thewhiteroseofvermilion - Tumblr blog

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

Q&A question

“This is I response to your chapter update for your video: what’s threw the process to start writing after such a long break? Did you have notes from before? How many times did you re-read your story?”

Interest in my proposed Q+A video was incredibly low, so I have decided to cancel the idea. However, I will happily answer this question here. 

1. What’s the process to start writing again after such a long break? 

After having been inactive for so long, I definitely am incredibly rusty. So to get myself back into the swing of things, I’ve been rereading my previous chapters, all the way back to the beginning of Arc II, in order to get myself back into my previously established tone and flow. I’ve also been refreshing my memory of upcoming specific story beats I want to hit by rereading a lot of my personal story notes. 

2.  Do you have notes from before?

Yes! I keep various notes about the structure I want to adhere to, story beats I want to specifically hit, and other subjects such as themes of particular Arcs. 

3. How many times did you re-read your story? 

Anytime I write after a long absence, I don’t go back to the very beginning, as that’s way too far back. But I do like to go back at least one or two chapters, to make sure what I ultimately do write fits with pace, flow, and style of those chapters, so the next entry (hopefully!) isn’t too drastically different. 

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

This is probably just me being confused but ill ask it anyway. During the whole trial ordeal, it was clearly stated that thrush was strung up to the ceiling with metal wires and his body was quite mutilated. I know yang in actual canon is the equivalent of a freight train carrying C4 wrapped in dynamite but in a setting like this wouldn't that alone have been evidence enough to suggest that maybe she didn't commit the crime?

It makes me happy that you remember that very specific detail.

Yang did confess that she attacked Thrush initially, but the nature of her violence towards him was entirely different than whoever it was that did kill him and desecrate his body afterwards. However, despite how incredibly grisly the murder was, Yang was the prime and only suspect; her motive for retaliation against him was undeniable.

To the jury, that was enough.

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

So since quarantine, I've had a lot more free time so I drew this for ya, oh and also hope your doing well.

#I stayed up all night drawing this and I have no regrets lol #who needs to sleep anyways

Love the super saturated background and Ruby's off-screen gaze. It's always so incredible to see different artists' interpretation of what she looks like, especially in her new Sentry armor. 

I apologize for publishing this so late, but I really am grateful that you took the time to create this and share it with me.

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

Moving Forward

Hello everyone. It’s been a long time since I’ve last spoken to you all, and an even longer time since I’ve last updated this story. Over the months and years, my absence has saddened, frustrated, and even angered many of you. Despite my own valid feelings of how—to put it bluntly—I don’t owe any of you anything as this is something I do for free and in my own free time, I still recognize how it must feel for you all to see something you enjoy so much slowly lose momentum and eventually grind to a halt. Furthermore, my habit of making enthusiastic yet empty statements in between didn’t help either. 

As such, a proper and honest explanation is due, as anything less would be unkind. This will be lengthy, but please bear with me. 

For the past four years, it’s been increasingly difficult to find the time, energy, and motivation for me to properly sit down and write. Seemingly gone are the early days of this story’s life when I was able to publish a new chapter every month or so, or even every two weeks when I was at the top of my game in terms of activeness. Even though I had an immense workload due to being a double major in college, leading me to adopt the best work ethic I’ve ever had, I still led a sheltered lifestyle where I didn’t have to worry about the many looming, inevitable adult responsibilities that were ahead of me.

Those tranquil years of course came to an end when I graduated, and I soon felt immense pressure to shift my attention to finding work, living independently, and working on things that would further my career. While I received support as an aspiring writer from the majority of my family, those being my mother and sister, the both of them commented more frequently as time passed by that my “fanfiction” wasn’t something that I should be spending so much time on anymore. After all, it’s not like I could sell the work as my own, and the fact that despite fanfiction absolutely being a valid artform, it wasn’t something that the world of professional employers cared about. 

