Thundercloud

It has been a LONG while since I’ve been active here! And I don’t know how many this will reach but here goes. About ten years ago, someone reached out and I’m guessing gave me a link to one of their stories, possibly for the purpose of me trying to be a beta? I’m not sure: I really suck at being a beta. As shown because I finally went through my files and found it. I’ve already asked my closest friends but it’s a no from them. IF ANY OF YOU HAS EVER SHARED A STORY WITH ME, PLEASE LET ME KNOW: this story is good and I would like to tell the author and apologize. 

Okay Writer question, from what I can tell. A personal website is a thing?

Okay Writer question, from what I can tell. A personal website is a thing?

Gotta continue taking a break for a while, I’ll be back to catch up and finish reading some ongoing stories when I can. Stay strong everyone.

Ok, so it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here.  Not a long time since I visited the site, but I’ve been very quiet.  I have, however, in the last week had JayDee, Sparrow and one person on the DR asking “Are you dead?”

Allow me to settle that.  I am, in fact, dead.  I’m sure you’re all wondering how I’m typing this, and it is a mystery.  I can’t quite answer it myself.  Blame JayDee’s slumber party super team for this; it sounds like something that would happen to them.

Ok, obviously I’m not dead.  A lot has been going on, some of which is cool and some of which will be awkward to talk about, but I feel like I should tell you all about it.

First off, I turned 35 back in April, and had my latest midlife crisis.  I have one of those every year, stressing about all the things I haven’t done in my life, and they’re getting more appropriate since, in four years, I’ll hit what, statistically, is mid-life for an average American male.  Likely in response to this, I am...endeavoring to get a new job, after working at a grocery store for the last decade.  I don’t want to elaborate too much, because this might fall through, and I may instead have to just push harder to advance at the store.  If things work out, there will be a prolonged training program (about six months), but after that I should be making enough money to live on my own, meaning I will no longer be an approaching-middle-age-man living with my parents.  I don’t want to say any more than that now, lest I get my own hopes up too much, but I will let all of you know if things move forward.

Up next, I should explain why I stopped talking.

Part of my Asperger’s is something whose technical name I don’t know, but that I’ve heard referred to simply as “avoidance.”  Generally, when something stresses me out, I tend to begin looking at or doing anything else.  That became a factor recently.

Some of you have presumably been following Mortuus Orbis, a multi-franchise crossover story I co-wrote with Sparrow.  It’s massive, far larger than I realized it would be when I agreed to work on it (to be fair, I also think it’s far larger than Sparrow thought it would be).  Two arcs, the one just titled Mortuus Orbis and the second one, titled Bunkerkampf, have been written, but there are three more to go, and then there were also plans for a sequel.  It’s part of a much bigger multiverse too, and as we talked during writing, I remember multiple other stories being discussed, including a story involving the Halo and Metroid franchises, another involving a massive planetary siege, and another that involved Avatar: The Last Airbender.  I also couldn’t see an endpoint to this, a place where it would really be over and done with.  Assuming these were all like MO, I would be doing the vast majority of the writing.

I saw this multiverse stretching out ahead of me, potentially forever...and I panicked.

Well, panicked isn’t the right word.  That sounds like I was like…

What really happened was that the avoidance kicked in, and I began to not-entirely-consciously withdraw from conversations that could or would likely involve this huge project, ending up with me going very quiet on AFF.  This did result in me being more relaxed, but at the same time it meant me abandoning Sparrow and not interacting with all of you here, so this is an untenable situation.  I have to figure out how to approach this again.

I’m not entirely sure how to do this, but I want to make it work.  At the very least, I will eventually finish the remaining three arcs of MO.  I’m not sure what the writing schedule will look like, given what I said about the possible (fingers crossed) change in careers.  If I get settled into an apartment and therefore don’t have to constantly take care of dogs, I’ll actually have more uninterrupted time to write, but again I really don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.  At any rate we’re in an uncertain time right now, but I hope to know reasonably soon whether the training will start or not.

I do have some other projects going on at the moment, though, so I’d like to take a moment to discuss a few of them.

Mommy Loves You: Games (Dungeons & Dragons).  A oneshot, it is nearing completion, expecting around 5k words.  This story is entirely Sparrow’s fault, and he will thus have it dedicated to/inflicted on him.

Sins of the Fathers: Games (D&D).  A possible sequel to MLY, this is still somewhat theoretical, but I have a rough idea of how it would go.

