Here's to those who still believe in how the sausage is made

More utterly premature HTTWSB planning: I'm not sure if it needs archive warnings on AO3 or not. I know I could just choose not to warn but I know many people treat that as if it definitely contains whichever one(s) they're avoiding, which ofc they should. But, I know it won't need Underage or Rape/Non-Con warnings. It's only Major Character Death and/or Graphic Depictions of Violence.

One of the deaths is an antagonist who barely features, to the point where I'm not planning to tag him, but it's from his POV which makes it seem much more MCD :S

The other death is... a robot. Which one of the main characters mourns like a person has died, some of them like a pet has died, and some of them like an appliance broke and the mourning character is completely insane. The mourning character is my self-insert Courier and I feel the same way entirely on this issue, and I think many readers would, too. But I don't think that changes things necessarily?

The violence I'm iffy on. The fic right now and what's planned I would call less violent than Fallout 1 without Bloody Mess, and that's the least violent Fallout game! "Canon-typical violence" as an additional tag gives me hives, so it's the archive warning or nothing. I am rating the fic either M or E and I believe that covers a multitude of sins, so maybe that's enough? Or maybe, playing the kinds of games where people regularly explode, my calibration is off.

Given the way I'm going to tag and summarise the fic I feel like using those two archive warnings would make you think that at least one of the Courier, Boone and Arcade is going to die horribly. And that's just not true. (The two maybe-MCD characters don't die horribly either, just tragically!) So then I'd want to write a note about how it's not like that, and that annoys me too because it's inelegant. Or, maybe those warnings wouldn't give that impression alongside the Happy Ending tag anyway?

January: 7980 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 25 days

February: 4 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 14 days

March: 261 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 21 days

High effort low output, kind of appalling! I have been doing some formatting to the whole fic (super boring - italicising quotes next to italicised words because it looks better on web, and I can do this automatically for upload, but I want the fic to look neat and tidy now too lmao), and as always, tweaking words and sentences here and there.

I'm currently stuck on day 5 of Caravan code of the wastes, which I thought would be so fun and easy - it's Cass, Boone and the Courier bonding through massive slaughter, getting absolutely sloshed in celebration and nearly having a threesome. How can I be struggling with this?? But I am. What I've got so far is good and funny, now I just need to write the rest of it. Instead, I'm re-reading like 5 chapters at once. I notice things to mention later, go and make a note in the appropriate future scene... already made it. I need to move forwards, I have all the outlines and notes I need!

This chapter should be really fun in general because it has the Courier finally telling everyone, not just Boone, what Benny did to her, and actually planning her revenge once everyone's on the same page. There's some Boone-Veronica bonding ahead, too, and 2 Arcade sex scenes and a Cass sex scene - I just need to write it!!

I wonder if part of why I feel stuck is because this is the end of the first act (unless you count actually killing Benny as the end - that's the next chapter, but I think I count that as the start of the 2nd act). I've spent so long getting here, maybe I'm intimidated, but I wish I wasn't because I'm so excited to get this story onto paper! (into SmartEdit Writer, haha)

April: 2874 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 13 days

That's way less than I hoped, but it's something! And I think taking time away from it to do fun things that aren't work, like playing more games, has paid off. I wrote most of that - 1691 words - yesterday! And I think I can make more progress today, though look at me posting here instead :)

Here's to the losers, bless them all

Cass hated the Mojave Outpost. Really fucking hated it.

Less nice to have someone who'd ask, Why the hell are you still drinking, Cass? as if they didn't know the answer: 'cause there was still whiskey. And 'cause she was still breathing, somehow, despite it all.

Strangers in the night

Two scavengers from the north. Caravan from the west. Lone female from the west. Another caravan from the west. Caravan to the north. Caravan from the north.

And… he'd agreed to accompany her. It wasn't too late to back out. But. He didn't want to. He didn't want to think about why, and for the first time in a long time, things actually seemed to go his way.

Let me play among the stars

Boone slept… okay. Probably because he'd chickened out of talking to Manny just yet. He tossed and turned until thirteen thirty hours, and gave up. Nearly four hours' sleep wasn't terrible, for him (though he was well aware it was, objectively speaking, terrible), and besides: he'd be on a normal sleeping cycle from now on.

Boone laughed. Not an exhale, a snort, or even a smile. For the first time in months, he laughed.

Just a couple of problem solvers

Boone was surprised at how easy it was to shed his nocturnal sleep schedule. Or maybe it just felt easy 'cause he didn't have much of a sleep schedule anyway. Since he and the courier had returned to Novac in the middle of the night, he'd slept most of the five hours he'd tried to. He felt… oddly well-rested, and didn't see the point in going for more.

He didn't think he did want to. But he was hardly gonna let her go alone. "Hmm. Could say the same to you," he said, instead of letting her take any of that the wrong way. At least she returned his smile.

Wise men say only fools rush in

Boone didn't know if Paxton was subdued on the walk to Novac because she was hungry or because she was still about to cry. It was probably both. Or maybe it was the chems. Regardless, she perked up the closer they got to the motel — just as he tensed up.

