soc_puppet | Entries tagged with mershark madness

I've decided to create a filter for Mershark Madness/Avery and Zeek stuff, just for my own peace of mind. (I'm contemplating publishing this at some point, so unless I go to like. Royal Road(?) or something, keeping stuff more locked down rather than less is probably the way to go.)

Are you interested in being on the filter? There's no obligation to interact with any of the Mershark Madness posts I make, but if you want to keep up with whatever I'm doing with it beyond vague progress reports, this would be the way to do it.

Poll #31802 Mershark Madness Filter

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 7

Do you want in on the Avery and Zeek filter?

Yes please!
3 (42.9%)

No, thanks ✌
4 (57.1%)

This poll will remain open indefinitely, and you can change your answer to opt in or out at any time. (Though if you do change your answer, maybe give me a heads up; I don't know how often I'll be checking this 😅)

Current Mood: thoughtful

First things first: Hours at my job are supposed to start picking up again in the next few weeks 😭👍 I am so relieved. I was this close (picture a tiny amount) to looking for a new job. I'm kinda considering it anyway, TBH; I'd love to have a classic M-F 9-5 deal, so I can do my Pokémon Go events without asking for time off, etc.

Next! My eye has been giving me trouble the past few months. I initially got some drops for it, and it went away, but then it came back, so I went back to the eye doctor and got more drops. What I have is called "episcleritis", and it's painful and irritating and I recommend against getting it if at all possible. I understand that this recommendation would be more helpful if I had any advice on how to avoid getting it, but sadly, I do not.

Finally, I need to remember to try and get some worldbuilding stuff done for Avery and Zeek; specifically, I want to think about what Zeek's people (and that world's merfolk in general) eat, and especially how they preserve food. So that'll be a fun thing to learn more about, I think.

Current Mood: contemplative

Nabbed from

redsixwing:

Give your wip a YA title with the "A ____ of ____ and _____" format

Me: "I'm going to one-up this and include a stylistically appropriate summary!"

A Network of Spell and Crystal

Recent IT graduate Avery has just lost his apartment when he gets a call from his father's younger brother, his enigmatic Uncle Jake. Jake offers Avery the opportunity to live in his home rent free, and will even pay Avery, so long as Avery can help Jake with a mysterious project; one related to the job that Jake has never properly explained, even to his family.

Avery soon learns the reason for the secrecy: Uncle Jake wants his help maintaining the burgeoning magical internet in another world. It's not long before Avery gets caught up learning spells and keeping the servers running, while the rest of the magical world expands around him. As he becomes more and more entangled with the magical technology of this alternate world, as well as the attention of a handsome young mershark, Avery is forced to face the question of whether he wants to return to Earth at all—or whether he ever belonged there in the first place.

I don't think it's quite as overwrought as a proper YA novel summary could be, and if it were a YA novel, then the mershark in question would be a prince or something, and probably of some opposing faction at that, but I think I got the gist!

Anyone else wanna play?

Current Mood: silly

Just wrote a good 1500 words of worldbuilding/planning for the Avery and Zeek thing, which I am tentatively calling "Tech Support in Another World". I now feel like I have a better grasp on where the story is going, while still allowing plenty of breathing room for exactly how I'm going to get there. More detailed outlining may happen soon-ish, we'll see.

Current Mood: busy

I've got a very rough outline for the story of how these two met and got together, but there is some more research I want to do first.

Unfortunately, some of that research is about IT specialist jobs and what they're like, which makes this not an ideal time to ask anyone questions about that 😅 ~~Thanks, CrowdStrike.~~

Still, that won't stop me from fixing up the outline and getting it into proper shape! Writing that first story about those two really helped me figure out a lot of what I want the background to be/how I want their story to go in general, so I should end up with a much better outline than I have now.

New tag for stuff in this universe is Mershark Madness, if only because the series doesn't have a proper title yet. I had one I was leaning towards, but then I learned more stuff about the story, and now it doesn't work as well. Current iteration is something like "Tech Support in Another World", because the story is very blatantly riding the recent isekai trend, and is not ashamed of it. Definitely not 100% the final title, though; we'll see how things shake out.