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[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 2 (click to show/hide)

If you were to ask Magmacube how his day was, he would say that this exact day, was the worst day of his eternal life.

His security of being was now bound to the survival of a fragile, worthless human child. And he had no idea how to raise one. He couldn't just eat it now and call it a day; Toady ordered it, he would know if he got rid of the child, then he would get rid of him.

Which left him one other choice. Taking care of this stupid fucking baby.

So, without another option, Magma considered his situation. First off, the baby. It wasn't an actual human. It clearly a mere narrative noo-construct, just a very, very complex and detailed one, to the point that it was completely independant of a imaginer to support it. It knew itself to exist, and since its noospheric weight was enough for it to count, it did. A transcended tulpa, if you will. It was still asleep, and Magma had no intention to change that. So he stopped marvelling at the divine tulpa conjuring techniques of Toady, and started thinking about how to parent.

He flew around with the basket at hand for a while. He didn't really have anywhere to put it, so it would have to come with him. While he flew above a cavern lake, he had the idea to, maybe, have him live on one of his islands. He certainly couldn't live at the fortress.

But which? Yanardag? No, too many predatory animals. Deslri? It was on a chlorine world, so it was not an option either. Pherd? Pherd was a island deathworld filled with creatures and plants armed from toepad to head crest. So no.

Mrenyon? He would be a giant of giants among the lifeforms there, but it was the best alternative he had. At least it would be him that does the killing, not the ecosystems there.

"Alright, settled. We are going to the jello world." He lifted the basket to his eye level and spoke to it. Then started preparing his gateway to the previously mentioned "jello island"

"Here goes nothing..."

[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 3 (click to show/hide)

Humans, how do they work?

Surrounded by miniature trees and many tiny flying and arboreal creatures, Magmacube was stressing over the one-day-old as it bawled its vocal chords off. It had just woken up, and when Magma tried to take it off the basket to take a look at it, it started crying.

It has been hours now. Three hours of this incessant crying which didn't stop no matter what Magma did, and three local solar cycles. Magma considered that for a moment. Until he had an idea. He checked the babies noo-print, and here it was. The babies mind was being pulled forward too fast. So its mind became a non-sensical mess, and that manifested as crying.

This child was practically a human, which evolved in a much slower realm. Maybe getting this baby to a realm alien to it wasn't such a great idea.

But where could he take it then? He could ask Nature to lpen her back, if he could find her, that is. No one knew where she was. Or maybe he could engineer a habitat for him at the fortress, though he may run into the risk of others finding the baby and add in rabid dogs to the habitat to "help", or something.

He had no energy to make a new realm. Fortress room had to do, for real this time. He would just have to make it large enough, and don't say anything of it.

[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 4 (click to show/hide)

The food stockpile of the fortress went on for dozens of kilometers in every direction, and a hundred meters up. Filled with all sorts of pots, bags and barrels all stacked on top of eachother as mountains and valleys and a diverse ecosystem of vermin and fungi which grew upon it. I was a nightmare to find anything specific here, except for the indiscrete nightmare sludge that formed small lakes and rivers on places bedded with compressed flour bags.

In this magnificent mess, Magma had come searching for milk. Any milk, really, but human milk would be nice. Toady, in his unknowable wisdom, had decided that humans couldn't be milked, so only human milk that existed was the ones that were spawned in.

He had left the baby on the room he prepared for it. It had finally fell asleep, which was his que to move out to find some food for it.

Any newly spawned food was down at the bottom of this room, some 80 meters down. So Magma heated himself until he was glowing yellow, opened heat calculations, launched himself up, and fell down, rapidly burning up anything that was on his path to the bottom.

He hit the stone floor, hard. He lazily got up, and saw that was surrounded by charred organic matter and scorching fire that ate away at the barrels. He couldn't move without the heat, but with the heat, he couldn't get to the milk. How was he supposed to find the milk if it evaporated before he could even see it? Curse this conundrum! Curse this...

Hmmmm... well, that sure was a plan. A stupid plan, but it was one.

He left the food stockpile for the baby room. Baby was still asleep, which was a good thing because he couldn't take interruption right now.

He opened the fortress mode start screen, chose the Twefth Bay as the civilisation, then he embarked. He made the room into a fortress, and the magic of the fortress filled the gaps. Embark menu appeared. Since his civilisation had access to all foods, he spent all the points on human milk. And here they were, magically appearing right infront of him, neatly stacked on a wagon wood wagon.

