Klok Blogs: The Ancient Era Breakdown!

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not yet finished reading the Ancient Era of Cryopod Refresh, do not read this post! Come back to it once you have. I will link it at the bottom of Part 173.

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Welcome to my official post regarding the Ancient Era of Cryopod Refresh, what it means for the story moving forward, along with my reflections about what I did right and wrong, along with what I would never change, and what I wish I could change.

Today's post is a banger. It will be incredibly long and detailed. So, for those of you with very little time on your hands, I will quickly condense the points into a fun little TL:DR.

-In my opinion, I could have skipped the Ancient Era and achieved much of my goals with plenty of callback dialogue between Jason, the Archangels, and Solomon. However, I would not have been able to pull off the big reveal of Part 172; which involves Jason suddenly losing Solomon's Crown. This specific point is so important that I almost single-handedly believe it was worth the Ancient Era.

-However, there were plenty of things that occurred as a result of writing the Ancient Era that I don't think I could have pulled them off in any other way. A lot of this is related to setting up future plot points, building up certain characters, and crafting a very specific narrative which I can't reveal due to its spoilery nature.

-My biggest regrets of the Ancient Era come down to only a few points; Time taken, speed of releases, stagnating Jason's storyline for 350k words, and a few poorly executed character threads. (Those two characters are Orias and Artorias, who will be important moving forward into chapter 3.)

-Overall, I do not regret writing the AE, but I do regret several specific occurrences which happened as a result of writing it. Mainly, the time taken on it, as well as the execution of a few minor and one major plot element.

-The AE suffered from several issues, but the most important was the 'prequel dilemma'.

-Chapter 3c from Cryopod Classic was a mistake, and will be corrected by moving it to pre 3a in Refresh.

...

The bullet points above are sufficient for a very general, vague, broad overview of my thoughts on the Ancient Era. However, I strongly invite everyone to continue reading to see my more detailed thoughts regarding the Ancient Era. For any aspiring writers, I think my thoughts on this matter will be especially interesting. A fool learns from his mistakes, while a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. 

At least, I think that's how it goes!

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Part 1: Cryopod Classic's Near-Death Experience.

One really important factoid about myself that some people might find interesting; I despise making missteaks. Especially more than once. I try to never replicate a mistake I've made in the past and always cut them out of my psyche.

The Ancient Era has one very noteworthy feature that I inadvertantly copied from my earlier writing: It stops the main plot of the story entirely to start fleshing out other, somewhat less important elements of the main universe.

So, one might ask themselves a question. What do I mean when I say I've made this mistake once before?

Look no further than Cryopod Classic, Route 3c.

While writing Cryopod Classic, I was in the process of reaching a pivotal point in Route 3B's plot. Let's just say, there were some absolutely massive developments about to happen; and had I merely continued writing, I would have finished Cryopod Classic on a truly phenomenal high unlike any other.

I am intentionally avoiding spoilers. For readers who remember the ending of Chapter 3B, you know what I'm talking about.

However, I made a huge mistake. Colossal, actually. It was a mistake I came to deeply regret, and directly responsible for my deciding to stop Cryopod Classic and do a rewrite.

I had, half a year earlier, stated there would be three routes in Cryopod Classic. Route A, route B, and Route C. I wrote all of route A with this knowledge in mind. However, upon writing Route B, I lucked out when Soni joined me as a beta reader. I was in turmoil at the time. I was five parts into Chapter 3B and had NO idea what I was doing plot and character-wise. For the first time while writing, I realized that my story had absurdly bad foundations. I didn't know where to go with it, and I had not planted the proper seeds for an excellent story.

However.

Soni joined my Beta Reader crew and gave me immensely helpful advice. Not just advice; he helped me totally rewire my brain when it came to writing characters. Until that point, my only concept of character writing came from ideas like, "This character is always angry" or "This character hates Green Beans". Basically, characters were a superficial set of traits that made them do the same things constantly. Most importantly, I had never comprehended the idea of "Story tension" and how the more conflict there was, the better the story could be.

Soni put me on the straight and narrow. He helped me retroactively fix and flesh out all the horrible, no-good, very bad plot points from the earlier chunks of Cryopod Classic.

In doing so, he allowed me to craft a series of incredible rises and falls that would lead to the ultimate finale of Cryopod Classic.

BUT.

But...

There was a problem.

That damned, pesky promise I made to my readers six months earlier that I would eventually write a Route C.

Soni and I hotly debated it. Both of us agreed that it was probably a bad idea. However, I doggedly believed it would be better to write Route 3c explicitly because I was a better writer and could totally make it work.

However, doing so killed the momentum of Route 3B. I had to end 3B on this incredible cliffhanger that made people's heads explode. Yes, it was truly that good.

And what came of my choice? Route 3C.

Now, don't get me wrong. Route 3C was pretty good in its own right. It had some really satisfying moments. But, the absurd leaps of logic I had to make to tie it together with Route 3B and the, erm, timelines, meant that none of it made much sense at the end.

By the time I finished Route 3C... I was fucking spent. I was beaten and battered. 

Let me tell you something. I stared at my computer for two hours the day after publishing Route 3C's finale... and the only thing I could think in my head were five words, over and over.

"I want to quit writing."

When I saw the scale of cleanup I would need to tie not only Route 3A and 3B together, but also 3C, I just... couldn't.

