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yaldev · 4 years

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300 stories! In this thread: celebration, circumstantial updates, project statistics and story plans going forward!

CELEBRATION:

yay me, i hit the arbitrary multiple of one hundred which is itself only relevant due to our base-10 number system, WHOOP DE DOO

Alright, celebration over. No need to rest on my laurels.

On a non-shitpost note, it often feels hard for me to take pride in my own accomplishments when I hold myself to the standards of the people I admire, who had typically accomplished more literary by my age than I have. Then again, they live in different circumstances than I do.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL UPDATES:

I'm not particularly proud of rate of progress in this place, but I also have to give myself some credit. A shitty breakup some months back with someone who involved herself pretty crucially in this project made Yaldev feel poisoned for a considerable length of time after, and I had to work through my inner storm until the creative muse would return. University's been eating a lot of my time and energy, delaying both that endeavour and Yaldev itself after it was finished. None of this made better by my shitty time-management skills and tendency to spend entire free evenings doing shit I don't even really enjoy. But of course that can't stop me. The kind of person I want to be wouldn't let any of this stop them.

Speaking of university, I've been heavily informed by a literature class I've been taking on science fiction. It's lead to me treating that aspect as something different from a mere aesthetic, fantasy with a coat of fancy paint, but something separate and defined by its own qualities. It's also forced me to do more reading of the genre and come to an understanding of some of its strengths (worldbuilding, creativity through restrictions, aesthetic potential, power in commenting on the present using the future as a device) and weaknesses (worldbuilding, restrictions on creativity, relatability, failing to make the damn characters/plot/prose interesting). In other words, if you notice me treating more scientific aspects of Yaldev differently in future writing, it's probably a result of what I've been learning here.

Above all, the single most important lesson: "bro fantasy writers are just too stupid to write SF bro,, they have arts degrees instead of STEM degrees like SF writers so they're really just intellectual inferiors, you have to have a very high IQ to understand r-"

I'm also not putting too much pressure on myself to go faster specifically because I'm still learning. When I sit down to write a post more historical in nature, it helps if I've done so after learning some more history. Same goes for economics, mythology, science, anything really. I'm still young and I have no doubt that I'll be looking back at much of what I've written and utterly cringe at my ignorance in several fields. To my future self who inevitably does so: I was self-aware of my lack of expertise, I did what I could with the knowledge I had, I frequently broke away from using this knowledge to create total realism in favour of pursuing my creative vision at the time, and I had to write a lot of bad stuff before I was ready to make anything good. So shut up you endlessly self-critical bastard.

COVID outbreak has prompted the cancellation of all classes for the rest of this term. I'll still be having to work on final papers and such, but Yaldev productivity will probably jump up a bit more.

I will be throwing some Yaldev ads out there soon, most likely candidates being Reddit and/or Facebook. If you've arrived here from one of said ads, welcome! Sorry for interrupting you, I was just really excited to show you my stories!

STATISTICS:

This is the fun part, lads! Get ready for some stats and some commentary!

Total Stories: 300

As should be obvious, all numbers are only for the point at which I'm writing this post.

Project Age: 1124 Days

Damn, oldie.

How Long You Have to Wait, on Average, For the Next Post: Approximately 3.75 Days

Yeah, it's nowhere near Beeple's output. Sorry to say that my muse isn't always in this place. I do write something creative every day but it's usually not something that works as canon in here. On that note, I do highly recommend that whatever your creative hobby is, do something every day to practice it, even if it's not much or not for long. You have to keep that part of your brain constantly active to maintain your present skill and remain in a state where you can improve with time.

This number would be lower if not for some of my longer hiatuses. I hope to eventually bring that down to 3.5, for an average of two posts per week across the project's history.

Readers Across All Platforms: 412 (58 on Facebook, 129 on Instagram, 119 on Reddit, 106 on Tumblr)

Howdy y'all! Thanks for being here and reading my steadily-improving crap. I really struggle with talking about my creative projects in real life, including Yaldev, primarily out of a self-trained instinct to shut myself up about it on the understanding that nobody cares - especially not other creative types, since we're all too invested in our own creation to pay much heed to others. I've been trying to overcome that, and you're helping me just by being here to read. That tells me there's potential in this and that it's something that at least some people genuinely want to see. Artists shouldn't attach their sense of self to their creations, but I can't help but feel validated through that.

At the same time, I do often fear that mine is the sort of content that just gets a like tossed at it for the pretty visuals on the way down the endless content scroll, without having made a real impression on anyone or created a lasting memorry. I'll probably always have that worry, which comes as much from a disdain for general Internet culture as anything else. (I say that as someone quite embedded in and familiar with it; at some point you just get tired of it all.)

Stories Per Reader: Approximately 0.73

Makes it sound like a pretty good growth rate, if on average I'm getting one (and sometimes more) new follower per story. I guess "good growth rate" is somewhat subjective and depends on your goal, but for me, having a tangible unit of increase for each at all feels good.

For word counts, all of them include post titles.

Shortest Story: Caged Light (26)

Unsurprisingly, the shortest posts in general are the ones that are excerpts of stylistic machine language. The runner-up is Titanium Hearts, at 32.

Longest Story: Steelflakes (2024)

That's right, the longest Yaldev story is this piece I revised over and over, and which basically nobody read! :^)

The runner-up is Meeting with the Oracle, at 2014.

Total Word Count: 68,689

That's within the realm of a standard novel, but fantasy novels tend to be about 100k words. We just might get there, lads!

Average Story Length: Approximately 229 words

Yep, makes sense. Over time I've come to realize that shorter is (generally) best given the attention span of most social media users. I think 200-250 words is solid, but of course there'll be deviations from that.

STORY PLANS GOING FORWARD:

It somewhat stresses me out how many "unfinished plots" there are. I'm mostly concerned about the fate of Dread Fighter Tarle, Decadin's death, the campaign of Commander Bruzek, Aran's life situation, the fall of the capital city, and most of all the journeys of Inzohm and the Lone Traveller. The last two are especially concerning because they're the only ones where I feel somewhat lost on where to go with it, and since it's literally the chronological end there's a lot of pressure to make it good and let it end with a good impression. That said, I'm not going to force early development for any of these. Sometimes it's a matter of having to wait for good art to come up. This may have to be awhile, since it took awhile for Beeple to start including humans in his art.

It's theoretically possible that some things still aren't tied up by the project's end, in which case I'll do something short and likely artless just to give them a resolution.

When I get to Beeple's later art I plan to be putting more focus on individual cities across Yaldev with it, shining a stronger light on Ascendant culture, and its regional variants based on the remnants of cultures it overran. I'd also like to do more pre-civilization loredumps, about the chaotic landscapes and natural phenomena of early Yaldev in the days before humans tilled the land and dammed the Aether.

Regarding visual consistency: expect variance. Some things in different pieces of art look close enough to each other to be the same object in the narrative, but still have some differences in colour or details that make them non-identical. As the biggest example, most giant disks will be interpreted as the Aether Suppressor even though not all of them will be made of purple crystal with segmenting black lines like the first post depicting it did.

Thanks for being here. What I always wanted as a kid was for other people to be as excited about my worldbuilding as I was, and while I doubt I've hit that extent, I hope my work's had some impact on you.

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