Noctis Sector Chronicles – Do Not Go Gentle: Original (kinda).  In progress.  A oneshot and partway done, but longer than MLY (will likely end up around 15k words).  This is part of the Dark Star universe created by John Drake.  He allowed several of his readers to design alien species for the universe, which led to characters created by readers and stories that introduce them, which came to be called the Noctis Sector Chronicles.  Two are already up, and this is to be mine.  The character, Selara, will also be one of the protagonists in a huge project below.

Title Redacted: Miscellaneous crossovers.  In progress.  Sparrow-adjacent.  Takes place in the multiverse; obvious connection.  Entire cast classified, wish to preserve surprise, but fact that I’m speaking like a scientist Salarian *inhale*...suspicious.

Found Family: Original (kinda, again).  In progress.  This started out as a story idea of mine, using all of the alien OCs as characters, and then another reader, currently going by Aia (she changes her screen name frequently) got super excited and REALLY wanted to co-write.  And then she just took off with writing it herself.  I’m very much involved in story planning and editing, but basically Aia and my writing relationship is Sparrow and my writing relationship backwards.  I came up with the story idea and most of the plot, she writes (except for a few select scenes I did myself) and I edit.

Aia is a beast, though.  Where I may get a scene done in a day, Aia usually gets a chapter, something like 18,000 words, done in a day.  It’s a lot to read and keep up with.

Anyway, FF started out as one book with three acts, but given the increased character focus, it became three books (it’s like the Snyder cut of an internet fic).  Anyway, this will go up on AFF, along with my NSC story, once both are done.

Tales of the Multiverse: Containment Breach: Anime crossovers.  In planning.  Action/horror story starring Marlene and Yuji from Blue Gender and other characters I need to come up with (‘cause what’s the point of a multiverse team if you can’t throw some other people in there?) facing a threat from an alternate Earth that went very bad.

The Arena: Miscellaneous crossovers.  Still very much in planning.  I haven’t started writing because this one needs more work in terms of story structure, specifically laying groundwork for the third act.  I have a lot of moments in there, but some of the things I’d thrown in fall into that category where they’re badass, but aren’t rooted in character arcs, and without that the events feel empty.  I’m somewhat nervous now that the field of “Deathstalker Giant Crossover-Inspired Fics” is no longer empty, so this has to be as good as I can make it so that it’s not completely overshadowed by MO.

Long Is the Way: This one won’t even be on AFF, but I want to mention this for completeness’ sake...and because you all will laugh when I tell you that yes, I am in the process of rescuing someone else’s angel.  I have an outline, which I’ll almost certainly share with JayDee because they must suffer all of my stories like this.   The short version is that this will be “InBrightestDay does Dante’s Inferno” and the title comes from a Milton quote: “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

The Spider House: Original.  In planning.  Cody and Yua’s intro story.  Y’all know about this one, but I am looking forward to whenever I get to writing it.  Low on the list because it doesn’t have to come out at any specific time.

Anyway, I hope this sheds a little light on things.  I wish I could elaborate on the job thing, but again, I’m really scared of getting too optimistic and then being let down, so I don’t want to go into detail.

FIRST time somebody asks via comments if I’ll write a particular crossover between fandoms, I’m a tad annoyed, but I’ll politely decline.  SECOND time means they feel entitled if they can’t be bothered to read my reply to the first one – DELETE.  (BTW, it’s on AO3, so that button’s available to me.)

Think 4.2kwords is decent progress for a weekday.

Well. It took close to a year and a half but we finally know why I’ve been having nerve pain and numbness and struggling to stand and walk. The ‘why’ is not an easily fixed condition (...possibly not “fixable” at all, from the sound of it...) but having an explanation for the problem is the first step on the path forward. I can’t even express how relieved I am to have physical proof that what I’ve been struggling with wasn’t just in my head; the fact that such was bothering me as strongly as it was should say something about how folks with invisible disabilities are often treated in the US. 

I’m still stuck with walking with a cane for now. There are also orthotics, braces, medication, and routine specialist visits added to the equation now. I’m not crazy about that...but I’ll live. At least it’s not neuropathy and there’s a chance of some improvement with treatment, and so long as those two statements are true, I’m sure I can find a way to not whine too much. It’s a bonus that the medication I’m on now is helping with my bad knee (why I had the cane, to begin with) and I’ve got a very courteous and understanding doctor taking care of me. Maybe now that the testing and waiting are over, I’ll have a little more free time. If so, maybe I’ll be more able to use said free time for writing and updating. In the meantime, it’s good to be back on here even if only occasionally.