As soon as the 7 dwarves showed up, he abandoned the fortress, and the dwarves left the room to... who knows where.

Problemo solved. Now the only thing he had to do was to continue babysitting. And maybe craft a wagon wood carpenters workshop and bed with those logs.

[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 5 (click to show/hide)

It had been crying for hours. Or maybe not, but for Magma it sure as hell felt like that.

The forumite was lazily swinging the -wagon wood crib-. His eyes were lifeless, and his strature was slumped. He just couldn't take this anymore. Couldn't he just, like, eat it, and be done with this garbage? No. No he couldn't do that. If he did, Toady would kill him, permanently. And he didn't wanted to die. But he also didn't wanted to dissapoint him either. He had respect for the ancient being.

"Look, I gave you warm milk, I changed your diapers after that. I knitted you those diapers. And I knitted your clothes. You were gassy and I help you let that out. I put you into the crib and shook you. In the crib which I made. I mean, what else?"

And then he realised he couldn't hear the crying anymore. Baby was looking right at him, its eyes locked on his. Magma was pleasantly surprised to see that baby had quieted down when it heard his little rant. He was unpleasantly surprised when the babies face soured into a frown and it started crying again.

But the fine print of the situation wasn't lost to Magma. If the baby was calmed by his nasal speech, then maybe his oral speech would calm it down completely . So he said "hi" to the baby using his mouth, and the baby was quiet again, looking right at him with those black orbs, and into his own orbs which were as big as its entire body. Heh, orbs.

"So if I talk like this, you shut up?"

The baby was still looking at him, not aware of anything but itself, which fueled its existence.

"You were looking for a mama to imprint, weren't you? Alright, I'll be your mama... And you are already asleep."

And the baby indeed was in a deep sleep. It must have been really tiring to cry for that long.

And then he realised that he was sleepy too. He was even in the process of falling asleep, right on the cold floor. How was that possible? He didn't really know. He chalked it up to his own  exhaustion from listening to all that crying.

And before he knew it, he was asleep, right next to the crib.

[Telgin]

Wow, it's been almost 11 years since I've posted in this thread.  I don't have anything direct to contribute except to say that I decided to keep working on my NaNoWriMo story from last year, which I completed last night after a marathon 5,400 words in a single day.  It came out to about 95,000 words across 29 chapters and a bit over 300 pages using the novel e-pub template I used.

When I started, I set out to write something I hoped would be publishable.  That was always a lofty goal considering that the subject material was inevitably not going to be broadly appealing.  It's a story about space explorers in an alternate, magical universe who discover that the solution to the Fermi paradox is that aliens keep wiping themselves out by discovering necromancy.  Except... it's also written from the perspective of a non-human species that are effectively space furries.  So, pretty narrow appeal.

Anyway, after writing it, I came to the normal conclusion that the story is just a very rough draft that needs a lot of plot and developmental work.  I effectively want to redo the last third of the book, maybe with the end result having no resemblance to what I wrote.  Editors understandably charge money to review a story of that length, and since I don't think it could be published anyway there's no point in doing that.

Still, it's good to finish something I started for NaNoWriMo.

[MaximumZero]

It's still quite the accomplishment to get a piece of that magnitude done. Bravo.

I'm in the midst of writing a story, too. I have the roughest of rough outlines done, but I'm getting bogged down in my own expectations and insecurity. The story is set in my homebrew RPG setting, so I have no idea how much to define and how much to let the reader figure out. I'm also not sure how much to describe the main character.

[Iris]

These days I've sort of let my writing lapse. Trying to get back into the hobby, but it's a bit difficult to choose what you want to do.

[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 6 (click to show/hide)

"So do you like this steel toy hammer?"

"nnnough"

"Do you like this grown walnut wood puzzlebox?"

"nnough"

"How about this rose gold mini-forge?"

"nough"

And Magma was out of toys to present, again. He added them to the evergrowing pile of rejected toys on the corner of the room. The baby would only play with a few select toys for reasons he couldn't fathom.

It had been about 3 months since he was bestowed this baby. His parent responsibilities had become a routine for the forumite. He would feed the baby. He would play with the baby. He would change its diapers. He would sing it lullabies.

