Subject: Aww, thank you.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-01-22 18:52:43 UTC
I appreciate you taking the time to give me a message back. :) And I'm glad you like this! I feel like there's a lot of room for improvement, but it's fun, so as long as other people find it fun too, that's all I can ask for.
...yeah. I think that post title says most of it.
Basically, what happened is that The Magnus Archives had a massive car crash inside my head with various other horror and paranormal stories I like (most notably, Jujutsu Kaisen and hints of the SCP Foundation), as well as a lot of old story ideas I haven't used in longform projects for various reasons. The resulting story is... not the most original thing in the world, but it's been well-received on the Discord so far, so I figured I'd share it here as well. It's a paranormal story with strong horror elements, and it's pretty Blacklist-heavy, but I'll put warnings before each chapter. The premise can be summed up as "everyman protagonist joins a secret organization keeping peace between the human and supernatural world", and I know there are a million stories with that exact premise. But on one hand, this is basically about extremely tired, overworked weirdos with various unpleasant body horror-y superpowers running around fighting extremely freaky things, and on the other hand, it's less a straightforward narrative and more a branching anthology with various perspectives and different formats (narratives, case files, mission reports, bulletins, you get me). There are two or three protagonists, but I've been more inspired by various shared horror/fantasy universes as well as TMA for the most part, so this is going to be... different. And fun, hopefully.
You can access the story here. [EDIT: I've updated the link here, so it will direct you to the current home of this story on WordPress, rather than the Wattpad one. You can still find it on Wattpad if you really want to in the previous version of this post, but I'd appreciate it if you used the WordPress link instead. It's where the regular updates are happening, so I figured it would be easier for everyone involved to give the link where you can find out all of the currently-available story, rather than a version I only plan on updating sporadically.]
Warnings are as follows: - chapter 1: body horror, BL2 from the PPC blacklist, lots of swearing; - chapter 2: body horror, more BL2, swearing; - chapter 3: body horror, heavy BL2, eyes being hurt, two brief fire-related injury mentions, and general disturbing things involving decay and dissociation.
Chapter 3 is my favorite so far, but I would like to hear any and all feedback. I worked very hard on this. Damian from this very community did the beta work on all three chapters, and he also worked hard on it. So. Y'know. I'd love it if you horror-reading folks checked this out.
It's sort of weirdly fascinating, but there is a lot of swearing, which i'm not really happy about. I think it's distracting. Now that it's the weekend and I have time to mess around on the internet instead of doing homework, I think I will read more. Thanks for reminding me!
-Claire
But if you're not the one for swearing, then this might not be the story for you? I don't like to litter all of my writing with profanity - my two latest missions were both PG-13, at least as far as the language goes. But I do write a lot of lowbrow, foul-mouthed female characters simply because it's a character archetype I enjoy seeing (not one for delicate swooning heroines, myself), so yeah. The language isn't going to get any more... Jane Austen-style, to quote Beth, I'm afraid. I appreciate you taking the time to check this out, though. I swear I didn't mean to guilt anyone into reading, but this is a project very near and dear to me, so yeah, it does mean a lot to me to see replies in this thread.
(in other news, I smashed my enter button not once, but twice lmao, hence the "never bre". Just new computer things lmao.)
Yeah, this... this project sure hasn't gotten a standing ovation. I won't stop working on it, and I honestly can't expect anyone to spend their time reading this 28000-word monstrosity, but if you do click on a chapter, just letting me know that you did that here in this thread would actually mean something to me. Anyway, yeah. No guilt-tripping, promise. But it would be nice to not be talking to myself.
Chapter 10 is here, with even more banter and dumb jokes, and perhaps... Do I smell just a hint of plot? (Warnings: several plot points and jokes involving fire, as well as a brief bit of body horror - presented in a non-scary way, but it might give you a mental image. Oh, and language, as usual.)
I've read all of it! It's amazing :)
I appreciate you taking the time to give me a message back. :) And I'm glad you like this! I feel like there's a lot of room for improvement, but it's fun, so as long as other people find it fun too, that's all I can ask for.
