Category Archives: The Strangers’ Crossroads (Healersverse)

4 books from now, maybe we’ll be in business

anime nerd corner, The Strangers' Crossroads (Healersverse)
  • In the new project, we’ve reached the “Protagonist Realizes She’s Kind of a Jerk, Decides to Try to Be Nicer Despite Not Knowing How” point around 48,000 words. Healers 1 reaches that point at around 60k. This might seem like progress, but the fact that this book has this sort of moment in the first place continues the frustrating realization that I Cannot Be Normal.
  • We’re fully in the summer 2024 anime season. Kind of a thin one in this house, so it’s half backlog.
    • Suicide Squad Isekai. Still pales in comparison to Harley Quinn, and I don’t care one bit about the otherworld, but it’s fine so far.
    • Senpai is an Otokonoko. Kiddo, you are in love with your childhood friend, and the longer this series drags that out, the shorter my patience is going to get. But it’s cute.
    • Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines! Like the meme says: I love mess. I truly do. Only one episode in, and I wonder if this will end up being my favorite this season.
    • Spice and Wolf continues. Coincidentally, I started listening to the audiobook recently, as a toe-dip into audiobooks overall. It’s fine, enjoying it quite a bit, but this makes three iterations of an identical story in a row for me (since we watched the first anime adaptation just before the reboot started). Had to stop for now.
    • Backlist: Tearmoon Empire. It’s on the verge of losing my interest about halfway through. It’s not bad, it just isn’t grabbing me.
    • Backlist: Natsume’s Book of Friends continues. It fell out of our “last show of the evening” slot when it started getting more intense, so it’s been slower going lately.
    • Backlist: Komi Can’t Communicate. OK, so the first episode of this show had me in tears, and predictably, I am here for Golden Retriever Nonbinary Goofball. But out of the other side characters, one is a complete void, one is grating, and one is so odious that I consider noping out every time she appears. (Oh goody, two of my absolute least favorite tropes, the Predatory Lesbian and the Yandere. Great. Hilarious.) And I have mixed feelings about Komi herself and how she functions more as a projection screen for the other characters than a person in her own right, which is so frustrating. I wonder if some of her interiority is lost because Netflix is doing a terrible job translating all the onscreen text. It seemed like she was, you know, a person at first, but now she’s more of a moe object that gets dragged around and fawned over.
    • Since my last delve into All of This Stuff, we started and finished Tomo-chan is a Girl!, which was delightful. The premise-joke wore thin sometimes, but beyond that was a cast of sweet dumbasses and secret schemers. Good times.

Anyway. I was reminded in a writing discussion recently that admitting you’re a weeb will drive people away from your fiction, something something cringe something something. Thanks, I’ll put it on the list of advice I’m ignoring.

This is all sounding oddly familiar

anime nerd corner, games nerd corner, The Strangers' Crossroads (Healersverse)

Full of energy now that the Health Stuff is resolved, and trying to use at least some of it to continue some projects.

  • Ballad of the Bardbarian is sitting aside for now, but it’s always there as an alternative day to day. It’ll get done.
  • About Strangers’ Crossroads. I’m not a great outliner, which is why Healers 1 and 2 took a hundred lifetimes each to finish. So as an experiment, I started outlining Strangers to see if outlining could smooth the whole process. The outline is now 31 pages / 16,000 words all on its own, and unless I decide to break this into multiple books, it isn’t done yet. “Outline” is possibly not the right word; it’s a summary of each chapter including the “what happens” and “what does the POV character think about it” elements in a kind of stream of consciousness ramble. But it lets me get the basics down, and know what’s coming next. I hope.
  • It’s increasingly clear, though, that Strangers has the same starting point as Healers (depressed and withdrawn boy, smart and angry girl, they hate one another). Everything else about the story is different — setting (albeit within that same world), backstory, personalities, goals — so I’m hoping the commonality is an advantage and not a drawback. (Okay, and the MMC is a member of the same God of Justice and Order church Keifon is, but I swear I’m not copying myself argh)
  • Games corner: Enjoying Palia but not playing at the moment, because my brain has been eaten by Graveyard Keeper. Take the “one more day” gameplay loop of Stardew Valley and combine it with a pitch-dark sense of humor, and you have Graveyard Keeper. I’m kind of glad I didn’t pick this one up until after I got back to my everyday routine, because it’s a time vortex, and one that’s more hectic than the extremely chill Palia.
  • It’s between anime seasons, more or less, and we haven’t shaken out the full summer lineup for this household yet. We’ve started Suicide Squad Isekai because this is a DC-television-series-respecting house. Spice and Wolf is continuing; I’m ride or die with that series. Will probably try Senpai is an Otokonoko unless it screws up its premise; we’ll probably try that deer series out of sheer WTFery; I might try Dungeon People on my already-canceled Hidive subscription. That’s probably enough, but I’m open to being surprised. In the backlog, I’ve barely started Tearmoon Empire and have enjoyed it so far (boy, that opening theme!).
  • (edit: I don’t know what Nokotan (the deer show) is doing, after the first episode. I think it’s that “anti-humor” thing where you’re supposed to laugh at the fact that it isn’t even trying to be funny? Because the heyday of “lolrandom” humor was 10+ years ago, and that’s the only other guess I have. Anyway, this is not for me(tm).) [Edit II: From reviews, it seems like this is either a case of cultural humor not coming across, or a questionable translation. Either way, not for me.]

