Walk of Fate.

The World The setting and world of this story was inspired by this idea: What if a ‘glitch’ occurred in the world and reality completely broke, causing humans to be erased?

Cosmic Being An incomprehensible cosmic presence that entered reality and caused its collapse: The Shattering. It is not malicious, but fundamentally incompatible with human existence.

The Shattering The event in which reality completely broke. Without reality, human beings have lost their sense of thought and their cognition. They are completely lost in the mind.

Erasure The process by which individuals who lose their reality stability are removed from existence. The erased do not die, but rather they cease to have ever existed. Memories others have of erased individuals disappear over time. Erasure is the primary threat faced by ordinary people in the ruined world.

Entities Monstrous-like, cosmic creatures that were formulated upon The Shattering. They feed on ruined humans who have no sense of reality. Upon consumption, humans are erased from reality forever. There are various categories of entities. Most common entities are animalistic with average strength, other entities develop special powers and abilities that make them stronger. There are also entities that are more intelligent, they display more organization and sentiense. They appear as dark, shadowy creatures with a slight iridescent/rainbow aura that surrounds them. They take the shape of familiar forms and silhouettes that humans can recognize but don't exactly appear correct, similar to how things appear in dreams. They sometimes end up looking like an amalgamation of various things. All entities do have at least one eye, some have various. Their eye guides them, but it's also their weak spot. More intelligent entities tend to hide their eyes. All this yap to say, they are not too important or significant within WOF.

Stability A term used to describe the state of mind of a person and their perception of reality. There are three different types of stabilities: Stable Reality, Unstable/Ruined Reality, and the secret third one I'll get back to later.

Stable Reality People who somehow have a natural grasp on reality, without the need of influence. They are far less likely to be consumed by Entities, and are able to perceive things better. This stability grants them the ability to maintain a consistent self-narrative. Stable reality is achieved through Contracts, or people who were born with a natural stable reality.

Unstable Reality Refers to a person who has no sense of reality. This comes in the form of a trance-like state. They are completely lost and lack direction, like their mind has completely shut off. They are prone to dissolve psychologically and become vulnerable to erasure. They must be influenced in order to be brought back into reality and their senses. People with an unstable reality are also referred to as 'ruined'.

Promisers People who have signed contracts. They are granted power to one state of reality, or Schema. This allows them to create influence, and also have the ability to manifest as tangible, physical power.

Contracts An endowed gift granted to a person upon signing a physical contract. These contracts give the user, or Promisers, an immediate stable reality and the control over one of the states of reality. Contracts bind a fragment of the broken reality to a human framework that can then create influence. Contracts can be Influential and Operative. They are not mutually exclusive. (aka, this is basically the power system of this world).

Influential - in Contracts Gives the promiser high influential power. Their purpose is to shape perception and control narratives.

Operative - in Contracts The ability to manifest powers through Schema that take the form of physical and tangible capabilities.

Schemas The ten power types that can be found in Operational Contracts.

The Six Dominions Six powerful organizations/families majorly in charge of the current order and rules of the world. Also referred to simply as 'The Six'. However, after some conflict, they end up being known as The Five. The branches that make them up are:

Elites A social class. Individuals who live in the Real World that have control over manufactured reality in some way.

Zones After the effects of the Shattering, the world has been divided into areas classified as zones. There are three types of zones: Tier 1 zones (the Core), Tier 2 zones (the District), and Tier 3 zones (the Ruined).

Cities Due to the scale of destruction caused by the Shattering, The Six would not be able to save the entire world so they decided to preserve major cities instead. The major cities would become Cores and Districts. Although this story takes place on Earth, counterparts of cities in this story are larger in size.

Terminals Various train stations are placed throughout the world to allow travel between cities. Each city has various terminals stationed within Cores and Districts. The trains are completely protected, making them the only safe method to traverse through Ruined zones. Terminals are available and accessible to anyone, but they do have sections separated by class.

Manufactured Reality Contracts make people stable, but they can't be given to everyone. As to maintain the rest of humanity stable, The Five produces media and entertainment as a sort of reality. Something people can latch on to, giving them a sense of identity. The power from this comes from contracts, which directly influence the way in which people interact with the world. People in the ruined world survive because they borrow identity from celebrities, they anchor themselves to trends, narratives, & drama, and their sense of reality becomes secondhand. And most importantly, it's completely controlled.