Nonetheless, when I did eventually find work as a film freelancer, I still tried to persevere and write on the side. My goal back then was to work in film in order to sustain my pursuit in writing. Film was something I went to school for, greatly enjoyed, and even saw a possible future career for myself in, but it was the writing aspect of it that I was truly after, that being primarily screenwriting. 

After two years of living at home, I felt the need to try and live independently as I outgrew my tiny room and my mom started dating a man that I didn’t particularly like. I knew it wasn’t financially smart of me to do so when my mom allowed me to live with her rent-free. But at the time I thought that it would help me to become more mature and productive, as I would have to force myself to work in order to put a roof over my head and food on the table—as opposed to living a sheltered life at home where everything was taken care of for me. Essentially, I was longing for the lifestyle I had in college, thinking that once I returned to it, I would be able to reacquire that once incredible work ethic I had. 

So, I became roommates with a friend from college and together we rented a townhouse together. Rent wasn’t terribly expensive, but it wasn’t cheap either. Regardless, I was able to make ends meet. My greatest challenge however, was to live up to my family’s spoken and unspoken expectations. On one hand, my mother was sweet and understanding, naturally giving me her full support. My father, on the other, always thought that it’d be better for me to pursue something safer and more lucrative, and to not risk being a starving artist. But the one I had to prove myself the most to was my older sister, who was wildly more successful than I was—financially and professionally. My pay compared to hers was like a drop in a bucket, and I felt both indirect and direct pressure from her to be more “professional” like her. Therefore, I threw myself into my work, which is when things slowly began to go downhill. 

As a film freelancer, my work hours usually averaged between 10-12 hours a day, and with my work taking me all over my home state of Maryland and even into neighboring Washington DC and Virginia, my commute time to and from work ranged anywhere from an additional 1-3 hours. It became incredibly common for me to wake up for work anywhere between 3-6 AM and not get home until 8-10 PM. 

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I slowly slipped into a routine where when I did have the “time” to write, I had zero energy or motivation as my work was so taxing. I reached the point where I had to drink two energy drinks with 300mg of caffeine to get myself to and from work. I saw less and less of my roommate and friends. I spent an alarming amount of money and gained weight from ordering take-out so often because I hadn’t the energy to cook for myself when I got home late from work. There would even be days when I fell into what felt like comas, sleeping up to two days straight at one point. My physical, mental, and emotional health was in serious decline. And yet I didn’t see it that way, as I had become obsessed with trying to prove to my family, my sister in particular, that I wasn’t a failure and that my pursuit of writing wasn’t a hopeless one.

During the first month of COVID-19′s outbreak last year, I finally had a much-needed vacation. This was undoubtedly the best time for me to have returned to writing—but I didn’t. At this point, so much time had passed since my last proper writing session that the few times I did try to write, I found myself completely unable to write anything. I was so out of practice and so out of touch with what I had written. This honestly frightened me, and I soon began to doubt if I could ever be able continue the story with the same quality that so many readers fell in love with. Regrettably, I fled from this revelation long enough for a full month to pass by, and I soon found myself busy with yet another distraction: unemployment. 

I was out of work for about 4.5 months, from the middle of March to the beginning of August. During this time, I had to rely on state unemployment, which earned me great scorn from my older sister. Our relationship had always been uneven since we were kids, but it was becoming increasingly toxic as of late since our college years. I felt so ashamed to tell her how much money I made in a year from my job as a film freelancer, and how I barely managed to move to a better position after four years of work. Riddled with guilt and disappointment in myself, when work became readily available again in August, I frantically threw myself back in harder than ever before. In the past where I had turned down the occasional job to give myself some time to relax or in order to make it to a social outing with friends, I now accepted every job thrown my way, only declining those that would make me double-book myself. I earned a lot of money during those months as a result, and I was so happy to finally distance myself from the stigma of being “unemployed.” However, I once again failed to see that I was yet again sliding back into the lifestyle that had been slowly poisoning me for the past two years. 

