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Whether we intend it to be or not, Holy Week almost always means returning to something old... or at least it has for me. I think it's because of the fact that we kids in the Punzalan household are placed under house arrest and nothing's open, so there's no point in going out anyway.
That said, what did I end up doing? I ended up getting bitten by the Endtimes bug, and started re-reading the entirety of my very, VERY old story from beginning to end. I just finished this afternoon.
BACKGROUND: For those on you who haven't been on my flist for a while, Endtimes -- ET -- is a story I started to write (and finished) in my freshman year of college... it clocked in at around 806 pages, and went through several revamps and revisions while I was in my sophomore year. From a very simple premise (Witch Hunter Robin meets gay etc. etc.), it expanded into a gimongous universe from which some of my most endearing characters hail from. It also has several hundred spin-offs, the most popular being Thick as Thieves and Bloodsport.
I originally intended to revise ET once and for all when I was in second year, but academic concerns and other stuff kept me from doing it -- basically, I ended up not touching ET for 3-4 years (excluding an experimental run of the first few chapters in the India & Conundrum online fic journal, which I still have to go back to when ET is really ready), and occupied myself with real life, writing fanfiction and doing other projects, like prepping campaigns for table top RPGs like D&D and World of Darkness. It was a little frustrating, but now that I think about it, it was a good thing: it gave me time to really, really think about how to redo ET and expand the universe properly.
Close friends of mine (namely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
khursten, ezraelandvari, xhael, yukitsu, kye_kestrel, archangel_dream and omnicrescence, with Khursten, Rachel, Liss and Drew being my part-time editors at various dates) know about my preoccupation with the story, and have been constantly encouraging me to pick it up again, but this is the first time I've managed to really sit down and get started on it. That's the lovely part about graduating: having a few months to check back on what really matters.
The moment I read the very first line of the prologue, I felt very, very old. I know that sounds ridiculous given the fact that I'm only 23, but that's honestly how I felt. The original version of ET was written when I was a much younger, much less immature and much more raw writer who didn't know a lot of the tricks and read a lot of the stuff that I've read at present. I was pretty good for my age: I'll give myself that. But I wasn't spectacular. Let's quantify what I mean by that. >_>
First and foremost, I didn't have a voice. I mean -- you know how authors all have this distinct style, right? You read a work, and you can go "Oh, it's Gaiman" or "Oh, it's Palahniuk". ET was written before I was able to come up with my own voice. There were parts where I seriously could not see myself in the writing. o_o It was generally solid and it got the point across, but it was empty. Too much interference from all the authors/sources of inspiration that I had for ET rather than me, I guess.
Like most young writers, I had a thing for melodrama. I can admit that to myself now. *coughs* Too much feeling went into the descriptions, and it sort of spoiled the fun of reading... I'm surprised that my friends managed to go through it in the first place without cringing. There's also the fact that my, uh, preoccupation with fonts came out in the text, an the fact that for a written work, ET was a bit too visual. Sure, stories are supposed to create pictures in your mind, but I've always been one to believe that there should be a delicate balance in a narrative work between the image and the emotion and whatever else.
Beyond the melodrama, there's also the fact that my fangirling came out only too often in the story. Heck, I made my own characters go OOC at several points. ~_~ I guess I just didn't know how to handle them yet... they were as new as the story was, and I didn't have enough practice with writing them and writing itself to do them justice.
Let's look at that a little more. Another thing that shocked/amused/appalled me as I re-read the story was how everything had changed. Like, Aidan was boring as Hell back then, and Rethe was still more cutesy than he was scary (and scary was what I was supposed to be going for, mind you) and Hotaru was distressingly YOUNG (and sometimes annoying) and Hikaru, heaven forbid, was straight as an arrow. I guess that leads back to the point about the story/world and all the characters within it being young -- I just didn't know how to do them yet. Things will be different, now that I've grown and they've grown. I SWEAR IT. B|
Okay. That stuff is almost forgivable, but this next one is embarrassing: I WAS TL;DR TO THE MAX. I mean it. TO THE MAX. Guyz, how the HELL did you stand reading all of those WORDS? DDDD: Thank you, college, for teaching me what proper writing is. I don't want to think about how I would've ended up without my education. ~_~
[/self-abuse]
I have to pat myself on the back for a few things though. The original version of ET is generally unusable to me now, with all the changes and growing up that both the universe and I myself have gone through, but there ARE a few parts and things that I'm going to have to retain because they'll still work in the new one.
OKAY. Now that the writer stuff is out of the way, what can I REALLY say about all of this? Just one thing:
For serious. Sure, there wasn't a lot of actual boy bonking, but DAMN WAS IT BLEEDING GAY and it had all the elements of tragedy and forbidden love and UST that make us fujoshi squee our heads off whenever we see the likes of AI NO KUSABI or MIRAGE OF BLAZE. Imagine: if I had somehow gotten ET published and/or animized/comicized back then, it REALLY would've made it as a BL title. I have enough confidence in myself to say that much. XD
How the hell did I come up with that conclusion? Let me count the ways. :D
1.) THE BL MANGA AWKWARDNESS! Srsly. Aidan and Rethe were doing the emotional tango from Day One and we fujoshi all know how the story goes. Tragic veteran + young, nubile and mysterious boy-partner = Fun fun fun. In bed.
