Chapter Text
JUNE 2023
Hello everyone, this is Cal Santiago, author of the Soulsborne Modern AU series. At the time of writing, it’s been 7 years since I last posted a new chapter.
I’m sure this will come as a surprise to absolutely no one at this point, but this is just an official statement saying that Sibling Souls! has been discontinued, and I will not be writing anything within this particular series as a whole for the foreseeable future. The series will still remain on Ao3 for historical purposes, however, and I have no intentions of deleting any of my previous stories.
I am writing this as an act of transparency, as well as an apology for simply abandoning this story in 2016 without so much as an update. I’d also like to use this an an opportunity to let previous readers who enjoyed my work over the past 7 years know that I want to thank them for reading, and that I appreciate their support over the years (more details at the end).
So, without further ado…
WHY THE SOULSBORNE MODERN AU SERIES IS DISCONTINUED
1. My career in the video game industry
Some people may already be aware of this, but I am a professional 3D Character Artist for video games as my day job.
In the interim since Sibling Souls! went on hiatus, I’ve worked both as a contractor/outsourcer and as a full-time employee for several AAA game developers and publishers across multiple countries, including 2K Games, Microsoft, Bethesda, Sony, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, etc… Yes, including FromSoftware. Especially FromSoftware. I couldn’t believe it when it happened, too, but it did. :D
Of course, this isn’t the time nor place for me to list my entire resume, but the point I’m trying to make is that I have a full-time career that I love and dedicate A LOT of my time and energy to. When I’m not working on games or doing day-to-day activities that keep my body functioning, I try to spend time creating my own personal projects. These include 3D characters and 3D portraits for my professional portfolio, as well as painting concept art and doing R&D for said projects.
As such, writing has always been just a pastime of mine— something that I do on the side when I need a change of pace from 3D modelling, animation, programming, and working in game engines for at least 40-80 hours a week on average. It was simply not sustainable for me having to write a comedic series chock full of hijinks and anime tropes whilst at the same time having to work a highly demanding job that, while fulfilling, can also sometimes be incredibly difficult, stressful, and taxing on both your physical and mental health.
That’s especially true when you take on more responsibilities, or end up leading a team of 10 people and have to do both project management and client relations, as was the case for me in 2022. Not to mention the fact that I had tight deadlines to meet. If I needed to work overtime on weekends because I had to do extensive pre-release bug fixes for WWE 2K23, or if I had to check an outsourcer’s asset submission for our various projects at Sony, then I would prioritise those over everything else.
2. No time, no energy
On a related note to the first factor, there also the matter of time and energy.
I first started writing Hotspring Souls! in the autumn of 2015, when I was in my mid-20s and in between jobs after only recently having made the transition to work in the video game industry. Even as I was freelancing for indie studios or working on my portfolio, I still had plenty of time to work on side projects that weren’t necessarily related to my career. Heck, I even had time to cosplay back then, too.
Ah, youth. How I yearn for the days when I had perpetual energy and perfect knees.
Since then, I’ve gotten busier and busier, whilst also having less and less time— and especially energy— to work on other things. You grow older, you get busier, you have less time and energy to do stuff. It’s an unfortunate fact of life. When you’re in your 30s, you just have way more responsibilities and things to complete in the “adulthood bullshit checklist of life”, so side projects such as this simply fall by the wayside.
3. My humour has changed, and so have my sensibilities
With all the life changes I’ve experienced in the past 8 years, it’s inevitable that my sense of humour would change as well.
To be frank, I find myself far less humourous these days compared to when I was in my 20s. Nowadays, I much prefer the kind of dry sarcasm that you would expect from someone like Ellen Rose or Jane Douglas from outsidexbox / Outside Xtra. No more screaming, no more overly passionate anime speeches, no more giant robot vs. kaijuu battles, no more straight-up slapstick humour that would be sure to cause an injury or lawsuit in real life.
Not to mention the fact that some of the things I considered humourous before are things that I no longer condone now. Using domestic abuse for comedy, for example. When I read the things I wrote for especially Brendan (the Bearer of the Curse) and Shanalotte (the Emerald Herald) and their relationship back then, I cringe. Cal in his 20s thought that was OK, Cal in his 30s disagrees.
As such, I don’t think it’s possible for me to capture the same zany energy and over-the-top comedy that I wrote back in 2015-2016. Not to mention the fact that times have changed, and I’m quite certain that some of my jokes in the older stories would be considered tasteless or unfunny by the GenZ whippersnappers these days. (Pardon me, Gehrman hijacked the keyboard for a bit.)
