In + Finem + Omnia

Today I juggled my two hobbies quite well. In the morning I drafted ~ 20 or so hardware routines - nearly the entire body of the routines I'd need for my assembly program project to go forward. In the afternoon I revised yet another chapter for Avatar/Backrooms. yay :D In the evening I almost finished my routines ... almost. I realized that for them to work efficiently, my routines for merging and appending strings had to be adjusted. Easy fixes ultimately. I design these programs so the routines live in their own spaces, with their own variables and can be stacked together without cross-contaminating each other. Still not done with either project but I'll take incremental progress over statis.

As for my Avatar/Backrooms work; I've been meaning to get into the deets here so let me try while I'm still awake. What I'm working on is only Arc 3; I've got 4 & 5 outlined but undrafted. Arc 3 consists of 10 chapters, 6 of which I consider almost fully edited, the rest are raw.

In brief, this is what they're about:

1 - Spider and Neteyam (as a na'vi) spend a weekend together in Colorado; this is Spider's first exposure to what na'vi even look like (he's lived a quasi sheltered life with Quaritch hahaha); it's an entirely non-linear chapter that tells the story backwards. It's got this 'archival' thread running through it. That's because - in order to quickly get up to speed with the whole Pandora thing - Spider's been listening to research logs by Tom Sully and Grace Augustine and those two just discuss everything so it madness. Neteyam, the boyfriend hahah, tries to be gentle revealing the admittedly difficult past Spider's parents (Miles and Varang) are responsible for. Also - the whole Backrooms thing....

2 - Grace & co are still trying to understand what the black death / plague running through the forests is about. This is a spicy chapter because much to my own surprise Grace and (na'vi) Payakan have a budding romance happening. We also learn a lot about Payakan's tragic past here (as well as Grace's).

3 - Varang breaks into Mile's house and they have a confrontation. She wants guns; turns out an upstart by the name of Wukula did a coup d'état that deposed her 15 years ago (after the disastrous war). He's ruining the mangkwan and she wants the RDA surplus weapons so she can get back into power. She claims she's not mad about how Miles totally stole Spider from her. But I think she's mad. And then along the way we learn something interesting about Miles Quaritch that might explain why his characterization is a bit different here.

4 - Spider is alone; and he's still getting up to speed with the Backrooms lore from the logs of the scientists who explored the place decades before. Like found footage horror but it's audio logs. Then we learn he's been going into Backrooms by himself ... and making his own audio logs along the way.

5 - Back to Grace & co, she hates this but in order to figure out what the plague is and how to defeat it, Grace realizes she's going to need the Backrooms to take her to Earth again. In this fic the Backrooms connect different worlds and when you arrive at a planet, it changes your body into a version that can survive on the planet; those would be the avatars. She ... turned against the RDA and hasn't been back to Earth in almost 20 years and really doesn't want to. But she knows Tom Sully used to keep a well stocked lab on their Colorado property (where coincidentally Spider is staying at but she doesn't know that....) Kiri volunteers to go to Earth with her (if she stays na'vi).

6 - After the confrontation, Parker visits Quaritch at the house. The Colonel was studying the 'evidence' Varang left behind along with her demands. And he realizes Wukula intends to strike the wind traders at a certain location. And that Varang wants to fight him there. A kind of three way aereal battle for dominance. The guns might be enough to give her advantage. So he convinces Parker to give her the weapons. He wants to get back in her good graces.

7 - Grace and Payakan explore the eastern side of the forest where the plague is thicker; she realizes something about the way it spreads and maybe its weakness.

8 - Two contrasting phone calls; Spider and Quaritch vs Spider and Varang. It's like Spider is the kid of a divorced couple and he's got to keep the peace between them.

9 - Ah, now we follow Spider as he goes into the Backrooms and really pushes forward. It's kind of freaky inside but the kid isn't afraid....

10 - Quaritch delivers the guns and sneaks into Pandora with Lyle and Hicks (from Aliens; hehehe). They're all na'vi-fied avatars thanks to the Backrooms. Quaritch then seeks out Peylak; he warns him about Wukula's attack and Varang's strike; and he wants to be an outrider to help defend them. (there's a history between these two; Miles owes him a few lives apparently).

The real fun arcs are the next two; I'm pushing myself to get through these chapters just to get there. After that I kinda / sorta understand the remaining plotlines and I certainly know how I want it to end. But I haven't gotten there yet. Anyway, I can't even stay awake anymore - signing off!

