Hello.

How are you tonight?

I had some thoughts about my story Hell/Dolls recently, and since we’re so close to release, I thought I’d talk a little about the history of the story.

This will be a little long-winded and meandering, so ou don’t have to pay too much attention to this post.  This is literally me just rambling before I pass out.

When I was in elementary school, middle school, and even through high school, I found myself acting out scenes and stories that came out of my messy mind.  Hell/Dolls began as one of these “plays for myself”, and I would end up acting out scenes for the story at home when I was supposed to be doing homework, at recess when my friends were preoccupied, and even on my walks up to the local university.  I acted out little skits, character asides, relationship scenes, and even full-on battles.  I am not ashamed to say I was intimately attached to the term “chuunibyou”.

But to be honest, acting out these scenes helped me clarify points: story beats, character personalities, world specifics and terms, and even the kinds of monsters inhabiting the world.  I did this for many different stories before Hell/Dolls; several of the stories I’ve produced started out as me self-acting the ideas that came to my head.

Hell/Dolls, for some reason or another, stuck with me when I got to college.  Every other story was a play on some show I was currently interested in, or a game concept that deeply pleased me.  But Hell/Dolls was different.  I had created the characters in their own world, separate from everything I had seen (mostly); it had religion, politics, love, and even my first permanent character death (that made me emotional in a weird way).

I had run through my mind the idea of this story as a tabletop game for a while after I got into them (I didn’t play my first D&D game until 2012 or so, and then I got REALLY into tabletop, as y’all probably know), and even now I have some first drafts and an Excel auto-fill sheet for a purported TTRPG.  This story has held more sway in my creations than most other ideas (one long-spanning idea I had may eventually resurface, but that’s for another day), and I can’t express enough what this story means to me.

It is the semblance of my creative identity as of now, and the written story I will be releasing is the most dedicated I’ve been to a project since I can remember.

SO TO HYPE Y’ALL UP, here is a brief description of Hell/Dolls:

It takes place in a world called Kiria, populated by many denizens, from mortal races like the Hjina and Retura, to the so-called trans-mortal races of deadly Baael and overly-respected Azrael.  The gods are gone, save one that resurfaces as The Scourge of The World every few generations, causing a surge of death and aggression upon its resurgence.

The story primarily follows an insurgent would-be hero named Vincent Laverse, who sways between “I can do anything myself” and “I need to rely on others” due to his past.  He meets a team that forces him to focus on the latter, and uncovers secrets about his new home, himself, his allies, and the dreaded Baael that forces him to think more carefully about his decisions.

I hope you all enjoyed my little ramble.  Please keep an eye out on Wattpad, FictionPress, and (if you want to support me) ko-fi (Marcosias Isif is generally my username).  I do eventually want to release more stuff, such as dramatic readings, art and concepts, and maybe even a playable TTRPG one day, so please keep an ear out for me.