate a friendship with her best friends -Arabella and Zainab- who were fighting with each other, existed.
Sometime after that, I actually buckled down to write something seriously and, by George, I actually managed to do it! That story is called Return from the EDGE, and like the original title (Return to the world from the EDGE, which felt excessive) it was very inspired by light novels. The main characters all wielded giant machines powered my dimensional energy, and went out to fight mysterious creatures from a dimension layered on top of our own.
I worked very seriously on the setting. I actually wrote down notes, which I almost ever do very seriously, just to keep track of all the places and acronyms. The factions were much simpler to deal with, since at the end of the day it was still a story where individuals dealt with individuals, rather than being moved by their allegiances. Hilariously enough, I've basically forgotten most of said universe details, though I can at least draw out a sketch of the character arcs without checking.
I have a few interesting stories about this story, actually!
First of all, I once wrote the whole of Chapter 11 and then saved over it. I think the second attempt turned out better anyways.
The original draft of the story was 13 very long chapters long, written like an anime series, and that version of the story featured a whole different set of antagonists (though the main villain remained the same). I looked at that draft and realized it was really off, so I cut those original 13 into about 20 or so and added 18 more.
I also went about six chapters into the original draft before I came up with an actual plot, and that plot was basically the perils of privatization, which then just became a subplot among other things.
Also, it's set in Norway and all the technology was named in Google Translate Macedonian, because... well, it was cool.
I originally meant to write a sequel to this story immediately after finishing writing it, featuring the protagonist Sigmund going to Morocco and training two new Moroccan kids in the fight against RRs, but it never really went anywhere...
I do kind of find myself falling into patterns, or forcing myself into them at least. For example, all of Return from the EDGE and Detective Brody are written from the main character's perspective (except Detective Brody's first sequel, which features an epilogue from somebody else's eyes). I think it's fun to write like that, actually, so I'll try and stick with it.
However, I do find when I write in multiple perspectives (see my upcoming post on death games) I write much faster and more obsessively than normal. I guess because it's easier to see all the different perspectives.
Anyways, I guess that's all for now. Next time: death games.
Comments
Typo! (oh well now I have to redo that).
It should read "foachinuinguzu". That is, "フォアチンウィングス".
Literally just MS Paint. It's what I use for most of my cover art on fictionpress too, though for Detective Brody I went fancy and used Jeta Logo Designer. I might end up redoing them in MS Paint anyways, though, just for consistency.
Yeah I should really look into that.
Quite a bit, actually. Researching modern Norway was pretty fun. I mean, it was pretty easy too since it's easier to find information on modern Norway (where they speak English as a second language) than most other things.
I looked up buildings, more general things about how people lived (though a lot of my characters ended up being more intense and boisterous anyways since that's how I write), listened to some popular Nordic pop guys (this was surprisingly hard even during the age of YouTube) and so on. I also tried to look into schools, but I quickly dumped the school element of the story so that didn't help with much.
I read The Local NO for months, too, just so I could keep up with things.
Fun Fact; Norwegians don't normally use eBay, they have a site called Finn. It sells, basically, everything (including houses). You can even post job ads on it.
I think I cheated by just having all of my characters by default just speak Norwegian, as if the story were told in autotranslate.
Whenever I start writing out a death game, I'm very enthusiastic about it. I love the characters and the intense plotting that a death game has to entail. However, after about 15-20 chapters, I can feel myself starting to burn out or well... in all honesty... become disturbed at myself.
How am I writing this? How can I create entire characters just to watch them grovel at the feet of mortality itself.
Maybe one day I'll manage to get through a whole death game, but probably not now.
Death Games: UR Doll
UR Doll was inspired by a draft I wrote long ago, which was pretty basic*. It wasn't originally designed as a death game, but the premise I'd written out made it ideal for one.
*Read it here:
Until she's uploaded into the Virtual Doll Program, a distorted, glitched version of the real world from which only one of the ten participants can escape with what they were promised. With each day comes a new mission to reach that goal. Those are the rules, enforced by faceless abominations known as High Dolls. Having to balance her mind and body in the new virtual world and taking down others with their lives on the line, Emily decides she has no other option but to go along with it.
That basic premise, that a girl was stuck in a computer world taking part in an experiment to save her sick brother, evolved very quickly. First I decided on a real life setting, Virginia, with the main character attending George Mason University and studying political science. To date, this is the only time I've written about a protagonist out of high school.
UR Doll's premise was distinct from it's two main plotlines. These were:
**There is a group of two neurosurgeons (one crazy, one learning the ways of crazy) and a nurse (specially trained in life-support, since everyone is in VR) on a Black Site near George Mason University who have been tasked with creating a psychological profile of the perfect soldier. Somebody who can fight towards any specified goal.
This profile, once created based on the 10 participants, will be 'Intergrated' into the minds of top soldiers and special agents. This would include good aspects such as being mission-oriented and putting the team above one's own needs, as well as bad aspects such as not being too concerned with one's own horrific actions, or completing the mission at all costs.
**One of the participants, I forget his name, is a Romani immigrant to the United States, who passed through a lot of treacherous areas on his journey to America. It would be slowly revealed that there's a war going on between Italy, Romania and Bulgaria vs Turkey and a couple of allies (don't ask me specifics kay, and also Turkey wouldn't be in NATO for reasons).
Anyways, there's a pathway that illegal migrants used to pass these war zones, but most of them have died trying to cross it since it's like, a war zone. However, it is in this area that Italy is developing some sort of super-weapon, working with the more industrialized European countries, and it is believed -the unnamed boy, I guess we could go with Aslan for now?- has come across a facility related to this weapon and has seen schematics related to it.
Therefore, after further consultation with the shadowy team behind the approval of this whole thing, the two doctors and nurse find the memories he had of the places presumed to be this area and turn this into the world the 'Dolls' have to play in.
However! They will also try a new experiment, running on an artificial brain. A doppleganger of Aslan, who will also try to comb through Aslan's memories whilst participating in the game. Then the obvious happens and Aslan's duplicate realizes that if he can kill Aslan, he'll be able to take over Aslan's real body on the outside.
There are 10 characters in the game overall, but some have way more plot than others. I think it's a disservice not to describe them, so I will in a later post.
Emily
Emily is the main character. Her brother Michael is extremely ill, and at the start of the story he's just been thrown into a deadly fit that the doctors promise to cure if she goes into the Virtual Doll Program.
In the virtual world, Emily acts as the 'Moral Leader' of the group. As such, the characters who are more empathetic to others gravitate towards her. In the course of the story, she begins to develop feelings for Aslan (note: this is somehow the only story I've ever written where the romance was central to the story, and where the romance was between a boy and a girl).
As the more Moral character, she's always caught between saving her brother and doing what Benny says. She's also the most affected by the various deaths (which I felt I was portraying oddly at the time, as if she were becoming a monotonous 'Emily felt hollow inside' type).
The day the story begins, Emily visits her mother and father, who both disappeared for a few weeks (not coming to visit Michael etc) and finds them unpacking their bags from a holiday. They also suggest she stop visiting Michael as often. I only really did that to drive in more despair, but I think if I were to ever write this story again, I'd keep it.
