Wheatley, You Moron: It's been a while · 5:15pm Apr 30th, 2015
Man, it's been awhile since I've done one of these.
Son of a bitch Windows 8 just tabbed me out.
Okay, fixed that. I'm seriously thinking about switching to Linux because of this Win8 crap. New rig came with it and it won't stop being a pain in the ass. Anyway. I digress.
A few explanations are in order. First and foremost, Grey Hat. No, I will not be quitting it, but I have certainly hit a minor hiccup. Finals are almost upon me and that's eating an understandably larger slice of my time. Bad news is I've still got two weeks left. I'll be writing in my off hours, but it's still hindering me. Good news is this is my last semester, so there's that.
Yeah, I did have a reasonably-sized buffer of chapter before I started, but then I got kicked in the pants because of this. So yeah. Things are happening. Stuff and things.
Now, I suppose I should address the elephant in the room. Minecraft...
I've made my issues with this story known for some time, so I won't go over that here. To put it simply, despite it being my most popular story, it's my least favorite. You can read a bit more about that here if you are so inclined. I've had a reasonably-sized portion of the next chapter done for several months now. To me, it's not as fun to write anymore. Don't get me wrong, I would very much like to finish it, but I'm not enjoying it like I used to in my hay day. I'd gamble a good two thirds of my followers joined because of that story. I am very pleased you like it, and that's one of the reasons the dreaded cancelled doesn't hang on the front door. I took a brief hiatus from it late last year in order to get my thoughts in order and work on Grey Hat. That's largely why the story had a near 20k word buffer, twice what my other collaborator had. It even spawned the story SINless Desire, my own loveletter to the cyberpunk genre. Perhaps if I got something off chest, At the End would come to me a little more clearer. Clear the air. Sadly, it didn't.
I don't enjoy it. I really want to. I even know exactly what occurs in the oncoming chapter and the next several. I want to but it's not in me.
So here's what I'm proposing. Tell me what you do and don't enjoy about At the End. What do you like, what you don't like. To be honest, after I scrapped my original ending, I had intended to nearly double or even triple the number of Miner-centric chapters compared to pony-centric chapters. I've had more fun writing those anyway. How does that appeal to you?
Come at me bros. I'm looking for something to latch onto. Give me a kick in the ass to start this again.
Well, I have to say that one of the things I liked most (and has become my headcanon for how Crafter powers work) is that the Crafters (or Crafter, if it's a lonely one) are dispersing the world into containable energy, holding it, and placing it back into the world. That the kinetic energy of their strikes enables them to disrupt the natural lattices of the world, and that this energy is then able to be viewed after strikes me as a simply brilliant way to view Minecraft's particular powerset, and even solves the weight issue (as it's all energy, it's weightless)
To me, this represents many ways to rationalize and realize the capabilities of the Crafters. They have their own form of magic-like ability, and it is a truly beautiful and magnificent thing.
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Now on to the part I don't like. As much as you're trying to lead us to where you're going with the story, we the readers are completely int eh dark. And we're stumbling, repeatedly and often. We have vague ideas of who Brimstone is, who Era'Doth is, but we have no concrete ideas. We don't know if this is based entirely off of Vanilla Minecraft, or if it's one that was modded, and therefore has things we wouldn't expect. We don't know much about the Crafter himself, because he's been constantly shuffled to second place, only responding and never being proactive. While that gives us a glimpse of the sort of person he is, it also fails to give us anything more than a glimpse.
It also doesn't help that, like, eight major updates happened while you were just getting the story going, so a bunch of headcanons changed a bajillion new things showed up that the Crafter should know, but doesn't, because he was written before those updates.
So, you asked, and you have received. Responses?
Personally, I really like how everything flows together so naturally. You said before that you've changed the concepts of your characters multiple times over the course of the story, but it reads like you planned it that way all along.
And your imagery. By God, your ability to describe the world of the story, not just tell the events but immerse the reader in them utterly astounds me. I've read a lot of stories on this site, but very few set the scene of the story quite as beautifully as you do.
I did constantly find myself wanting to know more about the Miner.
3031032
The lack of enough Miner chapters is one of the reasons I wanted him to gain more spotlight later, thus the bump in the number of his journal chapters. I had it in my head that because of shit about to go down, he wants to take a more proactive role.
As for ol' Brimy and Briney... sadly there's only so much I can do because they spawned from when I was a much weaker writer. I do have something in mind to fix a lot of problems, but that's still in the air. A lot depends on what's just about to occur.
As for what version of Minecraft, I've long since just picked my own and developed it from there. There is no possible way I could write this story and keep up with the updates no matter how fast I write. Even the Wither took me by surprise, and that's when I was pumping out chapters every one or two weeks.
For new stuff, I've since rationalized it in story that he's never built the more complex artifacts like the circular saw for Ambrosia because science is something completely foreign to him. He can understand the what and the why, but not the how. Now that he has access to more advanced tech and magic, he can make use of it, but it involves guesswork and failure. In short, I can and have rationalized recipes like those in Tekkit, but he has to have access to them and a reason to experiment. A bump in the number of his chapters should solve that.
But as for things that showed up in later editions like tameable horses and whatnot, I don't see how I can retroactively fit that in. That goes back to it being impossible to keep up with Minecraft updates. Portals are still a things, however.
From yours and 3031087's thoughts, it does look a bump in Crafter chapters is desirable. Good for me, because I like those more than pony chapters as well. I still have to take care of a few things, wrap up the coming fight, and then I could remap everything.
windows 10 is free, they don't care if you get it pirated or not :P
3031428
Well, the obvious answer to the problem is re-write the whole damned thing, after burning down the old one and using the surviving parts to build the new.
That said, the obvious ≠ the best all the time. Or the most expedient. Or most effective.
Whatever you do, either continuing or rewriting, I support you, as long as I get more story. Because I hate not knowing, and the reason I read stories to to learn about what happens in that world. A story is a window into another world, by damn I want to break the window and go through, glass cuts or no.
I agree with pretty much everything thats been said so far, I wouod like to see the miner focused chapters quite a lot. Some world description like when luna went into his dream... that'd be the thing.
3041494
World description, eh?
I think I can do that.
I'm a little late on the writing comment thing here, but I personally want more exposition and detailing of the world around the Miner, and his own thoughts. And more plot, because scrambling around in the details like a jigsaw puzzle isn't particularly interesting or fulfilling to read. Especially if the answers just lead to more questions, that lead to more questions, and then we forget what the first question was. That kind of think bugs me.
Anyway, I want more of the Miner, and more relatively straight forward plot moving, rather than circling. Please?