OOC Public Journal- Lyric

Hello~

I had the idea of logging my OOC thoughts and ideas about my plots into a space where anybody could read it. These likely won't involve private discussions or anything like that, but just my ideas and thoughts about various stuff involving my own writing, be it plots that went no where or plans that fell apart, or even just some insights to my ideas. This thread aught to wet my whistle for writing again, and is alls tuff I felt like jotting down before I went about CONTINUING these vary same threads.

Where to begin, where to begin~?

Inspirations For My Character: Lyric

So, in short, after finding this website I fell down a truely massive rabbit hole that was this site's history. I absolutely adored the idea behind the Judge system, where even solo writings were guaranteed to get eyes on them by SOMEONE, and you'd have your character rewarded for what happens too. I LOVED how old this site was, and how much lore there was to dig into. I would go to the old forums and just start scrounging around and reading interesting threads, getting ideas for my own stories to start here. I can't say how many times I'd see a thread that would mention something like a treasure lost in a dessert that invited players to come and get, and be like "Oooh, what if I went for it, all these years later?"

With that in mind, another thing I noticed was some of the huge names associated here that I still see this site littered with today. Truly awesome writers with legendary and powerful characters like Shinsou or Philomel shaped their story in a way where I could visibly track their immense power by the stories they made with others. I loved it! Don't even get me started on all the REALLY obscure lost-media-esque crap I saw evidence of, but never saw (Like the Althanas live action trailer I never got to actually watch!).

These characters and players who are still around also were, justifiably, really really powerful. Even the writer who writes for Philomel made an alternative character who was explicitly not as super strong (But no less amazing to read!), so I thaught "Well, no good making a character super badass if we all start at level 1, right?"

With that core idea in mind, I made Lyric with the idea that the most interesting and dramatic parts of his life should be AHEAD of him, not behind. He is honestly pretty pathetic, and really not conducive to survive in such a harsh fantasy world. He has very few things going for him, but plenty of potential.

The other most important thing I wanted (And continue to want) for Lyric as a character is that his growth would be influenced primarily from OTHER player characters. This, I felt, made his future uncertain even to me. Maybe I'd get to write with someone who's character is a profoundly good sword fighter, and Lyric could learn some sword skills from them. Maybe they knew magic, and Lyric would learn a bit about it from them. Perhaps they were in a line of work, and Lyric could pick up a skill from them. Anything! If Lyric was going to learn to defend himself properly, it'd be because of the people he meets. They would influence his future trajectory more than anything else, and where that could lead, I haven't the slightest clue.

Now, for reasons that will be explained in the plot stuff, that wouldn't pan out super well but hey! That's the conception!


The Stories

Firstly, lemme give this general timeline as I envision them:

Character Bio's History -> The 'Fun' Times -> Nothing Stays Forever- The Catalyst of Change -> Who Would Do Such Reprehensible Acts? The Aristocrats! - How Evil Spreads -> A Sanguine Trail To Tread

Ok, with that outta the way...

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The 'Fun' Times

So, this is not really a story I've written, but rather a vague amount of time where Lyric is simply travelling. Here, I intended to fit any number of short stories or one-off things I wanted to put here. It would represent this Lvl.1 version of Lyric, before the major changes that would come after the events ahead, and I could harken back to simpler base character concepts in whatever little thing I could throw in here. For example, I intend to write for this months (as of posting) Vignette, and that story will be taking place during this period of time. I'll post it here once it's up later, for sure~

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Nothing Stays Forever- The Catalyst of Change

So this was written as both practise for writing the character, and as a sort of intro to what I'll just call the 'Changeing' arch for the character. This basically details the start of the events that would lead into my first collaborative RP with other real players! The story itself is not as well written as my posts that come later, but goes into a sort of preview of Lyric's regular life at this point. A lot of anxiety and paranoia about his identity as a vampire being found out is, and will remain, a constant theme for him. He finds the closest thing to a 'comfortable' living acting as a recordkeeper and scribe at a middle-of-nowhere inn with a nice tavern keep letting him work and stay there, but there is always that ticking timebomb that is his next meal threatening him. It all goes widely wrong when a bard lures him away with music and tries to kill him! GO READ IT YOURSELF IT'S NOT THAT LONG!!

Anyway, two notable things I wanted to mention here about this story is it's inspiration and my attempt at using the formatting to try and be clever. The song the bard sings is an actual song I blatantly used called 'The Willow Maid' by Erutan. It's a song about a forest nymph who unwillingly is made wife to a young man who finds her, and it ends with her effective death after he forcibly removes her from her perch. Super pretty song, go listen to it! Anyway, Lyric loves music, and he gets swept away by him into the trap. The themes of the song are played upon, and to the extremely clever, might serve as a hint as to the motivations or history of the bard and why he's doing this (Ho ho~ I am not very clever...).

