Hello there!
Apologies for the extra long note.
A personal update regarding the state of my current uploads. As of writing this message, the amount of time I spend in a week working on my fanfics, including editing and posting is, usually six to eight hours. To be honest, I never even thought I would find popularity or support to even spend this much time doing what I love. However you can tell this is not a truly great number. The amount I make from writing is even lower, only 2 to 3 dollars an hour.
It is not something that I can keep up with sustainably; every minute of writing I can get out is, at the moment, squeezed out of my own free time to try and keep up with the monthly uploads. Already I've had to temporarily nix one of the stories I've been working on, Royal Business, because I've not been able to maintain a quality standard that I can be happy with.
It's... not exactly working, and I've had people complain about both the often late uploads and the fact that three thousand to five thousand words per chapter at one chapter per month, per fic, is not enough to maintain a sense of connection to the story or even remember what occurred in it.
I apologize for the annoyance procured by this message, but I genuinely would want nothing more than to be able to keep pumping out content for you guys to be able to read. Though I've had a number of personal tragedies occur all within the last year, I will not bore you with the sob story of my life; rather, I would like to provide you with some soft data regarding my current stories.
Syzygy, my to date most successful story, has had in the past year about seventy-thousand words produced. The content thus far doesn't even reach Cynthia achieving her second gym badge. While I cannot make a real estimate, by my own reckoning of the content I plan to write, we've reached about 15% of the planned content.
Comfort by Candlelight, my second most successful story, I have a better measure of the dimension. The wordcount is similar, as is the amount I've managed to post, and it reaches, for those of you who know how the story goes, roughly the point where Luka prepares to leave San Ilia for the first time to go back to Port Natalia.
For TENGE, after 2 years of writing and a little over 110k words written, I have officially completed Act 1 of what, if I have my way, will be a five act fic.
Royal Business, though currently on hiatus, is lastly at the start of the group's first palace, which between me and my collaborator, we speculate will take about fifty to sixty thousand words to complete. Latter palaces will not take an insane amount of words, but there's also the characters' lives beyond stealing treasures.
In essence... *If I continue like this, I expect to only be done with the current stories in six, maybe five years.* And while I might be fine, there's also the much higher likelihood that I will have to devote less and less time to my stories in order to do the other two things I'm a fan of, namely having a roof over my head and consuming food.
So, allow me to annoy you in order to explain that I am setting up a series of reader-funded goals that, should they be achieved, would allow me to move to writing fanfics full-time. Notably, has for some reason disabled funding goals, so I'll present them here for you;
100$/month - Once per month, I will make a raffle picking one of my subscribers in order to, if they wish for it, write a small (1-2k words) story of their choosing.
250$/month - I'll be able to put in enough time to resume updating Royal Business, one of the original stories that I'd been writing.
500$/month - I'll provide everyone with more frequent updates regarding health, general situation, and insight into the stories, the writing process and what comes with being a fanfic writer.
1000$/month - I'll be able to begin writing in earnest an original story that me and my collaborator have been working on, to be posted on and Ao3 (and maybe other sites?).
1500$/month - With this, I will finally be making enough to handle myself comfortably with just a side gig and writing, allowing me to switch up to a bi-monthly schedule of writing.
2000$/month - are enough money that I will be able to semi-consistently commission artists to make illustrations (and maybe music) to go along with my stories.
2500$/month - Would be enough to for my mom to comfortably stop working, something that would mean a lot given her situation. To celebrate that, as a thank you, I'll write a story whose characters, universe, themes and everything are chosen by the community as a whole.
3000$/month - Lastly, this would effectively be enough for me to never need to consider another career as potentially better, more "worth" it, or safer for me to pursue, and I'd be able to fully focus on the writing and achieve true stability. I would move to writing full time, updating as often as the chapters are produced, edited and beta-read.
Thank you in advance for whoever decides to indulge this desire of mine.
Eden lounges, in heaven, as she finds herself without anything in particular to do. Even with the Goddess' particular fascination with the son of Lucifina- maybe she should have some progeny herself if this was the result. She did not expect Goddess Ilias to want to be a grandma... ah, but she had expressely forbidden relationships of that nature with humans... hmm.
Where was she?
Ah, right. The troops, ordered. The orders, managed. The managers, trooped- no, er, that wasn't quite right. Still. Everything that needed doing, got done.
It's as she's lounging her time away, wondering about this and that, that she felt... an itch. A desire to do something, an irregularity within her body... but she couldn't sense anything.
With a deep sigh, she resolved to switch to her lesser form, expanding massively as she stared at all of her additional bodies. Ahhh, the peanut gallery. Sometimes she wondered how they could be her and still be so dumb.