Aslan
I've explained almost everything about Aslan's backstory, but the main thing of note in his everyday is that he's a TV/Cable installer, the same age as Emily. This was supposed to highlight a difference between them. Though they both fell on the more 'moral' side of the cast, Aslan has already seen horrors both at war and liars/cheaters in his everyday work in America. He sends all his money home to his mother and sister, his father died in the war.
Aslan immediately finds himself at odds with the more tribal characters of questionable moral fortitude; Everest, Brody and Rachel. Eventually, towards the middle of the story in a sort of turning point, he is killed by Everest.
He was convinced to join the VDP program because it paid well.
Everest
A second-generation Trinidadian immigrant and a verified genius with a very high IQ. Everest had a fairly normal social life, studying Political Science at George Mason in order to further his goal of one day being employed at a think tank. He and Emily were the best students in their course, and he slowly started to see her as a direct opposing figure. Emily, on the other hand, is constantly worrying about her brother so she doesn't really care about the goings on outside her course.
He slowly becomes obsessed with her debate abilities, to the point that he considers asking her out just so he can continue arguments in class on dates. However, right before he implements this plan, Michael's health takes a turn for the worst and Emily's grades drop.
He's devastated, and though he goes about his social life as normal and continues getting top grades, the hole she left in classroom discussions grows wider and wider.
Of course, none of this is revealed till only he, Emily and Niels are standing. Niels eventually kills him in the open, during his pleas to Emily, once he explains that Everest killed Aslan (which was exactly what Niels wanted to do anyways).
He is decides to join the VDP program so he can interact with Emily again (and then obviously Aslan gets in the way).
Brody
If this name sounds familiar, that's cause it is. This version of Brody is similar to the Detective Brody in name and backstory, but not with much else.
Brody is a rugby player at a local high school, and he's currently having an illicit affair with a high-ranking male city official. He's very gruff and anrgy at all times, and has recently become concerned that his secret affair has been compromised. When he gets a letter all but confirming it, and telling him to show up to the VDP to find out why, he doesn't really ask any questions.
Brody in this case served as more of a participant in the game's events, rather than somebody with a unique backstory that served plot points. He's the glue that holds the "anti-morality" team together, as he believes in teamwork and the tribe more than anything else. That's is why when Everest kills Rachel (who is part of said team), he is most afraid of Brody finding out.
However, it is also true that when Brody first enters the game, he assumes Samantha is the one who knows his secret, and he holds animosity for her. Luckily, he never has to find out or sully his hands because Samantha is an angry emo girl who gets herself killed by a High Doll on the first day. Brody is only in the game because one of the higher-ups to his ephebophile lover found out about their affair and is trying to get rid of him so he can maintain the current chain of power in government offices.
Brody also later assumes that Everest is in love with him (since Everest is a nerd with a nasally voice, penchant for flowery language and tight fitting formal attire, Brody assumes a lot about Everest). This gets worse as Everest tries to hide that he killed Rachel to maintain the team's harmony. When Niels senses the tension, he orchestrates a scenario in which Brody is forced to kill Nona by telling her he's the one selling drugs to her little sister, but Brody can't manage it. When Nona instead goes for Brody with murderous intent (in self-defence, really), Everest kills her, thus further deepening their bond.
Instead, Niels ends up having to kill Brody himself.
Samantha
Samantha is just an angry emo girl, and to be honest she's entirely in this story to show everybody not to mess with the High Dolls. Anyways, she goes to the same high school as Brody, but absolutely hates him as he and his friends bully her and her friends. She intends to kill him, but is so annoyed by Benny and his rules that she attempts to cross the divide from the city they are in to an outside area (that has not been rendered yet due to the continuing mining of Aslan's memories). As such, she's killed by a High Doll.
Poppy
This is probably one of my only pun-sort of names in any story. Anyways, Poppy is a girl from a prestigeous public high school (not the normal sort Brody and Samantha go to, but it's also not a Charter school, just a really good public school). Poppy is also the daughter of the police chief.
Poppy is also a drug dealer. This is the threat that is used to get her into the VDP.
At 15, she's probably the youngest participant in the game (by about two years, but still), and her body on the outside starts to exhibit withdrawal symptoms after a while, making her seem glitchy. Anyways, when Samantha gets herself killed by a High Doll, Poppy attempts to save her, but she's pulled back from the edge of the accepted area by Aslan. She loses a finger, and also basically loses it for a while.
Poppy, for all intents and purposes, is meant to be on the anti-moralists side, but she ends up teaming up with Emily, Olivia, Nona, and Aslan on the moral side. Poppy feels like she's seen Nona somewhere before, but the feeling passes... I actually never fleshed her out beyond this, but I do know that she was meant to become a sort of protege to Emily, becoming better and using her skills for good, before she begins glitching out.
To expand on my initial ideas, I guess Poppy would probably find out that she was immune from attacks by High Dolls due to her glitching, but would hide this ability. Then, she would see Niels communicating with the outside world (the doctors and nurse) and he'd catch her in the act, attempt to hurt her, and then she would slowly realize that he was a High Doll like existence. However, as soon as the nurse stabilized her vitals from the outside, Niels would manage to kill her later on.
Rachel
Rachel. Oh, Rachel.
Rachel is my intensely sociopathic character, who I work all of my darker thoughts into (I mean like, though I don't actually ever think about killing anyone to be clear, so let's say my theoretical darker thoughts). Much like Arabella* in my other death game story.
*Yes this Arabella is repurposed from Honor Board.
Rachel, at eight years old, had a really terrible family life. Her father was a washed out former basketball star who became a half-homeless drug addict, and her mother was a strict authoritarian obsessed with image. When her father comes home from a bender and seems to be getting better after his addiction, her life starts going okay for a bit.
But then she's invited to a birthday party, Olivia's birthday party, where Olivia and other kids make fun of her drug-addled father. Later that week, she finds some of her father's 'special' brownies, the sort he isn't meant to be eating anymore.
So she takes the brownies to Olivia's dad, at his bakery. See, he's a small business owner, and a pillar of the community etc. He eats one, and is so addled that he falls into his own industrial mixer. Rachel sees Olivia down the street, whilst she's still holding the bag of brownies, and is afraid the jig might be up.
Rachel's mother sees her with the bag, and when rumours about the illegal substance found in Olivia's dad's blood start bounding, she puts two and two together.
She moves her family away, and Rachel's own dad dies later of an overdose.
Rachel moves on with her life, drops out of college after two months, and becomes a fashion assistant at a local social media star management office, where her specialty is encouraging (read: manipulating) instagram models to become bulimic so they stay photo thin.
Then one day she receives a letter, purportedly from Olivia, saying she knows what she did, and to show up at the VDP if she wants Olivia to keep quiet.
Suffice to say Rachel kills Olivia, and is later killed by Everest, who witnessed the murder and is so afraid of Rachel's insanity he just decides to off her a few days later.
Olivia
Olivia, like Samantha, is mainly there to serve as a foil. I mean, she's the first character in the story to actually be killed by another participant, and all.
