Just like how REND had an author’s retrospective after each arc, I thought it’d be cool to do one for Render as well.
Inspiration For The Fanfic
There were two main sources of inspiration for this fanfic. The first happened when I was rereading REND. When I was reading the comment section on REND 1.12 I came upon a comment where Temple said Erind could merge with the Artificial Core. Then, I had the idea of what if Erind decided to merge with the Artificial Core right then. There were many interesting ideas of what Erind’s Corebring power could be. Temple told me in a comment that the powers in REND are greatly connected to a person (ex: Erind has multiple masks to imitate her faces and they also must follow strict rules). Since Erind was already connected to SpookyErind, why not make part of the power based on her? The rest of her Corebring powers will be connected to other facets of Erind’s life, as opposed to her Adumbrae powers, which skew towards fantasy designs.
The other source of inspiration was another comment Temple made. It was originally planned that there would be some romance between Erind and SpookyErind (because Erind was only capable of loving herself). And then I thought, why not develop some character growth between Erind and SpookyErind? We don’t really see SpookyErind that much in REND, so it’d be a good idea to use her more in fanfic.
Additionally, I found the idea of romance between Erind and SpookyErind to be very interesting and unorthodox. So, why not pursue some of that here? Of course, Erind is not going to accept SpookyErind easily, and SpookyErind will probably still mess with Erind, but eventually, I think it’s a fun goal to work toward.
Previous Writing And Writing Now
This is probably the longest writing project I have ever done. The closest thing that comes close is my undergrad thesis, which was 69 pages (nice), but a lot of that was figures, and it didn’t even go past 10k words. I did write some snippets of fanfiction and original work before, but all of them were short. My tastes have also changed back then. I was originally more into the sappy, slice-of-life stuff, before appreciating unique protagonists a bit more. One of the fun things about REND was Erind’s unique personality. It’s been pretty fun to write and put myself in her shoes, even though I am very different from her.
It’s actually very interesting writing fanfic. I don’t want to contradict canon (the original story) unless I have a good reason to, so I ended up re-reading a lot of the REND chapters. 1.12 was probably the most reread as I was constantly checking to make sure things lined up with Erind accepting the Artificial Core. It’s also nice to reread and get a refresher on any potential stuff I’ve missed. For example, I was rereading 1.18, Reo’s interlude where they were going to rescue Erind from the docks. They actually revealed the name of the company that the 2M’s used for their vehicles (the Stevedoring LLC one), and there was also some nice banter between the team as well.
Previously, I had just scratched projects after I wrote a few hundred to a thousand words. A lot of it remains unpublished. Some of them are published under a different username. Fun story: So one of my friends actually got me and some other friends to write an urban fantasy book by having us each write a chapter, and she ended up publishing it on Amazon and giving us all physical copies. It was definitely fun writing and building off of what the previous person wrote, so that probably helped encourage me to write fanfics. I’m a bit too embarrassed to share my previous works, but my passion for writing has stayed pretty strong. Thankfully, I was able to persist enough to get through an arc of Render (and hopefully I will for several more).
Planning It Out
I did try to plan out the fic a little bit. I wrote a short outline of what I wanted each chapter to be. Here is a little portion of it below.
1. 1.10: Dario’s group discusses what happens last night; what Johann found out about 2M’s, whether or not Erind & Deen would be comfortable performing with them.
2. 1.11: Brief power testing in fights (Myra vs Dario, Deen vs Dario, then Erind vs Dario)
3. 1.12: Friday now -> Docks observation
4. 1.13: Attacking vans leaving docks; gunships attack
5. 1.14: More vans enter; everyone splits up; Erind prepares to use Red Hood mask
6. 1.15: Erind and SpookyErind use Red Hood mask to attack docks
7. 1.16: Stella interlude: Attacks Erind, defeats her, but gets hit by rock by SpookyErind
8. 1.17: SpookyErind unsummons herself after getting defeated by Stella, resummoned by Erind. They regroup with Dario and company.
9. 1.18: Car gets blown up; forced to go underground in the sewer system.
10. 1.19: 2M agents in here; escape
11. 1.20: Epilogues
1. 1.21: Big Marcy’s epilogue: Discusses need for more Red Island members on mainland; Stella is upset
2. 1.22: Erind’s epilogue: Erind and SpookyErind discuss fun stuff in dream world. Explain in Blanchette rules.
It did end up changing quite a bit - a lot of the latter chapters got cut out. That ended up happening because I felt I was just going to be padding the arc with fight and action scenes, rather than some meaningful character growth. While action scenes can be fun, I didn’t want to overdo it for this arc.
Stolen story; please report.
