selenicseas

Writing-wise, this month was not good. At all. I finally seem to have run out of steam. Originally, I had planned on writing 9,000 words, but halfway through the month I revised it down to 5,000. Thankfully, I was able to hit that – I wrote 5,260 words.

Since my goal for the year is to write a minimum of 100,000 words, I decided to adjust my monthly word goals from now on – 5,000 words per month is the new minimum. I'm at 88,080 words for the year, so I don't actually need to write 9,000+ words per month to hit 100,000. The lowered goal will also, hopefully, give me a break from the hand and wrist pain I've been experiencing lately.

I'd like to say I made a dent in my TBR pile. I would have, if I hadn't bought more books to refill it (I had, and still have, quite a bit of store credit at the local used bookstore, so it's not like I'm spending money on these books). I read a couple of short stories as well. Some of them made it into my July-September recommendations post.

The books I read are:

• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
• An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
• Translation State by Ann Leckie
• Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

I didn't make much of a dent in my watchlist, either. After finishing season 2 of Twin Peaks, I wanted to make sure I watched both movies before moving on to season 3.

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
• Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
• The Woman in Black

As for video games, I finished Link's Awakening and started Echoes of Wisdom, which I'm still playing. I'll probably write up a short review for it as well.

I've become an artist that doesn’t make art, and I don’t like it at all.

My art output over the years has dwindled to almost nothing. This year, I've only done a few sketches on paper and one piece of digital art: an avatar that I ended up not liking and therefore not using. I didn't particularly like any of the sketches either, but they were conceptual sketches, not anything final, so that doesn't really matter.

I get discouraged so easily with art these days. More often than not, I find myself frustrated even when starting a sketch – and when I'm not feeling good about something in the beginning, I'm not going to feel any better about it later. My art starts off bad and ends up bad – assuming that I even end up finishing a piece of art at all. Like I said earlier, I've only been able to do that one this year.

Finding the time to even work on art is also difficult. I'm doing so many other things – writing outlines and working on worldbuilding for stories, reading 5+ books a month and short stories (at least, I'm trying to), writing reviews, trying to get through my video game, movie, and TV show backlog, periodically updating my website – and that’s not even including my day-to-day life stuff, which sucks up most of my time.

When I get a break from all of that, I don't want to make art. I don't want to do anything. I just want to vegetate because I'm tired. Because I'm doing so many things. I don't think I'll be able to start making art again if I'm doing all of these things.

Setting aside time specifically for working on art would definitely help; I could always vegetate a little less. It's how I've managed to read so many books this year – I have time set aside specifically for reading, and I stick to that every single day unless some kind of emergency comes up.

But setting aside time for art doesn’t help much if I'm completely demoralized about making art. I don't really know what to do to get out of that particular slump. It's something I'll have to dedicate more time to thinking about.

I've decided to remove part 2 of The Sundered Worlds. I'm not too happy with how it turned out, and it has a lot to do with trying to fit the story into the world of The Sundered Worlds. I had to remove a lot of my initial ideas and characters, which were more interesting than what I ended up with in the final outline. And, after thinking about it for a couple of days, I've realized that this has produced a worse story.

What I'll be doing is turning part 2 into its own thing. It will mesh pretty well with some other story ideas I have.

I'm also thinking that I want to do the same with part 3. While it works better as part of The Sundered Worlds than part 2 does, the story does still have a few restrictions that it would probably benefit from removing.

Unrelated to The Sundered Worlds, I've finished the outline for the new short story, which has been named Ghosts of Ghosts. It's very short – so short, in fact, that I'm not sure there's enough content for an actual short story. I don't think it will end up any longer than 2000 words, and I'm not sure I want to dedicate any serious time to something that short when I have other, more substantial projects to work on. At the moment, it does not seem to be a worthwhile pursuit, so I'm setting it to the side for now.

That leaves me with The Forest of Anomalies to work on, though I'm sure I'll also start reworking what was formerly part 2 and 3 of The Sundered Worlds.

I made my decision on what to work on earlier than expected. But rather than one project, it's two: The Forest of Anomalies and one of the shorter short stories.

The short story I have in mind doesn't need much worldbuilding or development; it's more of a "feeling" story than a "plot" one. The outline won't take very long and neither will the writing or editing, I think. I can most likely have it done by the end of the year – if I don't end up deciding that the idea isn't actually worthwhile, that is.

Actually, I can probably have it done in two months, but that's if I work on it exclusively, and I don't want to do that at the moment.

I don't have much to say about The Forest of Anomalies that I didn't already say on Wednesday. Organizing and outlining it will probably take until the end of the year.

The Gate at the End of the World

Word Count: 5,290

--

Renyeten trailed behind Elier, keeping a few feet of distance between herself and the border of the Exclusion Zone. Multiple layers of contain and repel spells were painted on the ground in the bright red of the flower that only grew within the tundra. It was just paint. Nothing physical prevented anyone or anything from stepping over the border.

