Haven’t posted anything in months since my schedule has been so hectic I haven’t done anything in months. For now, I’ve finally caught up on sleep and sent the first half of the next chapter to the Editing Gang.
As always, April sucks, but I’d like to get this done and out by May at the latest. We’ll have to see.
Happy 2021 to everyone who reads my stuff.
2020 was not, as I’ve said elsewhere, the best of years. However, in terms of the fic we did get at least a little accomplished:
There’s also some non-fic related things we’ve done:
I’d like to take the time to thank some people:
Pallan Minerva/Comma: as always expected from him, Comma continued to provide guidance, moderation, leadership, fic feedback, advice, and contributions to the fic. He did this WHILE both going to college full time (and graduating) in the midst of this COVID bullshit, and while managing his own server community and writing his amazing Fate Stay/Night fic story which has surpassed my own in popularity. Comma is his own harshest critic but he’s accomplished more in a single year than some people do in a decade.
Nimiraj : as always, provides strength and comfort. Her insight into the Sara/Liara rebonding section was critical (as with all the relationship pieces) as well as listening to all my self-pitying bullshit and keeping me cheered up is sometimes the only reason I keep going.
Xabiar: Despite the literally titanic efforts on his own fiction (nine chapters of his main fic, twelve chapters of TITANOMACH, twenty seven chapters of the XCOM Files and God only knows what else), the man managed to somehow take the scattered, disorganized and in some cases self-contradicting lore bits I had to create the Citadel Files, nearly 200k words of lore, expansion, and new ideas and characters — in under a freaking year. Very much appreciated, especially on top of running his own community.
Wele: Not only a driving force in working on art for the PV, Wele has been a key player in the success of the Personal Space in the discord chat. Her creation of the asari Sigils and her work on the Wedding Scene hasn’t slowed down her other efforts, on top of all the issues she has. You are appreciated very much.
The Elder One: I can never thank TEO enough for all he does in the background that no one even sees, from fixing up stupid typos and finding plot holes to keeping an eye on the chat. Again, this is on top of working on all his own projects and dealing with the COVID mess.
EnigmaticOne and Mooloor: These two took strong and energetic leads on the RPG Project, taking the insanely stupid and useless half-ass ruleset I gave them and turning it into a finely tuned product that helped produce what I feel was outstanding gameplay. They have continued to refine and expand the rules and at this point deserve a lot more credit for the Fic-RP’s success than I do. EnigmaticOne also went above and beyond the call of duty to collate and edit the RP logs into a format to be turned into stories.
B.W.: B.W.’s entry into the PV WriteCon was incredibly good, some of the best writing any of us have ever seen! Their work in discussing some aspects of where I’m going with the fic and other contributions have also been of seriously important help!
Jacob: Last but not least, Jacob — despite some personal issues — came back strong in 2020 to throw down both edits to the files he’d already done and an incredible piece on Richard Manswell. Jacob remains one of the few people I trust to handle my lore and build on it without oversight and I am deeply humbled by his contributions.
A few others deserve thanks as well:
Sevoris for managing the SIENCE with his usual deft tough
Bish09 for handling, organizing and managing the Gaming Discord
Kep for some very interesting and useful art that has given me ideas.
Krieg for returning to the chat in a far more productive fashion!
Mrosera for keeping the Warframe Clan organized and expanding it greatly!
DaSkyBurner for taking on the challenge of being our Minecraft Server Admin, out of his own pocket I might add
EternalConcern for adding many much needed (and becursed) emotes
SodiumEnriched/Fperson1 for being the original IsLurk and showing everyone how to go from lurker to key member.
JimHero, Eggnogui, DevilNero, Kinnix, Nolan, Neprau, Samael, and Seras for being Bro-Tier
Spicy for being the true and undisputed Lord of Cursed
Of course, I appreciate each and every person who reads, comments, reviews, or shows up in chat.
What does 2021 hold? Ideally, things will improve. COVID vaccines and perhaps a return of more conventional normalcy would help a great deal. As for the fic…
The Editing Gang has indicated — and repeatedly — that this shit is beginning to drag. I will endeavor to wrap things up in a way that does not take too long, but this is where people start dying and actually staying dead.
As for my personal condition… still have knee, back and wrist issues. Due to some medical complications, my finances are shit, and work remains hectic. Purportedly sometime this year we are moving to a new platform, so I expect a great deal of trouble with that since we are adding many new clients. The 2021 Death March is likely to be hellish.
However, I’m still alive, still in good health, and still trolling. I hope you all had a happy holiday season and have a wonderful new year, and that things get better, and not…
Well, you know, not like the Days of Iron. <voncern.jpg>
First of all, have a happy holidays, and the usual Mythos-themed carol:
Second, I’d like to thank Wele for my Christmas card, which is the nicest surprise I’ve had all year.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i-u7EUdBOvp71p2TnFzhFAibZHW9cmjl/view
Third, I was hoping I’d be able to get one more chapter out by Christmas, but work has been pretty crazy during the Death March, culminating in me working last night past 10 PM. I do have the weekend off, so I’ll try to get some writing done, but I don’t know if I can get it out or not.