2.) IT'S AN ORGY THAT COULD DO KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN AND PRINCE OF TENNIS PROUD. Liss and the rest were right -- there are soooo many ships, be it straight or lezzie or gay, and imagine: some of the best ones are actually canon!. Take a look at the Chain, for example: Alistair --> Aidan --> Rethe. And THEN there are the non-canon ones that are just so bleeping obvious, like Blake and Ro (assistant kink!). Or Calintz and Aidan (their love started even earlier than Aidan and Rethe's did!). Or Miriam and Liandrin/Harume (boobie-load of boobies!). Or Calintz and Hikaru.
I shit you not, Yukeh and Khursten. Calintz and Hikaru. They're bantering each other when they're not arguing, and they're basically carrying on like "Hahahaha I'll kill you someday~ ♥" throughout the story. And they're CONSTANTLY butting heads, even more than Calintz and Aidan are. Calintz even calls Hikaru CUTE. IT'S SO WRONG BUT IT'S SO RIGHT.I wonder if I should retain this for the new version. It'll be fun!
...Anyway, yeah. Original version of ET = BL novel. Lulz.
Even though I didn't agree with what a lot of what she said, my CW professor DID make one point that has stuck with me; she said that sometimes, writers find themselves with an idea or a scene that they can't actually handle yet. When that happens, the best thing that one can do is to write what they can for it, and then leave it for a long, long time.
In my case, Endtimes is an example of that sort of work, something that came at a time where I wasn't ready both as an author and as a reader to handle it properly. Now that I'm older and I know more and I've read moreand I have a lot more songs to pimp, I think I can finally go back to it and do it properly.
So! Who's up to sitting down with me and helping me replot? x_X
Easter Vigil Mass is tonight. You know. Easter Vigil. The Huge-Ass Dose of Holy Where They Basically Cram Seven Readings Down Your Throat in a Single Night.
...At least my parents are home.
Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core finally finished downloading. I'll take a break from the writerly stuff to check it out. ♥
That said, what did I end up doing? I ended up getting bitten by the Endtimes bug, and started re-reading the entirety of my very, VERY old story from beginning to end. I just finished this afternoon.
BACKGROUND: For those on you who haven't been on my flist for a while, Endtimes -- ET -- is a story I started to write (and finished) in my freshman year of college... it clocked in at around 806 pages, and went through several revamps and revisions while I was in my sophomore year. From a very simple premise (Witch Hunter Robin meets gay etc. etc.), it expanded into a gimongous universe from which some of my most endearing characters hail from. It also has several hundred spin-offs, the most popular being Thick as Thieves and Bloodsport.
I originally intended to revise ET once and for all when I was in second year, but academic concerns and other stuff kept me from doing it -- basically, I ended up not touching ET for 3-4 years (excluding an experimental run of the first few chapters in the India & Conundrum online fic journal, which I still have to go back to when ET is really ready), and occupied myself with real life, writing fanfiction and doing other projects, like prepping campaigns for table top RPGs like D&D and World of Darkness. It was a little frustrating, but now that I think about it, it was a good thing: it gave me time to really, really think about how to redo ET and expand the universe properly.
Close friends of mine (namely
khursten, ezraelandvari, xhael, yukitsu, kye_kestrel, archangel_dream and omnicrescence, with Khursten, Rachel, Liss and Drew being my part-time editors at various dates) know about my preoccupation with the story, and have been constantly encouraging me to pick it up again, but this is the first time I've managed to really sit down and get started on it. That's the lovely part about graduating: having a few months to check back on what really matters.The moment I read the very first line of the prologue, I felt very, very old. I know that sounds ridiculous given the fact that I'm only 23, but that's honestly how I felt. The original version of ET was written when I was a much younger, much less immature and much more raw writer who didn't know a lot of the tricks and read a lot of the stuff that I've read at present. I was pretty good for my age: I'll give myself that. But I wasn't spectacular. Let's quantify what I mean by that. >_>
First and foremost, I didn't have a voice. I mean -- you know how authors all have this distinct style, right? You read a work, and you can go "Oh, it's Gaiman" or "Oh, it's Palahniuk". ET was written before I was able to come up with my own voice. There were parts where I seriously could not see myself in the writing. o_o It was generally solid and it got the point across, but it was empty. Too much interference from all the authors/sources of inspiration that I had for ET rather than me, I guess.
Like most young writers, I had a thing for melodrama. I can admit that to myself now. *coughs* Too much feeling went into the descriptions, and it sort of spoiled the fun of reading... I'm surprised that my friends managed to go through it in the first place without cringing. There's also the fact that my, uh, preoccupation with fonts came out in the text, an the fact that for a written work, ET was a bit too visual. Sure, stories are supposed to create pictures in your mind, but I've always been one to believe that there should be a delicate balance in a narrative work between the image and the emotion and whatever else.