Influence The ability to shape perception, belief, and behavior. The ability to influence comes from Promisers and the entertainment or media they produce. Influence keeps populations cognitively aligned and acts as a stabilizing force.

Fame, Elite Celebrities Being famous basically. Elite celebs reside in the Real World and they create the media the Ruined World consumes. Famous elites are promisers and use the powers of their contract to influence. However, once they sign a contract, they can never stop performing, or they risk being terminated.

ReVista The Revitilization Strategy, or known as Revista, is the leading component put together by The Five to regain control over contracts. This strategy involves requies various elite celebs to perform a number of tasks that will increase their influence. The goal of this strategy is to gain enough influence and power to overthrow the Branch of Promise.

New Sense A program developed by The Five as part of ReVista for declining famous elites. Basically, elites who have been declining in popularity, sales, or for other reasons are placed here and provided with various counseling.

Termination Refers to having one's contract terminated. Contracts can only be terminated by the person, or group, who granted their contract. In this instance, famous elite's contracts can be terminated by The Five, because they are the ones who granted it to them. Upon contract termination, the Promiser loses all powers related to their contract and their reality becomes unstable. They are at high risk of being erased.

IMPORTANT: This is a big lore yap to show a glimpse to my brainstorming and thought process for creating this story and its world. Most of this information is easier available in the overview and terminology sections, but I like to write my thoughts so here is that. This section is quite long, but it does add a bit more clarity and context to my thought process for this story.

Chat… I’m going to be very real for a moment. Sorta, idk this isn’t anything serious. We're also entering some high levels of yap with this one. For a long time, my main story (basically the one all of my ocs are a part of) has been put on hiatus. And I thought it was because I had a lack of inspiration and I was feeling creatively blocked. But the more I kept wanting to write for it, the worse it felt. This story and its characters have really been so significant to me, it’s basically my passion project. The multiple stories I’ve written for them before this one have never really stuck. The first story I made with my ocs felt very ambitious and complicated, but I still really wanted to use them for something. So instead, I shelved that previous story and made a new one, which ended up being the story that’s explained in my devlog. This new story seemed pretty cool, I thought. The purpose of this story was to be simple, something I could actually manage but still use the ocs I love. So, I started writing it and I liked it. Then I wrote some more and I still enjoyed it. And then I got writing blocked. Well, that’s bad, I guess I’ll continue with it once I get more inspiration. So I waited… and waited. The writing block never went away. And honestly, the more I read what I previously wrote, the more I hated it. So why could I not enjoy writing my passion project? Maybe it was something with the formatting or the structure. I do have a habit of stretching things out way too much without keeping mind of my limits. But honestly, the more I tried to change it, the more I realized I just did not vibe with the whole thing anymore. So, what now? Will my ocs be orphans without a coherent story forever? This sounds so strangely emotional lol, but it does feel frustrating to make so many little things over the course of many years only for it to never turn out to be anything. I’m doing this for myself, but I do have that small wish in the back of my mind that others will enjoy what stories I create. I don’t consider myself a good writer, and that may be why I can never finish anything. But I’m also worse at planning, so that may also be why. I still like what I create even for how often I seem to block myself, I want it all to be finished some day. Of course, life happens but much of my progress depends entirely on me if I do want things to be done. So… what I’ve been thinking about is starting from scratch, something completely new. Unfortunately, what I have now isn’t doing it for me anymore. It does kinda hurt. I really have gotten attached to this story despite how I’ve felt writing it. It feels odd and kinda wrong to start over, but I can’t find another way around it. Despite that, I can’t help but think: what if the new story I create doesn’t stick with me either? I don’t really know how to answer that, other than we’ll see. I have details for this new story, and a lot of random thoughts that are basically just lore dump. So this is a page I made dedicated to all the lore and terminology, for myself and anyone else who cares about my goobers. I’m still in this weird state of mind where I don’t want to let old things go, but it’s best to move on. What I do want is that I really REALLY want myself to love this new story. I want to be insane over my own work again so bad.

