So I know a lot of people looked at the sketchdump yesterday and were like "what on earth is this" and I'm pretty darn determined to do stories/sketchdumps like these for a while mainly because I'm in the process of revamping old characters and I like to share the notes with you all, even though I doubt anyone really reads them.

So tonight I'd like to talk about something I believe someone in the comments mentioned... a much simpler story, but more importantly, a more relatable one.

When many writers are young, a lot of our stories tend to mirror others that we've read, generally ones that have greatly inspired us. While Dreamland was such a mixing bowl by the time I started really showing it off that it's harder to trace the exact influences (although it's obvious Pokemon was a large one), generally the influences in other 'projects' of mine were more... transparent.

I'm not alone in this, naturally. How many times have you seen a story on here labelled "Defenders" or something similar which starts with an allegiance page and goes on to describe the adventures of a group of foxes/wolves/cats etc. living in groups with strikingly familiar societal order? How about a group of mutant kids (generally with wings) under surveillance from the government? Children of several gods going on dangerous adventures often centered around protecting a certain safe haven for them they encounter near the beginning of the book?
It's not that I condone these in any way, because they're not being published and often become springboards to more original topics (plus I have seen some concepts done better than the originals, as well as very exciting things being done with these ideas.) I also give kudos to anyone who writes original material on Wattpad considering it being nearly non-existent despite it being supposedly the purpose of the site.

However, another big trend of my childhood happened to be collaboration stories. When I was younger the Dreamland stories were all mine but I liked to have an extra head to bash together with my own when it came to new worlds (and I use the term new loosely seeing as they were still in the expanded multiverse). These were a large staple of my elementary school career but one of the last and potentially best of these stories was written mainly in the seventh grade.

It just so happens to be about a cluster of cats who live in the wild in very organized groups which often fight each other to protect their boundary, yada yada yada...

Sounding familiar?
The difference is I did this one with Twistling, one of the most beautiful and brilliant writers I've ever met (and my best friend in real life). The two of us worked on this piece daily and instead of being your average fiction about talking animals it ended up as a drama that crossed over with almost all our personal works that involved thousand year histories, powers, catsunes (the origin of the Nyuhenge was here, by the way), vegetarian cats, dubious morals, mary sues, and sticks. It was incredibly lighthearted even though a lot of characters got the ax and we knew what we were doing was extremely derivative but by the stars did we have a lot of fun with it. It may be old now, so the pacing is confusing and a lot of the plot makes no sense, but I still have a huge place in my heart for these characters and had fun drawing them again. If you'd like, I can totally post the 100 page original manuscript sometime for those who want to see how much your writing can improve in three years.

This is the story... of The Activity.

Landia, our "protagonist" (the term used loosely because the POV bounces almost every other chapter and Landia ends up being barely relevant) is a vegetarian pacifist who lives in the Forest Tribe with a small cluster of close friends and then a lot of other cats who she couldn't care less about. The story begins with her telling her sister Primrose and best friend Tris a story about ancient warriors before going out to pick berries to eat which is in no way effecting her health.

We think.

She is rudely interrupted when a cat with massive wings falls out of the sky (like you do) and then excuses himself and flies off before Landia can ask any real questions. She later finds a stick and brings it home (like you do) which causes her to dream of fire.

She is informed by her leader (who really wants her out of there) that the stick has turned red and burned overnight, proving that she has been chosen by the Aurorium, a shadowy organization that hosts all the cats of the three tribes that develop powers. For the safety of all three tribes they try to collect these cats before they become dangerous, however, the Mountain Tribe is starving and the Ocean Tribe is technically banished so no one from there goes. However the Aurorium is doing just fine for itself and Forest Tribe cats are welcome additions.

The next day, two Aurorium cats come to pick her up:

Leonite is a perpetually angry cat with fur that has inflated over the years as he's accumulated secrets. His powers include lightning manipulation and he's constantly being trailed by Arice, who is a wind-powered kitten who never stops talking.

They go together like oil and water, peanut butter and rocks, or mentos and soda.

Landia is stricken by just how professional they sound as she immediately says good bye to everyone she's ever known and heads to this new and exciting place where they supposedly have vegetarian options because their society is far, far ahead of everyone else's and as they have become the elite, they get to sit around, harness their magical powers, sip berry juice, and watch as the rest of the world tears itself to shreds.

Meanwhile the flying cat from before turns out not to be some seventh grader's idea of a running gag and instead introduces himself as Zephyr. He meets up with Tris when she's busy hunting because Zephyr keeps falling out of the sky. The two form a friendship because Tris hates everyone (and now has to watch after Primrose, Landia's needy little sister) and Zephyr is a mutant who hasn't been sent to the Aurorium because his powers are crucial to his tribe's survival and if he doesn't spend all day hunting to the point of exhaustion they'll starve.

The two become the book's power couple.

When Landia reaches the Aurorium, she finds a place with beds of leaves contained in large wooden bowls that are remarkably comfy and basic lighting. The Aurorium is almost everything she's ever dreamed of and she fits in well. However, the leaders, the world's most powerful lesbians (Comet the dreamer and Ebony and analytical one) admit later at a meeting that a surprising amount of children are going missing and someone may just want to investigate that, now that they're about eight children in. Someone mentions that eight of the nine core elements have been taken (they seem to be missing fire) but Ebony dismisses the rumor. Meanwhile Landia's new friends decide to help her investigate by breaking all the rules they currently know exist.

