Sparrow

And now I’ve had my colonoscopy without anesthetic.  The procedure itself wasn’t a problem at all; the hours of horrific diarrhoea before it, on the other hand, now that was nasty.

I had a very close relative die in the summer and it’s kind of broken me too, as self-centred as it sounds when they’re the one who died, but I gotta try and move on a bit. Hoping to catch up on reading soon, especially the new halloween story jam you’ve got going on.

Sunburns are good things, happy things, ought to make you feel good.

So, no, positive thinking can’t overcome everything.

My story “The Cartooniverse Mother-Daughter Crossover Sextacular” references 75 different cartoons from every era. My thought this morning: “It’s like I was trying to ruin as many childhoods as possible.”

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.

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.

Haven’t been by here in a bit, and I noticed @JayDee and @Sparrow discussing my absence.  I figured I’d give a bit of info on what’s going on.  JayDee mentioned work, and that’s part of it, but there’s a little added stress as well.

COVID-19 has begun working its way through my social circle.  Among other things, my youngest brother tested positive a few days ago, and his girlfriend lives with him, so it’s no surprise that she’s got it now too.  I just learned about his girlfriend, so I haven’t spoken with her yet, but I did have time to call my little brother, and he’s what I suppose you could describe as “mildly symptomatic”: no serious problems with breathing, but he’s congested and running a fever, so I’m somewhat nervous.

One of my cousins has tested positive as well, and the disease is making its way through her family (my aunt is doing her best to isolate herself, but it’s difficult since she lives with them).  In addition my middle brother’s wife was exposed today, so we’ll have to wait and see whether she’s infected or not.

Everything seems ok so far, but I’d be lying if I said this didn’t stress me at all.