#writing noises

[ufuckingpastry]

Started working on a pet play fic for fitpac and, ngl, I think it's legitimately given me brainrot. I am rotating these two (and etoilza) constantly. I am looking at every interaction Fit has with Pac and going, yeah you would have that reaction dogboy. It's been so much fun writing and thinking and rotating it, and I'm so excited to share it once I'm done.

[ufuckingpastry]

What is Shattered AU?

Hi, I’ve been wanting to talk about this AU, but I’m kind of caught on “if I share too much, I’ll spoil it”. But then, if I don’t talk about it, then no one knows what Shattered AU is whatsoever. So that’s what this post is going to be for.

So what is Shattered AU?

Shattered AU, also known as Shattered or my Dream SMP god AU, is a god AU. I’ve also described it as having superhero AU vibes, but that’s because of the AU rules I set at the start of development. It was very important to me to have a set of rules for how this universe works, because that would be the basis for how the entire thing works. I feel like it's a sort of a different way of going about the regular god AU too, and that's incredibly fascinating to me.

So what are the rules?

This AU is based around the idea that gods are not born as gods. They are born as mortals first. If you're not born mortal, then you cannot become a god. This removes the potential conflicts with demi-gods or people born to gods and how that all works.

Even if one of your parents is a god, you will be mortal. This is a crucial aspect of the AU. Because of that, I also defined what it means to be considered mortal. I'm using the term "mortal" over "human", because this is based on Minecraft and includes some mechanics of that. So while there are humans, there are also hybrids and mixed races of people who are included in the concept of being "mortal".

To be considered mortal, you must be able to die. You have a soul and your soul resides in the vessel that your body is. You grow old and you will die eventually. Your body decays, but your soul is led off into the void to be with Death. You must also be born not knowing the Truth of the Universe. This is more of a cause of being mortal than the reverse. If you are mortal, you are not born knowing the Truth. You are not aware of it. You might be aware that it exists, but you don't know it.

Because the moment a mortal becomes aware of the Truth, well... That's why this is called "Shattered".

When a mortal learns the Truth of the Universe, when they're able to see the threads that make up each and every single thing in the universe, their soul shatters. The weight of the Truth is literally too much for their soul to bear. Their body breaks apart and their soul more or less explodes in enough damage to level a building. This is a very traumatic experience for the person, and tends to be caused by a traumatic event/a buildup of traumatic events.

After your soul shatters, you have a chance of your soul and your body reconstructing. If this is successful, congrats! You're now a god!

If it's not successful, well. You're dead.

The vast majority of shatterings are not successful. There can also be complications during a successful shattering that leads to unexpected effects. A person shattering can also cause another person to shatter with them. Examples of this are:

Dream/Drista/DreamXD - the God of Order/Chaos/Balance. They were siblings who shattered together and became one entity.

Jack and Niki - Niki shattered first and Jack tried to help her/stop it/take the burden of her pain. Jack ended up shattering too, and his hands were burned extremely badly.

Sam and Ponk - Ponk shattered (not sure how yet), and Sam tried to stop it. It ended up with Sam's soul not fully reconstructing, leaving him in a constant and continuous state of shattering. He was able to contain and stop it by binding himself to a suit of armor. If he leaves the suit of armor, he starts to shatter again until he can get into another bound suit of armor. He's worried that if he stays outside a suit for too long, his soul will shatter into nothingness and he will die.

Gods are still able to be killed, but they will not die of old age. If they are killed, then their souls go on to be with Death.

There are non-mortals in the AU. Death has always existed as an entity, and she tends to take the form of a crow or a woman. She's considered to be a god by mortals, but she was never mortal and so she never shattered. She is significantly more powerful than the gods. She is also cited as the cause of mortals being able to shatter and turn into gods, because she brought magic to them first.

The Ender King is also another entity that's been around since the beginning. He is the king of the End realm, the furthest point in the Expanse. He is extremely powerful, on the same level as Death. He and his endermen are not considered to be mortal because the way that they die is not the same as how mortals die. When endermen are killed, they return to the End to recover and are eventually reincarnated back into themselves. All endermen that exist have existed since the beginning. They do not die from old age, and they were born knowing the truth. As a rule, endermen are not able to become gods because they cannot shatter.

Ranboo being a god in this AU is very interesting because of that fact.

Why do you say it has superhero AU vibes?

I have described this AU as having superhero AU because while the gods have powers/abilities based around whatever their domain is, they are not that domain. As in, they are not in charge or really in control of it. For example, Tommy has abilities relating to manipulation of water, but he is not the God of Water.

Two notes here: There is no God of Life in this AU. As I stated earlier, Mistrixtin is often called the God of Death, but she's not technically a god. She is Death, but she does not have an opposite entity that is Life. The other note is that no two gods have the same domain. There are a few exceptions to this, but that is usually because those people shattered at the same time. What I mean more is that say the God of Fire dies. There will never be another God of Fire, but there might be a domain that overlaps with Fire.

Exceptions to the "no two gods have the same domain" are:

Dream/Drista/DreamXD - as stated before, these three share the domain of Order/Chaos/Balance, but they are 3 people in one body.

Technoblade and Philza - these two are called "the dual Gods of Creation and Destruction". They share the domain of Creation and Destruction (yes, that is actually a single domain). Many people take this to mean that, like, Philza is Creation and Technoblade is Destruction, but that is not how it works. Creation (as in, making/building things, not creation as in life) cannot exist without destruction, and vice versa. You cannot build something that will not inevitably be destroyed, and you cannot destroy something that was not created in the first place.