So, this is my dilemma! I wouldn’t consider myself the best writer. I love creating characters and writing cool stories for them, but I do get writing blocked so often. For my H4H story in particular (the devlog one), I have all the characters with set personalities, but nothing to do with them. Thus, the thing I’ve been considering at this point is to completely rewrite this story with them from scratch. It’s something I’ve thought about but never actually committed to. One of my resolutions was even to make little comics of my ocs interacting, but I feel it would become dated so quickly if I did decide to start over. So, that’s what I’m doing. I do have a couple concepts for new story ideas I wrote down in my journal, which I want to go over. But I do want to make a little disclaimer, most of this brainstorming is just gonna be me going ‘oooh’ to my own thoughts and ideas. Plus these are rambles, so it will be kinda messy. But I don’t know. I think showing this thinking process could be helpful to others, and maybe inspire some ideas. So, here we are. There are a couple reasons I’ve been wanting to restart this story, my lack of direction being a major one of course. But also, there’s this silly little series I really started to get into since 2026 began, this series being Gachiakuta. There is a lot of stuff I love about this series. The story, power system, characters, and worldbuilding in general, it’s all so peak man. I also really like the setting and world of the story, it’s really unique. Seeing a cool series like this with cool characters was just what I needed to take my story into a new direction. Before going into the concepts, I do want to provide more details about my H4H story first, because I can y'know. I know I’m doing a lot of explaining, but I feel it's essential to get an idea of what I’ve been working with. The story of H4H has a pretty set setting. It’s set in the 2000s, because I love that time period and Y2K. It’s an era I’m really nostalgic for, even though I don’t remember much of it… I honestly think it’s much better to set your stories in a specific time period, rather than leaving it as present time. I feel like a story could become more dated that way, plus it’s easier to research for past, or even future, time periods. The story also took place in Los Angeles, CA. I chose this location, particularly the downtown area, since it’s an area with various cultures. I also really like the sort of rugged look to it. Plus, it helps that I chose a setting I’m familiar with. With this in mind, I’ve thought about how I would like to keep this same setting for the re-write. I’d like to keep my story set in the real world, so I’m not concerned with creating a fictional setting. Plus, I just think this is a strong setting overall.

So in my devlog I did mention that I would be presenting my story through the video game medium. This is still an approach I'm considering... more on that later, but I still want to keep it very narrative centric. Something that did always bother me about the game aspect of H4H is the gameplay. The game would be a visual novel, which is fine if you enjoy that sort of game, but I felt it would be a bit boring without a sort of more involved gameplay aspect. I did have some ideas for some game combat mechanics, but nothing really stuck with me. Which brings me to another point, I’ve been thinking about going with more action, maybe even shonen inspired direction for the new story. My Gachiakuta brainrot is a strong motivation for this choice, of course. But this has also made me think about introducing a power system to my new story. Now, this story did use a power system before I completely rewrote it into H4H, but I’m not sure I would like to go with that previous system. I will go a bit more into my concepts for a power system in a bit, but this does easily solve the game combat aspect I struggled with. Now, I’m not an expert game dev so any combat would need to be simple. So maybe a turn-based combat system would work best. Something like from Persona, Exp 33, HSR, or even older Pokemon games for more simplicity. But, that’s something that should stay in the back of my mind for now until I’m done working out the actual contents of the story.

