New Infinity Addendum: The Stories of New Infinity
New Infinity is broken down into arcs, individual stories that explore a main theme or idea, not unlike a story arc made up of a few episodes of a TV series. At first, this was done because New Infinity was supposed to go on forever, and each one could be its own self-contained short story, but eventually I decided against that and instead went with the idea of New Infinity kinda reading like a novelization of a TV mini-series. I never fully figured out if it's “episodes” would be half an hour or an hour long, but I never wrote it to be adapted to TV or anything, so I didn't have to come to conclusions with those numbers, I could play it as loose as I wanted. There's an arc that last just two chapters, there's arcs with four or five chapters, but for the most part they're all about 3, which felt like enough time to establish a beginning, a middle, and an end. I always felt that the 5-chapter arcs kinda had an end and a new start on chapter 3 of each, and it's a bit ironic that 3 was that prominent, given Ash plays a lot of Valve games and Valve has a marked aversion to the number.
Originally, I wrote a trio of arcs to cover 3 different types of stories (a sci-fi one, a fantasy one, and a more realistic one, the former two being the first and second arcs I uploaded and the third being that forbidden arc) in an attempt to pitch the series to some friends to generate some feedback and a bit of buzz. Eventually it settled into a slightly sci-fi-based realistic series due to the nature of a series taking place in an otherwise ordinary town just saved to a computer. The original tone and genre of the series would have differed sporadically from arc to arc, and I feel that how it currently stands makes things feel more coherent.
The first arc of New Infinity sets up the idea of it being a digitized civilization more or less explicitly, and while I have minor qualms with it, I do feel it let me get away with so much more than if readers found out later, which might feel tacked on in an attempt to handwave the more surreal elements. It was also meant to set up Felix's antagonistic role but that was gutted with the rest of his original characterization shortly. I went back to the idea of the first arc's story for Arc 5, treating is with less urgency and in a more meaningful manner, taking the time to explore the relationships between Felix and where he works, as well as what Ash knows about Felix and what Felix wants her to know. If I had to entirely rewrite this series now, it'd be tedious and I'd probably get bored, but I can safely say the first arc wouldn't be as short as it was.
The second arc was originally the third, as previously expressed, and a lot of my reasons for gutting that now forbidden arc are just that it didn't hold up to the quality of the rest of the series, added little to nothing to the story, featured a character I was never going to go back to, and I think might not have gone over well with the actually-13-and-up age rating I decided on. I might release the arc as a bonus via Patreon at some point, but the gist of it was that Ash discovers a cannibal in the woods who claims to have lived in New Infinity since the 50s, and he ends up dead at the end. It played into the idea of New Infinity being a place that is constantly changing , sure, but once I had decided on the digitized civilization aspect in what became the second arc, a character mentioning they've lived in town for 60 years when it's only existed for 10 at most became a very noticeable mistake, and after giving the arc a good look I scrapped it, converting its first chapter into an interlude that set up more of the series' characters. And just for the sake of mentioning it here so I don't need to answer the question several times over the course of New Infinity's time in online social relevancy, Twitch explaining that New Infinity was a digitized city was entirely meant as a joke at first, though it did shape the ideas for the original ending and led into the concept for the series as a whole.
The proper second arc was part of a much larger story at first. I have never read a proper fantasy novel (we read through half of one as a class in the 5th grade, and half of another in the 6th grade, and only stopped with both after their respective authors did a talk at the school. Not to digress but the authors of the latter always creeped me out as they explained they read their book line-by-line to their Chihuahua and if he barked or got aggressive with them after that line, they'd change it. That's just weird), so I went off a lot of the tropes I vaguely knew about. Originally I was going to take the teams concept a lot father and Ash and company would scale a mountain to procure some sort of elixir, and Francisco was going to duel Ash there for some reason I forgot between when I started and when I finished writing that arc. The issue is that arc went through a lot of problems, I'm not particularly fond of fantasy and that arc was meant to end right on Halloween 2014. It didn't, it missed it mark by weeks at the very least, and I trimmed it down significantly to end shortly after the first event and have Francisco chase Ash and her friends into the capitol. I drew up basic floor plans of the building for that arc, but have since lost them, but regardless I personally think the end product for the second arc was better than my original idea, and definitely keeps the focus on the town itself much better. I probably won't write the beta second arc, as it'd be so far out of context it might as well be its own short story taking place at an undefined time and an undefined place. As a closing note, I'll say that I personally liked the sort of meta joke I included with the name of the arc being dropped by Felix between chapters. That was fun.