You have to understand; if it were simply combining Routes 3A and 3B together, that would have been simple. I wrote Route 3B to flow into and connect to Route 3A with Soni's help. We came up with all kinds of, ahem, string theories to explain how the, ahem, events, of those two routes worked together with Chapters 1 and 2.

But Route 3C threw all of our work out the window. Connecting everything was goddamned near impossible. Had I tried to write a logical, character-driven finale for Cryopod Classic, it would have destroyed Cryopod.

I am telling you this now, as the author, that if I had tried to finish Cryopod Classic, you would have been horribly disappointed. You would have been left scratching your heads, saying things like, "Why is X person here? Why are they doing this or that? I don't understand what's going on. This story sucks now. It used to be good."

...

That is why I chose to 'refresh' Cryopod Classic. Of course, as I tried to simply 'refresh' the story, I ended up instead doing a massive rewrite. I had to. The more I read, the more I realized just how piss-poor everything was written, especially with my newfound knowledge of the mechanics of writing.

So. Now that I have explained to you why Cryopod Classic Route 3C destroyed Cryopod Classic's momentum and nearly destroyed the whole story... let me explain why I said that the Ancient Era was nearly a mistake on par with 3C.

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Part 2: Repeating History.

One reason you might think I consider the Ancient Era a fuckup is because of the time it took me, as well as how it slows down the story.

Those are not the reasons.

Oh, don't get me wrong, they ARE problems; but they are not the true reasons I think the Ancient Era was in many ways, a colossal mistake.

The reason the AE was almost a story-ender was because of my motivations for writing it.

Why did I write Cryopod Classic Route 3C? Because I told my readers I would.

Why did I write the Ancient Era? Because it was in Cryopod Classic, and I planned to stick to Classic's skeleton as a rough draft as much as possible, even when it makes no sense.

That's right.

I did write the AE for several good reasons, but most pressing was this general idea that, "I did it in Cryopod Classic, and it had many good moments there, so I should do it in Refresh too."

Dear aspiring authors: Do not do this. Ever.

There are many good reasons to write something. Doing so just because you promised yourself or someone else, or writing a thing because someone else or yourself did it in the past; these are awful reasons.

I wrote the Ancient Era because, for some stupid reason, I believed it was the best way to convey the epic scope of the ancient wars between angels and demons. More importantly, because it had a few really epic moments in Cryopod Classic. I actually intended to recreate as many of them as possible, but ended up going in different direction!

Many of the failures I discuss in today's post are considered failures by me explicitly because I did them out of obligation; not because I thought they were the best possible options for me to move forward.

It doesn't mean the Ancient Era wasn't effective. It doesn't mean the Ancient Era sucked, or that it ruined Cryopod. Compared to Route 3C of Classic, the Ancient Era in Refresh is a shining jewel of perfection.

But, let us be honest; I could have done even better had I not shackled myself to the specter of Cryopod Classic.

That's what today's post is ultimately all about. I have promised myself to never again write something out of mere obligation.

If I write something, it will be because I have reviewed many options, and the one I choose will be the one that is most logical and best takes the story in a direction which excites me.

So. With that in mind, let's continue onward to the actual structure of the AE, and all of my tangled, myriad thoughts surrounding it.

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Part 3: Goals Achieved and Success Stories Crafted.

There is plenty to dislike about the Ancient Era, but there is FAR more that I believe worked out infinitely well for Cryopod as a whole. I want to start with the positive points before moving on to the negative stuff.

First, I am ecstatic with how I managed to set up dozens of future plot points which will come into play over the coming chapters of the story. My only regret on that front is how long it will take for many of these plot points to bear fruit. When they do, though, someone who re-reads the story will surely have their mind blown by the patience required to set up these points.

Unfortunately, when it comes to these future plot points, I can't say much about them. They're simply too spoilery.

So, instead, I will do a character-by-character analysis of everyone who appeared in the Ancient Era. This will show on a relative scale just how happy I am with each character's development, setup, and developed personality.

Let's start with the 'five main characters' who begin the Ancient Era.

--Jason: The ultimate point of showing the Ancient Era is to give Jason and the reader a bigger-picture look at the history of the Cryopod universe, allowing both to broaden their horizons. If I could change anything, I might try to find a way to make Jason more of an 'active observer' toward the end, particularly during the War in Heaven arc. Overall, I'm very happy with the progress I made for him, especially given he and Solomon's mutual choice to part ways.

--Solomon: The second biggest benefactor of the AE. While Solomon did not actually gain any new knowledge about the past, since he already knew what would happen, his observations of Jason allowed him to decide that Jason was not the ally he first desired. I won't say more beyomnd this, since his character arc has plenty in store for the future, but I do feel it's important to mention that Solomon went through as much of an arc as Jason did during the AE.

--The Three Archangels, Raphael/Gabriel/Michael: These three characters did not undergo a huge amount of character development by viewing the AE... at least, not on the surface. If one peels back a few layers, however, this idea can be fairly easily disproven. Raphael never knew of Leviathan's existence prior to Solomon's visions, nor did he know of Camael's worries, her struggles, and the weight on her shoulders. Michael ended up learning that he was a monster during the primordial era, which destroyed his psyche in a meaningful way. Gabriel, on the other hand, underwent little to no development at all.

As for why Gabriel seemingly underwent so few changes... well, let's just say there's a very good reason for that.