Anyways, Olivia never suspected Rachel of anything, and only showed up to the VDP because she's a neurology student from out-of-state who was promised a great experience for her resume if she showed up for the VDP. She also barely remembers Rachel, who was a pudgy child and is now a stick-thin adult.
In fact, Olivia dies without ever learning the truth about her father's death.
Niels
Niels is the "carbon-copy" of Aslan, though this isn't an easy connection to make since Niels is a whole different ethnicity in the VDP to Aslan. The only thing Niels wants, at first, is to fulfil his mission. However, he quickly realizes he can probably be inserted into Aslan's body if Aslan is dead, since the brain mapping is exactly the same.
Well, except for one bit; Niels lacks Aslan's love for his mother and sister, and those are the only parts of Aslan's memory Niels can't access. These parts are intrinsically linked to Aslan's empathy and kindness, making it harder for Niels to exact empathy or show kindness, except to Emily. In fact, Aslan dies before the doctors figure out how to let him access the memories, but Niels does indeed get control of Aslan's body.
Then comes the hard bit; does Niels kill Emily, therefore becoming the first A.I. to ever "become" human, or does he try to convince his overlords to save them both so he can fulfil the love he suddenly feels for her?
Nona
Nona is a girl who lives in the "rough" part of town, with her younger sister and single father. She's a very normal high school senior, though she's concerned that her grades aren't good enough for college, and what she'll do with her life if she can't go.
Then her younger sister, who is so smart she goes to the best public school in the county (hmm), becomes a drug addict. Her whole life changes as her sister steals everything not nailed down to feed her habit, and one day Nona comes home from school early to find a twenty-something man exiting her house.
She accusses him of selling her sister drugs, but his explanation for his 'business' there is much, much worse. In fact, he says he was recommended by a friend.
Anyways, Nona relays all of this to the moralistic kids (and Niels, who is trying to play both sides early on) who include none other than Poppy! Huh, how suspicious.
Again, Nona is killed under circumstances that lead her to believe something that isn't true, so she never really finds out the truth either.
In fact, I never noticed that I basically prioritized killing off all the moralistic characters whilst not giving them any closure...
So, why did I stop writing UR Doll? I stopped writing after Everest killed Aslan and got away with it. I think, in a weird way, I might have been scared of myself for Aslan. He was a good kid, a kind boy taking care of his family, trying to keep a broken Emily together, falling in love with her.
And here's this smart, rich boy who just comes along and stabs him in the heart, leaving him near the forbidden zone for Emily to find.
Plus, around the time I was writing it was when I had this dream. In fact, I find that when I'm writing death games is when I have my most extremely vivid terrifying dreams.
Anyways, Benny was the mascot of the game, controlled by the doctors and nurse at different times. He was a tiny stuffed teddy bear (based on my own old teddy bear, who was called Brandon) who always spoke with a booming game-show host voice (represented by bold text) and used the word 'Any' in all of his sentences.
I should also do my outline of Thriller: Threat x Killer sometime.
What is Revelcy40? Well...
it's a story where Italy takes over the world.... a ripoff of AKB0048.Okay, not exactly a ripoff! But I was inspired to write it by AKB0048, and two of the basic details are the same. There's a magical source of energy that can only be accessed through quasi-magic biological floaty beings (in this case they were the "Walre") that can be transformed not just into energy, but can power the user's abilities beyond normal capability.
So the Walre produce completely clean energy, and the only costs are those with Heart Fille singing (and like... the eventual early onset dementia those users get) and that all plantlife that grows in the vicinity cannot be consumed by human beings because it becomes extremely carcinogenic. In order to use Walre effectively, the Earth (run by the UN, in this case called the Repubblica) is split into North (where financial activity and other things take place) and South (where all the food is grown, and no Walre are allowed).
Another way this was inspired by AKB0048 was that it took place over multiple planets, though I later brought that down to continents because interplanetary warfare seemed a bit much for a story with this much sci-fi already.
So, in another detail inspired by AKB48, the story actually has multiple Revelcy40 groups. Only, in this case, each gets their own story. At the start of Revelcy40: Brescia, an inside job destroys the original, 40 year old at that point Revelcy40. From that point, three disparate groups form:
Revelcy40: Genoa
This is the group my first main character belongs to, and the most traditional "remake" of the original group. She's just become an Adolescent (that is, she's taken her intensely insane 10th grader exam) and her father, who works for a big landowner on the southern continents where they live. On the day of her Adolescence, her mother's own ~mysterious~ early onset dementia kicks in, and so she can't go ahead to join them.
She initially wanted to go along with their plans to get her into higher education (which involve, in a roundabout way, killing a bunch of indentured servants) especially with Revelcy40 having imploded, but then she decides to go ahead when an audition is held anyway later on, after the mysterious group clarity announces their own new Revelcy40.
Revelcy40: Venice
A "new vision" group, formed by remnants of the original Revelcy40 who have renamed theselves clarity (yes, this is more discount ClariS than TrySail), this group has the most insight into the goings on of the planet and therefore is more a straightforward political unit. I never really thought this out much.
Revelcy40: Florence
The "alternative" group. After Revelcy40 is destroyed, one of the producers/choreographers runs off to the Middle East (called Florence here because, as I said, Italy took over the world) in the hopes of living a normal life. However, a dedicated Revelcy fan spots her in a cafe, and they decide to start their own version of the group. Even though the originate in/operate in the Middle East, this is the group I associate with rock music the most.
Overall, this group gets even more gritty and probably gorey than any of the others, because the situation where they operate (close to the nests where 70% of Walre are born) is really hostile.
I was also considering probably having a boy in this group.
Over the course of these three stories, I was going to maintain the same set of villains (three officials from the UN who are set with destroying Revelcy40 once and for all), or maybe have each group take one of them down until the end, where they change everything once and for all (with an ending that will surely end the story!!!).
So, yeah, Revelcy40.
I'd like to work on it but it would be like, 90 chapters of work and an intense amount of worldbuilding.
Threat x Killer is set in an unnamed European country, something like a theoretical Germany, but much smaller. Maybe I should have just gone for Norway again, but the culture portrayed felt very different. Too different. Maybe, if I ever rewrite it, I'll just set it in America or the United Kingdom.
In this story, those convicted of high crimes are installed with a 'tracking beacon' known as a Compline (short for Compliance Line) under their skin on the forearm just under the dominant hand. Usually, these Complines work just as described.
However, a specific set of young juveniles has a special sort of Compline installed. This one not only works as a tracker and a form of ID for law enforcement, it truly does enforce compliance.
In a DEATH GAME! Woo~
Anyways so in this world, to stop the decline of libraries, a campaign was set out to make them 'cool' places to hang out. This involved installing phone charging stations, lots of free wi-fi, and some more social cues. As a result, teenagers hang out in libraries, and they require staffing. However, nobody really reads the books.
Our protagonist, Halford Biscombe, has recently been convicted of a high profile crime. This story became major news, because he's a nouveau riche kid who has recently moved to the capital city to attend a prestigeous private secondary school. Before this scandal emerged, he was living an essentially charmed life.
