Well…

-Skips through “I don’t know where to begin—let’s go with the beginning—” monologue/rambling-

2022-2023 was… Not such a great year for me. One could say that it was the absolute nadir of my existence, but given how things could get possibly worse THIS year, I’ll hold my tongue on that and knock on wood. But yeah, it was the worst. Personally and artistically. I tried to relaunch my first work, siVisPride (now Phases, plug-plug-plug-plug)—and no dice. The scope and ambition of the project caused it to be delayed again, and leaving me with absolutely nothing to work on but trying to piece my stupid story back together again. With the struggles with that, along with my own mental health degrading, I truly felt like I had no talent. Which was bad, because I basically gave up most of my life in pursuit of being a creative one day. Doesn’t do an already fragile mind good, existential terror.

And that was before the clinical depression set in—

So like everyone else when they’re down, I retreated into comfort and innermost thoughts. “Okay—first work’s a total bust and you’re a fraud. What do, what do?”

Autumn 2022 rolls around and man, I’m a Spring guy myself—but Fall is such a cozy period for me. The oranges, the reds and the horror we as a species come up with to celebrate it. I can’t say that I’m a massive horror fan, but I’ve always respected the genre and I do—or did as a teen—was enamored with supernatural/horror series such as True Blood, the Vampire Diaries… Fuck, as a kid, I loved it when series had Halloween specials that go full tilt into the idea. Regardless if it were a sitcom or not.

So me writing a supernatural/horror series was always going to happen at some point. But I’m weird, and can only be interested in a project when I twist a genre or story convention on its head, to get the juices flowing. It’s egotism, but also because it’s how I’ve been brought up. Most, if not all, of my favorite media are twisted or reinterpreted takes on the conventional genre. Part of my reason for writing and creating is showing that things don’t have to be the same ol’ same ol’, to keep that brand of creative energy alive despite many of these properties being before their time or just simply too weird to “exist” in the mainstream.

So I thought harder… What excites me about supernatural? What makes me squirm with horror? And my mind constantly drifted back to the same things: the colonial era of America—the dark forests. The descent into madness amongst the humans while a monster simply watch them kill each other—the Witch Trials, magic being more like curses, hexes and pacts versus helpful or compatible with the humans that weren’t so lucky to be victims of it, a time where folklore and fairytale seemed possible due to the undocumented gaps and mysteries in between (note: don’t mistake this for me being a conspiracy nut—I know all this was a combo of plague and dumb past humans—I just love the lore-).

Yeah. Yeah, that shit rocks—I want more of that!

I knew straight up that setting the story directly in that time would require… So much reading and reference material—So I compromised with setting it in New England. Both fitting and it’s a place that I’ve actually been to—and to kick it up a notch, set it in the tail end of the 00’s to curb that ol’ “lol smartphone, lol social media” story “breaker” compliant.

But it still doesn’t change the fact that there’s still no focus for me—aside from invoking such mythical past into the “current”, which is just every single supernatural show for the past decade and that’s not even a selling point. It’s built-in. So what to do?

The protags are forced to be witches by a curse? I guess—that’s different. But what does it mean to be a witch? I guess the Fair Folk are constantly after them—which can be compelling if I make them of two worlds—and most importantly, likable. But that’s still a massive big if. Especially since people of this site are guys that don’t want to see tearful girls being hunted by monsters and promptly struggle to become something they’re not and the angst involved. “oh boohoo, I get to learn magic—ain’t life so hard?”

Whatever this curse is and whatever it means to be a witch, it has to not only have a punch to both, but has a tangible hook for people to get invested in. “Witch” is good, but there needs to be a motif that definitely makes people turn head—

“…Magical Girl…?”

I then shook my head. “Everyone’s trying so hard to be a Madoka 2.0—it’s actually ruining shows now, it’s pretty crazy”. But colonial-era, dark magic-motif Mahou Shojo still felt too good to pass up. Especially since Madoka Magica—the whole design point of the Puella Magi (god I love anime)’s designs were to invoke general Magical Girl design, thus had “no theme” (they do, btw—there’s a difference between being loud about it and having a lowkey throughline—which PMMM does have). But still… The idea of Magical Girl fans coming over to my fic, only to see moe girls getting pummeled by the forces of evil—and said forces of evil are killing their families and friends and the team ceases having the slice-of-life moments due to losing so much…

Now I’m a pretty dumb motherfucker—and we’ll get to why at the end of this, but I would have to be especially dense for this to slip by my nose.

