Writers (Sims Fic) - How Do You Deal With a Fic that Goes Sideways?
I'm finding it really hard to figure out a story that I'm interested in playing through to its ultimate conclusion. This is in part because of the fact that the quality of writing isn't up to my usual whichever way you look at it.
My current apocalypse fic:
Clarissa and Bebe were happily fishing at the Central Park pond hoping to catch enough fish to either sell or to put towards cooking a decent dinner for the five of them. After all, their mind was on making a decent shelter by fall. Phil had dropped off his prized meteorites to Dave Ramsey who was manning the till at the counter as usual at Aleister’s. Phil had managed to get them in before the deadline and hopefully they would all sell, which hopefully would bring in a pretty hefty chunk of change for the group so that they could get started with making the foundation to their new home.
It also meant that Haruo who was definitively into collecting would also have to get some things started with the gemstones that he already had in his pocket – and some of them as far as River knew were valuable and would give them enough to break ground. As it was, it was going to be slow going and the five were going to be spending the majority of their time outdoors trying to keep from getting soaked when the rains came. The other alternative was to try to go down to the fitness center on the corner of Water Lily and Main or 28 Hour Fitness as it was known and use their showers and try to get some shut-eye indoors so that they didn’t get drenched. Either that or build a lean-to of sorts that they could use in a pinch. Although that didn’t seem like much. Even a glorified shack would do wonders for them. But they needed the simoleons for that and that wouldn’t come easily.
Haruo was currently over at 97 Waterfall Way harvesting some lettuce. Always nice to have greens and lettuce not only did it hold a lot of water, but it was also fibrous too – at least it would keep them constant. Just dig a nice deep hole.
Phil made some grilled cheese sandwiches, a key lime pie and spaghetti for his friends so that they wouldn’t go hungry. Now it was trying to find a table and chairs for them to eat off of.
Afterwards, Phil went off to dumpster dive for items to sell, but unfortunately, there happened to be a freak meteor storm, which ended up flattening poor Kaelynn Langerak ending her life. This would foreshadow much worse to come as the cosmic pummeling would continue.
Nightfall came very quickly and a last meal was eaten by all before the five headed off to bed, which was essentially pick a spot on the ground and collapse from exhaustion. Considering it rained earlier in the night, which they had to suffer through, not only were they exhausted but wet and miserable too. Even though the rain was warm, it just made things even worse since the night was usually cold and the mornings meant that the temperature dropped even further chilling them right to the bone. But luckily it wasn’t frost but they would have to do something about the fact that they were living in the open and unable to do anything about the weather. They would need to get under some cover.
The first night was absolutely uncomfortable. For all the appearances of flat ground, there were still dips, rises and indentations in the ground that meant that lying on the ground usually meant that something was going to poke into your back. River’s solution to getting the wind out of her face was to sleep under Haruo’s leg. Luckily he was so exhausted from harvesting wild plants, that he pretty much conked out and didn’t twitch a single muscle. Luckily he also didn’t let loose any gas either – that would have been singularly unpleasant.
vs. my Fanfiction.com fic written a few years earlier "Sunset Valley - Annihilation"
The Madonna and Child image was a striking contrast to the raging-in-pain virago of a few minutes earlier who was verbally airing her desire to not ever let Haruo have kids again because she was going to take a knife and make sure to render him a eunuch in the most complete way possible.
Then she absolutely floored Haruo by saying to him with emotion filled voice and teary eyes, "Honey...I want another one." To say Haruo was gobsmacked would have been an understatement.
Andrew James Junichiro Chikamori joined the nursery as their first born in the bunker.
Everyone was taking dibs on what Noel and Holly would name any kid they had. Haruo had dibs on Tinsel for a girl and Tree for a boy. River just rolled her eyes. Holly was not amused.
Haruo and River went back to child-rearing their firstborn; new parents at eighteen, yet having had to mature faster than their now immolated peers back in school who would just be completing their first year of university.
And Bella Bachelor and Mortimer Goth became teens. Bella helped out in the kitchen and went out to help with feeding the chickens and the cows.
It was at about this point the first Age Freeze potion was discovered by Haruo at the potion table which set a new quandary; were they supposed to live forever? And if so, how to make it so that future generations had their own day in the spotlight instead of the previous generation hogging the limelight. They all agreed that it had to be a personal choice. You could choose to drink the potion, or choose to abstain at the transition point between young adult and adult but once it was made it was irrevocable even if you changed your mind. Which meant a lot of thought went into The Choice as they called it. You could choose to stay the age you were when you drank the potion or you could choose to drink a Young Again potion to put you right back at the very beginning of Young Adulthood at the height of health and vigour before taking the Age Freeze potion then they were able to stay at the age in which they would be the most help in the Reconstruction.
Cameras on the exterior of the bunker saw periodic clearings in the radioactive miasma that seemed to have coated the lower atmosphere in soot clouds that sent the rad readings skyrocketing through the roof. The geiger sensors on the exterior of the building transmitted their readings to interior monitors. Evidently the scientists that had advocated that radiation from a nuclear war would dissipate in a matter of weeks were wrong; dead wrong in fact as none of them were known to have survived the initial exchange of strategic nuclear weapons. And they were not alive to have their hypotheses proven incorrect.
Haruo had opted for their generations to stay within the bunker until the radioactivity reduced down to a level that mirrored background radiation level prior to the nuclear war. Which meant they could potentially be in there much longer than the year or two the scientists were estimating. And their numbers were steadily increasing if River and Holly had more children and then would explode as the others started reaching prime child-rearing age.
When the drone was sent up it sent back terrible images of the destruction. Augmented by transmitters the drone was able to fly over the devastated location where the base used to be. The base was now a lake as two of the 375KT blasts were surface detonations carving a massive crater in the ground where the base used to be which filled with water and was highly radioactive. The geiger counter on the drone went absolutely crazy when the drone was within 200m altitude of Crater Lake. Anything within a mile of that lake was in a death zone.
The other hotspot was the region around where the nuke detonated over City Hall, and City Hall was a wreck melted into the ground at an angle in such a way that all access doors were barred. Anyone who had survived the incredible temperatures at ground zero within the building was doomed to die of starvation as they were sealed into a crypt that used to be their workplace. Even windows that seemed a salvation were not. They had bars in the window frame that were unable to be removed from the inside and the incredible heat had welded them to the building so the occupants that were still alive could only glimpse what they couldn't reach until they starved to death.
Central Park was a mangled mess of new growth trees, and glassed ground that was the centerpiece of display to the destructive power of the atom. For the new growth trees trying to make a comeback with the renewal of life were being attacked by radiation and some of those trees had lost the fight becoming yellowed withered versions of themselves before succumbing.
It was visions like this that made Haruo despair of ever being able to set aright what had been perpetrated on his town. Every nuclear detonation was yet another blight that only time would contain.
Though it was uncertain whether humanity had that time left.
It's frustrating because I feel like that muse (that I had corralled before) is JUST out of reach and I'm just not feeling it whenever I start a new fic.
