Sudden Realisations

[Harlequin]

Do you ever realise something, something that's quite amusing, about a project of yours? I was talking about one of my projects to someone and then I realised:

It's totally possible to argue that, in my novels, the world was saved by lesbians. Yes, that's right: my book is about lesbians (or more specifically, a lesbian) saving the world.

The entire world is saved because of a lesbian romance. Srsly. I just realised that this one, seemingly small, plot point actually sets up the whole of the rest of the trilogy and, without it, the world would be dooooooomed.

Anyway, so have you guys ever realised something absolutely hilarious about one of your books? This could be something like realising that a lesbian romance saves the world or that that background character's cough is really the start of a deadly disease that turns everyone into zombies or something.

I want to know!

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

One of my stories is a semi-satire based around a post-apocalyptic society that was reduced to ruins in an event known as the Hammer's Fall, which was caused by hammerspace technology. In the third book, the world is being jeopardised by warps and tears in the fabric of time due to the ever-increasing mass of the contents of hammerspace and the protagonist and the underground Nazis (in the literal sense of underground) are racing against each other to find the Gavelle, the most powerful hammerspace weapon ever constructed; the Nazis want it so they can use the rips in time to travel back to World War II and change the course of history, while the protagonist wants to use the weapon to fix the problem.

In other words, he wants to stop hammertime.

 

[Butterfree]

Most of my sudden realizations involve characters, since I create characters by first writing them based on some vague hunch, then analyzing the way they think/talk/behave in what I've written to figure out what actually makes them tick deep down (and subsequently write more after gaining this insight, which I can then analyze more, and so on). So after writing a character for a while I may suddenly realize, "Oh, Chaletwo hates himself!" or "Whoa, the Pokémorphs are Dave's purpose in life."

The Quest for the Legends also has its own special class of plot-related realizations, wherein I suddenly realize that something I wrote in when I was twelve and had no idea what the fic was supposed to be about actually makes perfect sense considered with much later aspects of the plot. Like, "Oh! Mew randomly appeared out of nowhere here in this chapter I wrote when I was thirteen because of [stuff relevant to plot created when I was sixteen or seventeen]!"

 

[surskitty]

I pretty much never actually plan my fics 8D so it's very common for me to have no idea what is going on and eventually I figure it out and go I AM THE MOST BRILLIANT. Or possibly brillant. It's hard to tell sometimes.

 

[Noctowl]

Most of my stories involve monkey pokemon. ._.

 

[Stormecho]

...I really like to have other people knock out my main characters through fancy magic or some other subtle fashion.

If I write Pokemon fanfics, expect a great deal of Psychic Pokemon being manipulative. Everywhere.

 

[Arylett Charnoa]

Usually, my realizations involve me being sympathetic to the villains and writing them so nicely that I feel sorry for them. It's like: "Aawww, I know that she stabbed the main character in the chest, but she's not so bad... poor her." I just can't help making some sympathetic villains. Due to this, I also like heel face turns quite a bit.

Other realizations commonly also involve side characters. I write so much about them and then I realize: "...This character who was supposed to only be a one-time person has suddenly become a main character." That happens a lot.

Also just general realizations about specific characters and how their personalities are since I just tend to write with little planning.

Oh and I have a tendency to feature transformation, self-inserts, forests, fields, and laboratories.

 

[Chief Zackrai]

This is me all the time:

In the middle of writing an essay: Wait... so that's what this is supposed to be about! I get it!

Ugh... *facepalm*

 

[Music Dragon]

I never write any longer stories because of my inability to commit to things and my ridiculously short attention span, but every once in a while, I have this brilliant idea for a plot that I feel like I just have to write. Then a while later, I realize that my brilliant idea actually sucks enormous brass balls and I decide not to write anything after all.

But the thing is, every idea I scrap somehow manages to return later, sometimes greatly altered but still recognizable. For instance, I once had this idea for a story that featured a giant dragon made up of poetry as the main antagonist. Nothing ever came of that, but the dragon keeps reappearing - not as an actual character, but mentioned in passing, depicted in a painting on someone's wall or used as a metaphor. If I ever do sit down and write a novel, it will most certainly be an amalgamation of every idea for a novel I've ever had.

