Cultivating Plants

Hello there!

For starters, I just want to say that Cultivating Plants has been my longest story so far, and by a long shot! This has led to some problems, but otherwise, I am happy with the result and appreciate all your support, so thank you!

Whilst I was writing this story, I had some of the worst years of my life, and this is clearly reflected in the writing. The ending was planned since the beginning, but my fluctuating mental state, personal affairs, and engineering studies all worked in tandem to make it far more visceral than I originally planned.

Cultivating Plants is a parody of the cultivation genre that I wrote because I didn't like how sexist and mindlessly brutal it was, and that is part of why this story is exactly sexist and mindlessly brutal, just from another scope. You might not think much of a cultivator genociding an entire sect with innocents included, yet here it leaves a bad taste. But that is the meta-narrative; I would rather address the story itself. Cultivating Plants since the beginning was about the cruel life, the suffering, and the paths not walked/taken. Yes, there could have been better endings, the could have been better developments, but choosing against them is part of the message of the story. Sometimes you don't have the privilege of taking a path, and sometimes you have shot yourself in the foot before taking it. Many people have commented that I do not address the trauma of Aloe (or rather traumas) but as I have said, that is on purpose. For example, there are currently some movements trying to censor children suffering in fiction, even if it's portrayed in an educational and informative light, and I consider this the most disgusting of censorships. If we don't read the awful things, we run the risk of not knowing about them. Cultivating Plants is a cautionary tale about the risks of not addressing trauma and mental health. The problem is not that Aloe committed genocide, but rather that she became disenchanted with life, her own included. Mental health is the type of health that not only affects oneself but also others. It's infuriating seeing people failing to understand this, but I also comprehend that I'm not the best writer, and transmitting nuanced messages is hard. Some thought I was romanticizing rape, whilst that claim alone disgusts me to the very core.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

At the start of the story, I had in the synopsis that this story was 'Breaking Bad meets Stardew Valley' and ended up removing it because some people got the wrong idea, but I was being very literal with the Breaking Bad comparison. Aloe has never been a good person, but also not an evil one. She was a selfish person, and whilst she isn't a paragon of everything good, that's okay. Having that normal person slowly become a worse version of herself was also one of my main driving factors. This story has been crass and downright horrible in some moments to teach the reader what NOT to do. You shouldn't be like Aloe; you should help Aloe not get into that state; and unfortunately, much to my dismay, not that many people get it.

Overall, I think I failed because I tried to share many lessons, not just mental health. I criticized too many things, and I ended with many puddles instead of oceans.

I have commented on this before, but I treat the stories that I post online as the first draft. There are no modifications from Patreon to here, and I only do minor rewrites to avoid plot holes, so this is by all accounts the first draft in the traditional publishing sense. If I end up publishing this story, I would not change the story, but I would reword a handful of specific chapters to better transmit the idea of the story. Also making things less crass overall.

I have that feeling in the back of my head that I have forgotten something, but I think this will have to do. Once again, thank you all for reading and supporting the story! Please, now that it's over, make your reviews so I may get the chance to publish the story without having to go the self-publishing route as I'm completely lacking a business mindset. Also, check my new story, Agatha and Christie, which is going to be far more wholesome but still with the Epsilon touches of mortal dread and scientific magic.

Thanks for everything from the bottom of my heart,

-Epsilon Twilight