Though he still didn't had a name for it. The baby was male, but he had no idea what to call it. It even started to develop a personality of its own. What was even more surprising was the rate it was growing. It was growing fast. At just 3 months, it was already the same as a year old. Magma had thought about the possibility that his child would only live for a fleeting two and a half decades due to growing so fast. And maybe it would.

It felt wrong to call his child an it. The little guy could answer simple questions now, and it was time it had a name.

The forumite watched the small baby play with the cheery wood toy hammer and trifling pewter mini-forge, hitting the forge with the hammer as if to try and create an item on it.

Aaaaaand he was asleep.

[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 7 (click to show/hide)

"Oh you little brat, you!"

"Cath meeee!"

It was the second time this had happened in this week, and it had happened many times before that. The boy was now 6 months old, but he was physically and developmentally a two year old. And with that came some amount of independence, and with that came shenanigans. At least the boy could do his bathroom business by himself now. He learned fast. Magma was incresibly grateful that the potty training went smoothly.

What he also learned fast was how to get on his fathers nerves.

"Boy, get over here before I grab you!"

"No no grabb!"

"Yes yes grab, little tulpa. Now get over with the scroll."

"Yes Magmag"

What he didn't learned fast was his fathers name. It was endearing, if not a bit frustrating.

Magma watched the kid drop the leather scroll back to the ground and go play with his toys. Then he realised that the baby-no the kid was now a he in his mouth. In his mind. And that he used his mouth to talk much more often nowadays, more often than, well, ever.

What he didn't readily understood was the kids avoidance to physical contact. He didn't like being held, at all. Maybe it was that instinct most tulpas had? That inherent fear of others realising their untangibility? The boy was a tulpa, but he was also forged by a god, and that made him as real as anyone can. He didn't needed to fear that; he couldn't dissapear like that, even if he wanted to.

He put the runaway chain of thought aside, picked the leather scroll, and begun to write.

[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 8 (click to show/hide)

Humans. How do they work?

Humanity had always puzzled Magma. Such weird beings. So disguatingly vibrant, yet so destructive, in every sense of the word. From the lives of eachother to entire worlds worth of biospheres, humanity had the potential to extinguish it in the blink of an eye. Yet, a small spark laid in each one had all other beings just, get them.

The forumites long-held questions and thoughts about the nature of humanity were aroused and challenged throught this year. More than any other time of his life. The reason? The child tulpa was modelled after a human. A clearly altered one, modded to grow and develop incredibly fast, sure, but the psychology was the same, down to the core. How would he grow up, and what he would become, Magma had no goddamned clue.

It had been a year. A little more than a full year with the boy. Which meant he was developmentally four-ish. He still didn't had a name. In his eons of infallible wisdom, Magma couldn't come up with one that stuck.

The boy had lived an incredibly sheltered life so far. The single room was now more of a house with different rooms, and the floors were heated up with magma flowing underneath them. He had lived his entire year of life here, learning to function and playing with his literal mountain of toys. He didn't knew any other place existed. For him, the seven or so rooms he lived in was all of the world. When his father dissappeared, he always did with a warning.

The other denizens of the fortress didn't knew of here. And maybe it was for the best they didn't.

Things would get complicated real fast otherwise.

[Magmacube_tr]

Spoiler: Part 9 (click to show/hide)

GODDAMIT!!!

This was the result of his idiotic, reckless experimentation, he assumed.

Just earlier, Magma had tried to change shape. To a more crisp and refined version of himself. But he failed, miserably at that. And what's even worse was that he couldn't change back! He was stuck in his true shape, a body of pure, unadultered, abstract inuition. And this absolutely sucked. No more hands, no more talking. No avatar. No presence. Just moving things around with his mind and using telepathy. And the regional omnipresence of being an alive concept, which sounded kinda oxymoronic when Magma thought about it. A limited form of infinity. It just sounded awkward and silly.

Didn't mattered. The child couldn't see him while he was like this. Literally. At least he could still open the door to get in.

"Hey, hey, kid. Here you are. I am back."

"Magma, where are you?"

"Everywhere. Not really though. I am here. I am just invisible right now."

"Why?"

"Well, your parent got himself into a horrifying incident and had his body corrupt and fail to exist afterwards."

The child doesn't really understands all that, and instead seems very concerned.

"It means I am fine, child. Why don't you go play?"

"But I wanna play with you!"

"oh"

That was going to be a problem. Sure, he could still fully interect with his surroundings, but he had no presence. And the physically-6-year-old human wanted to play with someone, not a disembodied voice he hears from all directions.