"What are you girls doing?" Eden asks, miffed. They knew better than to bother her during her doing nothing.
"Nothing, dear." "Nothing, why?" "Huh?" "?" "K-kuh..." As her garden replied in the negative, Eden's eyes zeroed in on the one that was twitching. Her expression was dazed, her complexion feverish, and she looked out of place.
"Well? What is it? Out with it then."
"T-type 1... C-cross world... contact..." The black-haired woman twitched.
"What nonsense are you blathering on about?" Eden asked, exasperated. It's at times like these that she wished to have the ability to read minds, but the Goddess had neglected to teach her, claiming that Eden didn't even know how to read her own thoughts. Well, duh, that was the point. If she didn't know how to read minds, how could she read her own?
"E-eliminate..." the Garden spawn choked, before thrusting out a hand and trying to punch another one of the Garden. The rest gasped, and Eden promptly vaporized her in a burst of holy lightning.
"Tch. Maybe I should've listened a little more to that sinner I was punishing a few hundred years ago. What did he say, again? Something, something... red meat causes cancer? Hmmmm... oh well. I guess I won't eat that, anymore. Now... which meat is red?"
"All meat is red, darling." One of the garden spawns told her.
"Oooooh... right. When was the last time we had meat, again?"
"That meanie Micaela told us to try some for the festivities after killing Heinrich, I think?"
"Oh. Right. I wonder how long she'll be on her vacation still... ordering the angels to do things for me is exhausting." She bemoaned, and all her Garden agreed.
Now... what was she thinking about, again?
As Noah wakes up, pain assaults him from... pretty much everywhere on his body, but in particular his throat. Without the adrenaline-fueled berserk he'd fallen into, every movement is painful as he struggles to peel himself off of... a plush chair?
Looking around the room, the piece of furniture is extremely out of place. This place looked like a doctor's office... and he had not seen one of those in a long while. He groaned, wondering if he should bother standing up before figuring that he might as well at least stretch. With a quick prayer, soothing light bathed his body, and he stood up and began stretching.
"Inconceivable. Had Promestein not told me herself, I would not have believed it." Noah whipped around to look and promptly wished he hadn't. In front of him was a figure that was half-machine, half-person, and fully unpleasant to look at.
"The average monster, I understand. But you could really stand to wear some fucking clothes." He huffed, his throat itching as his voice felt all scratchy.
"Clothing is an unnecessary waste of-" Laplace produced a noise that was between a mechanical click and a squeak as Noah finished taking his cloak off and promptly tossed it over her. Considering that her body was four feet tall at best, it only served to reinforce the feeling that he was interacting with a naked little kid.
As Laplace took the cloak off her face, she droned in a dull tone of voice. "Am I meant to interpret this as an attack?"
Noah snorted. He was getting way too used to being flippant to beings that could fold him like a pretzel. "The only thing being attacked is the basic sense of decency if you take that off."
Laplace stared at him for several moments, mechanical parts floating in the air before slowly retreating beneath the cloak. "Hmmm. You are just as odd as she said. Prude."
"I very much do not swing any way that would bring me to be attracted to a child's body." Noah rolled his eyes. "What were you saying earlier, anyways? What is inconceivable?"
"Hmph. While you are still weak and frail, naught but thirty minutes ago, you were drained of every last drop of semen readily available without killing you, and yet you still walk." Noah's eyes became pinpricks as his vision zeroed in on her form. For all that he knew that he didn't stand a chance, his fingers itched for a weapon.
A door on the other side of the room opened, revealing the most scientific angel. "You have awakened, Noah. How unexpected. I trust you've been enjoying yourself?"
"...I would've enjoyed myself more had you not left me with someone who raped me in my sleep, apparently." The android scoffed at the accusation. "Laplace could stand to learn some manners, like basic human decency."
As Laplace and Promestein shared a look, the redhead tilted her head. "I suppose that there is little room for courtesy in the pursuit of science. But you shouldn't be so unkind to the person who put you back together. You were quite broken when I brought you here."
"Because of your artificial spirit."
"Would you go blame a blacksmith because a swordsman tried to kill you? Grow up, Noah. I'm not the one who picked a fight with the mermaids of Port Natalia." she scoffed. "Besides, you get to keep Grandine as the victor. I thought that you'd be happy?"
"...what?" he and another voice inside of him echoed at the same time. It was a smooth, silky voice that felt like a cube of ice sliding down his back, causing him to shiver.