Next, let's look at all of the demons from the Ancient Era. The demons were essentially the protagonists of the AE, humanizing them somewhat and allowing us to see their struggles and origins.

--Satan: The most important demon of the AE by far, Satan's rise to power is probably my favorite part of the last 350,000 words, without a doubt. Not only do we see how he gains power, forges alliances, avenges his hatred, and executes brilliant plans to take out the angels, we also get to see his failures and lowest points. He ends up trapped in the Cosmic Realm and nearly loses everything, all because he wanted to save his friends while also dealing a deadly blow to the angels. Satan proves himself a strategic thinker, yet also a man burdened with ego and regret.

--Valac: Honestly, while I do greatly enjoy how Valac turned out, I definitely could have and should have made Valac a much more dangerous and prolific antagonist. His origins were pretty weak, and his motivations bland. He didn't do a lot for the first half of the AE, and that's all because I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing yet. (This is also the cause of the AE's substantial length) So, overall, I rate his second half as a 9/10, and his first half as maybe a 3/10. If I were to rewrite the AE in the future, I would focus heavily on trimming the fat from the first half and giving Valac a much larger role in the overall narrative.

--Belial: While I will say that Belial didn't have a ton of good moments, the ones where she did were extremely impressive. Belial didn't do much in the first half of the AE, but only because she wasn't a primary character. Toward the end, she had a much bigger presence, and that was by intention, since she will be an important character moving into chapter 3 and I wanted to really focus on her character development.

 --Nerissa: Nerissa, Satan's original lover, was a character from Classic I repurposed to serve several roles. For one, she's an ice manipulator, which was a fun new powerset. Second, she was Belial's sister, and a very strong contrast, at that. While Belial hated fighting and killing, Nerissa was almost playful in how she beheaded several Titan women and gave their heads to Satan to crush. She was mostly created as motivation for Satan to eventually initiate the WiH, but also as a reminder to him of how he needed to become stronger to protect the people he cared about. Unfortunately, I didn't really get to flesh out her and Satan's relationship, so I will freely admit she came off a little empty, character-wise.

--Bael: Another character we'll see plenty of moving forward. I wanted Bael to have a big presence in the AE, and in many ways, he was one of the most important characters. Just think about it for a minute. This guy took out Hercules, held his own against the Archdemon, punted Camael back to the stone age, and had plenty of awesome moments all around. If Satan was the brain of demonkind, Bael was the heart. (And brawn.) When it comes to Bael, I have zero regrets. He was awesome from beginning to end.

--Diablo: Naturally, I wanted Diablo to have a big moment during the WiH when he became the Archdemon, but even prior to that, he had lots of high quality scenes. Being tortured by Michael, only to come back and take revenge during the WiH, the scene where Lucifer and Berith challenge Satan but Diablo stays back and lets them fail, and  let's not forget the part where his insanely powerful punch nearly killed the Balrog in one hit. Like, come on, this guy was intense. Unfortunately, his early appearances fell sort of flat, but that was an issue many characters had in the first half of the AE.

--Lucifer: Lucy is a character I'm somewhat torn on. She definitely had some shining moments, but I never really got to put as much of her into the story as I originally wanted. I don't have much to say, beyond, "Well, she had a few fun scenes and that was about it." Definitely one of the weaker characters.

--Berith: Berith was something of a last-minute addition. In all honesty, she wasn't someone I originally intended to add, but I needed Valac to have an upper-tier lackey, and she allowed me to fulfill several objectives. For one, she helped give Davook his power, but she also assisted greatly in the Hercules ending, she was a decent foil for Lucifer, and she had a couple decent scenes during the WIH. Overall, I'd say she was a fairly middling character, but I liked her well enough.

--Artorias and Barbatos: I lump these characters together because they are so intricately intertwined. Unfortunately, while I think I did the annoying and whiny little Barbatos serious justice (and gave him a crazy cool fight scene against the Balrog!) his brother Artorias got the shaft a bit. This is because, no matter how I tried, I could not think of a good personality for him. By the time I did, the AE was 80% complete and I was about to kill both of them off. Let's just say that MWTX's art ended up helping me out a lot. Sadly, I have no way of fixing Artorias's character and dialogue easily. I may have to resort to retroactive lampshading in future arcs.

--Orias: I gave Orias one good scene, and that was it. Sadly, I had a similar issue with him as with Artorias, in that I couldn't come up with a good powerset or personality until more than halfway into the Ancient Era. Had I done so, we'd have gotten to see all sorts of fun shit happen with his gems. That's okay, though! In the future, there will be TONS of Orias to go around!

--Agares: I think I did Agares just fine. He was the source of demon mutations, he got several badass fight scenes, and he was a reliably solid supporting character. He didn't overstay his welcome, and he accomplished what I needed him to.

--Shax and Murmur: This brother and sister duo have no art presently. They probably felt like minor characters during the WIH arc, but they may just end up having significant roles down the road. I liked them enough, and I think I gave them pretty solid beginnings during the AE, without overstaying their welcome.

--Davook: Heh. I accomplished all of my goals with him, and wrote him very memorably. I have very few regrets, other than his first and possibly second intro scenes, where he barely had any dialogue and didn't establish his personality.

--Smealum: Who dis? Ohh, right, he's that one dark-skinned demon, the Animus. Yeah. He's probably unimportant. Just a nobody in the grand scheme of things.

...

After the demons come the angels.