Beyond the melodrama, there's also the fact that my fangirling came out only too often in the story. Heck, I made my own characters go OOC at several points. ~_~ I guess I just didn't know how to handle them yet... they were as new as the story was, and I didn't have enough practice with writing them and writing itself to do them justice.
Let's look at that a little more. Another thing that shocked/amused/appalled me as I re-read the story was how everything had changed. Like, Aidan was boring as Hell back then, and Rethe was still more cutesy than he was scary (and scary was what I was supposed to be going for, mind you) and Hotaru was distressingly YOUNG (and sometimes annoying) and Hikaru, heaven forbid, was straight as an arrow. I guess that leads back to the point about the story/world and all the characters within it being young -- I just didn't know how to do them yet. Things will be different, now that I've grown and they've grown. I SWEAR IT. B|
Okay. That stuff is almost forgivable, but this next one is embarrassing: I WAS TL;DR TO THE MAX. I mean it. TO THE MAX. Guyz, how the HELL did you stand reading all of those WORDS? DDDD: Thank you, college, for teaching me what proper writing is. I don't want to think about how I would've ended up without my education. ~_~
[/self-abuse]
I have to pat myself on the back for a few things though. The original version of ET is generally unusable to me now, with all the changes and growing up that both the universe and I myself have gone through, but there ARE a few parts and things that I'm going to have to retain because they'll still work in the new one.
OKAY. Now that the writer stuff is out of the way, what can I REALLY say about all of this? Just one thing:
The original version of Endtimes made a spectacular BL novel.
For serious. Sure, there wasn't a lot of actual boy bonking, but DAMN WAS IT BLEEDING GAY and it had all the elements of tragedy and forbidden love and UST that make us fujoshi squee our heads off whenever we see the likes of AI NO KUSABI or MIRAGE OF BLAZE. Imagine: if I had somehow gotten ET published and/or animized/comicized back then, it REALLY would've made it as a BL title. I have enough confidence in myself to say that much. XD
How the hell did I come up with that conclusion? Let me count the ways. :D
1.) THE BL MANGA AWKWARDNESS! Srsly. Aidan and Rethe were doing the emotional tango from Day One and we fujoshi all know how the story goes. Tragic veteran + young, nubile and mysterious boy-partner = Fun fun fun. In bed.
2.) IT'S AN ORGY THAT COULD DO KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN AND PRINCE OF TENNIS PROUD. Liss and the rest were right -- there are soooo many ships, be it straight or lezzie or gay, and imagine: some of the best ones are actually canon!. Take a look at the Chain, for example: Alistair --> Aidan --> Rethe. And THEN there are the non-canon ones that are just so bleeping obvious, like Blake and Ro (assistant kink!). Or Calintz and Aidan (their love started even earlier than Aidan and Rethe's did!). Or Miriam and Liandrin/Harume (boobie-load of boobies!). Or Calintz and Hikaru.
I shit you not, Yukeh and Khursten. Calintz and Hikaru. They're bantering each other when they're not arguing, and they're basically carrying on like "Hahahaha I'll kill you someday~ ♥" throughout the story. And they're CONSTANTLY butting heads, even more than Calintz and Aidan are. Calintz even calls Hikaru CUTE. IT'S SO WRONG BUT IT'S SO RIGHT.
...Anyway, yeah. Original version of ET = BL novel. Lulz.
Even though I didn't agree with what a lot of what she said, my CW professor DID make one point that has stuck with me; she said that sometimes, writers find themselves with an idea or a scene that they can't actually handle yet. When that happens, the best thing that one can do is to write what they can for it, and then leave it for a long, long time.
In my case, Endtimes is an example of that sort of work, something that came at a time where I wasn't ready both as an author and as a reader to handle it properly. Now that I'm older and I know more and I've read more
So! Who's up to sitting down with me and helping me replot? x_X
Easter Vigil Mass is tonight. You know. Easter Vigil. The Huge-Ass Dose of Holy Where They Basically Cram Seven Readings Down Your Throat in a Single Night.
...At least my parents are home.
Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core finally finished downloading. I'll take a break from the writerly stuff to check it out. ♥
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♥ I liked it a lot when I read it~ I still like it now~
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You don't necessarily have to read the whole thing. Trust me -- it's not going to be fun.
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CW profs can be so irritating at times and yet they do give some of the best advice. =/
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CW profs can be so irritating at times and yet they do give some of the best advice. =/ --> I just don't like the close-minded ones. I mean, honestly, there's no real way to teach somebody how to write properly.
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I should start reading ET again (I SHALL I SHALL), but I'm kinda lost which one I read as there were so many versions orz
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Wait for the new version that I'll be posting~
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I'll probably scan the older stuff and then somehow remake them, redraw them. Omg I had my tragic BL bishies too @_@ I'm a bit embarrassed by them now XD I know what you mean about having "orgy webs"; a character x a character x his mom x his dad too. XD Oh boy.
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Lulz. I'd love to help you with remakes if you'll help me with mine.
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The kitsch pwned me, friend.
Will they be up in increments at
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Yes, they will~ @ stitched. I have a bunch of stuff under the tags already -- they're all drabbles and quick reads. The stuff that aren't drabbles are obsolete though. @_@
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