2020 was not a good year for a lot of people. It was a year filled with losses and pain, a year where a lot of good people died and we have had to deal with Corona, as well as a host of related issues. I’ve lost family members and friends.
But there were also good things that happened, and we cannot lose track of the good in the morass of the bad. That’s the path to despair. Some of my readers are struggling — with their own pasts, mental issues, financial issues, deaths, health issues.
But if this holiday and the celebration of the birth of Jesus has any meaning beyond commercialism, it is to remind us that we can all depend on one another. That we are not alone, that no matter how bad things get we can get through it.
I appreciate each and every reader, and I hope you all have a happy holiday and a happy new year.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11178712/55/OSaBC-II-That-Which-Cannot-Die
I hope you like it 😀
Work has been absolutely hellish for the past few months, but we do have some progress being made.
First, I did another worldbuildy video thing, which is slightly less incoherent than the last one.
Second, I added some files. Xabiar’s Citadel series is done, as well as a couple of updates to Bird of Hermes and the Rachel Florez STG file.
Right now the next chapter of TWCD is in with the EG after an extensive rewrite, and it should be out by this weekend or maybe before.
Due to a happy coincidence of timing, I got the next TWCD chapter published as well as Xabiar’s new Citadel Files : Military out the door today.
We are having a PV-RPG session today from 2 PM to 6 PM CST, which will result in that being put into an online chapter along with Bright’s next happy discoveries.
I’m also in the process of getting bids and estimates for the next set of artwork, as well as waiting for my Patreons to determine what oneshots they want to see. Later on this month we’ll start to see more of the stories from the Fanfic WriteCon showing up as well.
So, before I talk about the fan-fic stuff, the ‘real news’:
Other than the above, things haven’t been so hot. Ankle and knee are slowly getting worse and I can’t do any therapy with the curfew and COVID lock-downs, so I have to manage with ice packs and grit.
I got one chapter of TWCD out, as well as an entirely new work, the Bird of Hermes. Set in between ATTWN and TWCD, Bird of Hermes is a sci-fi horror tale of the System’s Alliance exploration and evacuation of a pre-Inusannon colony world code named Rho-19. It ties in with a planned RPG segment I will be doing with some of my Discord participants, and will end in a series of reports on pre-Inusannon races to further out the backstory.
I’ve also updated Xabiar’s magnificent Citadel document he writes for me, so make sure to check all of that out.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13582864/1/OSABC-The-Bird-of-Hermes
Also, for those of you who are just finding out about my writing, I finally got around to creating a document to map out the best and recommended reading order for all of this stuff. Check out A (barely) annotated guide to the PremiseVerse:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NrYO5x8huRm1mpK32V96VdE2tIn9vBag1aZr1z_1BOU/edit?usp=sharing
Finally (and most hilariously) I finally decided to take a stab at recording an actual video. I warn you now that this is a low-quality web-cam and in my ignorance I forgot the mic pickup was right next to the A/C vent so the sound quality is absolute garbage.
However, it is a video message that is, according to the people who’ve watched it, worth listening to, so in the immortal words of our Queen Senzawa, ‘here we fucking go’:
I hope everyone is staying safe. You’ll forgive me if I don’t include some kind of pithy statement about the protests and the death of George Floyd, but as you can see from the video I’m tired of almost everything right now, and there’s nothing you can put on the net that will fix what is wrong with the world right now.
However, I will say this. The problem isn’t the ‘police’ or the ‘government’ or ‘hoodlums’. The problem isn’t solved by laws, or by guns, or by protests. The problem is fucking humans not giving a shit about each other, and lots of people are guilty of that regardless of skin color or profession.
Until humans all learn to love one another — white or black, Hispanic or Latinx, American or Chinese, CIS or trans, gay/les/bi or straight, rich or poor — we will all continue by ruled by hate.
Be safe. You are cherished. You are appreciated. You are trolled.
Haven’t been on much. Two friends are in critical care with COVID and my uncle passed away due to it last week. Several friends are out of work and with mounting bills, medical issues and no relief in sight, especially in Florida where the unemployment system is… unoptimal.
My place of work laid off more than 500 people in IT and support and more in operations. Critical people, senior devs, code writers who knew the legacy systems. This is going to lag things at work and pile more mess on me and my bosses. Schedule is even more chaotic and I am the on-call this week.
Not exactly happy with the home-schooling options presented by my nieces’ school, went through a social studies section claiming the cause of WWI was ‘economic anxieties’ and a Common Core math section that actually said 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 and 12 * 12 are the same. So now I have to go over that.
Anyway… I have gotten another few pages done on the next chapter of TWCD and may put out a tech guide. Not sure. Haven’t been on Discord lately so please obey admins or there will be more punishment for Susan handed out.
So far, I am not sick and neither is my mom or nieces. Given the asthma both nieces have, my smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure and mom’s issues, none of us will be going out in public for anything. I have no problems with re-openings; there are no good options for the people out of work who are going to be evicted without income.
That being said… God gave you common sense for a reason and I certainly won’t be interacting with anyone who thinks a bar crawl is a good idea at this time.
