alexanderwales posts
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Thresholder, ch 20, The Ten Worlds of Cosme Walsh, pt. 2
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~I found myself in a city of glass that hung from immense trees like ornaments, each bulb connected by thin filaments I’d have found daunting to cross if not for my staff, which could save me from any fall. I was once again blessed with gracious hosts who did their best to tend to my wounds, though they had little in the way of proper healing. Instead they inserted...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 167, All-Singing, All-Dancing
Normal TextEdit/Comment Text~~~~Alfric and Mizuki were being weird around each other, and Isra didn’t like it. It was undercutting every meal they shared together, and Mizuki was spending more time in Plenarch than before, coming home late, sometimes after dinner had already been concluded. She said that she was busy with school and it was easier to study there, along with her obligation to the ...
Thresholder, ch 19, The Ten Worlds of Cosme Walsh, pt. 1
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkA somewhat offbeat chapter. I almost think that there should have been more of it, not less, just a straight ten chapters from Cosme's perspective as a wild and experimental narrative diversion, but I can also see where that would be tiring. I think this risks being tiring, especially in the style it's presented in, a recounting rather than being vignettes. Hope...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 166, Collegiate Daydreams, pt 3
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~“My god, this tastes like grass,” said Mizuki. “What’s it made from?”“Would you believe me if I said grass?” asked Rosalind.“I would not,” said Mizuki.“It’s made from candyleaf,” said Rosalind. “And it’s quite the delicacy.”“That’s hooey,” said Mizuki.“What she meant,” said Willow, “Is that it can be a delicacy, something fo...
Thresholder, ch 18
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~“The werewolves are dead,” said Flora as she came into the apartment.“Dead?” asked Perry.“That old man whose tooth you swallowed, I went to go see him,” said Flora. “I was in uniform, and arrived there to see other police. Him and his entire family had been killed with undisguised violence and without any apparent motivation. They were werewolves, even...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 165, Collegiate Daydreams, pt. 2
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextApologies for the lateness of this one, the chapter got away from me and I found myself with a 10K chapter, which this is half of because I made a commitment to not kill myself with these super long chapters.~~~~Professor Arturo was the entire reason that Mizuki was even at the Reyhdcraft School, and she was grateful to him on that account … but she found all the rese...
Thresholder, ch 17
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkAuthor's Note: There's a possibility that this should have been two chapters, partly because of the word count, partly because of the content. Also, as a reminder, Thresholder is roughly two weeks ahead for Early Birds, or at least two chapters, depending on whether I can keep to a chapter a week posting schedule.Thanks for reading!~~~~Perry broadcast his messag...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 164, Collegiate Daydreams, pt. 1
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The Army Ship and the Jade Staff were both good gets, though the staff was particularly annoying to Mizuki, since its drawbacks seemed really counter to her circumstances. It warped space, allowing you to both see long distances and step through, but the distance limit was fifty miles shy of what she would need to get to Rayedhcraft, and it was incredibly nauseating...
Thresholder, ch 12.5, 16 & 16.5
Thresholder is continuing on from being a Writathon project, at least until the end of the first of three planned worlds, and ideally until the end of three, possibly with more if it's doing well and I'm still having fun with it.The plan is to have Thresholder on a "always two chapters ahead" model for Patreon, for Early Birds. This isn't how I've normally done things, and ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 163, The Sermon
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextNote: No second chapter of TUTBAD this week, I will be pushing chapters of Thresholder instead, ideally it doesn't replace TUTBAD in that way, but we'll see how I feel about the workload. Really, I think I need to scale back word count a bit, which would help manage things.~~~~Hannah felt nervous about the sermon, and dealt with that nervousness by baking. She w...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 162, False Starts
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkSorry about the recent lateness of the chapters. Officially, the schedule is just for specific days, but I've always tried to hit 10am local time, and haven't been doing that, mostly just because my brain isn't cooperating with doing the things that I need it to do. I'm not sure whether or not I should be happy that these problems aren't localized to...