Heh. Maybe she was becoming his addiction. It shouldn't have been a cheering thought, but he figured she was probably better for him than the whiskey.

And in between it's nicotine

Boone watched with dismay as Paxton tucked into congealed leftover mac and cheese for breakfast. He hadn't thought it was any good hot the night before. Reminded him of experiments to make rations taste better, and not one of the successful ones. At least she seemed to be enjoying it, and the sight of it wasn't enough to put him off his Sugar Bombs.

He went back to his research with more of a frown than usual. He couldn't even ask Julie who that woman was, because he didn't know her name. Heh. He definitely didn't want to ask Julie why she might have thought his name was fake. He didn't want her or anyone else to know it was the only thing about him that was real.

Didn't have too much to say

Boone liked listening to Paxton. Even when she was complaining — and she liked to complain. The current topic was the casino they'd just left. The Atomic Wrangler had dozens of faults, and that the proprietors were 'absolute fucking creeps' and it was 'a proper shithole' seemed to somehow make up half of them.

Yeah. Him and her against the world. Just the two of them. They wouldn't win, but they could go down fighting.

You can wag your tail

Arcade was starting to understand the appeal of exposing whatever you had lying around to FEV and hoping for the best. Ah, not the people of the Old Mormon Fort, of course, but it was hard to think that the barrel cacti samples didn't deserve it.

It didn't bother him so much when Ruth beamed at him over her own matching drink. And the bubbles must have been sending the rum straight to his head, because for a moment, he'd thought Boone had smiled, too.

Fight it with all of our might

Arcade was nursing a headache along with his breakfast coffee, though he wasn't sure why. Yes, he'd had more to drink than usual last night; but he'd hardly been drunk, so how could he have been hungover? Especially when his companions weren't. Though, they'd shown a degree of temperance themselves, in only drinking three, four, five times as much as him…

But he could learn to be one. Eventually. When the last of his family were dead? He wouldn't have a choice. Trust was too risky. Couldn't even afford to whisper his secrets to a stuffed toy.

Nihil novi sub sole

Took Boone a moment to realise it wasn't Carla in his arms when he woke. That it hadn't all been just a nightmare.

Maybe it didn't mean he was a bad person. Maybe it meant he was a good mercenary? Sure, Arcade could shoot like one, but he didn't feel like one… whatever that was supposed to feel like. If anything. He was grasping in the dark, and without any idea what for.

For the sake of having you near

Arcade liked to think he was a complicated, sophisticated person. Mainly because he spent so much time cultivating the exact opposite image, lest anyone start to find him too interesting.

This… her… all her problems. It wasn't going to just go away. The Fixer was something, but it wasn't enough. Love sure as hell wouldn't be enough, either. He just wished he knew what would be.

Just like a couple of tots

Arcade was thinking about the concept of moderation over breakfast. Not just because of Ruth, and how she lacked any concept of it. No… because as much as he'd been enjoying deathclaw omelette, this last breakfast in Sloan was very nearly too much of a good thing. So, it was a good job they were heading out, right? Best to leave on a high note.

Maybe. Pfft. As if even Raul couldn't already hear the pitter-patter of tiny psychopath feet. Ah. It was enough to warm an old ghoul's heart.

I'll be your cowgirl

Drinking to forget wasn't only making Cass mad. No. Making her stupid, too. Maybe she was just drunk enough to have forgotten it always went this way. And then? Why not keep going?

Maybe they were just looking for a fight. Didn't matter whose. And Cass could sure as hell drink to that.

Oh, ain't you glad you're single?

It was supposed to have been a little fun, or maybe charity. When The Forecaster had complained to Veronica that his 'thinking' hurt, it had felt more like child exploitation.

Would have been nice to have been more sure where exactly it was going. But this was pretty nice, too.

Wait 'til you see that sunshine place

Veronica stared at the motel ceiling, wondering who would be first to give in and admit they were awake.

"I know," she mumbled, into his mouth, eyes shut tight.

Caravan code of the wastes

Vegas!

[I know how it ends, but I haven't written it yet.]

I finally finished this chapter!! No wonder it was hard, it's a whopping 80k words! That's the 2nd longest chapter so far. I hoped You can wag your tail was a crazy outlier but no, I'm just not very good at estimating chapter length, oops!

It took 240 days... it didn't feel as horribly long as Wait 'til you see that sunshine place, which took a far shorter 236 days lmao. I guess it's partially a function of length - 228 words a day is tortuous, 339 is not better but it is 1.5x faster. (Then again, I don't know how much of each chapter I'd prewritten, so maybe that's not even accurate.) I think the big difference is that struggling with WTYSTSP made me utterly depressed, so I was happy to make any forward progress at all with CCOTW. Also, I didn't push myself quite so hard - I let myself leave it alone if I didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

I think I can't discount the positive benefits of a week with (basically) no internet this month, though :) I learnt from that and I'll try to remember. Boredom is so necessary for creativity!

I found it hard to pick a snippet and write a summary. I'm out of practice maybe. This is what I've put on my site so far:

He looked around, as if there was anything to see but the tent walls, and lowered his voice to a whisper; Raul and Veronica moved closer. "I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about patronising, uh, that energy weapons establishment in the future? Even though I wasn't involved."

