Chapter 3: The Story of the 12 Gods

"Do not lay all your eggs in one basket." This proverb means to not center all your resources into one investment. In my case, when I tell you to not lay all your eggs in one basket, I meant: "Do not attempt to write a story with a literal dozen characters as the main protagonists."

In this "chapter", I will be talking about my third official story. Spoiler alert: It never got finished. The Story of the 12 Gods is a typical isekai story where twelve people died and got reincarnated as gods in the new world. Who reincarnated them? A great god. What did they reincarnate as? "Gods". What more quirk does this story have? Its own levelling system.

This is the moment when I cringe at my own creation. I clearly remember a moment in the past (while writing the sixth chapter or so) that the title does not make sense. The powers these reincarnated teenagers possess ought to be classified as "hero" class at best. At least that would fit into the isekai junkfood genre that is currently plaguing the anime industry. It was also an option to use the title as foreshadowing for the long, long future. Yet for some reason, I just never bothered to change it. Darn you, past me.

The characters themselves were nothing special in my opinion. I hope I have often mentioned this in the past and will mention this again in the future, but I am the type of person who does stuff if I think I can do it. I thought I could write a story, and that is what I did. ...and now I am stuck with regret and cringe at my own creation. These characters are all super generic:

1. the typical goody-two-shoes prodigy who never learns from his mistakes because he never loses in the first place,
2. the envious second child edgy cringe lord who craved power to defeat the first character,
3. the energetic ball of energy who got cursed by the inability to show any emotion, (Wait a minute, this one is actually a tad bit more original.)
4. the undisciplined wannabe hero who was given the powers to do so by pure luck,
5. the one girl who has communication issues but wants to be friends with everyone else, (I guess I had my own version of Komi-san way back in the past.)
6. the pair of reasonable characters who adapted into the world, which is more or less the first character but not as overpowered because they are only overpowered as a pair, (Somehow I kind of want to see them now.)
7. ^
8. the adamant big guy with big powers who struggles to choose between his sense of duty and his own sense of justice, (...damn. This is such a good idea. If only I actually paced my characters instead of running them in parallel all at once.)
9. the pair of clueless characters with broken powers who never cares about consequences, (Which is to say they are yet another clones of the first character, except these two have no sense of morals.)
10. ^
11. the weak hearted one with anger management issues, (Perhaps it is because I don't read enough varieties of stories, but I don't see these types of character often as a protagonist. This is actually an intriguing story.)
12. the NEET bookworm who disappeared out of nowhere, and
13. the one unnoticed by everyone and got left behind in square zero; the one to watch over every event that other characters are experiencing.

So yeah. I had in fact planned for thirteen 'gods' even though the title says twelve. I think that the audience was meant to be the thirteenth god, because from the other characters' POV, you are literally 'nonexistent'. Funny thing is I once tried to rewrite everything and add myself to the story as well, but uh... that was even more cringe than failing to write a decent story, so I deleted this story entirely. There are no backups either, so nobody gets to see how bad my writing was. Not even myself.

While I was reading my notes about this story, I realized that I have been messed up in the head for quite some time. The experiences that these characters have would outright scar any empathetic readers. What the hell was I thinking? (Oh, wait. You didn't think at all. That's your shtick, isn't it?) It's almost as if the protagonists are the bad guys while the antagonists are the good guys. The 'gods' were basically invading the domains of the 'demon lords' after the latter literally destroyed the world. Considering 'the literal destruction and segregation of the world', you'd think that the demons are inherently evil, but according to my memory and my notes, most of the demon lords are actually goofy and carefree characters, barring from the first and second one.

...

The reason why I named them 'gods' is probably to have them resemble the twelve Olympian gods while choosing a generic archetype for the attributes of their powers. Now some of them makes sense, but the others are outright broken:

1. [Light] The generic symbol of good (most of the time).
2. [Magic] Because this attribute is more ambiguous than [Light] and does not necessarily mean good. (Even though that should be applicable for literally everything.)
3. [Knowledge] Because the third character cursed to be emotionless. (I was essentially forcing her character to be something that she is not. Believe me: This is the least sinful thing I have done to my characters.)
4. [Weather] was kind of unique, actually. I made it such that he can control the weather for only 1 MP even though he only has 3 MP total. (Probably for the best, considering the undisciplined wannabe hero trait that we gave him.)
5. [Water]. This was uh... my one and only attempt at writing romance. I pray I never have to write that bullshit ever again, because I literally did not think of that story's future.
6. [Void] and [Time] because of course this pair exists. I somehow managed to downscale their powers such that they are less broken, but it is blatantly obvious that they would become stupidly overpowered if they were allowed to grow. (Kinda makes me wonder whether I had planned to fridge them or not.)
7. ^
8. [Nature]. I believe I had spent a lot of effort into this character. His attribute has basically nothing to do with the story. The initial concept was just "Nature vs Nature", and yet it turned into (an attempt to tell) a life lesson.
9. [Death] and [Life]. I hate these two characters. They are one of my biggest mistakes as a writer. Even as a newbie writer, I never thought I would see myself give these broken-ass powers to the most slothful and apathetic individuals I have ever imagined. What can they do? Create life (e.g. golem) and undead (e.g. skeleton). ...WHAT IS THE POINT OF DEATH ANYMORE? If it was [Light], then maybe I could have fridged someone and hurt him emotionally. WITH THESE TWO, LIFE AND DEATH ARE MEANINGLESS.
10. ^
11. [Hunt] is truly fucked up. I don't even understand what the fuck was residing in my head while I was writing this shit.
12. [Dreams]... By the time I started writing [Dreams], I basically gave up on the idea of writing multiple characters and have her just disappear. I had a thought, and that thought involved her literally to be gone for a damn long time.
13. [Observation], because that is what you guys are: observers to a story.

For each type, I tried giving the demon lords the counterparts of their attributes, but considering the story was axed fairly early, they never got any chance to develop either. (Heck, it's a surprise that some of these stories start with encountering the demon lord in the first place.) Their attributes were: (1) Ghosts, (2) Evil, (3) Wisdom, (4) Honor, (5) Fire, (6) Matter, (7) Space, (8) Nature, (9) ???, (10) ???, (11) Shield, (12) Night. [Observation] did not have a counterpart since he is literally "outside the story".

1. [Ghosts] was meant to be a typical villain, destined to be slain by a typical hero.
2. [Evil] is a cringe lord paired with yet another cringe lord.
3. [Wisdom] is a gentleman who attempted to entrap [Knowledge] by giving riddles. (Least harmful demon lord that I can remember.)
4. [Honor]... I don't know why the hell [Honor] was paired with [Weather]. (Perhaps because their characters contrast each other?)
5. [Fire] is the counterpart of [Water]. (This is still one of the stupidest attempts of writing I have ever remembered.)
6. [Matter] and [Space] are actually broken if you think about it; potentially even more than [Void] and [Time]. (Well, this is definitely true because the 'gods' start out on their weakest state at the beginning of the story.) 
7. ^
8. [Nature] vs [Nature]; which is to say plants (god) versus animals (demon lord).
9. [???]. Now uh... I don't remember what attributes the demon lords have who were supposed to fight [Life] and [Death], and none of my notes seem to have the answers. Whatever it is though, it's probably stupid. Even if I don't remember them, I do know that they were supposed to be able to overpower "Life and Death". (It says here: "Together they met the Demon Lords and defeated them but apparently they’re still alive, thinking how to take revenge." ...Zone, how the hell did those hatchlings kill the demon lords? Did they keep summoning familiars and have them grind for EXP or something?)
10. ^
11. [Shield]. Now listen here, if I hadn't written this down in my notes, then I would've 100% thought that this character was called the "Demon Lord of Tracking" or "Demon Lord of Investigation". His name was "Sherlock" for goodness' sake!
12. [Night]. Queen of Vampires in a (sub-)world where every resident is a vampire. Yeah, that sounds about right. I don't recall giving this character any depth though. Obviously she was meant to have big pride, ego, power, etc. but I don't recall anything about her. It's almost as if she is living the "slow life" that every slice-of-life protagonist wants to have.

As I mentioned before, this story did not have much (if any) preparation (just like its predecessors) regarding the plotline; they were all made up as I continued writing the story (which is basically what I am still doing right now). I had written twelve to fourteen chapters; one for each character (except [Observation]) and one more for [Light] and [Magic]. (Because those two are special. Not. They are just the ones who showed up in numerical order, and it just so happened that their stories are somehow easier to expand than the rest.) After the fourteenth chapter, I dropped the story like I dropped World of Cage, attempted to rewrite it, cringed, and then dropped it again.

Thank you for reading my dark history. I'll see you in the next "chapter". (Damn, I should've named this series: "Zone's Dark Histories" instead of "Rambling Zone". I mean, I want to ramble nonsense for real in the future, but these "chapters" are literal dark pasts of mine.)

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