Pardon me while I ramble. Don't worry, it's considerably less bitchy and not about social media this time. More like... shower thoughts. Showers do prompt a lot of contemplation and such, don't they?
For as long as I can remember, I've had stories run through my head. A bunch of them. Often grand, sweeping ones, but also smaller, cozier ones. If I really thought back and tried to list all the characters, stories, and settings I've concocted over the years, I'd be here all night and leave a wall of text nobody would ever want to read. Most of them never went anywhere outside my own head though, unfortunately.
I'm glad I'm starting to change that though. I'm hoping MHO will be just the first of many projects, big and small. In fact, I'll let you in on a little secret- in some way, however tenuous, pretty much every single story idea I've had is, in my mind at least, connected to a sort of shared reality. But more on that in a moment.
Most of my ideas are fantasy, or "sci-fantasy" at most. Don't get me wrong, I've thoroughly enjoyed plenty of science fiction material over the years (Star Trek, Sliders, Quantum Leap, Dr. Who, etc.), but there's a lot of "hard" sci-fi out there that seems (IMO anyway) to get so bogged down with little technical details that it feels like the actual story takes a backseat to world-building and explaining how things work. Now, to be fair, I'm sure there's plenty of fantasy works that do the same. And I totally understand that for some, the world building is a big part of the whole appeal, either to reading or writing, so it's easy to get lost in that aspect. And more power to you if that's your thing. But while I can also enjoy fleshing out a setting, I'm generally more interested in characters and how they interact with one another. Everything else is just a framework for that, for me.
And I think that's why I have that whole "everything's connected" idea. All these stories can take place in a shared reality, because different parts of that reality work in different ways. And the underlying secret of that reality is that everything's technically made up anyway. It's sort of inspired by The Matrix in a very vague sense- no, please don't run away! Bear with me here.
I have umbrella term for a set of stories that'll really delve into it eventually (though not any time soon)- The Reality Codex. Sometime I'll post something that explains it in detail, which I've already written up but it could probably stand to be cleaned up a bit. But the basic idea is that every setting, in the primary universe that most of these stories take place in anyway, is kind of a hard, shared illusion of sorts, where outsiders try to help people remember the truth. Except it's not as simple as "evil overlords controlling everything and hiding the truth from them" or something like that. It's a lot more grey than that. Basically, different worlds are governed by different very powerful beings (gods and the like) that can vary hugely from "genuinely malicious, sadistic bastards" to "creative and generally benign, if slightly full of themselves cosmic beings that just want to weave grand stories for those caught up within their domain". And there are outsiders, whose goals are to either free people from said illusions, or at least let them know the truth so they can decide for themselves whether they want to remain or leave.
In the past, this led to freak "reality wars" that damages or even utterly destroyed a lot of beings great and small. That, in turn, led to some other truly freaky things I won't go into here. But the result was a kind of arrangement to prevent it from happening again: every so often, the god-beings would allow the outsiders to find potential candidates in their worlds that are already on the cusp of questioning their reality and subtly guide them towards the truth, while the divine sent all sorts of obstacles to try and dissuade them, wear them down, etc.
In most stories, this isn't particularly relevant and will never actually come up. In MHO, for example, I actually have a brief cameo of a particular "outsider" character that'll show up later, but that's it. And only the reader will know about it. (Teeeechnically there's been an ever so tiny nod to him in the Cult of the Crimson Isles arc already. Remember a certain mysterious painting of a strange 'sort-of konuul'~?) But again, it's just a cameo. And in a lot of stories, especially short ones, there probably won't even be that much. But it's there. It's all connected.
And whenever I get around to it, however far in the future (because I've got a lot else in mind too that's not related to all that), I do have specific stories in mind that are focused on the adventures of some of those "candidates" I mentioned. In fact, many years ago now, I actually had a good quarter (approximately) of one of them written, as well as tons of notes for it. Sadly, I lost all that in an HDD failure, back before I had regular backups. That's part of what killed my drive for writing for a long time, unfortunately.
Other than that, in the more near future, I have several spinoffs and sequels to MHO in mind that vary in size and scale. There's a couple that'll basically be roughly the length of a shorter MHO episode, a couple brief single-chapter asides, one action comedy style time-jump adventure, and another, much bigger adventure that'll see a lot of returning faces and be a true MHO sequel, length and all. (Kind of a more TLotR-style adventure, with a bigger main cast!)
I also have some ideas for a story or two focused on Aelana/Daisy and Clovaria in general forming in my head, primarily dealing with the origins of those two and different bits of their past: their childhood as a unified individual, the early post-Sylthean-separation years, the whirlwind romance with Inkari and subsequent fallout, their eventual schism and learning to cope with that, Daisy's chaotic romps that caused so much trouble, and then finally their little adventures in Clovaria making friends and mending their relationship more after Lykou and Kuna's visit.
Besides that, I also have other settings in mind, of course. I want to have more fun slice-of-life stories involving Brooke, Kael, and a few other OCs of mine that I've been wanting to use in their own little (modern world) setting. I also have kind of a near-future type semi-cyberpunk/sci-fantasy superhero setting I have some notes for sitting and gathering dust.
Not to mention two of my oldest OCs whose adventures have sat waiting on the backburner forever- the Tran-Di Twins. (....eugh, I may workshop that name.) Tellox and Kes in some ways are like the precursors to Lykou and Kuna, while also distinctly their own thing. Tellox is very timid, shy, and sensitive, but also pretty damn smart. Kes is an outgoing, upbeat, and extremely agile daredevil. While they're both capable of defending themselves, they have an unusually fervent anti-violence streak. Tellox has a phobia of sharp weapons and is generally kind of squeamish, while Kes greatly prefers confusing and embarrassing would-be foes to actually hurting anyone, no matter how much they might "deserve it". (Organic ones anyway- machines are a different story.) I actually have a notion of having them cameo in a short post-MHO story sometime as well, because they're basically world-hopping inter-dimensional travelers, and I think it'd be fun to have them play off their MHO "counterparts".
Anyway, that's it for now. If you read this far, thank you so much for indulging me. If you have any thoughts or questions please throw 'em at me! ^^