"Yes. I took the liberty to install the Grandine off of your opponent into you since she was able to provide valuable data. Considering the bond you formed with the fire spirit is quite a bit deeper than expected and wouldn't break easily, you'll have some good contrast so you don't end up almost killing yourself like you just did."
That cold sensation spread through his veins. Already, the idea of being... drained, in his sleep was violating. But this? Just... having an entire additional consciousness installed into his soul?
"...I see."
"I'm sure you do." Promestein purred. "Now, stay there for a while. You should still be recuperating, and Laplace and I have better things to do than to just hover over you, and you woke up earlier than expected. Feel free to play around with the spirit, though. Make good recovery, Noah." she waved dismissively, as the two of them left the room with a sneer from Laplace as she tossed Noah's cape back to him.
The cold had spread to his fingertips, his toes, the top of his head, and had settled into a headache behind his eyes as he slowly eased himself back into the chair.
He... didn't know if this was better than the scorching heat that had almost killed him... but somehow, he still yearned for Salamander's warmth. There was no reply from her, the only woman that Noah actually wanted to see.
"Fascinating, isn't he?" Promestein hummed. Laplace had helped her in surgery, in order to save the life of her subject. Considering all the effort and the results shown, it would've been a shame to let him die when it was trivially easy to avoid.
"...irreverent, more like. One would think that a human, let alone one who can barely stand on his own two legs, would have less cheek. And did you need to tell him my name?" Laplace huffed.
Promestein chuckled. "I had my suspicions, but rest assured I told him nothing. Our little alien is most likely a Seeker of Truth of his own... just not one we're personally familiar with."
Laplace, for a moment, stilled. As she ran the possibility in her head and made calculations, she breathed softly. "I would need an operating hardware the size of Heaven to adjust my calculations to a theoretically infinite number of universes."
"Maintain current parameters." Promestein scolded. "More importantly, take a look at this. The first time, I was too far to truly notice it, but this is concerning data."
With that, Promestein offered a USB stick to Laplace, her newest method of data storage after having accidentally learned that monsters could just... shove CDs in their mouths and somehow read the contents, the sense of which she could not divine. Bah. The more she tried to get consistent, nonmagical results, the more magic thwarted her.
"This is... White Rabbit? In a human? His blood showed absolutely nothing of the sort."
Promestein smiled. "That is because it is not White Rabbit at all. Despite the perfectly ordinary human body, his soul is cloaked in a mixed holy and dark shell that reacts when certain conditions are met."
"A shame that we cannot replicate the results. Lily and La Croix have mangled their souls beyond repair, I don't have one, and you..."
"Am an angel, yes. Not that I believe there to be any compatibility between what is going on with the human and in a way that I might replicate on myself. I do believe it has to do with the dimensional travel."
"Yes, I did want to inquire about that..." Laplace ponders for a moment. "Why would we send so useless a specimen, as opposed to a more capable collaborator, or even one of us?"
"I believe the answer may just lie in the uselessness you just mentioned," Promestein smirked. "For the past few days, after witnessing the amalgamation of light and dark in his soul, I searched for similar energy patterns in other, similar places, and I have found that the only places this can be naturally found in is one of the very rifts that our friend came in from. That is where the most interesting part comes in:
"The magical coefficient of a human is, on average, fifteen times lower that of your average earthworm girl. However... Noah in particular seems to have a practical vacuum in the magical department that, in a spectacular sort of irony, seems to allow him to cast magic by draining that of his surroundings. Were he not a prude, I would've suggested he pick up a lesson or two from Lily." she chuckles.
"That means that, whatever the dimensional travel constant is, he was engineered to be a perfect subject for it. I can only imagine that, had anyone else tried it without a stable rift, of which I've found none... they would have been torn to shreds." She shakes her head. "The samples I've had you pick up, on that note, are going to hopefully reveal to me if there's any messages we've sent myself encoded in his DNA or other tissues. Though... I'd recommend you not tell him about the modifications, however. He seems particularly sensitive about violations of his bodily autonomy, believing himself to still be a regular human, and looked like he had half a mind to attack you despite knowing full well he couldn't win." She shook her head.
Noah was a berserker of a man through and through, for all that he posed and postured as a gentleman in a normal context. Shame Ms. Jekyll Hyde perished when she did. It would've been amusing to introduce them to one another, watch them act demurely in one moment then try to tear each other to shreds the next.
Promestein would make sure that at least, the sacrifices of those that died in the name of seeking the truth would not be for naught.
Especially a truth that spun as far as outside the bounds of the universe.
So maybe, just maybe, Noah was developing a mild case of gynophobia. An entirely justified one, mind you, given that even shapeshifters tended to assume, for some reason, strictly feminine and attractive.
