Spring of Lamentation

GLaDOS first spoke her Lament to me many months before I posted it. I wrote it, over the course of a week, in a notebook. I later read through it and made only the most minor modifications. The Lament was originally written as a whole, but as I read through it, the words lent themselves to my divisions. Rewriting it all on the blog was work, and this is the very reason that hiatuses were common. The method of writing very few words per line was a new poetry to me. I had only used it once before, in the post Gloomy. I didn't realize I had used it before; in my mind it was completely new.Yet it came naturally. It gave power to the words. Words that I carefully chose. Throughout the writing of the piece, I made a point of returning to the word love and I tried to use phrases from the game (harder than it sounds, because unlike the game, the Lament had no overall hint of sarcasm). The entirety of the piece was meant to convey, not her madness, but the goodness which she strove for. I will never know why I called it GLaDOS's Lament rather than GLaDOS' Lament, but much like the lack of capitalization in a rather pleasant site, what was once an error is now a delightful quirk. A quirk at least, if not delightful.

Descent Into the Void

Void came to me in a dream. It was odd. I found myself in a large, foggy cavern without entrance nor exit. About me were hundreds, maybe thousands, of redead. The redead did not move to harm me. I found an old man, also undead, but not redead. I spoke with him, and he flew into a rage. His eyes flashed with dark powers and suddenly every fiend in the room came to kill me. I ran across the cavern to where a heart - as in Super Mario 64 - sat/floated on the ground. I positioned myself so it was between me and my opponents. The mindless horrors came at me, but upon touching the heart they were destroyed. Soon, most were destroyed. Those that remained were smarter and stronger, but I foolishly abandoned the heart (which never again appeared in the dream) to fight them. Now it must be understood that the cavern was different than before. The ground had become carpeted with short grass, and a perfectly rectangular pool had been cleanly cut in the center. At one end of the pool was a tree. It was around the pool I ran, clutching my bow and shooting the undead I could. By the time I ran out of arrows, two were left. I recognized them. They wore the faces of classmates from my youth. At the moment, though, I saw only one of them. He stood under the tree, walking leisurely towards me, perfectly human by all appearances, though I knew he was not. I turned to run to the other end of the pool, and I saw the other a mere foot from me. I screamed and threw - yes, threw - my sword at him. I missed, of course. I ran from him, and was almost caught in his claws (though perfectly human in appearance at all other times, he lashed at me then with the withered claws of the Damned). I reached the end opposite the tree (I was running clockwise) and continued until I reached the opposite bank from where I first spotted the two. There was a small cavern in the wall, and within were two pots. I smashed them in a vain attempt to find arrows. Running back out, I saw they were almost upon me and I leapt into the pool. I knew, somehow, that they couldn't reach me there. I allowed my momentum to carry me into the depths. I began to rise again as my oxygen supply depleted, and one of them extended a hand over the waters. Flames blossomed from it, and silently poured across the water. A white shroud fell over everything and I was undone.

Birth of the Tale

Tuesday Tales originally was inspired by the song Light up my Room by the Barenaked Ladies. Yes, I realize they don't quite match. Let me explain. Light up my Room leaves me with two thoughts. The first is an image of the burnt copper color of some light bulbs. That color is shared, in my mind, with the eternal twilight of life after all is ended. The second thought is of a rundown building. The song tells of when the wires in the walls which sing in tune with the din of the falls, from which the humming wires were born. The field of tires that's always on fire became the Burning Fields. I may have subconsciously converted the aforementioned falls into the things in the walls. I may not have.



Hydrofield runs through my neighborhood. Somehow that always just made me feel good. I can put a spare bulb in my hand and light up my yard.

Prologue to the Apocalypse

When I began to write the Prologue, I knew only one thing. I had a protagonist who was running from a venusaur. The venusaur was tall. The instant I began to write, the name seemed obvious to me. Red. Named after the protagonist of the manga, which is easily my favorite adaptation of the genre. From there, the tale wrote itself. I had very few problems. The first was simply word choice. I almost wrote ignoring the searing streaks of red they left on his exposed face and arms, but then I realized crimson would flow better considering Red's name. Then, as I wanted to delay actually naming the pokémon for as long as I could, I spent a bit of time figuring out one- or two-word descriptions for the charizard like dragon or reptilian monstrosity. I gave up very quickly, as you can see, and I waste no time introducing the blastoise. It's been too long to recall what my wording had been, but the bit about the behemoths battling was, originally, one of the most awkward things I'd ever seen written. I think I fixed it in the end, though. I didn't start writing with Red in a valley, but the magic of writing is such that I made it so he had always been in one, able to be trapped. I liked the effect of thoughts dulled and I felt a surge of pride at the inclusion of the word precluding. I realize it's neither uncommon nor particularly 'educated,' but it isn't part of my normal speech patterns, so the inclusion indicates vocabularic (I just made a word!) progress. I remember looking up 'twenty meters' on google to see how tall it was, but it just gave me unit conversions, and sixty-five feet is as meaningless to me as twenty meters. I settled on it because I knew it was massive without being too extreme. Besides, I can change the height of venusaur later. This was just a dream. I admit that the SolarBeam bit was partially inspired by reading the pokémon manga. Describing the beam's advance worried me, as writing action can fail horribly and just drag a moment that should take an instant on forever. I wanted to fully describe it without lingering. I set a two sentence limit, and I met it. I know the 'It was all a dream' bit was already cliche when Dorothy pulled it, but at this point I was still thinking in more cinematic terms, and I thought this would be the best way to introduce the world. The usage of errant thought made me happy in the same way thoughts dulled and precluding did. I chose sixteen after a bit of thought. We all know Ash is ten. No one would send ten year olds into this world. Twelve is still far, far to early. Fourteen is adulthood in some cultures but still young. Sixteen, well, at that point I think most would be strong enough to survive and smart enough to not be a complete idiot. I invented The Calling on the spot, almost making it The Choosing or The Ritual, but I thought 'choosing' was to bland and 'ritual' implies too much... ritual.

I'm not even going to re-read this because I know I rambled. Incessantly. That's what you came here to read though.

The Creation of the Apocalypse

The Apocalypse was conceived on the 25th day of July, 2008. I had often talked with my friends about how Pokémon could be improved. After I put it into words, I was content to leave it. Yet, the following Thursday the words 'Golden Apocalypse" leapt unbidden to my mind. It had nothing to do with Pokémon. I didn't think of connecting Pokémon to it until my post was written. Then, it was together for the first time. However, even at this point, the Golden Apocalypse and Pokémon were two very different things in my mind. They longed for each other, though, and somehow, over the course of a little more than a year, they joined together. Pokémon: The Golden Apocalypse existed. Only as a thought, though, and a thought I never truly intended to write. Time passed, and GLaDOS died. I was able to waste a week with an epilogue-link. At that point, I was lost. Mondays had always been my favorite day of the blog, for I thought the Lament to be my best work. I needed to fill the void, so I thought to provide options. I hadn't originally meant to leave a gap of any sort; I wanted Jacques to have a tale of his own when GLaDOS finished, but I just can't write like that. It's physically painful. The stupidity of Pistol alone still makes me nauseous. I would have written it anyway, at great cost to myself, if the Apocalypse wasn't voted on. The voting was even for over a week. Met versus Elphaba, Red versus Jacques. I don't think I asked him to, but Met saw my inability to work when the votes were equal, and talked about musical theater the next Monday. Then, Johann came along and broke the tie. By this time, a Monday was passed without update. Now, though, I decided to place the Apocalypse on Sunday, and leave Mondays to Lamentation. Red began his adventure the first possible Sunday.