#I’m still figuring out what I wanna do with this A.U idea :^^

[cosmicourple]

X-men but. It’s Spiderverse but also- it’s focused around Professor X/telepath users-type characters 😙😙😙

Already got ideas for who’s who:

a teenage Madelyne Pryor (AKA goblin queen/Jean Grey’s clone) is Miles (could of just made them Jean but I didn’t want to hajhahjahggfg)

mentally not okay/at first still drug addicted D.O.F.P! Charles is in Peter B’s place

a variant of Scott who gained Jean’s powers after her death as Spider! Gwen Stacey

Raven/Mystique who was reformed but then somewhat went back to her old ways as uncle Aaron/Prowler (idk how that would work, maybe she was put in charge or volunteered to look after Madelyne :/)

& old Charles would be in the slot of the Peter from Miles timeline AKA he dies, therefore setting Madelyne up for her arc as Miles had in the movie 👍

not sure who the other Spider People or the villains would be,,,

idk what this whole idea is, I just want more main character Madelyne Pryor Stuff ig mfggjhhgdffdeebb 😙

[dreamercail]

nanowrimo musings 2.0

so like five years ago I did a little nanowrimo retrospective where I talked a little bit about each story I wrote and what I thought about it. I’ve been thinking of doing another one while also avoiding other responsibilities so join me on this walk down memory lane:

PUTTING UNDER CUT CUZ IT’S A LOT OF WORDS WHOOPS

Silicon (2009) - Oh geez, I hate to even count this one, but it was my first ever nano attempt so I gotta. A story about Theresa Lee, a girl who unknowingly is an android (closer to a cyborg?), and the team running the experiment. I don’t even think I made it to 10,000 words. Features: first attempts at an intergenerational friendship and an interesting framing device. I don’t think I’ve opened the file in at least 10 years. This is probably for the better.

Relapse of Vernadora (2010) - my first NaNo win! Originally started off steampunk inspired but I have no idea what the final product was (there were airships?? and that was really it). A story about a half dozen Chosen Ones™️ who represent ~elemental abilities~ and they have to...save the country they’re in?? Because it happens every couple hundred years?? I don’t really know. Featuring: a fun first half of interconnecting stories and dialogue that sounds like bad anime fan fiction. Overall a yikes from me but I still love Chira Chronum as a character and will until I die.

Colossal (2011) - I will always label this one as the most read amongst people I know. It’s a pretty simple story about a group of teenagers who can see giants and have to go on a road trip to stop the guy who’s bringing them back from the dead. Featuring: a literal ripped from tv tropes 5 man band set up and entirely okay if not weak narration. In the end it’s hard for me to go back to and read because I’ve gotten a lot better but I’m still proud of it. Also the five main teens have such a special place in my heart and I’ll probably never be fully done with them. Also I think my only nano with a sequel?? (that took me like six years to write lmao)

Extinction Could be a Lot Worse (2012) - 300 years after global cataclysm, and humans have become a minority, giving rise to insect- and fish-humanoid hybrids known as Entosaps and Aquacrans. Arata is a kid with a guitar looking for one of the last major human settlements on earth. Featuring: half baked concepts, heavy handed and misguided messages about racism, and one actually decent speech at the end. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh I’ve never felt great about this one. It didn’t take me long after writing it to realize my messaging was super mixed and not as woke as I thought. Also like a few super problematic parts that make me cringe hard. Not the worst thing ever but not one I go back to.

How to be an Urban Legend (2013) - oh thank god the streak of straight protagonists has been broken. A really fun deuteragonist set up! Aliya is a party girl in need of a job. Morse is a down on her luck, awkward girl with a penchant for local urban legends. Each encounter Mackenzie Fylan, an urban legend known as a parsinct, a person who goes through overwhelming tragedy and emerges with supernatural abilities, and chaotic teleporter. Through a series of events the two girls uncover some peculiar goings ons in the basement of their office building. Featuring: a plot where like not a ton happens and a fun chapter naming convention. In the grand scheme of things an entirely okay story. Not a story with a ton of stakes but it marked a turning point in my writing as far as description writing and narration go. Aliya and Morse are an unstable couple, but I think I take a little too much joy in their dysfunction.