Anyway. Dropping off the face of the earth without warning is kind of normal for me but...well...this is why I’ve been exceeding my usual DOtFotE statistics. In the coming months, if I get unusually bristly on here, say something unfriendly, or come across as short or rude, I apologize profusely in advance. I’m hanging in here the best I can...but...frankly, my nerves are compressed and sending pain and itching signals through otherwise healthy tissue, and there’s not a whole lot I can do when it gets really bad. There are days when it’s so bad I just want to cuss a blessed blue streak, cry, or both at once. Generally, I try to stay offline on days like that but they’ve snuck up on me before. If it happens, please be patient with me and let me know I’ve been a dick (because I probably won’t even realize it until later on when I’m trying to sleep) and I’ll apologize for it.

Until next time, I hope everyone’s having a comfortable and safe spring, and wish y’all the best.

Ok, so last time the news was nerve-wracking, but I’m happy to report that things have improved substantially.  My little brother is fine (his symptoms never got worse than the mild ones I described last time), and my middle brother’s wife has tested negative several times now, so it seems she was never infected.

Still sort of nervous about my aunt, but that’s two out of three COVID-related things that have turned out well so far.

With all that in mind, I have some reviews to catch up on.  I know Invidia  has started reading Mortuus Orbis, and of course JayDee has left reviews of every chapter, and @Sinfulwolf has left three wonderful reviews on the finale of WitS, so over the next few days I’ll endeavor to respond to all of those.

As for what’s coming up next, I have at least two things to work on in the near future.  Both of them are science fiction stories tied to another work, one that’s not on AFF and I don’t really want to describe here.

Suffice it to say I make weird friends for who I am.  Then again the first friend I made here was JayDee so maybe not that weird.

In the case of the longer one, my co-writer has asked if she could just start writing, so I have to make an effort to keep pace lest I be left behind (as well as work out precisely which of us will be writing what scenes).  I know Sparrow may be concerned at the moment, but I don’t quite know what the co-writing process with her will be like, so it may not eat up as much time as one might fear, and after the weekend, I will endeavor to be on Discord more often.

I have another idea for a story called Below, but that doesn’t have anybody waiting for it, so it can be placed on hold until other things get done.

Bringing it all back to the beginning of this post, thank you to everyone who wished my family well and offered prayers and support.  You have no idea how much I appreciated all of that.

why does me turning 36 scare me so?! 

Well, that took a few weeks longer than it should have, huh?

The final chapter of The Woman in the Statue will be up Monday.  That’s not an “I swear it’ll be done by then, PLEASE BELIEVE ME!” kind of thing; it’s done, but I’ve given JayDee an advance copy of every chapter thus far, and I wasn’t about to break tradition for the finale.  They’ll have time to read it, and I’ll work on polishing it before posting it on Monday.

Be forewarned, this is the longest chapter I’ve written for this story by far, a little over 20,000 words.

So, what’s next?  Well, before anything else, I have some reviews to respond to, and a few stories I need to catch up on in terms of reviews.  @Thundercloud should know to expect a review of the grand finale of G.S.P., and I’ll try to catch up on @Tcr’s Last Full Measure, as well as @InvidiaRed’s Rationis.

After that...well, I missed the Halloween party this year, but I’ll be back next year, and of course I have a story planned for this year’s holiday party, which is likely to be my next writing project.

Well, that took a few weeks longer than it should have, huh?

The final chapter of The Woman in the Statue will be up Monday.  That’s not an “I swear it’ll be done by then, PLEASE BELIEVE ME!” kind of thing; it’s done, but I’ve given JayDee an advance copy of every chapter thus far, and I wasn’t about to break tradition for the finale.  They’ll have time to read it, and I’ll work on polishing it before posting it on Monday.

Be forewarned, this is the longest chapter I’ve written for this story by far, a little over 20,000 words.

So, what’s next?  Well, before anything else, I have some reviews to respond to, and a few stories I need to catch up on in terms of reviews.  @Thundercloud should know to expect a review of the grand finale of G.S.P., and I’ll try to catch up on @Tcr’s Last Full Measure, as well as @InvidiaRed’s Rationis.

After that...well, I missed the Halloween party this year, but I’ll be back next year, and of course I have a story planned for this year’s holiday party, which is likely to be my next writing project.

Chapter count for The Woman in the Statue is being changed again, this time to 11 chapters.  This isn’t because I’ve added a ton more story or anything; it’s just a matter of word count.  For instance, even after splitting Chapter 10 into 10 and 11, what I have of the final chapter is still over 11,000 words, and I am not done.

Of course, I wouldn’t be posting this just to say that.  Ok, so...*deep breath*

I will be posting Chapter 10 of 11 of WitS one week from today.  That chapter is done (and JayDee’s already seen it) so that won’t be a problem.  One week after that, Chapter 11 goes up, and we finally finish this.