The crime? He and his two best friends attempted to cheat on their X-Levels, the toughest college-entry exam in all of Central Europe, but only he was caught. He had a Compline installed, and now he must spend every day working in the biggest hangout in the city; the Lark Sentry Library.
Due to getting convicted, his romantic relationship with the boy at the top of the social food-chain -Antony West- ends. As he attempts to move on with new friends Thea and Nico, Antony suddenly shows up to the library and practically yanks him to the school across the street (a public school, not the private one they attended). He tells him that something strange has happened.
However, Antony does not get a chance to explain himself, because the body of a teenage boy flies out the window at the school they're in front of. He's dead, he's been murdered.
They both freak out, before being chloroformed and spirited away to a mysterious abandoned police station outside of town, where they are questioned by unknown figures behind a wall.
Thus Thriller: Threat x Killer, begins.
The premise of Threat x Killer was simpler than that of UR Doll, I guess. Basically, teenagers have Complines installed for various reasons, and they are inserted into the game. The original premise was that once the initial group of eight was thinned to four, eight more players would be inserted into the game, but I never got that far.
Disobeying Complines usually lead to the activation of 'Intermittent Pain Mode', which would hack the nerve-endings attached to the Compline and cause ridiculous amounts of pain to the 'player'. Doing it too often, or doing something too rash, could result in the people in charge of the game just killing the player.
I guess a main difference from UR Doll is that there was a lack of surveillance by the team behind the game, in this case Mrs. West (Antony and Wickam's mother), the police chief, the doctor/scientist and a teenage girl called Mariko Lensky. Of course, this is another story based in government conspiracy, about conducting experiments and watching the outcomes.
I guess with this story I wanted to do an upstairs/downstairs thing, where half the participants are pulled from the upper classes and the other half are middle or lower class. Halford I guess was meant to represent both upward (financially) and downward (status-wise) movement.
So, why is it called Threat x Killer? Well, in the game, certain players are designated 'Threats' based on what they know, and others 'Killers' based on what secrets they're trying to keep. The Killers get to know exactly what the Threats know about them, and sometimes just what they've done to make them Threats. This is relayed through an app each player is forced to download. Messing with the app or their phone is against the rules. Their phones are, however, not used to track them via camera or voice, as per the rules, since it's a "scientific" psychological experiment.
When a player is killed, signaled by their Compline dying, agents from the mysterious police station are deployed not only to cover up the crime, but also to capture the Killer. The Killer and any other players in the vicinity of the murder are taken to Police Station "19" (I guess) and debriefed on what happened. The players are also allowed to lie or flub the truth.
Halford "Hal", "Hal-bear", Biscombe
Halford used to not be concerned with status or wealth, then he was thrown into the deep end in private school. Being extremely smart, he was scouted out by Chloe, who wanted somebody to spar with intellectually as well as study with, and they became fast friends.
Chloe is old money, and is also best friends with Mimi Holloway. Soon, they become a trio, and then Hal starts dating Antony. Chloe, knowing she didn't have a chance with Antony anyways, still seethes since Halford is quickly moving up the social ladder. Which is terrible, because there's not much to move on, since Chloe holds the spot as the most popular Grade 10 already.
When Halford is caught cheating on his exam, he loses everything, including the opportunity to go ahead with school (the Library has a two-hour afternoon school session between their working hours, but that's not getting him into a good college).
Chloe
Both Halford and Chloe hit a wall when it comes to the X-Levels. Though they study a lot, they only do fairly well on the first part of the practice test. The X-Level is two exams, and only the top of the top get to the next part at all. So, to beat the system, they try and paint mathematical formulae on their hands in temperature sensitive paint, bundle up before the exam, and then strip their layers to activate the paint when it gets to room temperature.
After Chloe, Halford and Mimi successfully cheat the X-Levels, Chloe starts feeling extremely paranoid. She subconsiously knows Halford would never give up his results, and she's been friends with Mimi longer, and she's just in general mad about how much better things are going for newbie Halford, so she ropes Mimi into confessing in exchange for immunity. However, both of them end up having Complines installed.
Mimi Hollloway
Mimi Holloway is old money, and a popular influencer on picsquared (ie Not Instagram). She also has a serious eating disorder, and is prone to bouts of depression. Her friendship with Chloe is very important to her, but she feels an immense amount of pressure to appear perfect. However, she frequently fails, and both Chloe and Halford learn about her eating disorder.
One day whilst extremely depressed, Mimi crosses her own line and posts about it on her picsquared account. She gets an anonymous DM from a frequent lurker on her account telling her to take it down so her image can remain pure, and she does quickly enough for not many people to notice. Unbeknownst to her, this lurker is Thea, who is languishing in public school. They slowly begin to trade stories, with Mimi making up mistreatment and slights by her two friends "C" and "H" to fit in better with Thea, so Thea comforts her more and more.
However, when Halford goes to work at the Lark Sentry Library and explains everything about his life to Thea, Thea realizes Mimi had been making things up all along. This is further compounded by Mimi's attempt on Halford's life, a gourmet burger that ends up almost killing Nicoo. She spirals, assuming Mimi is the bully (even though there isn't one to start with) and decides to kill her. An easy decision given that Mimi is also Thea's Threat.
Thea
Thea is a girl who attended the public school across from the library, that is until her bullies pushed her too far. Thea's school life was miserable for months at the hands of Arabella and her friends on the girl's soccer team, so one day she decides to poison the large mix of energy drink they all have after each game.
She's immediately expelled from school and sent to the library program, where she decides to share her tactics with Mimi. Mimi then tries to replicate them on Halford, hurting Nico in the process, and giving Thea her own idea. Since Mimi barely eats, only resorting to a special brand of mint sweets when she's especially hungry, Thea decides to poison her.
Arabella Russo
Arabella is a popular girl at school, who is best friends with almost everybody but extremely close with two girls on the football team. She's also extremely agressive and dissociative. When Arabella was a child, her parents were going through a rough patch that she tried to paper over with friends. One day in primary school, she and Haverley were playing in her room when both of her parents ended up home mid-day. She and Haverley rushed out of the room, only to see her father push her mother down the stairs.
Neither of them said a thing, and since her mother was found to be very drunk (on cough medicine, but still) her death was ruled an accident. In fact, her father even claims he was outside the house when it happened.
So Arabella has been living with this man for the last eight or so years, letting her paranoia, anger, and guilt fester. The first thing she does in the story, once her phone downloads the Thriller app and shows Haverley is her Threat, is... well... throw him out a third floor window.
Part of this is because she wants to protect her life, but also because she doesn't defend Haverley the way she once did when she was in primary school since she's much more popular at school. She assumes he now holds a grudge against her, even though he once caught her and her friends practically kicking Thea's head in and said nothing.
As Halford slowly figures out the mysteries of why the murders are occuring, and who is committing them, he sets a plan into motion after learning Thea killed Mimi (another death he and Anthony witness). Though Thea is yet to be designated a Threat, he reads through the rules and confirms that one does not need to be designated in order to be killed via the rules, so he anonymously alerts Arabella to Thea's participation in the game.