So, the world has gone to shit.
The coronavirus shares several frightening characteristics with a theoretical flu variant call the Wheeze I came up with for the backstory of PV Earth, a virus that killed tens of millions of people and was one of the key factors in shattering world civilization into the mess that became the Days of Iron. As several other factors in my work have also come to pass, I begin to grow worried.
That being said, I am a paranoiac and disaster prepper anyway, so this outbreak hasn’t affected me much IRL. I already have high quality filters for my air, lots of toilet paper, MRE’s, canned goods, and the like. And I had a stack of N95 masks and surgical gloves after the SARS outbreak that are still here. I am able to work from home and my company is deeply involved in shipping medical supplies and food. Given the importance we have I am unlikely to lose my job.
I haven’t gotten much writing done, mainly because I’m having some blocks on the next main chapter, but also because my work schedule is chaotic. Our company lost our disaster response team so I’m part of a rotating on-call 24/7 response group. Yesterday, I worked from 5 AM to 2 PM, got 3 hours sleep, worked from 5 PM to 9 PM, got three hours sleep, and then again from 9 to almost 6 AM today. This erratic pattern doesn’t allow for good introspection.
I do have some updates, however. Thanks to the efforts of the Patreon donators, we have new art of Shepard — specifically, her attire at her wedding and a close up of the Star of Terra.
Right now, the current plan for the fic is as follows:
Beyond that… I dunno. This virus is a scary thing, but so is what it is doing to society, to economy, and to the lives of the poor and without resources. My work at my company is literally saving lives so for the moment I am more focused on that. On the other hand, with everyone shut in and isolating, I know a distraction is valuable, and I have certainly not forgotten any of you.
Feel free to email (viley@att.net), PM in FFN, DM on Discord or comment here if you need to discuss anything, need advice or want to ask a question. Please stay safe. Please self-isolate and don’t take stupid chances, this thing is containable if we just all act intelligently.
Redid the next chapter after the Editing Gang shot down draft one, and its with them now. I do not have a good ETA on when they’ll be done with it, but since in theory some parts have already been fixed the goal is to get it out the door before New Year’s Day.
Today starting at 11 AM is the final throes of the Death March, as we are predicted to have to ship and scan over two hundred thousand phones. Assuming I am not obliterated by this last torrent of hate, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas (or apropos holiday) and look forward to a new year.
I’d like to take a moment to recognize some people:
Nimiraj, of course, who keeps me sane. Several of her suggestions involving Shepard and Liara have been invaluable.
The Elder One, who continues to do background work in uploads, edits, and corrections to my train-wrecks, even while managing his own creative writing and other issues.
Both VadderDarth and TheNamelessWele in the Discord chat for work on artistic elements, emoji, and ideas.
Jim and Sevoris for the official design of Shepard’s and Aethtya’s warp swords:
The usual triumvirate of Comma, Jacob and Metaladdict for advice, ideas and support. All of them have gone through some shit IRL and yet continue to help, assist other members, and basically be bros. Extra props to Comma for doing all the moderation of the Discord chat, which as of today has 134 members, many of whom are completely insane.
Quentin, Bish09, and Burnsidhe for critical changes and ideas that I used in shaping the fic this year. Each of these has been extremely useful and evocative — and made me think on other things, down the line that have shifted the story line.
Seras, Nagato, and Kaikono for being supportive.
Everyone who participated in reviews, comments, well wishes, DM’s on Discord, PM’s on FF.net and emails — thank you. I don’t write for reviews, I don’t write for ego, and I don’t write to be praised. I write for the simple reason that I want to make people be able to lose themselves from the real world for a while, and to remind you that just because things are dark doesn’t mean they always will be.
Thank you for reading my work. Thank you for giving me a focus. Thank you for being yourselves.
The Author’s Note I left at the top of the last chapter bears repeating.
Often I am asked why evil flourishes.
‘Evil is merely the lack of empathy and the belief that love and hope are empty words. There are those who embrace the darkness within, who honestly believe that mercy is weakness and that to love one another is impossible – due to politics, or to conflict between our species, or that it is merely naïve.
‘Yet for all the power of evil – death, darkness, greed, cruelty, and lies – you will find these are transitory, and lead to the undoing of those who espouse them. Death is simply a part of life. To fear it is to miss the point of living as fully and as joyfully as one can in their span. Pain, greed, and cruelty are opportunities, a chance to show that mercy, love, and kindness are real. Lies are merely the tyranny of evil beings over those who would bring them down if they knew the truth, and will always falter in time.
‘None of these evils can match the laughter of a child. They cannot match the beauty of the moon-rise, or the glory of the sun. No material wealth is as potent or fulfilling as the warmth of a lover’s embrace in passion. No greedy and cruel leader can steal from you the ability to show love and to share hope.
‘It is only in those who have given up the fight that evil wins. And as long as I draw breath and live, I will never bow to its demands, nor fear its lash.’
-Matriarch Uressa T’Shora, ‘On Light Reflected,’ a commentary of her actions at the end of the First Contact War/Relay 314 Incident
Have a blessed holiday season.