Manual Override, the third proper arc, was a much shorter one I had no real plans for, but I wanted to get the technology Ash had smuggled out of Felix's workshop into her hands and working as quickly as I could. I considered it a breather after the relatively action-oriented second arc finale, and let me properly evaluate Ash and Felix's characters. I knew I wanted to use this tech properly for the rest of the series, but it had to be set up and introduced first, so that's what I did. I have little to say about this arc and frankly, I kinda forget it exists sometimes.
The Great Unending and its surrounding arc were things I knew I wanted to do with the series, though I didn't exactly know where the fit into the rest of the series. It's very vaguely assumed that Francisco/Twitch are to blame for New Infinity's rival town, but never explicitly mentioned and that's one of the things I regret not looking deeper into with the series. That said, it was a great arc and I still love getting Alex, Ash, her friends, and her enemies to all mingle in a single location and not ending with a fight. This is also where I began to flesh out Randy's character, who was originally just a joke peppered into the arc interlude like any of the other students I named but never did anything with. While Ash and Felix are vaguely related to how I see myself, Randy is probably a lot closer to how I actually appear to others, a big stocky guy who loves cartoons more than a high school senior/legal adult should, and who apologizes for things they didn't do out of reflex. I knew I wanted to keep him on hand for the rest of the series and the continuation, so I was careful not to screw him up too much versus Twitch and Francisco, his very problematic circle of friends.
Another detail to note with The Great Unending is this was where I started planting the idea of Felix being the stranger. He is mocked for his accent, which is nothing like any of the places he claims to be from (New Infinity in the Pacific Northwest, Boston, etc.), and puts on E.T. For a film screening, despite that being a tremendously old film surely everyone had seen already. By now, I had entirely filled out Felix's backstory and the cover stories he tells when confronted about this, so I started leaving clues that as of now I've yet to fully act on. And just to comment on Arc Interlude 2 because it's not terribly long or involved, this all started as a joke between myself and Daniel (who I thanked in the opening and closing of the story), where I said I should have an arc where a lemon tree kerfuffle becomes so serious Felix has to reset the town. There's not much else to add on that one, but the reset does kinda lead into the fifth arc, which I've already commented on half of.
The second half of Arc 5 centers on this book, which was one of the ideas for an arc I've had since the beginning and I believe I mention it in the very first post I wrote about New Infinity. The idea is it's a compendium of all the town has to offer, but the corruption from the first arc caused it to go berserk, destroying things in the process. This was the arc where I was going to reveal Felix as the bad guy way back when I came up with the story, and the scene of him approaching Ash in the ruins of the town is a vague call-back to all of this. As for the actual symbol on the cover, it was originally supposed to be a skull but I decided at this point that it should be the Happy Infinity Company's logo (which I never explained, it's an H, an I, and a C all layered over top each other), but jumbled up and corrupted. That's one of the aspects I fell hard on, and one of the troubles printed media has over more visual forms of entertainment. This probably would have gone better had the original plans for a graphic novel adaptation gone through, Daniel started working on one but we decided it was too much work for too little reward. We still have plans for a collaboration of some kind related to New Infinity, but those aren't anywhere near presentable yet.