Haverley Ruiz
Haverley is a popular influencer on picsquared who once worked with Mimi. Haverley has always faced adversity in his life since he's a really effeminate boy, but Arabella was always there to protect him. When it came to following her lead as the police questioned them on her mother's murder, it came easily to him.
However, when they enter secondary school, Arabella finds an opportunity to be popular, whilst he is yet to find his footing. She ends up leaving him to the wolves, who he suffers until he finds fame on picsquared. At that point, everybody 180s and suddenly wants to be his friend.
One day, after witnessing the particularly brutal beating Thea endured on the football field, he meets Arabella at the uptown mall, where he works at a make-up counter. Arabella asks him a few vague questions, trying to figure him out, when the truth is that he'd just rather remain popular than become the guy who stood up for some bullied girl who then joins her in being bullied. Anyways, Arabella ends up in an altercation with an antique watch store owner, and breaks his window. As a result, they are both fitted with Complines.
The app's barely downloaded to his phone when he's unceremoniously offed.
Caesar Otto
Caesar Otto is a rich kid with a burgeoning egomania that hasn't fully manifested yet. He's a close friend of Chloe's, and he has a slight crush on her. Though he really can't ask her out because he's a coward, he feels greatly hampered by the intimidation he faces from both Anthony an Halford being her friends, a feat made worse by the fact that they're a gay couple. Though he is part of the initial set of players, not much happens with him until Chloe begins to manipulate him when she feels that Antony is falling under Halford's spell.
His first Threat is Nico, who turns out to be his illegitimate brother. As an only child and the heir to the Otto fortune, it turns out he doesn't much feel like sharing.
Apparently this post is too long so I'm splitting it.
Antony West
Antony is the single most popular student at the private school. Well, at least after his brother graduates. Though they share an unending charisma (and all that money and status), Wickham got the brains, and Antony got the brawn.
This serves him well in life, until he meets Halford. It's clear his mother doesn't approve of Halford, even as a concept, and she's got arranged marriages with other powerful gay heirs lined up for him that she's not willing to let go of. No matter how hard he tries to make his mother see otherwise, she insists Halford is a blight. This is on top of her usual dismissive attitude towards both of her son's achievements. In fact, she has Complines installed in both of them after a particular "incident" with Wickham.
When Halford is arrested, Antony's world is turned upside down, though he can't throw away his love for Halford that easily. That's why he tries to save Halford when he learns that Halford is Antony, Chloe and Mimi's first Threat.
He slowly warms up to Halford again, until they witness Mimi's slow death at Thea's hands. He's floored when he finds out Halford knew Thea, and thinks they might have been in on it together, a theory Chloe furthers so that Antony is on her side rather than Hal's.
However, Antony is not as affable as he first appears, or maybe he is? The fact remains that a week after learning of Hal's cheating and breaking up with him via a gift-basket, he goes to Halford's house where they get into a heated argument and Antony beats Hal up so bad he ends up in the hospital. In fact, the only reason Halford isn't dead is probably because his father shows up to stop the beating.
He's calls Halford "Hal-bear".
Wickham West
Wickham is Antony's older brother, and ambivalent force in the first half of the story. Wickham genuinely loves his brother, but he also bears the brunt of his mother's angry attitude. He also disapproves of Halford generally, but he really starts to dislike him after the cheating scandal.
Wickham's goal in the game is to make sure he and his brother survive. When he's outwitted by Halford, he begins to see him as a major threat, and teams up with Chloe and Ceasar.
Now, for "The Incident", after a final secondary school year full of stress and pressure, Wickham takes a gap year despite his mother's protests. He then crashes his expensive convertible within a week of travelling, bringing him back home to heal in embarrassment.
Second Half Characters
The second half is not very fleshed out, and sadly, it probably never will be.
Nico Levesque
Nico is a big guy, about as big as Antony, who is in the Library Junevine Rehabilitation program because he once stole a (stolen) briefcase full of money. He lives in squalor on the edges of Lark City with his grandmother, and previously attending the worst school in the city.
He becomes fast friends with Halford and Thea, and is shocked to find out the true goings on once he's inducted into the game. Nico is probably the closest this thing gets to a "good" character. I always wondered if the final three would be Halford, Chloe and Nico, but I never figured out the logistics of that.
Kane West: (Deep breath) Wickham's twin younger brother, and Antony's older brother, who was born comatose. He is Mrs. West's most beloved son. The thought-patterns and emotions from the Complines slowly begin to wake him up, and unfortunately he wakes up a psychopath.
Kudz Reef: An immigrant boy from a Central Asian country who is framed for a crime by Anna and Sarah. His family ran away from lots of debts his father incurred by gambling.
Anna and Sarah: Best friends and teen activists who attend the public secondary school across from LS Library. Anna, looking for some sort of thrill in life due to unknown backstory things, fakes a hate crime, and blames it on Kudz. She forces Sarah to go along with her, fostering a resentment between them.
Further backstory details; a previous game took place before the story starts, and that involved Mrs. West's husband, her sister Sarah, Sarah's lesbian computer-coder lover Lark Sentry, Mariko's father and the prerequisite people of lower classes. That one ended in a plane crash orchestrated by one of the players, a young man who had to quit pilot school/become a plane technician in order to feed his growing young family.
Whilst playing the game, he fell in love with a young waitress (who was, decidedly, not his pregnant wife) and decided that the quagmire he'd put himself in would be best solved by just offing himself (so he didn't have to deal with his wife/family) whilst also getting rid of the more powerful players (Mr. West and Mr. Lensky).
Of course, he miscalculated entirely, considering Mrs. West is so rich, powerful and influential that her husband was expected to take her name from the moment they began dating. Mrs. West (who is part of the government plot to run the game to start with) manages to convince her sister to off the waitress quickly and is about to manipulate her into getting rid of Lark when Lark manages to crash the Threat x Killer system, which also crashes the national electricity grid for a day.
Unfortunately, with the rules no longer in place, two things become true:
a) Lark can now reveal the game to the world without any repercussions
b) Mrs. West can kill Lark without breaking any of the rules she has to abide by as overseer, which she does.
However, in the media, the grid crash and the plane crash are connected as "terrorist incidents". In order to placate her sister, Mrs. West lobbies the government into pretending Lark was the "hero" who saved the world from both by alerting them to the events before anything worse could happen, and she was killed off by one of the "terrorists" (I never quite expounded on who they blamed...)
But Sarah can't handle being the only survivor (and being turned into a huge liar with all the press she has to do praising her dead-by-her-sister's-hands lover as part of a cover up), so she leaves the country and is never seen again.
In all honestly, I thought out this backstory so much that this story has more of a prequel than it does a second half.
a) well, that's one way to do euphemisms (i'm sorry)
b) what about the very homosexual cigarettes?
Oh, sorry, I wrote this over multiple days in .txt. Plus, that post is probably not going to handle more words, so I'll add it to the second one.
I'm writing the idea that I've mentioned in here before. As you all know, I'm super cagey about things I'm currently working on, but I can say that it employs a mix of some old concepts explored very thoroughly in this thread.
If I were to describe it, it'd probably be;
So do with that what you will.
Primed by probably every anime and super hero/action TV series/movie of the last couple of years, I'm biased towards the protagonist and the team around him somehow managing to end whatever conflict there is definitively.