"Relax, doc. They have no idea about your indirect involvement in their humiliating downfall. Yet."

"Yet?!"

"Mhm. It's gonna get ugly. Uglier than me. Why did we get involved with this, anyway?"

Veronica crossed her arms, her eyes burning with reproach. "Because they're our friends!"

Revenge is a dish best served well-dressed. Ruth weaves plans. So many loose ends to tie up - so many hems to sew. Veronica learns about stitches and the ties that bind. No Chain links to get them through the Strip gates; maybe the real miracle technology was the friends we made along the way!

I like it a lot. Well, the chapter. I don't know if I like that the snippet and the summary both literally contain the word "friends". But it is the most important word, probably! (~And the most important thing in life~) Sooo many things happen in this chapter but the big one is that Veronica makes friends with Raul and Boone, which means the whole group is now friends. (To a lesser extent, Cass makes friends with Boone - but it's more like just growing to like him better, she didn't hate him like she and the others hated Veronica.)

I also fell in love with another side character, this time Sergio. Sergio and Cliff Briscoe... there's just something about eccentric shopkeepers maybe :) Icon with Arcade looking dapper is in his honour. He helps make Arcade a nice suit and there is also some shippy stuff!

I guess I'll be back in 2 days with the official May figures. Hopefully I'll have made some serious headway into And so the best that I can do is pray by then! I am not sure if CCOTW or ASTBTICDIP really marks the end of the first act. I almost feel like ASTBTICDIP sits between the first and the second acts? Maybe it will be clearer when I write it. But, if ASTBTICDIP is the start of the 2nd act, then the 1st act comes in at just under 600k. Isn't that crazy? Well yes, patently. Is this fic seriously going to be 2.4mil??? I don't think so, but I haven't done well at estimating anything so far, so...! (Once upon a time, many moons ago, I would have thought that maybe, maybe, maybe the whole fic might have been 500k. Maybe.)

May: 46029 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

Yay! Finally writing again! I had some really good days like 6k & 7k, the first this year, I was so relieved! The pace has settled down since then but I'm slowly getting And so the best that I can do is pray in order. It feels like for years - god, literally for nearly 3 years - this has been soooo far on the horizon that I'd never reach it. And now I'm here! I have to think of how it's all going to go with Swank and Yes Man and House. It's so messy and confusing in the game and I want to evoke the feeling of being out of your depth without actually confusing the reader :) I think I'm going to save the Vulpes stuff for next chapter or it's just too much, but I don't know, it might be too tricky to get just the Courier, Arcade and Boone to meet him otherwise.

I wrote one part of this chapter very early on - Arcade's immediate reaction to Ruth killing Benny. I had a few more snippets here and there that either had to be here or have ended up here all from Arcade's POV, so the whole chapter is going to be his POV, and it's going to be just the one day. Maybe even the evening will be part of the next chapter? I have a few chapters that split a day and if they're in the Lucky 38 by then it's definitely next chapter material. But maybe they will stay in the Tops. So much to decide! Back to work!

I've realised that with my Chosen One and Cass's backstory as far as I've gotten with either, they need to know each other. And they don't seem to. It's mostly fine but I feel like Senator Irina Dubrovhsky would be aware of the Cassidy Caravans-Crimson Caravan-Van Graffs fracas at the very least. Really, I can't work out how they aren't acquaintances, or at least how Irina doesn't keep tabs on Cass (even if Cass for some reason doesn't like her/want her friendship)

Cass backstory: born ~2244 in Vault City. She doesn't know where her parents met but reasons it could be anywhere between Vault City and wherever her mom was from.

Her dad told her some FO2 stories including clearing out the Wanamingo mine (Boone is dimly aware that Irina, as a Ranger, helped destroy at least one of their nests - he doesn't know that there was only actually one nest and just some local infestations)

So the question is what did Cassidy say about Irina? They were really close, in fact he considered Cass to be his third daughter after Irina and Miria. He wouldn't have not mentioned her. Has Cass just forgotten any details about her dad's old friends in his stories? This is fine but I feel like Cass ought to be aware that one of them is an important NCR figure. So then, is it that Cassidy somehow didn't know that Irina went into politics, and Cass never had any reason to join up the two figures? (Isn't she a little too savvy for that?)

The problem is, Irina is doing business in Vault City all the fucking time! It's one of her big targets with Tandi. In 2242 she's trying to get that all sorted, she's been trying since basically the end of FO2 and I don't think it will all be so done and dusted in 2244 that she'll never set foot there again. And then either she's fairly important and has people to go there for her in which case why isn't Cassidy reaching out to her, or she goes there with a bunch of guards in her CAR again attracting attention...

I guess an answer is to make it so Cass is born somewhere else, but I really feel like Vault City fits her (because it doesn't fit her!)

Cass says her mom was loyal to her dad even after he was kind of obviously dead, so that's an easy reason why they stayed in Vault City. I can also imagine her being too proud to reach out for or accept any help Irina might have offered. I can't imagine Irina literally never visiting or at least writing letters, though. Especially not having her own kids, there's no way she wouldn't feel like Cass was family.