--Raphael: I wanted to sell the idea of Raphael slowly being revealed to be something of a monster. In many ways, he is the Thanos of his people, having snapped away all of their memories and those of the Titans in some unknown, shady deal where only he was allowed to retain them. As the AE goes on, it becomes clear that the Archangel of Wisdom is hiding things that he doesn't want others to know. Some of his reasons are pure and virtuous, while others are not. 

With the revelation that ascending to the status of an Archangel requires a colossal number of souls, one might ask themselves this question: How many of his fellow angels did Raphael kill to become the anti-soul-manipulator that he is today? After all, killing other angels and taking their souls must be how he made his soul strong enough to defeat other Soul Manipulators. Should a being like him have ever been the leader of his people?

--Gabriel: Gabriel was the most static of all the characters in the AE. This is by design. Due to a personality trait which I haven't explored much (and most likely will in the future), Gabriel is something of an autistic character. If you examine how he speaks, talks, and emotes, you might find that he almost has a case of aspergers. This is partially to make him more interesting, and also to obscure certain other elements of his personality. I won't say anything else due to spoilers, but let's just say that I'm very pleased with how I used him during the AE. No regrets.

--Michael: Michael is one of my favorite angels. I don't know if he's in the number one position, but he's definitely up there. On top of having badass swordsman ship skills, Ultra Instinct, and the ability to fire holy energy from his eyes, Michael's most notable personality traits really came out during the Ancient Era; namely his stubbornness, pride, haughtiness, and general braggadocious nature. These traits collided with his realizations across all of the AE and WIH where he came to find out he was not as powerful as he once was, and even if he were still the mightiest killer in all of existence, the need for his bloodthirsty ways had been left long, long in the distant past. His vile nature is partially to blame for the rise of the demons, and eventually, I think I demonstrated how he came to realize his mistakes near the end fairly well.

--Uzziel: Uzziel was, in essence, the protagonist for the angel faction throughout the first half of the AE. While her presence did noticeably die off later in the AE and especially the WIH, I think she was by far the most influential angel when it came to the events of the Ancient Era. She created the demons and loosed them upon the world. Her naivete allowed them to enter Heaven (though Raphael was also partially to blame) and unleash havoc, and she also played a major role in Samael's arc later on. 

Eventually, we came to find out that, despite Uzziel's childlike demeanour, she was once considered the most bloodthirsty, vile, monstrous of all the Archangels. Only the memory wipes and Raphael's unceasing efforts to change her resulted in Uzziel's peaceful nature. However, her history comes back in a rush when Hercules unleashes Uzziel's full power as Yggdrasil during the WIH, kills the recently-revived Hydra, and nearly takes over all of Heaven with her power.

Overall, I am extremely satisfied with Uzziel's development during the AE. She will be interesting to learn more about as we progress through the rest of Cryopod.

--Camael: Unlike the other characters of the AE, I had a very strong idea of what I wanted for Camael from the very beginning. She would be the doomsayer of angelkind; the one who saw their annihilation coming but felt powerless to stop it. As the creator of all Divine Artifacts, Camael's presence ripples not only into the beginning of time, but the end of it as well. Having created nearly every magical object we'll find moving forward, her power exceeds the other Archangels in intangible ways. 

Camael's personal conflict with Valac was born out of necessity. I did not originally intend for Valac to be a seer like she was, but I decided to give him the power so that he and her could become polar opposites of one another and have a more intense villain/hero dynamic. Overall, I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

--Uriel: Honestly, I swear to god, Uriel might be my most favorite Archangel. It's hard to say. Unlike the others, she will have a very real presence in the upcoming chapters as a result of being trapped in Barbatos's body. Her powers make her the Avatar of Cryopod, giving her the ability to bend all four primary elements, while also possessing divine energy manipulation, and ace-level physical combat skills. She can summon divine constructs, too, giving her the biggest, most diverse powerset across potentially all of Cryopod. 

If I had any complaint, it's that I didn't get to give her much of an arc during the Ancient Era, since she started off hating the demons and ended up dying while still hating them. Of course, her arc is nowhere near complete,. as we'll soon come to find out...

--Samael: Ahh, Samael. Hades. While he isn't my #1 most favorite Archangel, I would certainly put him in the top 3 when it comes to being a multi-faceted, complex, unique character. Originally forced to work for the Devil against his will, he fights Satan every step of the way, only to find out in the end that they were on the same side the whole time.

Samael had potentially the strongest arc across all of the Ancient Era. His relationship with Satan gives them almost something of a buddy cop dynamic, where they bicker and poke at one another, but eventually unite over their similarities, rather than allowing their differences to divide them. His powers didn't get a lot of time to shine, but as the Archangel of Change, I can assure my readers, he is not someone who should be trifled with.

Also, let's not forget how many times he kicked ass while in Satan's mind. He defeated Valac when the Reaper tried to intrude, he took out Hercules, and even managed to beat the shit out of his brother Raphael, too! He is the ultimate weapon against unsuspecting telepaths, giving Satan a fighting chance against would-be mental assailants. Man, I love Hades.

--Catherine: At about halfway into the Ancient Era, I introduced several lower-ranking angels. This was partially to give myself room for more disposable angels later on, while also allowing me some breathing room for the angels to fight back against the massive number of demons I listed above. Catherine, leader of the Valkyries, is the first of those characters.