I’m presenting this cleaner than it how all this actually happened, but eventually it hit me. Hit me so hard, I wondered why I didn’t start with this and make up for so much wasted time.

How could I miss this…? The curse was literally right there. Horror has a complete subsection about this very thing.

If Magical Girls can transform to gain power—what if the curse was that they had to keep transforming? And to add… Why not make the transformations horror-based? They’re “were-Mahou Shojo”. Witches that have the face of humans…

Better yet. Monster Magical Girls!

So of course the breakthrough still hadn’t happened yet (I know—if you’re daunted reading this, try imagining having such a pea brain), because I knew immediately that girls turning into burly monsters wasn’t going to sway the hearts of anybody. The first iteration of Fear involved the girls having these shadow-y costumes they had to put on physically to transform—invoking werewolf skins. And hey—you now know where the Rebirth forms came from, was super glad that I managed to tie that back in again and have it be seamless as well.

The appeal of Magical Girl shows is that the new looks are stylish as they are very cute to look at. There still needed to be a human element there.

“Oh my god—Magical Pokaan! I can make that OP not a lie!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpq027OAMv0&pp=ygUSbWFnaWNhbCBwb2thYW4gb3Ag

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

For those who don’t know… Magical Pokaan—despite what the opening tells you, is a slice-of-life/supernatural comedy with these bratty princesses of each monster tribe dealing with the trials and tribulations of everyday living (also yes, this is where the blonde, hot werewolf chick came from-)

But that OP man… It tricked me into enjoying a show I would not at all touch back in the day, but that’s it! The story! Right there! Monster girls! Fighting to be together against a world that wants to sacrifice them! It’s all right there and I can finally get to wriiitin--

But if I have them in just animal ears and a tail, then where’s the angst of it…?

-Sigh-

Sure. It didn’t stop many anime, such as Wolf’s Rain, from clearly defining the cute doggo/kitty/monster girl traits from being a cardinal sin of their worlds—but that’s the problem. It’s been done before, and will continue to do so even without me. If I’m going to do this, I need to figure out a way that balances the horror with the hope. The fangs and frills. A twisted, feral beauty to it all.

Thought about doing animal pelts—such as the girls being forced to wear the monster that they’ve killed to gain the curse, to have this very unsettling vibe to them all, but that didn’t really speak to me either. I went with armor, but then it’s covering the places the people look forward in seeing, and if there’s spots in that armor—then the armor’s useless… I ended up scouring through media, be it animated or live action, to figure out the piece of the puzzle…

…And I rediscovered Witchblade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8hb4xp6Yao

Now that I’ve said this, I bet a good deal of you looked back at each Consumed design and went, “OOOOOOOOH, FUCK—HE TOTALLY RIPPED THIS OFF--!”

Haha, in all seriousness… Man, I remember watching this as a teen (I mean, you’ve seen the intro—you could imagine what the actual show’s about--). Jokes about that aside, I kinda wished back then that they continued to keep the fight-hungry aspect of things and the element of being controlled by zeal. It was scary… But kind of interesting to watch. Both pain and pleasure being mixed together, to the point of the theme song is pleading with the listener to give them “their XTC”. Horror has always been linked with… Rather horny aspects to it. Hell, Dracula himself toed that line. It was fun to be thinking about rather creepy things in a different sense than just plain upsetting or triggering imagery but with zeal and pleasure. “A-am I supposed to be watching this…? I’m 26—but am I old for this--?”

But finally, a breakthrough ensued. I had my inspiration, I had my aims. And before I knew it, I was writing about an emotionally ruined girl that soon lost her soul, but ironically had been cursed with what she needed to begin with: a proper outlet for her mountain of angst.

Despite the themes, blood, and definitely not-wholesome beginnings: I knew if I just made this story into a Madoka 2.0, it was over. So the importance of emotions, expression, and regulation was made to be the center piece. Magical Girls pride themselves and are powered by love… Why not talk about the full gambit, even the negative ones? Emotions in general are like nature—or other fundamental forces. It’s only good or bad once we get our grubby hands on them. And who’s the say that sadness and anger are purely bad things? It’s what we do with them that makes it so. But it’s sort of hard to embrace or talk about that with people really set in their ways… I.E., the people against “abnormality” or “the impure” themselves—which sounds a lot like colonial peeeeeeople~!