Meanwhile in the only tribe we haven't heard about, the Ocean Tribe (where Ebony came from, although she had to drag herself over because the Ocean Tribe is still in exile) is not doing that well. The pale-eyed, dusty furred cats are constantly subject to dangerous conditions and fragile dens, but they have been relegated there as a punishment for a war that happened an incredibly long time ago. It appears the once mightiest tribe is now dying out.

This brings us to Sephine, the worlds most sinful cinnamon roll. She wanders into a strange and dark place beneath the dunes late one night and meets an extremely trustworthy figure:

The starving Canira introduces himself as Vengeance and tells her that he can both show her how her Tribe came to be this way and the power to fix it, but in return she must give him something of hers. When she agrees, the light inside the lantern burns a sepia color and Sephine begins to have visions of the distant past.

It turns out that 200 years ago (it may have been longer in book) the Ocean Tribe had a large territory along the ocean and the marshes but slowly a disease began to take them that caused their members to mutate terribly, giving them furless skin hot as lava or stone growing out of their ribs. These mutations convinced the other two tribes that they were possessed and caused them to force the Ocean Tribe to the edge of their territory as punishment. However, they contracted the disease but due to some immune toughening the new 'diseased' cats simply got cool powers and eventually founded the Aurorium.

It also turns out that those mutations are coming back and Zephyr, the winged cat, is the first of a new race whose mutations are pure.

This knowledge angers Sephine and she prepares to build an army, equipped with the power to raise those cursed mutants from the dead.

Meanwhile in the Forest Tribe, Zephyr can't visit as often since his situation is getting worse but Tris and Primrose are also preoccupied with a situation... namingly that they've found a dragon egg. This egg hatches and the telepathic newborn introduces himself as Shrike, the last of the Quetzalcoatl race. He's looking for the new legendary warrior, she with the same soul as the original, so that they can fuse and fight in the upcoming war to end all wars. Prim remembers the story she heard from Landia about the two legendary warriors and Shrike is like "makes sense" so they fuse to become...

PRIMCOATL

There will be a small pic later and I might draw them in detail but all you need to know is that Primcoatl is basically the worst Mary Sue I've ever written. However Twistling and I realized this and we began to write her (them?) really overdramatically as if they were a self insert character for some ten year old and the results were... beyond hilarious.

Meanwhile in the Mountain Tribe Zephyr is having mommy issues.

Tireme, the leader of the Mountain Tribe, is growing desperate. She once lavished praise on Zephyr, calling him 'her angel', but now that he returns with less food as winter sets in she gets terribly angry with him. When she finds out about his relationship with Tris she informs him that if he isn't an angel, he won't need wings, and he crushes the fragile bird bones herself and then proceeds to have her starving cats pluck the feathers off one by one.

Back at the Aurorium, Landia gets captured herself and it turns out that this whole time, the stolen in trainings have been used to power energy for a beast unlike any other, a nine-tailed cat with the power of all nine core elements. All nine of the in-trainings are freed by Leonite, who has been working with the catnapper (ha!) but has a change of heart. Unfortunately they're still in the pit with a completed catsune and then it turns out that all along... Ebony has been doing this. Why? She needs more energy to give to Vengeance, since her fire is in his lantern. However, now that Vengeance has Sephine to provide him with energy, Ebony is no longer useful. Vengeance appears, Ebony's fire goes out, and she dies on the spot. The catsune goes wild and is defeated by the power of- oh wait, it's... it's running away.

Anyone going to go catch the giant deus ex machina before it kills everyone?

No..?
It turns out Leonite is also from the Scarred Tribe an wanted to help Ebony to reclaim his tribe's honor. Now they have to break it to Comet that her wife is dead and there's a massive and potentially omnipotent genetically engineered horrorfest running around the countryside.

We'll get to that later though. In the meantime Zephyr and almost the whole tribe is preparing to fight Tireme, accompanied by Tris and Primcoatl, as Prim can fly now because... Quetzalcoatl?

Tireme returns and she and Zephyr have an epic showdown as the few cats still loyal to Tireme are willing to fight to the death. In the end, Zephyr wins only to die moments later from blood loss.

Meanwhile at the Aurorium Comet is crying over HER WIFE and Leo is like mildly disappointed as well. In The Arms of an Angel plays for a good five minutes and then Leo gets sent back to the In-Trainings and two of the captured side characters get to hug.

This leads to Book 2- I mean Part 2- I mean... good god.

We never finished this one but the gist is that basically the Mountain Tribe splits in two, Landia's subplot continues to be useless, Sephine develops her supervillain laugh, the other legendary warrior gets found and bonds with a dragon, and before the war actually starts... we stopped writing it.

Truth be told, we could have gone on forever, but with characters like those and a story like that it sometimes appeared like we weren't just parodying our own works and Warriors, but each new plot line seemed like a parody of the last one, but it was all being played more or less straight. While it may have been utterly ridiculous, this was an incredibly fun story and world t be a part of.

So whatever you write, no matter how silly it seems- my real advice to you is simply to keep writing and to have fun with it. "Talent" is deceptive- real skill will come in time as long as you are passionate about what you do. These stories, along with the slogfest self-insert OC stories with no conflict of elementary school and the overplotted Pokemon wannabes of early middle school may have been awful stories objectively but they all helped me prepare for the month that changed me forever- my first NaNoWriMo. I've been working aggressively on the same project since then, but who knows where life will take me? I may even revisit these characters again in a more original context.

Regardless, I know I'll be having fun and learning the whole way.