Hey everyone, hope people are enjoying The Proving Grounds so far. It seems to be even less popular than my other fictions, but I hope the few people reading it are enjoying it anyway. As much as I would like to simply say "thanks for reading" and get right back to it unfortunately I've come to you today with something different to say entirely.
Well, anyway, we can agree that, coincidentally or not, 2020 has really sucked, huh? Yeah, things haven't been exactly great for me, either. My mother died. COVID-19 panic hit the USA and let me tell you it'll be a long time before we're done dealing with all the consequences resulting from it. Something is going on with my old man that he won't talk about with neither me nor my brothers, which I fully expect to cause some problems in the next year. Violence continues to escalate in this country and there is more uncertainty and distrust in the air than I've ever felt before, meanwhile the police and politicians will do jack shit about it, instead preferring to harass people over breaking curfews, lockdowns, and new regulations that aren't actually helping us as much as they pretend they do.
Simply put, I've been left feeling disappointed and betrayed at every turn for months and months, and it's been difficult for me to find anything to be happy or optimistic about. There's no way to sugarcoat it, things are bad right now, and I don't have much reason to believe they'll get much better any time soon. On the contrary, there's plenty of room for things to get worse, and all signs I see are pointing to a future where they do. Would you call me a doomsayer? Look at the world around you and tell me what you see. If you have really found something that tells you "yes, things are going to improve soon" then I most certainly am not seeing it right now.
I want to talk about Chasing the Hurricane a little bit. Don't worry, it's relevant to what I'm saying. I got the idea to write that from a conversation I had with a friend last year. So as not to go into too much detail, try and sum up the relevant parts. One of the things I said to him, in a way, could be boiled down to "things are going to get a lot worse before they get better". This, among other things we talked about, is critical to the themes of Chasing the Hurricane. It sounds depressing, but I wanted to take that and show it in an optimistic light. I wanted to craft a narrative that said, even if things were to hit rock bottom, as long as you're alive, there is potential for a future worth living to see, and there's still something you can do to help yourself and others reach it. That story still isn't finished but one day, when I get back to it, I hope I'll have succeeded in getting that message across.
The thing is, while I still believe those things in my mind, I now feel that I've underestimated just how close those bad times might be. I could be wrong, but if you ask me, they've already started, recently, at that, and the slow, painful downhill slide into the pit will continue on for a good while. Not everyone will come out unscathed. In the worst case scenario, none of us will. As much potential as the future has, it's difficult to feel that same hope I was feeling when I first started writing that story, slowly sliding down with everybody else, and not having any way to lift myself up.
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Even still, deep down, I still knew I wanted to keep telling stories. Unhappy with things as I have been, I still kept coming up with new things to write, and in its own way it has helped me sort out my feelings. And so, with new ideas, I got back to it.
The Proving Grounds is the result. While it's a mish-mash of all kinds of things I want to zero in on exactly what it was that made me decide to write this. I wrote it, thinking, "I still want to live, even if it's hard". This is a tale of heroes who are fighting and struggling because they want to free themselves from a world that seems to want to strangle the life out of them. I've been feeling this way about real life, too. If you take one thing away from this lengthy ramble, let it be this: no matter how bad it gets, try to overcome it, because it can be done. There are people who would see you give up and lose all hope, so you will not resist when they decide to suck you completely dry, like vampires, and they would do that to anyone, without feeling the slightest bit of guilt. Don't let them do that. Stand strong and hold on tight to your will. It's not as easy for them to take it as you might think. Remember that there is a future worth living to see, but you have to be there to see it. You might be needed to help build it, even. Gather your strength and push forward. While there are plenty of people waiting for you to fall, I know there are also people who are rooting for you, and struggling alongside you.
Phew, I wrote more about that stuff than I meant to. Let me get to the stuff that you more likely clicked this for.
In fact you're probably wondering what the "apology" here is for. There's actually a couple things, to be honest... where to start?
First of all, if you read the title, then yeah you know what one of these things are. *laughs* Yeah, I'm unhappy about it, myself, but for now, I need to stop here and rethink some things about how the story is going to go. Plus, while I do that, there are some other things that could use my attention right now and I feel I should focus on those. So I'm sorry to those of you who were probably expecting another chapter and instead got this. I'll try to get back to it sooner rather than later.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if someone looked through my works and realized that all of them but this one is on hiatus right now (and even then this one won't stay like that for long) I'm sorry about stalling on all of these, too, but I ask you not to doubt me. I fully intend to finish this, and Chasing the Hurricane, as well. As for the Magic Knight Saga, well...
...yeah, that's the third thing. While I won't say outright that I'm done with it, I've lost a lot of interest in that project, and haven't felt like touching it or even really looking at it for a very long time, now. To put it simply, compared to what I'm making right now, the Magic Knight Saga just no longer interests me and I feel like it's not worth finishing. While I could always make the sequels better, I'd always have to build them off of the originals and I can't ask someone to read through those to get to the better stories. Maybe I could salvage it but If you were one of the readers of that series, don't expect it to come back any time soon. Sorry.
Alright, I think that covers just about everything.
tl;dr: Peaceful days died. Let's survive. See you in 2021.