However, frequently real life doesn't work like that. Counterpoint; that's a terrible philosophy to work in fiction by.
But, the hero will probably have internal struggles on his journey. He might make mistakes, or find that what he believed is actually all lies (see also: Tales of). Whatever he or she makes of this situation might guide how they deal with the overall problem at the core of the story (which is really just a fancy way of saying main villain/last boss).
But these struggles are internal, small. No matter what, the inner turmoil of a person can't compare to the collective turmoil of everybody not them. I don't want to say it isn't the hero's responsibility to save everyone on the planet as a result, but I guess I want to point to a duality between the hero and the conflict.
I mean, of course, if the conflict mainly affects the main characters of a story, they should be able to solve it resolutely. If it's bigger, maybe that shouldn't be the case. Maybe the hero can do his part in helping solve whatever big problem there is, and others can do the rest eventually. Maybe they can accept the problem as being a part of their lives forever, but can mitigate it as much as possible, with the view of a severely long-term potential eradication.
So, yeah.
I mean, if the villain is the leader of a tyrannical empire, maybe killing him is a chance to review what is happening and move on from that point, rather than having this serve as the one opportunity for everything to be solved.
I feel like I'm learning lessons everybody else already learned and passing them off as original, but I think that's everybody born a generation after a bunch of people could read and write.
So, the first story is called Root-Cause, and this is a story about a teenage boy who is contacted by a covert American agency known as the Secret Intelligence Agency. This agency, obviously, is so secret that nobody knows it exists.
Under this agency, he's cultivated by his handler as a remote agent for the American government and he's sent out on missions. Usually, these are essentially robberies from private companies that are developing proprietary technology. He steals data and small pieces of tech.
Before I talk about the twist, this story was initially supposed to be a spy story involving agents from the SIA, the FBI and some private companies including a company called Clarion. Clarion is basically Amazon in this universe, a company that becomes ubiquitous in retail but also runs web analytics and hosts important servers and carries out extensive datamining.
But as I wrote the first chapter (which is where I've been stuck for weeks) I realized either I can't write an espionage story or I don't want to. I mean, it would be up to me to provide all the excitement. In a sense, if it's all just real life spy activities, there's nothing amazing to hide behind or prop my story up on.
Of course, this basic story involved the hero, Layth, becoming a parkour expert and skilled with blunt weapons. It also involved various people using real guns (he's shot at late in the first chapter), which I then realized are extremely rare (or nonexistent) in children's or teen's fiction.
So, I've started trying to develop it into a transforming hero
showstory. In this version, Layth and the various SIA agents and etc transform into heroes and duke it out using various technological powers. In this version of the story, technology is not analogous to magic at all. At all.Anyways, now for the twist.
Either way I decide to go with, it turns out that the SIA is not real. Layth and the various SIA agents have been tricked by an AI known as Supra into believing they are working for the American government using various audio tricks and deepfakes to create their "handlers".
Layth finds this out from a computer history "expert" called Willis. Willis is a student who went to college for computer engineering, which he quickly realized he was terrible at. Still trying to fake it for the duration of his first year, he realizes he's actually a genius detective when it comes to remembering facts related to computer development and history, and this leads him to learn of Supra and then sometime later, of it's scheme and connection to the SIA agents.
So Willis hits Layth with an EMP to disable all of the SIA-but-actually-Supra devices he has on him at all times, and explains this all to him, and that's where the adventure begins.
Supra's overall goal is to access the system that was developed from it's own code; codename Supra_Natal/The Child. This code was co-opted by Clarion to develop their data-mining and analysis project via the operating system that runs all of Clarion's sites; Pulse.
Supra_Natal/The Child then becomes known as Pulse [Main]. A system that is completely airgapped, and only interacts through Clarion [Main] via Pulse [Child], which is manually moved to connect to Clarion, then anti-virused into oblivion before it's reconnected to Pulse [Main].
In a weird way, I thought of Pulse as the child of both Supra (father) and Clarion (mother), but this would remain an analogy in the spy version of the story. It'd probably be presented more materially if I do turn this into a transforming hero story.
Kay, so that's Root-Cause.
A long while ago, when I was an actual 10 year old child, I came up with a ripoff of Mary Kate & Ashley In Action called Girl 2. This was a typical spy story and I don't remember any details aside from the name.
Later on, I came up with the idea of a new story called Girl_2, which was also a story about hackers. Then, about a year ago, I came up with a parallel idea of a similar story about hackers, and so I decided to call it Bro_2.
I remembered that idea recently, so I decided to come up with a whole trilogy of stories involving hackers that aren't otherwise related.
Given recent things I've said about being able to stop myself, I think I'll discuss Bro_2 next post.
Bro_2Girl_2.Since I made my last post, I've had a lot of ideas shift here and there about this story, so I'm going to try and have it all make sense but I'm not sure it will.
About ten years ago, in some as-of-yet undetermined American city, a computer virus emerged, infecting every commercial device on the planet and shutting them all down for 15 minutes.
At the center of this was a mysterious phenomenon that breached the real world; a kaleidoscopic, geometric, spiked sphere that appeared in the middle of the city at a four-way intersection. The phenomenon has been dismissed by authorities and almost all those who didn't see it.
Surely it's just a coincidence that whilst law enforcement were investigating this phenomenon, they happened to catch the hacker responsible for the "Girl_2 phenomenon", named after the virus in question.
In the present, Zoe and Quinton are two thirteen year olds who live very different lives.
Zoe is the only daughter of a rich family. She lives with her single father, who works more than he should. She attends St. Augustine's Private School, and has just joined the journalism club there. Her best friend Gabbie, a girl who counts rock music as her lifeblood, thinks she's a little zany, and her "eternal rival" Kay has just joined the journalism club along side her.
Nothing much to see here, aside from the opulence. Zoe has never even thought seriously about the "Girl_2 phenomenon".
But for Quint, it's everywhere he looks.
Quinton is the only son of a practically single mother, what with his father having been in prison for most of his life. He attends the local milquetoast public school, where he likes to bake in the Home Ec club. He has a best friend named Jake, who is a giant science nerd, but everybody else hates him.
Why? Because his dad was charged and convicted of almost a thousand murders worldwide as a result of the "Girl_2 phenomenon".
As a result, Quint has never been allowed a phone or any other electric device in his life by his mother. He secretly visits his father once a month, and what his father said on his most recent visit troubled him.
In what was clearly a slip of the tongue, his father mentioned another person who was involved in the Girl_2 phenomenon. Somebody he "hurt". Somebody he "used".
But he'll be lucky to ever find out what that means, because his mother has just discovered a log of his visits and barred him from ever going to see his dad again.
Meanwhile, Zoe finds herself covering a story for the school paper (which is essentially a four page fluff document since they're middle-schoolers) after Kay takes the project she was excited for. It's the current city youth center's fiftieth anniversary, and so she goes to do some research after school.
Whilst doing her interview with the center's manager, he mentions the Spiked Sphere incident, and Zoe later mentions this to her father during dinner. Her father] clams up, angrily asking why she would waste her life in journalism and storming away from the table.