There are a couple of things I want to keep the same, and the rest I’m completely changing. First off, I want to make sure my story stays significant to me. So for that reason, I wanted my story to be built off something that is and has been significant to me. I like a lot of things, but they weren’t really things I would enjoy writing a story on. However, something I did already mention a bit previously, is that I really enjoy plot-driven and action animated shows. So stuff like cartoons, or more prominently, anime. This made me think of my favorite type of anime, this being shonen (and because I watch very little anime tbh). Now, this story was previously, before the H4H rewrite, basically an MHA rip-off. Crazy. So, I have tried to take a shonen angle with this story once before. But that didn’t work because, like I said, it wasn’t unique or my own. At this point, I was better off making MHA ocs and calling it a day. So, what am I doing differently this time? I’m trying to create something interesting and unique that I can enjoy writing. Not all stories have to be entirely unique concepts never done before to be good, I just did not want to make a rip-off again. So, I’m still being inspired by something. But, I want to take a more personal approach this time. So now, I’m finally sharing my new ideas for this new story: I wanted it to be shonen inspired. But what else? What about the plot, setting, or system? I still want my previous setting of 2006 and LA to remain the same, but I did think it would be interesting to add a more fictional aspect to this. Something I did emphasize with my H4H story is that the particular area of LA the story took place in had a more grunge and rugged vibe. So with that, I had an idea: post-apocalyptic setting. It would still be in the same city and take place in 2006, but this time, it would be even more rugged. I really liked that idea for the new setting. Was this very inspired by Gachiakuta? Yes... and with the other major location in this story it feels even more obvious, but that's as far as the inspiration for that goes trust. But that brought about an even bigger question: What event, or apocalypse, occurred to make the world this way? I struggled to find a solution for this. My first idea was maybe a plague, or maybe something that caused a mass hysteria? I wasn’t sure what to settle on, so I did decide to leave this off until later. Maybe through other ideas, I could come up with something to solve this lack of inspiration. So instead, I went to work more on the details of my story’s power system.

I… also had no idea how to approach this. SO, I instead looked to my previous H4H story for some inspiration. And I noticed that something that was very prominent in my old story was these powerful, mafia-like organizations. These organizations did serve a purpose in the narrative, but most of the time, they just existed to aura farm basically. A question I could not answer regarding these organizations is why and how they would even exist? No seriously, why do they exist? LA has prominent gangs, but organized crime is not really something that exists too prominently there. I don’t think all things need excessive worldbuilding and explanations, but this was something that really bothered me. If my new story would have this slightly more fictional approach, I could write in these organizations to fit within the world so much better. So, if they were so important in the original story, I wanted them to also be very important in the new story. That made me think: Would these organizations be the ones providing the powers that will be used in the power system? Maybe… But then, there was another thing I noticed about my previous story. This was completely unintentional, but my H4H story has a lot of famous and wealthy characters. All my ocs are making bank for some reason. So with this, I was now thinking: Could the power system be based on fame and social power? My first idea for the power system was this: Fame and influence are a type of power, which are manifested as a more physical way with this shonen power system. It sounded interesting, and gave me a good idea of where I could take this story, and maybe some social commentary. However, the issue I did have with this is that I also wanted the characters that are not wealthy/famous, but still equally important to the story, to not fall behind with this. So that idea didn't work out. I looked back on the organizations and the idea of fame being a sort of power in this world. This made me come up with my new idea: contracts. Written contracts a person must sign, which they are also granted some type of power upon signing. This sounded like a perfect fit for the whole fame and celebrity angle I was leaning towards. It also solved my issue with the previous power system idea. These contracts would not be mechanically exclusive to famous or wealthy people, ordinary people could have access to them too. So I now have a set idea for the power system of this world: These organizations are able to grant people with contracts that give them certain powers. Maye they would be more accessible to the wealthy/famous people they work with, but more ordinary people could also get access to them, although in more morally gray ways. This gave me even more ideas about this new world after the apocalyptic events. I still didn’t have a set idea for how the combat aspect of these powers would work, but I did get another question from this. Could the power of the contracts and the ‘apocalypse’ be related in a way? And then I fell asleep.

So I woke up the next morning with a ton of questions and thoughts. I did have that major question I mentioned, and answering this question could potentially set up the big worldbuilding concepts of this new story. Why is this story post-apocalyptic, what happened? I was thinking; do I want the apocalypse to come from an external factor or was it human made? Inspiration is odd. You could actively seek inspiration and end up with nothing. Yet you can just go about your day, consuming media without a second thought and suddenly have a big brain-blast. The previous night, I was looking for ideas on Pinterest and found nothing. So I was frustrated the next day, and I decided to just relax and watch some videos. That’s when this silly little video appeared on my home page. It was a video from my watch later playlist, which I had already watched, that was popping up again. What was the video that completely enlightened me; it was a Wreck-It Ralph video. Yeah so this story would not exist without the silly little video game movie. It's unfortunate they never made a sequel for it. The video was an analysis on Turbo, and I accidentally removed it from my watch later so I can't find it anymore... But it's a very well-made video, pretty cool stuff. But it wasn’t the specific contents of this video that inspired me, it was that it made me recall that one meme of Vanellope banging on the screen. And I think it’s pretty funny to take a dramatic moment like that and use it in this way. But that’s when I locked in and a certain idea came to mind. What if the apocalypse was caused by some type of glitch? This sounds cool, but I kept going deeper. I started rearranging the details from the clip, like I was learning words for the first time. Glitch, broken, erasure: these words... what do they all mean? And then, everything finally came together. The big ‘why’ was finally answered. What if some glitch occurred on Earth and reality completely shattered, causing humans to be erased forever? Oooh my mind, it even amazes me sometimes. This was it, everything moving forward would now make some sense. But wait, there’s more.

