#averia

Nueve horas de retraso: Nuevo caos ferroviario en la línea #Almeria y #Madrid.

Esta, otras noticias y un editorial sin pelos en la lengua, además de encuestas en 'Comunidad' en '¡Esto es Almería, saecio!'.

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Hi, all.

It's me, Seph, your not-so-loyal writer and creator.

I know I have been extremely inactive. But I am here to announce that I am about to return and hopefully be more active as a poster and content creator not just here, but on my other original content, writing-based blog @readingtheextreme where I post personal essays about things such as pop culture from a psychology point of view, my opinions about education and developmental psychology, and deep dives into things such as LGBTQ, psychology, and sociology issues.

But enough about that.

What I am here to tell you guys is that this novel series is getting a hard reset.

I still have the document with my original novel on it saved on my laptop, but I will no longer be using that plotline.

In February of 2024 I was 302'd and placed involuntarily into the psych ward, and while I was in there, I decided I wanted to rewrite this novel. I was going to still use many of the same characters, in fact, all of the currently existing characters are still present, if I am not mistaken, but some of the side characters are now much more prominent, and much of the plot is changed.

I am hoping now to also make a habit of posting at least once a week (generally on Mondays), as I have made a schedule for myself for my content creation, with Mondays being for posting on here about my novel. A full schedule ought to be released soon.

Please note that Monday will not be the only day (hopefully) that I post updates, but having one singular day that I dedicate to trying to at least post one update on this novel, whether it be character design, plot updates, or even chapter pieces from the novel, will hopefully keep me both on track and accountable to myself to work on this novel!

Congratulations to @aveaveria for entering the Hall of Fame. 🥳💙

Averia has completed a Bingo on the Dick Grayson Bingo Card and with that has earned the badge Fingerstripes.

Check out her fanfictions for Nightwing 60th Anniversary here.

“But why do we have to make all of these alliances?” Hestia whined. “It’s so complicated.”

Averia chuckled as amused smiles spread across the lips of the other members of their small but growing familia. “You’re just annoyed because I suggested forming an alliance with Loki Familia.”

“I don’t mind forming an alliance with Hephaestus Familia,” Hestia said. “But why the Loki Familia? I bet you could beat anybody in her familia.”

“I could,” Averia said. “But that’s not the point.” She patted Hestia on the head. “Do you know a lot about how wars are won?”

Hestia’s brows furrowed. “That’s not really my area of expertise, but don’t you just, you know, stab all of the other guys?”

That got more chuckles, particularly from Tomoe who was especially good at stabbing the other guys.

“Yes and no.” Averia’s voice shifted into what the others had already come to know as her ‘lecturing voice’. “Wars are won by logistics, Hestia. True, you quite often need to stab people, but how do you stab people? You need swords and spears to do the stabbing and armour and shields to make sure you don’t get stabbed. Where do those come from? They come from smiths, craftsmen who need time, money, and resources to make what you need. Even if they grew on trees, you’d still need people to harvest them.”

Hestia nodded slowly. “So that’s why we’re forming an alliance with Hephaestus Familia?”

“Yes. While some of us do have skills related to making weapons and armour, Hephaestus Familia specialises in that. They can make better weapons than we can far faster than we can. However, they have a weakness. They aren’t well suited to dungeon diving or combat. They need us to secure materials from the dungeon and to protect them if they are attacked by more combat-oriented familia. The best alliances are those built not only on friendship but mutual need. It’s in their own best interest to ensure that we are as well equipped as possible while its in our own best interests to keep them fully supplied and well defended.”

“What about Loki Familia then?” Hestia grumbled. “It’s not like they can do anything we can’t.”

“True. Both of our familia do many of the same things, but they currently have something we do not: numbers.” Averia nodded at the other people in the room. “People are part of logistics too. Once you have secured a means of producing weapons and equipment for your soldiers, you need to make sure you have enough soldiers... and that those soldiers are of sufficiently high quality.”

