Ups and downs, rants, and progress

Hello everyone,

3 weeks. That's what we have left. Actually, 24 days. That's more accurate. We're pushing hard to get it done. I have abandoned the idea of polishing more because I simply can't deal with the amount of stress coming from work and some other stuff in my life that seems to hang over me no matter how much I want to shake it off...

I do know that external factors shouldn't matter if I plan on doing this seriously. I want to be a writer...not just a hobby writer. It's all fun and games, but I want to have a body of work, not just a one-off cute story that gets a few likes here and there. I mean, I still want that too :D but I also want to do more. 

Unfortunately, the challenge nowadays seems to be more about competing with AIs rather than with fellow human beings. That's not exactly true since a human needs to input the commands so that an AI starts writing a novel, but you understand what I mean. 

I saw an article posted about how ChatGPT 5 was launched and about its capabilities of writing fiction. I read the stuff it spit out, and I couldn't help but smile. It was overdone. The metaphors were piling up on each other. The text felt like it was trying to impress other writers rather than delivering something real that a reader could connect to. After you strip away the flowery distractions, the texts have nothing much to say. They are...empty. It's cute to read, it might even seem attractive at first, but after you're done reading it, maybe you'll be like me: "What was that even about?!" I understand what it wanted to say, but it still felt clinical rather than emotional. It all looks like a bunch of people who can't write emotions trying really, really hard to artificially create something that can do it for them. They still need to work at it for a long time until it can compete with human writing.

Remember: the training data stolen used for the AIs contains a lot of mediocre books. The vast majority of books out there aren't masterpieces. They are average. AI knows how to write average books, typical tropes, and somewhat cohesive character arcs. Don't let it scare you like it did me. WRITE. YOUR. NOVEL. Yeah, it will probably get stolen used for training too. So what? You still wrote it. And you'll write a new one that the AI can't have access to, because that next novel is trapped in your mind, waiting to be put out in the world, and there's no AI that can extract it from your mind. Skynet is not as close as people think it is :D

You'll thank yourself later for your efforts. So will I :)

Meanwhile. 

We have prepared illustrations for Chapter 1 and 2. Backgrounds have been colored. Sprites have been done. We still need more, but we're getting there. The approximate final word count clocks in at about 60.000. I don't even know how to do a proper count because of the way I write directly for Renpy. I think that fvn.li counts the words somehow, so I'll just let myself be surprised at how long the novel really is :D Some of the illustrations are on Ko-fi and Patreon if you want to take a look. Otherwise, you'll just have to wait a little longer.

I like what I wrote, but some might find it off-putting. And to those people, I say: tough luck. There's other stuff out there to read if you don't like my style of writing :) For the ones who liked how Light My Way was written, you'll like Graven. It has that kind of mood, but different... 

Time is ticking. Let's hope we get there by September!

I'll be at Eurofurence this year with a banner and a bit of merch in the Artist's Alley. Say hi if you see me! Look for a roll-up banner with Lucian on it!

See you in Kazuul (and Eurofurence),
-Hadrian Maximus