If there's a reason Cassidy never reaches out to Irina (this is too tricky when he's like, a settled down family man) then we're okay I think. Irina would have no reason to look for a man who went off to die on the way to Texas in Vault City. If he's running his same bar... well... maybe she doesn't want to go in and see who runs it now. The longer this goes on, the less likely it is that they'll avoid each other, but of course he dies when Cass is still young.

But Irina has to be aware of Cassidy Caravans at the very least by the time of the Legion war, and all she has to do is see Cass once to see the pendant Miria gave Cassidy around her neck... So it gets sillier and sillier that she sneezed every time she would have seen her.

I can't have Cass aware of Irina because she would have at least considered asking for her help with the Van Graffs and the Crimson Caravan, which I don't want. But I can't see how Irina would be unaware of Cass, and how she wouldn't reach out to her if she knew of her at all. Or why Cass would tell her to fuck off.

So, this is a really annoying puzzle!

I guess I will have to make it that they really don't know of their connection. I think Irina can hear about Rose of Sharon Cassidy and not instantly recognise that her elderly friend who she literally thought was dead had survived, come back and fathered a daughter... But wouldn't she assume it was some kind of niece or cousin, if she knows she's from Vault City? But even as much as she loved Cassidy, maybe that's not enough to set up a meeting when they're both such busy women, so it makes sense like that.

I decided a while ago that I want Irina to meet Cass and Boone like, past the end of the story. She would be coming to do Diplomacy Things, having either volunteered herself or been put forward after someone worked out that she's related to Boone and hence the apparent new leader of Vegas. (Irina would pretty immediately recognise the name Craig Boone as her 'nephew' (1st cousin twice removed), it's just that she'd never heard it until after the dust settled). Irina and/or Miria will recognise Cass by her necklace.

I need to write my FO2 longfic (not as long as HTTWSB lmao thank god) that has Miria making the necklaces :) She makes one for Irina and asks Cassidy if he thinks it's any good. When he says it's beautiful she makes him one too. He's like ??? and she's like "you can give it to a special lady hehe :)" which he does, but she doesn't really like it even though she appreciated the sentiments, and the first time infant Cass grabbed at it she was like "it's hers!!"

But first I need to get back to HTTWSB :)

I've reached what's possibly the end of And so the best that I can do is pray a few days ago and now I'm a bit stuck. Should I wrap it up here still with Arcade's POV? It's just gone 23k and considering I want it to be on the short side that seems like the right stopping point (same as Oh, ain't you glad you're single? which is also one frantic day, though we get the entire set of POVs so far).

The next scene, whichever chapter heading it's under, is Boone sulkily confronting the Courier about flirting with Swank (in his near-silent, reluctant to talk about his feelings way of course). I've decided for the sake of breaking up the relentless plot action (talking haha) that they'll stay in the Tops until the morning. It goes very well with the lyrics of Luck Be A Lady but maybe not necessarily the main themes of the chapter which is Benny vs Ruth & luck in general. But it's fine that it's introduced here, from Arcade's POV - Boone quietly seething, attempting to pick a fight with Swank but getting talked out of it by Raul.

To be the darling of all is more about the situation the Courier finds themselves in with House, the NCR and the Legion vying for their attention, and specifically in HTTWSB that Ruth doesn't like to be so prominent all of a sudden, the problems it causes with her (and Arcade's) friendship with Julie etc. and also settling in at the Lucky 38. But obviously When The World Was Young has, on top of themes of loveless luxury, a proud alcoholic, and having a sore head lmao the specific regret of exchanging an innocent young love for chasing after millionaires (and obviously this relates to House haha!). That doesn't apply to Ruth in actuality whatsoever but it definitely fits Boone's feelings that that's what she's doing, she's become too important to be interested in him any more.

It doesn't matter too much. At least this is the right way around, unlike the introduction of the Kings and Rex not long before the start of You can wag your tail, because I realised it was better pacing that way for a bunch of reasons.

Even after typing this out I wasn't sure. "It doesn't matter too much" is fine and balanced advice to give to someone else but not helpful for indecisive me to hear :) But ASTBTICDIP needs to be a short sharp shock to Arcade especially as much as possible. It gets bogged down with Yes Man stuff which I've found unavoidable and still works (it's nice that neither Ruth nor Arcade are particularly thinking straight about, well, anything). TBTDOA is more about Ruth's new position and that's exactly what is making Boone so upset. Starting that chapter with them fighting sets the scene much better. This jealousy is all to do with the Courier becoming, well, The Courier. If it hadn't been for Ruth plotting against Benny and hence both distracted and doing whatever she thought would get Swank on side, she would have noticed Boone was getting upset. Once he realises he's not really in any danger, he just starts moping about how he isn't good enough for her in general and how he needs to leave before someone assassinates her at him (totally unaware that she feels wretched for dragging him into all this, and they are both clueless as to how they're driving each other away with this preemptive shit...)

I just want to record here, because it makes me laugh, how, many moons ago, I condensed the title of my notes for this part from 'Boone Swank angst' to 'Boone Swangst'

June: 20926 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

Less than I hoped after May being so good, but it's still decent!