So I’m a big fan of cosmic horror. The idea that there are beings so incomprehensible to the human mind that may exist, and how terrifying that thought is? Mhm, big fan. I have considered, and even tried, to make a story that includes cosmic horror. And as it turns out, this might just be the one. This glitch in reality could have been caused by a cosmic being coming into Earth. Do I have a reason why it showed up? No… but I think the mystery is more interesting. Just the presence of this being made reality break, but not by destroying the planet itself, but by destroying humans. Again, cosmic horror is based on madness, forbidden knowledge, and unknowable and incomprehensible horrors. So this cosmic being made humanity see something that it shouldn’t, and that completely breaks their mind. So reality is broken, existence has no meaning, and humans are now perpetually in this trance-like state of: what even is the purpose? Basically, the doomer’s perspective. This also ends up creating these smaller entities that are the monstrous creatures, and they feed on people with this unstable state of mind. This is how people are erased. The entities consume them and they disappear, but that isn’t all. Memories others have of that person also disappear over time, like they never existed. And I love this idea, it’s so weird and creepy. However, there are a small selection of people who still have a ‘stable’ mind. The term stability will come up a lot so let me explain it (again). Stability refers to the state of mind of a person and their perception of reality. There are three main types of stabilities that correlate to reality: Stable reality, unstable reality, and the secret third one we’ll learn about on episode 4. People with a stable reality have a grasp on reality. People with unstable reality have, well, no sense of reality. They are prone to dissolve psychologically and become vulnerable to erasure by Entities. As I explained, the shattering of reality basically made everyone lose their mind, literally. People with an unstable reality can act differently from one another. Some may be just completely hollow and dead inside, while others may enter a state of hysteria. Either way, society has collapsed. This does answer my question I had regarding the origins of the apocalypse, which from now on I will be referring to as The Shattering. The Shattering was caused by an external force, the cosmic being, but was then created by humans affected by it.

So going back to a previous point, 6 individuals with a stable reality group up. They are not entirely there mentally, but are able to gather some thoughts. And they come to the mind-breaking conclusion that the world and humanity are cooked. At this point, I will start going over my concepts chronologically in terms of the story, rather than in the way I came up with them (by daydreaming in class ofc). It just makes it easier to understand and follow along. So the 6 individuals go out and search for the cosmic being. Because surely if it caused this then it can fix it, right? But getting ahold of a literal cosmic being is near impossible, so they never end up finding it. Out of fear and frustration, the individuals just start screaming out loud. They cry for order and reason to return back into the world. Suddenly, a pen and paper manifest into each of their hands. This is a contract. How did this happen? I dunno. They don't either, but it likely was by the cosmic being. Bro was tired of their screaming. They end up signing the contracts, because what other option do they have? And upon this, they are brought back into reality. Aside from cool powers, contracts have the ability to bring sense back into a person. I don’t imagine that it completely gets rid of everything they saw with the cosmic being, but they are able to 'process' it now. So these six people, these six guys if you will, are thinking: what just happened? But more importantly, can it happen again? It turns out that it can. Anyone with a stable reality is able to manifest a contract. Us, yes, me and you. So this is where the situation becomes… complicated. After these five individuals provide contracts for their families and close ones, they are left with a question. What about everyone else? A large majority of the human population is still left, not everyone has been erased. Giving everyone in the world a contract can help turn things back to normal. But contracts are now power. Not just their cool, physical powers; just power. Not everyone should have power.

