#(also got undertale so I can finally play that sometime but that one's less relevant here)

[aquilamage]

steam sale -> downpour acquired. aka extra incentive to get on my Hunter second try + more lore playthroughs

which means questions: 1) I'm gonna do the recording part anyway but does anyone actually care about watching game attempts vs just the live blogging I've been doing

2) is there a good way to spoiler-free see where all the basegame colored pearls are?

[a-real-chara-cter]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; MUN & MUSE - MEME.

FILL OUT & REPOST ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

TAGGED BY: @the-judge-of-bones TAGGING: Steal it

MY MUSE IS:  canon / oc / au / CANON-DIVERGENT / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK  Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. Are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK / KINDA (They're certainly underappreciated, I think - lots of screaming about 'MURDERBRAT CHARA', not much really looking at them as a character) Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO / KINDA (Depends on your headcanons, but they're literally the instigator of half the worldbuilding so) Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG (The main character is mistaken for them, and will either finally be seen for who they are, or meet them at the end) Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. (Duh. Human Prince of Monsters) How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL (The way I play them, while they're seen as more distant and less approachable than the King, Queen, or the other Prince - they have a reputation for caring and working hard for monsters, and for being, if not easy to work with, then reliable to work with. If they say they'll arrange funding for your work, you can practically start spending the money already.) How strictly do you follow canon?  — Not very strictly at all, really. I diverge in a major way right from the get go, and I have no problems with changing or tweaking details to make them work better, though I'll at least try to get at the -purpose- behind the detail first and see how it can be salvaged.

SELL YOUR MUSE! AKA TRY TO LIST EVERYTHING, WHICH MAKES YOUR MUSE INTERESTING IN YOUR OPINION TO MAKE THEM SPICY FOR YOUR MUTUALS.  —  Regal of bearing, quick of wit, sly of tongue, Determined of heart and dorky of mind. Prince Chara is an exercise in dichotomies, in the liminal spaces between love and hate, hard and soft, hot and cold. If you want to interact with a muse who can be waxing philosophical on the ways feelings can treat and triage emotional wounds one minute and then turn around and flirt through puns the next, here's your enby. If you ever wanted to see what a grown up Chara could have been, here they are.

NOW THE OPPOSITE, LIST EVERYTHING WHY YOUR MUSE COULD NOT BE SO INTERESTING (EVEN IF YOU MAY NOT AGREE, WHAT DOES THE FANDOM PERHAPS THINK?).  —  They're prickly. They trust slowly, and often only at swordpoint at first. They're a Chara, which, well - one of hundreds in the fandom, even if they're a bit different - the differences make them stand out, but also make them closer to an OC, which has its own problems. They like things to go as expected/planned, which can make initial interactions a bit tricky.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE?  —  The mystery of Chara fascinated me about Undertale, and I admit to feeling a strong kinship to them - the Sans Genocide fight certainly didn't help there, because _I love a challenge_, and that fight comes part and parcel with Chara in the surrounding fandom materials. It was a surprise when I started hearing their voice and feeling it looking for an outlet, but not an unwelcome one - it took me a little while to refine exactly who and what my Chara was, which parts of common fanon resonated and which to discard, but I'm quite pleased by the person they've grown into through the journey.

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING?  —  Honestly? Nothing did for a while. I had a bad experience with the fandom that put me off for a long while, and then real life got in the way and Chara retreated into the back corner of my head, only coming out for occasional snippets of conversation with their favorite Asriel or to snark on random moments and things I was doing. I'm not sure what drew them more fully out of hiding exactly, but it's been really great to get into the swing of writing them again.

SOME MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE MUN.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO / SORT OF? Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF? (I have headcanons and little ideas all the time, but I rarely write them out unless prompted, mostly they emerge in actual threading or discussions.) Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO / WHEN PROMPTED (See above, basically) Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO (They're in my head 24/7, along with a handful of other muses sure, but still, it's rare an hour goes by without them chiming in some thought or observation or another.) Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF? Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO (For all I often joke about being good for nothing but shipping and shitposting, I -have- been writing fiction for over fifteen years, and RPing for over ten. I'm pretty confident my writing is good) Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO / SORTA (I can be really easy to upset or piss off if a hot button topic's pressed, but I'm generally pretty thick skinned, and I'm learning to be better at catching my temper and working around it.) DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL?  —  If it's useful criticism, that's actually about _my_ Prince and not what the reader thinks Chara should be, sure.

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER?  — Go for it! I reblog headcanon type memes often enough, toss one at me, or just random questions.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY?  —  Depends on the headcanon - if it's a worldbuilding type headcanon, then sure, I'll debate that stuff all day. If it's a personal character headcanon, well... so long as you're framing it as a discussion, maybe? But it's not your headvoice, it's mine, you don't get a vote in how they express themselves.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT?  — Hey, that's cool. If there's something offensive about it, lemme know and I can try to fix things, otherwise, we can hang out on separate parts of the fandom without being forced to interact, you don't gotta love my portrayal to be here, you don't even gotta read my shit to be here.

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT?  —  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not my circus, not my monkey. Bring it -into- my circus and I'll tell you to fuck off.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS?  — Sure go for it

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN?   —  Fairly easy-going, but, well, I'm autistic, I know I'm not always as easy to get along with as I'd like. Still, tell me I'm doing something shitty and I'll stop, I'm not doing it on purpose.

[overratedjoe-blog]

Updates: Undying Wish's Act II release date & revision of Falling Apart

Hello, people! One of the reasons for me to create a Tumblr was for me to give updates on how my fics are going more easily. Before this, all relevant updates I had were given as author notes in AO3 and ff.net, and those were less than ideal ways for me to communicate to you guys. This post will probably be just one of many. You better sit and grab a snack, because oh boy, this is gonna be loooooong.