Full disclosure: I’m terrified.  Fingers crossed, everyone!

Holy word count, Batman! I was looking today, because I just posted chapter 50 of my main story, Billion Dollar Harem, and I just can’t believe how far this story has come! It blows my mind to think I’ve written an entire novel… of smut lol! At chapter 50, I’m at 711 pages and at over 375,000 words… of smut… lol! Its so strange to think when I started this story… holy crap 4 years ago now, that it would be this freaking huge! I want to give a huge shoutout to anyone and everyone who has given my little harem fic a read and especially to those who have reached out to tell me they liked it or to offer up some comment or criticism of its very immaterial material... Thank you!

Holy word count, Batman! I was looking today, because I just posted chapter 50 of my main story, Billion Dollar Harem, and I just can’t believe how far this story has come! It blows my mind to think I’ve written an entire novel… of smut lol! At chapter 50, I’m at 711 pages and at over 375,000 words… of smut… lol! Its so strange to think when I started this story… holy crap 4 years ago now, that it would be this freaking huge! I want to give a huge shoutout to anyone and everyone who has given my little harem fic a read and especially to those who have reached out to tell me they liked it or to offer up some comment or criticism of its very immaterial material... Thank you!

OMG OMG OMG! there is an inuyasha sequel coming out! but only inuyasha and sessys kids!! OMG OMG OMG! 

I have progressed from starting stories and not finishing them to not starting stories. Well, ok, regressed then. Which is a shame as the next unfinished one would have been about a guy finding out his Mom had a twin after finally meeting the rest of the family (after his Mom’s falling out before he was born). It’d have been dead pervy as there’d be an attraction on both sides.

Okay, folks, here we go.  Deep breath...Chapter 9 of The Woman in the Statue is coming soon.  And by soon I mean I’m hoping for Wednesday.

Bear in mind that, as I’ve been writing it, I’ve decided that the finale is going to be two parts, so the actual end of the story will be Chapter 10.  All titles in the chapter index have been updated to reflect this (Part x of 10, in other words).
 

Now let’s all hope I don’t screw this up.

So I’m working on Part Nine of The Woman in the Statue (the goal is to be done around the 18^th), and I wanted to describe the lobby of the Van Dijk building, but how big is it?

Now I could just bullshit this...but you all know I won’t.

So the building is about 300 meters tall and is a regular octagon in cross section (meaning all eight sides are the same length).  If the lobby in which Chloe, Luzurial and the assault team fight hybrids takes up one entire side (“edge” in geometric terms), how big across is it?

Well, if we assume the building has a base diameter of one sixth of its height, then it’s 50 m in diameter and thus has a circumradius (the radius of the circle connecting all eight vertices/corners of the octagon) of 25 m.  Each eighth of the octagon can be described as an isosceles triangle with two sides 25 m long (since those “sides” are the circumradius) meeting at an angle of 45 degrees.  So now I have to find the missing side.

Just to remind everyone that I am not a math major, I literally had to use Google to be reminded that an isosceles triangle is just two right triangles smooshed together, which I really should have remembered from 9^th Grade Geometry.  Anyway, since the sine (0.3826834323650897717284599840304) of one angle (22.5 degrees) of a right triangle is equal to the length of the opposite side divided by the length of the hypotenuse (25 m), and then we multiply that result (9.56708580912724429321149960076) by two to get the end of the isosceles…

So the lobby is about nineteen meters wide.  Why do I do this to myself?

Am back in a “can’t finish anything” phase. Which may be for the best after finishing Pregnant in Alabama.

Just finished a first draft at 5008 words, which is the most I’ve done on a oneshot in a very long time. Now I need to roll it in glitter.

I took a challenge story back on March 24, and since then I’ve

1. Calculated a Hohmann transfer orbit from LEO to the Earth-Moon L4 point.
2. Calculated another such transfer orbit (from Jupiter to Earth) to represent the planet-killing asteroid’s fall toward the Sun and thus the Earth.
3. Looked up several minor moons of Jupiter.
4. Done research into how dark matter can hypothetically collapse into small objects like planets or asteroids.
5. Looked into the differences between baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter, to explain why nobody sees the object coming but it can still cause a mass extinction upon impact, and…
6. Done research into a proposed space colony (the Stanford Torus) to have dimensions and structural plans for the station upon which our characters escape the devastation being inflicted on Earth.

All of this for a mostly-incest PWP where a young man, his mother, his female best friend and his elder sister must repopulate the human race.

