In Review: Forging

Hi, howdy, and hello.

It’s been a while; hope you’ve been doing well. I’m sorry to say this isn’t an announcement for the next Demon Healer Naberius entry (which is still on track for its late June/early July release window, in case you’re wondering), though it’s not entirely unrelated to DHN. A quick glimpse at this website’s archive will show that I like to celebrate the anniversary of DHN: Volume One’s release day, and this year is no different.

Accordingly, I’m here to review a piece of my writing once again, with this year’s sacrifice being my short story, Forging. It’s one of my earliest works—I think it was my third or fourth short story ever—with it being written back in 2017, if memory serves. I haven’t looked at it once since then, so I’ve gotten myself a little inebriated in anticipation of the embarrassing ideas and shoddy writing awaiting us that will be shared with you in its original, error-ridden, unedited form.

For anyone new to this, the plan is to go over and critique the work as I read it. As such, I’d advise reading the short story before this article, as you’ll lack context otherwise. There’s no real structure to this article either; I’m simply writing my thoughts as they come to me.

Now, you might be wondering why I subject myself to this. My answer is that I feel it’s important for creatives to not live in fear of their bumbling first efforts. Reflecting on your old work is a painful yet effective way to visualize how far you’ve come, which can help you determine how much farther you’ve still got to go.

Likewise, if you can allow me a moment of arrogance, it’s my hope that Forging can act as an example of the learning process for anyone who’s thinking about taking up writing themselves. It can be difficult to comprehend that every author was dogshit in the beginning (for the record, I’ve graduated up to dog puke) since only their most successful works are well known, so I’ll gladly share my past stumbles if it helps a nascent writer find their confidence.

I’m very familiar with that desire to give up after your first efforts fail to live up to the ideas in your head. I was certainly frustrated that Forging didn’t match the concept I had for it.

But—it was closer to its concept than every story I wrote before it.

I think there’s value in that. And I hope you do as well.

Alright, enough preaching. Grab a drink and a snack, and get ready to laugh at Baby Peter’s Forging.

The story has a bit of a cold opening before getting into a very amateurish introduction. You obviously need to get to know our leading man Casimir, but there are better ways to do it than immediately dumping his life’s story on the reader. There’s also a rather blunt attempt to build sympathy for Casimir by elaborating on the prejudice he experiences, which is something I would have highlighted through character interaction instead of flat statements were I to draft this story today.

On a side note, any DHN fans reading this might recognize the name “Casimir”. It’s not a coincidence—we’ll go over that in just a bit.

We then cut straight to the arrival of Uncle Albino. I’ve always felt that stories shouldn’t waste the reader’s time, but perhaps a bit more leadup here would have been preferrable. Regardless, I am fond of the strangeness of Uncle Albino’s character, and his interaction with Casimir is endearing.

I wish I could recall what else was going on in my life around the time I wrote this. There are several (very blunt) mentions of ostracization and weakness, so I’m curious if there was something inspiring those themes. Honestly, probably not, as I was employed, healthy, and still had Clementine with me back then, but I wonder, nonetheless.

We then get a small time skip, adhering to my desire to keep things moving along, followed by our main plot thread: where is Uncle Albino? I’ll take this moment to point out the inconsistent tenses. I couldn’t seem to decide if we were going with past or present progressive, so it flip-flops several times, and I apologize for the annoyance.

There’s also that bizarre simile used when the innkeeper looks at Casimir with suspicion. “[Like I was] covered in blood”—was that really the best line I had?

Casimir then steps into the brothel, Stummelschwanz, and I’m reminded that I’ve always been horny, though I do have some problems with the proprietress’ description. For starters, it’s kinda fucked up that I described her missing arm as a flaw, which while you can make the argument that it is one, I should have been more tactful. I can’t even use Casimir’s narrative voice as an excuse, as I don’t think he’d have the balls to say it was a flaw either.

Less troublesome is the fact that the proprietress is apparently wearing a sleeved dress. While not inconceivable, I would have chosen a sleeveless and strapless dress nowadays to better paint her as sexy. Obviously, I went with sleeves to draw more attention to her missing arm, but any more missteps like that and I’ll have to ask Mr. Varnicrast to see me after class.

Our proprietress then mentions that her name is Frauke, and my lovely DHN fans have probably figured everything out now.

Every Demon Healer Naberius volume has an epilogue that takes place in a pub called Stummelschwanz, and its staff are named Casimir, Frauke, and Felix. Forging is where they get their names and the bases for their personalities, though their DHN incarnations are ultimately different people. Their appearance in Forging is the main reason I wanted to share this past work of mine, as crummy as it is.

As an aside, I wasn’t aware that Stummelschwanz translates to “stubby tail”, which is German slang for a short dick, when I wrote this. I thought it meant “rabbit tail”, and it wasn’t until I was five volumes into DHN that a kind German informed me of this beautiful mistranslation.

Anyhoo, while the dialogue is rough in places, I generally like this exchange between Casimir and Frauke. It has flecks of humor in it, so past me gets to avoid detention for now.

