Kratogenesis

2023: Looking Back At It...

!! Spoilers for this work, if you care about it. !!

When I first wrote Kratogenesis, I thought it was my magnum opus. It's natural to feel this way after completing such a long work — long for my standards, anyway. Looking back at it, however, I think it actually kinda stinks. I'll give you eleven reasons I now think this way.

1: The self-declared premise, which was "bfb + superpowers", rarely took place. The characters were just fooling around, seldom actually using their abilities.

2: Book and Golf Ball becoming unlikable for bad reasons. "Re-establishment of order"? When a meteor struck the plains and shattered whatever order stood before? And with Four, a literal god (more about them later)? Get outta here with this Saturday-morning-lookin-ahh plot point!

3: Loser's heel turn is even more inexcusable, since he just became a jerk for no reason. What makes this point all the more frustrating is that I believe his heel turn could have been a good way to get the story going, but I flubbed it up. Thrice. And while we're at it...

4: ...him straight-up dying. Just why? I don't even hate him! Another thing that now rubs me the wrong way is the tonal shift in the story, which flip-flops between a funny little fic with goofballs and a literal death-by-electrocution scene. It's just too much.

5: The story started off in the same manner as canon BFB, but there were no eliminations, so the losers of each challenge just kinda stood there, doing nothing.

6: Four and X vanishing for no reason, when they could have intervened, in favor of or against the objects, or even just as "referees". In an indirect way, you could say that I screwed up on the villain department four times! (Heh...)

7: The language I used in the story, which makes me cringe. Too many adverbs, and telling feelings rather than showing them. Oh, and "Burly Detective" Syndrome ahoy.

8: I wrote it alone, which in itself isn't a bad thing at all, but I didn't make much use of early readers that could tell me what worked in the story and what didn't.

9: Besides the ones I mentioned, none of the characters do much of anything. This is like the anti-Kudzu Plot: only a few sucky arcs, and the rest is pure static.

10: I wrote the ending without planning a proper follow-up. Result: cliffhanger. (There is one follow-up, but I abandoned it after two chapters. Whoops.)

11: The name. "Generation of power"? The characters don't make their powers: a meteor strike does!

If you really, really want to (re-)read Kratogenesis, feel free to do so, but my advice is: don't bother with this pile of mediocrity and wasted potential, and if you do, don't expect it to be good.

I could rewrite the original story, but 1) it'd be vastly different from what I had written in 2019, and 2) too much effort.

Now, this doesn't mean I'll delete Kratogenesis, because some people still enjoyed it, and I had fun writing it, but the flaws I identified above are enough motivation for me to redo the story. (Yay for being monothematic!)

What I like of Kratogenesis is the premise. So much potential for butt-kicking, and I have fun planning all the different powers for each character. Plus, using song titles for chapter names is a nice touch. (Not so when I couldn't come up with a decent song I knew that would fit the plot!)

The new story I'm planning will not be a sequel, prequel or direct remake of Kratogenesis, and will not be related to in any way that isn't the premise. So no, no big Kratoverse. Oh, and it'll have actual villains created specifically for the new work.