After essentially working non-stop from August to March, my body, mind, and soul soon returned right back to the brink of collapse. It wasn’t until then at my lowest point when I finally realized how I initially went from working to sustain myself in order to write, to not writing at all and only working to sustain myself to work even more. It was truly scary to see myself fall victim to a brutal cycle of unfulfilling work that could have trapped me for years to come if I hadn’t broken free first. That’s when I realized that my lifestyle was personally unsustainable, and that something had to change. 

Henceforth, I’ve made the difficult decisions to both transition out of film freelancing and to soon return home to live with my father. At the end of April, the homeowner of the townhouse my roommate and I had been living in for close to three years gave us our 30-days-notice to vacate, as they no longer wished to rent but to sell the property. As my roommate had been planning on finding a place of his own with his girlfriend for quite some time, we split amicably at the end of last month in May and I’ve since moved into a temporary apartment with a friend who has traveled back to Maryland for seasonal work. 

Regarding the change in my career, I’ve been looking into applying for writing positions for something that I’ve grown to enjoy over the past few years, which is to write reviews for media such as film, anime, and videogames. This of course is not what I truly want to do in life, but I think that because it actually involves writing, it would be both good practice in terms of practicing my writing and experience in terms of resume-building. Furthermore, a stable “9-5″ job as such would be good for me, I think, as it would introduce some desperately needed structure back into my life. Being a freelancer was definitely fun as I had the power to choose my own schedule, but it unfortunately fostered a lot of laziness and procrastination when I wasn’t completely burnt out. 

I’ve shared with you all this information, a great deal of it being very personal, in the hopes that it helps you better understand who I am as a person and what I’ve been going through these past four years. 

I understand that my word may be difficult to trust due to my history, but I sincerely wish to let you all know from the bottom of my heart that I do plan on continuing writing The White Rose of Vermilion until it’s completed. My fears and insecurities may have alienated me from that promise, but not once did I ever entertain the idea of fully dropping the story. And I promise you, I never will. It most likely will not further my career in any way, bring any revenue in, and will continue to consume a great deal of my precious free time—yet I still choose to pursue continuing it because I can’t see a future where I don’t finish it.

It is after all my most cherished project; the reason that I was able to truly find my calling as an aspiring writer, its success also ultimately being the proof to my mother that I had some skill as a budding writer, who then gave me her full blessings to pursue it as a career. But most important of all is that it’s the reason why I was able to experience first-hand one of the most important and beautiful discoveries in my entire life. That being the incredible phenomenon of how art is like a beacon—its bright light is powerful enough to reach out and inspire others to create art of their own. From Monty Oum to Nancy Phetchareune to myself, I was blessed enough to see readers create wonderful fanart to show me or tell me in a review that reading my story had inspired them to create something of their own.

I am officially leaving behind my prolonged hiatus and returning to working on The White Rose of Vermilion. While I am extremely hesitant to even estimate when the next chapter will be published, please know that I am genuinely trying to leave behind my habits of old and returning to a more consistent schedule. 

The White Rose of Vermilion will return in:

Arc II, Chapter Twenty-Seven: Stranger in the Night

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

Important announcement regarding myself and the status of The White Rose of Vermilion will be coming tonight. I promise. 

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

When will the next update be? It’s been a while :/

I'll be making a separate post to properly address this question.

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

As a follow up to the tyrian question from yesterday (Thank you for answering it), Will you ever expand on what exactly it was that Lie Ren did to cause Nora to fear him during Ruby's extended vacation to the schnee house of horrors? Or is it going to be left up to interpretation?

As of now, I'm unsure of if I ever want to explicitly speak on what happened between Nora and Ren in Ruby's absence. If I do, I want to make sure it comes up organically within the context of the story.