The barroom is a curious bit from my perspective. I had completely forgotten about the arm-wrestling thing, which inexplicably also occurs in DHN’s Stummelschwanz during Volume Four, and while Felix is introduced as the bartender, he goes unnamed for now. I feel like the other folks in the bar are references to something(s) as well, but I can’t recall what.

Casimir then leaves the bar, where Frauke proceeds to make his day. Our little man skips back home to get ready, then we get to the good part where the real Frauke appears.

I like her shift in decorum here, even if I failed to go about it with any eloquence. This side of Frauke better lines up with her DHN counterpart, though she’s more foul-mouthed in this instance. I feel like that roughness was almost a prototype for Bosa.

It’s also endearing to see my sense of humor hasn’t changed much over the years. Giving Frauke a dog named Nutsack and mentioning that he’d tear a man’s cock off… I don’t doubt that I would make similar jokes if I were to write Forging today.

After that, our heroes depart for the wilderness. Another thing I forgot was just how crude their first conversations are, with some of the language even startling me, but if we ignore the subject matter, I think this is a fine example of how I’d come to appreciate dialogue in stories. I can’t remember if I had started reading Nisio Isin novels before I wrote Forging, but his works made me realize that I love writing out conversations between my characters, and I feel there’s something charming about Casimir and Frauke’s irredeemable discussions.

The bit of development where Casimir realizes he’s a leg man is especially adorable. I’m glad Frauke was there to support his budding self-awareness.

Also, the more I read of this first conversation, the more I’m certain that Frauke’s attitude is what inspired Bosa. The open sexuality is one thing, but Frauke literally drops a line (“…there’s a lot of fun that can only be had between two girls.”) that I’m pretty sure gets paraphrased by Bosa in Volume One or Two. I guess that’s why Bosa and Frauke are buddies in DHN.

Moving on, we then have a frank talk about unavoidable resentment and accepting oneself. I clearly had something I wanted to say here, and I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it hits the mark or not. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s awful, but again, I think it could have been handled more elegantly.

The discussion about countries and origins was an interesting learning point for the younger me. There’s a misunderstanding among novice writers that backstory and lore are very important to a story’s structure, and I fell for that lie back then. I wrote out a small history of the world where Forging takes place before beginning the short story itself, and in hindsight, it did almost nothing to help flesh things out. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a waste of time, but if there’s any lesson I can impart, it’s that you don’t need grand, flourishing details for your story about a wimp and a brothel proprietress looking for a hermit.

The story about how Frauke met her husband is in a similar boat. It’s a detail I didn’t transfer over to DHN, but I like the strangeness of it all. It’s not unreasonable for a man to cheat on his wife because he feels trapped, but it is unusual for his story to have a happy ending. Odd relationships have always been a favorite subject of mine, and the marriage between proto-Frauke and Felix is no exception.

I’m also a little pissed that my past self actually had some good lines. “Love isn’t about finding the perfect person. It’s about finding the perfect person for you”… I came here to ridicule myself, not pad my ego.

Our duo then takes a break at the halfway point of the story. The pacing is a bit weird since it’s already noon despite how they just talked for a little while, but I guess I just wanted that sense of progression. There’s also a notable blandness in the punctuation here because I wasn’t acquainted with semicolons or em dashes at that point in my studies. My apologies once again—Varnipast did his best with what he knew.

Likewise, I feel he could have handled the darker subject matter more gracefully. Suddenly dipping into the horrors of war and survivor’s guilt was likely an attempt to help the story come off as mature beyond its adult language, and I don’t think I pulled it off very well. Again, this story is a textbook case of novice’s indelicacy, but that is part of the learning process.

You figure out how to be more subtle, or you double-down and realize that anyone who uses subtext is a coward.

The story about how Frauke lost her arm, however, is fine. She tells it exactly how she wants to, colored with crude language and facetiousness. Unfortunately, the story then transitions into the section that marked it as an embarrassing misstep in my mind as Frauke suddenly jerks into an aggressive attitude.

I know what I was trying to accomplish here. I wanted to make Casimir suddenly face his weakness, with Frauke being the one to test his boundaries. Problem is, the whole exchange feels terribly out of character for Frauke, and Casimir as well, to a degree. Frauke shouldn’t have gotten so heated so quickly, and Casimir wouldn’t have the gall to growl any sort of argument. I injected too much emotion into the scene without considering how reasonable it was, and it feels so forced and—as much as I despise using this word—cringeworthy. I try not shy away from wet storytelling when it feels appropriate to the characters, but this is an instance where I practically dumped a bucket on my cast.

Off the top of my head, if I were to remake Forging, I would have Frauke express disappointment in Casimir and calmly give her lecture about how pathetic it is that he’s given up on even dreaming of revenge before telling him to head back to the outpost. Casimir would feel hurt by the exchange but stay with Frauke, and after a period of silence, they’d encounter something that would either have Frauke demonstrate her strength or push Casimir to grow an inch of backbone. Something that would be more mellow and suitable to the tale.

