Finished biggest fic so far!
Nov. 6th, 2023 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jajalalaI'm doooone I finally completed my behemoth of a fic, Alone Together (We'll Freeze in Hell),.... At 214k and 44 chapters, it's my longest fic posted so far. And tbh, I hope it stays the longest XD. I loved the concept and characters and all that, but it grew SO long that libreoffice had slowdowns (yes I had it all in one document. Google docs can't handle that, so libreoffice is my beloved). I'm very relieved to have this DONE so I can have a lil break without being haunted like "wait u gotta get the next chapter(s) written before ur deadline" all the time XD.
This was a My Hero Academia fic about two siblings (Fuyumi and Touya) ending up physically merged into one body and having to deal with the ramifications of that. It's a somewhat "crack"-y concept that a person in one of my discord servers put out as a prompt way back in fall of 2022. At first I thought it was way too intense... but then I couldn't stop thinking about it, and it marinated for awhile. At some point I started writing the fic, and in Feb 2023 I started posting.
Looking back, I think I could have split the story into a series of four "arcs" based on where the main characters were (The Personalized Care Center arc, the Rappa arc, the Shie Hassaikai arc, and the League of Villains arc). However, ultimately I like everything being all together best, so putting it into an AO3 series didn't feel right for it.
The scale of this went big, and with each "arc" new characters cycled in as relevant supporting cast, but at the same time I feel like I was really just rotating around the same themes over and over from dozens of different angles. The horrible helplessness of childhood, pacifism vs. violent change, and the strength/value of choosing to change despite feeling like it's "too late"... Also how horrible it would be to be trapped in a body with your sibling lol.
I loved the chance to explore some less popular characters. I was careful with setting things up for the finale, and along the way I realized I needed to use characters from a certain arc in canon that I originally skimmed through and didn't really like. I still don't love the arc, but after rereading for developing this fic I found myself liking it more, especially some specific characters (Rappa, and perhaps even Chisaki slightly).
The fic is almost entirely from Fuyumi and Touya's alternating POVs, but for each other main member of the Todoroki family (Rei, Natsuo, Enji, Shouto) I gave each member an extra-long POV chapter at key points in the narrative. Those chapters were really fun to write, since we were always in Fuyumi and Touya's heads, it was refreshing whenever I got to write another character and reveal what had been going on with them the whole time the reader was following along with the missing siblings. I also really liked the vibe of pulling out one of these chapters on occasion which created a disruption but, as the fic went on, revealed itself as a pattern that built reader expectations.
In general I ended up doing a lot with repetition/cycles/parallels in this fic. It follows Fuyumi and Touya from a young age being traumatized, and I ended up pushing them to perpetuate that cycle of violence and become what they most hated. This definitely went much more angsty than I typically go! Though in the end, I was thankfully able to give them a happy ending. As I was writing the epilogue, I kept thinking of more and more scenes/concepts/threads to add, to the point where I had to cut myself off like "I'm trying to FINISH this, adding too much to this epilogue I might as well start a whole sequel". In spite of how much I loved the fic, I love finishing things even more so I honed in and focused on making a satisfying ending. I always struggle with endings, but ultimately I feel like this was one of my better endings.
My very first foray into My Hero Academia fanfiction was also a Fuyumi (and somewhat Touya) focused fic (Mild-Mannered School Teacher/Adrenaline-Junkie Vigilante). The Todoroki family has some complex dynamics in canon, but doesn't focus as much on the daughter (Fuyumi) as I would like, so a chance to tread new ground and grow complexity in her unexplored psyche is like catnip to my fanfic-writing brain. However, that fic was written in 2020 when there was less canon information on some important characters (AKA Dabi=Touya had not been canonically confirmed). When canon revealed more, some stuff in my fic was retroactively made inaccurate. Ultimately I was writing from what we knew then and I still enjoy my conceptualization of the characters and their history, but it bugged me that there were new layers to the Todoroki drama that I didn't actually get to dig into.
So this most recent fic was a chance to incorporate more of that new stuff, especially in regards to Touya's official backstory and personality. It made me happy to get to embrace and explore the new stuff canon brought to the Todoroki's. And I got to explore my characterization of Fuyumi again, which I love love love doing!!!
When I wrote that first My Hero Academia fic, I got a really lovely and positive response from the fandom. Vigilante fics and Todoroki family drama fics were both hot at the time, and I was updating the fic during the initial COVID-19 pandemic when many places were shut down and people were seeking to escape into fic, so there was a lot of really positive reception. I think statistics-wise it's still generally my "most popular" fic (depending on what metric u use). That fic was my longest until this latest fic, and I had spent a lot of time and grown attached to it and loved it... and I think in my head after finishing, I worried a bit like "I don't know if anything I write after this will live up to this." Part of me I think was afraid that I wrote my masterpiece, and what I wrote next would always be "not as good" as that fic.