I may have gone overboard.

I took a challenge story back on March 24, and since then I’ve

1. Calculated a Hohmann transfer orbit from LEO to the Earth-Moon L4 point.
2. Calculated another such transfer orbit (from Jupiter to Earth) to represent the planet-killing asteroid’s fall toward the Sun and thus the Earth.
3. Looked up several minor moons of Jupiter.
4. Done research into how dark matter can hypothetically collapse into small objects like planets or asteroids.
5. Looked into the differences between baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter, to explain why nobody sees the object coming but it can still cause a mass extinction upon impact, and…
6. Done research into a proposed space colony (the Stanford Torus) to have dimensions and structural plans for the station upon which our characters escape the devastation being inflicted on Earth.

All of this for a mostly-incest PWP where a young man, his mother, his female best friend and his elder sister must repopulate the human race.

I may have gone overboard.

I took a challenge story back on March 24, and since then I’ve

1. Calculated a Hohmann transfer orbit from LEO to the Earth-Moon L4 point.
2. Calculated another such transfer orbit (from Jupiter to Earth) to represent the planet-killing asteroid’s fall toward the Sun and thus the Earth.
3. Looked up several minor moons of Jupiter.
4. Done research into how dark matter can hypothetically collapse into small objects like planets or asteroids.
5. Looked into the differences between baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter, to explain why nobody sees the object coming but it can still cause a mass extinction upon impact, and…
6. Done research into a proposed space colony (the Stanford Torus) to have dimensions and structural plans for the station upon which our characters escape the devastation being inflicted on Earth.

All of this for a mostly-incest PWP where a young man, his mother, his female best friend and his elder sister must repopulate the human race.

I may have gone overboard.

So I’m over on Literotica reading this Erotic Horror story called “The Girl Next Door.”  It’s about succubi, and it’s creepy and sexy and honestly kind of sad, but it’s carried me along for about four chapters seeing what’s going to happen next.

Then at the end of Chapter 4 and continuing into Chapter 5, out of absolutely nowhere, we find out that the succubi have captured an angel, specifically the Angel Lailah, the only female angel.  The first scene of Chapter 5 is then concerned with her corruption (in these kinds of stories that’s less “seduced to evil” and more “physically pumped full of evil and forcibly transformed into something villainous”).

There are three explanations I can think of for why this is happening to me.

1. After spending too much time reading Thundercloud’s G.S.P. story, I have absorbed Jennifer’s superpower of Terrible Luck.
2. The internet has become sentient, knows I have a thing about bad things happening to female angels, and is actively fucking with me.
3. JayDee knows Kingmaker711, and ten years ago, they were talking, and JayDee said something like “You won’t believe this email I got about my story where a female angel is raped and tortured,” and Kingmaker was like “Oh yeah?” and JayDee was like “Yeah, some guy wants to write her a happy ending,” and Kingmaker was like “Man that’s bullshit; you gotta stop him,” and JayDee was like “I mean, I already said he could, besides it’s been a while and I haven’t seen anything, so he’s probably not writing it,” and Kingmaker was like “No, dog; I have a plan.  In 2013, I’ll write a story about succubi, which will be totally normal for the first 3.95 chapters or so, and then I’ll reveal that their apocalyptic plan involves corrupting a female angel, using her actual role in Jewish folklore so it fits, and they’ll succeed, but only after really dragging it out so this is as upsetting as possible, and then she’ll just be hissing villain for the rest of the final chapter and when the other angels show up they won’t try to fix her, but instead she’ll be sentenced to exile until Judgment Day, and naturally Email Guy will be wondering how she can repent and be redeemed since she was basically mindwiped and didn’t choose to do any of this, and then I’ll have the last time we see her be while she and Michael are locked in combat and he’s trying to strangle her, so Email Guy will realize that I haven’t established whether or not angels have souls in this setting and will have to contemplate Lailah being wiped from existence as punishment for things she didn’t choose to do, and just to make sure Email Guy can’t just write off the story, I’ll give it an ending with a gloriously insane action scene featuring the human protagonist, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, and I’ll give it the most amazingly happy ending of any of my stories, as in the human race isn’t destroyed and Creation doesn’t unravel,” and JayDee was like “I don’t know if I see your point,” and Kingmaker was like “Email Guy will read this just as he’s attempting to write the Happy Ending part of his Happy Ending story, and he’ll be so depressed over Lailah that he’ll get serious writer’s block.  Problem solved!” and JayDee was like “Can you see the future?” and Kingmaker was like “I’m from the future!”

Or maybe it was just an unlucky coincidence.