I’m hesitant to go back and edit my old work, however, because I feel it still functions just fine within the context of the story it’s in, as well as the characters that say or do those comedic things. I don’t think we should completely censor works that were made in the past but are considered problematic today because our sensibilities have changed, and we’ve— thankfully— become more sensitive, understanding, and inclusive human beings. Most of us, anyway. There are still plenty of horrible assholes out there. But my point is, works that were written in the past are a product of their time— the same with how a lot of historical figures (especially Medieval ones) who are considered problematic today are a product of their time— and should thus be viewed that way.
So what’s more likely is that I’ll simply leave the stories as-is for historical reasons here on Ao3, but maybe add an author’s note saying that the jokes were written in the mid-2010s and probably are outdated or no longer funny if someone reads them later into the 2020s or, Cthulhu forbid, the 2030s and beyond.
Also, notice how I’m using proper English spelling again instead of the fake American spelling I forced myself to use back then? Yes, exactly. And “hotspring” isn’t even a real word— I just forgot to hit spacebar when I wrote that first chapter all those years ago, decided to use it as a gimmick to set my story apart, then sort of forgot about it. :P
4. The exponential growth of the Soulsborne franchise
This is the biggest reason why I can no longer continue this series.
When I stopped working on Sibling Souls! in 2016, there was only Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, and Bloodborne. The Dark Souls III DLCs hadn’t even been announced yet. As of 2023, we’ve since gotten Déraciné, Sekiro, Elden Ring, and the upcoming Elden Ring DLC(s). The Soulsborne franchise (or if you prefer, the ”FromSoft Cinematic Universe”) has simply gotten too big for me to create viable, entertaining stories, and the risk of simply reusing the same plot points and story arcs is much higher than when I first started.
Plus, more characters to bring into the modern AU meant growing the ensemble cast of characters, which was already quite large to begin with. Even as early as Slice of Souls!, I already felt like some of the characters were flat and uninteresting, particularly when compared to the “star cast members” who were the Hunter, Evetta (the Doll) Artorias, Ciaran, Solaire, and Maria. It was a genuine struggle to write POV chapters for everyone because I wasn’t sure who I could work with and if I could make them entertaining and endearing. Lucian (the Slayer of Demons) was someone I definitely struggled with the most, and I often felt that he just ended up as the annoying Butt Monkey of the group whom no one really took seriously. Circe (the Maiden in Black) was underused and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with her character, either. And then there was the ever growing backlog of interesting, but ultimately unused ideas. Ornstein’s POV chapter was an interesting experiment, since I had planned for him to have a bigger role later on and become a recurring secondary character instead of just a one-off guest member. The same was true for Ludwig and the Old Hunters, and they eventually would be more than just “the funny senior citizens who get into trouble all the time” (they were going to star in a Game of Thrones crossover chapter at one point). But unfortunately, those plans never materialised.
The sad thing with Sibling Souls! specifically is that I already had established personalities for Grey (obvious spoiler, but he’s NOT a villain at all), Anri, Seri, and Horace if I had actually had the opportunity to continue writing this story. I wanted to show how Grey and Marcus get over their differences and eventually become good friends. I wanted to explore more of Grey and Anri’s relationship. Because let’s face it, it’s VERY hard to find good fanfiction of the Ashen One and Anri online (unless you’re explicitly looking for creepy Stockholm Syndrome stuff or other things that I dare not mention here). Thankfully, this was sort of mitigated by the in-universe DS3 stories written by my best friend and fellow Ao3 author FanficsbyVe. I highly recommend checking those out if you have the time. Oh, and check out her long-running Skyrim-Soulsborne crossover series, too! That one is a labour of love that was written in a span of almost a decade, and if you like both Soulsborne and The Elder Scrolls, I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it as well. (OK, shameless advertising is over now.)
As for the other FromSoft games that followed once the Dark Souls trilogy came to a close, well, would you believe that I ALMOST continued the series in 2019 with a one-shot story of Evetta and the Hunter babysitting Yuliya from Déraciné? In that story, she was another Cainhurst kid, and overall the tone was a bit more serious and heartwarming rather than comedic (a bit like Beyond the Fog Gate, if you’ve read that). I simply never finished writing it because I was also finishing my Master’s dissertation at the time and needed to focus on that. And unfortunately, it seems most people who claim to be Soulsborne fans have never even HEARD of Déraciné (which is a bloody shame, go check it out because it’s excellent), so that might’ve alienated a lot of people, too.
So next comes Sekiro… Well, Sekiro was kind of where the can of worms dropped onto the floor.
Sekiro’s world, characters, and story are completely different, and while I enjoyed the game (whilst simultaneously hating the gameplay) I had a hard time figuring out whether I could even viably bring Wolf, Kuro, Emma, Genichiro, or Isshin into the modern-day AU. The most I could think of was that they were tourists who where visiting, but even that didn’t make sense because my AU sort-of-kinda already takes place in Japan anyway? Also, Isshin would’ve just been another overly passionate elderly rival character with no indoor voice, and I already felt I was stretching the “senior citizen ridiculous hijinks” story arc too thin. So I scrapped it.
