The Curious Single-Timeline Nature of Everything I Write
As you are probably aware, either from the fact that the Daily SPUF recently hit a milestone in articles or the fact that I, Medic, write all of them, this crazy individual does a vast amount of writing. In fact, I do so much writing that the article in which I mentioned we had nearly reached 2400 articles had to be updated, because I had originally written the article just before we hit the 2300 article milestone and nearly forgot to change it. In fact, I had to alter this opening paragraph to not include a number due to how long it took me to actually publish this.
But there’s something about my writing that I have only really noticed recently. And no, it’s not the fact that I ramble on like an attention-starved lunatic or act slightly high and mighty because I have a blog. In fact, if any readers disagree with me, I invite you to come along and write an article telling me that I’m wrong. We have a sign up page and everything.
Anyway, I’m getting distracted (another curious artifact of my writing). The weird thing about my writing is how spontaneous it all is. These days, I will pump out an entire article or story in the space of a couple of hours. For example, the other day, I wrote a story about a guy in a very small ship getting caught in an EMP, reminiscing about his life and wondering if it’s possible that he will survive falling out of the sky and crashing into the ground at high speeds. It’s probably not accurate if you consider that the main character is human, but Retvik is definitely not human in any way. My point here is that this story of a character falling through the atmosphere happens when that story is published, on the 27th of August 2019.
Most of my stories are like this. They happen on the date they are published. This leads to the unique situation where I technically don’t need a time line or anything (although I do have a never-updated one for past events) because everything is ALREADY in chronological order! You hit the random button over on Phovos.net and it’ll take you to that specific moment in Phoviverse history. Most of the time.
Of course, this isn’t always accurate. After all, three days after I wrote the above story, I wrote a story about how a death god is kinda sad but not sad that he saved the life of the aforementioned guy who fell from space. The death god rambles at a time god that he is upset that the other gods lashed out and that he may have saved the guy’s life but the whole event has caused the survivor to mutate, giving him strange powers. The time god doesn’t add much and only really asks the death god if he can date one of the death god’s friends. The story ends with an explosion nearby (that the death god goes to deal with), but I don’t actually write about the direct aftermath until the next day. Because there are only so many words a day I can write without breaking my brain.
I also have several story arcs that happen in future time lines. I don’t really have many of these. Off the top of my head, I have the whole Space Between Universes story arc, but that’s intentionally set so far into the future that it could happen at literally any time. Other story arcs will have notes at the beginning of the first story in the series noting that the story is not set in present times.
So not everything happens on the exact date that they are published. But most of my stories happen around the date they are published, and most of my Daily SPUF articles tend to do the same thing – they are written then published within 1-7 days of being finished. The only exceptions to this are articles written by others (or adopted by me) and articles that I write and abandon in the Pending section.
But that’s where we reach… ironic levels, I guess? Because this article is the sort of timeless article I write occasionally. This article has sat in the Pending section for ages, waiting to be published, but being ignored for more newsworthy stuff. After all, this isn’t as interesting or as fun to read or write as an article about the next new Warframe, Pokemon or Team Fortress thing, is it?