Gasp!
Holy crap. How long has it been?
Okay, first and foremost?
Yeah. That's me. I totally made this challenge my bitch. On the 29th, no less. Which, okay, isn't that impressive compared to, say, my friend An-chan who wrote over 160k, but for me with my RL flailing and my loltention span? Yeah. It was an achievement.
The novel isn't actually finished yet. I'm thinking of bulldozing most of it and rewriting it from the ground up. Hence, what you see below the cut isn't actually what the final version will be about, I'm pretty sure. But some elements are probably going to make it in the final.
Title: Hilariously, I realized on the 28th that I never actually gave my novel a title. I've thought about it in brief, but I never really settled on a name.
Important Concepts:
The Flash: A mystery event that occurred in the late 80's. Exactly what it says on the tin. That is, a brilliant flash everyone saw. Somehow linked to all the shenanigans involving reality rape.
Creator: A being with the ability to bring fantasy into reality. Basically, if they daydream it, it magically becomes reality.
Figment: A being brought to life by a Creator. Every Figment, as a result of crossing over from their reality to ours, also gains a special power in the process. This can really be anything that relates to them in some way. (See Dramatis Personae.)
The Department: Hell if I remember the actual full name of that thing. (And I'm far too lazy to just open the document and search for it.) A secret government organization geared towards keeping a lid on the whole Creator-Figment thing to avoid, you know, having the world implode. Apparently also functions like the mafia.
Dramatis Personae:
Jane Gray: Yes. Jane Gray. I didn't even realize it was an incredibly lame pun until a few chapters in, when I typo'd her first name as "Jean." Jane is a Creator, a girl with the power to bring things in her daydreams to life. (As in, she imagines them, and they magically exist.) She's also a snarky teenager with extremely low self-esteem and the tendency to fail miserably at hiding her emotions. (There's not a scene that goes by without her either blushing, nearly crying, or laying the sarcasm on thick.) Also pretty loyal and cringes at the idea that she's just being a burden to everyone around her... even if that's not true.
Henry Wyndham: (Formerly known on this blog as "the MC.") A genius physicist/research assistant from one of Jane's favorite comic books and Jane's first Figment. Possibly due to Jane projecting part of herself on his development, Henry is blunt, sarcastic, and completely and utterly tactless most of the time. He cares about people; he just doesn't show it that often. And when he does, he does a great job at convincing them that it's entirely for practical reasons and not for actual emotion. In other words, an educated and eloquent ass hole. Also a technopath due to the entire Figment thing.
Max Gray: ("The cat.") A gray (NO PUN INTENDED, I SWEAR TO GOD) tabby owned by Jane. Also a magnificent bastard and a Figment. His power is apparently not the fact that he can speak to people. It might have more to do with the fact that he has the mysterious ability to appear from out of absolutely nowhere.
Agent Seven: An entirely too perky agent from the Department. She was at one point a Mary Sue, and as such, she seems to have a solution to everything -- or at least ways to piss off everyone around her. A telepath naturally, she gained clairvoyance upon crossing over to the Jane's world. Also, she just doesn't shut up.
Agent Quinn: Agent Seven's androgynous, elfin, mostly mute partner. (He can speak. It's just that for some reason, as soon as he does, people forget he's spoken at all. His voice apparently has the ability to drive people insane.) Formerly someone's video game character, he's a death knight expy black knight, which means he wields not only a pretty fierce (flaming) sword but also the ability to open chasms into Hell to call forth demonic minions. Tends to be intensely stoic at all times, although he's apparently a softie at heart.
Sam Langley: Jane's punk best friend. She's got a mouth on her, but she seems extremely nice to Jane (save for the part where she sort of ditches her every weekend to go work or something). Additionally, she had been one of the few normal people in the entire cast... and then it turned out that she was a Figment who could manipulate shadows to create bloodthirsty shadow monsters. Which she set on Jane. For shits and giggles. Jane is apparently not the best judge of character.
Vinny: A freshman built like a quarterback. He seemed like one of Jane's bullies (asking her constantly awkward questions about dogs... which you can fill in the blanks for, but needless to say, she took a lot of them as insults) until he arrived to help her in the climactic battle. It turns out he's actually a werewolf Figment (with super strength), and he's intensely terrible at pickup lines.
