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I'm-I'm gonna hafta third that.

*faints*

Me? gwahaha.

Love the new look, by the way, Anarki.

Wow. What a coincidence. Muwahahahahahahahaaaa!!!

No but srsly. Y'all can post anytime. I MIGHT have internet this weekend. If so, I'm gonna make a new post, so if anybody has anything to put in before the heroes are shoved into the audience chamber to be sentenced and the villains start playing Black Jack and bullshitting around (that second one isn't much of an impending predicament, is it? XD), I suggest you do it within the next two or three days. Cause then the s**t's really gonna hit the fan. Especially for our little Black Mage friend. Muwahahahhaha!!!!!

Argh. I keep meaning to post but it's not happening. gonk

Anarki....Lightwater....I need to talk to you two. Come closer, friends. Closer still. Clooooooseeerr....
WHOA, too close, too close. Back it up a bit. You're gonna smell my breath. It smells like cigarettes and watermelon-flavored Trident gum. Mhm.

But srsly. I have an announcement.*sigh*

Now...I love you two like you were my own children. Well, maybe more like little brothers. But anyway, my point is, we've known each other for quite a while now. About two years, I think, give or take. You two have been part of The Fiction We Live since damn near the beginning, and you've been sticking with it longer than anyone else, I'm very proud to say. So, I give this announcement with a heavy heart.

Basically, for a long time now (pretty much all year), I've been a neglectful dickhole jerky-jerk, neglecting this RP, and even my own guild, the beloved SOATMOL. I talked with Kyle last night about this. He argues that I haven't been "neglecting" it, I just....can't do it. I'm not able to run it, what with my only getting to use internet once in a blue moon (figuratively). And I thank Kyle for not seeing me as a d**k (he's a great Captain and friend, and I'm totally not being a suckup Kyle, you know I don't give a s**t enough about what anyone thinks of me to be one. You really are a totally book guy. Get over it XD), but I can't overlook my continuing dickotry.

So, the way I see it, I have two choices. I can be a total a*****e and keep up with this cruel game of stringing y'all along, or....

be an a*****e by shutting down the RP. Just temporarily, of course.

I've thought about this a lot, despite what some people may think. I know I am an impulsive person, but when it comes to things like this, y'all should know by now that I really put a lot of thought into it. And, after a lot of this thought, I've decided that it's my responsibility to be the lesser of two evils. So, sadly, I'm going to put TFWL on hiatus until I get my own internet.

I don't know how long that'll be, so I won't lie to y'all and come up with some bullshit due date. But you will know when it happens, because the temporary shutdown will be done, and there'll be a totally ********' hugeass post in the main TFWL thread with all kinds of nifty plot thingies and whatnot. Yeah. It'll be awesome. I've discussed this with Kyle, and he understands, and I hope you two do too. I really hate to put this RP on hold, because I have high hopes for it (which WILL be fulfilled someday!!!), not to mention it was my first attempt at creating a massive (okay, too massive) forum RP.

BUT, y'all know I can't just leave ya hanging or anything. I'll always have some kind of surprise for my still-active guildies. For a long while, I've been thinking up an RP, which I will, at some point in the near future, post in SOATMOL. It's gonna be simple, and very short, so we don't get caught in a rut and stuck in the first chapter of what will eventually be a twenty-plus chapter long RP *cough*TFWL*cough*. Sound cool to y'all? ^_^

Remember, although TFWL will stay in this guild as long as the crew is willing to keep it here, the new, super-simple one, will be back in our old (and far too long neglected) guild, Suck Out All The Marrow Of Life.

Oh yeah, and it's gonna be a Zelda RP, by the way. Yeah. XD


Thanx for listening, guys. And I hope y'all understand this is neccessary. Sorry for everything. Talk to y'all later. Live life, laugh a lot, have fun, stay fresh.

Okay, let's not fool ourselves here, kids.


I love TFWL. It's the first massive RP I ever made. I put so much work into it, that I filled an entire notebook with maps, diagrams, job charts, at least ten different approaches at the abilities and the ability system, and basically countless tiny scribbles of ideas, before I even OPENED the damn thing, way back when. I had so many ideas and plans for it. It was going to be the most awesome thing ever!

.................


But, needless to say, I was in way, way, WAY over my head. It was TOO massive. It still is. And I'm afraid I'm not able to carry it on. Not now. There may be a time in the future that I can - I really hope so, anyway - but that's a big maybe. For now, it's over.

