hello! Like the description says, I made this blog to post about my webnovel, The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, currently hosted quasi-inappropriately on RoyalRoad, the online hub for progression fantasy and dubious user ads. I am intending to set up a site in the near future, but have been procrastinating.

TFTBN is a weird project that I've been working on at variable pace for coming up on four years now. To try to sum it up, it's a psychological whodunnit in a science fantasy setting that is 1/3rd depressing yuri and out there sci-fi concepts, 1/3rd my decade's worth of fermented thoughts on Ryukishi07's library, and 1/3rd my hyper-specific grudge against critical response to a bunch of ideas surrounding life extension espoused in certain strands of nerd/tech culture, most particularly the rationalist community. It's kind of an over-complicated mess but I'm also proud of it, so please consider reading if you haven't and any of that sounds appealing!

I haven't posted on tumblr in almost a decade, so I'm not 100% sure what I'll do with this beyond announce updates. But if you have any questions regarding my writing or the story, setting or characters of TFTBN, my asks are open, so please go hog wild.

Chapter 156: The Antediluvian World (9)

Just as acceptance begins to set in, a complication arises. A new chapter is now available.

You're welcome, and thanks for reading! I'm really glad you're enjoying it.

Chapter 154-5: The Antediluvian World (7-8)

Su and Ptolema learn some interesting news while visiting a unique book shop. A new chapter is now available. And also one from last week.

Chapter 153: The Antediluvian World (6)

Ptolema and Su discuss art. A new chapter is now available.

I've decided I wanna start recommending stuff here every so often! And I'll start with throwing out one for Spare Parts, a VN series by an acquaintance I feel is kinda underappreciated for how much hard work obviously goes into it. I originally played the first part back when I was going through my thankfully-pretty-brief treatment for liver cancer back in 2021, and it did a lot to raise my spirits at the time.

I feel like I'm bad at describing other people's work in a way that captures what makes it special gracefully, but in short, it's a episodic story about a bunch of robots abandoned in a basement that starts off as mostly slice-of-life comedy, but has mystery and drama undertones that eventually grow to become the focus of the plot. The whole thing has a very carefully-cultivated sentimental atmosphere that makes the story feel more than just the sum of its parts, and the character work is some of the strongest I've seen in the medium - I don't think there's a single member of the cast I ended up not being intrigued by. The wordcount is also quite hefty for a western VN, which often feel overly-streamlined to me, and the attention to detail is kind of incredible with that in mind.

It's not really got a lot in common with TFTBN in terms of tone or genre staples, buuuuuut if you like somewhat Umineko-inspired works that try to break down certain topics in novel ways by approaching them with a roundabout sci-fi premise and/or are a weird and specific type of yuri pervert with broader horizons than just whatever the fuck I'm doing, then you will probably get something out of it!

I somehow missed this question from a while ago! Whoops.

How I got into murder mysteries is a little roundabout - my first experience with them was binging my mom's collection of the classics as a kid (Carr is my fave from that era), but if I'm being honest it was probably the AA games that got me seeking them out and actively consuming them a lot in my early teens. Then I got brain damage in the Umineko fandom in the early 2010s and after that they kind of became my primary thing.

Despite this, though, I am not super good at solving them. Maybe a little better than average? I remember I figured out Umi at like the point in Episode 6 where they're basically yelling the answer in your face.

Chapter 152: The Antediluvian World (5)

Su grapples with her situation, and gets most of her immediate questions answered. A new chapter is now available.

Chapter 151: The Antediluvian World (4)

Ptolema explains everything, though not very well. A new chapter is now available.

To be completely honest, I don't think I've really grown as a writer much writing the story beyond getting more accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the webnovel market. I feel like I've been stylistically in a bit of a rut since I gave up on traditional publishing in my early-mid twenties, since I haven't really had any projects that have forced me to write in a specific, uncomfortable style or at a very high standard of quality-- I'm the sorta person who struggles to push myself without a hard incentive to do so. A stint writing clickbait articles back before AI rendered that an unviable way to make money online also kinda poisoned my brain a bit.

I think she probably hates the cutesiest ones the most. Without checking my notes, I think the situation is supposed to be that the academic community was more hostile to women when she was younger, so she grew to dislike anything with an infantilizing quality.

Honestly, this happens so frequently that I feel like it's rarer for readers to react to something the way I expect... I think the biggest example that I can say without spoiling anything is just (spoilers for chapter 100+, I guess) Su's character. After all the reveals had dropped, I expected her to be extremely divisive and a lot of people to be outright disgusted with her, but outside of a couple RR comments people still seem to view her very favorably. It almost makes me wonder if I should rewrite some later segments, since there might be less implicit drama than I thought.

Chapter 150: The Antediluvian World (3)

A pleasant meal, followed by an unhelpful conversation with a wild animal. A new chapter is now available.

Chapter 149: The Antediluvian World (2)

Utsushikome returns to a place she does not recognize, and culture shock ensues. A new chapter is now available.

Chapter 148: The Antediluvian World

Su begins an odyssey. A new chapter is now available.

I think you might have misunderstood a bit! The idea is supposed to be that an Index isn't something you can be born with, but rather a sort of non-physical machine that gets welded to your pneuma in the second half of an Induction. Kuroka wasn't born with an Index, she was born with a pneuma that just happened to grow normally after being altered at birth so it wouldn't reconnect with her Seed.

It's supposed to be extremely rare-- Sort of like spontaneously healing from a serious spinal injury in the real world. I feel like the text is a little bad at conveying these concepts, so it's understandable you'd get mixed up.