A Different Kind of Normal/Author's Notes

Whew. Well, this has definitely been fun.
I’m not sure how long i’ve been making ADKON for, but judging by when it’s component parts were made(see below) it was around June-July 2017. At that point, I had a relatively random group of OCs with little to no relation to each other. The only links were all centred around Vendeta the Hedgehog: Tel-Eth was his arch nemesis and Gabriela Angel was his mother. What I really needed was something to set the stage for what was going to happen next in the continuity. Of course I had Sonic Guardians, my first fangame, but that was a disjointed mess of a story that didn’t really show the universe in any new light, so ADKON would have to do something differently.
==The Characters==
When I started coming up with ideas for this new fanfic, I had several concepts lying about:
*A character who was set to appear in a fanfiction about Ice who had multiple personalities. During Ice’s first adventures, he would join him as his heroic persona, but Ice wouldn’t recognise him. This would of course be Johnathon Persona.
*A character I had just adopted from Austin Bison: Rugal Paramount.
*A load of concepts I had for Gabreila Angel that got rejected when I made her into Vendeta’s mother. These concepts included a name: Angel Skyheart.
The next thing I needed was a protagonist. I decided on telepathy as Natalie’s power as I thought it was an interesting power to play around with:it aloud crazy stuff such as going into people’s memories and it meant that Natalie wouldn’t be able to power her way through problems but would still be able to solve them in interesting ways. The idea to make her Vendeta’s daughter worked for me on so many levels:It would give some kind of backstory to a relatively bland character, tie the Powers Club more firmly into what little lore existed, and would provide a running mystery and substory (nothing like Rey, but it would work) for both ADKON and other stories to come. Angel was also planned to be lesbian (another asset I carried over from old ideas from Gabriela Angel, as crazy as it sounds), so I made Natalie lesbian as well, although this was changed to bisexual later in development in the (admittedly rare) event I wanted to do a protagonist’s child scenario.
Carl was made more out of necessity than anything else. As it couldn’t be Tel-Eth (he wasn’t in the right time zone yet as Sonic Guardians hadn’t happened) the villain was basically guaranteed to be Kabletech, so a character that could manipulate tech would obviously be very useful. Initially I only really saw Carl as a necessity, but then as the book progressed he slowly turned into a catalyst for character development, especially for Rugal.
As you may have guessed from looking at my original page for Rugal and his backstory in ADKON, his backstory changed massively during development. This was actually because of what I plan to happen after ADKON. I’m currently planning a fighting game called Disaster Club, which would feature the club in question and Rugal facing his past (psychotic brother included) as well as the first physical appearance of Marcee Archer (who I had adopted around the time I started conceptualising the project, ironically in quite a similar way to Rugal and ADKON). This overall made a much better backstory for Rugal than “he was bullied so he became a bad guy”.
Edit: Disaster Club is now a thing.
Angel was also changed a lot during writing, not because of any other project, but because I didn’t especially like her much. She just seemed to me like a bland, cocky action girl who was only there as Natalie’s girlfriend. As it was, ADKON’s cast was generally made up of people who were socially pressured in some way or another, so I pushed that to the extreme with Angel and the result was much better than what I had originally:she retained the cocky demeanor but was fighting with anxiety. This also meant I could get more of a story out of Natalie’s and Angel’s (at that point) perfect relationship in the future, as Angel was struggling with her feelings. I also gave her actually kinda nice parents, because everyone else has parent problems.
And I also have to talk about Sasha. I never wanted her to be an average background character to fill the role of Natalie’s mum:she was always destined for badass. Obviously, that was achieved when she was made into Vendeta’s (ex?) wife, which meant I could link her to the Assassin’s Guild. Swords like the Chronosabre were mentioned on the sword’s page, so it was the most obvious thing to give Sasha one.
==The Plot==
At the start of writing any story, three things usually form in my head immediately:an event at the start, a major flashpoint in the middle and the end. The event at the start was either Natalie coming home to Sasha or the Club meeting for the first time, i’m not really sure, the middle one was Wraith’s attack on the club and the bit at the end was the battle with Wraith, kissing included.
A lot of the plot of Act 1 existed so I could reveal more about the main characters and have subplots between them, primarily the first hints of feelings between Natalie and Angel and Rugal’s character development. It also allowed me to flesh out the world the characters were living in and set the stage for the rest of the book. For me, this was my personal favourite part of the story. Writing the dialogue and getting the characters to interact with each other was loads of fun and it was a shame I had to advance the story.
Act 2 basically wrote itself. It was just basically “get everyone out of Kabletech Tower and run”. This was honestly my least favourite part of the story. For me, the pacing felt far too rushed and there wasn’t much time for the dialogue I had enjoyed writing previously. However, I got to write Ice’s crazy speech patterns and the magnificent bastard that is Kable the Fox, so that kind of made up for it. Plus, I got to write loads of fight scenes and really show off what the Club could do as a cohesive unit, namely when Rugal uses his powers to bring Ice back and he comes back as a load of spikes. Playing with Ice’s powers was a lot of fun, as his powers are very versatile in terms of what he can do.
There's also a minor thing I'd like to mention in Act 2: John's reaction to Ice. As mentioned above, John was going to originally appear in an origin story for Ice which I was planning to write cocurrently with ADKON. To put it simply, they are friends and then people die and it goes to hell and it's a lot better than that in practice I swear. I wasn't sure which to write first, but I chose ADKON so when I got round to writing the Ice origin story there would be a permanent "we know how this ends, but not how it happens" feeling. However, the Ice project got left at the wayside for Sonic Forces: Kingdom Come so the dialogue comes across as sudden and odd. Anyway, I hope to get back to writing that Ice thing again after I've finished SFKC and the aforementioned Disaster Club.
Act 3 had pretty much been planned out from the start to the point where even specific parts of dialogue where planned exactly, so it was easier to write than the other two. I personally think the Act wrapped up the story nicely:most of the questions were answered, but enough plot threads were left for the future.
==Overall==
ADKON has been a lot of fun to write. It’s only the second story i’ve actually been able to finish(the first was a Lego Nexo Knights fanfiction which was...actually pretty good), but actually it’s kinda evolved into something more. The characters have a place in my heart that I didn’t expect them to take, more than a Sonic OC deserves the right to, and I look forward to writing about their adventures in the future. Thank you to Wikikinetic for copyediting the document, for the people in the Awards who gave it criticism and to all of the readers, including you, . If you want to read anything else i’ve written, take a look at the fanfiction template bellow, or look for Skyblade743 on Wattpad where I will (hopefully) be writing original stories and non-Sonic fanfiction. Also, there is a questionnaire on the front page and your opinion will be appreciated.
Thank you for reading.
Category:Skyblade743