What is the setting?

So the setting of this AU is based in Minecraft, but it takes place in a modern setting. So there are cities, there's college, the Nether and the End exist, but cars also exist.

How are you writing this AU?

So there are a few one-shot fics that I've written for this AU as a way of developing it. AO3 Links are here:

To This Audience Of None - Jack-centric; he does a monologue to an empty auditorium

From Dust to Silt - Tommy-centric; specifically, Tommy's POV of his shattering

Do You Remember the Before? - Tommy and Tubbo talk briefly about remembering what it was like before they were gods

Additionally, I am in the process of writing the main fic of this AU, which I plan to write as a trilogy of multi-chaptered fics. The trilogy and the AU itself is still in development and it may be a while before I actually begin posting it. The story is heavily interconnected between its different parts and I want to make sure I'm consistent with how those things connect.

The three parts, currently called Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3, are based around 3 different gods and how their stories connect with each other. Those gods are:

Act 1: Fundy, the God of Defiance

Act 2: Ranboo, the God of Discovery

Act 3: Jack, the God of Pain and Burdens

How can I learn more?

This is the first post I've really talked about in-depth about the AU, but I really want to keep making more. Especially, if people are interested. However, I do use the tag #shattered au for it, and also my general tags of #fic noises, #writing noises, and my fic tag.

[ufuckingpastry]

Me: it can’t be that long since I’ve last updated PB!

AO3: 

Me: ... oh...

[ufuckingpastry]

Gonna go take my meds and then we’re hopping to writing this morning. I got some big plans with PB, plus gonna work on WEG some more. I also wanna write Ranboo’s shattering for my god au cuz I’ve been rotating that again.

If my brain starts to stall I’ll take a break or switch to some of the requests I got earlier this week.

[ufuckingpastry]

Writing Update 3/6/22

Hey guys. I’m taking a (kind of not intentional) break from writing this month and any update I’m gonna have probably won’t happen this month. If it does, maybe later on. I’ll give some of the main reasons for it below the read more, but I wanted to at least give y’all a heads up for it.

TLDR: I do not have a bunch of time to write due to several reasons, but mostly ones that involve a level of time management I struggle with. I hope you guys stay patient with me as I work on being patient with myself too.

Reason 1: World of Warcraft 9.2 update Pretty much what this means is that the vast majority of my free time is gone. I’m part of 2 raid teams in WoW with two different characters. The 9.2 patch was released almost 3 weeks ago, but that also means that I’m raiding now for 3 days throughout the week for up to 8 hours total (per week). There’s also a bunch of new content that I want to keep up with and I’m already struggling to do so because of some poor time management on my part and just an absolutely shit sleep schedule because of

Reason 2: My ceiling was leaking The room my computer/do my hobbies in had a leaking ceiling/doorframe about 2 weeks ago. And I ended up staying up until 11:30pm every single night due to waking up to that sound and trying to manage it the best I could. And then, when I got confirmation that my landlord and his contractor were coming over, I mass-cleaned my apartment, also devouring my other free time and also keeping me up super late. I’m trying to get out of the habit of staying up that late, which has proven very hard. 

Reason 3: General Self-Care/Time Management on Hobbies I’ve put these two together because they go together. I’ve talked about it before, but especially with WoW taking up a large portion of my life again, I’m still trying to not only limit my hobbies to WoW. Because when the game was the only thing I played, my mental health suffered. Plus the isolation from COVID and some specific interactions that really tore me down that I’m still recovering from. Basically, this is me struggling to make sure I’m

Doing my chores

Keeping up with WoW

Putting in time for other hobbies

Writing

Self-Care/Mental Care

Reason 4: Fic Development I realized some time in February that I don’t fully have an idea on where I’m going with some of my major AUs. Like, I have up to ch 15 figured out for PB, but I don’t know where it leads afterwards, nor how I’m going to make a good climax for it with all the things I want to do with the fic. WEG is at its first major conflict, but after ch 8, I need to figure out where I’m going with it too.

I’ve also started really working on another AU where I want to actually write that/most of it out before I start posting it, so I can avoid the same problems I ran into PIP and what’s happening again with WEG and PB. 

What I’m doing now: I’ve decided for this month, I’m going to focus on figuring out some of those things I’m unsure of in my fic development, while working on getting some updates out. I have a good chunk of both WEG and PB’s next update done, but I’m either stuck at a point or just need some time to sit and write a bunch of words, and don’t have the motivation to do so. 

[ufuckingpastry]

NaNoWriMo Time!

This is gonna be absolutely tiny, isn’t it.

Anyways, this is the stuff I’m working on for NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve got several fic projects in progress and I’m using this month to motivate myself into working on them. The goal is a total of 50k words across my WIPs.

I’ve got it set up to sum up what I work on each day/each WIP (total). The goal per day is pretty self-explanatory (50k/30 days). The cumulative total (written Cumm Total cuz idk how to spell the word I guess, lol) counts up how much I’ve written in total added up each day so I can go back and see my progress. The very right number is actually the total number of words I have left to write and not a sum of that column.

I made this post mostly for myself and the chance to infodump on this chart. But this also serves as a visual for my earlier post for what I’ve been working on. Cuz man. It’s a lot.

help me

[ufuckingpastry]

Glad to have Steve in the world now

[ailedocto]

What I should be writing: 500 word black belt essay

What I am writing: 3 fanfictions