I'm completely stuck on the first main part of To be the darling of all. The bit at the start that basically wraps up the last chapter is fine (I did it like this partially because I wanted to keep it as an entirely Arcade POV chapter followed by an entirely Boone POV chapter), but I'm stuck with the whole meeting House bit. Boone doesn't meet House, none of them do, but I don't wanna just skip to them being inside the Lucky 38. So I have to work out that segue and yeah I've been struggling with that for about a fortnight! At least now I'm better at letting it sit, but still, I can't let it sit forever...

I'm also not super happy with the Arcade sex scene in the previous chapter, but I'm not sure how to fix it (it's really structural lmao). And I am looking now at the next few chapters in more detail and yeah, it's a lot! This whole section of the fic (2nd act: post-Benny, pre-DLCs) is not well planned. I worked out it needs to take place over about 77 days. I'm worried I have too much planned there! Which is maybe okay, just means more stuff to put in the 3rd act (the Courier has run off to do 3 of the DLCs and sulk). There was already plenty of room (time) for relationship stuff there, but maybe I will farm out some quests that need to be done before act 4 to some of them too haha :) The 3rd act is really long, like at least 100 days, probably a lot more... I never worked all of this out in my spreadsheet before this month.

Just because we're halfway through the year: combined 2023 update!

January: 7980 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 25 days

February: 4 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 14 days

March: 261 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 21 days

April: 2874 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 13 days

May: 46029 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

June: 20926 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

Note 30/09/25, when I reassembled this journal: I changed the inline pics to links to dreamwidth, and I eventually made an FNV mod based on these ideas, too.

I've finally gotten to the Lucky 38 presidential suite! Now I have to decide how it looks. I can't deal with the way it looks in game. The bathroom-curtains...!

That's how it looks in game, or the best I can do with trying to work out the scale of the furniture.

In my first remodel, I tried to sort out the atrocious bathroom situation, and make the guest room(s) less weird. My second remodel, I swapped the kitchen/dining room and the guest bedroom(s) because I think that missing void is where all the plumbing (and gas?) is (as well as the air conditioning probably - and I hate so much that this is on the outside on 3 walls and there's not a single window lmao).

Because there still wasn't enough beds for the whole crew, I added a sofa bed!

Then, I decided to see what's going on with these rooms in the Sims 3! It was really tricky because the table sizes are completely different. My first attempt was way too large, because I accidentally doubled the space on each side of the central part where the lift is. But overall, it wasn't too much more spacious than a typical Sims 3 house (which I think are overly wide, but American houses are just like that to some extent)

I corrected the problems and got something I think is pretty accurate - here it is with my redesign.

I like how I got a laundry room and a dressing room into the bathroom area :)

Here's the sims remodel on the in-game map, or close enough. I'm not sure which of these scales is right, but the differences are very slight, and this is enough for me to write from!

Eventually Veronica and Christine will share the 2nd bedroom, but there's no way Veronica will start off with it. Will she start with the sofa bed? I don't know what's funnier. Obviously giant Arcade going to squeaky tiny bed at 10pm the latest so he can get up for work whilst Cass is drunkenly playing pool right behind him is the funniest, but I need something that actually makes sense too :)

They could of course share the double bed(s?) but I can't think of something there either. At first, there's no way someone won't prefer the sofa bed.

I realised I couldn't get any further in To be the darling of all until I knew how long it would take the Courier to visit the Legion (because she will know automatically, and it will help determine how she breaks this fun news of House's assignment to Boone). And I didn't know that until I planned out all of Act 2 (basically, how much rushing is necessary - and if I needed to cancel the plan of a 2nd visit where she actually takes the chip). So, that's what I've been doing for the past few days.

First: how long does it take to reach the Fort? (To Cottonwood Cove is simple enough, but god, it cannot take 3 hours from there, no matter where you land. I put a motor on the barge and decided brahmin can pull a cart as fast as horses and it's still 4.5 hours!)

And after that, making sure they can all be done with whatever needs to be done in Act 2 before she leaves due to a combination of I don't want my real birthday in the fic (my real mental illnesses and sexual response is fine, but some things are personal, you know) and when I've worked out that (SPOILER!!). There I was, hoping to wing it, but no. Thank god, I can actually wing Act 4, because I don't have any particular time for the 2nd battle of Hoover Dam to take place (I thought a year would be tidy, and maybe it will still be that, or maybe overrun - doesn't matter). (Act 3 is well padded by its nature of the Courier spending a long time in Zion and then also in Big MT, I think it will be the act with the most skipped days)

But I have it! And I named all the new chapters! I really like it. It's hectic! I had envisioned a lot of killing time in the Lucky 38, but they'll be almost constantly on the move (or, Ruth and Boone will be, at least - the others dip in and out). It makes sense because House says all this shit about no vacation time, and though only maybe half of what she's busy with is stuff he's asked for/would be actually happy with, at least he can't say she's lazy, haha :)

I can't count, so I tried to make them both have a 'matching' 17 chapters even though act 1 has 16 and I've ended up with 18 in act 2 after splitting one that wasn't super-thematic into three. But, I think I didn't leave things enough room early in my planning (and even quite recently). I never wanted 80k chapters, and I have two!! I hope erring on the side of division nice and early has avoided that.