So here is our first instance of conflict. These six individuals are not entirely great people. They were the first to discover this, they have the right to reserve this power, right? Besides, if everyone has power then no one has power. At the end of the day, its greed and wanting to be in control. But leaving everyone to die and basically reducing the human population to the hundreds would not benefit them either. So they develop this ‘savior’ mentality. They were chosen to create rules after they were made void. They are the ones putting the world back together. Their duty is to save humanity. 'There is no god so I stepped up' ahh people. So you know how I mentioned that organizations provided others with contracts? This is them. The six individuals and everyone close to them become the first Elites, the people in control. But they also form six organizations, you know for the formality of it all. These organizations and their leaders will then be known as The Six Dominions. So they get to work, they come up with a plan to bring order back into the world. But before they get to saving people, they need to isolate themselves into their own little bubble because they are not going to live with these brokies. Contracts can do a lot of things, so they give people contracts that make them able to build things really well and really fast. This is how they build the ‘Real World’. A world separate and restricted from the Ruined World. By the way, the Ruined World is just all of Earth, and it is completely ruined (who would have guessed?). So after they have their neat little utopia, how exactly will they save people? They did a bit of experimenting. You know, just a little science fair project with the boys. Contracts also allow the contract user, or Promisers as they are called, to share reality through influence. So I did a little bit of investigating and exploring the internet in search of… reality lore? Getting to this point of the story development where you are just researching random stuff is the most fun thing ever, but it also means you’re hard invested now. So I went to Wikipedia and found the Theory of Categories. All of this stuff is pretty cool, especially to someone not smart like me. There are a lot of different ideas by different philosophers, but I decided to settle on Aristotle’s version. So the states of reality are these ten: Substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, condition, action, and affection. Now this comes from the text Categories and is meant to ‘place every object of human apprehension under one of ten categories.’ So I dunno, I think it’s fitting within my context. Also, I did mention influence earlier, and that’s also an important term. This is turning into a lot of lore soup, but stay with me. Influence is the ability to shape perception, belief, and behavior for other people. This is where our third type of stability comes in: Manufactured Reality. Through contracts, promisers can influence people and bring them back to reality. This breaks them from their trance-like state and they have sense again. Also, they are no longer in danger of being erased or consumed by entities. But manufactured reality is odd. Unlike people with a stable reality, being under this influence makes people very dependent. I guess it could be considered similar to being brainwashed in a way. They are still stable, and are able to think for themselves and are basically normal again. But, again, very dependent. But dependent on what exactly? Obviously, this would be the elites, Six Dominions, and celebrity/famous promisers, but in what way do they influence ordinary people? This is where we bring back fame and celebrities. Because, one of the easiest ways to influence is by consuming media. All types of media work in this world: music, movies, television, fashion, arts, etc. By making this media mass produced, through relevance and fame, everyone can access it. SO the elites gather people who were famous or just talented people, give them a contract, and make them create. Wow, this is such a perfect system. And most importantly, they are still the ones in control yipee! Anyone, including ordinary people in the Ruined World, can be recruited to be a famous elite. They just have to have the talent to create and perform for billions. Once they are recruited and sign their contract, they are invited to live in the Real World. Isn't this so awesome? Just don't stop performing or we'll kick you out into the entities.