Instead, Frauke loses her patience and threatens to kill Casimir. We then get that period of silence I wanted, but now it’s just a spat of awkwardness that doesn’t really get resolved. After that, Casimir gives an impassioned speech, then he and Frauke are suddenly good buddies again.

I know it’s a short story, so I wasn’t giving myself enough room to better develop their characters, but boy does it feel weird how they sway from joviality to animosity and back like a pair of drunk teeter-totters. It certainly doesn’t help that Casimir is saying that he greatly respects Frauke despite how they literally met that morning.

But past me was confident and happy with the flow, so I’ll let him have it. That said, I’m going to have to call his mother about this one.

I suppose we do get a bit more character development through the subsequent off-dialogue, but I don’t think that really excuses the earlier gaffes. Our lovely duo then arrives at Uncle Albino’s cabin at last, and this is where things get most interesting for me.

The inside of the cabin first reveals a stranger’s corpse, then the fate of Uncle Albino. I think this is one of the first instances of me realizing how enjoyable it can be to lay out a scene before spelling out what happened there, and it comes free with an example of my odd fascination with describing violent aftermath (you can thank Kotaro Uchikoshi for that). We then pan over and discover Uncle Albino was crafting swords in his reclusion, which necessitates a bizarre anecdote from me.

So, the main inspiration behind Forging comes from an experience I had while playing Pokémon (I wanna say it was Y specifically). For whatever reason, I got into Pokémon breeding, and I started creating Pokémon with ideal stats, abilities, and moves—sometimes even pushing to have them be shiny (i.e. a different color) as well. I warmed up the eugenics factory, studied what constituted optimal move sets for each monster, and futzed with the RNG until I got my desired results.

Maybe that sort of obsession sounds like it would suit me. But what I find crazy is that I had no interest in playing Pokémon competitively.

Apropos of nothing, I felt compelled to ‘forge’ perfect Pokémon. I put all that time and effort into making top-tier monsters, only to leave them locked in a box in a game that I later sold to a coworker for twenty bucks. And I wasn’t bothered by that at all.

Still, I recognized my odd behavior, and I thought it might make for an interesting story. Obviously, I reworked it to be about a hermit making incredible swords out in the wilds instead of a grown man getting way too into Pokémon, and despite my incessant fumbling, I feel that Forging was able to get reasonably close to expressing that outlandish idea of mine.

As I said, it got closer to its initial concept than any story I had written before it. I think that’s worth a begrudging nod or two.

That said, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit this whole story came from some freak behavior I had while playing Pokémon. If this entire article weren’t an exercise in sandbagging my shame, I would have kept that bit of my past buried where it belongs.

But do me a favor and don’t tell anyone, alright?

Getting back to the tale itself, I appreciate the fact that it’s never clarified why Uncle Albino was making those swords, both because it stays true my anecdote and just makes for a more interesting story. I also like the detail that Casimir is illiterate, though I’d have to go back through the story again to make sure nothing contradicts that fact, and I’m not sober enough for that.

I then do that thing where the characters openly explain and summarize everything, and I won’t fault you if you find that obnoxious. I think it’s usually fine to do in written media, since the level of abstraction can unintentionally obscure necessary details, and I personally find it more obnoxious when an author leaves you in the dark. A master of the craft can lead their readers with only scant mentions, but since I’m not a master, I’ll err on the side of comfort.

I think the resolution at the cabin is fine as well. Burning it down feels suitable enough given Casimir’s desire to honor Uncle Albino’s impenetrability, and Frauke is just as reasonable in wishing to keep a pair of the blades. Frauke hoping to never burn another building is neat little quip, though it makes me wish I could have been that subtle in the earlier sections.

Our story then concludes with Casimir and Frauke sauntering back to town. It sprinkles in some ideas of where the characters might go from here, but it’s wholly inoffensive. I’ll give my past self credit for not dropping the ball on the ending, and he gets a few more points for not trying to make the story bigger than it was (I would later do that with a different story and feel stupid as hell about it).

And with that, Forging draws to a close.

Like always, this retrospect wasn’t as painful as I imagined, but I think still it warranted a little inebriation. For me, this was mostly a reminder of how edgy and crass some I could be, but it also allowed me to see that there were seeds of my eventual writing style even back then. I don’t regret writing Forging, as flawed as it is, and I’m glad I took this time to read it all these years later.

I hope you enjoyed it as well, though I won’t blame you if you didn’t. The sheer number of typos and errors alone is sickening, but it also has the naïve brashness of a novice in its DNA. Still, if you managed to power through it, you have my utmost gratitude.

We’ll wrap things up here. Demon Healer Naberius: Volume Seven is in the midst of its final round of editing, and it just needs to be formatted for publication after that. Boss Tostantan is also working hard on the novel’s character designs and artwork, and what I’ve seen so far has left me swooning with delight. Please look forward to the next entry in Demon Healer Naberius; I’ll do what I can to get it into your hands as soon as possible.

Take care, dear reader. Find the worth in everything you do, regardless of who witnesses it. Your own satisfaction is a treasure none can replace.

And don’t forget to always buy two Ariadne Threads whenever you’re at the shop. You won’t regret it.