Note 30/09/25, when I reassembled this journal: I changed the inline pics to links to dreamwidth. Maybe one day I'll upload the whole gallery of spreadsheet screenshots!

Finally getting somewhere with the new chapter. A lot of this month I was too busy to write, but I think it was churning around in my subconscious the whole time. I kept working on the new Act 2 plan and it's looking pretty solid now!

So it's the perfect time to procrastinate haha :)

I've been taking screenshots of my chapter planning sheet for over 2 years now. I realised it would be a fun way to see my progress both in the actual writing and in the planning. Here's the most recent one, the first one that has the whole sheet as it stands, because it's in fairly good shape - don't mind my silly jokes! :)

There are more columns to the right, including date first draft finished, summary drafts/notes, and one I did just yesterday after meaning to for a while: act total wordcounts. Act 1 is 598.9k according to this! I used to track character/relationship/additional tags per chapter back when I thought I'd post them in a series, but I gave up on that and I honestly think it sped my writing up, lmao! It was a lot of work.

I was feeling so smug about this (have been all month, tbh) that I decided to do a little AO3 mockup and see how the fic would look if I posted it today. Which I won't! I'll stay strong! Hopefully! But this is how it would look on AO3 right now (if you had my cool skin)

I edited the wordcount/chapters, I didn't want to actually format and draft the whole thing. Also, I guess it would come up a few k short, that's what I worked out when I drafted the entirety of You can wag your tail to see if it would fit in one chapter.

(But the tags are real. I checked how many are already used - Boone & Rex isn't?! Neither is Veronica & Raul?! - and noticed there's a new Arcade/Manny fic I hadn't seen, with lots of Arcade & Daisy too. I'm weirdly tempted and repelled from reading it. I can handle other takes on Arcade, but if it's too close to what I'm writing I get really fussy about either their writing or mine. It sucks and I hope it goes back to normal when I've finished. What's the point of having ships you love and hence avoid?)

I don't know if HTTWSB really has 52 chapters, by the way. It probably doesn't. There's a lot up in the air in Act 4 and even Act 3. But Act 1 is finished, and Act 2 is tightly planned. Doesn't necessarily mean I'll stick to it, but it's planned :) Also, I think I will split at least the longest chapters into multiple parts, so 52 is really the minimum. (And already a year of weekly posts... I'm never going to finish!!)

July: 9824 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

Not only was I hoping for more, I really thought it was more... I guess all the planning progress I made felt like writing progress :) I've been pretty busy this month so I'm pleased I got any writing done, but still, it's not a lot. I really hoped I'd have finished To be the darling of all but I'm just inching forwards.

Speaking of, I was shuffling some scenes around in this chapter and the next two yesterday. So I think this chapter will be all Boone POV, the next one mostly Veronica (with a Cass scene at the front? Just some comedy I wrote like, a year ago... I could change the POV to Ronnie's, probably), the one after that Arcade. That's fun, right? It's not really on purpose or something I want to stick to, but it makes a change.

I think part of why To be the darling of all is turning out to be such a slog considering nothing really happens is that it's got soooo many scenes with the whole gang, as well as the introduction of the main set (haha). Actually, it's not true that nothing happens. It's just that the first part has involved Boone just hanging around and sulking a lot. He's actually a fun POV to write group scenes from because he doesn't speak much so we can get more of his reactions this way :) Arcade is getting good at reading his mood, but it's not like he can read his mind.

There's like secret Arcade drama in this chapter. Followers spy shit. So staying off his POV for nearly a week is going to be tricky and tempting, but it's going to be fun! I already hinted at it in the last chapter, which was all his POV. Now I am hinting through Boone's POV and so on. The Arcade chapter, when we get to it, has this really long drama scene I wrote like immediately after playing Disco Elysium last year. Ruth and Arcade are awful characters for talking endlessly even when they're not talking about mental health and politics and idealism... I already pruned it a lot and I think I can tighten it further. But this is just what they do. They talk! And they get soooo mad at each other (because they love each other).

But that's two and a half chapters away. We still have Vulpes Hat Encounter, Kings vs NCR and lots more fun this chapter :) And next chapter is going for a nice friendly meal at the Ultra Luxe where Nothing Bad Will Happen, haha.

Not to jinx anything, but this month is already going so much better than last month! I'm already past 13k :)

I love my summer Arcade & Boone icon. Don't they look so relaxed, and liable to burn? It's great. It's summer in England but it doesn't exactly feel like August. In HTTWSB, it's nearly Christmas. Arcade and Boone are probably happier that way, honestly.

I'm finally on the last day of To be the darling of all (which is Wednesday, 21 December 2281, with a waxing gibbous moon...). Starting from cold with all these notes and snippets to get into shape... it's often quite intimidating. I don't know why. I've only written ~400 words this morning, which was colouring into the previous day and wrapping it up. I really hope I can write lots more tonight!