So, new story but same characters. How do my goobers fare in this new story? I have plenty of ideas, various scenarios are playing in my head as we speak. But before that, let me tell you a little something… This is going to sound very confusing at first, but it will only really be relevant for this little section. Just hold my hand ok, let me cook. This lore page and the information in it are not the reboot I’ve been discussing in this ramble. Everything in this lore page is actually a reboot of the reboot. Basically, everything I’ve yapped about so far is still very much relevant to the current story, but it was made in mind for a different story. You know how I said I wanted to make this an action, shonen story? Yeah, that idea didn’t last. That was the reboot. I’m not really used to writing action like that, so although the idea seemed cool at first, it became draining pretty quickly… But, everything about the world I’ve built up until this point remains the same, so it’s basically just a different plot. That’s all there is to this portion, I won’t mention anything about the old story or the old reboot plot because that can get confusing really fast. I just wanted to include another important aspect to my thought process, since it’s a pretty important little bit. Any and all other information in this page is relevant to the ‘Walk of Fate’ story, aight. With my previous idea dying down pretty quickly, what was I going to do with these characters and everything I’ve made up until this point? Was I just going to discard everything and start from scratch again? Well, no, because I didn’t want to. I loved all of the worldbuilding I put together so far, the plot was just not really hitting. I was seeking some ideas and that led me to watching others’ oc content on TikTok. Something I noticed is that a lot of popular ocs on the site had a strong hook to their story (or they were just very visually aesthetic but…) And that made me think, what should be my hook? My previous stories with these characters have had some pretty lackluster hooks and plots in my opinion. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but I wanted to be able to explain my story in one sentence to make it something easy to get into. And since I was on the topic of TikTok content, I was also thinking about branding and what ocs I would be associated with. There’s of course Louis, the main character of my story, and I would personally enjoy making content with him. But something felt a bit lacking. I did end up realizing that for pretty much all other stories I make, I have a duo of two main characters. This to me sounds much more interesting and makes it easier to demonstrate who your ocs are if they have someone to bounce off of. So it took me a moment, but I eventually found a plot idea I really like.

So my priorities for a new story were for it to have two main characters, an easy to digest plot, and have it take place in the same world I had been previously working on. I still want to make something I enjoy and not just for the sake of easy to create Tik Tok content. A thing that really bothered me about my previous reboot was Louis as a hitman. This is a big part of his character and in that reboot, it felt more like a title than an actual occupation he actively works on. So I wanted to go back to that concept. But then there’s the question of who should be my secondary character. The biggest contender for this was Mika. She’s always been in an odd spot for me since she’s meant to be a major character, but I always end up writing her as if she was just another side character. So this new role was perfectly fitting for her. With this, I came up with my new idea: A bodyguard is hired to protect a famous singer from continuous threats, but there’s one issue - he’s also a hitman hired to assassinate her. My mind, it always amazes me… (This was already obvious if you read the story section lol) This new plot fits all my criteria, and personally, I think it’s a pretty nice hook. Just as a side note, I decided to change Mika to be a singer rather than keeping her as an office worker. So now, I have a plot premise I really like, but what about the plot itself? Like many things I create, I was overly afraid that this story would become overly ambitious to the point I get caught up in my own ideas and completely lose the plot. So, I wanted to make sure this story was contained. This plot idea already sets up a premise of a story focused on two characters, so that’s already a good start. I didn't want to lose focus on the two main characters that mattered, but… i also wanted to include my other ocs lol. I'm not going to get too into this now, but it was a prominent thought in the back of my mind as I brainstormed how this story should be approached. If I don’t enjoy writing heavy action too much, what do I like to write? Well, I really like thinking of mundane character interactions, so drama and slice of life is more my style. I also enjoy comedy and tragic comedies, and considering how ironic the concept for this story is, I think that would fit for it too. So now, I have an idea for the genres. What I wanted to decide now is the conflict, story structure, and character roles.