To say Catherine is my favorite Valkyrie is a gross understatement. She's awesome, and partly this is due to the prevelance of the Catherine name littered throughout a lot of Cryopod. Even ignoring that, a battle-scarred warrior girl with flame magic similar to Beelzebub who has suffered from painful dragonfire burns for tens of eons is just an interesting character to write for. Her relationship with Michael, Uriel, Camael, her fellow Valkyries, and her eventual confrontation with Valac cement her as not only the most interesting Valkyrie, but one of the top five most impactful characters in all of the AE.

Hyacinth: Compared to Catherine, the other four Valkyries had minimal impact on the story. They were mostly there to even up the battles against the various demons onscreen. That being said, Hyacinth is a rather amusing character for me. I wrote her as a long-range arrow-flinging support Valkyrie, and then gave her healing magic. What makes this funny is that until Hyacinth's reveal, healing was explicitly the role of water magic users, holy magic users, and Belial. Funnily enough, Sophia, the Valkyrie of Water, should have probably been the healing Valkyrie. Eh, whatever.

One thing I really like about Hyacinth is her hard-nosed manner of speaking. She didn't say much throughout the AE, but I tried to give her dialogue that emphasized her coquettish nature, her no-nonsense attitude, and unwillingness to accept defeat. Maybe it worked out well and maybe it didn't. We will see in the future.

Sophia: I like Sophia a lot. I modeled her after my favorite Avatar side-character, Ty Lee. She's bubbly, perky, bouncy, and likes to dance around and have fun. Of course, when faced with the grim reality of her brothers and sisters dying... well, it puts a bit of a damper on her high spirits.

Sadly, Sophia didn't get a lot of time to shine, but in the future, who knows? Anything is possible.

Penelope: This big girl, a giant among her sisters, didn't get a lot of talk-time. However, she did contribute physically to the story with her giant warhammer, cocky attitude, and smarmy comebacks. She's sort of the Bael of the angel faction, I suppose. Definitely lots of room to improve in possible future appearances.

Shepherd: This totally unimportant angel made friends with a demon, got his wings ripped off, and then kinda just vanished from the story near the beginning of the WIH. I'm sure he's unimportant and won't be worth paying any attention to.

...

Alright. Finally, we have the Titans. I have no art for any of them, but feel free to use your imagination.

Hercules: By far the most important Titan, I have a bit of regret about his initial characterization. I was originally going to write him as a lovable, semi-dense musclehead. However, halfway into the AE, and especially as I neared the WIH, I realized he would make for a fantastic villain, but only if I wrote him as a highly intelligent soul manipulator.

For those who have read Cryopod Classic, you guys might recall that Hercules possessed the power of Army Manipulation. By reframing it in terms of soul manipulation, I was able to add a great deal of complexity to his character, give him a much more dynamic powerset, and get rid of his awful death from Classic. (In Classic, Satan used his Vectors to fling a rock through Hercules' head and OHKO him, it was kinda pathetic.)

What was especially fun for me was evolving his character ambitions and dynamics as time went on. Hercules started as a youth trying to impress his father, but then he lost his wife and began walking a dark path toward dominating the minds of others. By the time he fought Satan and Bael and nearly defeated the demons all by himself, he had become convinced his methods were superior to those used by his father. Eventually, he ended up 'captured' by the angels, where he sulked in his hatred and devised a plan to rid the world of those who stood against him, once and for all.

I think Hercules might be the most interesting character in the AE, if not necessarily the most impactful. His arc is very well-defined, though it also is a little bit weak in the beginning. His tendrils stretch out and touch numerous other character, not least of whom is Jepthath. I didn't get to use a few important scenes from Classic for Hercules, but hey... that's fine. Classic can have its unique moments, and likewise for Refresh.

Zeus: The second most important Titan, but far overshadowed by his son, I find Zeus to be a rather... weak character. He could have been written a lot better, but he did have several standout battle scenes, particularly against Satan and Bael. Overall, I find him to be just average.

Ancient Hall Titans: These consist of Odin, Ivaldi, etc. I don't have a lot to say about them for spoiler reasons. All I will say is that I accomplished all of my goals, made them intimidating, and arranged a few surprises for Cryopod's future.

Jepthath: I have no regrets. Jepthath turned out exactly how I wished. He's intimidating, a badass, and an absolute monster when it comes to kicking demon ass.

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Part 4: Minor and Major Failures/Stumbling Blocks.

Alright. Now it's time for what went WRONG with the AE. I am happy with a lot of chapter 2, but I am unhappy with just as much of it.

First, and most obviously; the time taken. It took me one year to write between 350k and 400k words. Compared to my average of 700k before that, that's a drastic slowdown. There are many reasons why I not only slowed down my writing speed, but spent so long on this one single chapter.

1. The Prequel Dilemma.

A big problem I had and knew would be an issue early on involved writing a story set in the distant past. We already knew some characters would stay alive until Jason's era, such as Bael and Agares. We knew others would die, like, say, all the angels.

This is similar to what happened with Star Wars's prequels. We knew Obi-Wan and Anakin would survive. We knew Yoda and Sidious wouldn't kill each other. The sheer spectacle of their fights was fun, but it lacked tension as a result of their survival being ensured. Obi-Wan and Anakin's fight in particular ended up being a boring series of strikes and slashes with little wonder as to how it would end. We knew Anakin would be defeated, and that he would turn into Darth Vader. It had to turn out that way.

