This site is...
Based on an original story and alternate future by Sonny & Ais called In the Company of Shadows.
The story contains..
Slash (M/M), het (M/F) and graphic language, violence and sexual situations. Not intended for anyone under 18!
Based on an original story and alternate future by Sonny & Ais called In the Company of Shadows.
Slash (M/M), het (M/F) and graphic language, violence and sexual situations. Not intended for anyone under 18!
Check the sections/questions below for Frequently Asked Questions. If you have additional questions not answered here, please contact us; we will add more FAQ topics as we receive feedback.
The simplest answer to that is we roleplay the story out. Each of us has main characters we are in control of and there are peripheral characters we share or split between us. When the scene focuses on a character one of us is in charge of, that person will write the majority of that scene until it gets to a place where our characters interact again. At that point, we control our own characters, writing narration and dialogue for them, and share the narration for general scenes. However, during editing we both look over the entirety of the story and will change pretty much anything regardless of who wrote it unless it's direct narration or dialogue of the other person's character; then we leave a note for the other author about our question/etc.
We started out just writing on AIM, but that was a problem because we both had to be online at the same time, AIM/the internet could be randomly wonky for one or both of us, and one of us constantly had to be saving the excerpts of the story to a Word document. From there we wrote it on livejournal, using a new entry as the beginning of a scene or chapter, and replying off there. That was better because we didn't both have to be online at the same time but it ran into the same problem of constantly needing to copy/paste the replies over to a document, not to mention the longer scenes kept having the replies scrunched way off to the side.
Around that time, Ais' friend introduced her to Google Docs, which is available through Google's email system Gmail, and it's been the most effective, efficient, and best collaborative system we've used yet. See info here: Google Docs Tour. This system is awesome for collaborators! The main points are that: both collaborators can be editing at the same time, the story is available anywhere that you have internet access because it's connected through your email, you can highlight/bold/italicize/etc just like a normal Word document, you can leave comments and those comments can be color-coded to the person leaving them (Sonny, for instance, leaves yellow comments and Ais uses pink despite the fact she's not a pink sort of person), you can save the documents in a variety of formats including Word doc, you can check what revisions have been made and revert to old revisions if you think they were better, and it has an 'Edit HTML' tab which automatically HTML's what you're writing in there. Of course, to make it proper HTML we still have to clean it up, but it's not nearly as bad as the horribly gunky background HTML that Word and others will do. (Web designers, you probably know what I'm talking about).
If you're interested in collaborating with a friend on a story, we can't recommend Google Docs enough as a fast and easy way to do so.
That's pretty tough to answer because it depends on what you're wondering about to ask that question. The basic suggestion would be to just keep writing, even if something seems like it's crap, and to not worry too much about making it perfect or making it all make sense. That's for editing. When writing descriptions, we often try to put something for each of the five senses, or at least hit a few. A few other things to think about with characters are individual quirks or characteristics; like, what sort of clothing do they wear, do they have any particular mannerisms, any varying style of dialogue...? For suggestions on finishing stories, in some ways it's easier when it's a collaboration because as long as there's a good friendship or rapport between both authors, one can always remind the other to write.
An important part of writing is also knowing when to stop and take a break. When writing starts to seem like a chore, you know you've burned yourself out. We were guilty of this while writing Book 1 and it resulted in a long slowdown of the process. Another tip I'd want to add is, if you're posting an incomplete story on the internet, do not let people's negative feedback change the plot of the story or the personalities of the characters. While we value feedback negative and positive, we both decided in the beginning that we had a set plot and we weren't going to change things around at the last minute unless it was something we truly thought was important to the flow of the story or to fix a plot hole.
When writing a story on your own... We'd like to know any suggestions you may have because we're both horrible about starting but never finishing individual projects. It seems to be a common ailment for many writers. One thing Ais found that sort of helped her was telling other people what she was writing so there was more accountability. At one point she had a friend hold her to a schedule she'd tried to make; it worked for a bit until writer's block hit her. Maybe try joining a writing group, online or in person, to move you along and keep you accountable to goals set. Also, NaNo has worked quite well for Ais in the past and worked very well for Sonny & Ais in ICoS in 2006, when we wrote over 90,000 words for the contest.
A few books Ais recommends (that she has to admit she hasn't fully read but liked what she did see) are:
The main difference is the main characters; Sonny plays Sin, Ais plays Boyd. The other characters are split or shared between us. We could compile a list if there's ever a lot of interest but otherwise we figured we'd leave that as a mystery. (Insert spooky music here?)