A general idea of what happened between them is extrapolating on Ren's increasingly agitative and alienating behavior shown towards Nora and Jaune during Volumes 7 and 8. As a butcher...I'll leave your mind to think on what it is that Nora saw that disturbed her so.

"extended vacation to the schnee house of horrors" jesus lmao!

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

I've had a sneaking suspicion ever since the introduction of the poor quality ore plot point alongside the death of the civilian in the streets of vermillion. Would the hooded figure happen to be Tyrian?

This is actually a very interesting guess! Although when I wrote that chapter, it was years before Tyrian was actually introduced. The hooded figure, whoever he is, is definitely unhinged just like Tyrian.

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

That’s all for now. I need a good night’s rest before making an important announcement tomorrow. 

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

Hey, I loved your chapter and read your an asking for any questions. I was just wondering if you might clarify on what weiss was doing for the month she was in her tower? Or maybe some of her ponderings? Loved your chapter! You might already be pretty far into the next one, and I might be too late, but oh well.

My sincere apologies for not answering this when I should have. Interest in my proposed Q+A video was incredibly low, so I have decided to cancel the idea. However, I will happily answer the questions I did receive.

This is a great question! In addition to her daily routine of studying a variety of topics that ranged from literature to history, Weiss took a liking to painting to help pass the time. Ever since her first encounter with Ruby, the idea to attempt to paint Forever Fall coincidentally crossed her mind. It was a time of self-reflection, as she desperately tried to understand why her father, the warden, continued to prevent her from assuming more responsibility for their province. If you would like a refresher on this, you can take another look at Chapter 12: Judgement.

After the events of Chapter 15: Red Like Roses, Weiss matured considerably. After experiencing first-hand the traumatic fallout of her actions, she soon fell into a state of deep regret over her hasty attempt to accuse Yang for murder just to impress her father. Convinced by the lengths Ruby went to defend her sister and the sheer conviction she saw in her eyes during their duel, Weiss attempted to look at the mysteries behind the murders of Jonathan Corbon and Amice Thrush with a fresh and unbiased perspective.

Furthermore, even though her month of imprisonment had ended much earlier than when Ruby recovered from her injuries and became a seeker, Weiss still willingly chose to continue her sentence as penance. During this time, she spent a great deal of time researching and documenting events that were occurring in neighboring and distant provinces. With her sentinels as her eyes and ears, she assembled a great deal of information into a large map of sorts, which she studied and analyzed religiously. If her father would not teach her how to become the next heiress, she would do as much as she could herself. If you would like a refresher on this, you can take another look at Chapter 21: Winter Winds.

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

for da q and a, Who is the better dancer of the Caesar Stabbers?

My sincere apologies for not answering this when I should have. Interest in my proposed Q+A video was incredibly low, so I have decided to cancel the idea. However, I will happily answer the questions I did receive.

Cassius is definitely the better dancer of the two "Caesar Stabbers" (that is hilarious). At a social event where dancing is involved, Cassius would be the one confident and friendly enough to engage in such an activity. Brutus, on the other hand, would definitely rather find a seat, a beer, and someone to arm wrestle.

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

Long story short, I’ve come to realize that I’ve been spending a disproportionate amount of time on my youtube channel. I’ve been basically sinking enough hours into it as if I were a full-time youtuber. I am not. I had an ambitious and aggressive upload schedule, and it’s come to the point where I haven’t been taking care of my physical or mental health. I know I keep on saying something of the same note repeatedly, but I really hope this time I can prove it to you. 

I’m taking at least a month off from youtube stuff, maybe more. Also because I’m out of work due to COVID-19, I’m going to spend this newfound free time to focus on writing. Hopefully in this month or so, I’ll release at least two chapters. During this time I’ll also be working to come up with a new approach to running my youtube channel, because I still wish to develop my brand as a creator/writer, and I don’t think I could entirely sacrifice one in order to further develop the other, despite TWRoV clearly being the more successful endeavor. 