Renyeten took occasional breaks from scanning the horizon to glance down at the ground.
Their patrols had settled into a pattern quickly after Renyeten had arrived at the Base Camp: Renyeten kept watch for threats, and Elier examined the border for disturbances. Elier had been here almost twenty years and knew exactly what abnormalities to look for.

"See anything yet?" Elier asked.

( Read more... )

 

In June, I finished writing The Gate at the End of the World. Aside from that, I didn't write very much. I haven't had very many ideas for blog posts and only wrote one review, for Black Mesa.

I wrote 8,538 words in June. For the first time this year, it was difficult to reach my monthly goal (this time it was 8,500). I finished writing the above-mentioned short story and didn't want to move on to writing something else, which was a problem I solved by working on an old conlang and slowly fleshing out another story project I've been fleshing out in my head.
My local library's summer reading program started at the beginning of June, so I was pretty focused on reading books. I ended up reading eight in total:

• The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
• The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
• The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
• Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker
• The City & The City by China Miéville
• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Provenance by Ann Leckie
• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

I also read a grand total of zero short stories.

After seeing Suspiria mentioned by multiple developers in The Art and Making of Control, I decided that would be the first movie to watch in June. I then decided to watch a few other movies that were released in the seventies. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much time as I thought I did, so I only ended up watching one other movie: Carrie (1976).

• Suspiria
• Carrie (1976)

I finished playing Black Mesa (finally!) and started playing Half-Life 2, which I haven't had as much time to play as I thought I would. At the rate I'm (not) playing, it may end up taking me until the end of September to finish it and both of the episodes.

I'm done! It's done!

I set myself a goal of 500 words per week until I finished the story and managed to exceed that by writing 5,148 words in a little less than a month. I didn't think I'd write this much. My initial assumption was that the story would end up in the 3000-4000 word range. Then I decided to add a section that wasn't in the outline to make things flow better.

I'll likely have to add another section or two during editing. There are a few points in the story that are a little too heavy on dialogue and light on details. It's a problem I have when writing – describing things is not my strong point; dialogue is. That wasn’t too much of an issue with this particular story, mostly because I put notes like "describe the setting" and "explain history" right into the outline.

This is the first piece of fiction I've finished writing in five years. I still need to edit – and I suspect that will take another month – but I finished a story and I don't hate it.

In May, I finally finished chapter outlines for part 1 of The Sundered Worlds. Like I mentioned in my previous blog post, I decided to put The Sundered Worlds to the side right now and instead focus on writing The Gate at the End of the World, a short story I re-outlined last month. That's still in progress.

I wrote 9,044 words in for a yearly total of 65,308. Slowly but surely, I am getting closer to reaching 100k.

I read nine books in May, which comes as quite a surprise as I didn't expect to read this much. The books are listed below:

• The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick
• The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
• The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
• The Art and Making of Control
• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
• Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
• No Harmless Power by Charlie Allison

I also read six short stories.

There are plenty of movies on my watch list, and in May I watched a total of five:

• Shaolin Soccer
• Edward Scissorhands
• Donnie Darko
• Hackers
• The Neverending Story

I didn't quite finish Black Mesa, but I'm almost done with it. Seriously, I think there's maybe one hour left of the game.

As of last week, I finished posting my text let's play of Control. I actually finished writing it a few weeks earlier, but as I'd established that posts would occur on Fridays, didn't want to speed up that schedule unless Control Resonant was announced to be coming out soon (which it was not).

The replay of the game started last December, while I started the writeup a few weeks later in January. That probably wasn't the best thing to do. When I finally got around to writing up a part, I'd forgotten quite a few things and had to resort to watching parts of a video let's play to remember what actually went on.

Throughout the writeup, I was constantly thinking about what I should put in and what I should take out. There are plenty of comments on FBC documents, videos, and the Oldest House in general that I had to cut because they ultimately weren't relevant or would make the post too long. There are a couple of sidequests I completed but didn't mention. There's an entire conversation with Arish that ties into an altered item and some case files that I didn't include because I couldn't figure out where to put it. I don't think I even mentioned anything about the Bureau Alerts.

Given that the purpose of this let's play was to re-familiarize myself with the world of Control and theorize about what could be relevant in Resonant, I'd say it wasn't a bad thing that I had to cut a bunch of stuff. I got all my theories and guesses out there.

Now that I say that, I bet Remedy's going to make something I didn't mention really important in Resonant.

In my next let's play (yes, I have others planned! But they won't happen for a while), I'm going to do a few things differently. Firstly, I'm going to write up a part immediately after I finish playing it. That will likely mean shorter playing sessions, which will probably be better for my health and time management in general.