Alicia ("Al"): A goth girl and sophomore who seemed at first to be one of Jane's bullies. (Jane thought she was laughing at her, but it turns out, she was actually laughing at Vinny.) In actuality, she always wanted to make friends with Jane but thought she hated everyone. Out of the group Jane thought was bullying her, Al is probably the most outgoing and perky. As a Figment, she has the ability to heal wounds by touch, which renders her as more support during fights than anything else.
Dee: One of the other "bullies." A hothead by nature, Dee's ability as a Figment is to manipulate fire... which he does a little too enthusiastically to be healthy.
Jose: The last of the "bullies." As a Figment, he has the ability to manipulate earth, including forming projectile weapons from rocks and dirt. He usually hangs around Dee and serves as his foil, being the calmer and mellower member of the four-man band.
Punch: Jane's first conscious creation. He's basically a winged giant with super strength but reversely proportionate brains. In other words, he's a brick wall and a tank, but he's dumb as a rock.
Pen: A golden dragon and Jane's second creation. He's a little more powerful than Punch, wielding the ability to fire beams of light from his mouth on top of the whole slashy, tossy, all kinds of fun things... thing.
Summary:
As you can probably tell by the above, basically, this is what happened:
The novel starts off with Henry fending off hackers from a mysterious organization by... counter hacking. Because that makes sense. (There was supposed to be a subplot involving this organization but... I kinda forgot about that.) And then it turns out it's all a dream by Jane, who's nearly slept through the entirety of study hall. Jane turns out to be a pretty ordinary girl who goes to classes, spends all period writing fanfiction and passing notes to her best friend Sam, and heads home uneventfully (save for some "bullying" by Vinny and the gang). She talks to her cat and sits down to do a little bit of studying... while at the same time, Henry appears on her block with absolutely no recollection as to how he got there.
And then Jane gets attacked by a giant monster made of black tentacles. Whoops?
Henry, still feeling disoriented from popping in from outta nowhere, comes to her rescue, but the celebration lasts only a little bit before the Department swoops in to clean up the mess. Jane and Henry are technically kidnapped (although the official reason is that they're being held "to avoid having Jane screw up the world while trying to master her powers"), which causes Jane to go, "bitch plz," create Punch, and storm on out of there.
So, Henry decides to try getting her back by stalking her taking a job as a substitute teacher at her school and convince her to come with him to pick up the cat she forgot about at the Department. She takes the bait and to his apartment. (All while her mind is screaming, "RAPE! ...Would I object to that?") He tries to apologize about being a douche to her, but all his hard work dissolves when it turns out the Department broke into his apartment and sat there waiting for him, making her think he just wanted to drag her back with them. Henry tries to strike a deal with the Department to get them to let him become her guardian of sorts when all of a sudden, MORE TENTACLE MONSTERS.
Cue epic revealing of Quinn's powers plus an epic car chase, culminating in a fight between a giant shadow dragon and the newly created Pen. Sam is also here at this point because she nearly crashed her car into the giant shadow dragon. And then the giant shadow dragon ate her car. When the Department shows up, Sam is not happy about the fate of her car. So Agent Seven decides to screw with her brain to put her to sleep for awhile. Jane's not happy about that, either.
So, Jane and Henry take Sam home (and watch her stumble into her house like a drunk) before they head back to Henry's apartment, under the idea that she'd be safer if he was watching her. Max and Henry have a heart-to-heart the next morning (and by that, I mean Max tells Henry repeatedly that he's a dick), which causes Henry to think Max is actually the one sending the shadow beasts on them. Jane is not convinced because Max is her cat and certainly not a Figment, so they go to school in awkwardness that culminates in Jane's realization that she actually does want to bonk Henry more than a little.
At school, Sam confronts Jane about her weird behavior (apparently not remembering the night before), but that's quickly resolved. And then Jane goes out to get a notebook from her locker, only to release Max from the confines of her backpack accidentally.
Which means she's subsequently attacked by a giant, three-headed, black dog.
She runs into the student parking lot ('cause she thought it was a good idea at the time), only to trip, fall, and nearly get eaten by Rover, just in time for Henry to pull a Big Damn Hero by taking control of several cars and smashing them into the dog. (Agent Seven attempts to tell him off for the property damage, but Henry, being Henry, really doesn't give a damn.) Vinny and his gang show up not long afterwards and hit on convince Jane that they're friends. And then they go kill the big dog, and everyone lives happily ever--
OH SNAP, IT'S SAM.
