PetersReaders

I began making ARC around 18 or 19 years old, I was dealing with severe mental health problems during my teenage years. Around 14 or so my mind completely broke, I had become fully convinced that everyone wanted to kill me. Which is where Salvation came from. The only two elements that had always been there have been the Waylay and Salvation. Damian started to take form shortly after then Jessica then Kel then ARC. 

ARC wasn’t my first project but my third, having dropped the first two when I realized that I didn’t have any plans for them and was simply spinning the wheel. I am still fond of the ideas I cobbled together for them, though knowing what they were in my head makes it difficult to call them anything other than bad.

Salvation was a trick fecker to write. I didn’t want to make a villain for this book, though Damian is pretty dang close, but I was also playing though system shock 2 and really wanted to do something with a hive mind. So I came up with a hive mind necromancer who doesn’t know they are a necromancer. Able to convince themself that they are not, in fact, killing people and puppeting them around but instead welcoming them into a perfect way to live. It does feel weird that I always knew what Salvation was but only figured out the ending way later.

ARC didn’t begin in a recognizable state, hell it was basically just a rip off of RIFTS. Damian, Jessica, Kel, hell even Salvation didn’t really exist when I started making it. But the Waylay did, it and vis. It was still a multiverse invasion but it lacked any sort of narrative. Damian was the first character I came up with for the book, having a love of chaotic but predictable characters. Funnily enough, Damian was the only character I was forced to continuously nerf. His look didn’t change much since his creation, always having the gear eyes and metal limbs. He could originally peer a small bit into the future, though only ones he would do, and his boots could slide him though space instead of just sliding. I loved the ideas but it made Damian too powerful, already able to make a perfect physics simulation in his mind it would have been impossible for him to fail unless he was letting it happen. While I wanted him to be mysterious in his capabilities I didn’t want to let him over take Jessica or Kel. Damian shouldn’t be able to solve the main problem, no one in the book but Salvation should be. 

Jessica was the easiest of the characters to make, I wanted to make a murder machine so I did. The adamantine was a fun idea I half stole from Terraria to give her a fictitious uber material. I had the idea while thinking about propaganda in children’s media that reinforces the ways they see the world. It occurred to me that the divines of Neuova would have a truly bonkers incentive to spread propaganda and misinformation, especially towards kids who haven’t formed their perspective on reality yet. Adamantine was one of the first successes for those programs, but that was a while before Jessica was born. What it can do changes depending on what the neuvin using it thinks it can do. For Jessica it was an invincible metal that remade her, letting her become what she wanted to be at the time. Something like an ascension but without her becoming the most Jessica she can be. 

This would also be a good time to mention how I made the neuvin’s use of vis. I hope its obvious that the neuovins are my stand in for humanity, and I am a fan of warhammer 40k. So I just kinda, shoved the orks and humans into the same species and ran with it. The more supernatural elements of the world came about at an exponential rate as the first nova’s were pretty low powered but they fostered the belief in the supernatural which only reinforced itself over time. In fact, Jessica’s exit from neuova was another bar setting moment.

When forming the characters and plot, I only came up with a few points I needed the characters to hit in certain ways. I wanted the Kel vs Jessica from the moment they had both been made. The ending only came about during a trip to Washington DC, I was having a panic attack in the building they house the bill of rights and stuff in and was trying to vanish into my head, so I started to think about the hypocrisy of the founding fathers. From there I started to think about my own hypocrisies which led me to my book’s ending. This was the first ending I ever made, for well anything really. I normally get distracted and swap to another idea, but I stuck it out this time, YAY! I hope it doesn’t sound egotistical to say I did well, I’m very proud of what I’ve made. It was originally Jessica and Damian storming Salvation’s home world and killing them. But it had never felt right to me, in the end Salvation never would have realized what they had done. So I got thinking about it and I realized the solution, Damian was always barely more than a puppet, why not make him exactly what Salvation needs to figure out their mistakes? If Damian gave in and caused Salvation to realize what they had done, it would also make Jessica actually lose for the first time in her life. She would have lost basically everyone she cared about and failed to take revenge, more than that she can’t even bring herself to hate Salvation after getting to know them more. I thought leaving her in that awful and confused state but knowing she would get though it would be a fun contrast to Damian as he loses his mind. It does also mean that Damian knows more about Kel than she does, a fact Damian will use to bait her for centuries to come.