I know that's not what you guys wanted to hear upon my return after being away for so long, but don't kill me just yet. I'm gonna lay down some facts, and I want you to think about it, and really have a grasp of the situation, okay? Still with me? Good. Now let's take it point by point:



First of all, the plot is much too complex. I have an outline of the entire plot, split into all the chapters I planned to make. It's huge. There are too many plot points, and most of them are centered around certain supporting characters (or supporting characters disguised as main characters just to move along a dying plot *coughWilliamcough*) {<--- There, see that? That's another thing, but I'll get to that later} that either have very little significance to the actual story, or would have to be dragged around the plot into events and times that they weren't supposed to be in, which further confuses the plot, and makes me have to keep rewriting the whole story to try to keep up and make it all work. I was wrapping myself in layers of newer and more complicated stories. And the original story was far too long and complicated in the first place, without all of that! It was all spread far too thin, and by the time we reached the tenth chapter (which would be nowhere near the end, btw), I'd have wrapped myself up so tight, you'd need to dunk the story in acid to find me! And the longer I went doing this to the story, the more ridiculous it all became. The point where we were, in chapter 1, was doing fine for the moment, other than the low activity, but once it advanced just a little bit more, everything would fly in a million directions. It was pretty easy to see the wires and cheap cutouts from the audience seats, if you know what I mean. There were elements of the plot that were so contrived, I wanted to shoot myself for ever writing them.


Then there's the characters. Not y'all's characters, I love all of those. In fact, that's one of the main reasons it tears me up to close this RP. I've come to think of Remy, Lot, and the gang as my own friends. (I know that sounds cheesy, but... blow me)

But the hugeass cast of supporting characters and NPC's we had, and most of them only had a teeny bit of importance to the story, but they hung around and clogged up the RP. But I kept adding more and more of them, either to try to move on the ever-deadening story, or as fixes to certain problems I mentioned earlier about constantly rewriting the plot. After a while it seemed hardly any of them were needed.

But let's move on up to William and Astrina. These two are from a long story called "The Race", which I started working on long ago, but took a break from it a while back, because it got stale and, well, I do that. It's a sort of prequel-ish thing to TFWL, and the whole thing is important, but that importance wouldn't be made clear until more than halfway through TFWL's story, so for now it's insignificant. Anyway, these two weren't supposed to be brought into the RP until late in chapter 4 (William) and somewhere in chapter 10 (Astrina). Obviously, I made a huge change in the story when I brought them in not even halfway through chapter 1. Oh, it's a larger change than you think, considering certain things that used to be huge plot points before I took them all out and started changing everything. The story in its entirety, as it is now, looks absolutely NOTHING like what it originally was. The final conflict was going to be completely epic and original. What it looks like now, is a pathetic cry for help that looks like I ripped off Final Fantasy VI and poured in a huge bottle of ridiculous cliches and a teaspoon of desperation. Okay, let's stop talking about this now, it's making me sick.


Also, the length of the thing was monstrous. If you go look at the progress we made in the first chapter back when it was in SOATMOL, then add up the one page here, it looks like kind of a lot. But that's just about halfway through the chapter. Yeah. There was still the court session and sentencing to do, then (only read the white text if you don't mind the rest of chapter 1 being spoiled for you) being put into jail, staying in there for days, breaking out, fighting a shitload of guards, the bad-guys fooling around, then getting on an airship to Gabbiani to talk to the king and whatnot, then learning about the jailbreak, and offering to hunt down the heroes team. Then the two teams finally meet up and fight, and all hell breaks loose. Then Tal gets a mission to go to a different country from his boss Balthasar, and he decides to take his new party with him. And that's a lot of s**t. And that's just the first chapter. There are going to be at least 27 chapters! Do the math and you'll see that the result is "DAAAYUMN, BANSHEE, YOU HAVE NO LIFE!"

And then there's the job tree and abilities, which, ya know, the whole system seems awesome. Seems like it would work. And it would... for a VIDEO GAME. But it's far too complicated and kind of unneccesary...

You know what? I could keep going on and on about how much I screwed up here, but it's really making me sick. Truth is, I ******** up, not you guys. You guys were great. I messed up by making this thing way too big. I messed up by not fixing the initial problems in the correct way in the first place. I messed up by not being there when I should've. I messed up by getting Kyle to let me dump this thing here cause I couldn't handle it. All in all, I messed up by continuing to beat a dead horse. But now I can try to fix all that.


Don't worry, you guys. This isn't a permanent goodbye. I'm not gonna let this whole thing completely die. It's gonna take a lot of time, but I'm going to figure out a way to make TFWL work. A BETTER way. More efficient. I've actually been thinking about that for a long time now. But like I said, it'll take time. Maybe a year or two, I dunno. We'll see. At any rate, for the time being, this story is over.


But you know what Semisonic once said.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.