30 / MAY / 2025
Progress with The Valkyrie Program
Hi. Hello again.
For those of you who've been keeping up with The Valkyrie Program, you might be wondering when "Psychopomp" will come out. I'll tell you now that progress on it is pretty slow, as it's the only one of the first five chapters that I haven't already written anything for. Prelude, "Oi Lavóntes Máchairan," and "En Machaíri Apoloúntai" were all mostly-complete scenes that I only had/have to revise before being in a presentable state. Penance was something of an exception, as I wrote it in two major fragments that I had to stitch together into a more cohesive scene.
Now, you might be wondering when and how I found the time to get all of that writing done for a story that I vaguely mentioned in one profile post on Agora Road-- or, well, a comment on my own profile post, but you get the picture.
To satisfy that curiosity, I'll break some news that's now months old, but I never formally said on my website: In February 2025, I finally graduated from university! And my God, I'm glad to be out of that hell-hole. I was miserable and alone there, and it was honestly the least fulfilling experience of my life. The only good to come out of it was the internship I took to New York City where I actually had some profound self-discovery. I really came into my own in that place, and I hope to move back and find work there sometime. I still needed a half-credit to graduate after the internship, so I took a 3-week winter course about writing a novel, wherein we all had to write some 5,000 words every week. I forget the exact number; it could have been 5,000 or 10,000, but I can assure you it was a lot. So much, in fact, that I was practically drilling a whole field of oil to fuel the rest of this story. Not everything ended up being outlined, but a substantial amount of scenes and plot threads were written.
With all that said... Well, I honestly worry about whether or not I'll finish the whole story once I'm done with these first five chapters.
To be blunt, I'm sure you've seen the projects and writings that I've started but never finished. This includes TIIwLSHS, 浪人さまのチャレンジ, YOMI HUSTLE: Campaign, the story ideas I've blogged about in the past, and a number of video essays. More concerningly, it seems that the Physnet is slipping into my list of discontinued projects, too. Although, to be frank, I never intended to devote too much energy to that project. It was always something to be on the perpetual backburner until I really feel like going back and giving it a good week or so of work.
Honestly, whoever said that "the hardest part is starting" was either lying or a fucking moron. Starting is the easiest part, with ending following close behind. And even then, the only difficulty to ending a project is that you need to have started it beforehand.
The hardest part, by far, is continuing. Anyone who tells you otherwise has no idea what the creative process is like. At the start, ideas are penned and proposed. They're rejected, kept, and improved; usually by yourself. It's the fun part of the process, really, where you get to let your imagination make a mess before pragmatism comes in to organize everything. As for ending... Well, as I said already, the only difficult thing about ending a project is that starting is a prerequisite. No story ever began or continued because the author was too busy or lazy to have it be otherwise.
Continuing, meanwhile, requires more than just time and diligence. It demands a level of obsession; not just the willingness, but the desire to consistently think about the one thing you've been working on for days, then weeks, then months, then years. And that's a bit insane when you think about it. You need to keep your mind on something over a course of time that doesn't just "pass," but puts its claws into your life and cuts into it at an excruciating rate. Only when you stop to examine how much (or how little) you've done has the time already passed. To put it briefly: Time doesn't pass; it already has.
It's here that I've bogged myself down, and I fear that I've cursed The Valkyrie Program.
I'll say this: I've birthed and murdered plenty of stories in the past. There have been points where I had too many ideas at once that I simply didn't know what to do with. These days, with my standards being more rigid than they once were, I'm sure I've slowed my imagination down to the point where I can really focus on one or two projects over longer periods of time. If The Valkyrie Program can't be the start of various projects seen to completion, it ought to be the exeption to my failed projects at the very least. Because then, I'd be able to finally say that I've achieved a life goal.
Regardless of The Valkyrie Program's completion, there are a few other narratives I'd like to put into action at some point in the future. I know, I know, I'm not doing myself any favors by putting dessert in the oven when the main course is only half-baked. But the important thing is this: These are all narratives that I've had in my mind for a couple years now, and they still linger upstairs when I'm not thinking about The Valkyrie Program. For that reason, I know I can obsess over these concepts enough to give them a real chance of being seen to completion.
So let's obsess:
If you know me from Agora Road, you've likely seen or heard about the Maid Syndicate. It's something I've been worldbuilding for the past year or so, with the original idea having changed drastically since inception. As of now, I've outlined three plotlines for the characters involved: one being a rescue mission with a similar tone to Generation Kill, one being the life story of the luckiest unlucky soldier, and another being a sappy romance between the first plot's rescuee and and a rescuer who was presumed dead for years after the operation. I've fiddled with ideas for a near-future "advanced warfare" plot, but since I don't know anything about the state of modern tactics, I really don't think I'm qualified to write that sort of narrative.
My second obsession is a story that I've outlined, but only publicly shared once. It was first concieved as a "vapor noir" film, where a film-noir plot is delivered through a vaporwave aesthetic in a cyberpunk setting. Yes, it's a lot, but I promise that these are all themes that work well together. The plot follows a detective (Erica) who lost her arm in a war that took place in South America, but for all intents and purposes could be considered a stand-in for Vietnam. Or, to really follow the noir influence, World War II. The event where she lost her arm was one where she hesitated to kill a child soldier, and as a result her arm was blown off and she shot him impulsively before hitting the ground. She was later given a new prosthetic that fired bullets from her fingertip and was wired directly to the brain for maximum efficiency. But, due to her misbehavior and some kerfuffle with paperwork, she was discharged to civilian life and got to keep the arm. After a while, her prosthetic gradually caused hallucinations and deteriorated her state of mind as she was working as a cop.
This is where the vaporwave aspect of it comes in. I was inspired by late-night crying sessions with ECCOJAMS to use vaporwave as an obsession with the past. Not in the nostalgic way that most people think of it as, but in the regretful "I wish I could fix that mistake" way. Over time, as the hallucinations take over, the vaporwave score takes a turn to death's dynamic shroud.wmv's style. One particular scene I had an idea for was one set to "Loving Is Easy" where Erica goes on a date, but keeps getting interrupted by flashbacks to the war and the murders that she's had to study.
Oh yeah, the murders... The plot itself revolves around a murder Erica needs to solve, where the victim is a soldier she knew and had already killed himself during the war. He's been dead for years, yet there he is at the crime scene. His appearance, his DNA, everything is identical to the original him that Erica knew. But of course, it can't be him. He shot himself in the barracks, not strangled by a stranger in his apartment. Ironically enough, I don't really have the ending figured out. I imagine the murder case ends up being unimportant as our protagonist's priorities shift from solving the case to getting her mind in order. The end scene is meant to be her getting lost in her mind, disappearing behind corrupted images of dead bodies and countless copies of the same memory playing on repeat: Shooting and killing that poor kid.
I've ordered the above ideas in terms of priority. As someone with absolutely no film connections, the second idea isn't one that I can feasibly commit to at the moment. But, all the same, I'd like to find a way to get it done somehow. With the Maid Syndicate in partictular, it began as a silly world to run around in, then became a campy Black Lagoon-esque adventure. I'd encourage looking into the post I made on Agora Road to get a better idea of the world I made, and also to understand that I really didn't make it with the intention of being an action series. It just kinda came out that way towards the end.
I have more to say, but that can come another time. I've made this post long (and disjointed) enough as it is, heh.
{ END LOG }