Then again, phobias were defined as irrational, and being off his guard would get him killed sooner rather than later, so...
Still. This world ran on sex. On lust, rather; and until he sat down to ponder about the basic urges of men, he realized that such a basic recontextualization might be what his perspective needed.
Because his world was run on greed. Oh, it was absolutely mundane compared to this world, and it was probably an exaggeration... but he didn't feel like it was a particularly egregious one. Not in the late-stage capitalist era, bordering on anarcho-capitalism, that he came from. Not that he wasn't disgusted by that too. It just hadn't gotten him violently assaulted... but then again, there he was a member of a pretty privileged caste, the same way as... that mermaid, for example, was. It didn't come as an epiphany, or some revelation that then would go on to make him decide to hold hands with monsterkind and go Kumbayah like Luka would. It just... informed the context of the power that he was struggling against, both in the means and the ends that the oppressors (monsters) were doing.
After all, it wasn't like pleasure attacks were developed solely as a means of hunting humans- though it had happened precisely once, it was the whole reason that Granberia could never win against Alma Elma. '...not that I would go on to sexually assault a monster.' his face scrunched up with disgust at the thought. That was both morally reprehensible and a foolish endeavor. As a human, he didn't have the means of...
'No.' Banishing all thoughts of the fleshwarping magic that would grant him the means of doing so, he sighed. He wasn't even sure where that mental tangent was headed, but surely, nowhere good. With a sigh, he resolved to try again on something he'd been having no luck on to try and distract himself. "Come, Grandine."
A shimmer of water coated his body as he looked down at his hands, and he could feel the numbness spread, like being dunked in a pool of cold water, but without the thermal shock.
After a moment, he already found himself pulling back with a shuddering gasp. No.
Salamander had once claimed that he was a natural at calling upon the power of fire... in fact, he was too good at it. Watching the smattering of burns on his body that even angelic magic was struggling to heal, he couldn't help but agree. Apparently, he lacked the control necessary to not kill himself while using it, not the willpower to call on it. That kind of passion, however, was a two-way street; etched in his mind was a refusal of the basic principle that water required.
Surrender. Giving up heart and mind to the flow of the world. Even attuned to Grandine's power, he couldn't tap into that feeling at all. And the trauma only reinforced that refusal to trust that power. In a way, it was like faith, of which Noah had none, yet somehow, that still failed to make Holy magic inaccessible to him. Even more, however, it seemed that his fear was just as reflected in the spirit. Considering that Grandine was artificial and the spirit of water besides, however, he figured that it was his emotions reflecting back against him rather than true sentience on the spirit's part.
With that failure, his mind resumed its wanderings, about justice, about the world, and the parallels with his own. It was kind of a stupid argument anyway- unlike wealth, it wasn't like the inherent erotic qualities monsters had could be redistributed in the name of fairness.
Okay, so maybe he didn't have such a particularly profound idea as he thought he'd had and was just going crazy sitting in a chair in a lab buried underground.
Seize the means of reproduction. the awful pun left him giggling in nervous amusement to himself. Yeah, he was definitely going crazy in this laboratory environment, given what had happened to him, the lack of Salamander, and the general situation.
"I see you're doing alright, despite everything." The smile slipped off of his face as a voice piped up, the metallic door sliding open. Right... the other angel that had hung in the background of the battle- Promestein hadn't come alone to "rescue" him. "Woah, don't be so tense! We're friends!" She smiled.
His eyebrows shot up in disbelief as he took in her appearance, trying to figure out her angle. She was a petite figure with hair that fell in locks all the way to her feet, red eyes, and a smile on her face. Despite that, she was dressed pretty unflatteringly compared to what he'd seen every woman in this world save for Promestein wear, with a blazer, pants, and... "Is that my coat?" He asked, weirded out. He'd fought, sweated, and bled in that thing.
"It's comfier than anything I've got. ︎" she hummed.
"...run it back a second. Friends? I haven't seen you before in my life."
She stared at Noah for a moment, expression slowly falling into a pout. "After all the help I've given you... but I suppose that the only time we came face to face you were sleeping." After a moment, her eyes lit up. "Oh, wait, I get it! Right, of course, you were acquainted with other-world me, not me-me! Very well, let's introduce ourselves properly. I'm Hecatolomea, a Seeker of Truth. Thank you for rescuing me from Black Alice!" She said, moving to sit on his lap as she grabbed his hand in her own.
...what?
Uh-oh. Eden it's spread to Eden now.
Also, making OCs connected to the main story feels like I'm committing some kind of great sin as a fanfiction writer.