I finished To be the darling of all Monday night! Had to straighten some things out yesterday, but I think it's done. (For now: I'm always editing!) It didn't really take all of August - I spent half of it not touching HTTWSB because I was playing Dwarf Fortress, haha :)

It's just over 41k in the end... I think (considering the length/pacing of HTTWSB as a whole) it's about right. Not a vast deal happens but an awful lot of stage is set!

I've made a good start on the next chapter, Don't care for high-tone places. Moved a Cass POV scene to the next chapter when I realised I couldn't make it Veronica POV (it's comedy, and her perspective on Veronica's reactions is a lot funnier than Veronica's actual reactions would be), so this chapter is all Veronica :) Veronica is funny to write... glum yet hopeful and always irreverent. She idolises the other characters to greater and lesser extents; Boone is the youngest, but she acts the youngest. But worship and mockery go hand in hand for her!

This chapter is about the Ultra-Luxe. It's going to be really fun to write how dazzled she is by it all. I can indulge in some description of interior decoration and fashion that none of the other POV characters care about (aside from all four of them being like, 'this is too fancy...', and Boone getting all tactical about restrictive suit jackets and the cover of thick curtains and whatnot, haha) But first they have to get there. I've managed to write 6k of a breakfast conversation between her, Arcade, Cass and Raul which has just started to reach that point, lmao!

I feel so sorry for them - they're having a tough time (well, Arcade, Boone and Ruth are, because of her mental health) and they think they're gonna have fun. Okay - Arcade knows he won't, but Veronica, Ruth and Boone are really looking forward to it (Cass and Raul wisely sit it out). But no. It's cannibalism and politics time :)

August: 39060 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 17 days

It started pretty well but then I got sidetracked with Dwarf Fortress. I think I was also thinking about the upcoming chapters. And, I think I don't really acknowledge how drained I am every time I manage to finish a chapter - because it feels so energising!

After finishing To be the darling of all, I thought I could go really headlong into Don't care for high-tone places, but I realised it wasn't plotted well enough. I didn't write a lot yesterday as I had that on the back burner (and what I did write was mostly more of the scene where Arcade reconciles with his ex, which is all the way in When you have such luck). I think I finally have it now :)

Soon I'll be writing the scene where the Courier stumbles on an ex she realises she's forgotten entirely despite that they'd stayed friends... awkward :) But it is a sideshow at the cannibal circus! I'm also looking forwards to the scene where Veronica and Ruth's spa day has gone ever so slightly entirely off the rails and Ronnie heroically beats the staff to death with her bare hands in a swimming costume.

September: 3610 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 6 days

I was going to say "it started so well, but then I got distracted by Dwarf Fortress" - and then I noticed that was exactly what I said last month. :)

I'm not sure I have anything to report - haven't really made any progress. One thing I ended up doing yesterday was to fix a longstanding plothole in Nihil novi sub sole that was in the bit I uploaded to AO3. I have to have read it more than 100 times by now, but it slipped my notice for years! (It was very small as plotholes go - it only took rewriting one paragraph to fix - but even so...)

Slightly late :)

October: 2622 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 9 days

And I haven't been making much better progress in November so far! So much for NaNo-ing it. Anyway, I've been doing edits here and there. Today I plotted (and named) a 3rd act chapter; yesterday or the day before I decided the beginning of Don't care for high-tone places that I've stalled out on needs to be scrapped and rewritten, and mostly how. It's a shame - I liked what I had, but it wasn't working. I had similar difficulties with You can wag your tail, which I put down to it being the first real Arcade POV at at the time, but this wasn't the first Veronica POV so idk what went wrong there exactly!

This month I've been distracted by replaying Fallout 3, mainly. (And trying not to get distracted by the Lone Wanderer/Betsy fic I want to write as a semi-sequel to HTTWSB...) There's a lot of Brotherhood stuff in this game that I think will be useful! (Not so much in this chapter, but it's still good for Ronnie in general)

Overdue, but...

November: 2644 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 12 days (but I also wrote a HTTWSB-verse Arcade/Boone fic, 9k, so... only moderately bad haha)

December: 273 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 3 days (... this is just genuinely I wasn't writing!)

Oops! :) I think my writers block often seems to be about my subconscious having seen a problem with what I've written/planned that I can't see. And rudely not telling me. Lying in bed on new year's morning (or some approximation thereof), I realised there are some serious issues with the previous chapter To be the darling of all that I need to iron out to progress. It's just the juggling of where everyone is and what they're doing. They're too static and it's too obvious when we're moving to Ronnie's POV and sidelining Cass and Raul for the 2nd time in a row. ED-E is also a pain! I'm still building up the courage to hack it up and fix it. I don't even think it'll be very hard - or am I just jinxing myself by saying that? :)

2023: 136,107 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 214 days

I'd started off aiming for 300k, wound that down to 150k, back up to 250k, and didn't even make 150k. Even with the other fics, it's still 145.5! I wish I'd updated my spreadsheet before the end of the year and forced out that extra 5k at least, but what on when I'm stuck on HTTWSB? (Well, there was potentially going to have been a xmas fic, but I just never got round to it!)