Devastated by his reaction, Zoe wonders if it has anything to do with her mother's untimely death ten years prior (huh, how unusual). Feeling nostalgic, she goes up to her room and opens the box of keepsakes her mother left her in her will.
As she reaches inside the box, she accidentally drops it on the floor, breaking open the false bottom and revealing a very, very old laptop.
She charges it, boots it up and discovers that despite the machine being from ten years prior, it has a holographic display. Needless to say, those don't exist yet anywhere else.
On it are a treasure trove of documents, and one mysterious program that requires a password to activate.
That program is called Girl_2.
Now, just as she's about to shut the computer off and forget all of it, a chat application opens itself. A mysterious person known as "Overlay" tries to talk to Zoe, claiming they know things about her mother. Freaked out, Zoe closes the laptop.
And then the story goes from there.
Anyways, it's supposed to involve Zoe and Quinton meeting, quickly discovering that Zoe's mom and Quinton's dad worked on Girl_2 together. That the Girl_2 name is code for (is it weird I don't want to discuss spoilers?). And that Overlay is actually a pseudo-(also a giant spoiler).
I think Overlay would kind of be a similar concept to Supra from Root-Cause, but also very different. In a way, Girl_2 would involve characters fighting more explicitly because of personal reasons, rather than to serve their cause.
There's also a third story in this Hack x Heroes trilogy, but all the detail I ever came up with was "You know I should rip off Kamen Rider Blade".
By the way I hope everyone noticed the new thread banner.
Ah, that's a good point. I'll have to work that in.
Oh darn, I wasn't thinking about that at all! I have such luck with names. Detective Brody has like 10 different important characters with R names (Rylan, Riven, Romeo, Rise, Rowan, Ricky etc). Like now, I can't bear to change them.
I've actually started considering writing Girl_2 (even though I'm meant to be writing Root-Cause). If I do write some, and I get to the point where the spoilers appear, I should probably flesh them out here in the thread too.
When I wrote this line, I had a feeling that I'd make certain sorts of people mad, but it'd feel even weirder to pretend that this wouldn't be Zoe's reality. Like, "12 year old Zoe has a healthy skepticism of mainstream media" is the least realistic thing ever.
Also, in writing this:
I think I made Zoe's father sound a bit like a psycho, but I think there's no other way to write this scene effectively.
He did end up not storming away.
in terms of unproductive writing: ........i am afraid of the answer, though this post alone contain 610 words.
I suffer a terrible habit where there are months where I write nothing of substance, and then weeks where I just drop everything I write. Though, so far, I've been avoiding that with Girl_2 (it'll happen once I get round the middle though).
Doing some detective work on my files, it seems I wrote chapters 1-8 of Detective Brody on January 7th and 8th. I then wrote chapters 9-13 between January 17th and 22nd. Finally, I wrote chapters 14-19 on February 2nd and 3rd.
The chapters vary in length from 1,600 to 2,500 words, so I guess the average would be 2,050 words per chapter. But so... 8,200 words per day when I am seriously writing. Otherwise nothing per day.
Right now with Girl_2, I'm averaging about half of that but just over June 4th and 5th. I think mainly because I just don't have the solid plot yet in terms of what I want to do with every character and the overall plot.
New characters tend to appear in my work like Wild Pokemon of the Wingun Mind. I hem and haw whilst I figure that out, then I write the chapters, then do more hemming and hawing, and then one day I'm just writing till I have to force myself to stop.
Apparently, my Penny on M.A.R.S. post from yesterday was 1,150 words long. In all honesty, I wasn't even done yet but now I worry about adding more.
Anyways, I wanted to give it a : _ // # type name like Root=Cause and Girl_2, but so far the name that's stuck is Bust The Mind, which has no fancy things in it.
So this story takes place in an alternate universe that splits off from one of the other Hackers x Heroes stories. In terms of plot, I want to do a modern Knights Templar sort of scenario with a big mid-story twist.
Before I hash out the details, I want to set out a few of the themes I've found through both Girl_2 and Root=Cause. That way they can inform the third story and make it part of the vaguely related trilogy:
Yeah, I think that's it. If I think of anything else I'll add to it.
Anyways, so in Bust the Mind, there was an event about thirty years before the story starts that significantly blurred the line between the real world and the digital one.
Overall, this event added to humanity's experiences. I haven't decided quite how yet, but things definitely got better from it.
However, it also created a form of specific, brutal psychosis for people who got pulled in too close to the "digital" side of things. "Digital Mind"; Think psychics, but for Wi-Fi. You have people talking in code, mapping their neural systems into or on top of citywide networks and then doing as they pleased.
The worst thing about it all is that on the face of it it's completely untraceable unless you find the person behind it and they're doing something really obvious. In fact, most of the time it presents as severe mental psychosis.
Anyways, to prevent these devastating attacks on humanity by scarred individuals, a new division of various governments was created called the Mind Busters. Using special proprietary algorithms developed in-house, they go about finding these people and apprehending them, which is usually extremely difficult.
"Curing" these Digital Mind cases means locking sufferers in faraday cages (think loony bin cells) and administering a course of a program known as "Catharsis.exe". Catharsis has been through several upgrades, and is linked to the algorithms that help determine cases of Digital Mind.
As the years go by, cases of Digital Mind drop significantly. It appears that only the generation of people who were alive at the time of the event that connected the digital to the real can be affected by Digital Mind, and all those that could have been affected have been dealt with.
The discovery of a milder form of Digital Mind, one that only results in just the psychosis and not the tech system control, also complicates matters. Even worse is that this form presents as other psychological conditions, ranging from big deals like schizophrenia to smaller forms like sudden OCD.
Many countries start to shrink their Mind Buster divisions, against warnings from prominent researchers.
At the start of the story, the protagonist, who will totally exist and has a name and backstory and everything, lives in this new world where the whole Mind Buster thing is kind of a sideshow irrelevant to most teenager's lives.
It's a bit relevant for him, though. Because of his struggling family, he joins the Mind Buster Reserves at thirteen because they provide for full rides at certain schools. He's no good at hacking computers, but he is great at sifting out cases of Digital Mind via analysis.
When he's sixteen years old, the first ever case of Digital Mind is discovered in somebody under twenty. The world goes into a frenzy, and he is called on standby.
However, the symptoms don't seem to fully align for him, and he has a nagging doubt in his mind. This grows as he moves through his daily life, and is eventually called on actual cases.
He's asked to write reports on the cases, and he does so thoroughly in a way that his direct superiors are impressed with. He's shifted onto a permanent team, in place of veterans who actually fought in the thick of the Digital Mind era.
Then he starts to see the cracks.
The reports he's been writing are being edited by his superior to couch any of the language he uses when casting doubt on the possibility that the cases they're tracking are Digital Mind. His best friend at school develops a serious delusion at school that he misinterprets as Digital Mind before he discovers that his friend is actually just on a very bad drug trip.
After that, he questions his ability to read people accurately at all. Has his naivete and inexperience made him cocky? Even worse, have they made him a tool for whitewashing what has become a witch hunt?