I hope everyone’s keeping safe in this difficult time—remember to stay indoors as much as you can, limit who you come into contact with to a minimum, and to wash your hands! And if all goes well, there will be a chapter or two of TWRoV to help you pass the time :)

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

New Year, New Writer

There’s a saying out there that there’s two types of writers: the architect who plans out everything in advance and knows exactly where the story is going, and the gardener who nurtures an idea and works with it as it blossoms and grows. For Arc I of TWRoV, I mostly fell into the camp of the gardener. I knew what characters I wanted my story to focus on and certain plot points I wanted to work towards, but really I was writing the story mostly as I went. It was a process that that was exciting and fun—even I didn’t know where the story was heading half the time. By writing in that manner, I felt like I was a reader at the same time.

However, my writing in that style didn’t come without its faults and I’ve noticed things that I disliked about how I handled the first arc: over-description of certain things that made what could have been a single chapter be dragged out into two or three, the underdevelopment of certain characters, the issue of balancing Ruby and Weiss as co-protagonists in an ambitious story. I still am incredibly proud of what I’ve written, but I don’t want the rest of my story to be like that. 

Realizing now that an arc is basically the equivalent to a book and that I’m now in the second book where the world drastically becomes more open and complicated than the first one, I simply can’t just stay as a gardener and write things as I go. Maybe I wouldn’t care so much if I was a more casual writer, but the part of me that actually wants to turn The White Rose of Vermilion into an actual five-book series, licensed fanfiction or heavily inspired “original” work, has me convinced that I have to change. I have to be more of an architect.

The document below is one of several that I’ve been beginning to put together to help me better map out where I want the story to head. It’s not a spoiler per se, but it might give some readers a more clear idea of where the story is going. If you prefer not to keep reading totally blind, then ignore the rest of this post. 

                                     ~Super Light “Spoilers” Below~

In this case, I’ve written out all five planned arcs and written a sentence for the main conflict of said arc and a sentence about how it concludes. For obvious reasons, I’ve removed everything that I haven’t covered in the story just yet. If anyone finds this remotely interesting, I might post some other documents, like some brainstorming notes or my process of how I structure a story.  

I just wanted to leave this here to let you guys know that I am still alive, despite my continued long absence from this story. But I want that to change. One of my new years resolutions is to spend more time on writing TWRoV like I did when I first started writing it. I know that I’ve made a lot of empty promises lately...but I really, really want this year to be the one where I break free of that. 

Happy New Year!

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

I like your authors notes! and thank you for posting another chapter! i love twrov

I like posting them too, but it seems that I’ve been writing them wrongly recently. Either I get frustrated and angry and guilt trip people into leaving reviews or I try to be enthusiastic about my return and most reviews welcome me back—while not mentioning anything about the actual chapter I wrote. 

It’s really dumb. If I keep AN, I’ll just make them much shorter…

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

So beacuse fanficion the site only allows one review per chapter and then I messed up. Here's what I have for chapter 27: After now reading the chapter, I have to say that your writting has only gotten better over time. This chapter had me on the brink on tears for how you portrayed the bond of Dhago and Lutolf. You managed to show what several hundered years allies look like. So great chapter and I can't wait for more, however long it takes.

Captain Bunnies! Your review did go through and I really appreciate the fact that you came here just to say it again in case if it didn’t go through. Thank you so much for your kind words, especially about the scene with Dhago and Lutolf. It had been such a long time since I wrote TWRoV and such an intense scene. Even though I am out of practice, I’m glad that some readers such as yourself still found it enjoyable. 

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

I think I should just scrap Author’s Notes from now on 

[thewhiteroseofvermilion]

Thank you again for posting a new chapter and not giving up on this. The chapters may be few and far between, but I always enjoy reading them regardless. ;)

Thank you kindly! This most recent chapter may not be my best because I’m so rusty and out of practice, but I eagerly look forward to getting my edge back!