The basic answer is that we wanted to write this story for fun and to pass the time but didn't want to make up whole new characters so we each took one of our old rpg characters from different games we'd both played in and stuck them together. How they were chosen was basically a fluke; Sonny hadn't had the chance to play Sin much so he wanted him, and Ais thought Boyd would be funny as his partner. The way this went down has already been detailed in the Story Origins page. We also included some of the AIM conversations when we made the decisions on characters, the title, etc, at the forum. A lot of the decisions were really quite arbitrary... Poor Boyd; Ais didn't even remember his name when she suggested using him.
If you don't know what het and slash mean, you probably wouldn't be asking this question. But just in case: slash = male/male, gay relationships of some sort, and het = heterosexual, male/female relationships of some sort.
Onto the answer: Because "slash" is nothing more than a label and should never dictate what should happen and what should not happen in a story. Why do we mark it slash instead of drama/action on AFFN? Because if we did that, considering the way fandom is on the internet, it would be doubtful that the story would find an audience. The fact that many pairings in the universe are homosexual would undoubtedly drive many people away and so we feel like listing it under slash gave us the chance of reaching a wider variety of people who would actually be interested and read. But that does not mean that every single character has to be a male or has to necessarily be gay or that even the main characters are required to only be interested in men.
If we were to follow those narrow guidelines there would be plenty of cases where character development would be left out, which is a major part of this story. The ICoS universe so far is about individuals who lost themselves after or because of the war and are only now finding out who they truly are. If we cut out half of the world's population simply because it could make for non-slashy situations, we would have a pretty weak story on our hands. Over the past two years of writing, we mostly let the characters take the reins and go in directions we never really expected. It may sound silly to some, but it's how a lot of the plot and its various twists and turns have been decided so far, especially for Book 2 (Afterimage).
It's important to keep an open mind about things. And I think slash fans being open to het pairings and female characters in general is a big part of that. If we want the general population to stop being so hard on slash, we should also be open to heterosexuality in slash otherwise we're being just as narrow-minded as the people we condemn for being homophobic.
No but one of us is an ALIEN! (Haha, kidding). Yes, one of us is in fact of the masculine variety. He goes by the illustrious name of 'Sonny.' Ais is a boring old female. (Boo! We don't care about her!, is what the slash fans say ;p). But in truth we don't really think it's that big of a deal. XD
We've known each other for several years online (maybe 6-7?) but have never met in person. That's probably good for Sonny; Ais was once a bouncer at a friend's party and she'd likely take him out.
There's probably more information about that and other miscellaneous trivia facts than you want to know at About Sonny & Ais
We talk about it more at the fanfic and fanart pages, but we both actually love the idea of fanfics and fanart. It makes us really happy to know we inspired anyone into writing or drawing our characters or world. However, and this is VERY important:
That's for fanfics, fanart, roleplaying games-- it doesn't matter where or how you're using our creations, we still need to be credited. For this reason, we want people to ask for our permission so we know where the story will be represented. We'd love a link or copy as well. It's pretty much 99% certain that we'll say, "Yes! Please go ahead!" But we don't want our story/world/characters being plagiarized or used without us being credited.
Just say that the characters/story/world (or whatever you're borrowing) are from Sonny & Ais for In the Company of Shadows. Provide a link to our site here at http://www.aisylum.com/sonnyais. It's best if you also contact us via any of the ways outlined on the contact page and give us a link to your work. We'd love to know if there are fanart or fanfics out there because we showcase them on our site. Of course, if you don't want us putting something on our site, we won't. But we'd still like to know you did it.
If you've written fanfiction/drawn fanart/etc and want to submit it to us, you can do so via the forum at the Fanfic/Fanart, Plot Bunnies topic or by emailing us at sonnyais@gmail.com. Please do write fanfics or draw fanart! We'd love to see it! Just make sure you credit us (see above). We ask all artists/authors/etc if it's okay if we showcase their fanfics and fanart on our site... It's perfectly fine if you don't want us to, but we'd love to put it up or link to it if you're okay with it!
Oh. My. God. YES we read feedback! YES YES YES. "Yes" cannot, in fact, be said enough. Do we care about feedback? Again -- YES YES YES! Should you bother writing us or leaving feedback even if whatever you're reading was posted awhile ago? YES YES YES... Should you tell us WHY you liked the story? YES YES YES. Should you write us a long email if it's something you're interested in doing? YES YES YES! Should you contact us any of the ways we describe in the contact page? YES YES YES. (Do you sense a pattern yet?)