With the idea, themes, characters, and basic barebones story—I had Fear. “Fear the Girls of Willow Reverie”. I was very relieved when I could fit that all in the header, lemme tell you…

But I froze a bit. “sP” (the now “siVisPhases”) started with this amount of love and energy… Not before long that I have to plan shit out, work myself to the bone, second-guess everything… And instantly hate everything I wrote here as well.

To fully prove that I’m a fraud.

…

So I did what I never really did before.

I just let the story write itself.

-Looks at whatever AI software’s out right now- No, not you.

Thankfully Writathon was around this time and like so, I just wrote Fear with the general ideas I had. And it really, really shows.

My main regret is the fact that I didn’t have a more stable plan. Or at the very least, have a sit down after the contest was over to pour over the ideas, organize them, and truly map out things.

Because that’s what held it back from being a pretty great story. It’s a good story, but it would’ve been great had I ironed things out. Maybe even… Patreon-backed good…!

Me crying in my Cheerios aside, yeah… I felt like maybe I could’ve seeded Cassie in more, or at the very least had a stable persona for her presence to be felt more. In fact, how and why did she make the deal with Richard and the Better People? Shouldn’t we have an episode about Cal and co. being in their lair and seeing the horror in normalcy?

There's also the fact for all of my respect for the Magical Girl genre--I never once took a typical episode structure or meta and do my own rendition of it. Have it rhyme and have the challenge to directly tie the overall point of the genre together in a new fashion. Maybe allowing more team stuff in general, forced Cal to cope with people a lot quicker than she's already used to in the current story?

Maybe owed a lot more tangible character focus that wasn’t Cal in general?

Maybe less talking about how things worked and a lot more show—Entry 5 is straight depression for me to read back. You can tell I had no idea what I was doing, the setpieces were not planned out as they could’ve, and we never had that level of threat from the Subsumed again.

And yeah. The Subsumed themselves.

They just became fodder. As you read through this, and thank you for doing so, you sorta get what I’m spitting. The impetus was for these Fair Folk to be constantly stalking these girls, never a moment of calm and if there were—it was soured. They have the creep factor, the means, the history, the concepts. But due to me constantly wedging my girls forward toward the climax, they just went down easy. I didn’t sit down to think about how giving the girls proper means to fight back, like any Survival Horror game, the monsters are able to be dealt with via new loadouts. Those poor bastard’s fears about being humanity’s second fiddle were 100% founded. At least with the Curses from JJK, they scored pretty hefty victories over the heroes, and… Well, was gonna say “despite making it out unscathed”, but that’s a fucking lie—

Haha. I’m still immensely proud over the overall product. Calypso turned out to be a very interesting, fucked up character beyond my dreams, the fact that I wrote about monster magical girls, in general, was a blast, I liked the fucked-up designs I came up with, the violence of the series was straight out of hammer horror, and I really. Really liked the fact that I had the parents in on it. Name a supernatural horror anything that allows that to happen… And they’re still alive by the end of it.

Above all else… It not only proved that I do truly love writing, love creating ideas… But that I do have a shot at having an audience.

Again. I know that it’s a drag to read at this point but truly… The fact that at the time of this writing, I’m nearing 50k views—it’s not at all at the apex of the site. But the fact that I managed to achieve this at all really surprised me. Humbled me.

You guys legit saved my soul. And I can never truly repay you with that, unless I keep doing what I’m doing.

So as mentioned, I have another series called siVisPhases. A shounen that’s entire premise is that it’s set in times alike ours, and the fantasy elements are not at all what we thought they were going to be. So if you liked me twisting the magical girl genre, you can enjoy me ripping apart shounen ala Naruto, Bleach, etc al. But I would hold off and if you can, just follow it for a bit. It’s a very slow burn and I’m currently rewriting the beginning for you guys—so I would just wait until you see “Episode 3” and binge it all. You don’t have to if you want to, but I’d appreciate it greatly.

But for news you actually care about… I do wanna continue Fear at some point in the future. Many two months from now, maybe on it’s 2nd anniversary—who knows. But I want sP to get a chance to grow first and see if it’s truly just a dud idea or not. But if I wanna bring back Fear for a proper series, I need it to be properly fleshed out. Just continuing it now is not going to be fun for me, and it’s gonna show. And nothing would be more tragic than this story losing it’s light.

How ironic, in a sense. Hahaha. In short, you guys will know first and foremost when Cal wants to venture into the darkness once more.

But thank you guys so much. Hope you all have a damn good one.