Mostly putting this here to let people know that I've deleted my main deviantART because I hadn't used it in literal years, but I also forgot that I'd put up all the ASLH and CYAH maps in my stash, so... I'm going to have to go and replace those all at some point, I guess?? I also briefly hosted some of the early ch1-2 graphics on sta.sh as well, as well as the ch1-3 trivia... Unless I actually put it in my secondary dA? I'll have to check on that later. (If you notice anything weird, let me know. I'll also try to fix typos when I have the chance, though... genuinely, it's a little hard for me to read my own writing from now over four years ago, so fixes might have to wait a little bit.)
Annual productivity report: I'm still planning to continue with DRE:CYAH and ASLH Clear Skies Mode... eventually. I scripted most of DRE:CYAH around four years ago, which as noted is a lot of years, and I would like to heavily rework the project if/when I get back to it. As for CSM, I just haven't had the energy or motivation to work on anything related to ASLH. Still, I hope I can grow to love my high school self's stories again.
In the meantime, sorry again for continuing to disappear off the face of the Earth for months at a time. I've stepped away from public-facing social media this year for my mental health and have also been struggling with wrist issues and extreme creative burnout, though I still appreciate all of your kind comments and kudos.
If you have any questions about ASLH or about me, I'll do my best to answer what I can, though I won't guarantee a reply. (Nothing personal, I've just been feeling oddly about sharing myself online these days.) I'll reblog this to the CYAH blog, too, but I'll be closing the ask box there because I genuinely cannot answer much about what I plan for that story or its characters; it's all a little up in the air, and I don't want to say anything that won't end up coming to fruition.
In the Chapter 6 trial, Bates references a note left alongside the bucket. Since we never get to see what the note read, I was sort of wondering what it actually said.
Probably something along the lines of "we all hate your ass kys". Honestly though, looking back on how communication in Japan generally works, I think there probably wouldn't have been a note at all and the "we all hate your ass kys" is implicit. (Or it's 50/50, a quarter of the cast is from the US and would probably take the time to write it out?)
How detailed were your outlines when writing ASLH?
It really depended, they got more detailed as I wrote on. I'm not sure if this quite answers your question, but here's my process! Generally, I'd break things into broad levels of detail:
The outline I wrote for the whole story focused on a few specific story beats, like the ch3 case, the mastermind reveal, and certain deaths. I had a clear vision for specific moments and a general idea of what arcs I wanted certain characters to go through, but the clearest scenes were all at the beginning of the story. As I wrote, I'd often think of more specific scenes or plot lines that I wanted to resolve, and I made sure to write them down somewhere (mostly in a planning Discord I had with some friends, I found the different channels really helpful for organizing information). I don't think I actually wrote a full outline for the story at any point, I think I just infodumped everything once in a server and then copy/pasted that to make my outline LOL
Once I actually got to the casing chapter in question, the bullet point outline that I wrote went into more depth about specific storylines I wanted to hit. Well, to be honest, I didn't do one of these for ch1-3, because I didn't have a writing process then, there were a lot fewer storylines to keep track of, and I didn't fully know how I wanted my characters to develop at that point. After ch4, having a bulleted outline became necessary. There's obviously the culmination of the killer and victim's storylines, but I also had to keep track of things like the overarching mastermind plot/storyline or specific character beats that I wanted to integrate. I didn't do this back then, but nowadays I'll also attach things like playlists or images to my outlines to get a general sense of what I want the case to "feel" like.
From the broad strokes of my casing chapter, I'd decide how I wanted to pace the chapter (like, how many daily life chapters felt appropriate), and I'd also have a general sense of the scenes I wanted - whether it was something as specific as "conversation between these two characters when they're doing this specific thing that touches on xyz topics" to "I think we're gonna need a scene with this guy's character arc I don't have any big plot things planned for them". A rule of thumb I like to follow is that each story chapter should have at most one high-tension moment that advances either the mastermind/worldbuilding plot, the killer/victim plot, or a central character dynamic in a major way. If I put more than one high-tension moment in a chapter, I ran the risk of cheapening either moment since there was no feeling of normalcy/status quo to contrast the reveal with. (Sometimes, like the first half of 5-1, there were plot-advancing scenes that didn't necessarily have an overemotional aspect to them. In this case, I'd consider the last scene of 5-1 to be the high-tension moment.) I'd divide these types of scenes among the daily life for pacing, or make a note of which things I wanted to be revealed in deadly life (occasionally with notes on how I wanted to do it). I wouldn't necessarily plan Every scene of every story chapter at this point, but I had a feel for what had to go where and what the general tone of each story chapter should be.
From there, once I got to the story chapter, I made a bullet point outline with the specific scenes I wanted in the chapter. In addition to the story beats that I came up with in the casing chapter outline, I also slotted in some filler events using underutilized characters to make the high-tension moment seem worthwhile, or to come down from that moment. I used these to either dump random characters to flesh out spontaneous dynamics which could be expanded upon as subplots later down the line (in ch1-3) or address subplots that hadn't been brought up in some time (in ch4-6). A beautiful byproduct of this process is that I got to delete the outline as I went along, which was extremely satisfying.
So basically, they got more detailed as I got to the points where each story element was relevant. I hope that's helpful!
Out of curiosity, what would Tristan's execution have been like if it had happened?
Confession: I don't like making executions, and I never bother unless they're plot relevant. As my plotting process is 75% randomly envisioning a really cinematic moment and then 25% trying to connect the dots, if an execution idea didn't occur to me in the 75%, it is unfortunately not happening in the 25%. I put off making Tristan's execution for the last minute because it was not in the 75%, and once I let him live I was so happy that I didn't need to come up with anything. I can do a lot of really cool poetic things but executions are not one of those things, or at least not when I want them to happen, so I usually end up asking a friend for help.
What's DE:OPH? Also, is there any way to read the original draft of WTD?
DE:OPH was the original name for dr:aslh's companion, danganronpa epitome: cross your aching hearts! which is on extended hiatus at the moment for personal reasons, but is up on ao3 if you'd like to take a read :]
also, while i appreciate the curiosity, i'll be honest - that's something i'm not really comfortable sharing u__u i wrote it like. fffive? years ago or so and not something i'd consider comparable in writing quality to something i'd be comfortable posting now. again though, thanks for asking!
*through gritted teeth* it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done. it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done. it doesn’t have to be-
sometimes u go on google searching for a reference image and you just find something that is totally not what you are looking for but is better than anything u could have ever dreamed