It took me a moment to fill in the blanks, but I was essentially rearranging and brainstorming on the world building I had previously built. First, I wanted to identify the conflict. Since I mentioned I want the plot of this story to be light, I’d imagine some of these things don’t have to be too drastic. Maybe some of the conflict could come from everyday inconveniences such as how Mika handles her responsibility as a celebrity, how Louis manages his double life, and how both perceive the system they’re under. There’s also another major aspect: their relationship and their growth. For as much ship art as I will draw of them, they do NOT get along at first. This was a good starting point… but I felt it was not enough. Yeah, stories focused on a sole relationship can and do work, but there’s a big elephant in the room I needed to address. So why is Louis tasked with assassinating and bodyguarding Mika? This is such an important part for the plot setup, so I needed to figure it out now. Part of Mika’s conflict is that she has begun to resent being famous and wants to quit, yet she’s not allowed to. So what’s the reason, is it a contract thing (an actual contract, not the one in the terminology) or something larger overall? But more importantly, how should this correlate with my previous question? My brain was just a bit fried at this point lol. So I took a step back and worked on something else. But when I got back to thinking, I thought of something: war. Mhm, so what happened to saying I didn’t want this story to become overly ambitious? Well, the ‘war’ itself would not be the main conflict but it would be the setup for the conflict. Walk with me here ok. So I mentioned The Six Dominions and the power they have over contracts, the Branch of Promise in particular. What if something caused this branch to split from the rest, leading to some cold-war implications? What would that something be, and could it be related to the contracts? Well, yes, but it took me a moment to get my concepts straight. This is better explained in the overview section, but essentially: contracts have been malfunctioning, the Branch of Promise noticed and got scared, they offered ideas to fix this to the other branches but they refused, they got pissed off at them so the spit off and ceased distribution of contracts, they employed gangs to demonstrate The Five’s system, the Five initiated ReVista, and then there’s all the rest of their cold war. It feels so nice for all my insane ramblings to come together and make sense now. This also answers so many questions. Mika can’t quit at this time because celebrities are basically a scarce resource at the moment, since no new contracts are being produced. It’s also more important than ever that they’re active so they can contribute to the ReVista strategy. With the turmoil the Branch of Promise has employed, celebrities are being targeted now. But this has been going for a while now, so why is it just now that Mika’s getting a bodyguard? Well, it has to do with the fact that Louis is also her hitman. The Five have been able to handle all threats made to Mika, because they’re miniscule, but when they start hearing rumors of potential assassination threats, they need to lock in. So, who is Louis in this story exactly? Well, he’s basically an agent who works for The Five. He is amongst the best that they have so when the idea came up of hiring a bodyguard for Mika, he was the best choice. But it’s just not because of his skills that they keep him around, they also keep a close eye on him for their own reasons. There’s something they know about him that nobody else does… but that’s enough of that! Louis also has a sort of double life since he works as a hitman on his own account. Why does he do this? Who knows. Do the Five know? Yes, but… this is another plot hole I need to fill in, but for the time being, they just don’t care. But they should because he is the hitman at the center of the assassination rumors, but The Five have no idea it's him. How convenient that this government that has eyes literally everywhere would miss this important little detail, call that plot convenience. So, who hired him? The obvious answer is the Branch of Promise, but I’m gonna be honest, I’m still not too decided on this part yet. But with the basis for the conflict now complete, what’s the story structure?

So you know how I mentioned the ReVista strategy earlier? I mentioned it so my ramblings made a bit more sense, but this idea took me a WHILE to get to. And it started with brainstorming how the story should look like. This is where I mention that I’ve begun to see this story work for a show rather than a game. Technically, a visual novel could work, but I see it more fitting as an animated show. So then what would a typical episode look like? I needed a plot device that gave the story a goal and each episode some meaning to that goal, so this is where ReVista comes from. First off, how is Louis supposed to assassinate Mika when he is hired by The Five to protect her? He doesn’t. Failing the Five would be detrimental for him, so he quite literally can’t kill her right now. So now the story isn’t about him being a bodyguard AND hitman anymore, is it? Well, Louis knows that ReVista exists and, as the story begins, the strategy is at its final stretch. Mika is a popular figure of very high influence, so her contribution is really important for this. Simply put, the more she puts in, the quicker the strategy will meet its goal. And when it does, he would no longer need to be her bodyguard. There is a little note with the hitman commission, which is that it has no deadline, and the assassination can be done at any time but as soon as possible. So Louis’ plan works perfectly for him: he pushes Mika towards ReVista so the war can be over with and he can finish his job. All ReVista is about is raising celebrity influence, so it would involve events, meet-ups, concerts, and PR. This is the story structure. But there is also another idea I had for the structure itself. Considering how the story is light and focused on character interaction, I wanted there to be a good amount of ‘filler’ episodes that were not always focused on moving the plot forward, but rather, developing the characters and world further. So this story is made up of two things: plot arcs and light filler. The plot arcs would be longer (about 2-6 episodes) and focus on ReVista stuff. They would have more action, drama, and higher stakes. Then there’s the light filler. These would be half or a full episode of a self-contained story. These are pretty much here to develop interactions, but they can also contain some smaller plot elements. Both the arcs and filler would be pretty prominent, with not one being used more than the other. I really like this formula, and I find that it fits so well with my writing style. Anyways, I have been feeling insane over Louis and Mika and have not stopped thinking about them or their interactions. Omg my ocs, i care so much