Sam reveals that, actually, she just likes abusing Jane by making her think everyone hates her. Why? Because Sam, as it turns out, is a Figment, and as a Figment, she's just naturally and clichély evil. Also, psychotic. Extremely psychotic. And a sadist to obscene levels. So, she summons a gryphon and several spindly shadowy things...
...And the novel's progress ends right there because I'm too lazy to continue.
But yes. This sounds coherent, but it's mostly filler and drama and WHY DID I MAKE THIS BE ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL?
And yes. Bulldozing = good times.
That being said, my next project is not only the Yuletide for pokeprompts but also the massive board-wide event going on at the BBS. Definitely a good idea to sign up now if you haven't already because there's a lot of pretty nifty stuff to do floating around.
Aaaand, I'm terribly behind on the Pokémeme, so I'm just going to go ahead and do it one day at a time.
Because my answer for the next type is pretty long.
NIDOKING
I ran through Red a lot. And by a lot, I mean I'm not even kidding. Because I didn't really have anyone to trade with, I couldn't actually complete my Pokédex, so it really didn't matter to me if I started over. Not only that, but I'd also go back and start Red all over again between challenges for shits, giggles, and Missingno.
With that being said, it was hard to find ways to make the game interesting for me. The problem was that I played through it so many times that I already knew basically everything there was to know about that game. So, I wasn't really playing to enjoy the storyline so much as it was to try new combinations of Pokémon. Some of them got boxed in favor of my favorites; others actually became my favorites after awhile.
The same is true for the Nidoran line. I've trained both a Nidoqueen and a Nidoking on separate runs, and both were caught early on in the game, right around Viridian City. (I have this habit of keeping only the Pokémon I catch early on on my teams, probably because they're usually overleveled by the time I get to a new route.) And I have to say I never really expected them to rank as high as they do. They were both amazing - Pokémon that could take hits and deal them if necessary, even in that awkward second stage I always seem to end up hating with other Pokémon lines. Double-Kick, by the way, has been my life-saver I don't know how many times. Earthquake, too. Did I ever mention I used to abuse STAB? I was totally justified with Nidoking.
Oh, and why is Nidoking my top favorite instead of Nidoqueen? Design, the fact that I prefer offensive over defensive... and, um, it may or may not have something to do with this:
Dear Pixiv,
Thank you for making me wonder whether or not I have a TF fetish.
(No) love(, you jackasses),
Me
Okay, first and foremost?
Yeah. That's me. I totally made this challenge my bitch. On the 29th, no less. Which, okay, isn't that impressive compared to, say, my friend An-chan who wrote over 160k, but for me with my RL flailing and my loltention span? Yeah. It was an achievement.
The novel isn't actually finished yet. I'm thinking of bulldozing most of it and rewriting it from the ground up. Hence, what you see below the cut isn't actually what the final version will be about, I'm pretty sure. But some elements are probably going to make it in the final.
Title: Hilariously, I realized on the 28th that I never actually gave my novel a title. I've thought about it in brief, but I never really settled on a name.
Important Concepts:
The Flash: A mystery event that occurred in the late 80's. Exactly what it says on the tin. That is, a brilliant flash everyone saw. Somehow linked to all the shenanigans involving reality rape.
Creator: A being with the ability to bring fantasy into reality. Basically, if they daydream it, it magically becomes reality.
Figment: A being brought to life by a Creator. Every Figment, as a result of crossing over from their reality to ours, also gains a special power in the process. This can really be anything that relates to them in some way. (See Dramatis Personae.)
The Department: Hell if I remember the actual full name of that thing. (And I'm far too lazy to just open the document and search for it.) A secret government organization geared towards keeping a lid on the whole Creator-Figment thing to avoid, you know, having the world implode. Apparently also functions like the mafia.
Dramatis Personae:
Jane Gray: Yes. Jane Gray. I didn't even realize it was an incredibly lame pun until a few chapters in, when I typo'd her first name as "Jean." Jane is a Creator, a girl with the power to bring things in her daydreams to life. (As in, she imagines them, and they magically exist.) She's also a snarky teenager with extremely low self-esteem and the tendency to fail miserably at hiding her emotions. (There's not a scene that goes by without her either blushing, nearly crying, or laying the sarcasm on thick.) Also pretty loyal and cringes at the idea that she's just being a burden to everyone around her... even if that's not true.