Today I revised a whopping 2 chapters of my Avatar/Backrooms x-over. I'm about to try the next. I'm not finalizing these just yet. The point is to whip them into shape. They're ... awful ... as I simply typed them from my notebook at warp speed. The first chapter I revised ballooned from 4K+ words to 6K+ words. Today's second and third chapters also ballooned by a modest amount ~500 words a pop. In fairness that was a very, extra sprawling first chapter whilst the others were mercifully short and to the point.

It's possible I revised them spicier than I intended. Welp, it's a Spider x Neteyam fanfic at heart, isn't it? Yet we've only seen them together at the start of it. And we won't see their dynmic blossom until I get to the 5th Arc (I'm working on the 3rd Arc atm). Apparently there's a lot of um, er emotion that yearned for releif - keeping it clean I suppose. It's not explicit; I don't expect these chapters to move the needle anywhere near to M or X.

Ah, and then a development that took me by surprise, Grace Augustine x Payakan - OK, na'vi!Payakan. He's an OC but I'm drawing from the original character a lot.

What I'm really looking forward to present is how Miles Quaritch grows as a character through this setting. In the fic's 'canon', Quaritch / Varang ended badly ... like he steals Spider from her badly. Until she returns (thanks to the Backrooms) to take what's hers. She's so epic. (The fic's premise is that the Backrooms permit travel between worlds and in addition to that it changes your body to something like that of the native population; a so-called avatar body.)

This fourth chapter I'd like to at least start revising tonight sees Spider educate himself about the Backrooms and how to use it. Like 'Async', the RDA and its scientists love to document everything. He's tapping into that. It sits at 4K words in this sorry state so there's just no way I finish it tonight. I'll make a good start of it though. Then I'm off to watch Godzila Minus Zero heh heh

Alright so this morning I typed the final chapter of my Arc #3; that's a total of 10 chapters and ~30K words that I need to edit. I'm going to do that over the AO3 outage to keep busy. I'm almost tempted to post these 'raw' drafts to let anyone peek into what's to come. It's just that it's rough and raw. I wrote the 1st and 2nd drafts by hand; for the final stretch I simply sit and type at my top word per minute speed without stopping to correct anything. So ... yeah, that would be an eyesore. I'd need to give it a good read through at least once. I got to think about that.

I want to go through the extant chapters of the Avatar/Backrooms to do a couple of things: remove all the typos I keep finding (gah) and remove anything that contradicts what I'm going to do with this. It's one of the dangers of writing a series this broad and layered; a stray statement dropped by a character could be contradicted a ten chapters later.

Lastly I do want to repost my ancient fics from like 20 years ago. There's just a few concerns that trouble me. Especially for my Thundercats stuff. A lot of what I wrote then involved OCs that my fellow fandom authors devised for themselves. We were to an extent a LARP fandom - especially inside the TCATGR, a fan group I created for similarly bent fans. I just can't repost that work; it wouldn't make sense to anyone who wasn't part of that scene. And it's technically other's personas. So, a fair chunk of my Thundercats work will have to remain private. (And, if I'm going to be honest, a lot of that material specifically, um, may have been too wild....)

OK. So, um, I'll have better luck with my Inuyasha and Avatar:TLA works, I took better care of those. Ah, and then the Transformers. Oh, Salome Sensei, where ever you are, you are single handedly responsible for what have to be my most insanely popular works. Who would have thought Sam/Bee would be the thing I'm remembered for? Well that and the Esnovelotoris Amateuris.

This is an experimental post; I want to see what happens if I link to other platforms; so it's all hidden behind a cut.

( ... from bluesky ... )

Created by abunnslife and reposted to pillowfortu_haul

Q: What kind of writing do you do? (Short stories, fanfiction, drabbles, poetry, etc.?)

I used to do oneshots and limited multi chaptered fics almost exclusively. In the OG Thundercats fandom I was one of few authors who actually completed their fics LOL. When I got into Inuyasha, I started to do drabbles as well. When I returned to fandom earlier this year, I dove right back into the longer forms of fanfiction.


Q: What made you start writing in the first place?

Oh, wow. This would have been in the mid to late 1990s. That's when I found the online Thundercats fandom as it existed then. I loved the fanfics I was reading especially about MummRa, my fav. So I decided, why not? and wrote (and shared) a bunch with the others. They were mostly OK with it and I just drove right off that cliff.


Q: Is there an author/writer who you look up to for inspiration? What's your favorite work from them?

