Contains: long-term weight gain, direct encouraging.
Hey, everyone. Been a while, hasn’t it?
A while ago, I posted about how the stress of quarantine and current events has made it hard for me to write, and I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to finish a story again. But life is funny, and often finds ways of making me eat my words. I genuinely meant it when I said in that journal that I didn’t know if I’d ever finish a gaining story again. But in the back of my mind, I wondered if posting that journal would mean I’d break my silence soon.
And then inspiration struck, in the form of this wonderful piece of art by BiggerIsBest7. In addition to being really hot, that piece reminded me of an idea that I’d long wanted to write a story about: a fat Viking. Or rather, a fat guy in a society that’s aesthetically similar to the popular image of Viking society. From there, however, it took me a very long time to figure out a plot I liked and wanted to write. That plot came with the help of my friend Ali, whom you can find on Instagram as chubmera.
Once I had that plot, I started writing, and blew past the 2,000 word roadblock where I seemed to always get stuck before. For some reason, I expected this story to be only about 7,000 words long. It ended up being twice that long. As it kept growing, I kept worrying I’d lose the motivation to work on it, as I had for so many stories before. But here we are, my first finished story since May. It feels so good to be posting for you folks again.
Does this mean I’m back? Let’s wait and see. Coming up with this idea was a three-person job, after all. It remains to be seen whether I can keep this momentum going into other ideas. Specifically ideas that I tried to write in the past few months and couldn’t, but want to give another chance. There’s more I want to share. More worlds I want to take you through. More characters I want you to meet. More I want to create. I can’t promise I will, but I intend to do my damnedest to make that happen.
As for the name of this story, you can thank Ali for that too. Since I gave the characters in this story Viking names, when I had trouble coming up with a name for the story, he suggested I do something similar. That is, take a title like “The Filling Voyage,” and translate it into the Viking language, Old Norse. Now, I loved this idea. But regrettably, I couldn’t find any online translators for Old Norse. And I wasn’t willing to buy and read books on the language just to name this story. So I did some research, and found that Icelandic is the most similar modern language to Old Norse. I then translated “The Filling Voyage” into Icelandic, and thus we get: Fyllingarferðin. According to Google, it’s pronounced “fill-LING-gah-fare-din”.
One more thing: I would like to give a huge, huge, huge thanks to my proofreaders, who’ve been helping improve the quality of my stories for over a year now. After such a lengthy period of silence, I was worried about whether they’d still lend their keen eyes to this story. Thankfully, both were still on board. You can find them on DeviantArt at thesirgalahad and justgiveme1username. Head on over and give them some thanks for helping to make my stories better.
Synopsis: Bjørn’s village has fallen on hard times, with persistent rain destroying many of the crops. After going to the tavern to nurse his sorrows, he meets a stranger named Trygve who tries to cheer him up with a drinking contest. After Bjørn wins the contest, Trygve gives him a map that he claims leads to an island that’s bountiful beyond belief, with as much food as one could want. Upon sailing there, Bjørn finds the Trygve’s promise to be truth, and also finds him living there. But the greatest surprises are yet to come.
Continue reading “Fyllingarferðin (The Filling Voyage)” →