Aphelli

Remember how everything was going... not very well in the past few episodes? Your anxiety can recede – it finally gets better. Or does it? 
 

The Odd One Out has a new chapter. 
 

Remember the first time you played Reborn?

How a charming, enthusiastic, somewhat not-quite-down-to-earth young girl encouraged you to go to her "really nice" friend Mr. Shadow because there was a door he could open? And then, you found yourself in the Power Plant? 

Imagine that happening to you in real life. What would happen then? 

[Ominous music background with lots of tense pauses]

A new chapter of The Odd One Out is online.

And we're still respecting the Candy-approved guideline of a Gym battle every at most five chapters, I didn't think it was possible. 

Small Odd One Out update: the hiatus is definitely going to be a long one. I don’t expect to update anything before a month at least, perhaps even two. There’s work I have to go on procrastinating actually do, that sort of thing.
 

Also, I’m kind of stuck figuring out character motivations because at least a few points make very little sense. I’m not going to go into detail because spoilers. 
 

Here I just want to share my frustration with a certain underground event which I can’t imagine consistently.

The first point is that there’s a big plot hole I don’t know how to avoid.
 

The second point is that if I ignore it (after all, there are plenty of characters who do weird stuff for unfathomable motives, right?), I only managed to make up a few scenarios, none of them satisfactory. 
 

Scenario 1 is boring and also undoubtedly artificial.
Scenario 2 is... rather gross and doesn’t really solve the conflict. 
Scenario 3 is clever but somewhat naive, compared to what the parties involved are.
Scenario 4 is more realistic than scenario 3 but much edgier, quite disturbing, and I’m not sure how the good guys get out.
Scenario 5 is my only idea of resolution but feels completely like a deus ex machina and nullifies the conflict. 
 

I’m trying to find scenario 6 which will solve this little riddle, because 6 is a perfect number, right? 

So, you may have been wondering why the latest chapter from my story dates back to over two weeks now, and why I have so shamelessly failed to keep my schedule. 

I have two reasons (and yes, the fact that I'm speaking of it now means that there should be a chapter this week-end or early next week). 

The first one is the Aya battle. Basically, I don't have too good an answer for it and I'm a little bit dreading it. I guess I want to keep my death count as is.  

The second one is the Yureyu rescue. That thing was difficult to write and grew so massive that I'm unsure how that won't dwarf the next action sequences. But the first draft is over (although it will not be a cakewalk to think and write my way through the fallout). At least, I hope that you'll appreciate the spin I've chosen to put on it. What I'm going for should already be apparent in the upcoming chapter, but of course it'll get clearer afterwards.  

Sometimes I should just sleep instead of writing late as if I was trying to get nightmares...

I just finished the first draft of the second-to-last chapter of the second part of The Odd One Out. Here are the last sentences:

... I think this finale is going to be online for Christmas. How ironic. 

The beauty of wild nature... Mountain hikes... The high-stakes battles to (eventually) save children... 

Alas, what can one expect, when they're assigned something by the Novel Nihilist? 

The Odd One Out has a new chapter. 

The chess game goes on... How will it end up? The Odd One Out has a new chapter.

The end of the Mind Games is at hand. The finale is being built as we speak! 

The situation the characters find themselves in is... difficult. As you can read in the chapter. A plan has been prepared. But could it really work? 

Can you figure out a safer way towards a "happy ending" (or, perhaps less ambitiously, a favorable resolution of this arc)?  

Read The Odd One Out's new chapter to find out!

The final chapter of the first part of my Reborn story is out! Will Gabriel survive Corey's death trap?

(There's going to be a break of maybe two or three weeks before part 2 starts)

Second, more of an idle remark -- it's surprising the amount of questions you get to write down about a yet-incomplete plot when you try to fan-fiction/AU your way through/around/inside it. 

(Yes, it's again about that Rejuv story idea. I don't know if I'll have the time to write it but it's rather cathartic to plan the highlights). 

The last chapter of The Odd One Out's second year of existence has been released. It is entitled Pentest: can you guess what it is about?

The second part of The Odd One Out is now fully online. 

There are many drawbacks to trying to be Sherlock Holmes. Some are obvious -- but one which isn't often thought of is that you need a very particular kind of enemy to pull it off. 

There are some who will give riddles to people they want to assess. And there are others, who ask them to instead climb mountains. Guess which category is Kiki? Guess which category Gabriel would have preferred? 

The Odd One Out has a new chapter online! 

(PS: If you didn't answer: "the category of people who will take care of Reborn City and help him go home", you might have been wrong ^^)

There's a new chapter to my Reborn Story! 

Gabriel's living nightmare goes on... why would I ever want to stop it?

They're outnumbered, outprepared, thoroughly outmatched. And yet they must not lose. 

How can you fight so strong an enemy?

The Odd One Out has a new chapter. 

https://www.rebornevo.com/forums/topic/49209-the-odd-one-out-a-reborn-adventure/?do=findComment&comment=923370

Time spent procrastinating the Shade fight because I feared I would get so wrecked: a couple of weeks. 

Time spent preparing for said battle: a few hours. 

Final score after first battle: 6-0. 

Maybe, just maybe, counting the number of times I fail makes me overthink stuff? Or am I just getting better?

Today is The Odd One Out's first "anniversary"! (insane stats below)

It's almost unbelievable how much has happened since I started posting it. 

To celebrate it, I thought it funniest to find out some stats... so I copy-pasted everything into Word, used some formatting magic to remove the pictures and make the presentation more uniform... 

The result can't be trusted too much, but the order of magnitude is... well... 

36 chapters

210 pages

109 820 words (reportedly)

Some 350 KB in memory.

It's so big that Word starts to struggle with elaborate search queries... and we've only just passed Shade!  Next year, to do the same task, I will have no choice but use command line tools. 

(Also, I should start revising the earliest chapters at some point, but I'd rather keep going on, given that we're getting closer to one of my earliest motivators for the story, in less than ten chapters...)

What's inside Blacksteam Factory? Or, more precisely, who is there? What nefarious schemes could they be enacting? 

The Odd One Out has a new chapter. 

You know what's a fine way to procrastinate? Searching for anagrams.

The conclusion of the story, of course, is that 29-letter sentences have way too many possible anagrams.

Do you know which color the lake is supposed to be on Azurine Island in Reborn 18.4.1? I'm on my first visit, and it's blue. But in TTar's playthrough (for instance), and in my memory as well, it was always brown at that point... Am I mistaken or is there something wrong?

I recently found out that my Reborn story's title (The Odd One Out -- there's a new chapter just available btw) was almost the name of a (entirely unrelated) YT channel with millions of subscribers. People (including me) are weird, I guess?

Part 2 of "The Odd One Out" has finally started. It's been a long break, but I hope it'll be worth it! 

The issue when you plan climactic endings to your story arcs is that they often end up way longer than you would like. The end of Part 1 may well take some 30 pages...