And I think I’ve mentioned it before in the main posts as well as the sticky post, but Therapist book 1 will be on sale about a week from now as part of the July 12 Cozy the Day Away sale (the sale is on July 12, but I will have mine up for a bit before and after).

They now have a page specifically for the sale: Cozy Fantasy Sale (promisepress.org) (cozyfantasysale.promisepress.org). The list will be revealed on July 12, but I can say that I got a ton of books last time and have been enjoying reading them ever since. Lots were free or 99c, too.

That’s it for now; gotta actually write something about Sadboy and More Feral than Agna But Not Entirely Different Girl. <3

How long till I un-memorize this thing?

games nerd corner, The Strangers' Crossroads (Healersverse)

If you work on the same project long enough, it’s easy to accidentally half-memorize it — when I try to reread book 3 to edit, I tune it out. So as hard as it is to not move forward, I’ve been working on another project to keep momentum going while my brain empties out that particular buffer. The plan is to keep that up for a couple of weeks and then see if editing works.

It’s actually going pretty well. I don’t know if it’s A Good Idea to finish this one next, vs. picking up the dangling plot threads in book 3 to continue with A&K & co. next. But it’s a nice palate cleanser for now.

Finished Bugsnax in about 20 hours, including the Isle of Bigsnax expansion, which was included in the Switch version. Did not finish all of the small sidequests, but I finished all the story-related sidequests and got the “good ending”.

I did not know this goofy-looking puzzle game had such fun characterization?? and a plot driven by personal challenges and complicated relationships??? what? I love it. Also: one of the townsfolk is a nonbinary mad scientist, excuse me, what a delightful surprise. I got out of the custom plushie biz several years ago, but I am sorely tempted. I still have an annoying amount of plush and fleece boxed up in the craft room. … … We’ll see.

Next up gamewise: Actually, Earthbound, via the Switch’s SNES emulator. I don’t want to replay Night in the Woods until closer to fall, didn’t feel like starting Breath of the Wild, and didn’t have enough cash in the account to buy anything else on my wishlist. So let’s see if I make it all the way through Earthbound this time.

One… non-ideal solution.

The Healers' Purpose (Book 3), The Strangers' Crossroads (Healersverse)

Alternating edits/rewrites on book 3 with some loosely planned writing on book ?4? (actually takes place before book 1, so we’re going to have to come up with some better numbering).

Couple of thoughts. It starts with cringe comedy.

I don’t like all cringe comedy, but I like a bit of it. I’ve gotten some disdain from friends about it, because how could anyone possibly witness those horrible people doing and saying the Wrong Things? Doesn’t it hurt to see someone so imperfect?

Thing is… I’m a full garbage human who has never said a Right Thing in my life, and almost-impossibly-flawed characters are some of the types that I find most relatable. I think one of the reasons I’ve found book 3 so hard to write is that the narrators have worked on themselves to the point where they are not horrible people anymore. They have flaws and shortsighted spots, but their bond continues, they are not actively self-sabotaging, and they’ve Learned some Stuff.

At the start of the new story, one of the narrators is an inept people-pleaser who is neck deep in well-deserved self-loathing; the other is a likeable extrovert who is a) silently cataloguing everything wrong with everyone around her, in order to use it against them if they ever cross her; and b) perpetuating a very long lie about what she did at the Academy. This is finger-steepling cartoon villain level fun to write. They are awful at this point, and as with book 1, I know where I want them to go; it’s just a matter of figuring out how to get them there and make it feel deserved. It’s a breath of fresh air.

That said, I’m realizing that there is even less magic in this story than the Healers trilogy. It follows two more Academy graduates, but they’re a priest (skills: talking) and a swordmaster (skills: hitting things with swords). I really, truly do not know what genre we’re doing anymore. I should care about that? It’s hard to care. As long as I’m writing something, that feels better than writing nothing. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to shoehorn some magic into the plot. I don’t know, man. They’re words. Read them if you want to.

In conclusion: January is nearly over, February is short, and then our hemisphere will be nearly done with winter. Can’t wait.