New Year's Resolutions
It's a new year! I've been thinking about what I want from writing this year, and here are those thoughts:This Used to be About Dungeons is in extra innings right now, mostly because I felt like it. There's a strong chance that it drops down to a chapter a week instead of the current two chapters a week. It'll go on for as long as I feel like, essentially, though ideally it would m...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 161, The Empty Dungeon
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Tilde felt like she was finally fitting in, though she was well aware that she’d made a pretty horrible first impression, and not that great of a second impression. She’d said that they needed her and asked for a larger share, then came crawling back to them some weeks later, since it turned out that while they did need her, she needed them more. Finding a party...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 160, Dungeon Wide and Dungeon Vast
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Mizuki stepped through the portal feeling like there was a badger in her guts. It had been a good while since they’d done a dungeon together, and all the ‘I’m a dungeoneer’ feelings that had been building in her seemed like they had left. It was like a structure abandoned mid-way through construction, leaving everything to rot. Here she was, trying to get ba...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 159, Finding Joy
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkNote: This was originally going to be a dungeon chapter, but the stuff that was to come before the dungeon ran long, and I really didn't want to do a 10K word chapter, especially since it's the holidays and my ability to work is compromised.~~~~Isra had butterflies in her stomach, which had nothing at all to do with the upcoming dungeon. They were having a gathe...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 158, Performance
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkSorry for the one day delay, I was slightly behind because of a longer-than-usual chapter, then decided I was going to take a nap before final editing. That nap ended up lasting eleven hours and just being my normal sleep for the night.~~~~While the Settlers were off exploring a cave, Vertex had been doing a dungeon, their own descent that hadn’t been nearly such an e...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 157, Cool Cave
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The mouth of the cave was almost wide enough that they could have maneuvered the house into it, but it narrowed quickly. Alfric slowly and carefully parked the house in a meadow just outside of the cave, then once they were out, had it rise up to its full height, almost thirty feet on its long metal legs. It looked impossibly unsteady, and swayed slightly in the win...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 156, Searching
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkApologies for the chapter being a day late. We had a big snow storm here, which meant a snow day, which meant that writing got slowed down. I'm also dealing with some of the good old one-two punch of depression and anxiety and sleeping way too much, which isn't what I'd call great. Thanks for understanding.~~~~Pinion had been warned that they were eccentric ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 155, Wanderings
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkThis is, I think, an extra final "arc" to This Used to be About Dungeons above and beyond what I had planned for, in part because I'm still quite enjoying writing it. There's a good chance that I'll step down the number of chapters per week and run two/three serials side by side, but for now it'll be business as usual.I do think that last chapter...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 154, Roads Go Ever On
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkAuthor's Note: I think that this is the last chapter of "Book 2" of TUTBAD ... but I think I have one more arc in me. TUTBAD currently sits at 800K words, and I'm not sure exactly how long that final arc would be. Ideally, there would be another 400K words so that it could be a loose "trilogy", but I don't know that I want to go that long. I&...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 153, Setting Records
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Verity’s trips to Dondrian for the concerts had been times of incredible stress, not least because she always felt like she was pushing up against a hard deadline, never able to practice quite enough that she felt confident going in. She still wasn’t sure whether the concerts had actually been any good, except that she’d genuinely enjoyed playing ‘The Brave ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 152, First Steps
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextApologies for the lack of promptness for chapters lately, I've been a little fried, mostly because of sickness repeatedly hitting our household. I'm hoping that going into December I'll have a more regular pattern to my life, and have more energy overall.~~~~Two weeks passed.Marsh had welcomed Hannah back like she was his long-lost love, reunited after turbu...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 151, The Rayedhcraft School
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~A few days passed.Mizuki was thankful that she wasn’t bound to secrecy anymore, and talked all about their adventure to anyone who would listen. They even had someone from one of the Dondrian newspapers come to visit them, which had resulted in an interview over tea. Mizuki normally didn’t read newspapers, but she’d gone out of her way to pick one up, and then...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 150, Wild
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Verity didn’t particularly like the Wildlands. They made her nervous. By contrast, Mizuki seemed to enjoy them enormously, visibly enjoyed them more than even Alfric, and she had a smile on her face the whole trip.“The trick is to go with the flow,” said Mizuki. “Are we walking to a mountain? To a lake? A little village? Doesn’t matter!”“It’s a lot m...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 149, Diplomat
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkDealing with a sick kid right now, Thresholder is on a hiatus that will hopefully not last for more than another few days (and hopefully I won't get sick too).~~~~‘How hard can it be to kill a dragon?’ wasn’t something that Harmon would ever have actually asked his wife, but it was something that he’d thought. She’d been inside the demiplane for more than ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 148, Bellies
Normal textEdit/Comment text~~~~“It’s kind of a relief, in a way, because one way or another it’ll be over,” said Mizuki.“I don’t find that relieving,” said Verity. Her lips were thin.They were outside of the extradimensional space, in the village, together. There had been fallout from what Alfric’s mother had said, loud arguments, and he did feel betrayed — but she had lived thr...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 147, Making Moves
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Five days passed. It felt like an eternity. They were too cooped up, and in a way, Mizuki felt like she was the most cooped of all of them. She was supposed to be going to wizard school to learn how to throw wizard fireballs, which they did through a complicated system of magical bulbs and valves. Instead, she was mostly spending her time in the extradimensional spa...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 146, Meetings
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~“You need to be more circumspect,” Ria told Verity. “Cagey with what you know, and how you know it. You came back the last two times, and we’re probably going to have to keep if you come back again, just because we’re running low on days. Cool and imperious does seem to be the way to play it. She's serious about wanting to have it go right this time, a...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 145, Allies
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Alfric didn’t particularly like how they were doing things. They were running into classic chrononaut problems, largely relating to trust and secondhand information. His mother had made several attempts at fighting Cate, which included the party at various points. They hadn’t managed to actually kill the dragon, nor to get her to reveal herself, though when they...
Thresholder: National Novel Writing Month 2022
This is Perry's third world, or fourth if you count Earth. In the first, there was Richter, a brilliant scientist who gave Perry a working suit of power armor before dying to an attack by an adversary that seemed to come from nowhere. In the second world, he became a knight fighting in a war against a callous enemy. There are others like him, thresholders, always in opposition, and it's be...