In his arc 5 retrospective, Temple mentioned he was more of a pantser. It was interesting to compare that writing style to a little bit of planning. I did get stuck with writer’s block in the early chapters, so writing the short chapter outlines helped a bit. I also wrote little notes in the chapter of what I wanted to happen when I got stuck (for example, I would write something like
SpookyErind’s and Erind’s Relationship
As mentioned earlier, SpookyErind and Erind’s relationship was one of the main driving forces for this fic. It was fun to imagine how she would act in real life. In Erind’s mind, SpookyErind would always mess with Erind, so I tried applying that a bit here in various ways in the real world. For example, SpookyErind would sometimes say things Erind wouldn’t do, and that would get Erind upset, like forcing them to stay at Deen’s house.
Erind herself has mostly stayed the same, but SpookyErind is a bit different. She is probably way more touchy-feely and romantic compared to REND. While SpookyErind did hug Erind whenever she wanted, she wasn’t as close as this. If you’ve checked the tags for this fiction, you’ve probably noticed they’re pretty similar to REND’s tags except for the Romance tag. I do plan on eventually having Erind and SpookyErind be in a romantic relationship, although that will take time to do. Erind’s pretty rigid in her thoughts right now and still believes SpookyErind is trying to take over her body. I also plan on having some romance-dedicated chapters to help build up their relationship. I think it will be fun to write some of it along with the main Render story. Maybe we could even add some Deen romance later on lol (but that will need to be way further down the line).
Other Deviations From REND
Of course, since this is an alternate universe fiction, the plot that has been taken is going to be quite different. There will be similar locations and characters just like in the original REND, but they may interact with the story quite differently. Additionally, since Erind now has extra powers and is also stronger, that will change things as well. One of the other tags that are absent from REND that Render has is the Strong Protagonist tag. While Erind will be able to easily beat up a lot of other characters, she still will run into various problems along the way. For example, Erind still gets easily curb stomped by Stella. It’ll be interesting to see how Erind develops even though she believes herself to be way stronger than a bunch of the early arc characters. She will still have to deal with the fact that “there’s always a bigger fish” (although she’d probably get the saying wrong somehow).
While I do enjoy OP MC stories, I don’t think they can work well long-term, so we have to make sure there are still some challenges for Erind to overcome. Additionally, SpookyErind will also do some fighting, but she isn’t always going to go full all out. SpookyErind does like watching things play out and does turn out to be a bystander sometimes. Of course, she will do her best to protect Erind from actually dying.
Additionally, one of the fun things about Alternate Universe (AU) fanfics is imagining how the world changes off on the fanfic’s premise. So, Erind doesn’t easily get captured by the 2M’s because she’s way stronger now (and technically also has Deen by her side in this case), but that in turn causes the 2M’s to buff their security forces and add stuff like drones. At the end of the arc, we also see Big Marcy buffing security at important places like the Eve. Hopefully, that leads to some interesting developments and roadblocks later on.
There are also way more other deviations from the original REND story. Here’s a changelog of some of the important ones (mainly character or worldbuilding changes; it would be too long to list all the plot differences) if you were curious:
* The Office of Censorship is never mentioned in the original REND, but since WWII gets interrupted by the Adumbrae invasion, why wouldn’t the U.S. keep it around? Hopefully, I can integrate it more into the story later on rather than it just being mentioned in 1.4.
* On the topic of WWII being disrupted, the Philippines originally was a US territory that was scheduled to be independent in 1946, but what if that changed due to the Adumbrae invasion? I do plan on having an arc in the Philippines later on as well. There are also various territories that are now states too.
* Moving onto chapter 1.5, it wasn’t really mentioned how Deen worked out even though she had superstrength in the REND spinoffs. So this is where the Atlas Supermachine came in. It’s a high-tech weight machine with 10,000 lbs in weights. Additionally, strength levels were given to Erind and Deen. Erind can lift 6000 lbs while Deen can lift 1000 lbs.
* Jim Ambrose calls for help from Stella rather than just dying and not warning anyone in chapter 1.14. This is so Erind actually encounters challenges rather than just eating the rest of the base with no consequences.
* Some new original characters were introduced in Big Marcy’s epilogue, which should lead to some more fun character scenarios as well as challenges for Erind.
Schedule Planning And Thank You
My release schedule was pretty erratic for this arc. I just kind of released chapters when they were ready. I hope to make it a bit consistent over the next arc. I want to release three chapters a week: one on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Saturday. In the cases I do get busy, I plan to at least post a chapter each Saturday.
Lastly, I wanted to thank you all so much for reading this! It’s pretty crazy to imagine REND even having fanfics (technically the spinoff is one as well), but here we are. If you have any comments or suggestions, I’d loved to read them. If you find any typos, please let me know, I try to read through each chapter once before posting, but I can always miss something.
Anyways, I wanted to give another thank you to all of you, and I hope to see you back on Monday!