One of my biggest headaches was finding out a way to avoid the Prequel Dilemma. I think I did pretty well, but there is always room for improvement. I tried to put a lot of focus not on the characters' survival or death, but about the ambiguous uncertainty of the future in between the Ancient Era and the Labyrinth Era. There's a whole lot of human history there, plus a ton of demon history left open for business.

A lot of focus went into Camael's predictions, her artifacts, the evolution of demon society, and how the demons vie for power among each other. By putting emphasis on these things, I took attention away from silly questions like, "will Bael die" or "will the angels go extinct here?"

In the end, I think I did a decent job getting away from the issues some prequels have, but if you think I didn't, it's understandable. I could only do so much to mitigate the issue, and it was always in the back of my mind, slowing me down.

2. Jason Becomes a Background Character.

This is a biggie. I could have saved a LOT of time in the AE by taking all attention away from Jason, like I did in Classic. Sometimes, I would think to myself it was a good idea and I should have done it. After all, would you rather have 100,000 words dedicated to the AE without Jason mentioned at all, or the 350,000 we got with him constantly being brought in along with the Archangels and Solomon?

I don't know. What I do know is that it feels like he either wasn't in it enough, or too much. He didn't have any impact on the events, so most of his appearances revolved around him and the Archangels/Solomon gradually ratcheting up their tension until the boiling point, like when Michael stormed away from the campfire or Solomon broke away from Jason in the end.

On the other hand, had I simply cut him out, I could have focused on making the AE much breezier. I could have used an omnescient third-person POV and cycled through the AE in a far swifter fashion. Much of the wordcount was devoted to making each POV character interesting in both their thoughts, actions, and effects on the storyline.

Ultimately, I think I struck a decent balance here, but I wouldn't call any reader wrong for stating that having this storyline slam the brakes on Jason's main storyline was the wrong choice. If I were to rewrite Cryopod, I might cut out the Ancient Era entirely and relegate it to a few parts at a time memory reflections from some character like Bael.

3. Conflicting Storylines.

Who is the protagonist of the Ancient Era? Who is the antagonist?

You might think of Satan as the protagonist, but the AE starts out with Uzziel. Satan immediately starts playing a big part, and I don't think calling him the primary protagonist is far off, especially given all the shifting points of view. However, the lack of a truly stable protagonist, in my opinion, hurt the Ancient Era significantly. Later on, we also got Raphael, Hercules, and Nerissa as Deuteragonists.

Then, if you look at the villains... oh boy. The protagonists are the villains themselves in some cases, along with Valac, Leviathan, the Titans, the Angels... so many in total.

The AE 100% suffered from a lack of focus. I can't deny it, you can't deny it. The shifting goals and occasionally lopsided representation of some characters made for a series of shifting goals that could sometimes stand stable like the Pyramids in the distance, only to transform into spaceships and blast off at lightspeed right as we neared the goalposts.

One issue I identified while writing this blog post and re-reading the early AE was the lack of a strong villain. There were clear conflicts between demons and angels, but none of the angels in particular were the 'bad guys' except for maybe Samael. Satan was the protagonist by that point and was also sort of a villain during the angel POV scenes, but he wasn't all that menacing as a recently arisen demon lord/baron/duke/whatever he was.

A villain is often essential for driving the plot forward. Check out this video if you don't believe me. (Endgame Spoilers, but surely you've seen it by now, right?)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVF8ZZMd3qU 

If I were to rewrite the AE, making Valac the central villain and Satan the central protagonist would be my number one goal. The former would take a lot more work than the latter, but I believe both would be quite necessary.

On the angel side, I would also probably make Camael the primary deuteragonist.

4. The 'Who Really Matters?' Dilemma.

There are many characters in the Ancient Era. I didn't come close to listing all of them above, and already that number is a mind-boggling number.

A problem I know many readers had to endure involved playing the guessing game. Is this random angel guy important? This demon lady? Who is a side character, and who will be important in the future of Refresh?

I'll be honest here. I have an obsession with callbacks. I like inserting a seemingly benign or random character, only to bring them back in the distant future. This goes back to a post I made way back in 2017 regarding "reader levels". Check it out here:

The Five Levels of Readers. 

(Spoilers included for Cryopod Classic, which will also spoil the future of Cryopod Refresh.)

For a quick breakdown, here are the five reader levels, sans spoilers.

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Level 0: This reader is a dullard. He/she might not be particularly smart, and this might even be their first experience with a book. They are either easily amazed, or never care. These are the people who watch anime just to look at cutely rendered girls, and pay barely any attention to the plot. These are the readers who just want to see sexy succubus-on-angel action and they like reading about things going boom.

Level 1: These people have definitely read a book or two, or maybe watched a few series of the genre they are currently interested in. They may have some small capability to remember character names, and you might even be able to inspire a spark of mental aptitude in them with a particularly dramatic plot twist. (Hint: They were MINDBLOWN by 'Luke, I am your father.")

Level 2: These people are fairly smart. They've read several books. They remember most major character names, can clearly follow plot threads, and will probably have some fun trying to predict where the story is going. These are the people who will ask questions about worldbuilding, usually, and will use their perception of character motivations to guess at where the plot will go. Their predictions are correct sometimes, wrong on others. These readers will get a special thrill out of finding out their predictions were correct.