In which the only way I could get myself unstuck from writing a chapter that didn't want to be written was to bring in a new plot thread. I regret nothing.
Check it out here. Content warnings: swearing, a mention of drowning, and while this chapter isn't a particularly Blacklist-heavy one, I actually managed to scare myself while writing it, so yeah. Make of that what you will. Comments are welcome as always, although frankly, I'm considering only sharing new chapters on Discord from now on. That's not me being passive-aggressive or guilt-tripping, for the record, I'm aware that I can't demand anyone's time or attention for a project written for a genre that's not everyone's cup of coffee. But to be met with complete and utter silence is... Well, it's suggesting that this isn't necessarily something folks here are interested in, so it might be better not to start another thread when this one drops off the first Board page.
I don't know. If you do check this out, I hope you'll enjoy it. I wouldn't be working on this story if I didn't love doing that.
Why yes, I am patting myself on the back! Well, actually, I pondered adding short excerpts of each chapter to the Table of Contents page on the Wordpress site where I'm hosting this project, but given the sheer amount of episodes I'm planning for this thing, I felt like it would make the page rather hard to navigate. So I'm putting them here instead. Consider this a teaser if you will, to show you whether it's your kind of story or not. (WARNING: scary. I will not post anything containing Blacklist items, language or potential triggers, but if any kind of spooky imagery tends to affect you - which I understand, that's not everyone's kind of genre -, this post might... get to you a little. These are not the actual scariest parts of chapters, just very short quotes that I feel represent their theme and imagery as a whole. Make of them what you will.)
Chapter 1 - "When Beth looked up, the kitsune mask was standing in the same place, motionless, the tilt of her head almost mocking as she stared at Beth from behind that unreadable fox face. Slowly, she raised a thin, bony brown hand out of her pocket, and beckoned."
Chapter 2 - "So like I said, there was growling, and it didn’t… sound like a dog? More like a human voice pretending to be a dog, if that makes any sense."
Chapter 3 - "And then a spot of white shifted into the edge of my vision; it was gone when I turned my head that way, but it left an imprint."
Chapter 4 - "That was when I felt its eyes on me… no, not its eyes, its attention. Like noticing it made it notice me, too."
Chapter 5 - "The door remained closed. From somewhere in the city, a siren’s wailing could be heard, muffled by distance and cold walls. That was all."
Chapter 6 - " “Think about the mission, is my suggestion. If it’s your first, you want to be ready for anything.” "
Chapter 7 - "Finally the tendrils relented and let go, slithering away into the darkness, and they took the noise with them."
Chapter 8 - "The water stains on the walls around me had turned into ice, branching out in strange patterns that really shouldn’t have reminded me of long fingers, because that meant I was starting to let that place get to me. But… yes. They did."
Chapter 9 - "The reason I made that cliff comparison was because I had this feeling that if I looked up I would see something dreadful, something I never, ever wanted to see, and that if I looked at it, if I acknowledged it, it would be like… an invitation."
Well, that is all for now. Chapters 9 and 10 are plotted and underway as of right now. I'll try to stick to a chapter-per-week schedule with this project as long as the inspiration lasts, so hopefully at least chapter 9 will be out in the next few days. Cheers.
Yes, I've been busy with this thing. It's my great pleasure to announce that Hexmaster has moved into its second story arc and finally managed to introduce a character who will be very important throughout the story, which you can check out here.
Content warnings: swearing, some animal body horror in the form of a non-humanoid monster, implied things involving fire, a detailed but non-excessive injury description, and... well, generally speaking, it's not one of the more cheerful chapters of Hexmaster. So, y'know. Watch out for the Feels Bat, because I know I whacked myself with it when I wrote this. As always, if anyone gets this far into this monstrosity of a project, I'd love to hear your thoughts, either here or on the Discord.
Why yes, I did!
First of all I'd like to apologize for not engaging with a lot of the really cool stuff you folks have posted here, as well as the recent discussion about the Blacklist's efficiency that has popped up. I don't feel like I have any useful input to offer there, but I'll go with what the community decides. The truth is that I'm not doing superb and funky myself for multiple reasons, and Hexmaster is, like, the one thing I can genuinely pour energy into aside from IRL stuff, but I'll try to be more active here when I can.