Scribed. (2014) - Most famous for not being finished, rip. In a world where writers are assigned particular individuals to “scribe” their lives, Ariel Hess accidentally discovers he’s being written about by the inexperienced scribe, Maiara Snow. It would’ve been a fun kind of breakdown and commentary on the stories we consume and the protagonists we choose to write about but it never quite made it off the ground (partially due to life being a lot that year). Featuring: really not much but some fun with style/formatting.

The Incredibly Consequential Life of Charlie Zappala (2016) - After having to skip 2015, this was a fun one to write. Also, chaotic cuz I dallied the first half of the month then ended up writing like 22k in 6 days. Charlie is a disillusioned 20-something who always thought they were made for something greater until real life came and beat them with a stick. That is, until an interdimensional elf herald pops out of their refrigerator and claims they’re the Chosen One. From there Charlie has to balance the world of their dreams with the world they know and figure out which is really meant for them. Featuring: first nonbinary protagonist and a whole lot of swearing. Charlie as a character is such an outlet for a lot of processing of what it means to be an adult in this day and age. I love them a lot. Of course, in the manic way the story was written the pacing is wonk and needs some work before it’s the best it can be. Also the only nanowrimo (save the unfinished ones) that never got a proper edit.

a.u. (2017) - HEY DID I MENTION THIS ONE WON AN AWARD. I’m sure I have. To go from no one reading my stories to now thousands of folks having checked this one out is A Lot but also probably one of the coolest things to ever happen to me. Damian is a fresh out of college fuck boy, Alexander is a hipster barista. They meet in a coffee shop, we all know what happens then, right? If by that you meant that a mysterious earthquake comes every morning to the coffee shop and leaves the two with the only memories of it happening, then yes, we all know what happens. A story meant to be an exploration of fan fiction tropes and AUs, but also with an underlying message of what it means to find yourself when the world around you is constantly changing (#kidswhomovedalotproblems). Very admittedly nervous that I was gonna come across as fetishizing mlm relationships just by nature exploring the typical “””””BL plot””””” so that’s probably what’s stopped me from out right asking people I know to read it haha. Featuring: boys kissing and some actually damn good analogies that I have yet to replicate. Did I mention it won an award? And currently has 30k reads?? Anyway read it online. No shame.

Road to Arcadia (2018) - Boy does this one have my whole heart. Set in a very nearby future (about 30 years) in a world where we did jack shit about climate change (so like current trajectory), Kai Gilling sets off to the desert to look for something better. On the way he encounters a pair of siblings and a woman who says she has a map to Arcadia, an urban legend rumored to be the only city thriving during these hellish times. Cue: desert road trip story. I’d been wanting to write a desert road trip story for ages and the route the characters follow is nearly identical to one my dad and I took on a road trip the preceding summer, so it all came together. Featuring: a main cast where none of the characters are cis/het and Jeep Wranglers. The letters Kai writes back home have some of my favorite writing and some raw emotion and thoughts from me. It’s not perfect in its execution and it doesn’t have the playfulness that a.u. has, but it’s really special to me. Also available online! (not as many reads tho working on that one)

EXCAVATOR: Tales from the Twelve Vessels (2019) - Probably my first real big step into hardcore sci-fi and another deuteragonist tale. In the future, out in the deep recesses of space, flies the jaundian coalition, a group of twelve spaceships housing orphaned races from across the universe, most notably the sapiens (ya humans) and the nkrey (kinda like a mix between grey aliens and high elves). The story follows Meera, a wide-eyed Idealist looking to work planetside and Sauk, a convicted criminal who would like to do not that. Shenanigans ensue. It’s definitely out of my comfort zone to write something in a world so unfamiliar and it was hard to do a nanowrimo story when half the time needed was for world building. Also still not fully finished to this day. I got the 50k but still have a lot left to write in terms of plot. Featuring: ALIENS and sassy teammates. One that I probably won’t know how to feel about until at least another year or so.

Thanks so much for reading!! And oh man I’m only scraping the surface of a lot of this. If you ever wanna know one thing I could talk forever about it’s my stories and characters.