I came up with the worlds on the fly, which is probably apparent. I did try to put a good bit of thought into them but most of my attention was on the main four and the plot. The exception was Tolden, where Damian was for the first part of the book. I put a decent bit of work to make it feel real, trying to figure out how their use of vis would change how they function as a species. Turning into a supernatural tool whose ability would depend on how skilled they had been in life. I figured it would lead to teachers being highly regarded and they would never make it out of a warring state era. Any sort of progress away from war is nearly impossible as those in charge are incentivized to keep the wars going to keep the flow of powerful heirlooms they can use to defend themself and stay in power. Locking them into an arm’s race perpetuated by a core aspect of their species. Which I found funny. Tolden’s main purpose, in the plot, was to show what kind of person Damian is. That he could have found and destroyed the binding in minutes but weaseled his mind into forgetting that he could. Letting him mess around more on the planet. He only joins Salvation because he sees it as getting it out of the way. That Salvation would either take over everything or would falter at some point. Either way, getting it over sounded like a good option to him.

Rather than perfectly form the plot I chose to dedicate my time to the character and how they interact with reality and the others. The vast majority of the book was unplanned, just trusting my brain to find all the tweaks and overhauls needed to make it work. Honestly, I was on my 6th iteration of ARC by the time it was over. Each was wildly different in how the characters spoke and acted. Except for Damian, he has always been Damian. I only got past chapter 8 one time in my first five before realizing a critical flaw that needed me to throw out what I had written. Something I did with glee knowing that I was about to make a better version of it.

The Waylay is a more living version of the Way from the Will-O-Verse. But connected to entrances not people, so you can’t sue me Will Wright, HA!

Damian is my answer to characters like Rick from Rick & Morty. I don’t believe that being intelligent and smart are the same thing and I show that though Damian. Despite having theoretically unlimited brain power, Damian is constantly wrong. He misjudges others on a regular basis and formulates conclusions based on a lot of information but lacking key elements. Like watching how someone behaves at work for months and assuming that’s how they always act. A lot of information but lacking the understanding that people act differently at work. I took inspiration from Columbo for manipulating how others see him and the coat. The limbs definitely aren’t from Full Metal Alchemist. No, that’s just an insane idea that only you thought of. I removed his eyes because that is the most relatable part of a person. Oh and Damian’s true ablility is bad luck, or more aptly me fucking with him. Everything else was just the minimum requirements I needed to give him to be tortured forever.

Jessica is primarily based on aspects of myself. Though thoroughly exaggerated to realms far beyond mine. It’s hard not to hold some constant resentment towards others due to my fears. Learning to deal with that anger wasn’t too hard for me but I figured it might be a wee bit harder for Jessica. And those last words Damian said to her was a question I asked myself. Like her, I used the question to think deeply about who I am and what I would want from a life I deemed worth living. The question was invaluable to me at the time and really helped me focus on what I should do to better myself.

Kel is just really fricken cool. That’s it, just rule of cool all the way down. The blood power comes from Deadman Wonderland and the ash on their hands is from God of War. I wanted Kel to be Jessica’s role model of sorts, with them intentionally parring up with her knowing what her life had been like. Hoping to guide her towards a more harmonious relationship with herself, rather than let her desire for combat to lead to only mass death. Kel was positive she would learn to control herself, if given the tools to do so. Jessica’s need is combat after all, not killing. 

ARC came about because I need a place for Jessica and Kel to work. A similar situation occurred with Jessica’s home world. I wanted to call the supernaturals from there novas, so I came up with Neuvin as the base species and Neuova as the home world so I could call my characters novas.