So, it's now Chapter 5 of Kaden's first evolution. Suffice to say, this writing warm-up series has actually been very beneficial for me recently. And I'm not talking about economically or view-wise.

Instead, I mean creatively.

Recently my writing has been rough due to health issues, to the point it was slowing down my other writing efforts off-site for a while. Before even talking about how drained I was from work, my health had been getting really poor until some recent medicine changes. They hit like a brick but work... and with my health recovering, I realized I wanted to do more writing. As I said, however, I had been slower and slower with very little writing of more recent work to get me a place to work from.

So I took a meme character, Barricade-chan, from one of my tabletop campaigns I run and spun it.

For context, Barricade-chan is an object that appeared in the campaign and protected my players from a boss without breaking. It was so popular of a joke that it earned itself an emoji in our Discord. The basic gist was that Barricade-chan's sole goal was to protect others.

That, to me, was what led me toward isekai; particularly, I draw a lot of inspiration from isekai themes as they've become a very prominent form of manga in more recent years than before. But I've had a fascination with the genre far longer with series sharing similar vibes like .//hack that trapped people in a different world. My most recent reading has also incorporated some long-standing and well-polished manhua/manhwa, too, which helped reinforce that I was positive I could make an idea from it. I created Kaden and set it on my planning board, where I slowly pieced it together as I brainstormed.

Fun fact: Kaden's name came from "Barricading"; friends of mine cut it the word short when we play certain games like Rainbow Six Siege or ArmA, generally referring to "they're at the cade" or "I'm 'cading the door".

I hadn't realized that my creative drive recently has felt very limited, despite running many campaigns and my writing being very open in what I'm allowed to do. I had a lot of ideas I wanted to do but felt restricted trying to do. With Evolution Barricade, that changed; I just did what I wanted and toyed with the ideas, fiddling them into shape until it looked presentable and made sense. For an isekai satire that's also an isekai, I opened up myself to a whole new theme and range that I could manipulate in any direction. Hell, I even pulled out my paint.NET and made some quick doodles (as you've seen).

For the first time in months, since I'd not had the time to run or even attempt my other fictions here, I had an opportunity to write and create without apprehension or concern. I was writing JUST to write. I made the decision that I wouldn't do more than a cursory pass via Grammarly so that I didn't worry about anything too glaring as far as mistakes go.

I guess the best way to put it is that is a nice breath of fresh air! I don't normally use exclamation points... but with this story, I can. I've been doing a lot of physically-aimed writing and shirking on my dialogue, yet now I can talk or hit whenever I want. I kept the stats simple and branched out multiple paths and basic footstone that could work on their own, all so that I didn't need to worry about hyper-expanded branching.

Hell, I've been intentionally miswriting my footnote since Chapter 1.

It's little things here that give me so much more freedom that I try my best to ignore ratings or views. I try to ignore the voice telling me "it's just a silly warm-up, work on something else." Getting to enjoy writing again has me being productive and writing large word counts again instead of scrambling out less than a hundred per session/day.

Everyone who's giving my writing here a chance, thank you. While I'm making this story solely from my own personal enjoyment and chance to write freely (flooding it with shitposts and references to things like blatant product-ripping in manga), your views and comments always help cheer me up or make me think. Royal Road hasn't produced a large following for me but that's fine because I don't need one. If I can make a story that folks enjoy and that I enjoy writing, without the hassle of doubting or picking myself apart over mistakes...

Then that's fine, right?

Anyway, I hope you look forward to another sample cut of Evolution Barricade. This will be dropping alongside Chapter 5, as I have more writing to do today that isn't Evolution Barricade-related. I'm still not sure what I'll do with my other Royal Road stories but for now I'm happy and this fits into my needs. Going forward, I hope you enjoy the story and work as much as I do.

Oh, and if you'd like me to focus on something in the next Writer Talk, comment below or send me a message! Whether you want a Q&A or just want to ask me about something, I don't mind at all.