Well I've written plenty since then. And a couple of months ago I went to reread that fic and.... well, I do still love it, it's all my favorite things bundled in there of course, but the writing... let's just say there was a decent amount that I would have edited if it were not already posted and out there. Nothing major, but I was like "Oooh these bad writing habits that nowadays I edit better are still in here, eek."
So that relieved me. Like I doubt statistics-wise anything will match up to that (especially since now it has a time-advantage) but now I can feel smug against myself like "well my writing has gotten better since then" XD. This latest fic focuses on the same characters, but I feel like it goes into more depth and is better written with stronger deliberate themes and more forward-thinking choices and just generally has stronger writing.
Then again, maybe I'll reread this latest fic in a little while and be like "oh my god wait actually this is a mess XD". TBH it's so long and was written serially so it's guaranteed to be SOMEWHAT of a mess, but I hope I will still have a lot of fun when rereading.
Now that that's done, I'm going to enjoy a little break! For real tho, I've got a couple of projects on the backburner. The biggest is probably a Toga/Ochako in Revolutionary Girl Utena's setting concept that I'm really excited for (and have written a decent chunk for!), but I would like to do some fun and funky stuff with CSS and workskins on AO3 to create some fourth-wall breaking stuff that hearkens to the heart of Revolutionary Girl Utena as a story that interrogates and invites the audience to interrogate the nature of a narrative.
Other semi-active projects include an original story involving a haunted house and a bad boyfriend, though that's set aside as something I just work on during a writing group. I've also got a little zine fic I need to edit before release. There are a variety of other WIPs currently languishing that I could poke at...
And this is looking WAY ahead, but right now my roommate and I are obsessed with Ace Attorney. I've only seen the anime (which covers the first three games) but we're currently working through the second game (out of six, I think?). There's a cyberpunk Franziska/Maya concept marinating in my head that I am itching to start, but I want to wait until I finish all the games and have the full cast/story to work from when developing a cyberpunk AU.
But chillaxation and celebration first!
This was a My Hero Academia fic about two siblings (Fuyumi and Touya) ending up physically merged into one body and having to deal with the ramifications of that. It's a somewhat "crack"-y concept that a person in one of my discord servers put out as a prompt way back in fall of 2022. At first I thought it was way too intense... but then I couldn't stop thinking about it, and it marinated for awhile. At some point I started writing the fic, and in Feb 2023 I started posting.
Looking back, I think I could have split the story into a series of four "arcs" based on where the main characters were (The Personalized Care Center arc, the Rappa arc, the Shie Hassaikai arc, and the League of Villains arc). However, ultimately I like everything being all together best, so putting it into an AO3 series didn't feel right for it.
The scale of this went big, and with each "arc" new characters cycled in as relevant supporting cast, but at the same time I feel like I was really just rotating around the same themes over and over from dozens of different angles. The horrible helplessness of childhood, pacifism vs. violent change, and the strength/value of choosing to change despite feeling like it's "too late"... Also how horrible it would be to be trapped in a body with your sibling lol.
I loved the chance to explore some less popular characters. I was careful with setting things up for the finale, and along the way I realized I needed to use characters from a certain arc in canon that I originally skimmed through and didn't really like. I still don't love the arc, but after rereading for developing this fic I found myself liking it more, especially some specific characters (Rappa, and perhaps even Chisaki slightly).
The fic is almost entirely from Fuyumi and Touya's alternating POVs, but for each other main member of the Todoroki family (Rei, Natsuo, Enji, Shouto) I gave each member an extra-long POV chapter at key points in the narrative. Those chapters were really fun to write, since we were always in Fuyumi and Touya's heads, it was refreshing whenever I got to write another character and reveal what had been going on with them the whole time the reader was following along with the missing siblings. I also really liked the vibe of pulling out one of these chapters on occasion which created a disruption but, as the fic went on, revealed itself as a pattern that built reader expectations.
In general I ended up doing a lot with repetition/cycles/parallels in this fic. It follows Fuyumi and Touya from a young age being traumatized, and I ended up pushing them to perpetuate that cycle of violence and become what they most hated. This definitely went much more angsty than I typically go! Though in the end, I was thankfully able to give them a happy ending. As I was writing the epilogue, I kept thinking of more and more scenes/concepts/threads to add, to the point where I had to cut myself off like "I'm trying to FINISH this, adding too much to this epilogue I might as well start a whole sequel". In spite of how much I loved the fic, I love finishing things even more so I honed in and focused on making a satisfying ending. I always struggle with endings, but ultimately I feel like this was one of my better endings.