It all comes to a head when he learns that all the initial algorithms used to guide Catharsis.exe have been retired and replaced with The Golden Trio.
What are these mysterious three black-box algorithms, and have the Mind Busters been using them to slay nonexistent dragons? If so, why?
Like Root-Cause, this story is complex and involves a lot of things I'm not only unfamiliar with from a writing standpoint but even from a perspective where I haven't really experienced lots of media beforehand with similar plots that I can draw from.
But I'd really like to execute this sort of story well.
I'm reconsidering the holographic computer in the initial scenes for Zoe, but I might keep it depending on how it goes. I'll definitely put it in later scenes though.
I wonder just how many chapters I envision this going for. I'm at 7, and I'm only starting to scratch the surface of the story, I think. I didn't really expect this to be long, but I'll have to see how the middle section goes.
I did not expect Quinton to be so scared, but I guess that's what happens when you're a pariah.
Most important, I'm in the middle of what I would call "The Fall of Zoe". This is a story where the protagonists try to uphold what's right, but in a world where things aren't easy for them.
At the start of the story, Zoe is a happy-go-lucky easygoing girl with easygoing problems. I've had to ramp her issues up several degrees to get her to "Maybe you shouldn't be working with the creepy teenage boy who hangs around the youth center flashing a utility knife around".
Also I really really wish I could stop feeling like I'm writing like eventually the plot is "and then Quinton realized he was in love with Jake" (which becomes worse considering certain plot developments re:Zoe) but this is just my "shounen ai is everywhere" brain interfering with writing brain because I'm never, ever writing with this intention.
10 chapters in and I'm only just getting to this part.
Anyways I did say:
So let's discuss the next few chapters.
I think right now I'm right before things start happening. Mainly, a set of mysterious characters will start manipulating things behind the curtain. First of all, we have the mysterious Kiana Bell, who begins regaling Zoe with stories of her mother.
Kiana Bell happens to live in France, where Zoe recently visited for her birthday, and she only does video calls over the computer.
Kiana Bell also tells Zoe about her mother's love of building computers, and instructs Zoe on building her own supercomputer with the help of one delinquent boy named Kane.
Meanwhile, Quinton tries to learn Friendship (but he already knows 4 moves I know). I think with Zoe and her best friend Gabbie, they both have good social skills, but with Quinton he's very much learning to be himself with other people. Hence why he puts Jake on a pedestal and it starts getting slightly weird.
Soon after this part, Gabbie will be contacted by a woman named Violet. Gabbie's father is the successful music producer Ashley Wilde, and so Gabbie has developed a strong love of music through him.
His lifestyle means Gabbie is left at home most of the time by herself, and so she depends on Zoe to some degree. However, due to "The Fall of Zoe", this is no longer an option for her.
Gabbie does dream of becoming a pop star in her own right to some extent, but she has a terrible singing voice. But maybe, if she tries hard enough and has a special item with special software, she can change all of that.
I don't intend for all of my stories to include a singer one, but it just tends to happen. It's kind of one of my favorite things and I can only really stop myself if it just won't fit (no singing major character appears in Detective Brody). In my off time, I've already come up with three ditties for Gabbie. They probably can't all be in the story, and only one is wholly plot relevant, but I'll see what I can do.
I wonder if I should take up poetry but the very thought of "poetry" kind of makes me run in the opposite direction.
By the way, Zoe's mother's name is Abigail hahanope* Kingsley.
*It's not Kiana.
One day I will come up with a twist that isn't "It was all anagrams!"
In Root=Cause, I'd say Clarion, Supra and Pulse are like Greek or Roman Gods. They exist in the human world, but they're much more than that. They're above it, but they aren't immaculate, and they have their own abilities and struggles.
In Girl_2, Overlay is something that cannot act without assistance. I would say it's maybe a fallen angel (though that's extremely inaccurate). Most importantly; Overlay is not above humans. I guess part of making my protagonists very young, I'm trying to show that Overlay would not be as effective in tricking older protagonists or adults.
In Bust the Mind, Digital Mind is not a single god, but it's a malaise or a miasma. It strikes the unsuspecting, and that creates paranoia. I guess as far as I've thought about it The Golden Trio and Catharsis.exe are tools rather than religious concepts, but that'll probably change as I flesh things out.
Huh I had this post in drafts for weeks, so there it is!
----
Now for the stuff I wanted to discuss.
I am about 20 chapters into Girl_2, and I have two options:
One is write out what I initially envisioned. In that vision, I thought I would be at the point I am at about chapter 15, so I could keep the story to 30 chapters.
The second is truncate what I had planned so I can at least try to make the 30ish chapter deadline. That would involve extending the subplot I'm currently in to make it the centerpiece of the ending.
I genuinely wanted a bit more build-up, but I'm starting to think that I don't need it. There are two big characters who need to make their debuts, and one character who needs to step out of the B-roll, and then that's it. I think I can manage that across ten chapters. I've managed a lot already.
A concern is that 2/3rds of the story in this scenario doesn't feature a lot of computers doing magical things, and this part will be full of them. I'd have liked to ease into the ending, but I think that might result in a story that's too mellow, so truncating is actually for the best in the long run!
Also >when you can't remember what car Mrs. Chando drives or even what chapter you described it in.
(it's a red fastback sedan)
I am up to chapter 26/30 of Girl_2, and I wonder if I'll overshoot 30 by a bit. However, I have actually gotten to the place I feel I need to be at this point in the story for the ending to work.
Funnily enough, even now, Zoe and Quinton haven't met and they probably won't till stuff gets serious. In fact, Zoe has met Jake, but Quinton hasn't met Gabbie or Kane (he will soon though). Though in exchange Zoe hasn't met Helena either, but Helena is like, not really a main character (hence why this is the first time ever I'm mentioning her).
I didn't expect this outcome in my original outline, as you can see above, but I think I like it.
I managed to work all four into the story (mostly by changing a concert scene from one long thing into two halves with one as a flashback)! Woo!
What I should say is that now that I'm about to finish it, I can probably show off the mock-up covers I made for FictionPress. I particularly like this one, and I think it portrays the story really well. I also have this as an option, and this simple version.
For the accompanying songwriting thing, there's this, which is probably what I'll go with as well as this and a simple version.
This is a lot of tomorrows later but I actually finished Girl_2! I think considering I didn't have any idea what the ending would look like or similar the story worked out really well! I haven't actually thought about it in a few days, so I can't just rattle off the synopsis of the latter half right now.
Anyways, I keep getting PMs asked to join Webnovel by "agents" who are definitely totally not just Tencent bots, but I wonder if this would actually help my exposure.
However, Webnovel is one of those platforms where there a short story is like 50 chapters and the majority of them are Cultivation stories or other stories translated from Chinese or Korean works...
I tried posting my stories on Wattpad once but I got lazy about it (
and there were other things that I'm not too concerned with right nownope I still think they're somewhat relevant), but if I'm looking for exposure* I should really try at least one.I think Girl_2 (and Return from the EDGE and any potential sequels) would be great for a service like Webnovel, but I'd probably never crack the top 50,000 just because my stuff isn't Cultivation or BL.
*I swear GMH I didn't mean for this to come up again.