Arc 6 was a big one, meant to celebrate the anniversary of the series, and so I knew it had to be important. I wanted to finally discuss the background of Ash's father, who goes unmentioned until this point other than a couple passing comments. To get to this point, though, I knew I had to get to it via the corrupt book, so I came up with the idea of Felix copying a passage out of it to hand to Ash, making this a continuation of the previous arc in a way. One thing I think I handled exceptionally poorly is this revelation sending Ash into a depression. I myself struggle with depression but cannot talk to anyone or get professional help for it due to confounding variables at home. As such, I didn't do my research as to how meeting a therapist and getting help works and I didn't want to have to write more scenes, so I immediately wrote in her getting anti-depressants. I feel this trivialized the entire procedure and could be seen as invalidating people who are actually struggling with mental illness yet seeking help, so in the Penana rewrite I decided that Alex instead should talk to her and explain the situation when she cools off, which just felt a lot more meaningful. Despite that, she still holds resentment at Felix for this, assuming he's read the book and getting even more annoyed when he mines her memories for present ideas but still cannot find a better way to bring up her incarcerated father. If I had any other criticisms of this arc, I still think that Ash shouldn't have been so stubborn and Felix should have presented his case better and earlier, but even despite that, I still personally love the arc for the same reasons I can see past the issues in some of my other favorite works like theGravity Falls episode “Society of the Blind Eye”, because little errors help me strengthen my own critical eye, which helps me become a better writer.
Arc seven focuses on a duplicate, antagonistic Felix who copies his tactics and is trying to ruin things. This I felt was more explicitly Twitch/Francisco's doing, and also let me make fun of Felix's original role in the series. I personally love Winter scenes, it's easy to capture the silence and peacefulness of a winter's night in writing and they're definitely my favorite times of year, so getting to write one after being stuck in a drought of summer arcs was very refreshing. All in all, this was an arc full of catharsis, and getting to end with the shot in the head a la The Stranger was one of my personal favorite things to write, second only to the eighth arc.
Arc 8 was meant to be filler in a way since 9 and 10 were going to be dense with action and drama, and 7 ended with a man being shot. I had the idea of switching Ash's Role with Felix's and how those characters would react, and knew I kinda had to act on it. Ash still treating things seriously made sense, but Felix, getting to be young once again, takes the time to enjoy himself, and a lot of this was meant to break Felix's character out a bit more, and start to allude more and more to his actual backstory. The inclusion of Anglish in place of standard English does have significance, but I don't have much to say about it as of right now, so I'll skip that. The last thing I have to add is this was the arc that took the shortest amount of time to write, I think I wrote all five of its chapters in the same night, mostly because I loved the concept so much. As of right now, I don't have many plans for arcs like this one for the continuation, though I do plan to change that.
Arc 9 was a big one, which wasn't helped by a massive amount of writer's block I faced going into it. When planning this series at one point, I planned for Arc 9 to span two total arcs, Francisco's takeover to be an arc, and for the series to end on arc 13, but decided that I just wanted to cleanse my hands of this project. Not that I hated working on the project, mind you, but I hated how long it was taking me to write New Infinity so I condensed those arcs down into just two and an epilogue. The original version of this arc was to be centered around Francisco and Twitch making Ash's life hell, going as far as to kill Franklin and get her mother fired from her job. These were decisions I made while I was at my worst mentally, I wanted to destroy these characters and had no plans to do a continuation at that time. However, as I wrote arc 8 I gave my outline a good long look and decided that throwing away Franklin's character would be a waste, as he was easily my favorite of Ash's friends. That said, it might have just been me challenging myself to give Nathan, George, etc. more depth, but regardless I kept him alive though injured to cement the idea of Francisco attempting to ruin Ash's life without actually, y'know, ruining Ash's life.