Henry Wyndham: (Formerly known on this blog as "the MC.") A genius physicist/research assistant from one of Jane's favorite comic books and Jane's first Figment. Possibly due to Jane projecting part of herself on his development, Henry is blunt, sarcastic, and completely and utterly tactless most of the time. He cares about people; he just doesn't show it that often. And when he does, he does a great job at convincing them that it's entirely for practical reasons and not for actual emotion. In other words, an educated and eloquent ass hole. Also a technopath due to the entire Figment thing.
Max Gray: ("The cat.") A gray (NO PUN INTENDED, I SWEAR TO GOD) tabby owned by Jane. Also a magnificent bastard and a Figment. His power is apparently not the fact that he can speak to people. It might have more to do with the fact that he has the mysterious ability to appear from out of absolutely nowhere.
Agent Seven: An entirely too perky agent from the Department. She was at one point a Mary Sue, and as such, she seems to have a solution to everything -- or at least ways to piss off everyone around her. A telepath naturally, she gained clairvoyance upon crossing over to the Jane's world. Also, she just doesn't shut up.
Agent Quinn: Agent Seven's androgynous, elfin, mostly mute partner. (He can speak. It's just that for some reason, as soon as he does, people forget he's spoken at all. His voice apparently has the ability to drive people insane.) Formerly someone's video game character, he's a death knight expy black knight, which means he wields not only a pretty fierce (flaming) sword but also the ability to open chasms into Hell to call forth demonic minions. Tends to be intensely stoic at all times, although he's apparently a softie at heart.
Sam Langley: Jane's punk best friend. She's got a mouth on her, but she seems extremely nice to Jane (save for the part where she sort of ditches her every weekend to go work or something). Additionally, she had been one of the few normal people in the entire cast... and then it turned out that she was a Figment who could manipulate shadows to create bloodthirsty shadow monsters. Which she set on Jane. For shits and giggles. Jane is apparently not the best judge of character.
Vinny: A freshman built like a quarterback. He seemed like one of Jane's bullies (asking her constantly awkward questions about dogs... which you can fill in the blanks for, but needless to say, she took a lot of them as insults) until he arrived to help her in the climactic battle. It turns out he's actually a werewolf Figment (with super strength), and he's intensely terrible at pickup lines.
Alicia ("Al"): A goth girl and sophomore who seemed at first to be one of Jane's bullies. (Jane thought she was laughing at her, but it turns out, she was actually laughing at Vinny.) In actuality, she always wanted to make friends with Jane but thought she hated everyone. Out of the group Jane thought was bullying her, Al is probably the most outgoing and perky. As a Figment, she has the ability to heal wounds by touch, which renders her as more support during fights than anything else.
Dee: One of the other "bullies." A hothead by nature, Dee's ability as a Figment is to manipulate fire... which he does a little too enthusiastically to be healthy.
Jose: The last of the "bullies." As a Figment, he has the ability to manipulate earth, including forming projectile weapons from rocks and dirt. He usually hangs around Dee and serves as his foil, being the calmer and mellower member of the four-man band.
Punch: Jane's first conscious creation. He's basically a winged giant with super strength but reversely proportionate brains. In other words, he's a brick wall and a tank, but he's dumb as a rock.
Pen: A golden dragon and Jane's second creation. He's a little more powerful than Punch, wielding the ability to fire beams of light from his mouth on top of the whole slashy, tossy, all kinds of fun things... thing.
Summary:
As you can probably tell by the above, basically, this is what happened:
The novel starts off with Henry fending off hackers from a mysterious organization by... counter hacking. Because that makes sense. (There was supposed to be a subplot involving this organization but... I kinda forgot about that.) And then it turns out it's all a dream by Jane, who's nearly slept through the entirety of study hall. Jane turns out to be a pretty ordinary girl who goes to classes, spends all period writing fanfiction and passing notes to her best friend Sam, and heads home uneventfully (save for some "bullying" by Vinny and the gang). She talks to her cat and sits down to do a little bit of studying... while at the same time, Henry appears on her block with absolutely no recollection as to how he got there.
And then Jane gets attacked by a giant monster made of black tentacles. Whoops?
Henry, still feeling disoriented from popping in from outta nowhere, comes to her rescue, but the celebration lasts only a little bit before the Department swoops in to clean up the mess. Jane and Henry are technically kidnapped (although the official reason is that they're being held "to avoid having Jane screw up the world while trying to master her powers"), which causes Jane to go, "bitch plz," create Punch, and storm on out of there.