Still thinking about the 1990s; the author's name was DemonPrist; they wrote what I thought was the best MummRa-centric fanfic I've ever read. It totally changed my perspective of the character and shaped my own ficcage going forward. Outside of fandom, plenty of old timey authors. There's also House of Leaves, which is becoming a major inspiration for my latest fic project.


Q: Outside of authors or literary media, what inspires your writing?

Movies. What got me back into fandom was watching Avatar Fire & Ash. I wanted to explore what a different dynamic between Spider and Varang might be like. Something to counter Spider and Neytiri.


Q: Have you done a writing marathon before? (Pillowrimo, Nanowrimo, other?)

No; the closest to that was the Just Write June 2026 prompt series I wrote.


Q: Do you prefer to draft on paper or on the computer?

First draft on paper, always. If I can get away with it, second draft on paper as well. After that I type and do the finalizing on the computer. My handwriting is only so neat and after a while it looks like gibberish.


Q: Who is your favorite original character (OC) of all time?

Of my own work, heh, the na'vi Payakan I keep sticking into my Avatar fics.


Q: Can you share a snippet of a WIP?

I'll put this under a cut; it's ... rough

( ... this is rough draft ... read at your own risk! )


Q: Is there an end goal in mind for your current project?

My Avatar/Backrooms crossover is like not even 30% finished at this point. But I do know exactly how I want it to end. I want to get there.


Q: What's your 2025 2026 goal for writing?

To finalize the 3rd Arc of my Avatar/Backrooms project.


Q: What parts of your writing are you trying to improve?

Voice for characters; I think I'm getting better at it but there are moments where I can tell that's just me not them.

I should be sick more often if it's going to be like this, heh. So yesterday as I took it easy at home, I typed up chapters 24 thru 28 of the my Avatar/Backrooms Arc #3. Today even if it kills me I'm going to type the last two chapters of that sequence. I estimate approx 30K words. That's roughly estimated since I'm only typing this stuff and not actually editing the chapters into shape. That agony awaits later.

Stuff I noticed that I enjoy - most of the chapters clocked in under 2K words; only 2 so far were ~4K words (the two that remain will be of this size a pop). That's how I hoped my chapters would be spaced overall. When I started this project I foolishly thought these could be ~500 words or so. Experience quickly ended that speculation. Still ... since they're nowhere close to publishable quality - and since they're missing a lot of the details (like footnotes eg) - the final word counts will be greater. Or should be.

I really enjoy the way Varang is coming out as a character here - very epic.

The (na'vi)!Payakan x Grace Augustine pairing simply came out of nowhere to me and that's probs the best part of this for me.

I came down with something yesterday and it continues today. Totally knocked me out of kilter. I kept myself busy with projects for what ever that was worth. Today I'm going to continue my writing endeavors and that includes an attempt to post what remains of my 'Reflections' novella. I found a neat-o way to organize my fanfic here; under the 'Link' area I've got a backdated blog with an index of stories I've written. Eventually those link to a table of contents style blog with further links to the actual chapters.

Anyway, I want to try my hand at writing drabbles too. Let's see how it goes.

originally from Pillowfort User Natblida; reposted at pillowfortu_haul by iimpavid

Name The Three Characters You:

1. Most recently fell in love with: Varang (platonic), Athena (planotic), Odysseus 

2. Would bring back to life, if you could: Neteyam, Eurylochus, Rotxo

3. Would want to hang out with, from the same fandom: Athena, Circie, Calypso

4. Would stick in a room together, from different fandoms: Sokka, Lo'ak, Zuko

5. Love the most, who identify as female: Varang, Neytiri, Kiri

6. Love the most, from your childhood: MummRa, Marsala, Skeletor

7. Would Date: Neteyam, Koga, Inuyasha

8. Would Smack: Miroku, Miroku, Miroku

9. Would like to BE, if you could trade lives: Ginta, Hakkaku, Koga

10. Will always love, no matter what: Varang, Neteyam, Koga

I'll preface this by specifying it's only valid for the C64's BASIC v2 and, obvs, 6502 assembly. Further, BASIC didn't require spaces between keywords & arguments; in fact, BASIC programs were smaller and faster when the spaces were omitted. Even further - and ridiculously technical - the C64 used PETSCII not ASCII (see C64 PETSCII Codes). And yet another point of order, values will be given in $HEX / DECIMAL the first time you see them.

( ... go ahead jump right into the cut ... )