My very first foray into My Hero Academia fanfiction was also a Fuyumi (and somewhat Touya) focused fic (Mild-Mannered School Teacher/Adrenaline-Junkie Vigilante). The Todoroki family has some complex dynamics in canon, but doesn't focus as much on the daughter (Fuyumi) as I would like, so a chance to tread new ground and grow complexity in her unexplored psyche is like catnip to my fanfic-writing brain. However, that fic was written in 2020 when there was less canon information on some important characters (AKA Dabi=Touya had not been canonically confirmed). When canon revealed more, some stuff in my fic was retroactively made inaccurate. Ultimately I was writing from what we knew then and I still enjoy my conceptualization of the characters and their history, but it bugged me that there were new layers to the Todoroki drama that I didn't actually get to dig into.
So this most recent fic was a chance to incorporate more of that new stuff, especially in regards to Touya's official backstory and personality. It made me happy to get to embrace and explore the new stuff canon brought to the Todoroki's. And I got to explore my characterization of Fuyumi again, which I love love love doing!!!
When I wrote that first My Hero Academia fic, I got a really lovely and positive response from the fandom. Vigilante fics and Todoroki family drama fics were both hot at the time, and I was updating the fic during the initial COVID-19 pandemic when many places were shut down and people were seeking to escape into fic, so there was a lot of really positive reception. I think statistics-wise it's still generally my "most popular" fic (depending on what metric u use). That fic was my longest until this latest fic, and I had spent a lot of time and grown attached to it and loved it... and I think in my head after finishing, I worried a bit like "I don't know if anything I write after this will live up to this." Part of me I think was afraid that I wrote my masterpiece, and what I wrote next would always be "not as good" as that fic.
Well I've written plenty since then. And a couple of months ago I went to reread that fic and.... well, I do still love it, it's all my favorite things bundled in there of course, but the writing... let's just say there was a decent amount that I would have edited if it were not already posted and out there. Nothing major, but I was like "Oooh these bad writing habits that nowadays I edit better are still in here, eek."
So that relieved me. Like I doubt statistics-wise anything will match up to that (especially since now it has a time-advantage) but now I can feel smug against myself like "well my writing has gotten better since then" XD. This latest fic focuses on the same characters, but I feel like it goes into more depth and is better written with stronger deliberate themes and more forward-thinking choices and just generally has stronger writing.
Then again, maybe I'll reread this latest fic in a little while and be like "oh my god wait actually this is a mess XD". TBH it's so long and was written serially so it's guaranteed to be SOMEWHAT of a mess, but I hope I will still have a lot of fun when rereading.
Now that that's done, I'm going to enjoy a little break! For real tho, I've got a couple of projects on the backburner. The biggest is probably a Toga/Ochako in Revolutionary Girl Utena's setting concept that I'm really excited for (and have written a decent chunk for!), but I would like to do some fun and funky stuff with CSS and workskins on AO3 to create some fourth-wall breaking stuff that hearkens to the heart of Revolutionary Girl Utena as a story that interrogates and invites the audience to interrogate the nature of a narrative.
Other semi-active projects include an original story involving a haunted house and a bad boyfriend, though that's set aside as something I just work on during a writing group. I've also got a little zine fic I need to edit before release. There are a variety of other WIPs currently languishing that I could poke at...
And this is looking WAY ahead, but right now my roommate and I are obsessed with Ace Attorney. I've only seen the anime (which covers the first three games) but we're currently working through the second game (out of six, I think?). There's a cyberpunk Franziska/Maya concept marinating in my head that I am itching to start, but I want to wait until I finish all the games and have the full cast/story to work from when developing a cyberpunk AU.
But chillaxation and celebration first!
no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 03:47 am (UTC)That's an incredible amount of words, congratulations!!!
no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 10:41 am (UTC)Your Utena/4th wall break with CSS stuff sounds super fun :D Happy that you have exciting stuff to look ahead to, enjoy the rest, celebrate well, and good luck with whatever comes next :D :D
no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 01:33 pm (UTC)And ahahah I still love the story.... but after all that time spent I MAY be tired of it too. I'm definitely not going to reread what I wrote for a decent while XD. I'll let myself forget a bit of the story and the writing struggle and get some distance before going back to enjoy as a reader.
Thank you!!!
no subject
Date: 2023-11-09 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-10 11:56 pm (UTC)