I tried VERY HARD to try and use the formatting to play on the reader's interpretation of what is being sung. The bard doesn't have any lines outside of actually singing, and when he does, I gave his lines their own color. Every time they would see that color text, they'd associate it with the bard's voice. With that in mind, once Lyric gets lead into the forest, and the bodies start singing... It's conveyed with the text (Being the verse they've read already, so should be familiar with) being a different color than the bard's, as well as being positioned on different sides of the page (Leaning hard left, right, or middle, to convey what direction they're coming from without spelling it out explicitly). In the end, hopefully, it conveyed the effect well! It should read as if from Lyric's point of view, starting to hear other singing voices appearing around him, before the Bard's own heightens in intensity and violence as he is stabbed through the chest.

In the end, it also ends in a way to show the sort of 'worst case scenario'/nightmare situation for Lyric. Caught, exposed, and needing to quickly uproot himself. To be fair to him too, it would look pretty bad for him, don't you think? Go read it it's the only story I fully completed so far dangit.
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Who Would Do Such Reprehensible Acts? The Aristocrats! - How Evil Spreads

So, this story is, as of writing, technically not complete yet. However, I've actually long known how I wanted to write and end it, so feel I can still talk about it. Just uh... Beware spoilers. Skip ahead to the next story if you care at all. At the time of writing for it and plotting, the only other active writing activity on the site was another player who was writing some very... Uh, 'riskay' stuff, involving their own character enjoying their harem. That's fine, nothing wrong with that at all~ Indeed, I read it all! What it did for me though was signal to me that writing such things was acceptable, which gave me the go-ahead to write a darker and far more terrible turn in the story that I'm sure will make the reader feel wildly uncomfortable. That is intentional; Not every story is meant to feel good, or even have a good ending. This story... Will definitely not.

The story essentially picks up where the last left off, with Lyric needing to displace himself again. This time though, through a series of unfortunate events, he is swept up into servitude of a land lord that effectively owns and entire town. There is a far larger cast of characters for this one, and it's also meant to setup the later stages of my RP with other players I'll get into ahead!

In the story, I made sure to introduce the Lord's close companions, one a tougher fighter type character and the other a more intellectual type. The Lord himself is actually a grossly obese and indulgent character who is spoiled rotten with having all the power in his name, freely plucking women (And as it's hinted, some men) off the streets with a promise of living the high life for his own amusement. It's heavily implied that this has become some people's entire reason for even coming to the town, you could just get picked up off the streets and bam you live in a manor! Of course, the relationship is far from glorious, acting as little more than concubines.

Lyric getting picked up and ousted as a vampire changes everything though. As of writing this, I haven't gotten to it yet, but: They DON'T kill him. In fact, they intend to use him. The Lord character, after learning he is a vampire, is enticed at the prospect of the immortality vampirism would provide. Indeed, it gives him illusions of grandeur, and he intends to single handedly becomes the ruler of this place eternally with his never ending life span Lyric would provide him, as well as giving the 'gift' of vampirism to his minions.

In the meantime, while his intelligent minion figures out how to make that happen, a lot of terrible things happen to Lyric I won't delve into here, other than to mention that it leaves them changed in a fundamental way that permanently changes their identity going forward, and will leave lasting mental (and physical) scars for him to figure out.

Now, it WAS going to end there. Lyric looks like he's trapped in truly terrible straights, and there's suddenly going to be a MASSIVE vampire problem in this part of the world with him basically being at fault. Lyric's fate from here WAS going to be decided near the end of the collaboration with two other players in the next story, but uh...

Well... Let's just talk about it in the next story.

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A Sanguine Trail To Tread

So... This is the basket which I put all my preverbal eggs into. This is where, I think, I am most proud of my writing, and the stars were aligned to make something fucking awesome. I had some seriously cool ideas for where this could go, character's who's backgrounds I had all fleshed out would be taking the vast majority of my share of the spot light (Kinda ironic to not use my actual designated character for 99% of the intended story but whatever lol) and I'll get there, but uh... It all kinda went to shit really fast.

Now, I don't want to get TOO into detail, and DEFINITLY don't want to cause any finger pointing at anyone. Seriously, don't bother these people. I know you can literally just look at the thread, but still. For various reasons that, kinda amusingly, I wasn't ever actually involved in, one of the two other writing partners for this story abandoned the entire site for good. I... Don't even actually know exactly why. It had nothing to do with me or the other writing partner, but in a really weird way, my writing here and invitation kinda butterfly-effected events into motion that caused this.

They were super excited, as were we all, to write with me and of course I was super stoked as well. big plans after all, and they were a super gifted writer and old veteran of the site, so I was really stoked! They were so enthusiastic that they even talked about basically re-writing some world lore with me, which I was honored they thaught so highly of me to do that. However, with this newfound activity and gusto, stuff got weirdly heated on the Discord server between them and some others and this ended with them basically saying 'Fuck this bye' to all of Althanas.

Well... Me and the other person involved in this story kinda just had an awkward 'Uh, what now?' with each other after that and... It died then and there. The story was set up in such a way that I gave too much importance to the person who was now gone, and it uh... Just smothered the whole thing in it's cradle.