So, Henry decides to try getting her back by stalking her taking a job as a substitute teacher at her school and convince her to come with him to pick up the cat she forgot about at the Department. She takes the bait and to his apartment. (All while her mind is screaming, "RAPE! ...Would I object to that?") He tries to apologize about being a douche to her, but all his hard work dissolves when it turns out the Department broke into his apartment and sat there waiting for him, making her think he just wanted to drag her back with them. Henry tries to strike a deal with the Department to get them to let him become her guardian of sorts when all of a sudden, MORE TENTACLE MONSTERS.
Cue epic revealing of Quinn's powers plus an epic car chase, culminating in a fight between a giant shadow dragon and the newly created Pen. Sam is also here at this point because she nearly crashed her car into the giant shadow dragon. And then the giant shadow dragon ate her car. When the Department shows up, Sam is not happy about the fate of her car. So Agent Seven decides to screw with her brain to put her to sleep for awhile. Jane's not happy about that, either.
So, Jane and Henry take Sam home (and watch her stumble into her house like a drunk) before they head back to Henry's apartment, under the idea that she'd be safer if he was watching her. Max and Henry have a heart-to-heart the next morning (and by that, I mean Max tells Henry repeatedly that he's a dick), which causes Henry to think Max is actually the one sending the shadow beasts on them. Jane is not convinced because Max is her cat and certainly not a Figment, so they go to school in awkwardness that culminates in Jane's realization that she actually does want to bonk Henry more than a little.
At school, Sam confronts Jane about her weird behavior (apparently not remembering the night before), but that's quickly resolved. And then Jane goes out to get a notebook from her locker, only to release Max from the confines of her backpack accidentally.
Which means she's subsequently attacked by a giant, three-headed, black dog.
She runs into the student parking lot ('cause she thought it was a good idea at the time), only to trip, fall, and nearly get eaten by Rover, just in time for Henry to pull a Big Damn Hero by taking control of several cars and smashing them into the dog. (Agent Seven attempts to tell him off for the property damage, but Henry, being Henry, really doesn't give a damn.) Vinny and his gang show up not long afterwards and hit on convince Jane that they're friends. And then they go kill the big dog, and everyone lives happily ever--
OH SNAP, IT'S SAM.
Sam reveals that, actually, she just likes abusing Jane by making her think everyone hates her. Why? Because Sam, as it turns out, is a Figment, and as a Figment, she's just naturally and clichély evil. Also, psychotic. Extremely psychotic. And a sadist to obscene levels. So, she summons a gryphon and several spindly shadowy things...
...And the novel's progress ends right there because I'm too lazy to continue.
But yes. This sounds coherent, but it's mostly filler and drama and WHY DID I MAKE THIS BE ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL?
And yes. Bulldozing = good times.
That being said, my next project is not only the Yuletide for pokeprompts but also the massive board-wide event going on at the BBS. Definitely a good idea to sign up now if you haven't already because there's a lot of pretty nifty stuff to do floating around.
Aaaand, I'm terribly behind on the Pokémeme, so I'm just going to go ahead and do it one day at a time.
Because my answer for the next type is pretty long.
NIDOKING
I ran through Red a lot. And by a lot, I mean I'm not even kidding. Because I didn't really have anyone to trade with, I couldn't actually complete my Pokédex, so it really didn't matter to me if I started over. Not only that, but I'd also go back and start Red all over again between challenges for shits, giggles, and Missingno.
With that being said, it was hard to find ways to make the game interesting for me. The problem was that I played through it so many times that I already knew basically everything there was to know about that game. So, I wasn't really playing to enjoy the storyline so much as it was to try new combinations of Pokémon. Some of them got boxed in favor of my favorites; others actually became my favorites after awhile.
The same is true for the Nidoran line. I've trained both a Nidoqueen and a Nidoking on separate runs, and both were caught early on in the game, right around Viridian City. (I have this habit of keeping only the Pokémon I catch early on on my teams, probably because they're usually overleveled by the time I get to a new route.) And I have to say I never really expected them to rank as high as they do. They were both amazing - Pokémon that could take hits and deal them if necessary, even in that awkward second stage I always seem to end up hating with other Pokémon lines. Double-Kick, by the way, has been my life-saver I don't know how many times. Earthquake, too. Did I ever mention I used to abuse STAB? I was totally justified with Nidoking.
Oh, and why is Nidoking my top favorite instead of Nidoqueen? Design, the fact that I prefer offensive over defensive... and, um, it may or may not have something to do with this:
Dear Pixiv,
Thank you for making me wonder whether or not I have a TF fetish.
(No) love(, you jackasses),
Me