Iron Company Ramblepost #1
Sep. 11th, 2024 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doodlemancyso, since about 2015, i've been working on a visual novel called Iron Company. and by "working on" i mean... constantly thinking about. always writing little bits here and there. it's the mind palace i go to when i'm on a bus or the toilet or in the shower or in a waiting room. i would write random scenes on my phone in the break room when i worked retail. i am kind of always thinking about it a little bit. when writers say they have a story in them that needs to come out-- it's that sort of situation.
as touched on in a previous post-- i've struggled for a long time with sharing my writing. i get really anxious and shy about it. i've been posting my art online forever, since i was in my early teens, and even when i was a baby artist and bad at it and lacked confidence, for some reason i was never as afraid of that as i was about posting my writing. i wrote fanfic as a lil preteen and definitely lied about my age to post it on FF.net (it is not there anymore and i'm not sharing it sorry) but at some point i got really self-conscious and scared of sharing my writing... even though it's something i love doing. i don't really remember how it changed. i think maybe i got some mean comments or something, or i just read too much Mary Sue Discourse™, or whatever.
earlier this year i made Potion Stand Story, a shorter visual novel project, spawned quite accidentally by an attempt to learn some more in-depth ren'py skills than the ones i already had, so that i could focus on Iron Company more seriously for the rest of the year. long story short, it got out of hand. i got attached to its placeholder main character (a 3D model made in Vroid, since i couldn't draw at the time due to carpal tunnel syndrome) and it turned into a whole story with a lot of actual heartfelt bits in there. it was supposed to be basically a silly tech demo, just to prove to myself i could learn a bit more about programming, and it got a little bit real on me... and people liked it. it was my first time really putting myself out there and getting positive feedback on my writing since my long-gone fanfic days. people told me that parts of this VN made them cry. and it made me so powerful.
it's been a wonderful and strange experience. as a lifelong anxiety-and-phobia-haver, i'm not used to so much of one inhibition simply disappearing overnight. i'm still pretty headshy when it comes to critique. it's something i really only accept/seek out from a few people i trust and sometimes i have to like, pace around for a while. but also??? i am so much more confident right now about my writing than i was even 6 months ago, to a wild degree, and when i do get that insightful critique from people i trust, once i get past the initial cringing, it turns into So Many More Good Ideas.
showing off a demo of IC in late July and getting a bunch more positive feedback sparked a fire in my brain that led to an entire month where i did almost nothing but write. just hyperfixation to the max. to be totally honest, my mental health isn't in a great place right now (i'm not getting the amount of alone time a person of my particular flavor of neurodivergence needs to be functional) so i was a little worried about it but also, IT'S BEEN SO GOOD. i've felt stalled on this project for a long time.
the thing i was avoiding the most-- showing anyone else-- was exactly what i needed. i wonder if i will take this lesson and apply it to other areas of my life (arrested development narrator voice: probably not).
on the other hand, i think i kind of needed to do that smaller project first to build confidence. maybe it did happen at just the right time, and maybe waiting so long was fine. either way, we're here now.
anywaaaaaayyyyyy,
Iron Company is a visual novel about several broken people whose jagged edges end up fitting together. Its two main characters are John Sykes and Petra Raskoph, who scarred each other's faces during a war. It's kind of a period piece (1920s/1930s), but not strictly historical (set on a fictional earth, and sometimes when the research says something i don't like i just say I DO WHAT I WANT). It's comedy-horror-mid-apocalyptic-enemies-to-friendsfiction. in the first chapter, Sykes and Petra bump into each other a year after their fight "to the death," and end up working together to save a town from some cultists who have been taking human sacrifices to summon demons in the woods.
you can read the first chapter right now, if you want. (please heed the content warnings.) there's a web version linked on that page so you don't even have to download it to try it. it's... really more of a text adventure in its current state, because i'm focusing on the writing part first and the drawing part later, but it's got descriptions of the visuals that are supposed to be there and stuff (and i'll be adding sketches and stuff to it over time). the first chapter takes most people about 2 hours. i'm aiming for 6 or 7 chapters, currently, but that's a very We'll See situation. i'm always hungry to hear from people who enjoy my work-- as i'm discovering, this is really what fuels me-- so if you give it a spin and have a good time, let me know!!