Again though, both writers who were working with me were great writers. No ill-will to anyone, truly! I'll get into what I had HOPED to get through with them below, but just know that this is a sort of 'What could have been' for a bit:

So, I had introduced two Vampire Hunter characters that I would have LOVED to flesh out with them (Them being my writing partners). They were both up there in age, but still badass I like to think. Nigel had a magic eye that could see blood inside others he used to find vampires, Bordeux had weaponized mechanical legs, and both were basically professionals who were from a bygone era where their skills just weren't really needed anymore. It gave them both a chance to be useful again, and by the end of the story, when they would have tracked down Lyric (Did I mention they were investigating the events in Nothing Stays Forever? Because they are) to the Manor where they'd discover it was over run by vampires, the characters from the previous story.

My partners had such perfect fucking characters too, between Posion being an actual vampire herself (Something I intended to become important later, I'll get to it) and Arphenion being a powerful badass with tons of influence and knowledge to draw from. They could both play off my two hunter characters, where I as a writer could see their characters play out before my eyes so I could learn more about them (I also read some of their earlier material before any of this even started shhhhhh) and enjoy watching how the story would unfold.

By the end of it, however we got there, I had an idea in my head one way things COULD pan out for Lyric himself. I didn't have anything super definitive for the Hunters, I figured that's where the collaboration would come shape their stories. No matter what, they would eventually need to narrow it down to that town where Lyric was trapped in, finding it either by Nigel's magic eye or something Arphenion could do (I remember his profile mentioning some cool abilities that could help with this).

Whatever went down in that place, it'd be a bloody battle... And I remember having all sorts of cool shit planned for when it got there. Giving all the characters excuses to bring out their abilities, my Hunters included, I honestly plotted the death of at least one of them, depending on how things got written by my partners. It's all very nebulous, since obviously this was me imagining far ahead and anything could change, but...

By the end, Lyric would finally enter the story, as they'd find him int he Manor of cource and he would be deduced to be the Vampire they were all actually looking for. Oh how I swooned over the idea of my actual character getting to meet Poison and Arphenion (Recall my idea for him to begin with: Any growth and development would be spurred on by other player characters primarily) but alas, this story would never get to go anywhere near this. This is also where Poison being a vampire herself would also POTENTIALLY become important, as she could educate Lyric on the matter (Lyric actually is very uneducated with vampirism beyond that he has it and sun-is-bad). Alternativly, I had a entire scene planned out in my head for the surviving Hunter after these events (Let's just go with Nigel) would choose not to kill Lyric, and instead, educate him on his condition and how best to handle things.

You see, for BOTH Hunters, I intended to constantly hint at them (Especially Nigel, spreading to Bordeux after they'd meet) having doubts about their past deeds. Nigel had long lamented his past deeds as, after so long living with what he did to kill vampires in the past, he came to realize that they weren't monsters at all, and all those innocent harmless ones he killed for the church in the past probably didn't need to die. In their youth, the church had them looking at all vampires as irredeemable monsters, and sure some definitely were, but for every one evil vampire lord of the night with deadly aspirations there were dozens that were just struggling to survive and probably didn't deserve it. If anything, they deserved pity, and if only they were more widely accepted as people too they could maybe live a normal life with the help of others. With this in mind, by the time they have Lyric and all the 'bad' vampires are dead... The former vampire hunter chooses to help. Hell, they'd have been traveling with a vampire the entire time in the form of Poison anyway, so honestly by the time this happened this probably would have already come up from their character interactions with each other.

Lyric wise, this is where his 'Hidden' abilities listed in his character bio would become actually usable, since either Posion or the Hunters would teach him about himself (What kind of vampire he was, what he could do, things like that). Hell, even Arphenion could fill that role really.

From this point, by the end of this story, I wanted Lyric to have a new lease on life. A major turning point, and of cource, I'd have gotten to say I completed a RP with two awesome writers~

-sigh- If only...

So... SINCE NONE OF THAT IS ON THE TABLE ANYMORE, what now? Well, as you can tell, this was very discouraging to me. The Discord was weirdly politically charged, and that made me not want to participate in regular discussion (It got so rough they made a debate channel, which I think was the right move) and with how already sparce the activity was here, to have something like this fall apart in such a weird roundabout way that I couldn't have prevented was a real 'Eh... Maybe it's best this place slowly dim to nothing' kind of moment. I stepped away, thinking I'd not come back, and frankly distracted by life events IRL too so perhaps a hiatus was on the horizon anyway.

Now that I AM back, as much as I personally hate the idea, there are three options ahead of me:
1. Just scrap all these ideas and reset plans back to this never happening.
2. Try and finish it by myself or with Poison's writer, writing out Arphenion. Or finally,
3. Skip ahead and pretend the events actually happened.

I'll be blunt, I don't like any of these, but I think I'll just need to settle with a combination of the first and the second options. Completely rethink, and do a solo re-write of this story into something else completely. Lyric was NOT supposed to be able to get out of the horrible situation alone without intervention that Arphenion & Posion would have provided, but now I guess I gotta come up with something. I'll be brainstorming how I can make that happen, and what on earth Lyric will be like at the end of it, but until then...

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Thanks for reading my OOC journal so far! I'd encourage you to read the proper stories themselves, as these are more like Author's Notes, but still: Thank you!! If you want to ask me anything, feel free to respond below and I'm sure I'll answer it lol.