Level 3: This reader is a genre buff. They have read so many time travel and etc stories that they can predict major plot points or figure out how the world works by noticing even the smallest hints dropped. For example, they might notice the constant references to Excalibur's incomplete state, and thus theorize that when it makes its debut against the Archdemon, it will break and splinter into a thousand pieces.

However, this is not the final level for a readerbase.

Level 4: This level can sprout from level 2 or 3, and is tailored to specific authors and writers. This person may or may not be genre-savvy, but they are author-savvy. This is the person who has read so much Asimov that they can figure out what's going to happen in an Asimov novel before it actually happens. This is someone who pays so much attention to little details in Cryopod that they can spot the Red Herrings and Chekhov's Guns and tell them apart. Nothing surprises this reader, but above all others, they get the most thrill from "being right" about their predictions. These people are also the most mindblown if their predictions are not correct, but only if the manner in which they are proven wrong makes sense and isn't... bullshitty.

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I stand by this assessment. I see nothing wrong with any of these readers, and I want all of them to enjoy my story.

Maybe you're not particularly smart, or you just have trouble following all of the characters throughout all of the arcs. That's fine. You probably read the story just for the "main conflict" involving Jason against the Demons, Jason and Hope, and possibly Jason and Phoebe. You're not going to pay much attention to all the little references, you won't try to predict the story, and hell! You might not even read this blog post.

There's nothing wrong with that. Cryopod features tons of action, explosions, and wild crazy shit that can still blow your mind.

A big problem with the Ancient Era though is that I forgot this fundamental rule when I decided to write it. Because Jason became a side-character in his own story, the level 0 and level 1 readers likely found themselves drifting off. Who cares about these ancient demons and angels? We already know how their conflict went down. Why haven't we gotten back to Jason yet?

These complaints, in my opinion, are perfectly valid. If you didn't like the massive scope of the AE, or how long it became, or how it seemed to go on forever (It's fully half of Cryopod's length, now), you are perfectly correct in saying it was boring.

Certainly, I'm sure the level 2-4 readers got anywhere from some to a lot of enjoyment out of the AE. In writing the AE though, I broke one of my own cardinal rules and ignored two very important types of readers. It's something I don't plan on ever doing again, if I can at all help it.

(This is also why Jason is going to be extremely important and heavily focused on in the future arcs, but shhhh... spoilers.)

5. No Outline For the Ancient Era.

Here we go. The big one.

When writing the AE, I went in such a far-flung distant direction from Cryopod Classic's Ancient Era that, well, almost nothing resembled Classic.

Fun fact: The Ancient Era in Cryopod Classic was somewhere around 25k to 30k words. 

In Refresh, it's 350k words.

I've already covered bloat, so let's scratch that off the list. The number one biggest problem I suffered when writing the Ancient Era was a total lack of direction going in. 

Oh, sure, the conflict between angels and demons was there. But stuff like changing all the 'gods' to Titans, figuring out the overall big bad guys, all that stuff; I had nothing to fall back on.

Compare this to Chapter 1, and the future chapter 3. In Chapter 1, much of what I wrote was heavily based on and improved from Cryopod Classic.

For example: Gressil was kinda boring in Classic and a bit of a moustache-twirling idiot. Beelzebub had no impact on the story. Phoebe was literally a nobody. I took all of those characters, fleshed them out, and expanded them to be far better.

With the Ancient Era, I had no such option. I barely had anything other than something involving humanity's rise, a Titan named Hercules, Satan crushing heads to steal powers... and that was about it.

Who was Uzziel? Camael? Samael? In Classic, they were barely anybody at all. In Uzziel's case, she was just 'some woman,' while Camael didn't exist at all. I had to invent whole new characters, personalities, and backstories.

In the case of Camael and Uzziel, I did already start laying the groundwork for their existence much earlier in Refresh. I planned from the beginning to have an Angel named the Lady in the Lake; someone who would bestow Excalibur upon Arthur, and the Crown upon Solomon. She was always there, but I didn't know what to do with her personality and relationships with other characters until I actually wrote the AE.

In Uzziel's case, she did exist in Classic and even had a few semi-important scenes. However, she had no personality, conflict, motivations, or anything else. I had to invent all of that for scratch.

If you want to point fingers at any particular aspect of the Ancient Era, look no further than this subheading. Without a story skeleton, the Ancient Era was bound to suffer in one way or another.

Speaking of outlines, I did end up writing two outlines for the AE. If you're curious, you can read over what I wrote. The first one sucked, while the WIH one was actually quite fleshed out.

Outline for the Ancient Era. 

Outline for the WIH. 

For the WIH one, I absolutely had to flesh it out. The reason I kept saying in the comment section that it was 'about five parts from being finished' was because I would look at the remaining outline, separate the goals into story chunks, and assume I could write them in X time. However, due to my in-the-moment writing, I would often stretch stuff out more than I originally intended. (I had various reasons for doing so.)

In the future, I don't plan to go off-script more than absolutely necessary. Chapter 3 of Refresh will be heavily based on the events of Classic Chapter 2 (the second half, post-AE), while chapter 4 will be heavily based on the events of Classic Chapter 3C.

After that, Chapter 5 will be structured HEAVILY around Route 3A, while chapters 6 and 7 will be based around Chapter 3B and Chapter 4, which I never ended up writing.

Speaking of which. Let's move on to that.