I also won't take nearly as many screenshots. I took 400 screenshots during the Control replay and only ended up using 112 of them. While I know I'll always take more than I'll end up using, I really need to keep my compulsion to hit F12 in check. Sorting through hundreds of screenshots to find something relevant was not a pleasant experience.

Lastly, I need to decided exactly what I'm going to focus on. I cut a lot out of the Control let's play because other than theorizing about the future game, I didn't actually think about what the reader would actually need to understand the story and the setting on its own. I'll likely be adding more background info next time.

There are spoilers for Control as well as the trailer for Control Resonant. Read at your own risk if you haven't played the game.

<< Replaying Control, part 16: The Nail (1)

The Nail



On the way to the Canyon Rim, Jesse travels through some caves, suddenly falls through the floor, and ends up in the Astral Plane. Specifically, the Astral Collision – the part of the Foundation that's colliding with the Astral Plane. It's mostly Astral Plane with some Bureau equipment and red sand from the Foundation.

Since this is technically part of the Oldest House, there are Hiss here as well.



Traversing the Astral Collision takes quite a bit of time. It never felt like a slog, since the place is beautiful and enemies don't show up too frequently.

There are plenty of collectibles here, including:

• A recording stating that Dr. Ash was the one who created the control points to stabilize the Oldest House
• A notice stating that the Oldest House does not have windows, and that anyone who sees a window needs to close their eyes immediately and go to the nearest safe room
• At least one maneki-neko
• An episode of Threshold Kids that's even more cursed than usual

The Threshold Kids episode is made even more ominous by the ever-present Black Pyramid of the Board in the background.

At the "end" of the Astral Collision, Jesse touches a rectangular pillar with a tree etching in it and is once again taken to the part of the Astral Plane with the sphere. Before she's allowed to do anything, the Board apologizes for being angry with her earlier. They'll let her keep the power Former gave her. That doesn't mean they trust former – they tell her not to listen to it.

This time, the sphere was crystals growing out of it and chunks missing, so Jesse needs to use both powers to repair it. Once that's done, the Nail is a little more repaired.



Now it's time to go to Research Site Gamma. This place is actually located at the entrance to the Foundation, in the caves, but couldn't be reached at the time since Jesse didn't have either new power.

But before we do that, there's something to check out first.

Found Footage



There's a sign pointing to a Chasm. At the bottom of the chasm, past a wall of crystals, is a TV playing a video of Ahti. The TV itself isn't an Altered Item, but the video tape it contains is.



FBC staff filmed Ahti. This created a video tape that, when played, mesmerized all those who watched it. That included the hostile creatures in the Foundation, the Id. Those Id are extremely hard to kill, even with the Service Weapon. We haven't encountered too many of them so far, but this tunnel is full of them.

What Jesse has to do is traverse the tunnel while using the TV to placate the Id. This is easier said than done. There are also Astral Spikes in this tunnel. And given how dark it is in here, you're not going to see all the Id and some will be getting attacks on you. I ended the mission with just a sliver of health.



The Nail

There's a sign helpfully pointing toward Research Site Gamma, but I didn't take a screenshot for some reason so you'll have to take my word for it.

Entering the caverns gets Jesse another hotline message from Marshall. In this one, she explains that she blew up the Nail so the Hiss couldn’t corrupt it. Jesse doesn’t like that, but doesn't have much time to think about it because there are Hiss and an Astral Spike in the next room.

Then it's time to head to the Deep Cavern. The cave system leads back outside, with Jesse needing to levitate across a few Firebreak-like natural bridges to get to the Deep Cavern. She can call a Ranger for help in this area. You might want to, since a pretty extensive battle against the Hiss takes place. There are even Hiss snipers present.

When that battle is done, Jesse is now able to access the last of the stone pillars with the tree etching. This takes her to the last of the locks. Once she's repaired the sphere, she goes to leave and…can't? The Astral Plane starts collapsing. Former tells her to leave. Something – maybe Former, maybe the Astral Plane itself – builds a crystal bridge to lead Jesse to a safe area where she can leave the Astral Plane.



Now Jesse is back in the Foundation, and it's time to start the last mission of the DLC.

Or it would be, if I hadn't taken a detour first. Remember those maneki-nekos? It's time to gather all of them and see what they do.

The Maneki-nekos

There are eight of these cats to collect, and I only found a couple on my own. I had to use a guide to find the rest. Some of the puzzles are easy to solve, and some I never would have even known were puzzles at all.



Once you have all the cats, they line up in front of the Firebreak door, beckoning Jesse inside. And what is inside, you might wonder? Well, it's this: more maneki-nekos, and a platform that contains cat ears for Jesse to wear.



Jesse will be wearing the cat ears for the rest of the game. Which is only one more mission because in the next part, we're finishing up the Foundation DLC.