Not sure what I'm going to aim for this year. I might not aim for anything in particular. I like recording my progress, but falling short of my goals and easily outpacing them both discourage me! I mean, obviously I want to somehow finish the fic and start posting it, but somehow I doubt 2024 is going to be the year :)

January: 7980 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 25 days

February: 4 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 14 days

March: 261 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 21 days

April: 2874 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 13 days

May: 46029 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

June: 20926 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

July: 9824 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 19 days

August: 39060 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 17 days

September: 3610 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 6 days

October: 2622 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 9 days

November: 2733 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 12 days

December: 273 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 3 days

January: 29 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 2 days

February: 221 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 4 days

March: 370 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 3 days

April, May: nothing ;_;

June: 109 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 3 days

July: 2279 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 8 days

August, September: nothing ;_;

October: 1072 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 4 days

November: 543 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 1 day

December: 2 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 1 day

lol wtf

2024: 4625 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 26 days

Truly dreadful. Onwards and upwards?

2025 so far:

January: 2 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 1 day

February: 480 words added, and I at least looked at the fic on 1 days

March: nothing

April: nothing so far, but I did write some notes earlier in the month. And I filled out the tracker that let me so quickly type up all those big number today. And there's like a week left in the month! What are we guessing, 30k?

I have something even wronger with my brain than what makes you write something like this in the first place so I want to scrap it and start again. Like if you write 700k words over 5 years, or more like 3 or even 2 honestly lol and then just don't hardly touch it for another few years, how about just do it all again for no reason? Literally no reason and every day you are inching closer towards death

I'm just not super happy with the early chapters and I want to change my approach a bit. Like gosh, maybe even tighten things up. Except not really. So like maybe what I've written so far should come in at a short and sweet 600k, you know? And I'm thinking I can trim the POVs. It's a shame 'cause I kinda like them sometimes but I think Raul and Veronica have to go, they just slow me down. Cass, well, I'm awfully attached to opening the fic in her POV, but it still pisses me off how similar she is to my Courier (well, so is Veronica too in the opposite direction, it's not great!) but yeah whatever. I can do it like this and pretend you get one half of all the romances, which is obviously superior, but like, who is Ulysses in love with lol? (Obviously JG still carries a torch for Ed, but like, gingerly 'cause fire scary). No, this is just all silly justification and not real. But I have fun with Cass POV so it's staying! But now I can really focus on my booooooys, which is obviously all I wanted to do (until Christine comes in ofc, and I'm having 2nd 2nd thoughts about how far to take the romance between her and the Courier and all...)

There was always a huge problem with how I originally envisioned the fic, which was mostly just dossing about in the L38 and going off on little missions here and there, and how it ended up which was like too plotty. I need to be braver in terms of what to delegate to the NPCs lol. But at the same time, the Courier needs to stay as a special figure. So it's a hard one to balance, especially when you never get her POV so you can't see all her shady dealings with all the powerful figures she even vaguely hears about!! And I feel way more confident about expressing that in Boone and Arcade's POVs, who know her very well, and then in just Cass's as the alarmed outsider. Yes, it has to be better. But it shames me slightly because it's lazy lol, I'm just too lazy to fully work out the perspectives of sheltered lesbian monk and 250 year old Mexican handyman... but whatever, I mean it's a fanfic so I'm writing what I love!

I'm hoping Ronnie and Raul might actually be more interesting this way: with no confirmation that Ruth is right when she says they're trustworthy, or even at least not out to harm them. I would like more tension. I mean, it's not that tense. I'm sure it will be fairly obvious that I'm writing them as good guys and that this is, despite all the drama and violence, an everyone singing holding hands kind of fic - and I'm not looking to trick the reader, but it's less insulting if there's a little mystery, right?

And yeah, I'm just kinda hoping this can get me out of my "and what was everyone else doing?" when it's not necessary and I'm not even enjoying it. Though there are a few scenes from Raul and Ronnie's POVs I'll kinda miss, and I get that there's no reason I can't just keep those, but I feel bad not including them all equally lol which is a huge problem when the fic is so frontloaded with Boone and Arcade just by its nature (which obviously comes from my preference, too) and then I want to keep focussing on them because... they're my faves! They are the three main characters and that's just how it is. I really think it says it all that I feel so peaceful after writing this all out, even though I'm now staring down the barrel of like TWICE AS MUCH work, if not more, but the fic really just started exploding when I introduced the (mostly-)full cast, and I think this is the cure. And I don't regret what I did because I had fun despite I literally died in real life several times, and I think all the writing I did in those POVs did help me with characterisation (both ways!) so it wasn't even wasted effort for this fic. [You have become addicted to Copium. :)]

Anyway hey look at my new diary, this is the first one I actually wrote in here! And now I need to scrap the chapter listing on the new main page before I ever even finished or uploaded it lol. But the title heading thing I did is soooo cute. I'm firmly back on my bullshit and happy about it :)

oh... I was just trying to beat myself up further with how long it's been since I was writing, but right here on this pages it says 2023 was a 100k+ year so... it was really just last year... well and this year. Okay I still suck never mind ;_; onwards and upwards though [You are no longer suffering from Copium withdrawal :)]