We LOVE feedback. It makes us extremely happy. It really does. We started writing the story just for ourselves but since others started reading and liking it, we've been more inspired to keep going. Without feedback, the story would have stopped being posted online long ago. Without feedback, it's possible we would have lost interest eventually and stopped writing or switched to another story. Without feedback, it's possible we would not have been as intent on finishing it as soon as we did. Without feedback, In the Company of Shadows and the associated world would not be what it is today.
We're both busy people... We have jobs, school, sometimes second jobs, things happening in real life, Sonny has his kids... There is a hell of a lot going on and as much as we love the story, sometimes things get so crazy busy that it's easy to lose focus or inspiration. Knowing that there are readers out there who are interested in the story means a LOT. It means we have one more reason to keep trying to work our schedules around each other, to double-check what we write to make it more accurate or have better wording, to finish what we started so we can post it... In fact, there have been times that we've been especially intent to post something after a period of no writing precisely because we've continued to get reviews and feedback even during that quiet time.
So it's EXTREMELY important to us to receive feedback. EXTREMELY. We cannot stress enough how important it is. We don't like the idea of begging for feedback every chapter (although that's usually what we do) or demanding certain amounts of feedback before we continue. We write this story and share it for free because we're mostly enjoying ourselves and because we like the idea of sharing the story with others. But especially because of that, feedback is that much more important. We may not charge money for the story but feedback works excellently as payment. Even if we don't respond to you directly (because you left a review on AFFN or the guestbook or shoutbox), we absolutely promise you that we read that feedback. And we seriously appreciated it. Especially if you tell us why you like the story... We LOVE hearing that.
So should you write us feedback? Do we care? YES YES YES. PLEASE DO. We are not scary people and will not harm you.. although Ais may get really excited and ramble to you for awhile and perhaps overuse emoticons. But we'd like to think that you can live through that...
Yes, but we're not telling. It's so top-secret that it's even secret from the readers!
No, really though, we like the idea of keeping certain aspects of the world completely ambiguous. Just as we stated above about the city, this way it allows the reader's imagination to wander and they can picture whatever they want. It also is a reminder that this could be any government Agency in any city, in any country, and we're not bogging it down to just one specific place and any stereotypes that may go along with it.
We've decided to never say the name of the city and to only give information about it's basic location, which is East Coast and somewhere near the Pennsylvania area. One reason for doing this is because we want to leave things ambiguous and somewhat mysterious. We want people to think that this kind of thing could happen in any city in the country and not be tied to imagining just one specific area with certain landmarks.
The second reason is that the city is the geographic version of the Everyman; a place that could exist in any state, any country, any continent because it was once a normal place with normal people where extraordinary things happened. This changed it all for the worse and brought out the baser instincts in people once their survival mode kicked in. We don't want to play in to stereotypes and say one region or city has a more likely chance of that happening than another; we want it to be known that (and this is a large aspect of the overall plot of the book) people are just people. There is nothing inherently evil about them, no matter where they come from; that it's outside influences, outside events, and their internal reactions that can change them for the better or worse.
Basically, the Agency is (and we have information on this scattered all about the story in various places, so we figured we'd give one coherent explanation :p) a secret organization in the United States that excels in espionage and assassination and works covertly with key people in the government. The purpose of the Agency is to protect the interests of the United States and, in the post-WWIII world that we set up, to do everything possible to aid the nation in gaining power internationally after the severe downfall that it suffered economically after the war. Another purpose, and the purpose we focus on in the stories, is to protect the government from people both in and outside of the nation, who want to overturn the government and take control (a phenomenon that is seen worldwide in ICoS, understandably since countries everywhere were destroyed, lives were ruined, and people want a lasting change--not just a superficial one--to ensure that this kind of thing will never happen again).
There are two branches of the Agency; one in Europe and one in the United States although both act solely in the interest of the US. Our story focuses on the US so far, so we'll only discuss that branch.
The Agency is located in our unnamed Everycity on the East Coast of the United States and its base of operations is on property that once housed a company called Johnson's Pharmaceuticals. Through various deals with the owner of the company, the company name is also used as an official cover for the Agency for the outside world.
Since it was once the headquarters for a major company as well as the site of factories and scientific testing, the property is vast. Think of a gated college community, with numerous streets and buildings inside. The main building on the Agency Compound is The Tower, where all administrative departments are housed as well as briefing rooms, conference halls and some training areas. Then there are several residential buildings for agents who live on-compound, training bunkers (where training occurs for various stages of advancement, includes a gymnasium type area, training rooms of different kinds and a cafeteria), and smaller buildings that are used for a variety of things such as Weapons Research and Testing, specific medical specialists, and so on. (We'll provide a detailed listing of areas and possibly even a map of the compound at some point in the future.)
