i originally got the spark for this idea while i was doing the team celia prompt for bugust and i actually got fairly inspired while doing some research for what to do. in particular this line really stood out to me:

this has a ton of room for interpretation so sometime around mid september i started drafting ideas, and eventually kinda stumbled into what i wanted to do fairly quick. a lot of the main story is inspired from my personal experiences playing and improving at fighting games, although mostly just in general 'vibe' as the stuff that celia does in the story far beyond anything i ever did. all i did was mald and get salty LOL

something about my general writing pipeline is that i usually just run whatever comes to mind first and adjust later, and while this has probably led to some unrealized ideas i think it's generally worked well for me.

snippet of a fairly early version of the plot outline

alt title for ch3 another semi fun-fact is that the main like, "bio" for this fic was inspired by that one baki the grappler quote, something along the lines of:

"If someone is born a male, at least once in his life he’ll dream of becoming the strongest man alive."

this is admittedly fairly unserious of me but i think i managed to rework it into something that actually makes a decent bit of sense--tying it back into that like, pre-awakening drive where bugs gotta like be strong or die from natural selection was basically an accident but it ended up working out in the end. i actually added that second part in after because at some point i realized like there was no fuckin way to tell what the story was about at a glance LOLLL

in terms of like the actual story though im fairly proud of what i've done! i covered most of what i wanted to portray from the ideas i got and i think i kinda exceeded my personal expectations for how nice at writing i am.

a personal favorite scene of mine to write was actually that ENTIRE sequence with scarlet. i've been a known geeker for fight scenes (animated ones) for quite some time now and i was super excited to write it out. i'd actually like to thank John Fox and his article on rules in fight scenes for REALLY helping with the development on this one. the primary rule for making something cool written ended up just being having some reason to get invested, and in this fic's case it was do-or-die between team celia and omega evil bloodlusted scarlet. i was proud of how i wrote him too i think i got a good enough amount of freak in da dialogue.

this art by czaneavecg (new acc) genuinely had me SO geeked the morning i saw it on my feed. this shit is so fiyah i need everyone to see this...

in terms of "regrets" i have with the fic? honestly not many LOL

i think one thing i might have done is split up the chapters a little bit more evenly. the word count distribution for chapters in this is all types of fucked up and i think ch2 ends up being a bit of a wall due to it's length given how early in the story it's placed.

word counts in a pseudo graph this is mostly due to the fact that everything gets kinda written on the fly and it's hard to really gauge how long a fic chapter is gonna be until it's actually being written. this is the case for chapter 2 actually, the general idea i had for that chapter was just showcasing how her training regiment was and the general effects after a few months pass and she still not ahead.

however, i ended up going into wayyyyy more detail about every little part of it and this ended up inflating the wordcount a fuck ton before i even noticed it was up there LMAO this is probably one of my biggest strengths and weaknesses because i really like having that super detailed regiment in but it comes so early in the story chapter-wise that i feel it would have been wiser to split it up in some manner.

i also wish i gave a little more development to some of the side characters; fit and marion are two chars i personally fw kinda heavy but even then they're mostly there in the background mentioned ONCE in depth on ch2 and then kinda just sparsely mentioned throughout the rest of the story.

while this might have taken away from the main focus (celia and levi) i felt it MIIIIGHT have contributed to something a little more had they a bit more on screen development. probably adding more meat of the story to that inbetween section and adding parts where you get to see celia like, ACTUALLY develop in strength would have helped a lot rather than just having it as a general timeskip but for my own personal sake as a writer i think it's fine to have left it alone. i think it WOULD have led to a better story but one that would have taken way longer to write and also one much harder to draft that's overall it though! very pleased with myself for what i've got down here and i can safely say i'm free to close the book on this fic for the forseeable future. i've had a couple of ideas for a short epilogue drafted but i'm honestly not sure if it'll ever become something realized as the last chapter is a nice enough conclusion.

post fic plans

first: mostly gonna be a small break from writing, although this probably not happening LOL

kinda noted before both on here and on ao3 but i've been admittedly facing a bit of a depressive slump in the last 2 weeks or so that's made it quite hard to do much of anything and i'm still trying to outlast it until i'm feelin like myself again. is this something more serious that i should check out? maybe but i deadass hope not cuz that would be ANNOYING as hell. i'll probably be aight

second: a bunch of short stories. maybe a bit of hyperbole

whumptober kinda reignited my drive for short story writing and i've been meaning to get out some of the ideas i've had locked in my head for quite some time now.

one of them is called Domiciles and if this gets written it'll be a cool little collection of oneshots about diff chars and their homes. i actually have a bit written for the first one with kabbu and i lowkey used the second one for my last whumptober entry BUTTT this might still get written. no promises though

i also had one in mind inspired by my final artwork for bugust where leif has like a magical camera with 1 use permanently there film. this one's admittedly a bit more experimental and i don't think i'll fully realize this one (despite me actually having a bit of the first chapter drafted rotting in my docs) but it's cool.

third: the big one

All I will be posting about it is the title.

I've been thinking about this one for quite some time now and I kinda planned out finishing Strength Not Found In Numbers to finish sometime in november so I could spend the rest of it planning for this one. I am, positively fucking geeked to write this and I have such crazy plans for a ton of parts of the story and like, oh my goodness im excited.

This is gonna potentially become my next main longfic so long as I stay interested in bug fables and/or don't change courses with this other idea i have in mind and/or don't get horribly depressed and stop doing anything at all. the other fic is mostly just a similar plot and theme to The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty featuring eri as the main focus but that one has mostly just been passing thought.

this vi fic is hopefully gonna keep me busy until the summertime if I can get it started and i'm immensely excited to get to work on it. after thanksgiving will probably be when i full send production on it but im unpredictable and shit.

that's all there is to the post-mortem though! thanks for reading if you got all the way down here and i hope i made you cry or laugh or any form of emotion when reading strength not found in numbers. it's anom and it's been lit