B.A. Legacy genre brainstorming (5/5/26)

   

~To make a Fairytale or not to make a Fairytale that is the question~

Hello~ I’ve been thinking about Brooklet Avenue: Legacy again and have some thoughts I want to share with you guys, this post is going to be kind of brainstormy and I encourage you guys to share any input you might have (if you have any) :)

But first-

(This is going to be said twice because I took it straight from the other post I’m working on that’s taking way too long, so bare with me) 

I remembered back when I asked you two what you were most interested in, regarding the story of Brooklet Avenue, and if I remember correctly… *flips through paper and adjusts glasses* Missy asked for character dynamics and didn’t care who but hinted at a preference for romance, and Eebie wanted to know about the origin of The Infection, which would now officially be called The Purge Of Decay.

Well, Missy I am working on your long overdue character dynamic lore dumps, as for Eebie, I have a question for you: I have already told you that I was holding off on sharing lore for The Purge Of Decay because the concept was too unsteady and constantly changing for me to feel comfortable sharing it, however these note posts now brings me some leeway. I have three options for you- 1) I can continue to hold off until I have a more solid concept that I’m more sure of, 2) I can show you my general thoughts and the direction I plan on going with The Purge Of Decay as a concept, or 3) I can share the bare bones, non history version of The Infection’s origin that you might already know or at least have an inkling about.

Now that I’ve freed that from WIP jail, let’s talk about the real topic of this note post shall we?

I’ve officially named Penny, Steven, and Jo-Jo’s POV of Legacy, which is:

“The Collective of Faerie Journalists”

(Yes I know I’m waiting to read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries and yes I am easily inspired when it comes to media I enjoy but this was not one of those moments I swear)

I decided to call it this because It follows Jolie Cardinal, (who would be either in her 20s or 30s, I haven’t figured out the timeline yet) as she continues to research the Infection alongside Josephine Cardinal after having to remake her entire journal due to loosing it in the city back in B.A. STEP III, and Steven VonLillian, as he researches the Fae alongside Penny Brown, both in hopes to educate future generations and promote a world kinder to the Fae. (I feel like I should mention the four of them travel together)

Now while I love this idea, I also find myself leaning more and more away from Brooklet Avenue’s overall genre, that of a post-apocalyptic world, and leaning more towards a fantasy approach. Now there’s a reason why I mentioned that Legacy may end up more “fantasy” than Nature’s Revival, but something I find to be a reoccurring problem is how I tend to detach from the overall world building whenever I get too excited about a specific POV idea. Let me explain: You have Rori Crowell, Paisly Brown, Percy Brown, and SpiderLily, those two duos follows a POV that is very centered around the more apocalyptic side of B.A, they get to constantly deal with the Infection while trying to get Paisly back home to The River Town, hence that’s how I see that POV, the only “fantasy” elements being SpiderLily, meaning it’s not that different from STEP III. Then we have Evie Goldborne and Bonibell Jules, they are unapologetically based off of a specific duo I like (if you know.. let’s be real you already know) particularly based off of an AU that will probably never see the light of day (hence why I yoinked certain plot points from it), it’s like a mix of what I can best describe as southern gothic (simply the general visual aesthetic) primarily because Evie comes from a mining community and has a theme of gold, and slightly vampiric because Bonibell literally has fangs and is represented by a bat and wears primarily blacks reds and pinks, you also see a lot on the city and the Gardeners from this POV, while also being very focused on the Creature’s and how they’re treated, it’s difficult for me to describe simply with words but their POV is very different aesthetically than Paisly’s POV. Then we go to Sylas Crowell and Emil Finch and the rest of their group, an extremely city-focused POV that sheds a lot of light on the inner workings of the Gardeners and generally focused on traveling around in the first train test run, it also has a different aesthetic but to me, like Paisly’s POV, feels the most similar to Nature’s Revival. And then we have The Collective of Faerie Journalists… this is where the genre gets thrown way off track because despite being in the same world with the same worldbuilding I can’t stop thinking about a more fantastical world that I can best describe as “fairytale” in comparison to Brooklet Avenue’s usual worldbuilding, I really want to introduce the Fae Realm and I keep wanting to introduce characters who are surrounded by that typical nonsensical storybook magic, you know the type where you randomly meet some lady in the woods who has a magic house, things like that. I also keep veering towards slight medieval fantasy despite the fact that I know I wouldn’t like writing a medieval story, I just can’t help myself I like knights and fairies and Princess and stuff… ToT

My brain craves magical buildings and faerie portals and nonsensical storybook characters within a medieval-esc fantasy world, but at the same time it also craves a vampiric dark academia hunter city and a cozy cottagecore town within a post-Apocalyptic world… surely two can coexist, right?

That’s what I’m trying to figure out, can the two coexist or am I just trying to hard to make it work…

The main problem is that there’s a lot of stuff with B.A.’s worldbuilding that doesn’t allow for me to do that type of stuff, one of the main problems I have with the idea of the world of B.A. suddenly having so much “fairytale” medieval-fantasy elements is the fact that not too long ago it was a generally normal place with the occasional “Critter” or “Creature” within a forest and then went through an apocalypse. Legacy is basically the concept of a new world being shaped after the humans have started to learn to live inside of the apocalypse and is attempting to rebuild society, but the fact that not much time has passed still bothers me, like to give an idea Percy Brown is 24(?) and was born either inbetween STEPs II and III or inbetween STEPs III and IV, meaning it’s only been barely a decade or so since Nature’s Revival (give or take, perhaps two decades), and yeah, a lot can happen in a decade, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit strange for things to suddenly show up out of nowhere… Which means I have two ideas: 1) make an AU, not the greatest idea to me because then I’ll start confusing AU with Original and I don’t like the idea of balancing both, but it’s an option, and 2) Make it so that the Fae Realm starts “leaking” into the human world, the Fae can start engaging more outside of their realm, interact more with humans, and I have this specific idea of how it would look to do it that way because the concept of how Creatures access the Fae realm is a really cool concept in my head. The main thing that would work against this idea is the fact that the Fae Monarch didn’t like humans due to how they were treating their kind, but frankly that had more to do with the Creatures living outside of the Fae Realm and frankly the Fae Monarch was more scared of The Infector than Humans, and that issue is taken care of thanks to Sadie, Willow, and Elder Rose so like who knows maybe the Fae can have a bit of a comeback.

Idk I’m interested to see your guys thoughts because I feel like getting some input that’s not my own thoughts could be helpful :)

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Do you think suddenly introducing the Fae Realm more in Legacy would work despite the worldbuilding I already built up?

-Stitch 🌱