The Agency is governed in the following way:
A note about field agents vs guards: Guards and field agents have totally different roles; guards watch the compound and a field agent's main duties lie off-compound. As such, it depends on the situation as to who technically outranks who. Regarding compound security, a guard can tell even the highest ranking field agent what to do. But regarding something that would fall under field agent orders, such as more specialized, higher profile raids/terroristic threats on-compound, a field agent can tell even the most senior guard what to do.
This sort of situation rarely occurs and typically the guards and agents work together without their job descriptions ever needing to overlap. However, this discrepancy has been known to cause friction in the past; some agents feel the guards are just glorified security guards, the kind that could be found at any parking garage or other low-level job, and some guards feel that the agents think they're better than everyone else because they have all their fancy training and deal with issues off-compound as well. The concept of jurisdiction can cause issues when a guard, in his jurisdiction, tells an agent what to do and if the agent doesn't feel he should need to defer. This can occur vice versa, with an agent on compound and in his jurisdiction telling a guard what to do.
Along with all those listed above, there are a variety of other staff positions. There are non-field agents who work in a number of areas such as Research (Ryan and Owen) or Analytics (Jeffrey), and other units that have on-call agents who work full-time in other capacities (such as Aerial Support; for example, Blair works in the Insurgency Unit but is on-call for Pararescue for Aerial Support). There are also scientists, psychiatrists, doctors and other people who work on the compound and have jobs that require a high level of classification. Then there are the civilian positions who provide clerical or other service-oriented tasks but are also sworn to secrecy and can suffer the same penalties as an actual agent if they don't stay true to that promise.
When we first decided to post In the Company of Shadows we didn't know how the original fandom works, in that many original authors charge people to read the stories on their sites. We also didn't initially expect the story to be liked enough for people to want to pay for it. We've discussed it and neither of us likes the idea of charging people for stories available online; we both like the idea of keeping it free, so those who don't have much money can still enjoy it. Also, that way people in different countries have better access.
However, we are now considering self-publishing a re-edited and revised version of the story that people can buy if they're interested in it. Unfortunately, we need some help with editing; if you're interested in helping us edit Book One from start to finish, we'd love to hear from you! See Editing FAQ for more details.
Even once we self-publish, we will keep the current version as-is online for free. This is because we started writing it for our own fun and we will continue to do so for that same reason. It's also because readers like you are out there, are awesome, and are telling us you're interested in what we put out. If all readers and feedback were to disappear, the story would probably disappear as well.
Not at the moment but it's something we're talking about for the future. As a note about that, what is known as "book one" (prologue through epilogue with 44 chapters in between) would probably be split into 2 or 3 books. We are currently working on a continuation of the series (what we've been referring to as Book Two, or Afterimage) and have plans for several other books in the future.
The overall series will be named In the Company of Shadows and each book will get an individual name. We don't have a name for "book one" yet but, as mentioned, "Book Two" is named Afterimage. Visit our forum entry with Chapter/story status updates if you want to stay aware of where we're at in the process of writing.
If you want to help us and speed up the process of publishing, you could volunteer to be an editor. See our Editing FAQ.
If you're interested in somehow helping us out with In the Company of Shadows, one very easy (and extremely appreciated) way is simply to give us feedback (see the feedback question if you're wondering if that's worth it).
You could volunteer to be an editor to help us speed up the possibility of publishing the book.
Other ways that are really helpful are sharing any cultural/linguistic/etc information you may have with Ais via any of the ways detailed in the contacts page. This includes even if you live in America somewhere but especially if you're from another country other than USA or fluently speak a language other than English. We are both anthropology nerds and Ais especially is extremely interested in firsthand knowledge of other countries, cultures, or languages because she hasn't done a lot of traveling and knows some other languages but not fluently. You could contact us via the contact page or leave a post at the forum where we requested information on Culture/Language/Slang from readers.
If you're interested, we would also love fanfics or fanart to be written/drawn for the story (provided that we're credited and linked to). See the fanfic/fanart question for more info. You could also help by creating banners for the site or giving feedback about what could be done to improve our website.
And if you like this story, you can always direct other people our way. We feel very honored and happy to know that this story has been recommended by some readers to their friends or others. That really, really means a lot to us.
When we can publish this story, you could help at that point by buying it or telling others about it ^_^
If you have any questions about any of this, email us at sonnyais@gmail.com or check the contact page for more info.