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Part 5: Reworking the order of Cryopod Classic.

Cryopod Classic was a mess, but I am glad I wrote it. At the time, I didn't realize that it was only a stepping stone for me to totally rewrite and overhaul a few years later. 

I have no regrets when it comes to Refresh. Yes, the Ancient Era is a bit long-winded and could have certainly been shorter. However, when I look at the grand scheme of things and just how much quantity of Cryopod is coming, I can't help but feel it's little more than a drop in the bucket.

Classic Chapter 1: 75k words.

Classic Chapter 2: 120k words.

Classic Chapter 3a: 450k words.

Classic Chapter 3b: 300k words.

Classic Chapter 3c: 250k words.

I'm estimating since I can't seem to find the exact numbers. Anyway, I know the final wordcount was about 1.2m words for Classic.

And today?

Refresh Chapter 1: 350k words.

Refresh Chapter 2: 350k words.

That's 700k. At this point in Classic, timeline-wise, we were at roughly the 140k words marker.

(This doesn't actually mean the rest of the story is going to be huge and bloated, but more on that in a minute.)

Now, the trick I've come up with revolves around my first main heading back in part 1, which revolves around the failed experiement which nearly annihilated me as a writer; Cryopod Classic Route 3c.

Here's the thing.

I'm going to take all the best parts of Classic Route 3c, all the stuff I liked, all the parts that I can... and merge them into the Post-Chapter-3a Storyline.

If you're a new reader and didn't read Classic, don't worry, this bit isn't for you.

If you read Cryopod Classic and still don't understand, then let me simplify it further.

Classic went like this:

1, 2, 3a, 3b, 3c. I never got to write the final chapter, chapter 4.

Refresh will be like this:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

So, cross reference them.

Chapter 1 in Classic = 1 in Refresh.

Chapter 2 in Classic = 2 and 3 in Refresh. (The Ancient Era gets its own chapter, that's why.)

Chapter 3a in Classic = 5 in Refresh. 

Chapter 3b in Classic = 6 in Refresh. 

Chapter 3c in Classic = 4 in Refresh. 

Chapter 4 in Classic = 7 in Refresh. 

So it would be as if I wrote Cryopod Classic like so:

1, 2, 3c, 3a, 3b, 4.

Confused? Sorry, I don't know how else to explain it. The point is that I intend to fix the catastrophe that Chapter 3c caused in Classic, while retaining the valuable stuff it gave me. 

How long will Cryopod Refresh be? Let's go back to what I said a minute ago. Just because the current Cryopod Chapters have multiplied the length of their original counterparts by anywhere from 3x to 5x, that doesn't mean the same will be true of future chapters.

Chapter 3a in Classic, which will likely be Chapter 5 of Refresh, was about 450k words. I don't believe it will be a millionn words long. I don't believe it will be two million words long, either. In fact, there is a slight possibility I actually shorten 3a's overall length when I write it in Refresh.

However, I believe that refresh will very likely range from 2-3m words. It will be very long, once complete (To say nothing of the final chapter, chapter 7, which could be insanely long, or reasonably short). The Ancient Era is HALF of Refresh's entire length now, but when I compare it to the final version of Refresh at some point in the future, who knows? It might only be 1-10% of the whole serial's length.

I cannot make any serious predictions, especially given my track record of being WAAAAAY off, but I think it's a reasonable possibility.

So, now, let's move onto my concluding thoughts.

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Part 6: Concluding Thoughts.

When I started writing the Ancient Era, I made a few mistakes. When I continued writing it, I made more. I am not perfect and will continue to screw up in the future.

However, I believe the Ancient Era was a success. It achieved my goals, it introduced characters we will see well into the future, it continued the themes of Chapter 1, and it progressed several important character arcs while setting up and paying off others at the same time.

Perfection is impossible. It's not dsomething anyone can attain. Of course, that doesn't mean striving to improve myself is an unworthy goal. The thing I've learned most from the Ancient Era is what I said earlier, which is:

In the future, I will not commit to writing something out of mere obligation.

I felt obligated to write the AE because it was in Cryopod Classic. This thinking is the exact same thinking which led me to write Chapter 3c of Classic, which ultimately forced me to stop writing Classic. 

It's not that I hated what I wrote, but that in the end, slamming the brakes on the 'main' storyline in exchange for a forced subplot was 100% not the right way to go about it.

In the future, you should, hopefully, never see anything like this again. Hell, I don't want to write this sort of stuff again. It was exhausting and mentally draining. Constantly having to try and think up new ways to avoid the Prequel Dilemma alone made me want to gouge my eyes out.

Revealing the history of something is one thing, but telling a story via that history and keeping it engaging is insanely hard.

In conclusion, I have many regrets about the Ancient Era, but most of them amount to 'I could have done better,' not, 'I did poorly.'

I achieved my goals. I wrote what I felt I had to. And now? It's over, and we're past it.

From this point on, Cryopod becomes very Jason-centric. Our protagonist is going to be the focus ofsomewhere around 80% of all parts. We're going to see villains like never before, intertwining plots and conspiracies, and even some absolutely balls-to-the-wall stuff from Classic expanded in 100 different directions.

I apologize to anyone who was turned off or bored by the Ancient Era, but that was the last of it! From this point forward, I'll be on the straight and narrow.

Thank you all for reading. Subscribe to my Patreon if the thought of seeing more high-quality Cryopod excites you!