The end of the arc finally involves Francisco taking control of Felix's terminal, and originally I was building up to the scene of Felix getting hit with the mind wipe and not being affected due to gold mesh in his cap. I never made this explicitly clear in the actual scene, as he gets knocked out but there is no mention of such a detail. This was why Felix was so intent on wearing his cap during the back half of New Infinity and why “Hats off to Felix” was repeated as much as it was, but in the end I kinda fell a bit short. I could go back into the Penana project and edit that chapter, but by now the PDF version of that is already circulating. I might patch it up, I might have already done that, but editing the story for FictionPress would be a lot more work, and I'll be completely honest that I more or less disowned the FictionPress version of New Infinity. It's first few chapters are now nothing like what I wanted them to be, that's part of writing, part of growing up, and part of your tastes changing.
Arc 10 begins with the sight of New Infinity in ruins and Ash's friends and family seemingly gone. I decided going into this chapter that by now, Felix had begun trying to recover the town and thus had taken some people out of it to safety. This is also implied by Felix's behavior in the first half of the arc, as he is using the NPC-type stuff seen with a few random characters (the only one I remember naming being Jarvis) in the very first arc. A lot of this arc is actually a huge shout-out to the rest of the story, and full of nods to the people who had been reading since the start.
Felix's comment about “thinking of simpler times” in this arc was done heavily to begin implying that the rabbit hole goes deeper, that even the person he claims to be beneath all the secrecy is just another alias. I also begin planting some cues for his entire backstory, but to completely contextualize them would make New Infinity much longer than it needs to be and might not sit well with everyone. I wanted New Infinity to be a self-contained story and then use the continuation to start linking it to other things and experiment with his characterization more. The clues are all here but the thing that ties them all together isn't, so I can come back to it and explore his character more while also leaving bits not unlike our own reality. All of us have bits and bobs that don't connect to anything or anyone, we all have moments or phrases or places or dates that to an outsider look like red herrings or pieces of a bigger puzzle, and they might not be, and that's alright.
The encounter with Francisco at the end of chapter 1 was not designed to be the big climax. I intentionally treated the scene with a little bit of comedy or at the very least not 100% seriously as Francisco wouldn't either. He'd make it a bit of a joke, get himself some powered armor and a cloak, shouting one-liners and making what should be a serious, edgy moment so over the top that he seems less dangerous and more immature. Likewise, Francisco takes credit for Ash's family and friends disappearing, and while he could have taken them, it's left completely vague up until Ash walks past their rooms in the end of the second chapter, so it seems threatening at first, but then when the curtain is pulled back and all he's done is give himself a bunch of ridiculous gear like the server admin of an MMO, he seems even more like an idiot.
Randy declaring Ash a friend was likewise based on both the people who called me a friend after I helped them once or twice, or the “friends” I made after one or two encounters or talking about video games with at recess. Randy, again, was meant to be the type of person I probably am to people outside my immediate friend circle, and any chance I get to make a self-depreciating jab at myself is one I have to take.
The biggest thing about the final arc though is that New Infinity is falling apart. Twitch knows this and is willing to die, but he wants to take Felix down with him as a result of his resentment against Happy Infinity. This also ties into Francisco's development as an antagonist, he's having a breakdown of his own as he shouts and demands and attacks Ash for no reason other than to prove himself as strong, in some twisted sense of the word.
The second chapter is entirely about the rush back to Felix, and here I included a closing note for Randy and Ash as friends. I need to make it clear that this is not setting up any sort of romantic subplot, I hate those, and if you consider dating everyone who saves you from something then you probably should better evaluate what you want in a significant other. Equine and Gallus, if I recall correctly, are variants of the Latin word for Horse and Rooster, as New Infinity started in the year of the horse and was ending in the year of the rooster. Felix's ramblings here are once again moments from his life, being uttered mindlessly by the NPC Felix. The paragraph in which New Infinity finally disintegrates was one of the toughest paragraphs I ever wrote, and I think it cements the idea that everything has finally come undone. There is no way that being ripped out of existence like that couldn't hurt, it'd need to be one of the most primal pains imaginable.