Right, on to slightly more cheerful waters! Without going into spoilers about this chapter, it's basically the conclusion to the first story arc of this project out of several I'm planning, and it's suitably dramatic as heck. And cheesy, too, but it was a ton of fun for me to work on, and I hope it will be fun for readers too. Lots of content warnings here, though: one heck of a lot of swearing, body horror in the form of a creepy non-humanoid monster, some detailed but non-excessive injury, corrosion and decay descriptions including BL9-adjacent ones, general spooky scary vibes, and... there might be some I'm missing, but these are the most prominent.
I won't ask anyone to check out Hexmaster at this point, partly because there's a lot of it by now, and partly because I've said my piece in previous posts about how much energy I'm pouring into this. No guilt-tripping and no pressure on my part because we all have things to be and places to do, and I can't expect anyone to be as passionate about this project as I am right now. But, well, if someone does decide to drop by the Hexmaster-verse, letting me know what you think here or on the Discord would mean a lot to me.
You can read chapter 7 here.
This one is a bit different from the previous ones (you'll see what I mean), but chapter 6 is going to be... a doozy. I'm hoping to get it written over the weekend, but I will have to slow down with my writing and sharing chapters come next week for IRL reasons, so there will be a bit less of this story to keep up with for a while. I'll try to keep updating it at least once a week, but given how some really big things are down the line for later chapters, it might take me a hot minute to actually keep things going.
Either way, you can find the latest chapter here. The only content warning I need to give is swearing. No betaing this time either, but I edited it a lot, and a friend checked it out to make sure it was ready for publishing. I'd really appreciate any kind of feedback on this story. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm pouring a lot of energy into it.
Two chapters in a row, yes, but I had to change some plans, and these were written pretty much in one burst of writing inspiration. Originally, chapters 5, 6 and 7 were going to be one single entity, but the characters insisted on having a lot of fun banter and long but extremely plot-relevant conversations, so they grew into their own things. I haven't the foggiest when I'll manage to finish what was actually going to be the majority of the entire chapter before I had to split it in three, so for now, here's the continuation of the yarn I began to spin in chapter 5. I'll try to get out chapter 7 soon, but it's unlikely it'll be out before this time next week, so I figured I would leave here what I have of the story so far, and let you folks decide if it was a wise move on my part.
Here is the latest chapter. Content warnings: swearing, and some very brief body horror mentions, but nothing graphic within the chapter itself.
(For the record: pretty much all the chapters I've posted for Hexmaster so far are in the 2000-2300 word range. I don't want to post too much stuff, nor do I want this story to get bloated, but I'm trying to find the balance between keeping things concise and actually fleshing out the setting and the characters, of whom there are many. So the compromise on my part is to be doing bite-sized episodes instead of gigantic chapters, which hopefully makes it easier for readers.)
The first three chapters of this story were basically different episodes of the same narrative, but the plot is moving forward in this one! Or at least the timeline is. I am very excited to share this with you folks. There was no in-depth betaing this time, but I spent pretty much the entire day editing and rewriting, and friend Midnight checked it out for me and gave me the go-ahead on publishing it.
You can find the new chapter here. Any and all feedback would be very appreciated, as always. Content warnings: ample amounts of body horror and some swearing, but I'm told this chapter gets pretty funny in places, so I wouldn't call it the scariest part of the Hexmaster world. I really am excited to post it here. Hopefully you folks will like it.
I've decided to move my story to a Wordpress blog, both for storage/customization purposes, and because it will be easier to keep track of my audience that way. It will still be available on Wattpad, but the Wordpress version will be updated more frequently. Please ignore the fact that the domain is terrible, can't change it with a free plan (frankly, I'm glad I managed to figure out the user interface to begin with, lol). The new address of Hexmaster is right here. Do read the content warnings in my original post before deciding to read the chapters, though. I won't put content warnings on the Wordpress site unless I break out some seriously heavy topics, to avoid spoiling the experience for potential readers. I will link to each new chapter in this post and later posts on the Board, where I will give the appropriate Blacklist and other trigger warnings, promise.