09/05/2026
What I've Been Up To
Hallo hallo! After many years (a week) I return to this site.
I posted chapter 2 of my fallout fic! And since this isn't the first chapter, I was like 'Oh, I can spend less time nitpicking this, right?' WRONG!
I've posted it now to get it away from me, and force myself to move on. The quality difference from 1 to 2 is night and fuckin day. I feel so pretentious talking about craving 'a five course meal' of a fanfic - mate, what the hell was I on about? I can't fuckin cook!
Quality of writing aside, I'm pretty happy with the actual story, though - hence why I've posted. So what's probably gonna happen is I'll pop back in to give it quality of life edits every now and again. My current (eventual) plan is to post the whole thing on Ao3, but I'll do that when it's done - or as done as it's getting. I'll do the big rewrite and clean-up then.
But I had an idea, one that I really really liked. What if, in writing the fanfic, we do sections with simultaneous storytelling?
I like this idea because I was conflicted on how to start the fanfic: the Grognak POV feels the most correct, but there's some other stuff for Ozzie and Nick that feels weird to put anywhere else.
The idea would be a 'crossroads' of sorts, which loops back to itself until you've read all the 'pathways' - in any order you choose. Like in Act 6 of Homestuck, with the choices to follow various conversations all happening simultaneously, in any order.
Is this bad? Who cares - it's an experiment! Smarter writers than me might not do it. It's because I'm shitty, and trying hard, that I'm having to try new things to make it interesting to read.
Same reason for the art at the start of each chapter.
Yay character memes.
This technique could be really fun for seamless storytelling after killing off a POV character, too. And you could have the death itself from different perspectives!
My thinking is that the sections would happen along... more or less the same timeframe. But like, that could be a day, or it could be 'everything before 2277', or it could be 'the summer'. And you'd see what certain characters remembered more vividly from that timeframe, and where their focus was. I'd also obviously want to have details split between different POV that when put together, tell another story beyond both. Hopefully not the sort of thing you'll miss so long as you're looking for it - I think I'm not very good at putting clues in ahead of time, so I try to be a little obvious with my foreshadowing.
In other words, I couldn't pick, so I want three-ish prologues.
Another thing this 'crossroads' technique can be used for is jumping across the map. It's a big cast, bigger because of NPC's, and since it's a big map with stories scattered across it, the most seamless solution is to have POV characters in different locations, to give us an engaging perspective of what's going on at both. And with the radio system, it's not like these characters never talk to each other. In fact it's maybe funny to have the same conversation in both POVs, with added context once you read both sides.
But then, after the crossroads section, the story continues seamlessly in Sanctuary, or Diamond City, or wherever the main action is happening. It just lets us advance the story elsewhere too, without needing to manufacture a reason to have them travel out there.
I had the idea from the footnotes html - being able to jump wherever on a single page made me think I could make 'Choose Your Own Adventures' for the site. These could essentially be narrative games, in the projects section. The possibility is there to use them as 'adventure' practice for ttrpgs, where you can literally play along by reading as you go. Obviously it'll work best with things like Call of Cthulhu, but it could also be an option for DnD, Masks, Fallout, and other simpler systems.
But from that idea came the reminder of Homestuck, and the option of crossroads 'choices' in an otherwise linear story. Interactive storytelling. And since a site like this has so little audience interaction (which don't get me wrong, I'm loving - way less pressure) it really benefits from giving you a way to engage with the site.
So yeah. I'll add the new 'pathways' in as I write them - no need to get ahead of myself before I need to. That's also the same reason I'm drawing the art as I go. If I wait until the end, I won't have the motivation.
