New Chapter, an explanation, and new worldbuilding material · 2:06am Aug 16th, 2018
Oof, this one is going to take an explanation, huh?
As you can see, a new, much belated chapter is out. The delay on this one is basically inexcusable, but I still own a reason for it having taken so long.
After having finished the previous chapter, it was obvious to me -- and probably obvious to all of you -- that the next chapter was going to involve some long awaited revelations and resolutions that have been a few hundred thousand words in the making. This ended up being exactly the case, but I found that those story beats involved scenes with a large number of characters whose differing places in the story necessitated multiple POV's to cover. My usual custom has been to have one POV per chapter, but I thought that it made more sense to have all of these important scenes happening in rapid succession, in a single chapter, without having been split up. I finished the first part of this fairly quickly, and I thought it would be relatively simple to wrap up the last portion of it.
As it turns out, it wasn't. Obviously. Instead, I found myself really struggling to finish this thing. Without meaning to spoil, it involves two . . . conversations. Ones that will be very, very important, in terms of both character and plot development. I found that I needed to choose my words very carefully in these conversations, which required a lot of deliberating and rewriting that I previously haven't had much trouble with. That, combined with exams, combined with moving over the summer, combined with a new job and new work, made it very hard to finish.
I was determined to finish the entire chapter, and stubborn. In the end, however, I realize that I kept you all waiting far, far too long. I've decided to move things forward, starting now. What you'll be reading soon is the first third or so of this difficult chapter. I hope it at least satisfies for now -- I think it's best that I not promise when future things will be released, but I do think the full chapter will be done before too long.
As an offer of peace, I have also brought a few miscellaneous materials, however! These are a few worldbuilding pieces I did, a while back. Not likely to impact the story greatly, but they might be some light reading in anticipation of future chapters. Additionally, I have a new map for the in-world equivalent of Facebook almost done -- I had a little time which was good for cartography and not much else, so this was the result. It's not quite done yet, but I would expect it fairly soon -- I'll need a scanner for it, and one should be available soon.
I really can't apologize enough about the wait. I've been on this site for a while now, and I have been disappointed several times by stories that started great, improved more and more, and then suddenly ceased when the author lost interest and never came back. There's nothing worse than a dead fic, and I promised myself that I wouldn't add another one to the site. I want to repeat that promise to all of you: this story will be completed. I love writing it, and love knowing that people are reading it as well, and I wouldn't betray those readers by leaving them hanging. That's a promise, and I plan to keep it.
YAY! I was getting worried! Also.... I JUST got the 'Putinites' pun.....
Nice.
But... YAY! So happy fic isn't dead after so much work and so much awesome! I can get just not being able to figure out how to make things flow well. Sometimes getting someone to talk it over with can help.
Also, stupid damn IRL, always getting in the way of things that matter, like Ponies.
I get most of these puns, but what is V'kay supposed to be?
It's great to have an update! Now, I'm just torn between diving right into the new chapter, or re-reading the last few in an attempt to get back up to speed.
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You might want to at least read the chapter immediately before this one, if you need any reminders on what the characters are doing. There's a slight time gap between the two, so it might seem disjointed without a refresher.
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V'Kay is the popular Russian social media site VK, usually thought to be the most visited site in the so-called "Runet." It's not entirely unlike Facebook or similar sites, but is considered by many to be owned by allies of the Putin regime.
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Sorry about that -- I'm hoping to keep up communication more in the future, to make sure people don't get anxious about this story's future.
I might just enter the market for such a person in the near future. Having someone to discuss story details has been helpful in the past. I've also been tinkering with another project that I would love to have people look at sometime in the future. I can't tell much more about that right now, however -- spoilers and all.
Amen, friend, amen.
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Should get to reading soon, once I get a day or two off work.
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Ok, got it.