it'll be a long-haul project, so tbh if you're curious about it, don't let "not wanting to spoil yourself" or something hold you back LOL. it will be years before i get this thing done, and things about it will certainly change in the process. it was originally supposed to be a webcomic and i think that's sort of the way i'm treating it, in a way, as something to be released in little bits and pieces until it's done.
more rambles to come. and sketches. i also have a bluesky feed specifically for this project.
as touched on in a previous post-- i've struggled for a long time with sharing my writing. i get really anxious and shy about it. i've been posting my art online forever, since i was in my early teens, and even when i was a baby artist and bad at it and lacked confidence, for some reason i was never as afraid of that as i was about posting my writing. i wrote fanfic as a lil preteen and definitely lied about my age to post it on FF.net (it is not there anymore and i'm not sharing it sorry) but at some point i got really self-conscious and scared of sharing my writing... even though it's something i love doing. i don't really remember how it changed. i think maybe i got some mean comments or something, or i just read too much Mary Sue Discourse™, or whatever.
earlier this year i made Potion Stand Story, a shorter visual novel project, spawned quite accidentally by an attempt to learn some more in-depth ren'py skills than the ones i already had, so that i could focus on Iron Company more seriously for the rest of the year. long story short, it got out of hand. i got attached to its placeholder main character (a 3D model made in Vroid, since i couldn't draw at the time due to carpal tunnel syndrome) and it turned into a whole story with a lot of actual heartfelt bits in there. it was supposed to be basically a silly tech demo, just to prove to myself i could learn a bit more about programming, and it got a little bit real on me... and people liked it. it was my first time really putting myself out there and getting positive feedback on my writing since my long-gone fanfic days. people told me that parts of this VN made them cry. and it made me so powerful.
it's been a wonderful and strange experience. as a lifelong anxiety-and-phobia-haver, i'm not used to so much of one inhibition simply disappearing overnight. i'm still pretty headshy when it comes to critique. it's something i really only accept/seek out from a few people i trust and sometimes i have to like, pace around for a while. but also??? i am so much more confident right now about my writing than i was even 6 months ago, to a wild degree, and when i do get that insightful critique from people i trust, once i get past the initial cringing, it turns into So Many More Good Ideas.
showing off a demo of IC in late July and getting a bunch more positive feedback sparked a fire in my brain that led to an entire month where i did almost nothing but write. just hyperfixation to the max. to be totally honest, my mental health isn't in a great place right now (i'm not getting the amount of alone time a person of my particular flavor of neurodivergence needs to be functional) so i was a little worried about it but also, IT'S BEEN SO GOOD. i've felt stalled on this project for a long time.
the thing i was avoiding the most-- showing anyone else-- was exactly what i needed. i wonder if i will take this lesson and apply it to other areas of my life (arrested development narrator voice: probably not).
on the other hand, i think i kind of needed to do that smaller project first to build confidence. maybe it did happen at just the right time, and maybe waiting so long was fine. either way, we're here now.
anywaaaaaayyyyyy,
Iron Company is a visual novel about several broken people whose jagged edges end up fitting together. Its two main characters are John Sykes and Petra Raskoph, who scarred each other's faces during a war. It's kind of a period piece (1920s/1930s), but not strictly historical (set on a fictional earth, and sometimes when the research says something i don't like i just say I DO WHAT I WANT). It's comedy-horror-mid-apocalyptic-enemies-to-friendsfiction. in the first chapter, Sykes and Petra bump into each other a year after their fight "to the death," and end up working together to save a town from some cultists who have been taking human sacrifices to summon demons in the woods.
you can read the first chapter right now, if you want. (please heed the content warnings.) there's a web version linked on that page so you don't even have to download it to try it. it's... really more of a text adventure in its current state, because i'm focusing on the writing part first and the drawing part later, but it's got descriptions of the visuals that are supposed to be there and stuff (and i'll be adding sketches and stuff to it over time). the first chapter takes most people about 2 hours. i'm aiming for 6 or 7 chapters, currently, but that's a very We'll See situation. i'm always hungry to hear from people who enjoy my work-- as i'm discovering, this is really what fuels me-- so if you give it a spin and have a good time, let me know!!
it'll be a long-haul project, so tbh if you're curious about it, don't let "not wanting to spoil yourself" or something hold you back LOL. it will be years before i get this thing done, and things about it will certainly change in the process. it was originally supposed to be a webcomic and i think that's sort of the way i'm treating it, in a way, as something to be released in little bits and pieces until it's done.
more rambles to come. and sketches. i also have a bluesky feed specifically for this project.