The forumite should have never started playing his games with him. Now he was too used to it.

"Aaaaalright, what are we going to play, little guy?"

And so they started to play, and for just that short time, Magma felt himself present, even if he really wasn't.

[Caz]

Wow, it's been almost 11 years since I've posted in this thread.  I don't have anything direct to contribute except to say that I decided to keep working on my NaNoWriMo story from last year, which I completed last night after a marathon 5,400 words in a single day.  It came out to about 95,000 words across 29 chapters and a bit over 300 pages using the novel e-pub template I used.

When I started, I set out to write something I hoped would be publishable.  That was always a lofty goal considering that the subject material was inevitably not going to be broadly appealing.  It's a story about space explorers in an alternate, magical universe who discover that the solution to the Fermi paradox is that aliens keep wiping themselves out by discovering necromancy.  Except... it's also written from the perspective of a non-human species that are effectively space furries.  So, pretty narrow appeal.

Anyway, after writing it, I came to the normal conclusion that the story is just a very rough draft that needs a lot of plot and developmental work.  I effectively want to redo the last third of the book, maybe with the end result having no resemblance to what I wrote.  Editors understandably charge money to review a story of that length, and since I don't think it could be published anyway there's no point in doing that.

Still, it's good to finish something I started for NaNoWriMo.

Hey, well done. 95,000 words is a big achievement even if it still needs editing.

I look back on posts I made 10yrs ago to this thread and forum about writing and I've only just finished some of those projects. Writing seems a long road.

[Telgin]

Thanks.  I recently started rewriting that story with some real hopes of making it public in some fashion, though I've been trying to think of how I'll do that.

Even if I got the story and prose up to a level I'm happy with, I know there's no traditional publisher that would take it, so at best I could self publish it on Kindle or something.  That's better than nothing, but I've wondered if it might make more sense to try to publish it as a free web novel on a personal website or something.  I wouldn't make any money on it that way, but maybe someone would actually read it without all of the expectations that it's a professionally edited novel.

Except I don't think people really do that anymore.  I've gone looking a little to try to find web novels, and it looks like there are some aggregation sites but the few I looked at didn't have the best presentation or usability.

What's worse is that I have another story idea I want to work on that has undead as a prominent feature of the setting, and if I ever tried to publish that people might feel like I'm one note.  And maybe I am.  Guess I could use a different pen name.

[Caz]

Thanks.  I recently started rewriting that story with some real hopes of making it public in some fashion, though I've been trying to think of how I'll do that.

Even if I got the story and prose up to a level I'm happy with, I know there's no traditional publisher that would take it, so at best I could self publish it on Kindle or something.  That's better than nothing, but I've wondered if it might make more sense to try to publish it as a free web novel on a personal website or something.  I wouldn't make any money on it that way, but maybe someone would actually read it without all of the expectations that it's a professionally edited novel.

Except I don't think people really do that anymore.  I've gone looking a little to try to find web novels, and it looks like there are some aggregation sites but the few I looked at didn't have the best presentation or usability.

What's worse is that I have another story idea I want to work on that has undead as a prominent feature of the setting, and if I ever tried to publish that people might feel like I'm one note.  And maybe I am.  Guess I could use a different pen name.

RoyalRoad might be what you're looking for, though that site mostly focuses on LitRPG genre. I went the Kindle route. It's just nice to have something finished so it can stop taking up space in your brain.

You say one-note, I say niche. There's people who only want a very specific type of story and will gobble up any that fits those parametres, so if you find your 'people' you can be successful no matter if you keep writing about the same thing. Heck, I think most writers stick to similar topics, if not the same genre at least.

[Telgin]

I've heard of Royal Road and peeked at it a bit, and maybe it's something worth looking at more closely.  I was going to contest that the concept of LitRPG was pretty bizarre to be represented so heavily there, and it apparently is to the point that I see one of the threads on their forums is advertising that anyone who hasn't written LitRPG to advertise it there, but then I remembered that one of the big fanfics I wrote is in a sense LitRPG.

It's a bit disappointing that Royal Road doesn't have more granular tagging, and if there's a way to search for cross-genre stories I haven't figured out how yet.  I'd really like to see a system like this that used extensive tagging like you see on a lot of art boards so that I could find something very specific.  As it is, it looks like you have to mostly know the name of a story you're looing for or you have to slog through a ton to find something that might interest you.