Tomoe spoke up then, the Renard baring her teeth in a grin. “We’re good, goddess. Thanks to Averia’s training programs, tactics, and strategies, we’ve grown far faster than we ever imagined possible. In several years, I doubt there will be a familia that can stand against us if what we’ve been doing so far scales well. But there aren’t a lot of us. If we were attacked while Averia was busy in the dungeon, we’d be vulnerable.”

“Oh...”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Tomoe continued. “Even without Averia, we’re not weak. All of us are at least level three, and we’ll be taking another batch in soon. If they level as quickly as we did, we’ll definitely be able to hold off any of the middling familia without taking too much damage. But there’s strength in numbers, and we don’t have a lot of people.”

“At the moment, Loki Familia has a better spread of strength than we do, as well as greater numbers. As we grow, an alliance between our familia will ensure that we are secure until we are capable of fighting any threat ourselves. More importantly, an alliance with them will allow us to venture into the dungeon more often, which will allow us to not only level even more quickly but also level more people more quickly.”

“But what’s in it for them?” Hestia asked. “I know Loki. She won’t agree to this if she doesn’t get something out of it too.”

“I am stronger than any member of her familia,” Averia said simply. “I am the bargaining chip here, at least for now. With my aid, her adventurers can go deeper than they have before without fearing for their lives. I can also offer training and sparring sessions to her more powerful adventurers.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. I won’t give away any important secrets, but just having a stronger opponent to fight regularly will help their growth.”

“Hmm... that might work,” Hestia murmured. “She has been grumbling about how some of her stronger members aren’t progressing as quickly as they’d like.”

“Give me a few more years,” Averia said. “I know for a fact that what I’ve done with our members so far will work with more people, provided we are picky about who we admit and continue to keep our standards high. If anything, it will snowball. The more high-level members we have who are trained in my methods, the more new members we can train in those same methods. And the more members we have, especially powerful members, the more resources we can acquire from the dungeon, which will in turn make training people easier.”

“It’s like you’re building an army,” Hestia said.

“It’s because I am.” Averia chuckled. “It’s something I’ve done before, so it’s not like this is new to me.” She smirked. “Trust me. Some people say that life is a war, but if there’s one thing I know how to win, it’s a war.”

X     X     X

“Wait!” Hestia leapt onto the coffee table. She would have fallen off it Averia hadn’t reached out with one hand to stop her from tripping over. “You can use your skill to make clothing?”

Tomoe raised one eyebrow. “You’ve seen her make armour with it, right? Not that anyone has actually managed to land a decent hit on the captain...”

“Well, yes,” Hestia said. “But I thought you could only make weapons and armour and stuff, Averia.”

Averia shrugged and flicked her wrist to one side, forming a blade of gleaming crystal. The weapon shattered an instant later, vanishing, before being replaced by a metallic figurine of a dog. “I usually don’t bother since I’d rather not get lazy by making my skill do everything for me.”

“But you can makes other clothes with your skill, right?” Hestia insisted.

“Yes.”

“Oh!” Hestia punched the air. “Then we need to start experimenting with this! I know you like wearing suits all the time, but you could be wearing dresses, and gowns, and... and... we have to try everything!”

Averia chuckled. “This is quite nostalgic...” She glanced at Tomoe. “Can you handle this afternoon’s strategy meeting? I have a feeling Hestia won’t stop until we’ve tried this at least a bit.”

Here are the metrics for my novel. I've spent over 400 hours on it, which comes to about 17 days. I've typed about 27.4k words on it. The going has been slow, as I have been working on this since Jan 6. Granted, I took a break about 1k words in to write a 16k word manifesto/world building document that outlined the world in detail, and that took a good several months as well, as I wrote it as I wrote the beginnings of this book.

I am very proud of what I have written, as this well surpasses the original draft I had of this book that I later on deleted due to it being poorly written and somewhat dense.

I am so grateful for @miss-galaxy-turtle for being my test reader and putting up with my angst.