And of course… Elden Ring. OOOOOOOOOOHH, ELDEN RING. (Sorry, I had to.)
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking LOVE Elden Ring. It’s pushed its way to becoming my second favourite game in the series, with Bloodborne still— and always— being number one in my heart. It’s not just because I worked at a company that helped co-develop the game with FromSoft, either. I went from being incredibly dismissive when the teaser was first shown; to being apathetic; to being sceptical, but somewhat intrigued; to being cautiously optimistic; to being genuinely excited by the time of the network test; to pre-ordering the standard edition; and then to absolutely loving the shit out of this game when it launched. Elden Ring is the Soulsborne game that I sunk the most hours into. I would spend whole weekends sat in front of my PlayStation 4 exploring, grinding, engaging in jolly co-operation with other players, doing NPC questlines, and of course progressing the story. My best friend and I basically spent my company holiday break at the end of 2022 playing it, too.
I LOVE the characters. Fia is my absolute favourite NPC in this game (please be civil, Ranni fans, I’m not looking for a fight); Rogier is Tatsuro’s (my Tarnished protagonist) softboi best friend; and Boc is a good monkey who only deserves love, happiness, and all the best things in life.
Elden Ring singlehandedly revitalised by love and passion for the Soulsborne franchise after Dark Souls III and its DLCs had left me disappointed and jaded. It’s most likely because Miyazaki was heavily involved, and for the first time since Bloodborne, I actually CARED for the NPCs again. I desperately wish there could’ve been a way to save Fia. To save Melina, Millicent, Blaidd, Alexander, etc. To tell Malenia what happened to Miquella and perhaps even work together to save him from Mohg. To give Godwyn the dignity he deserved. And the list goes on.
I was so engrossed by the story and characters that, for the first time in years, I started writing lore theories and stories purely for my own enjoyment again. And in fact, I DO actually have plans to publish a serious, multiple-chapter, in-universe Elden Ring story here on Ao3 at some point. I’ve been writing it for several months now and it’s progressing quite nicely. But again, given the current state of my career and how much time and energy I can dedicate to writing it, I don’t know what that timeframe will look like.
Honestly, bringing Elden Ring characters into the Soulsborne Modern AU might be the highest possibility of bringing the series back to life. I have some rough ideas for how modern-day Fia would interact with and eventually join the “Blond Waifu Club” (don’t worry, Rhea, Anri, Shanalotte, and Circe are blond in spirit). Or how Blaidd and Arty would get along swimmingly due to both being noble, honourable, and ridiculously tall wolf-themed knights (imagine them meeting a la Alex Armstrong and Sig Curtis in Fullmetal Alchemist, but with swords instead of muscles). However… that’s something that I am not ready to commit to at this time. Ideas are one thing, execution is another. It’s something to shelve for the time being, and I may or may not end up writing it in the end.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So there we go. Hopefully this answers the question of whether or not Sibling Souls! will get a new chapter, what the state of the Soulsborne Modern AU series is, and where the hell Cal Santiago has been these past 7 years.
I’m sad to see this series go, I really am. It gave me so much fun and happiness writing these stories and these characters. Writing Hotspring Souls! helped me fight off depression when I was first starting out in the games industry and hopping from indie studio to indie studio as a freelancer. But unfortunately, sometimes you need to let go of a project, no matter how dear it is to your heart, because more important things need to come first. I sincerely hope you understand, and once again I apologise for just abandoning it like that.
Will I return to this series in the future? At this time, I really don’t know and I don’t want to make promises that I can’t keep. But I hope this gives the readers— especially the long-time ones if they’re still around— some sense of closure. I owe you at least that, and I’m sorry that it took this long for me to say something.
Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone who joined the Hunter, Evetta, Arty, Solaire, and the rest of the gang on their journeys as they dealt with all the shenanigans and anime tropes I came up with for them. I know that a lot of people genuinely liked what I wrote, and though I couldn’t respond to all the comments over the years, please know that I really do appreciate your support. Some people have messaged me or left comments saying that they couldn’t stop laughing when reading Hotspring Souls! or Slice of Souls!, or that Ciaran’s POV chapter in the latter helped them cope as they were dealing with a difficult situation in their lives. To all you folks, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks and appreciation. At the risk of sounding cheesy or cliché, I’m truly grateful that I was able to provide you with a positive experience in some way.
If my silly stories, outdated humour, bizarre crossovers, and 90s-2000s anime and PlayStation 2 era video game references (that no doubt betray my age) gave you a chuckle, then that’s more than enough for me. :P