Comments for page "Selenophilia / The Goddess"

they published, entirely as a joke, the April Fool's SCP Anthology — a collection of 31 parodic prompts that resembled the real anthology's themes. it was a goof, a gaffe — something that should have, in all respects, been uninterestingly good.

I wrote the three parts of ACROPHILIA in four days, and it comprises about 12k words, being by far and away the best example I have for what one can do when possessed by the muse. of course, given the fact that I was a brand new author who had coldposted the articles out of nothing but bull-headed stubbornness (hey… that seems familiar. note that down for later, maybe.), the two tales went ignored, still holding less than +10 each while the SCP is in only slightly better shape, sitting at +25 as of writing.

so, what did i learn from the whole "rush production" style of writing, and the obvious damage which it did to the potential reception of those articles?

+ lengthy ramblings, 1024 words

- Close

i am both incredibly proud of Selenophilia for the monstrous amount of words i was able to put in while still keeping A Degree of quality, and the amount of Things and Ideas I was able to integrate into the whole project (so much so that, if this thing gets popular, i'll probably put out a "director's cut" version where i explain my moment-to-moment writing style and the Things and Ideas that influenced how this thing came out.)

there are, of course, a couple of general things which i can talk about now — the first being, what to any wiki author must be, a sun-bright decision to coldpost this entire thing. while i cannot stress enough how much i do not endorse this sort of reckless and irresponsible behavior, i do feel like, in order to embark on some of my wildest and most clearly ROI-negative pieces, such as this one, coldposting serves as a way to make working on pieces like this — which i do find fun — worth it in my mind. i also think it encourages me, whenever time isn't as much a pressure, to give much tighter writing and editing to my pieces, as i don't have the incredibly luxury of having people look over it before i publish on the wiki. of course, this also means that pages don't come out with as even a quality as they could be — jagged edges will be transparent. regardless, in my personal estimation, this is worth it in order to be able to swallow the pill of, say, writing a 17.2k word piece on a site which is explicitly not equipped for such bullshit.

another couple things with regard the structure of the piece:
1) the poem at the end doesn't necessarily have to be there, i'm well aware of that. the reason that i spent so much time on it anyways is because i felt like, in a story which primarily occurs in a world that is completely unrecognizable from anything on the site, being able to tie some familiarity to this world while also being able to characterize the titular Goddess and lay bare her incredible fucked-up-ed-ness, was something that would play well with the prose narrative. also, it was grandfahered in from…

2) this thing was not intended to be a folklorecon piece. originally, it was going to be a standalone SCP written to fit more exactly onto the prompt given by the anthology. then, after a coauthored piece for 9kcon fell through due to my coauthor's mental health issues, i tried to hammer the thing into 9kcon worthy shape in about 5 days. it didn't work.

then, during the voting period for 9kcon, i saw the announcement that folklorecon was going to happen, and the gears turned in my mind. as stated above, i am an avid fan of coldposting and regularly practice such nonsense myself. realizing that, if i was ever going to participate in the backrooms wiki, i had to have that option at my disposal, i knew that repurposing the 9kcon draft into a folklorecon draft would be the easiest way to ensure that i had something presentable in the timeframe allotted. so, i deleted the SCP portion and carried over the poem to a new backrooms sandbox. "it shouldn't take that long — how much content can there be here? i want FOREFRONT interludes to be under 10k, i'll just make sure it stays there"

that sentiment was foolish. if there is something that i am an even stronger advocate for than the right to coldpost, it would be the right to be indulgent, poetic, and hubristic in prose. i had, at the outset of the draft, recently listened to a reading of Outer Dark (the Cormac novel) by Ed Sala, and i had really enjoyed it — so much so that, in order to pay tribute to it and develop a new prosaic style, i decided to emulate cormac's mode of writing, taking his literary principles as i had observed them in Outer Dark and running for as long as i thought necessary. i directly attribute the length of Selenophilia / The Goddess to this.

lastly, this piece was so massive to me not just because of the enormous effort that it represented, but because by posting it, i feel i have been able to redeem myself for the thing that started me down writing for the backrooms wiki. during duelcon, i wrote a grand total of 24,000 words for a tale that i felt (and occasionally said) would be the Backrooms Equivalent of ADMONITION. i set out with that goal, writing it like i would a novel; lots of little observations and tangential asides which would hopefully inflate perceived quality, wordcount, and ratings. unfortunately, with that piece, i flew too close to the sun: despite a massive effort from myself, and some general crit from several people on my team, it was outside of my reach — and by a sizable margin too. by having this up, i feel that i have been able to show that, as a writer, i am improving, little by little.

the ultimate goal that i'm working towards, with this series, is a book. i want to write something that will be remembered as good by many people, something that — even if it doesn't reach the gifted heights that gifted authors can attain — aspires to do more than entertain. that is my goal both for this wiki and for the SCP wiki (though the SCP wiki project will take yet more time than FOREFRONT, the series i'm pirouetting about).

i hope i acheived this with Selenophilia. it's massive and unkempt and — i cannot stress this enough — probably features writing that would be laughed out the room if put before an actual copyeditor… but it's mine. i wrote it with coffee and determination alone, no input from anyone except on a single paragraph to gauge potential reader interest. knowing i was able to finish this bolsters me, it makes investing my time into writing feel worthy.

i hope reading it is worthy to you.