OMG, So Now We're Going To Talk About Viper. (this Corpsefucker Right Here)

OMG, so now we're going to talk about Viper. (this corpsefucker right here)

So, the first story I'm writing is (planned to be) a little 40k word novella about Mia (no powers) and Nico (echolocation). Mia has been on the run from Viper for nearly a decade now (our girl is resourceful af!).

Viper is bad news. He's the chief enforcer for the Fayetteville, NC, crime syndicate (no hate, it's just that my husband lived there for a while before we met, so if I have questions about the location, I can ask him) and he's known for his cruel and ruthless tactics. He has no super powers of his own, but will often lead teams of non-sanctioned supers, which is pretty impressive in the underworld.

Mia's parents owed the Fayetteville syndicate big time, and ended up promising Mia to the syndicate to help pay off their debt. Mia caught word of this right before she was "collected" and thus started her life on the run. Viper took this as a personal insult, of course, and has been obsessively hunting for Songbird (his "affectionate" nickname for Mia) ever since. Word is that he'll pay really well for accurate information that will help him track his Songbird down.

Let’s take a moment and talk about the villain in your story! Is it a person? An obstacle that needs to be overcome? A big fat CLOSING SOON sign on the front of your favorite video store?

No, but this is how you find the other player characters in the world! Legitimately!

So, no offense to anyone, but I have trouble caring about every person in the world - I don't have the energy or emotional bandwidth for that. So people I love and care about and vibe with are "real", they're player characters. Everyone else is an NPC, and I'll mind my manners and be friendly and I hope they have wonderful, fulfilling lives that are as gentle and kind to them as possible, but they aren't real to me they can't be. I can't handle it.

So when you write the stories you want to read - the characters that are brave the way that makes you feel alive, the scenes that crush your soul and break your heart, that's how you find your people. The folks who swoon over your words and weep for your characters, those are your people! They'll understand you and they'll speak your language and they'll accept you in a way that will leave your hands trembling and your face hiring from his hard you're grinning.

Everyone else is just an NPC, the trolls and even the folks who just don't get it.

So yeah, write to discover yourself, bc you will, and write to heal yourself, bc you will - but don't stop sharing your writing, don't stop opening up, bc someone else will discover parts of themselves they never realized were there BC you shared your words. And they'll love you for it.

The problem with writing romance, and not specifically romance where the sex happens, but any romance is...

Whether you intend it or not, you're interests are in there. Your desires are laid bare. What you lust for, perhaps, what attracts (and doesn't) certainly but more what you long for in a relationship and what frightens you away from one.

Everyone who reads it will know more about you than you probably want. You will learn more about you than you probably want.

This is true for all writing, but for some reason the intimate nature of relationships (both romantic and not, because you'll find those out too) is a bit more painful to broadcast.

And I am not simply talking about stories where romance is the entire point. I mean any stories with relationship dynamics to deal with.

You smash those dolls together, you have fun breaking hearts, but just remember what little doors in your own you are opening as you do.

Or the realization that you are what you write is going to hit you like a brick.

Are you ready to hear about my stories? Bc I'm about to start gushing about them. Info dump beneath the "read more".

Ok, like I said in the re-introduction, this will be an ongoing series of action/thriller romance stories. It'll start off m/f, but I'm willing to branch into other pairings if there's interest (I'm either bi or pan, myself, so I don't mind, I'm just trying to figure out what my audience is into and m/f is a good place to start).

I consider these stories dark, but not "dark romance" dark, if that makes sense. Think... Soft yandere - her health and happiness is always his highest priority, and he's happy to destroy anything that might get in the way of either of those. Lots of stalking, invasion of privacy, making decisions about her life without consulting her, but no violence towards her and little, if any, kidnapping of her. Plenty of violence regarding anyone deemed a threat to her, though.

For those who didn't catch the re-introduction, a small percentage of the world's population has superpowers. Think One Piece-style: if you have a power, you only get the one and it's up to you how you use it. No one else has your exact power, but it doesn't mean they can't do some of the things you can do (for example, flying bc you can control your personal gravity, vs flying bc you can control your personal density).

In the USA, the government says you must register your powers if you want to be able to use them legally. If you do this, you're called a sanctioned and everything's good. If you don't do this (no matter the reasoning), you're labeled "non-sanctioned", classified a criminal (if they catch you), and face imprisonment or worse if they catch you using your powers. Anyone with no powers is called a civilian.

All my male leads will be non-sanctioned. Some will be criminals/villains and others will be vigilantes - expect a lot of grey morality with some genuine evil thrown in sometimes, just to keep things fresh. All of my female leads will be either sanctioned or civilian. (Obviously, this set up will change if I start branching out of the m/f dynamic).

My city that I'll set everything in is San Padua! Definitely not based on San Antonio, TX, I don't know where you would even get the idea to ask that, how oddly specific and random! I take creative liberties often, but I'm trying to keep the details organized as I create them to minimize confusion and loop holes later.

My criminal underworld is going to be more similar to the John Wick stuff than it will be to anything in the DC or MCU and it's growing slowly as I get ideas for different couples. There's not so much a Justice League or Avengers group, as there is a Sanctioned Supers Division of San Padua's police department.

I'm excited because it's starting to feel real - like a place I could actually go to myself, so please feel free to ask questions! And it's ok to call me out if I give conflicting info! I'm serious about making this as realistic as I can, so staying consistent with what I've already established is important to me.

^ This, but also the logical understanding that posting twice in one day after a small eternity of silence will not earn views, and hence not earn the happy chemical, versus the compulsion to keep refreshing until you see proof of a reaction.

the ever terrifying and exhausting cycle of “i don’t want to share my writing bc it feels disheartening when not many people are interested in it” and “i have to post the writing for people to become interested in it”

i stole this from twitter

"immortality sucks because all your friends die" all your friends die anyway. those we do not mourn are those who mourn us.

"immortality sucks because you forget who you are" we always forget who we are. do you remember who you were at four years of age? who you were at fourteen? "who i am" is a shadow cast on the wall.

"immortality sucks because" skill issue. skill issue. skill issue. give me your liver