So, first of all, I'm happy to say that the development of Undying Wish's Act II is coming swiftly. Sure, I rewrote some sections entirely and had classic writer block, but compared to Phantom Memories this is being a dream. 

Under normal circumstances, I'd say Act II would be released by the end of February/beginning of March with quite some confidence. However, I've been rethinking on my schedule, and this may not be the case anymore.

What could delay Undying Wish's final part release is something I've been thinking of doing for some time now: a complete revision of Falling Apart. Originally, I planned on doing that only AFTER I completed the series, but I think it would be more beneficial if I actually did that BEFORE. I'll explain this later on this post.

But first things first: why make a revision of Falling Apart, the first installment of the Sometimes series?

There are two main reasons for that: one more personal, and one more practical. 

Falling Apart was not the first fanfiction I've written – it happened to be the first I actually had the courage to publish, though. However, when I began writing it, it had been quite some time since I had written any form of fiction, so – and probably it's not that hard to notice – I was a little rusty. You can see that by comparing any paragraph from the very first chapter of Falling Apart with any paragraph from the last chapter from Undying Wish's Act I. Looking back to the first entry of the series, I notice the sentences in there are too short, the pacing is weird, and the ideas sometimes are presented in a disconnected way. I don't mean to say my writing is now free from its problems, but I can safely affirm I've improved since then. 

However, the structure of my writing is just part of the problem. After re-reading Falling Apart's first two chapters, I realized my initial grasp on Frisk's character is simply terrible – it's inconsistent with the rest of the series; heck, it's inconsistent with the rest of Falling Apart itself.

You see, in chapter one of Falling Apart, I present Frisk as this angry, edgy, angsty teenager who is sarcastic and cynical for no good reason. Sure, he's had a rough past, and suffers with guilt due to his journey on the Underground, but that's no excuse for him to say things like (about the orphanage he lives in):

“Yeah, you are totally right. Let’s just take a bunch of kids in, give them a bit of food so they don’t starve, let them figure out life in this hell, and then send them away with nothing when time comes.”

When I wrote this, I wanted to make Frisk sound angry and rebellious because I thought it was kinda cool. But now, reading this made me cringe. Seriously. That's not being cool; that's being edgy for the sake of being edgy, and that's bad for a fanfic that wants to take itself seriously.

Weirdly enough, Frisk gets a lot more tame after chapter three, and I think it's because I got a better grasp on him when I made him interact with other known characters from Undertale, like Sans, Papyrus and MK.

So – structure problems and Frisk's characterization are the first, more personal reason I have to be wanting to make a revision on Falling Apart.

The second reason actually ties in with the first one. To explain it, I'll post here a screenshot of Sometimes' traffic stats on ff.net on January 2017 (soon after it was updated with Undying Wish's Act I). 

Let's take a look at these numbers and figure out what they mean.

Apparently, 46 people, give or take, clicked on the Sometimes fic, and were lead, obviously, to the first chapter (which is Falling Apart's first chapter, of course). That's not a bad number considering I don't update the story regularly, and ff.net system favors those who do just that.

But then, we look at the following chapter's stat, and notice there is a massive drop on clicks – just 20. That means that I lose half of my potential readers right off the bat, and that's not good.

After chapter three, the views stabilize around 10 per chapter. The conclusion – from all the people who click my fic, about 75% go away right in the first three chapters. As I'm able to retain people after that, I'm certain the problem is with the first three chapters of Falling Apart (specially the first two due to the characterization issues I explained above).

The fic would benefit immensely from a revision on Falling Apart. By fixing the structure and the pacing, and getting a better grasp on Frisk's character, not only will I be making the introduction to the series more consistent with the rest, I'll also increase my chances of retaining readers.

Don't get me wrong – I don't live just to see my fanfiction get views, kudos and comments. In fact, I consider myself to be very lucky to have some very faithful readers, who comment, bookmark, favorite, and/or leave kudos on every entry. And for that I'm really, really grateful.

However, the reason I decided to post the Sometimes series online was because I wanted to share it with other people – other people who played Undertale, who loved the characters, who wanted to see them going through all the possibilities the game presented us, who wanted more from this amazing title. It's no wonder the Undertale's fanbase make such high ammounts of fanworks.

Of course, if even after making the changes these numbers I showed you above keep about the same, you won't see me complaining about it. As I stated before, one of the primary reasons for me doing this is purely personal. Above all – above keeping readers, above all stats – I want to write a good, consistent story. Falling Apart's revision would be part of that.

Now, what would exactly be the changes made is a matter of discussion for another post, as this one is already long enough the way it is.

And this leads us to the beginning of the post – the release date for Undying Wish's Act II.

See, the reason I want to "fix" Falling Apart before posting the final part of the story is related to the new readers I'll be able to keep if I do that. When I post the final part of the series, it'll go to the front page both on AO3 and ff.net. If I've already made the changes I wanted to do in Falling Apart by then, chances of the new readers becoming invested on the story will be higher.

That means that, while I had planned to release Act II by the end of February, if I'm going to do a proper revision of Falling Apart, it could take at least another month, if not more. Of course, I would try to make up for the delay by keeping you updated on the status of it – and even posting a preview when the time comes.

Well, that's quite a long first post, huh? I think that's about it for now. Thank you for reading and see you next time!

P.S.: Forgot to mention in the core text of the post: if we look at the traffic stats above, we notice that the last chapter has about the same number of views than the first one. I don't know why that happens; do people in ff.net just check the first and the last chapters and then leave? o.O