Re your tags on the ask post: PLEASE DO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WRITING. You deserve to gush about your creative things!
AHHHHHHH THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
So I have many novels in the works, but my most important one by far is Just Another Tomorrow which I've been working on for over a decade at this point. I started it as an escapist fiction when I was in high school and it has morphed into a novel about life, therapy, found family, and other strong topics such as familial abuse, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, hate crimes, unorthodox coping mechanisms, and what love really means.
Maddie, a 17 year old, has been stuck with her abusive father since she was 4 years old. She was told her mother walked out on her and her father (truth later reveals she committed vehicular suicide). In her freshman year, she meets Cameron, who notices how solitary she is and tries to become her friend. He learns about her home life and becomes determined to get her out of there, by any means necessary.
The book starts on the night they run away, and follows them through their road trip. The book is told from Cam's POV, he is a very unreliable and biased narrator, but he's also a 19-20 year old dumbass who of course has privileges he never considered (two parents, nice house, stable jobs, etc), so he learns A LOT through the book. Between chapters, we get excerpts from Maddie's diary, to show her perspective on things. We learn about their history together through flashbacks, shown through Cam's POV as well, because the novel very much follows his train of thought (poor undiagnosed ADHD man). So basically something triggers the memory in the book and it goes into the flashback, it's very fun.
Anyways they're just trying to stay away from their hometown until Maddie turns 18, so that legally they're in the clear from her father. However, they run out of resources and they don't know what to do, so when they're stopped in a small town in Arkansas, he's trying to get some cans of soup and peanut butter, and an older couple comes into the shop and notices him. This is Rob and Edie, cofounders and current owners of Summerfield Family Campground. Edie asks if he needs help, and he nods, on the verge of tears, because of course this was his idea, he was supposed to have all the solutions, he was supposed to help Maddie, and now he's struggling. So they couple offers help, Cam and Maddie follow them to the campground, to a smaller offset called Utopia. This is where Rob and Edie host their found family, all sorts of people who they've helped over the year. This includes their biological son Vinny, his husband Daryl (nicknamed Dare because in college he took every dare given to him), Jess and her toddler aged daughter, Elijah, [Wren] (I have gone through about 13 names for this character and I cannot settle on one, basically genderqueer AuDHD who was a troubled foster kid), and a few others. Ta da, found family!
Anyways, this is where most of the positive character development happens, Cam learns, Maddie heals, everyone is happy, until cops discover that Cam and Maddie are runaways and that their parents are desperate for them to come home, so they have to run again.
Later, Cam accidentally finds Maddie's diary open to a page where she talks about wanting to go home because things were easier there (it was an older entry but undated bc they lost track of the days during their trip) and he gets mad, storms off, and gets hit by a car. They're both taken to the hospital, and that leads to parents getting called and basically the end of the running away. Cam's parents arrive first and he starts explaining to them why he had to do what he did. Then Maddie's father arrives and starts laying into her, tearing her a new one, making a scene, and that's when Cams parents intervene and say she's not going with you. He's banned from the hospital and goes back home bc he didn't wanna keep paying for the hotel. Happy ending, Maddie and Cam are safe and (relatively speaking) well. Obviously Cam has a long road of recovery ahead but he's alive, so can't really be too upset at the circumstances.
There's a LOT more than that to the book, but that's the gist of it. I'm really proud of Just Another Tomorrow. Special thanks to @xmarinaryx who has seen this book from start to finish more times than I can count, and has marked up many a page with red pen.
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the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.
capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.
now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.
and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.
and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.
and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".
it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"
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lil creatures <3 (and some i don’t know… hermits?) (Really detailed image description below)
a drawing of geminitay, pearlescentmoon, zombiecleo, stressmonster101, and false symmetry posing in a line. they’re in their season 10 outfits or slightly altered versions of their normal skins.
gem is posing with a diamond sword across her shoulders and wormy snail, and the orange and yellow lighthouse goldfish hanging out behind her. she’s in her pirate skin with magic hair ending in water, with shark teeth, slitted eyes and claws. she has a very toothy grin and desaturated palette.
pearl is flicking up the brim of her hat while holding onto the strap of her messenger bag. pogt is peeking out behind pearl, with a messenger pigeon on her hat. she’s in her postmaster skin with an undershirt on, a jacket tied around her waist, and hiking boots. the bag has more celestial details. she has a relaxed smirk and a very warm palette.
cleo carrying atlas, an orange cat, and a tray holding enchanted books and a tall, teal glass. she has on flowers in her hair, a sleeveless button up, a torn off-the-shoulder shirt, a high-waisted pencil skirt, and dress shoes. she looks exasperated and she has a cool palette.
stress is proudly holding up a pile of mud with roots and bricks sticking out of it with madame meepless, a gray british shorthair, looking up at stress. she’s wearing a pink-purple-teal flower crown, a white shirt, overalls with patches and one leg short and the other leg tucked in her black rain boots, and a bright pink tracksuit jacket on top. she’s covered in mud and has a very vibrant color palette.
false is holding a briefcase and a diamond shovel casually, with the shovel on the ground. she has on the minister hat with red and white goggles acting as the ribbon, a red, poorly tied tie, an untucked red-and-white striped shirt, a dark green blazer with gold buttons, fancy shorts with a white 2nd shorts underneath, and brown boots with socks. she’s looking confidently off to the side and has a warm, but muted, palette.
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Serious question.
Do you think we’ll see the parents/family of each of the guys???
Like, We’ve been TEASED with Ace’s brother, that I’m starting to think it’s just a reference to that Alice in Wonderland park character in Japan and nothing else….
Jack’s family, Ruggie’s grandma, Falena, Maleficia, Ms.Rosehearts, Just now Vil’s dad is in the picture which I am really happy but now I’m wondering about his mom, and so Deuce’s mom.
I mean, some HAVE a silhouette!! It could mean they do have a design in the making/ready to show. They could’ve shown us Falena in the Tamashina (hope I said that correctly) event, but didn’t (prolly to make Leona not so σ(▼□▼メ) and it’s understandable)
Anyhow, any idea/headcannon about this? Who do you want to see first?
I'm wondering if everyone might eventually get a travel event? like they've now introduced with Vil's that it doesn't have to be specifically hometowns, so that opens things up a lot! (especially if they have to figure out how to do three separate Coral Sea visits) (how would that even work otherwise)
but yeah, I hope everyone gets a chance! there's a lot of backstory characters I would LOVE to meet. :D :D :D though I do think some of them don't really suit the more light-hearted tone of the events (pretty sure you're right about that being why Falena wasn't in Tamashina-Mina, that would've just been. too much for Leona.) so like...we're probably not ever going to meet the Rosehearts. or Maleficia (although I maintain that this would be THE funniest possible way to introduce her outside of the main story, and actually I would love this a lot, can we please Twst) (I need to see her to put Malleus in a froofy little outfit and tell him what a handsome boy he is). but they've sprung surprises like Kifaji on us, and honestly anyone who shows up and tells embarrassing stories about characters' childhoods is good in my book!
characters off the top of my head who I most want to meet: literally any of the Zigvolts, Azul's mom, Ace's brother, Che'nya's grandfather (<- I think he would be a good one for Riddle) (please just any non-terrible adult in his life), any member of Rook's family because I need to see how they managed to produce him, and...really just whoever they can come up with for Silver.
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