The gray concrete bunker that appears in the second half of chapter 2 is an abandoned Happy Infinity bunker in Oregon, where Felix has been using their leftover terminals to run the town. He believes there is no way he could be caught since he took everything off their Intranet and built them into his own, but as for if that's true will have to wait for the continuation. Randy's name being written as Randall was another nod to the first few chapters, where he introduces himself as Randa thanks to a mishap involving remembering a panda fact he heard earlier. Additionally, Twitch number works out to spell “ROLAND” on a Polybius Square, which will be better explained in the continuation. I didn't want to use the same ciphers I used elsewhere in New Infinity like Felix's scrambled password, as I wanted each instance to be its own little puzzle.
My personal favorite detail in all of New Infinity has to be Felix's upgrade to the town. He goes from Floppy Discs to ZIP Disks, which while newer, ZIP 750s are still between a decade and a decade and a half old, which is definitely not helping matters. We're just going to pretend the “Click of Death” won't happen in this case, I just wanted to include a ZIP Disk in New Infinity because it's rather interesting technology. What's important to point out with the disks is that the size of New Infinity has seemingly grown, from a couple gigabytes to 7-8, the reasoning implied by the label: Felix can finally start making external backups of the town instead of having to keep all the saves on the terminal at all times. The antiquated technology is one of my favorite parts of New Infinity, but it's high time Felix start upgrading.
Chapter 3 focuses on Felix reintroducing Twitch and Francisco. I knew this was going to be a hard chapter to write and write well, as a lot of it depends on readers not thinking Felix is being facetious or even a little tyrannical in this case. I'd say you could definitely argue that he's not a 100% good person, but to be fair, nobody is. Additionally, I made it clear that this is all because Twitch never trusted Felix to begin with and in his current state, he couldn't. Twitch is used to Happy Infinity screwing with him, not telling him the truth, giving him outright misinformation. Even when Twitch says “you're not with them,” he cannot take that for much value because Felix could very well lie, and he knows that. By resetting him and then Francisco, I can begin building them into more worthwhile characters and play off of the idea that the people Ash remembers are seemingly gone, but how would they know that? I also personally loved the idea of Felix rolling time back to the beginning of New Infinity, it really helps cement how much time has passed since the beginning of the series and the end, and I leave the chapter on a little bit of an open note that I can lead into the epilogue with.
I opened the epilogue with the dialogue exchanged between Alex and Ash to hammer home the idea of everything being back to how things were. I never explained this, but the idea I've always had in mind is that resets or time rolling back are slowly corrected over the course of a few days, with a second or so shaved off of each minute or nights being skipped once everyone has gone to bed. That said, the logistics of how it works aren't particularly important, but I felt a time skip this significant (a few days) needed some explanation somewhere, even here. Anyways, the parallelism here helps close the circle a little bit and getting to properly have the game night Ash planned gives her a win she desperately deserved after Arc 10. Two important additions I made here were a single interaction between Twitch and Ash, where he stares at her, unsure if he knows her from somewhere or not (implying he still can vaguely remember the events of the past arcs, which I plan to touch on in the continuation), as well as Felix giving just a little bit to talk just a little bit about Felis, this “old friend” of his who introduced him to rifts some undisclosed amount of time ago. I ended things here, on a nice night with the ground enjoying their company, because moments like those are where I'm always happiest.
New Infinity is more than just the journey of Ash and Felix, but it's also my own journey through a world lacking meaning and purpose, dealing with depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts while also pushing myself to finish the story, finish something, finish anything. 12 November 2017 was the second anniversary of the closest I have ever come to ending my own life, and I wanted to put a bit of positive weight on the day by ending New Infinity there. It was a highly personal journey in a number of ways, but seeing people genuinely interested and excited about what was next and where their favorite characters were headed did make my day and maybe my life a bit better. I cannot thank you all enough for your interest in New Infinity, and I hope to hit the ground running with a continuation very soon. Until then, please get in contact with me via Twitter to let me know if you have any other questions or comments, and don't be afraid to get help when the world is turning against you. Me turning to Dan let this get finished in the first place, only good can come of it.
With kindest regards,
E3kHatena
ns 15.158.61.16da2