 

[Chief Zackrai]

I never write any longer stories because of my inability to commit to things and my ridiculously short attention span, but every once in a while, I have this brilliant idea for a plot that I feel like I just have to write. Then a while later, I realize that my brilliant idea actually sucks enormous brass balls and I decide not to write anything after all.

THIS!

 

[Tailsy]

"Man, this sucks. I should delete it."
and then five minutes later
"Man, I should've kept that and just edited it."

and then I get nothing done!

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

I had one today. I started writing a poem called "The Age of Plastic" and then I suddenly realised it fitted perfectly with another poem that I'd written called "Makara", so I decided to make each of them one part of a three-part poem called "Romance".

 

[Butterfree]

SO I JUST HAD A REALIZATION.

Morphic draws quite a bit of subconscious inspiration from ReGenesis, one of my favorite TV shows. Which is to say, they both feature a team of molecular biologists and geneticists, the most prominent one of which is a jerkass (at least on the surface) who drinks and swears a lot and is named David. And one of the other scientists is suddenly shot at a relatively early point in the story. I swear this was not intentional.

 

[Harlequin]

SO I JUST HAD A REALIZATION.

Morphic draws quite a bit of subconscious inspiration from ReGenesis, one of my favorite TV shows. Which is to say, they both feature a team of molecular biologists and geneticists, the most prominent one of which is a jerkass (at least on the surface) who drinks and swears a lot and is named David. And one of the other scientists is suddenly shot at a relatively early point in the story. I swear this was not intentional.

I love that kind of thing! Ages and ages before Avatar was released or any of the concept art was thrown about etc I was working on a sci-fi project involving humans from Earth and aliens from another planet. The design of my aliens bore rather more than a passing resemblance to the Na'vi, although with some differences (my aliens were hairier and green, not blue), and the story was broadly similar in many ways.

When Avatar came out I was like "FML" but now it sort of amuses me.

 

[hopeandjoy]

Since I don't do Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep storylines with my robots, I accidentally made an illusion character to fill the role.

Woops.

 

[Rai-CH]

I've realised that almost all the characters that I've created share a personality trait with me.

I think I've been subconsciously creating self-inserts all this time ;_;

 

[allitersonance]

Keeping my viewpoint characters away from romance was intentional... every secondary character relationship ever ending badly, however, was not. Even if they're not particularly intrusive.

One of my forbidden magic systems could work as a metaphor for GHG emissions. Not well, granted, but it could. ... the response is to kill everyone who uses it, which I don't advocate. Really.

Despite wanting to go for Anyone Can Die, I don't have that much named character death in my stories. Well, one has a good chunk of named characters dying, but that was outright stated as the intention from the beginning, so that barely counts. Less amusing than :(, but.

I never write any longer stories because of my inability to commit to things and my ridiculously short attention span, but every once in a while, I have this brilliant idea for a plot that I feel like I just have to write. Then a while later, I realize that my brilliant idea actually sucks enormous brass balls and I decide not to write anything after all.

"Man, this sucks. I should delete it."
and then five minutes later
"Man, I should've kept that and just edited it."

and then I get nothing done!

Also, these.

 

[Butterfree]

UPDATED SUDDEN REALIZATION!

So you know ReGenesis, that show I was saying very blatantly inspired big chunks of Morphic? Well, apparently it didn't, because I didn't watch ReGenesis until Morphic was eight chapters in!

I officially name this the most bizarre coincidence ever. What the hell.

 

[Harlequin]

UPDATED SUDDEN REALIZATION!

So you know ReGenesis, that show I was saying very blatantly inspired big chunks of Morphic? Well, apparently it didn't, because I didn't watch ReGenesis until Morphic was eight chapters in!

I officially name this the most bizarre coincidence ever. What the hell.

That's actually a really neat coincidence! Those are nice because I think it shows that certain ideas and themes are quite appealing in a general way, but then there are the specifics that you hit upon and that's interesting!

I was thinking about Institute today and its sequels, and I realised that my characters started off living in a pretty okay world which quickly became crapsack. It doesn't get better. I have a tendency to do this with things I write, and even when the story ends nothing is necessarily better than before, just different and with probably a few thousand to a few billion fewer people.