ghoulishautomaton:

nostalgebraist:

I am also very confused by people who say they were expecting/hoping the ending to be “Lovecraftian” and were let down because it wasn’t (?).  Several people have said this, and I literally can’t figure out what they mean by the term.

I think they mean that they expected the characters to have discovered some Horrible Truth Man Was Not Meant To Know that visibly undermined reality, drove them all irrevocably insane, and/or summoned squamous things from beyond time and space as we understand them.

While you could argue that the truths man was etc. was one interpretation of what happened, it would be a subtle one, and Lovecraft was not one for subtlety.

(spoilers)

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(via brazenautomaton)

I am also very confused by people who say they were expecting/hoping the ending to be “Lovecraftian” and were let down because it wasn’t (?).  Several people have said this, and I literally can’t figure out what they mean by the term.

ozymandias271:

nostalgebraist:

I’m feeling frustrated with TNC in a lot of ways.  But I’ll write something else, and it’ll be different, and better.  Or at least it won’t have the same flaws.  I am learning.

I think TNC was a really successful novel. Like there were things I disliked about it but like… there were also things I disliked about the professionally published books I’ve read, and they felt… on the same scale, sort of?

and mundum is freaking terrifying

Thanks.

One of the things that’s getting at me here is that I can’t tell serial vs. archival issues from quality issues that carry over to archival reading.  Like, it seems like some people are disappointed by the ending because it was abrupt, or because it didn’t go in the direction they were hoping, or because the foreshadowing led them to imagine it would be a lot darker / longer / etc.  But those are all issues that are much much more salient to serial readers; my hope is that people reading the story archivally will just read the whole thing pretty quickly and won’t have too much time to imagine to build up “disappointment potential energy.”

In particular, what’s weird is that although I’m not entirely happy with the way the plot was resolved, I’m really proud of the last ~5 chapters as writing.  But I’ve seen a bunch of people say they felt rushed, or like there was a drastic decline in quality.  (I was really proud of the dialogue-only Chapter 25, but several people singled it out for criticism.)  I hope this is a serial vs. archival thing, and I’m not just totally off-base in thinking that I continued to write as well, if not better, as the story concluded.

(Of course, there are also a few cases where some people were like “I’m mad because X didn’t happen” and other people were like “thank god, I was going to ragequit if X happened” and there, well, what can you do)

(via bpd-dylan-hall-deactivated20190)

fwiw i enjoyed tnc a lot and it feels a lot more like, inviting than floornight which i will go back to eventually but dont think i can right now

Thank you – it really cheers to me up to hear people say they enjoyed TNC as a whole.

Floornight is more of a … free-for-all, like it’s objectively more of a mess but I feel less bad about it being a mess because being messy for fun was the whole point.

I’m feeling frustrated with TNC in a lot of ways.  But I’ll write something else, and it’ll be different, and better.  Or at least it won’t have the same flaws.  I am learning.

some comments after finishing the northern caves

First, I’m relieved to be done with the story.  That may sound weird, since no one was forcing me to write it.  But this is the first time I’ve gotten a nontrivial amount of attention for a story while I was updating (the audience for Floornight before it was finished was around ~10 people).  This was a new kind of pressure I wasn’t used to, and while its existence wasn’t surprising, I wasn’t really prepared for it.  (This connects to some ways that I felt the story got out of my grasp, which I’ll describe under the cut.)

Also, it’s a spooky story, and it really kind of spooked me – there were a lot of times when I didn’t feel like writing it just because I wanted to write something more cheerful and less obsessed with inevitability and duty and stuff like that.  Next time I’ll write something more cheerful.

I am proud of the story, mostly on the level of prose, characterization, and setting.  I’m less proud of the plot as a whole, although I’m proud of certain parts of it.

More notes below, including some notes about how the story was conceived and written.  

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fipindustries replied to your post “Chapter 27 of The Northern Caves is up here.  This is the last…”

that last chapter felt a little like a punch to the gut with the harshness walt and damien talked about the events and charatcers of the story. what was the intention behind that last chapter?

(Spoilers, also I am still tired and probably going back to bed soon but I figured I would need to make a post like this)

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Chapter 27 of The Northern Caves is up here.  This is the last chapter.

I may write some stuff about completing the story later on, but for now I am going to sleep, hopefully for a very long time

aprilwitching replied to your post “Chapter 25 of The Northern Caves is up here Close, but not done yet.”

rob what is it with you and eleventh hour gay makeout scenes in your fiction is this gonna become a stylistic trademark bc id be on board with that

also you do character voice better than i think i appreciated before– i was able to follow all of this fine and tell which characters were talking when even without any dialogue tags :)

On the second part – thanks, and glad to hear it!

On the first part … (under a cut for both Floornight and TNC spoilers)

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